The Silverwing's Sorceress: THe Shadow Slayers, Book 2.5

  Dedication

  For Melissa Cutler, my partner in :Crime.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my family and friends for continuing to support my dreams. My parents for always being excited to hear about my writing. My husband for being a single soccer dad when I’m on deadline. My kids for learning to cook fried eggs. And Rosie, for providing those tiny little eggs day in and day out.

  Jennifer, I can’t believe this is our third book together! This relationship is getting pretty serious, and I’m thinking we should take it to the next level—book four. Heehee. You’re the best, and I’m so fortunate to call you my editor!

  I also want to thank all the great staff at Samhain Publishing. It was so fun to meet you all at RWA 2012 and dance the night away at the fabulous Samhain party! Thank you, Angela Waters, for such beautiful covers for The Shadow Slayers series. My friends voted, and Jaxon’s abs were a major hit!

  And thank you to my readers. I love writing, but I wouldn’t love it as much without you.

  Chapter One

  Abbey glanced back and forth between Jaxon’s work boot smashing down the brake pedal and the pine trees flashing past the darkened passenger window. “Pump harder, Jaxon!”

  Sparks shot from the side of the passenger door as the white Neon scraped against the metal railing separating them from the sheer drop of the cliff.

  But rubbing the railing wasn’t enough to slow them down. Not when the mountain range they’d driven up for the past forty-five minutes finally crested, and the road began its steep downhill descent—a slope that on any other day would have them to her family’s cabin in just a few miles.

  “Hold it down,” she urged. “Just press it to the floor!”

  He speared her with a quick glance. “I know how to stop a car.”

  Braking was something Abbey had taught him day one of his driving lessons, and she knew deep in her heart, no matter how much she wanted to deny it, that this wasn’t a simple problem of him not doing it right.

  The brakes were out.

  Jaxon slammed his foot onto the brake so hard that it looked as if the force buried the pedal in the floorboard. The vibrations from the car riding the railing were enough to make the speedometer a blur. It probably didn’t matter how fast they were going anyway. There was a vertical rock wall looming above them to their left and a drop off the side of the mountain to their right. They were going to die. And Abbey wasn’t ready.

  “Put on your seatbelt, Abigail. Do it now,” Jaxon commanded.

  When a realization broke through her panic, a sense of peace filled her like a cleansing breath of ocean air. Jaxon was Demiáre, and fallen angel hybrids like him could survive anything but total decapitation. Abbey, with her witch blood, wasn’t so lucky.

  With the sound of metal shredding and sparks lighting the dark night, Abbey laid her hand on Jaxon’s shoulder. His skin was hot and damp through the thin white T-shirt he wore, and as he fought for control over the steering wheel, the car began to hop from its left tires to its right, threatening to tip.

  “You were a true friend when I needed one, Jaxon. I’m so thankful for you.” She managed to say it calmly, even over the horrible screeching in her ears.

  As though her words gave the battered railing permission to give up the fight, her old car gave a hard jerk and tore through the barricade. The impact flung her against the door for one terrible moment, then there was nothing.

  The car quieted but for the soft hum of the engine as she fell against the roof, her hair covering her face and eyes as if to protect her from seeing the moonlit canyon floor rushing up at them. “Take…care…of Kara.”

  “No!” Jaxon flung himself at Abbey, already willing the flash as his arms clamped around her.

  The breath rushed from her lungs when they hit the seat then crashed to the roof again. They rolled together in the metal prison, her glorious red hair fanning across his cheeks as he willed them to dissolve.

  But something was terribly wrong. He’d never felt a barrier of witch magic when he’d flashed before. Now it was like a strong wind snuffing out the fire of his will. He crushed Abbey to his chest, knowing he couldn’t protect her if he couldn’t flash.

  When the car skimmed the side of the mountain with a bone-shattering jolt, Jaxon knew they were seconds from impact. He closed his eyes, centered his will and cast his thoughts out with more energy than he’d ever done before.

  Not far, he begged. Not an old familiar place. Just there. He visualized the top of the mountain, a place he’d visited seconds before, and he felt the blackness take him.

  He grasped Abbey tighter, not caring if he was crushing her, and they dissolved together. He carried her through the Abyss in a flash outside of time, the endless depths not even having the chance to pull at their souls before they hit the asphalt—his back and head first, then Abbey coming to a crushing stop on his chest. The sky opened with the deafening sound of her beloved Neon compressing into an accordion on the granite rocks below.

  Jaxon coughed as the air returned to his lungs. “Abbey?”

  He blinked once then sat up and grasped Abbey by the shoulders to get a better look. The bandages wrapped around her abdomen had soaked through, and the light pink sundress she wore was spotted with blood. “Say something.”

  “I’m all right, Jaxy.” Her head fell against his shoulder again, and this time he simply held her, giving thanks that she was in his arms and not at the bottom of the ravine in what was left of her car.

  “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” she said. “I guess it wasn’t your fault, after all.”

  Jaxon laughed, cradling her head in his hand. “Scold me to your heart’s content. The sound of your voice convinces me you’re alive.”

  She pulled away and looked at him, her breathing still uneven. “I should be the one who’s getting scolded. I know I haven’t taken my car to the mechanic in a while, but the brakes weren’t even making that scraping sound that tells me when it’s time. I never thought…” When her voice faltered, she gently pushed from his chest and walked to the edge of the barrier.

  Jaxon jumped to his feet and joined her. His foot smarted as though he’d cracked a bone, but it tingled where it was already starting to heal. “You couldn’t have known, Abbey.”

  As Abbey regarded the wreck, Jaxon regarded her. She looked magnificent in the soft light of the moon. Tall pines towered above them, and the night was blessedly warm. In the dark, her red hair was the deepest auburn and her pale skin almost glowed. He would have given anything to pull her to him and kiss her lips, to feel her blood coursing through her veins in time with the steady beat of her heart.

  Instead, he rested his hand on her shoulder. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “You saved my life. That’s enough.”

  “You’re upset.”

  “Look at my car.” She covered her eyes with her hands and shook her head. “How am I going to get to work?” She pulled away and stepped closer to the edge. “And all our stuff is in there. The groceries. Our bags. My phone.”

  He reached out to touch her again, then pulled his hand away. For six months he’d held her at night, brushed her beautiful hair, rubbed lotion into her feet as she introduced him to the delights of television…but all that had amounted to was pleasant companionship. And it wasn’t enough.

  “I’ll go at first light and salvage what I can,” he replied. “You said a few miles back that we were almost to the cabin. How much farther?”

  “That’s the good news,” she said with some bite in her voice, then she started down the road. “When you pass the summit a
nd start heading down the hill, you’re almost there.”

  “Abbey.” She was a good height for a woman, but with Jaxon’s long legs he still had to shorten his steps to match his stride to hers. He took her hand. “Abigail.”

  “What?”

  “It’s going to be okay. The car can be replaced.”

  “I thought I was gonna die. The only thing that made it better was knowing you would survive.”

  He wanted to grasp her shoulders and force her to look at him. “Do you honestly think I would survive losing you?”

  “We’re going to part company someday, Jaxon. That’s what happens when an immortal is friends with a witch.” She paused, then finally met his eyes as a small smile found its way to her lips. “But I’m glad it wasn’t today.”

  “That makes two of us.” He had never experienced fear like what he’d felt when he’d tried to flash with her and been unable. It had lasted only seconds—perhaps even a fraction of a second—but it was a feeling that would haunt him forever.

  They walked in silence for a long while. The night was dark without streetlights along the road, and there had been no sign of other vehicles since they’d taken the last turnoff some twenty miles ago. Still holding her hand, he felt her pulse slow and her quaking ease the farther they ventured from the site of the crash.

  “I know that tree!” She pointed to a tall pine that looked like the top had been snapped off. “Three more trees and the driveway will be on the right.”

  Jaxon smiled at the excitement in her voice. This would be so therapeutic for her after the months of hell she’d endured. “I think we made the right choice coming here.”

  Abbey let go of his hand and loped down the driveway. Jaxon stopped at the top of the hill and cocked his head, confused at the sight before him. “If this is a rundown log cabin, Abigail, you must be a hard woman to please.”

  “Oh. My. God.” The cabin wasn’t how she’d remembered it. Weren’t things supposed to seem big when you were little, then appear to shrink as you grew?

  Apparently not, because this cabin was a monster.

  Its arched wooden entryway had clear beveled-glass windows in the center of each double door, making them appear like the shining oval eyes of a jack-o’-lantern. She walked down the shadowy driveway to where the house perched overlooking the mountains and valleys beyond. Her father had always said he’d picked this spot for the view, but now the only thing she could see from where she stood was the two-story, red brick structure obscuring it.

  “My grandma said my uncle Claude had repaired a few things, but…where’s my cabin?”

  Pine trees still flanked the property on all sides. She turned to her left and saw the huge granite boulders she’d climbed as a child. Even in the moonlight, the bottom of the lowest boulder looked like it still had her name etched in it with the penmanship of a kindergartener learning to write her name.

  She poked a finger in the direction of the boulder. “My dad was so mad when I tagged that rock. But when Grammy D pointed out that I’d done it with one of my first successful spells, all was forgiven.” She looked back toward the house. “The right rock means we’re at the right house.” Even if she couldn’t believe it.

  She was going to call her grandmother just as soon as Jaxon recovered her cell phone and ask her why she hadn’t bothered to mention that they owned a house in the mountains four times the size of their small homes in San Diego. Correction. Make that home. Singular. Since Abbey’s house had burned down, her grandma’s was all that was left.

  Jaxon came beside her and extended his hand. “Do you want me to take the key and have a look?”

  At times like this, she wished she were more of a badass than a frightened, broken witch. She practically fainted at the sight of blood, and that was before…what happened with Gable. She hated the fear that hovered around her now like a swarm of flies attracted to the stench of decay. Because decay is what she did. First her body as Brakken’s sign on her abdomen seeped and oozed, then her confidence, every day corroding a little more.

  She handed over the key. “You probably should.”

  Jaxon inserted the key in the lock, opened the door, then took one step over the threshold before an explosion of light blew him back ten feet to land on his ass on the pine-needle-strewn cement of the driveway.

  He sat for a moment, as if in shock, then he looked over his shoulder and cocked a brow. “There may be a small ward up.”

  Chapter Two

  Abbey ran to him and fell to her knees. “Oh, shoot! I’m so sorry, Jaxy.” She swiped her thumb under his bloody nose, then cleaned it on the hem of her already filthy dress. “Are you okay?”

  Her hand traced from his brow to the curve of his cheek. He closed his eyes and leaned into her touch. When he didn’t say anything, she took his head in her hands and inspected his face. “Are you hurt?”

  After leaning toward her wrist and drawing a deep breath, he finally opened his eyes. “You smell like these mountains. Fresh and pure. Even at night, you’re sunshine through the clouds.”

  Relief coursing through her, she planted a quick kiss on his forehead. If he was back to scenting the things around him, he was fine. When it came to the opposite sex, witches relied more on energy fields than pheromones, but Demiáre were another story. She’d never imagined that beings descended of fallen angels could be so carnal. But after witnessing firsthand how Demiáre society worked, she decided she’d never met a species more led around by their very well-equipped…noses.

  “Looks like you’ll survive.” She ruffled his hair and rose to her feet. “Now to turn off that ward.”

  “Be careful,” Jaxon said to her back as he watched her mount the steps.

  After a minute, she peered around the corner of the open door, her olive-green eyes wide, and waved him inside. “Come on in. You’re not gonna believe it. It’s huge.”

  He slowed as he approached the threshold. It wasn’t that he minded the pain of the ward, but he wasn’t eager to look like an ass in front of Abbey. Head held high, he stepped into the foyer and stifled a sigh of relief when nothing happened.

  “You’re right. It’s not small.” But then where Jaxon came from, houses rarely were. He’d spent more than two decades on Mercury Island, a tropical paradise in the Indian Ocean where the ladies of his clan lived in sprawling homes to accommodate the size of their harems. But in the past six months he’d grown used to a cramped two-bedroom apartment and sharing a bed with Abbey. As tortuous as it was to sleep mere inches from her, there wasn’t anywhere else he’d rather be when the sun went down.

  Abbey stopped and twirled in a slow circle, her gaze sifting over the unfamiliar surroundings. He might have guessed she would have been pleased by the renovations, but the downward tilt of her pink lips told him otherwise.

  “Why would they keep this from me?” she asked. “Does Grammy D even know what Claude did to the cabin?”

  He shrugged in response. “She did give you the keys.”

  “Yeah, because the locks had been changed—not the whole house.”

  “Dora is a straightforward woman. I’m sure she would have told you if she’d known.” Abbey had taken him to her grandmother’s for dinner on several occasions, and the older witch had made it clear she wasn’t overjoyed that her granddaughter was living with two Demiáre—Fallen, as they were known amongst the witches. “It was your father’s home?”

  When Abbey walked into the kitchen, Jaxon trailed behind her. She looked through the cupboards, then glanced in his direction. “My father’s and my mother’s. My dad’s younger brother, Claude, was the executor of the estate and took care of their holdings, like the cabin. It made my grandma mad at the time, since she spent a lot of time up here, too. Who knew Claude would turn out to be a…a vandal!”

  If she wasn’t so upset, he might have smiled. Vandalism didn’t quite seem to cover it. “I’m sorry, Abbey.”

  “The table… Where’s my mother’s kitchen table? And right here—�
� she pointed to the window above the sink, “—there’s supposed to be a dreamcatcher. My father made it for me out of yarn and some feathers he found in the woods. But then, why would it be here? This isn’t their kitchen, is it? This isn’t even their house.”

  She wandered to one end of the kitchen and back, her sweet face twisted in an angry scowl. “He had no right to tear down the cabin. And where did he get the money to build this? I took control of the estate when I turned twenty-five last year, and trust me, money wasn’t something my parents left behind.”

  “Then perhaps Claude is the one we should be asking.”

  When her stomach grumbled, she put her hand over it. “My car is toast, my childhood cabin is gone, my family’s been keeping things from me. How can I be hungry now?”

  “We haven’t eaten since noon. There’s no shame in being hungry.”

  Whoever had overseen the building of the new structure had spared no expense. Even the kitchen looked like it was modeled after a fine restaurant. But if there was a phone in the house, it wasn’t here in the kitchen. Jaxon opened the refrigerator and, not surprisingly, found it empty.

  “Don’t waste your worry. The electricity is on.” He checked the range and it sparked with blue flame. “The gas is working. I can find you a meal and have it prepared within the hour. Do you like rabbit?”

  She pulled a can from the cupboard. “I’d prefer chicken noodle.”

  He walked to the cupboard and peered over her shoulder. The shelves were fully stocked with nonperishable items and what looked like emergency rations. “Then you won’t be disappointed. It looks as if your uncle has stock in the chicken noodle company.”

  Abbey opened the door to the large pantry and fumbled for the light. “Hold on,” she said from inside the dark room, “it has one of those weird light timers that you have to twist.”

  The light clicked on, illuminating a room that was piled floor to ceiling with jugs of drinking water along the left side, but just three bags of sugar on the back wall and a meager two salt shakers on the right. With all the water in the pantry and the canned food in the kitchen, it reminded Jaxon of an outpost or a lodge that was preparing for a bleak winter.