Cuckoo in the Coven

She nodded. “You see it now, don’t you?” She put one hand on her hip and flapped the other in front of her face. “It’s awfully stuffy in here. I think we should get some air. I’ll open a window.”

“No!”

She sent a bolt of energy through the nearest glass pane.

The entire window shattered outwards. A gust of fresh sea air surged into the vacuum of the room.

His eyes flickered wildly. He lifted his hand in the air.

Only then did she remember what Rowena had said. “With one click of his fingers...”

Click.

It was too late.

Steel bars quickly enclosed the whole building. The outside light faded and vanished as the building became a fortress.

The chandeliers grew brighter.

The last bit of natural air was sucked out of the building.

Oh, crap. Her heart sank when all the natural light was blocked and she was trapped.

He’d achieved his goal, but he looked strangely diminished, as if the act had drained his power. She turned to face him and a sense of calm descended on her. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s your big party trick. Surrounding your guests with bars?”

Allowing her head to drop back, she laughed.

Fox turned to the only door and reached out. It slammed shut and beyond it the sound of more bars echoed.

He shifted quickly and watched her as if he was trying to gauge her next maneuver.

“That’s why you have to keep people here, because it’s all bluster, isn’t it? Unless you keep the dark tides supplied with innocent souls you’ll never get further and your reputation is built on hot air.”

He looked ready to take action again.

She opened her hands, drew on the natural resources all around them, reeling them in around the building.

His eyes looked frantic and his skin paled. “Stop it, or I’ll...”

She cocked her head on one side. “You’ll what?”

With great effort, he forged a stack of huge chains, then attempted to raise them from the floor to surround her, and failed.

“What’s the matter, have you overshot your goal? Perhaps you’ve forgotten something...”

For the first time she saw an expression of awe in his eyes.

She laughed softly. He thought she’d fractured his abilities—that she’d done this to him. Perhaps she had, because she’d taken a sacrificial soul away from him. She’d deleted Cullen from his list of casualties, which meant he was down on power.

Let him think it’s me, she decided, her visual image of him cracking wide open, chinks appearing everywhere. “You like hunting big game, as well as women, don’t you?”

She climbed up onto the table, strode across it, responding instinctively to the glazed look in his eyes. “Hunting is a crime against nature.”

She raised her hands. Plants grew along her arms, tendrils shooting through her fingers. “I work with my emotions, and I draw on nature. I find the trees respond to me. Plant life and creatures, too. See how they aid me when I call upon them?”

“You’re gifted in control of the elements. That was obvious thirty days ago,” he spat back. “Can you control inanimate objects, defeat man-made forces?”

“Nature isn’t enough for you?” She stepped closer. “That’s funny. Nature is everything to me. I’d sacrifice my twenty-first century career in technology for nature to thrive, so I could be at one with it.”