Dae
The moment Alice's lips formed the first few syllables of the incantation, reality twisted around me.
One second I stood outside the circle, watching with my heart in my throat as the woman who was life and death to me prepared to take on a fucking djinn. The next, I slammed into Alice's consciousness like a fist through glass.
Her terror blazed through me. Her magic surged up my spine, snapping my body stiff as if I'd gotten struck by lightning. The taste of her blood exploded across my tongue, her scent filled my lungs, her innate goodness filled my heart, and beneath it all, the sick, oily wrongness of him.
Marcus.
He was coiled around Alice's core like a serpent wrapped around its prey, threading himself through the spaces, slowly squeezing the life from her soul, violating the connection we had. Poisoning her from within, drop by drop, breath by breath.
"??," I gasped, my knees buckling. Fuck!
Distantly, I felt hands on my shoulders, holding me up as voices whispered in my ears. Or maybe they screamed. Asking me what was wrong.
But I couldn't answer. Alice's voice—my voice?
—continued the chant, and every word pulled me deeper and deeper into the spell until I felt like I was being torn in two.
The cemetery vanished. The vampires disappeared.
There was only the circle, the witches' joined power pulsing around me, and Alice's heartbeat thundering in my ears like a drum calling me home.
"By all the gods…dammit!" Judy's voice sounded far away.
"Get him into the circle!" No! No! The circle was closed.
If anyone entered now it would break the seal and put everyone there in danger.
Yet, hands circled my arms and pushed me from behind.
I felt intense pressure and a snap and then Alice's back was against my front, her scent filling my nose, and my arms automatically wrapped around her waist.
I was her.
And she was me.
"Move! Close the circle again!!"
Judy's magic rose first. Steady and controlled.
She'd been High Priestess for decades, and it showed.
Her power surged, steady and inexorable as a river finding its course during a spring thaw.
Through Alice's senses, I felt her magic wrap around us like armor, protective and furious and aching with love for her niece.
Keira's magic was the next wave, and it crashed over us like a wave in a storm, wild and unyielding. Tendrils of it reached out, probing Marcus's hold on us like fingers searching for weaknesses.
We felt Emma fast on her sister’s heels, not quite as precise, but still solid. Marcus's grip tightened on us with sinister desperation, but Emma’s magic pressed hard against him, locking him down inside the threads of Alice's existence so he couldn't latch on any harder.
I gasped for air as the other witches all joined in.
The scent of blood filled the air and I heard a hungry groan from Brogan through the ringing in my ears as Esme slashed her palm and dripped it around the circle.
Spirits screeched as they circled around us, terrifying and unseen as Jesse and Ryan called to them to assist us.
Lizzy's warmth poured into the circle and into us, along with Alex's cold darkness, so similar to his Seattle cousins—Jesse and Ryan—but not nearly as unsettling.
Then came Angel.
Her magic slammed into the circle like a freight train. Like a fucking avalanche. Pure, undiluted force that had been locked away for far too long, pressure building under the lid until it was allowed to blow.
Through Alice's eyes, I saw Angel's face across the circle. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but her expression remained fierce. Determined. Power poured from her with the desperation of someone who'd been denied this—this—for far too long.
Then I felt the strangest sensation…
Just a whisper at first. A brush against us. A foreign presence threading through the brilliant knot of fate and blood that tied me to Alice.
Talin.
Normally, we'd feel nothing as she followed the threads that attached us.
But within the circle, within the spell the witches wove, I felt everything.
She moved through our bond, tracing the threads where they twined together, delicate and precise, searching for the place Marcus had tied his life to ours.
She descended further and further until, through the fog of our merged awareness, I sensed her hesitation. Sensed her triumph the moment she located where Marcus had anchored himself within our bond.
He'd nestled himself right into the heart of our connection, where her blood met mine. Where her magic wrapped around my immortality. Where the mate bond pulsed brightest.
Talin began pulling at the edges of Marcus's anchor point like she was trying to remove splinters that were deeply embedded in our skin. Each tug sent ripples through the bond, pain and relief mixing together until I couldn't tell them apart.
Alice's chant faltered when she felt it. Just for a couple of seconds, but it was enough for Marcus's grip to tighten reflexively, digging back into our connection like barbed wire.
My arms tightened around Alice, holding her harder against my chest, my palms splayed across her stomach.
As Talin worked to pry him loose, Marcus's fury kept building until I tasted the metallic edge of his rage, his magic parasitic and possessive, claiming ownership of something that would never belong to him.
Talin pulled again, harder this time, and Marcus snarled. I responded with a possessive growl of my own.
The witch was MINE, dammit. Not his! Never his!!
And through it all, my Alice's voice rose. Strong and steady, louder and louder, until she was all I heard over the chanting of the other witches and the rage of the djinn whipping around us like a cyclone.
"Blood calls to blood, and the blood that calls is mine.
What was opened may be opened again.
By salt and by fire, by the four winds, by the earth and the moon, elements and magic, I take back the welcome.
No blood shall house you. No mouth shall speak you. No door stands open at your back.
Come forth in flesh. Made flesh, you may be unmade."
The combined power of the coven pressed down on us like a vise, making the djinn writhe inside us. Still, he dug his claws deeper and deeper, refusing to let go.
"It is spoken!" Alice called out.
I tightened my hold on her, tucking my face between her shoulder and her throat as her arms rose high. The back of her head rested against my shoulder as I did my best to hold her together while the thing inside her tried to tear her apart.
Her voice rose to the sky. "Let it be done. Let it be done! Let it be done!!"
The spell book suddenly flared with golden light. Ancient words crawled across its pages, then rose into the air, swirling within the circle, faster and faster until they were nothing but streaks of color flying around us.
Marcus screamed in rage and pain, and Alice and I screamed with him as djinn magic poured from her, just like the image she'd shown me what felt like a lifetime ago. Her magic or his, I didn't know, but I felt its power. Felt it pulling on the dark forces around us.
His screams vibrated through our bones, shrieks of rage, possession, and a twisted, obsessive love that made my stomach turn. He thrashed against the witches' combined magic, against the book's spell and the bond between us, fighting to maintain his hold on the woman he'd claimed as his own.
But the coven held firm. Their magic tightened around him, binding him, forcing him toward the surface of Alice's consciousness like drawing poison from a wound.
"Laney," Talin called, her voice cutting through the chaos. "Now!!"
From the safety of her place outside the circle, her scary as all hell mate right behind her, Laney's lips began to shape words in a language that predated any I had ever heard. She never raised her voice, but I felt her power build, pressing on my eardrums as it gathered strength.
The temperature suddenly dropped and chills swept over my sweat soaked skin. The candle flames leaned inward and held there.
Laney's magic sliced through the circle's protection, nearly surgical in its precision. I felt it cut—sharp and cold and merciless—slowly severing the golden thread that connected the djinn to us.
Marcus's shriek of fury and pain shattered the night. He convulsed within us, thrashing back and forth like a cornered animal as Laney's magic continued to cut, separating him from the bond with Talin's help.
Alice suddenly went rigid in my arms as her magic flared white-hot, boiling my blood as Marcus fought to maintain his grip. But Laney and Talin continued to force him out, inch by agonizing inch.
"Get out of her," I snarled against Alice's throat, my voice raw and guttural, fighting the urge to sink my fangs into the side of her throat and stake my claim.
Talin's magic wrapped around the severed threads of Marcus's presence, pulling them away from our bond like unraveling a tapestry. Each strand that came loose sent jolts of pain through us, but beneath it—underneath the agony—I felt space opening up. Clean space. Our space, free of his corruption.
Alice's fingers closed on my forearm hard enough to grind the bones together.
"Yeobo." I put my mouth against her ear. "Stay with me, stay here, stay—"
I watched as a circle of blue-white light drew itself up out of Laney's center, growing until it looked as though she would burst from it. Then she turned her head, and her eyes found my mate. She spoke one word, softly, the way you'd say a name across a room.
Alice's spine bowed and her head slammed back against my shoulder. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out of her at all, because the screaming was coming from somewhere deep inside of her, ripping through my skull and down my spine and out through the soles of my feet.