Something About Witches (32 page)

Ruby slid her other hand over his on her breast, gripped it. It pressed her nipple farther into his heated palm, increased the sensation of her bare body against his, the fact he was still inside her. He could tell she didn’t want to go forward with the memory, so instead she gave them both the gift of her imaginings that night. Before everything changed.

“I was so big then, but I knew you’d want to see me all naked. And I’d be reluctant about it, uncertain, and then you’d make me feel so beautiful, because you always do. And Derek, at that point, you’re just so…. I wanted you so badly. I was imagining you stroking my body, altered as it was, your hands between my legs.”

She paused another moment, then continued. “I was walking along the sidewalk, having this great fantasy, mixing it with reality. Since you weren’t there, I’d be doing the stroking, but I’d close my eyes, pour the wine over my breasts, feel the tingling over my nipples…. Though I missed you so, in that moment, it was like I was completely
alive. I knew you were coming back; it was just a matter of time. That’s what I kept telling myself.”

Another swallow, and tears clogged her words. “I knew you were probably somewhere you couldn’t talk to me. You’d done that before, and I always tried not to worry, because even with bumps and bruises, you always came back to me. So I imagined your face when you saw me. I knew you’d be so happy. I could just see it. I’d set up a nursery, but I knew you’d want to help me decorate it even more when you got back. We’d put all these amazing things in it, color wheels and crystals, chimes like birdcalls…. Great big stuffed animals and blankets so soft Theo would tug them out of the crib and steal them. We’d curl up on them with her. Even though we’d never talked about having kids, I knew you’d be so happy about her.”

She’d overcome herself, he could tell, her throat thick on those final words. He wasn’t sure he could have spoken louder than a husky whisper himself. So he spoke against her ear, giving her something back, something that might give her the strength to continue, to share the secret that she feared.

“You know me better than anyone, Ruby. In all my centuries of living, I’ve never…. gotten someone pregnant. Eventually I figured it was the price of what I was, the power I carried.” He pressed his lips to her temple. “I know there are men who don’t think about it, don’t care about it. But sometimes I watched kids playing in the park with their dads…. and I’d ache for it.”

A tear rolled over his hand. “Never…. in centuries?” Her voice was so soft.

“Never.” And he let the import of that sink in. He’d never bothered with protection once he’d figured it out, centuries ago. He was immune to STDs; nor could he convey them. So it said something pretty significant, that it had been with her that he’d finally conceived.

The woman who meant more to him than any other ever had.

“Have courage, girl,” he said roughly, bringing her closer, inside and out. “I’m here.”

“And the whole Grat demon thing….”

“I meant it. Though I might throw you over for Marilyn Monroe. If she was alive. I always had kind of a thing for her.”

“Ass,” she said, her voice muffled because she’d turned it into his forearm. He lifted a brow.

“Did you just wipe your nose on my arm?”

“I was sniffling.”

He growled at her, rocked her back and forth, making her catch her breath at that sensation, but then he slid free, tucked himself intimately between her buttocks, recognizing they were about to get into a darker area. He didn’t push her, but he sensed when she quieted again. He stilled as well, waiting on her.

“I could feel her laughing inside me, seeing what I was imagining, that great big dog playing tug-of-war with her and her blanket. Then…. he came. Asmodeus.”

His hands reflexively clenched on her, hard enough that she quivered. He made himself ease the touch, though Derek remembered the way she’d reacted when he spoke the demon’s name in the gun shop, that first day. It had made something in her blacken into a rage so strong, a hatred so visceral, it was an actual hunger.

“He sensed I was…. unprotected, inexperienced. I was a veritable vat of brimming power, lacking any confidence or skills. I might as well have slapped a tag on myself that said ‘Christmas came early.’ He wanted that power, wanted to drain it from me. But then something happened. Rage.

“I felt so much rage, Derek. She was afraid. It was as if she knew….” Her voice faltered, then strengthened. “And I was her mother. I was supposed to protect her. That rage overflowed and I fought him on instinct, no idea what the hell I was doing. I got lucky.”

Her tone suggested just the opposite. “It knocked him on
his heels. In hindsight, I realize he hadn’t expected any resistance at all, so he hadn’t projected with any real strength. I vanquished him back through the opening he’d come from. I fought him, Derek. I fought a demon.”

It terrified him, just imagining her standing alone against something like Asmodeus, whether he’d done a lazy, half-assed projection or not. But she’d done it. His girl had done it. At a terrible, terrible cost.

“He hurt me…. injured me. The trauma…. She died inside me, Derek.” Her voice trembled anew. “I was connected to her soul, hers inside of mine, and I felt her die.”

Holy Goddess.
A mother might feel a fetus die in the womb, which was terrible enough, but a witch, with her enhanced powers and connection to the Earth…. It would have felt like her very soul was being ripped out. Especially since it seemed the child had possessed nascent abilities, abilities that had very likely twined their essences together, in a manner similar to twins, but different. The baby had been nourished not only on her mother’s body, but on her soul as well.

“He’d thrown me into the street before I sent him back to the Underworld. When I rolled off the windshield of a car, I was lying on the pavement, holding my stomach. Crying, feeling that life slipping away. She’d been laughing, Derek, and now she was afraid. She could feel herself slipping away, and she was reaching for me, crying for me. I couldn’t let her go. I had to protect her,” she repeated.

She’d studied so much, growing up in her mother’s shadow. He’d been in and out of her life enough during those years to remember how her academic interests had blossomed on their own, until she’d become a veritable encyclopedia of all things arcane. Not just for dutiful recitation. She comprehended it at an amazing level, made connections far beyond her years. She’d have impressed Roger Bacon. In fact, he saw quite a few similarities between Ruby Night Divine and the learned monk who’d explored the scientific aspects of sorcery.

Early wizards, such as himself, had come before order and science was applied to nature. He’d been part of both worlds, the instinct and chaos that was felt intuitively, that required genetic acumen, and the later world, where magic became about understanding the patterns and lines, the order in Nature.

Her unborn child had helped her unlock her inherited acuity, and her years of study had already been there, ready to marry it. Apparently that night, that union had occurred. Her vast knowledge had unfolded like a sky of constellations in her head, while her intuition had been the navigator, knowing exactly which course to take among the hazards.

“I pulled from the elements around me. I’m sorry to say that night I didn’t care if I was draining them. That didn’t matter to me.”

Raina had said that was mentioned in the police report, how the trees lining the streets were dead, birds limp and fallen as if they’d hit windows. A water main busted, a storefront on fire. She’d assumed whatever had attacked Ruby had done it. They hadn’t considered it was Ruby herself.

“I put her somewhere secure. And just like that…. I wasn’t pregnant. Not a mark on me. No stretched skin, my breasts suddenly just back to the way they were before I was pregnant….” Her voice broke. “It was horrific, wrenching, like it had never happened.”

Which was why the medical report didn’t indicate a pregnant woman, Derek realized. It was a remarkable piece of magic. One that would have required as much Dark magic as Light to pull off, because reverting a near-term pregnant woman back to her pre-impregnated state was about as adverse to Nature as any magical act could be. He held the thought, even though the significance of that told him she was about to head into even more troubled waters.

“I simply shifted her into a different kind of womb,” she said softly. “I wove a temporary illusion so she thought she was still there. I hummed a lullaby, wove it in with her, so
she’d hear it whenever she needed it. I hoped that would hold her until I got out of the hospital, and it did. Once I got out, I went to work. That’s when I brought it all together, figured it all out. How to embrace my powers, how to twist together Dark and Light in a unique way. And I used it not only to give her a permanent Paradise, but to find my potential at last.”

She looked up at him again. “My mother, you, Raina…. You all had the fireworks
and
the knowledge for so long. When I started embracing that power, it was the first time I’d ever felt the fireworks.”

He knew what she was talking about. It had been a long, long time for him, but he still remembered, as an apprentice, those glorious moments when experience and academic knowledge came together and became something tangible, useful, building until it became expertise.

“I’ve made sure she’s in Heaven, Derek,” she concluded softly. “Not the kind where there’s doubt whether or not it truly exists, or a temporary way station to a new life. She’s in a place where she’ll never be afraid, never know anything but love and beauty. Every day is something different, but it’s always sunshine, happiness. Laughter.”

Holy Goddess.
He repeated the mantra to himself, even more fervently. Ruby had created a soul prison.

D
ARK SORCERERS KNEW HOW TO CREATE SOUL PRISONS
, the ultimate torment to any living thing caught in them, and they fed off the energy of that fear. Ruby had done something impossible, and just as dangerous. She’d reversed it. Her daughter’s soul was in a soul prison, but one created to give her never-ending happiness and peace. The price of twisting the magic was that it was feeding off Ruby’s soul.

The knowledge required to do such a thing was extraordinary, unprecedented. His heart was breaking, for several different reasons. When he turned her, she anticipated him, resisting, clinging to his arm. “No.”

He forced her to face him, with gentle but ruthless hands. “Ruby, the baby would have returned to the Hall of Souls. She would have been loved.”

“No.” She shook her head. “That’s what they always want us to believe.”

“You know it’s possible that Asmodeus’s touch infected you with this kind of despair, that it’s still clouding your viewpoint.”

“There is nothing of him in me,” she shot back. “My child died, Derek. That’s enough despair for the whole world. That bastard doesn’t need to do a thing to add to it. And what if they do care for her in the Hall of Souls? Eventually, they have to let her be born, to another set of parents. Can they protect her? Will they love her? This is my baby. Mine to care for. Because of me, she will always experience happiness, contentment and no fear—”

“But it’s not real, Ruby. It’s not living. Her soul never has the chance to rejoin the flow of divine energy and try life again.”

“Who cares? Why is that so important? Because some divine power says so? Well, fuck them. They weren’t there when I needed them, and neither were you. No one has ever been there for me; no one has ever been willing to give up or sacrifice a single bit of themselves for me. Maybe I’ve done nothing to deserve it, but a child always does, and my child is going to have that. Forever.”

She was out of the bed, facing him with hands clenched, her eyes wild and feral, mouth curled in an ugly, determined line. He rose from the bed then. Fuck it. He didn’t usually take advantage of such a mundane magic, but he concentrated, brought his clothes to him from where he’d left them in the cottage. Yanking on his jeans, he shrugged into his shirt, facing her in a better position than bare-ass naked.

“This magic is a death wish. No one can interact with Dark forces for long without being pulled into full servitude to it. You’ve been avoiding that fate by using your soul as bargaining chips. And bravo— you’ve turned yourself into a formidable witch, possessed of great abilities. Abilities that will serve no one and nothing in the end, because they’ll be consumed in the fires of the Underworld like popcorn.”

“You need to leave. This is no longer your concern.” But the desperation in her voice said she knew that wasn’t going to happen.

“Ruby, I can’t let you do this. You know I can’t.”

“So the sorcerer steps forward. The
cop
.” She spat it out. “It’s always that side of you that takes precedence, isn’t it? You’ll never simply be the man who loves and supports me. Fine. You want to try, you try. But you will have to kill me to do it. If you have the balls to do it, to kill the woman you claim to love, then do it.”

“Damn it.” He seized her shoulders before she could evade him. “Ruby, you can’t see; you’re too mired in it. This is wrong. And if telling you that, forcing you to face it, makes you hate me, then that’s the price I’ll pay for loving you…. and for loving her. Because I would have loved decorating a nursery with you. I would have loved knowing the very second you were carrying her. I hate like hell I was trapped in a Fae world, unable to be there for you. I hate it enough that I’m willing to change everything in my life, right now, to make sure I’m always there for you going forward, but there is no moving forward unless you let her go. You’re killing yourself, Ruby, destroying your soul. Worse, you’re keeping her from having the life she should have.”