Page 1 of The Blood Witch
1
Warm lips press against my cheek, and I lean into the tender touch. It feels warm and familiar, and I don’t know why, but I need it so much right now.
“I’m here,” a strong, deep voice assures me, and I search for the source like a sunflower seeks the sun. “I’m here,” he tells me again, and then those warm lips are on mine, gentle pressure coaxing me lovingly from the darkness.
I drink him down, parting my lips for his and deepening the tentative connection that feels dangerously fragile between us. There’s a wrongness to that feeling. What’s between us should be strong, impenetrable, but instead, it’s on the brink of shattering and I’m afraid.
Desperation roosts in my chest, and I reach up and thread my fingers into thick, silky hair. His tongue teases mine, and I lap up the desire and heat that’s being fed to me, shivering as the chill in my bones is chased away. Large, strong hands cup my cheeks as the kiss turns frenzied, needy. I moan, the sound begging for more, and an answering chuckle has me sucking on his bottom lip and then giving it a teasing nip. Satisfaction moves through me at his answering appreciative groan, hunger dripping off of it as thick as fresh honey.
Yes.This is how it should be, I exclaim internally as the connection I feel in my chest starts to heal.Thisis right, I affirm as the tether brightens and grows thicker, more secure.
“Rogan,” I pant, breaking the kiss so I can demand more, but as soon as his name leaves my lips, it’s the key to unlocking the truth, to unlocking everything that happened.
Images assault me. Prek blowing a powder in my face. Rogan holding my limp body as he negotiated his place at the table. The feel of a needle in my neck, whatever was in the syringe stealing my fight and my consciousness. It all slams into me with brutal unforgiving force, and I’m thrown into reality like it’s a freezing ice-coated pond. I breach the surface of my Rogan-fueled fantasy with a gasp, sitting up as alarm pumps in my veins. My heart is a speedy staccato of panic, and my eyes don’t adjust fast enough to everything around me. Rogan sits back from the edge of the bed I’m in, surprised, his green eyes taking me in, uncertainty and worry alight in his examination. My surroundings are out of focus, but I see him.
All I see ishim.
His coffee brown hair, the scar kissing one side of his face from eyebrow to cheekbone. The guilt in his moss-green stare. Rage surges in my blood, replacing the traces of alarm that were just there. I burn with fury, and the concern on Rogan’s face shifts to wariness.
“Get the fuck away from me,” I snarl as I try to blink into focus the world just past Rogan’s unwelcome visage. I scramble back from him, sheets tangling around my limbs until I’m stopped by a wall, trapping me between it and this duplicitous witch.
“Lennox, please,” he counters, his features beseeching, entitled, as though he has any right to look at me that way, any right to be heard or to plead his case.
I’m not interested.
I wipe at my lips, as though I can wipe his searing presence away, disgust and confusion warring inside of me. “Where am I?” I demand, rubbing my eyes as though it will finally bring my surroundings into focus.
What did they give me?
“Lennox, you need to understand thewhy,” Rogan insists, and I scoff, shaking my head in disbelief.
“Get away from me right now, or I’ll make you,” I growl at him in warning, trying and failing to move back even more as he reaches for my hand.
Is he serious? Does he really think, after everything he’s done, I’ll just sit quietly while he defends himself? What does he think he can say that will erase what he’s done, erase the betrayal and selfishness?
“Please,” he begs, the word quiet and filled with emotion.
I don’t sift through everything I hear in his one-worded petition, because I can’t get past the hint of hope I hear in his plea. It makes me want to pluck that hope from the air between us and crush it in my hands. I want him to watch just what I think about his supplication, about his need for understanding. How can he think for a second that there’s any coming back from what happened? He destroyed anything that could have ever been between us with one little word.
Seno.
The simple incantation he’s used far too many times to knock me out swirls in my mind, laced with Rogan’s commanding voice and topped off with treachery. Hurt hurtles through me, but I drown it in anger. This witch gets nothing more from me. Not my pain. Not my loss. And certainly not my sympathy.
I glare at him, sitting feet away from me, unmoving and unwilling to heed my warning. He still isn’t taking me seriously. The thought I had—just before I was knocked out by whatever he and the Order gave me—was that I would make him wish he’d never laid eyes on me. I focus on that promise as magic fills my limbs and retribution fills my heart.
An incantation trickles into my mind, and without any thought, I seize the magic in a death grip and let it pour out of my lips:ikur woor essenna ih beshee vot dhono sava ru.Terror overtakes Rogan’s gaze, and he opens his mouth to say something, but all that comes out is a pained groan. He grabs at his torso with both hands, and every muscle in his body tightens as he heaves out an agonized bellow.
The raw sound of his pain lashes out, and I try to fling it away from me. I harden myself against his agony. He hurt me, and now it’s time he hurts. Rogan looks up imploringly, his face mottled with purple like he’s been holding his breath for too long. Blood starts to drip from his nose, and then there are crimson tracks trailing from his eyes too. I can see the questions and betrayal in his accusing stare before the green of his gaze is lost to the blood pouring out of them.
A flare of satisfaction sparks through me, but when Rogan falls to the ground and starts to vomit up blood, I’m knocked from my perch of vindication by a wave of uncertainty. Magic pours out of me, and I try to ignore the disquiet of my thoughts. I remind myself that he deserved this, wrapping myself up in a thick blanket of justification. He betrayed me. Violated my trust. He had this coming.
Blood pools below the bed I’m still sitting on. At least I think it’s a bed; I still can’t make out anything besides Rogan. He convulses on the ground, and it’s so hard and brutal that I prepare to hear the sound of cracking bones at any minute. He chokes, wet gasps breaking up the sound of retching. It’s so violent and graphic that my stomach turns in rejection of what’s happening before my eyes. Salt floods my mouth, and I clasp a hand over it to quiet the cry that tries to escape.
I try to pull the magic back, to stop what’s happening, as death-twitches fill Rogan’s limbs and blood pours out of him.
That’s enough,I tell myself as I struggle to gain control. But it’s as though the magic spilling out of me is slippery and I can’t get a hold of it.
“That’s enough!” I scream, cracks sounding off around me as Rogan’s bones give up and shatter. “Stop!” I beg, but acid crawls up my esophagus, and the next thing I know, retribution comes pouring from my mouth. The coppery taste of blood fills my senses, and before my vision blinks red, I see my own blood start to pool around me. I’ve never felt anything like the pain that chases through me in this moment, and I’m lost to the heaves of blood pouring from me.
