Darkness Bound

Chapter 2

Two

GRAY

Was sudden onset attraction to someone who annoyed the hell out of you a symptom of cabin fever, a symptom of magical burnout, or a symptom of one too many blows to the head?

It had to be a symptom of something. I refused to believe there was any other explanation for the rush of heat I felt whenever Asher got too close—a scenario that was getting harder to avoid since we’d been sequestered together at the safe house.

I understood why the guys had left us behind—Ash was still recuperating from the damage of the devil’s trap, and as the group’s resident human and seriously depleted witch, I needed some extra R&R, too.

But it was hard to relax when three of the four men I’d come to care about most in this world were putting in long hours at the house where we’d been ambushed by opportunistic vampires working for the monster who’d killed my best friend and countless others.

And things between Asher and me? Oh, how I wished I could go back to those halcyon days when hating him came as naturally to me as breathing. But how could I hate him now?

Whatever we were to each other when this nightmare began—whatever he’d thought of me years ago when he’d helped bring me back from the brink—springing him from the devil’s trap had bonded me to him in ways that went well beyond the kiss we’d shared.

I’d felt his soul. Glimpsed the darkness there.

And in that darkness, some black, cold thing inside me had recognized a kindred spirit.

Maybe that should’ve frightened me.

It doesn’t.

Maybe I was getting used to the darkness.

I am.

Maybe I was starting to like it. To like him.

I am...

I shivered, the salt of Asher’s skin still lingering on my lips. He’d been in the shower for twenty minutes already, and in that time, the only thing I’d managed to accomplish was filling the teakettle.

I hadn’t even turned on the flame.

Scolding myself, I turned on the gas range and grabbed my mug from the cupboard—the chipped one Sophie had painted for me—grateful Ronan had thought to grab it from my kitchen in South Bay. It was a little piece of home—a reminder of my best friend and the safe, normal life we’d once shared—and I clung to it.

Words like safe and normal were no longer part of my vocabulary, but thinking of Sophie always grounded me, even when my current roommate was doing everything in his power to drive me to an early grave.

“Darlin’, your love is my poison,” he sang out from the bathroom down the hall, “and I’m dying for another taste.”

“I’ve got your poison right here,” I grumbled, though I doubted he could hear me.

“You make me bleed,” he belted out, “a little more for every kiss. But baby, don’t you know by now I’d bleed myself dry for one last hit?”

Goosebumps rose on my arms.

I yelled at them.

“Can’t you hear me?” he sang, louder and more passionately with each word. “I’m out here in the cold, banging down your gate. I’ll never leave you, darlin’, I’m just begging for my dose of fate. ‘Cause oh-oh-oh, your love is my poison, and I’m falling out for—”

The kettle whistled, muffling his next words. I whisked it away from the flame and tried to catch another note, but it was too late. Asher’s serenade had stopped.

“Thank God,” I said, though my voice lacked conviction.

I pictured Sophie teasing me with a hearty laugh and a swift roll of her eyes.

You are soooo crushing on him, Gray…

I poured the hot water over a sachet of chocolate pu-erh tea, letting its sweet scent calm me as the image of Sophie’s smile faded.

Asher started up a new tune, but I knew better than to give him any more attention. Leaving him to it, I headed into the living room with my tea and my book and an unflappable resolve to carve out some peace, even if there was a sexy-as-sin incubus tormenting me from behind the bathroom door.

Where he was currently in the shower. Naked.

Dripping wet over all those muscles and tattoos.

Singing rock ballads that gave me goosebumps.

Figures he can actually sing, too…

I caught myself before I got sucked into another pointless fantasy, refocusing on the task at hand.

Which was…?

Oh, right.

Peace and quiet in the living room.

While the kitchen was a sleek affair with vast granite countertops, glass-front maple cabinets, a big island in the center, and stainless steel appliances, the living room was much homier, featuring huge bay windows, a vaulted timber-framed ceiling, lived-in leather furniture, and a massive stone fireplace that took up almost an entire wall.

Setting my stuff on the coffee table, I knelt before the hearth and loaded in some crumpled newspapers and a few logs, kindling new flames to life.

Asher’s voice dimmed to background noise as the fire popped and hissed, and I grabbed the butter-colored afghan from the back of the worn leather couch, curling up in what was quickly becoming my favorite spot.

I’d left Sophie’s tarot cards on the coffee table, and I reached for them now, thinking as always about my best friend. Lately, her presence had been a constant in my life; real or imagined, memory or vision or magic or plain old pie-in-the-sky hope, she’d been with me, making me laugh and cry, offering advice, and keeping me company through the loneliest hours of the night.

I’d always felt especially close to her when I read with her cards, but tonight, something seemed to shove my thoughts in a different direction. The instant my fingers touched the deck, a fresh image appeared in my mind: Haley and the other witches from Bay Coven.

Someone was sending me a message.

I centered myself, tuning out everything but the warm glow of the fire on my face, letting my intuition take the wheel. I shuffled quickly and pulled six cards, placing them face down in two columns of three cards each.

“Tell me what I need to know,” I said softly.

I flipped the first two cards at the top of each column, revealing a four-handed Magician performing for an audience of shadows, followed by the reversed King of Swords. The same cards had turned up in Sophie’s last tarot reading—the one she’d shown me in my magical realm after I’d discovered her book of shadows.

“Hunters,” I said, eyeing the King’s massive sword. But unlike that day with Sophie’s reading, I now realized the cards were speaking about one hunter in particular.

One whose lips had turned words of love into weapons and curses the day he vowed to burn me alive.

I was certain he was behind the Bay’s recent string of witch murders and kidnappings. But what was his ultimate plan? Why had he left some alive? Why had he left me alive?

Swallowing the bile that rose in my throat, I turned the next two cards—Seven of Pentacles and Eight of Swords.

In the eight, a sinister moon lured a nude woman to an open window, impelling her to lean out. A garden of eight sharp swords bloomed beneath her. One more inch, and she’d fall to a brutal death.

The seven—a young witch drawing blood from a tree blooming with silver pentacles—was the card that had clued me in a few weeks ago about Sophie practicing witchcraft in secret with the Bay Coven.

Showing up here with the Eight of Swords, it was clearly a warning.

“He’s forcing them to do his bidding,” I said, letting the messages wash over me. “He needs them alive, but scared—too scared to run. He needs them to work their magic.”

The fire popped and sparked, as if confirming my hypothesis.

I turned it over in my mind. If it were true, it meant that Haley and the others were still alive—that they still had a chance at surviving this thing. But between the options of death and survival, a thousand more possibilities lived… and most of them weren’t good.

Hastily I turned the bottom two cards—Queen of Swords and Nine of Wands.

Dressed in robes of gold and red, the fierce queen held two swords, one tipped with blood. It dripped onto the ground before her. Sometimes this card spoke to me of a badass, take-no-prisoners woman getting s**t done.

Tonight? She scared the hell out of me. She was out for blood, and she’d do everything in her power to get it.

Like the woman in the Eight of Swords, the figure in the Nine of Wands also suggested imprisonment. She sat on a stone pedestal, her head bowed in apparent defeat, a black mask covering most of her face. A staircase marked by eight wooden wands loomed behind her—a possible escape—but it remained hidden from view. The only glimmer of hope came from the ninth wand, flaming like a torch, ready to light her way home.

I shivered, pulling the blanket tight around my shoulders. The positioning of the bottom two cards worried me. The sword-wielding queen seemed to be threatening the girl on the pedestal, refusing to let her leave.

“Where are you?” I whispered, brushing my fingers over the Nine of Wands. The girl on the steps seemed so scared, so defeated. I wanted to tell her not to give up. That she wasn’t forgotten or alone. That somehow, she’d be found and brought home and made safe once again.

I picked up the card for a closer look, and a gust of warm air blew out from the fireplace, stirring my hair.

A small voice sounded in my head.

Help us…

I sucked in a breath. The fear I was sensing in the card suddenly manifested inside me with a heart-wrenching terror that sent real waves of panic cascading through my limbs. Sweat broke out across my forehead, and my chest heaved, my mouth filling with salty air that tasted like the sea. I gulped it in greedily, as if it were the first chance I’d been given to breathe in days.

Black smoke curled out from behind the flames, reaching for me, drawing me in. The magic inside me stirred in response, and I held out my hands, determined to strengthen the connection despite the discomfort. Smoke twirled and danced around my fingers, caressing me with a warm, inviting touch, calming the dread that had gripped my heart.

It pulled me from the couch, urging me closer, and I knelt at the hearth again, staring into the fire as some unseen force compelled me to look deeper. To see. To know.

Images appeared in the flames, frantic and disjointed at first. I held up my hands, and the fire dimmed at my command, the images slowly coming into focus.

Women and girls. Witches. Dozens of them locked in cold, cramped cells with no windows, no natural light. The glow of magic flickered all around them, throwing eerie shadows on the wall.

The image reminded me of the Magician card.

The vision zoomed in on a single prison cell, and the girl inside turned to face me, her eyes widening as if she could see me, too.

“Help us,” she said, her voice weak, yet determined.

“Where are you?” I shouted, but she was already fading, the flames roaring up once again, taking her away from me.

“Gray! Her frantic call echoed, the sound of my name in her frightened voice like an arrow to my heart. “Gray!”

“Gray!”

The bark of a man’s voice yanked me out of the trance, and I whipped my head toward the sound just in time to see Asher charging at me from across the smoke-filled room in nothing but a towel.

The fire alarm screeched overhead.

I’d barely had time to process the visual when he started shouting again

“Open the damn door!”

I bolted for the front door and hauled it open, then moved on to the windows.

Immediately, the smoke began to dissipate.

Blinking away the last of my confusion, I headed into the kitchen and grabbed the broom, using it to hit the reset button on the smoke alarm.

The house fell silent once again.

When I turned around again, Asher was at the fireplace, one hand holding up his towel, the other messing with the damper on the chimney.

“What happened?” he demanded.

When I didn’t respond, he crossed the room and grabbed my shoulders, peering into my eyes. Despite the frustration in his voice, his face was pinched with worry.

“Gray,” he said, softer this time. “You looked like you were about to dive right into that fire.”

I looked at my hands. They were trembling, and it wasn’t because of the smoke.

“I saw her,” I whispered.

Asher ducked down to meet my gaze. “Who?”

“Reva Monroe.”