A Witch's Beauty (Daughters of Arianne 2)

"This is true. No matter what." He said it with his mind linked with hers like their hands. "No regrets."

"It's all regret," she whispered.

"Just promise me not to regret what we've had. Not a moment."

She nodded, and then he pushed her over the edge, but Mina apparently didn't want to go alone. She held him inside her, stroking in a rhythm that had his hold going erratic. He exploded on a growl, the Dark One blood augmenting his ferocity as a male warrior as he surged into her hard, offered her seed. Offered himself in a way that he knew she wouldn't expect.

As they at last came down, David drew deep breaths. Steadying breaths. He could feel the Dark One blood, but he could feel his own as well, a tense stalemate that created an irritating, low-level hum throughout his senses, which oddly matched the outside roar of this world, as if a weaker frequency. But they'd done it. Mina had known what he needed to weather the worst initial moments. Clever, sweet witch.

He'd reclaimed what had been knocked out of his mental grasp upon entry into this place. The energy angels used, from grounding in meditation, or a woman's body, to find the still center of the soul, and hold it inviolate against anything. A balance. Similar to the type of balance Mina had practiced all her life.

He'd typically have cleansed his soul at this point to strengthen it, but he knew that center also had to have the fouling presence of the Dark One blood, so that he could maintain his focus in this wretched world. He would endure its roaring insistence, use it as she'd said, while refusing to give it what it wanted. He might not make it out of here, but if it was in his power, she would.

"WHAT have you done?" Mina struggled up on her elbows, and then to her feet. His gaze was reassuringly aware, despite the red flickers, and he helped her up with a powerful arm around her shoulders. Despite the harrowing first few moments when she was sure she'd made a terrible mistake, when she told Jonah that David could do this, she could tell that incredible focus angels possessed had taken the upper hand.

It didn't mean she wasn't going to skewer him with one of those blades in the next two seconds. She was a witch. She knew the feel of life and death. Releasing fertile seed was a choice for angels. A choice he'd just made in her body. "What did you do?" she repeated.

"Gave you something to live for, if you make it out of here."

She stared at him, sure he'd gone mad. "David, I can't have a baby. I can't. I'll kill it. I can't love it."

"No, you won't, and yes, you can." He reached out toward her hand and she batted it away. He returned, caught it anyway, squeezed in reproof. "There has to be a seawitch for the next daughter of Arianne. Your Fates are entwined, remember? If you're worried, Anna and Jonah will raise the child. But you'll take care of her, Mina. I know you will."

He let her go, checked the sheathing on his blades. "Which way do we go?" he asked, that startling hiss emitting from his normally velvet-toned voice.

"If I thought we'd live through this, I'd promise to kill you later. If we're caught, I'm going to tell them to torture you first."

"Understood." He nodded placidly. "So?"

She nodded toward the west, where a spear of irregular rock thrust into the sky. The tower she'd known would be there.

If his seed found a fertile egg, she knew she'd feel it. Could kill it with barely a thought of her mind. She wasn't feeling cruel enough to say that, though, which suggested that he'd mellowed her in two days far more than she'd anticipated. Another reason it was a good thing they weren't going to survive this.

But as remote as both their chances were of getting out of here alive, hers were better. And he'd known that, damn him. If she felt that connection happen in her body, then he knew she wouldn't give up, even if he was taken from her.

"Okay." He gestured toward the tower, though his eyes were on hers, as if reading her thoughts. Mina turned her back on him and began to move in that direction, picking her way over the ground.

"It's a little late to ask, but why didn't we attract any attention just now?" He asked it a few moments later as he circled another creature in the mud, choosing a patch of ice instead. The jellyfish like animal was the size of a football, with teeth and legs. It paid them no attention except for a menacing hiss when the air of David's passage attracted it. "There were Dark Ones, flying through the sky when we arrived, weren't there? Or was that just all in my head?"

She sighed, relented. "They're here. Across that plain there, they landed in the trees. Lower echelon, like you. Keep moving. Look purposeful. And Dark Ones, though they are all male, do couple for physical release," she added. "They're not modest about their needs. Our actions out in the open were not unusual."

David winced. "Sorry I asked. Are there any humans here?"

Mina shook her head. "Much as the Dark Ones want to reclaim the humans, the spark of light the Goddess gave them when she stole them away made them unable to survive here. The humans have to embrace the Dark Blood in themselves first, before the Dark Ones can bring them home."

"Home. I've never heard that word used to describe our little paradise."

Mina spun. David flipped two blades into his hands as he whirled in the same motion. She went to a defensive crouch.

"Impressive."

What had been right behind them was gone, moved in the blink of an eye. A purposeful twitch drew her eye upward. The pleasant voice had apparently come from the creature now sitting in the crotch of the tree to their left.

To all appearances, he was a human male, in his thirties. Pale, but with a face almost as beautiful as an angel's. He had no wings as many of the Dark Ones did, but there was no mistaking his heritage, for both of his eyes were brilliant red with dark lashes and silken brows that blended with the tangle of dark hair that fell over his high forehead and bare shoulders in wild disarray. Human in form, but most definitely not. Somehow different. She studied him, her eyes narrowed.

His clothes did not match the handsomeness of his face. The ragged pair of trousers appeared to be pieced together from scraps to provide a rough and filthy covering. His upper body was lean muscle, though his bones were evident. Hungry. Curling his upper lip, he revealed a pair of sharp fangs, not as long as Mina's in her Dark One form.

More refined.

"You're like me," he said, his gaze fastened on her. "Dark Spawn." David shifted to a more aggressive posture before the witch.

"Think you can move faster than me, lower Darkling?" the creature hissed.

"Yes," David said. "You won't get near him."

"Him?" The visitor's eyes glittered. "It may look that way, but all is not as it seems with you two. And Dante smells female. Welcome home, little sister."

David took a deliberate step forward. "You're about to bring trouble on yourself."

"This one serves you, but hard to manage, no? Good disguise, but unnecessary. Dante knows. They know you." He was still staring at Mina, paying David little attention. "You came for the shiny horn. They wait for you. No one will stop you from getting to the tower. I'm to tell you that."

Then he was gone. "Well, they're waiting for us," David commented. "Just as you expected."

"Yes." Mina felt a weight on her chest as if the scorched air had become too difficult to breathe. "I don't think they're sure about you, yet, however."

"So we keep going."

"They'll be coming out to meet us soon, I think. He was the warning. Let's just... take a minute." Putting her back against one of the inert trees, she sank to the ground on a cluster of its roots, staring at the tower rising above the macabre landscape.

David squatted at her side. Curved a lock of her hair around her ear in familiar affection as she let the Dark One illusion melt from herself, while keeping his in place. "What's the matter?" He asked it quietly. "Are you frightened?"

She gave a bitter, short laugh. "What if Jonah's right? What if the most dangerous weapon the Dark Ones have is me? Doesn't it make more sense to destroy me and then they have no one to play the Trumpet?"

"Someone else would eventually be able to do it. The way of objects of power is they want to be used. They must be guarded carefully for that reason." Straightening to step over her, he tugged her forward and settled behind her, putting her between his thighs with her head nestled under his jaw, his arms crossed over her front, holding her.