The Silverwing's Sorceress: THe Shadow Slayers, Book 2.5 (8 page)

“Well, thankfully they aren’t here. You’re the only Demiáre on this mountain, and I don’t think you’re going to hurt me unless you plan on lecturing me to death.” With a flip of her hair, she grinned and sat back down. “Besides, you can’t stay mad at me—remember?”

He frowned, wondering if he should have kept that weakness to himself, but then pulled up a chair beside her. “What did you find?”

She showed him page after page of ingredients and spells that made the veins in his temples stand out from his skin. It didn’t help his mood that many of the things listed in the book were designed with dark magic meant to be wielded against his kind. He was a patient man, but after two hours, he’d had enough.

He took her hand and shut the book. “Enough. I’m going to bed. I understand now why these books are outlawed, and yet you still haven’t found what you need to shut down the mountain’s protections.”

She yawned. “I’m not through the whole book yet. The spell’s not going to say ‘How to shut down a mountain’s ward’. It’s bigger picture than that.”

“You can start again in the morning.” He couldn’t believe he was really allowing her to search that infernal book.

“Just another hour,” she said, blinking her eyes like they were going blurry.

“No, not another minute.”

When he picked her up from her chair and carried her up the stairs, she let him. One of the best parts of having a silver-wing for a friend was not worrying if she was too heavy when he wanted to carry her. “You’re so bossy when Kara’s not around. Who knew you were such a tyrant?” And why, oh why, did that have to be such a turn-on?

“You can scarcely hold your eyes open.”

She swallowed down another yawn, not willing to give him the satisfaction. “Men carrying me to bed usually has the opposite effect of lulling me to sleep.”

He laughed, opening the bedroom door with his foot then tossing her on the king-sized bed. “Be careful what you say, little witch. I might get the wrong idea and assume you enjoyed our time in the hall more than you’re willing to admit.”

He stripped down to his boxers and crawled under the covers.

Abbey sighed, peeling off her jeans and scooting under the covers beside him. “Yeah, you do seem to have the wrong idea lately. What happened to my sweet snuggle buddy? If you cross this line—” she drew a finger down the sheet between them, “—you’re going to be exiled to the guest room for the duration.”

He shifted as if he were getting comfortable and flung his arm over the imaginary line. “Damn it. I’ll see you in the morning.”

When he jerked like he was getting up, Abbey pulled him back down and laughed. “You’re horrible.”

He grinned. “So you do want me here. I was thinking I might enjoy stretching out in my own bed for once.”

“I know that smile. You’re bluffing. You have that same expression every time you hide a grocery bag by the front door and try to convince me the store didn’t have rocky road ice cream. It’s definitely a detriment to your poker career.”

“What?” He brought a hand to his chest. “I’ve beaten you and Kara the past five times we’ve played. I have a collection of quarters as big as my fist.”

“That’s because, my sweet Jaxy, you’re so cute when you win that we throw the game.”

“
Humph.
So you say, my sassy witch.”

“It’s true. We can read your face like a book. When you puff your lips out like this—” she made a slight pucker, “—it means you don’t like your hand. And when one eyebrow twitches after you look at your cards, you have something worth holding on to.”

“Really? And tell me…what does this mean?” He smoothed back her hair and came nose to nose with her, staring deeply into her eyes.

“That you have poor vision?”

He moved in to kiss her lips but then veered off and pecked her nose instead. Stifling a smile, he bought his hand to her face and felt around, as though he couldn’t find her mouth. “You do know me.”

She giggled and pulled away, curling on her side to share his pillow. He was teasing, but her skin was prickly hot having him this close to her, especially after the scene in the hallway. Any moment he could grasp her hips in his big hands, and she’d be a goner. It was time to take it down a notch. “I wouldn’t say I know
everything
. For instance, I know your pant size and how you like your coffee, but you’ve never told me about your family. You’ve heard way too much about mine—Grammy D and Claudius, anyway.”

Jaxon hated being asked about his family. There was nothing that would take the spark out of him faster, and she definitely didn’t need more sparks right now—her body was lit up enough as it was.

“I told you that I don’t have a family,” he answered.

“That can’t be the whole story. Everybody has a family.”

She was shocked when he sat and leaned against the headboard, wedging two thick pillows behind his back. “I want to talk to you about something, and I suppose now is as good a time as any,” he said.

He stacked another set of pillows behind Abbey, and she settled into them, drawing her knees to her chest. “This sounds important.”

“It is.”

“Okay… I’m officially awake now.” And why was she suddenly wishing she hadn’t asked?

“Remember when I told you that Kara was tasked with getting the blood of a black-wing to help heal your brand?”

“Of course. I think it’s a horrible idea. There’s no way I’m coming anywhere near some black-wing’s bodily fluids.”

“Be that as it may, it started me thinking about brands and what they symbolize for the Aniliáre in the first place. I…” His voice faded away.

“Say it, Jaxon.”

He let out a quick breath, like a sprinter waiting for the gun. “I’d like to attempt healing you with my own blood.”

Abbey tried to hide her revulsion. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, when clearly he’d put a lot of thought into his offer. “Hmm… Okay… Why do you think your blood could heal my wound?”

“Although branding is rarely used anymore, I was told that hundreds of years ago the Aniliáre favored it to show ownership of their females. The black-wing’s symbol was permanent unless he used his own blood to heal it. In some cases, the blood of his immediate offspring could also be used. I never considered this for you, because you’re a witch, and what Gable did to you is no normal brand. But still…if Claudius wants the blood, there may be some truth in it.”

“Claude didn’t ask for Brakken’s blood. You said he just wanted the blood of a black-wing, in general. But if what you said about Brakken’s son being able to do the same thing is true…then wouldn’t you have to be—”

“Yes. His son.”

“
What?
” She jerked as though she’d been slapped.

Jaxon…Brakken’s son? No, that couldn’t be right. He would have told her. Her heart thudded as memories of Gable’s brutality flashed through her mind. Gable…the son of the craziest black-wing in the Shadowland. Jaxon…his brother.

She jumped to her feet and fled for the door. Jaxon caught her before she could make it across the threshold.

“Abbey, wait…”

When he wrapped his arms around her, she pushed hard at his chest. “I don’t understand what you’re saying! If you’re telling me the truth, you’ve been lying to me since the day we met. If you’re lying to me for fun, you’re some sicko I don’t even know. Which is it?”

A thick crease wedged between his brows, and his shoulders hunched like he was being pelted with stones. “I never lied. It’s simply not something I talk about. No one knows—not even Brakken himself.”

“How is that possible?”

“Sit back down, and I’ll tell you.”

She walked to the bed, ashamed to admit that the only reason she agreed to sit and hear him out was that her legs couldn’t support her weight. Her knees felt like they’d come unglued from the tops of her shins.

Her ass sank into the mattress as she tried to hold herself upright. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

Somehow, he looked more distraught than she was. He sat on the edge of the bed next to her, his face ashen, with a thin film of sweat misting his brow. “Have you heard of the female Hexa?”

“No. Should I have?”

He glanced away. “If you’d been born Demiáre, you would have learned all the proper swear words growing up. A favorite expression around the island is…‘by Hexa’s…
hairy ass
’.”

Abbey shook her head and smoothed her fingers along her pounding temples. “I’m not following you.”

“The form most Aniliáre take would look human to you, but under that veneer, fallen angels are more spirit than flesh. Because of this, the results of their breedings are not always predictable. There’s always the chance that a…
mutation
will occur.”

“Mutation?” She met his eyes and raised a brow, still not sure what this had to with anything. “Are you saying Hexa really did have a hairy ass?”

“Not
did.
Does. And it’s not only her bottom—her entire body is covered in silky brown fur.”

Abbey’s mouth gaped. “Like a chimpanzee?”

He frowned. “No. Softer and thicker. Like an otter.”

“And you know this because…”

With his chin tilted up, he finally met her eyes. “Because she’s my mother.”

What the hell?
“Your mother is an otter hybrid?”

“Of course not! She’s a highborn Demiáre with an unfortunate mutation. And she’s certainly not the only one. Hexa is not so different from any other fallen angel hybrid you might meet. Well, except for the fur.”

Jaxon Hex.
She’d always thought his chosen last name was a joke of sorts…a poke at witches. But he’d taken a piece of his mother’s name.

Abbey was having trouble piecing it all together. But what seemed most important was the part about the worst Aniliáre scumbag in the Shadowland being Jaxon’s father. “So where does Brakken come into play?”

Jaxon’s complexion looked mottled, like his emotion was coming to the surface, bleaching a ring around his lips and staining his skin. “What you need to understand is that Hexa has always been treated poorly. She’s been ridiculed and tormented since the day of her birth when her mother and father renounced her. She has no children…except for me—and she would deny it if she were pressed.”

“Why would your own mother deny she’d given birth to you?”

“I haven’t spoken to her since I was a teen, but when I was young, she said it was so Brakken would never know that he’d succeeded, and so I could have a normal life—where no one would suspect the tainted blood I carried.”

“What do you mean, that Brakken ‘succeeded’?”

Jaxon rose from the bed and walked to the window. Just when Abbey thought he wouldn’t say more, he said something too low for her to hear. She rose and quietly joined him. The view from the master bedroom was of the entire valley, moonlight bathing the trees and mountains as far as the eye could see.

She pressed a hand to his forearm. “I couldn’t hear you.”

When he faced her, she saw teeth clenched tight and a single tear sliding down his cheek. “I said that he captured her to humiliate her.”

Abbey released a tremulous breath and waited, not sure she wanted to hear the rest. But he continued, “He made a spectacle of…mating her while his people watched and hurled insults. When he finally released her, she fled back into hiding. When she learned she was with child, she thought of cutting it—me—out of her own womb. She said the only reason she didn’t was fear of the pain and doubt she would be able to accomplish it without help.”

It took Abbey a minute to realize that Jaxon looked blurry because of the tears running from her own eyes. “I think that’s a normal reaction to what she went through, but I have no doubt that the first time she held you in her arms, she loved you.”

His laugh was a low, bitter sound. “You’re thinking like someone from the surface. It’s rarer than you know for a Demiáre female to feel true affection for her child. Some of these females are almost as old as the Aniliáre themselves. I never expected my mother to love me, so I can’t pretend she let me down.”

Abbey was silent for a moment, simply being present in Jaxon’s pain and letting it soak through into her. “I’m sorry you’ve kept this secret inside you for so long, but I can’t tell you how honored I am that you shared it with me.”

The tension in his shoulders relaxed a fraction. “Can you ever look at me the same knowing I carry the blood of a psychopath and a mutant within me?”

She ran a hand over his incredibly silky hair and smiled. “At least you didn’t get Brakken’s crazy gene. The rest we can work with. As for Hexa, it’s not her fault she was born with a…pelt. You should have seen my great-grandmother’s mustache. When she kissed my cheek, I’d get rug burn. She was awesome beyond belief. The only problem I have with Hexa was her leaving any doubt in your mind that you are the most amazing man walking the planet.”

He pulled her close and kissed her. Lingering mouth to mouth, she breathed in his air. “If my tainted blood can heal you,” he said, “everything I’ve endured would be worth it.”

She kissed the corner of his lips, then leaned away so she could see his face. “That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself. Even if we tried it, we can’t be sure it would work.”