A Witch's Beauty (Daughters of Arianne 2)

Quiet David. The qualities that had turned him into a lieutenant were so evident now. His command of the situation, his confidence, the ability to take control. A man would trust his direction. While a woman would surrender, knowing with one tip of his hat that her heart, soul and mind were safe with him.

She realized her fear was no longer of him, but of what she would do to him if he truly convinced her of that. Horrified, she felt a teardrop slide from the corner of her eye to pool in the curve of her ear.

The saloon was a quiet, empty room again, all furniture long gone except for one round table with a broken leg and the scarred impressions in the floorboards where the bar had once rested.

David couldn't take his eyes off her. She wasn't a saloon girl with siren red lips and a perfect face anymore. The dress she wore was ill-fitting at the top because of her lack of a breast on one side. The map of scars along half of her face, throat and one arm was a mockery against the beauty of the silk. None of that mattered.

Lifting her under her elbows, he brought her back to her feet and folded her in his arms, holding her against his heart, feeling the wetness of her mouth against his chest. Did she realize she'd let out a sob or two among her cries of pleasure? He pressed his hand against the side of her face, the heel of his hand high on her cheekbone to absorb the telltale dampness he knew she didn't want him to see.

A broken soul, not a dark one. There was a difference.

"It's okay," he murmured.

"We both know that's not true," she mumbled into his skin, her fingers curled into his arm. "You can hold me like this, and it will only feel good for so long. Eventually, what's inside of me will need to push you away, repelled by the very thing that brought me close in the first place."

"Then stay until it doesn't feel good, and let go. I'll be here when you can bear it, when you need it."

"It's not that simple. You can't make it that simple." Pushing away from him then, she yanked the fallen sleeve of the dress up, held it there as it tried to fall again. "I don't cry. This isn't me."

"You were the one who started this." David worked to keep his tone mild as he gestured around him. "Who are you trying to convince?"

"You appeared in the middle of it," she said hotly.

When he stepped forward, she backed into the stage. "Mina." He didn't reach forward like he'd done before, instigating one of those power struggles he knew she might use to either make him prove himself or push him away. He wasn't in the mood. It was the second time she'd taken an earth-shattering connection between them and tried to destroy its meaning. While he knew what she fought, and was willing to stick with her through eternity to overcome it, it didn't mean he'd lie down and accept the denial, let her roll over him with it.

"It's not that simple; you're right. Jesus, nothing with you is." At her narrow glance, he inclined his head, letting his annoyance slip a sardonic edge in his tone. "I get it. You're dangerous, or rather, you think you're a danger to others-"

She blinked at him. Twice, if he remembered correctly. By the third blink, he was airborne, as the saloon floor exploded beneath his feet, throwing him up and through the roof, the planks shattering, nails tearing his skin. The roar of the explosion deafened him to everything, including his cry as she was lost to his view, gone despite his fierce struggles to flip against the concussion and shoot back toward her.

He landed hard on the street and was assaulted by planking, raining down toward the ground like arrows, such that he sprang away and aloft to get out of the shower of debris, striking through it with fists and a twisting body.

"Mina," he shouted. The saloon was a ball of flame. A breath before he prepared to dive into it, she walked out.

Walked out of the flame in bare feet and that ill-fitting dress. The fire split before her like subjects before a monarch as she stepped into the street, no dirt or debris on her, not even a scorch mark that he could see.

He landed before her, trying to process that she was unhurt. Trying to suppress his reaction when he realized she'd done this purposely, a rather overly violent reaction to his mild irritation with her.

No, that was wrong. He struggled to look past himself and analyze the way she stood, stiff, rigid, staring at him with that chilling distance he'd confronted before. It hadn't been his words, but her tears. She wouldn't tolerate those from herself. It was herself she was punishing, denying herself the moment they'd been given, not him.

"I'm not something you can fix, David," she said. That flat, passionless voice he'd heard far too often settled back in place like the equally despised black cloak. "I'm part of chaos and Dark Magic. There's a great deal of difference in that. I dream of the Dark Ones every night, have been connected with them since I became self-aware. They've been trying to coax me back through that portal for nearly twenty-five years, and in the last few months it's gotten worse. Much worse. Eventually, Jonah, Marcellus and all of them will be right. I won't be able to hold them off any longer."

As she watched him process the disturbing revelation, she cocked her head. "What do you think your Legion would do if it knew that? You think if I have the capacity to shed tears or feel a woman's desire, if I have a moment of kindness or pity toward an infant, it will outweigh the hundreds-maybe thousands-of times I've thought of slitting Anna's throat, letting her blood flow over my hands, savoring the last gasps of her breath?"

The sudden venom from her, the graphic image she painted, sent him back a step before he could stop himself, and her eyes darkened. The lines at her mouth deepened, somehow making her look far older, as if he were face-to-face with the wicked witch of every fairy tale with a dark wood to traverse. "Don't ever patronize me," she said, low. "It's dangerous, and stupid."

David studied her face. Gave her an imperceptible but unfathomable nod. Then he moved.

The electrical charge slammed through her system, paralyzing Mina's mind for the key moment it took for him to put her on her back. His knee was uncomfortably high on her thigh, depressing the important human artery there so that her heart rate stuttered. He had his dagger point at the soft tissue under her throat. In one movement, he could drive the blade, charged with more of that angel fire that could kill Dark Ones, up into her brain.

"I get it," he said, his voice stern and ruthless. She noted, with a lick of terror, his eyes had gone entirely dark. Apparently even a human-born angel's eyes changed in combat. "I'm not innocent or simple. For sixteen years I've fought the kind that sired you. I know their capabilities. If I reversed this knife now"-in a blink he had the power-charged dagger in her hand, his curled around it, the point under his throat-"and I goaded the blood in you, just enough..."

Light energy invaded her body through that grip, spreading out from her throat, paralyzing her vocal cords, rushing toward her heart.

The Darkness roared up, reacting like a cornered wild predator. The redness rushed over her, and David was painted in the blood of it in her vision as the Dark One took over. Her fingers, now talons, swiped at his abdomen with a flash of lethal tips while she drove the dagger up with the other hand.

One push should have sent it into his brain, but he wasn't there anymore. Suddenly Mina was in the air, as if propelled by the same type of explosion she had just created. With no way to slow her fall, the electrical charge still rocketing through her, she flipped and flailed through the air, her joints popping, muscles straining. She would not scream. She refused to scream.

"Got you."

She hit David's chest with a jarring thud and found herself gripping his shoulders for dear life. He took them back to the ground, cradling her in his arms as if he hadn't just had a knife to her throat. When he reached the street, he lowered her feet to it, even as he held on to her waist with one hand, steadying her.

They faced each other. She was gasping, the darkness as well as the witch part of her swirling in confusion, uncertain which direction her compass was pointing. She'd kept her hands on his shoulders, sliding to his chest when he lowered her, an

d now she had her fingers hooked into the belt of his half tunic, clinging there between the metal buckle and the hard line of stomach muscle and hip bone. His pulse was pounding in his throat, but his eyes were level, his tone even as he finally spoke.

"Perhaps we both underestimate each other." As she blinked at his casual observation, he continued, his voice sharpening, "If you want me to prove every day that I can control you, protect you from harming others, I will. But hear me..." He lifted her chin then, and she couldn't stop the quiver of her body from his touch, any more than the sullen defiance of the beast within her. "It won't change how much I want you. Love you. I meant that. It won't affect the way I feel for you."

"The Darkness is me, as much as the other half. You can't love me if you understand that."

"Yes, I can. But I'm beginning to wonder if you understand it."

Her brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"I see a woman who conducts her life as if she's under siege by an invader. She's fought an admirable lifelong battle of deception and strategy to keep it from taking the ground she fights so hard to hold within herself, for herself. And in the process she's been deprived of any joy that life can give her. Which is why she's weakening, even as her powers grow stronger."

"No." She shook her head. "You don't-"

"What if I do understand? What if it's you who can't afford to think of it my way?"

Perplexed, she couldn't think of any reply to that, and he nodded, his brown eyes holding her gaze with that determined look she found hard to deny. "Fine, then. Can you afford to invite me onto that battlefield, let me fight at your back until I prove it to you?"

She bit her lip. "What if you die there?"