Winded (5 page)

“I can do this.” But Vetiver knew from the determination she
read in his gaze that she was grasping at straws. “I just need to divert
everyone’s attention, so there’s no chance I’m interrupted at a crucial
moment.”

“Vetiver, if this island is a doorway, you are the key that
keeps it locked. The equinox is a moment when all locks turn against the key
holders. I am the storm that will splinter all doors into dust, rendering them
useless.” He peered into her, through her. “There are always three spells to
bind, three spells to break. You broke one when you spent your blood and
invited me here through the keystone—”

Vetiver jerked her hands, but he held fast. “No. I won’t let
you do this.”

“Two remain,” he continued relentlessly. “It is only a
matter of time before they are rendered sterile now that the first and most
powerful is broken.”

Ball was barking. The gale was loud enough now to nearly
drown out his wrath.

“I will protect you,” Boreas promised, bringing her fists to
his lips. “But the island will fall. Before the equinox is upon us, this land
will rest beneath the waves.”

Ball threw back his head and howled just as every window in
the Device house exploded outward.

The floorboards cracked, splintered and flew up in a geyser
of debris.

Chapter Five

Hell was unleashed in her home. Vetiver Device had never
dreamt such a sight and for a moment she feared she’d lost her mind. But she
had read the myths in her ancestors’ Grimoires. It was only years of intense
study that kept her sane now, as the horrifying monstrosities crawled up
through her broken floor and lumbered toward her, fangs dripping, obsidian
claws as long as bayonets, flesh rotting and smelling of damnation. There were
five that she saw, but the endless reverberation of their growls warned her
there could be many more.

The Unnamed were earthbound at last. And on her watch.

Vetiver tasted failure like sour milk on her tongue. It
stained her heart with the resignation that her island was indeed doomed. She
hadn’t known she was breaking any bounds when she’d asked the island for help.
In her rash ignorance, she had allowed the Unnamed a way through.

Ball’s fur quivered. He stood between his mistress and the
closest monster—its flesh bubbling and weeping thick, tar-colored pus—and his
body swelled to an enormous size. His bones cracked. His form morphed as spines
erupted along the length of his back. His fur fell away, exposing a reptilian
hide of scales. His eyes bled crimson rage. A belch of flame erupted from
Ball’s snarling mouth, catching the monster before it could strike Vetiver,
launching it into the air, through the ceiling of the room, a hurtling ball of
fire that screamed with the voices of a thousand lost souls.

Vetiver was frozen in fear, but Ball’s rough lizard head
herded her from the room. Meanwhile, Boreas himself had transformed. His hair
whipping around him like a typhoon, blazing white-blue blades erupted from the
tips of his fingers like claws, which he used to slice their attackers. He ran,
bounced one foot off a wall, flipped to the side, landed behind one
particularly brutish foe and cut him in half with one swipe of his hand.

He moved so fast, Vetiver could only see this small glimpse
before Ball had pressed her out into the hallway.

But here they met with more danger. Just one Daemon, but it
was so massive it blocked the entire width of the hall, cutting them off. Ball
breathed fire but the Daemon roared, its fetid breath holding the jut of flame
at bay. Vetiver couldn’t think, much less plan an attack, but it seemed her
heritage sang rich in her blood this night. Her body turned of its own accord.
Her hand reached out, grabbed a teardrop paperweight on the old, narrow buffet.
It was made of crystal—a heated mixture of sand, quartz and lead oxide, a
mélange of natural materials that seemed to nudge alive the magical center of
her.

Vetiver felt her body as if she were apart from it. It was a
lightning rod, along which the mysteries of the universe raced, imbuing the
paperweight with immense power.

Her hand felt as if she’d doused it in liquid nitrogen.

Her bones felt as if they were made of something radioactive
and her skin thrummed madly around her skeleton.

Her hand hefted the paperweight, which glowed a vibrant
green, and threw it into the Daemon’s open, snarling mouth.

The Daemon’s head exploded.

Ball looked back at her and Vetiver shrugged, wide-eyed.
“Just go with it. I am,” she said through numb lips. Together they raced to the
front door, she and her dinosaur Familiar.

Outside, the earth vomited up more of the creatures. But
Vetiver vaulted over the porch railing, her bare feet slapping onto the wet
grass. She would have run then. But something in the ground gave her pause and
she stopped still.

You may be the last of your line
, the trees
whispered.
But you are not the least
, added the rocks.
You are a
Device
, the soil murmured.
You are our daughter
, all the voices of
nature chimed, in a chorus that drowned out any lingering fear or doubt.

Vetiver felt her heart soar and, with the aid of all the
elements of nature on her side, she faced down the advancing army. The wind
picked up, the rain fell harder and thunder shook the sky.

With a smile playing on her mouth, she felt the whole of her
body light up like the day.

* * * * *

Boreas was frantic. He’d lost sight of Vetiver in the fray.
He’d also lost count of how many Daemons he’d dispatched. There was a pile so
high around him it was impossible to gauge an exact figure, but there were
dozens at least. He knew if he didn’t burn their hearts to dust they would rise
again, but he had no time, he had to find Vetiver first.

Had they taken her? He felt his heart stop, terrified by the
idea of what they would do to her when they caught her. Would they eat her,
like they did the majority of their prey? Or would they take her prisoner as
they had at least one other powerful psychic in recent years?

He would tear the world apart at the seams if they had her.
He would not rest until she was returned to safety, even if it required
absolute destruction of the planet.

Boreas charged from the bedroom, shouting her name. He sent
his Winds to search and blew the walls apart like rice paper.

The house was in ruin. Vetiver was nowhere to be found
inside. He exploded out the front door like a cannonball, sending timbers and
debris about him like toothpicks.

What he saw tripped him up, stunned him, and he landed hard
on his knees, unmanned before the spectacle unfolding in front of him. But he
was too stunned to care about his disgrace. He was undone.

It was a siege. Pure and simple. The goal, the prize, was
the witch. And his witch was standing her ground.

Boreas wanted to shout at her to run. He wanted to throw all
of his power to her, to lift her up and away from danger. But he couldn’t
speak. He couldn’t move. He could only watch in disbelief.

Vetiver was blazing, alight with a savage power that humbled
his own.

She was glorious.

And without mercy.

Her entire body shone as bright as a dying star, blotting
out every shadow the beasts might have found shelter within.

Boreas was blinded and had to turn his face away from the heat
baking off Vetiver in suffocating waves. But in the short glance he’d managed,
he saw the fierce warrior grin stretching her lips. The twenty Daemons rushing
her. The reptilian form of her Familiar at her side, aglow with his own fire
dancing beneath tough scales. The image was seared into his mind’s eye,
engraved on his heart.

Her courage was breathtaking.

Her magic was terrifying to behold.

The sun was anathema to Daemons. More so than it was to any
Shikar. Vetiver’s very form had become their greatest enemy.

In doing so, she had become the greatest weapon against the
Horde that Boreas had ever dreamed of. She’d been created for this battle. She
had been born to fight this war.

At his side. His mate. His equal.

The Daemons screamed as their bodies were set alight. Eyes
watering, Boreas couldn’t stop himself from once more bearing witness to this
wonder. The monsters’ flesh bubbled. Their eyes exploded. Their bones crumbled
and their voices faded, died. As quickly as they’d risen, they’d fallen.

All that was left behind was ashes, heavy and wet from the
rain, sinking into the grass and soil.

The heat ebbed, the light dimmed, and Boreas looked at the
woman he vowed would belong to him forever. He breathed her name. “Vetiver.”

Her multi-hued, smoke-gray eyes were silver and still
bright, wide in her delicate face. The piercings in her face were glowing red
and little tufts of steam floated up where the rain sizzled on her bare
shoulders. Her dress was plastered to her body, wet and transparent, revealing all
her lush femininity.

His breath stilled in his lungs and lust thickened his
shaft, tightening his sac. He wanted inside of her. Now.

With a short, bewildered laugh, she pitched forward,
unconscious.

Boreas caught her before she could hit the ground. He was
almost afraid to touch her, but when he did her skin was merely warm, not
scalding as he’d feared. He lifted her up in his arms and carried her into the
trees behind her home, Ball keeping pace with him, tendrils of fire curling
about the corners of his mouth.

When he’d carried her to the keystone where she’d first
called him, the only safe place he could think of, he placed her gently on the
broken blooms scattered over the ground and tucked her beneath the shelter of
the boulder. He eyed the beastie that was her Familiar. “Can you go back and
destroy the bodies in the house so that I can stay with her?” he asked in a low
voice, barely louder than the blitzing air, afraid of drawing attention should
more enemies be lurking close.

Ball huffed, as if such a request were insulting to his
great talents. Still, he turned and raced for the house, leaving his mistress
in Boreas’ protection.

Chapter Six

Vetiver awoke to see her house engulfed by fire.

There were better ways to greet the dawn.

Her head was in Boreas’ lap. His hand was stroking her hair
and he, too, was watching the spectacle of her home—the last tie to her
heritage and family—go down in a blaze of glory.

The sun had not yet breached the horizon, and with the storm
still raging, the clouds dense overhead, it would not touch the island today.
The wind was still up, the trees bending at alarmingly sharp angles, but none
of it touched them where they rested underneath their shelter of granite. The
ground was still littered with blooms from where Boreas had sprouted—had it
only been last night?—and the freshly overturned soil was a strong scent in her
nose, but not strong enough to blot out the acrid odor of her burning home.

It was over.

Everything she owned consumed by hungry flames.

Everything that had owned
her
, that held her to this
place, was torn away; dead roots to a tree that would bear no more fruit.

The Grimoires, the antiques, the heirlooms, the foundation
of her life and the lives of so many of her ancestors, all of it transmuted to
ash in but a few hours.

She couldn’t help but feel a little lost.

Who was she now? A woman without a home. A witch without a
purpose. Her New England island was doomed to a watery grave. And she had
nothing save the dirty clothes on her back and the silver cuff she’d managed to
keep secured on her arm.

All that remained of the Device family wisdom now slumbered
in her memory. Long days of study at her granny’s knee, Ball at her mother’s
side while she went about making a poultice for some friendly islander. Sleepless
nights spent worrying over the next Warding ritual when she’d inherited her
powers, and Ball along with them. The sudden loss of her mother and
grandmother, the comfort she’d taken in all they’d left behind for her. The
many tears she’d shed as she had worked hard to memorize every spell her mother
had written, every recipe her grandmother had saved during the course of her
long life, the better to help them live on when the time came for Vetiver
herself to give birth to a Device girl child.

If only she had known the hand of fate was guiding her down
this path, she would have secreted the Grimoires away, off the island, stored
away for her descendents.

It was a strange legacy, stranger still to be cast loose
from the moors of the responsibilities that had accompanied it. It was all
Vetiver knew.

And now it was over.

She sat up and looked at Boreas. This strange, electrifying
man who had swooped into her life, with hell close on his heels. She didn’t
blame him. What had happened was destined. She’d felt it when she had first
come here to call upon the elements for their aid, though she hadn’t understood
it at the time. Nor did she feel bitter that it was she who had been chosen to
enter this fray and meet the Unnamed foe their family had feared for so many centuries.

What she felt was a confusing mix of defiance against her
lot, resignation to it, anticipation of what might await her next and a deep
appreciation that she had this strong, fearless warrior at her side to help her
weather the storm he’d brought to liberate her.

“Will more of them come?” she asked, her voice husky from
sleep and roiling emotions.

“Not while the sun is up.” His voice was a deep rumble,
music to her ears after the cacophony of the night.

“But won’t the clouds give them cover?” She looked at him
pointedly. “You seem just fine out here.”

“They cannot abide
any
amount of sunlight. The clouds
protect me, not them.”