The Witch's Dream - A Love Letter to Paranormal Romance (Black Swan 2) (30 page)

Storm turned and looked at Kay. "You're not coming back."

Kay looked down at his boots for just a second before meeting Storm's gaze head on. "She doesn't want to wait, says now she understands just how fast things can change. And she's not the only one who's learned that lesson.

"I've got enough money so I can spend however long we’ve got just trying to make her as happy as a person can be - for however long we've got. And that's what I'm going to do. Make her happy. Keep her safe."

Storm took in a deep breath and let it out. "You're right. She's not the only one who's learned that lesson." He was reliving the feeling that he had when he was standing in a Siena side street with handfuls of beautiful, warm, wicked witch one minute and nothing but silent, unforgiving stone wall the next. "Black Swan will be losing its best."

Kay guffawed. "That is
such
a lie. All three of my teammates are better knights than I am."

"Now
that
is a lie." Kay just smiled, while his eyes wrinkled in disagreement. “I don't have to dance disco, do I?"

Kay laughed. "Polish your boogie shoes, brother."

Storm groaned.

Ram answered the door and invited Kay and Katrina inside.

Elora was shocked when Kay asked both of them to stand up with him.

"Well, of course." He barely got that out when Elora plowed into him for an excited hug. "What did you think? This is a progressive Black Swan team. Ladies welcome."

Katrina smiled when Elora looked her way for confirmation. "He's spent the past twenty-four hours explaining things to me and I agree. It's fitting. As it should be."

They sat down and Kay delivered the news that he wouldn't be coming back to The Order after his honeymoon. There was always a sadness accompanying the turning of a page, but there was usually a joyful anticipation of transition as well. Ram surprised Elora by saying that, since his mate insisted on going wherever he went, he'd been thinking that the only way he could keep her safe was to retire from active duty himself.

It was news to Elora that they were retiring, but she wasn't heavily invested in fighting for Black Swan. The reason she had become a knight in the first place was to be sure she could keep those three men alive. What she really wanted was a nice fifty acres of green grass where she could breed wonderful Alsatians, or rather, German Shepherds and at least one, probably rowdy, strange-haired little boy with beautifully pointed ears.

As counterintuitive as it may seem, sex demons are solitary creatures who prefer to live alone. Normally, sharing a residence would have been torture for Deliverance, but there was something almost divine about this creature who was partly him and partly the witch he loved. He dreaded the day, fast approaching, when he would have to let her go and wished he hadn’t been foolishly hasty in telling her that a pact of fire binds even him to an agreement.

He had been forced to relent on his proclamation that she should not eat until she could take them through a pass. He fed her for a full two days while she struggled with acquiring the skill, but finally, on the third day she began to show promise. By the fourth day she had the hang of it. For a demon, or a creature like Litha with sufficient demon blood, s
lipping dimensions is only slightly out of the ordinary in the same way a yawn is just a different way of drawing breath. Not painful or difficult. Just different.

The first time Litha successfully slipped dimension without assistance she giggled with a child's delight and Deliverance reacted with an embarrassing rush of sentiment. It wasn't like she was a six-year-old learning to ride a two-wheeler for Cromm's sake!

She learned that most of the passes were about the same size as a large doorway, but that some were huge and in flux like the one off the coast of Florida.

Once she caught on to the possibilities she'd gone a little crazy with wanting to exercise the power. He'd watched her crash a beach bake and eat lobster on the coast of Maine. She'd tried twenty-seven different kinds of seared peppers with flank steak in Rio, crawfish on a pier at Fairhope, Alabama, Szechuan beef in Chongqing province, sushi on a deck with a view of Mount Fuji, and Hungarian goulash in a Budapest bistro.

They fell into the habit of enjoying conversation together during her meal, then they would find a place for her to occupy herself shopping while he took care of his own sustenance. As much as she loved sampling the fare and exploring the cultures of her own dimension, he found her to be aggressively adventurous, for a Terran, when it came to some of the more exotic pleasures available in other dimensions.

By that time she had learned to control her ability to gather fire. She could start fire at will without an emotional stimulus and control the size of the flame, making it as big or small as she chose.

He had proudly introduced her to Sylphic Warriors in a wind dimension where they traveled by sailing just above ground on ships with saffron sails like sampans. He told her that some people called them archangels.

"You're friends with angels?"
"Not a lot. Just like fae sometimes have elf friends."

Litha considered that. "What's the difference between fae and elf?"

"There may be a little difference in dialect? Or in their histories, but the origins are the same."

"So you're saying that angels and demons are basically the same as well?"

"We're children of the ancient elements. Like siblings."

"You know what most humans think.”

"Well, they're good at naming things and pointing fingers."

"What does that mean?"

"Sometimes it's who gets there first. The Akasus, which is the species you call demons, angels, and some others, are one of the oldest races that evolved on this planet. By the time other worlds began to produce similar species we were advanced, relative to them. The Nephilim made a hobby of watching the worlds to see when a new batch of upright creatures was ready to be impressed with godlike abilities. They have a sort of perverse need to be worshipped. Fire demons weren't into that and didn't care if the Nephilim wanted to fuck around with primitives.

"My mother told me that, in the old days, they were fond of wearing cloaks covered with white feathers when they went among the primitives. That's how they came to be associated with wings."

"And the, uh, primitives saw some of the demons start fire? And that's where the whole demon from hellfire started?"

"Hmmm. There are some advantages to being trusted the way the Nephilim are. But there are also advantages to being feared."

"It all comes down to spin.”

“Well said."

"They… you’re… just like us, only more powerful."

"Everything in creation that is sentient is light
and
shadow, Litha. The only absolutes are villains in Batman comics."

"You know, you sound a little like the monks who raised me."

"In that case," he said smiling, "I must meet them. I'm sure we would be great friends." He grew suddenly serious. "Certainly I owe them a lot."

Litha looked thoughtful. "You have a mother?"

Deliverance grinned. "Want to meet her?"

"Yes."

“I haven’t seen her for a while. Not since Rosie…” He trailed off and seemed to withdraw into himself.

"Have you explored all the worlds?" The question brought her father out of his reverie.

Deliverance laughed good-naturedly. "No, love, a thousand years isn't nearly long enough for that. On this plane alone there are countless dimensions, some hospitable and some not. Some are not fit for travel because of the occupants and some have been ruined by explosive waste or chemical warfare."

"Do you travel between planes?"

He shook his head. "No. Think of it like a multistory building with eleven stories and each story represents a plane. On that story there are hallways with lots of doors and each of those leads to a different dimension, but there's no elevator or stairway to get from one story to another. There's no proof that there are eleven planes, just speculation. It could be more, or less. As to where we are, we could be on the first floor or the eleventh. The main thing is that there are a lot of possibilities on every plane."

"How do you know which ones you've been to and which ones you want to go to?"

The demon beamed at her like she was the brightest student in the class. "Now here is an interesting bit about your heritage. Only a few of the entities tethered to the earth's gravitational field can move between dimensions and, of those, there are only a few who can do it effortlessly." He smiled and held his arms out like a performer inviting ovation.

"And Abraxas demons are among the few who don't break a sweat." She seemed unimpressed. "Of course only birds can fly effortlessly, but that doesn't stop hu... Terrans from doing it anyway."

"First, birds are not the only creatures who fly. Second, what are you talking about?"

"I know somebody who came to my world from another recently. They call it 'slipping dimensions'. She was transported in a machine."

"Uh huh."

"Well, is there a lot of that going on?"

"I wouldn't say 'a lot' per se."

She cocked a hip and shot him a look.

"It's been going on for a while and the traffic is picking up."

"What's a while?"

"I don't know how far back. It's not a subject that has ever interested me, but certainly all my life." Litha seemed to need a minute to digest the implications of that. "But you sidetracked me while I was trying to make a point."

"Okay. What?"

"Do you understand how special you are?"

He waited patiently while she stared at him for a long time trying to sort out her feelings and decide how to answer. "I could learn to appreciate my demon side."

Just what he was hoping to hear. He moved faster than she could track, grabbed her up in his arms and swung her around like she was a featherweight child. She didn't want to enjoy basking in a father's adoration, but it was hard to be indifferent to someone who behaved like she was the best thing since breath moved upon the waters.

A couple of minutes after he set her down, she recovered her footing and her equilibrium. When her brain began working again, she said, "But you didn't answer the question."

"Hmmm?"

"How do you know which ones you've been to and which ones you want to go to?"

"Oh. Well, that's where your 'gift' for tracking comes in. Once you've been to a given world you can find your way back just by thinking about it. After you arrive, you can track the passes by instinct. Every world has them. At least all those I've visited or heard about. Use a pass to step into the aisle, form an image of the world you want, and presto, changeo, abracadabra, calamazam, there you are."

Litha stared at him for a minute while she processed that.

"How about calamari on Santorini?" he asked.

"Mexican fusion and margaritas at Cabo San Lucas."

"Done."

The sun had shifted in the sky since they'd been seated. Litha finished her margarita and put on her sunglasses. "Back to what you were saying about the worlds I haven't been to..."

"It's time to talk about the less hospitable worlds." He looked around. "Right after lunch."

"I just had lunch." Litha found that she enjoyed teasing him.

"Funny. I meant me and you know it. I'll meet you back here in an hour."

Litha set her shopping bag down on a terrace table with a grand view of a Pacific sunset and ordered a second margarita. After a few minutes, a demon almost too beautiful to look at slid up next to her.

"This seat taken?"

"Yes it is. I'm meeting my father."

"If you favor him, he must be very good lookin'." Deliverance sat down across from her looking “full” and satisfied. "Time to talk self-defense.

"You come with some very fine tools at your disposal. Few creatures can withstand fire. Other fire demons, dragons, proto-salamanders, that's about it. Even if you were attacked by a horde of whatever, you could just call more fire.

"Your body can be pierced by anything from an arrow to a nuclear missile. The first you would survive. The second you would not. Sometimes it’s best to run.

"The sylphs can protect themselves with their breath. In fact the older ones could blow you off your feet. They also whip up storms when they’re aggravated. Or bored. On your world it gives meteorologists fits. ‘Where the fuck did that come from? I predicted blue sky all day.’” He laughed like it was a joke she could share. “The undines can call water the same way you call fire and, although a dump of water on your head won't usually hurt you, it isn't pleasant either. The purview of the trolls is mutable. They’re pretty much at the mercy of the other elementals which is probably why they’re so disagreeable. You could threaten to scorch the earth, but they’d just laugh at you and tell you to go ahead. Never ask one for help. They’re likely to do the opposite of what you need.