A Witch's Beauty (Daughters of Arianne 2)

"David. David." When he shook himself out of wherever he was, she made her voice hard, sharp, drawing his attention. "Everything you learned about focus and concentration, you're going to have to use it, harder than you've ever had to use it before. The smallest feelings, harmless in this world, a moment of jealousy or anger, will magnify and spike and easily take you over. If we get challenged, fighting is a last resort. Tell me you understand."

"Lieutenant." Jonah's tone made her sharpness sound like a mother's absent cooing. David's head jerked toward him. "Pay attention to her. Did you hear what she said?"

"Yes. Yes, Commander."

Mina stood, backing away. The strength she relied on in herself wavered as she turned her back on the wreck she'd just made of him and faced Jonah. "He can't do this. I can't do this to him."

"He can, and you already have." Jonah's tone was equally stern with her, though lower. "You knew this was necessary. So did he. Distance yourself. Think, and help him."

Never one to respond to authority, still she was grateful for the snap in that voice that had her back stiffening, her chin coming up. Turning, she dropped back down before David, seizing his hands to draw his attention to her.

"David, I need you to choose a good memory now, something that forms a picture in your mind. You'll use it to bring you back to yourself, every time the blood tries to take control. The thing that most reminds you of who you are."

It struck her in the gut when he didn't even hesitate. "You. The way you ate the orange." A trace of a strained curve of his lips, even as blood seeped from between them, where he'd bitten himself. The hair was damp at his temple as she ran her fingers along it. "Unless the... lust... is a problem. It was the way you took it from my fingers."

He closed his eyes, visibly struggling. A snarl burst from his lips, quickly cut off as his fingers clenched into the rock of the ledge, digging in. Then he opened them again, looked at her. "It was as if you might one day consider trusting me. I knew that was the most important thing I could ever do. Win your trust, so you'd let me love and protect you. That's who I am. Your champion."

Slowly, breathing deep, he straightened. There'd been a disconcerting hissing to his words, but when he faced Jonah, she saw the angel holding the reins over the blood. For the moment. "Commander. I'll fix what I screwed up, with Mina's help. With the Goddess's help, we won't let you down."

"You never have," Jonah said. Then he glanced at Mina. "You should have told me before you changed him. I would have liked to-" He stopped.

"It's okay." David coughed. "Better this way. No unmanly good-byes. Luc would approve."

"Lucifer will miss you as much as I will," Jonah said roughly.

David swallowed. "If she makes it back out, please give me your word you'll protect her. Help her."

"David-" she protested.

"You don't have a say in this," he said quietly. "Be still."

Jonah studied him. She suspected, in the arrogant way of overly protective men, they were saying something to each other without her being able to hear it. She quelled an urge to zap both of them.

David could tell it was irritating her. It was oddly reassuring, just like the glint of understanding humor in Jonah's eye, followed by a more serious look.

You have my word.

And you have my gratitude. As Marcellus returned, David acknowledged him with a nod of his own, then turned and extended a hand to his prickly witch. "Let's go."

She took it. As they turned toward the defile that would lead to the portal, the darkness that had so repelled him when he'd first touched the Dark One skin holding the blood now had an enticing moan to it. He surged forward.

"Fight it," Mina snapped. Her fingers dug into his arm, slowing him down. Mild irritation became a flash of anger shooting through him, and he'd clamped down on her hand before he thought. Emitted a low growl that startled him but she'd apparently expected, for she didn't back away or try to remove her hand from his grip.

"That's the direction we're going," he grated.

She nodded. "But make it your choice, not your desire. Your desires and intuition are no good to you now. Use only your mind. The decision you feel most strongly about in this state is likely the wrong one."

"South is north," he muttered. Slowly, he loosened his grip. As they passed into the narrow tunnel, her cavern disappearing behind him, he felt the portal's approach and forced himself to slow down, just as she'd advised. It was like digging in his heels against the force of a gale shoving behind him. Jonah and Marcellus seemed leagues away now, instead of just a few feet.

"I liked the house, in the Schism," she said abruptly.

Through the odd buzzing in his head, the waves of red heat that waxed and waned inside his system, he felt the incursion of a different kind of warmth that helped steady him. He looked toward her. Her profile was the unscarred side, and when she glanced at him, the blue eye was momentarily unguarded.

She would have learned to love him. He was sure of it.

He forced himself to extend a hand again, opening up his fingers, surprised how difficult that open-palmed gesture was. A simple act of affection, and it weighted down his arm, making it hard to lift. If nothing else, this blood was helping him un

derstand more and more why Mina had put so many physical obstacles in her life. Anything that would give herself something to hold out against it. And he knew if she did ever decide she loved him, he wouldn't deserve her. No man could.

"So you would have liked staying there, with me," he said.

She sniffed. "I didn't say that. But I might have let you come around, now and again."

He fought for the smile, won it and knew it was worth the effort when her gaze riveted on his mouth, lifted to his face. "Mina, it wasn't... when we... it didn't feel like this with me, did it?" Please Goddess, I hope every moment of pleasure wasn't stolen from a moment of darkness.

"Yes and no." As she turned her head, her blue eye and crimson one met his fully. "Always a balance. A perfect one, I think."

Then she looked back at the portal where they now stood. She spoke in a language he didn't know, telling him the blood was interfering with his automatic translation abilities. His heart began to race as Dark One energy gathered and the door misted, became a vortex of black smoke that drifted out toward them with eager fingers.

Lacing her fingers with his, she looked up into his face once more. "The best moments of my life were spent with you," she said.

They stepped forward together.

Twenty-two

IT reminded David of the sci-fi movies he'd watched as a boy, the nauseating spinning and tumbling through a wormhole, where gravity and speed pulled cells apart like gum, leaving the body a distorted, stretched mess on the other side.

Which was why it was surprising, after what had seemed like an endless passage, to find himself standing next to Mina on a landscape that was the Hell of evangelical imaginings.

Far worse than that, really, for it wasn't Hell. Lucifer ruled over an ordered Hades, structured for justice and redemption, followed by eventual rebirth. This was a place without meaning or purpose. But the images of fire and ice, monstrous shadows wheeling in the sky, creatures dragging themselves through the mud with red staring eyes, were only a flash of impressions before pure chaos and disorder struck his mind, driving him to his knees.

As he fell, his hands hit the frozen ground, while his knees landed in what felt like a bed of embers. He rolled to his side, found himself in sucking mud. Images drilled into his brain. Horrifying vignettes, as if he'd fallen into a theater of endless stages, a parade through every nightmare that had inflicted itself on a dreaming mind.