Witch Heart

CHAPTER NINE

"If they're tracking us magickally, they're biding their time," Adam said into the phone to Thomas.

It was a warded call and a warded call would work to keep privacy from a warlock. From a demon, all bets were off. But Claire was of the opinion that, if the demons were watching the house, they wouldn't monitor the phone lines.

"Does Micah have anything yet on Claire's problem?" Adam asked.

Silence. "Not yet. He needs to talk to her."

"She's going to start poking around in the magick today. I think she'll know more soon."

"Call us whenever you have more information, or e-mail. There's a computer in the study." Thomas spoke low to someone near him, hand covering the mouthpiece. "Isabelle wants to know what she's like."

Adam's gaze strayed to Claire. She stood in the kitchen, sipping her very first cup of coffee with cream and sugar. Her eyes were closed and her facial muscles slack. Her dark hair, mussed from sleep, curled lazily around her shoulders and her lashes shadowed perfect, alabaster skin that had never known makeup and didn't need it.

"Gorgeous." Mentally, he slapped himself. "I mean—"

"Adam." Thomas's voice held a hint of warning.

He blew a frustrated breath and whispered into the mouthpiece, "You'd have to be dead not to notice. I'm not a total pig. I noticed she's intelligent, too. To go along with it, I noticed her magick, whatever it is, is mad wicked strong. Once she gets it all under control, she's going to be a force to be reckoned with. She's any witch's dream girl."

"Okay. How's she doing emotionally?"

"Emotionally?" He reflected. "She seems a little cold. It's hard to tell. It's not like she's opened up a lot. I know she's confused by the fact she misses Eudae and feels like a foreigner here. That's all I really know, though."

"Consider where she's grown up. The Ytrayi aren't known for displays of feeling."

"Exactly. I think she's had to learn to repress a lot of that. Anyway, she's warming up slowly. I think it's just going to take some time. Other than that she's feeling a little out of place, but she's eager to experience all the earthy things she's missed out on."

Silence. "Don't show her too many earthy things, Adam."

"I mean like food, boss." Now he was irritated. "Like TV. Like driving fast. Like just having fun." Fuck, and sex, too, maybe. Claire was a grown woman and could make those decisions for herself. "I'm not going to take advantage of her. Shit. Who do you think I am?"

"I think you're Adam Tyrell, who never met a woman he didn't want."

Mark him down for wanting this one, too. Guilty as charged. Still, he was annoyed. "Gotta go, boss. Things to do, demons to fight."

"Stay in touch, Adam."

They hung up and he walked into the kitchen. Claire still sat at the breakfast bar sipping the steaming cup of coffee, her eyelids heavy with pleasure. She noted his approach, gaze flicking over his chest, down his legs, then back to her coffee. Interest there, then gone.

Theo stood at the stove, wearing only a pair of pajama bottoms, black tribal tats inked all over his dark skin. The delicious aroma of eggs and bacon wafted from his efforts. Adam's stomach rumbled.

"Micah has started working on Claire's problem and if we know him, he'll be up twenty-four/seven until he makes progress. Otherwise, it's the usual. Head down, eyes open. He told us to hunker down here for a while."

Theo turned, fry pan in hand. "Did you tell Thomas about his car?"

Adam sat down at one of the place settings at the bar. "Yeeeeah, I think I forgot to mention that."

"Uh, huh." Theo scooped eggs and bacon onto all their plates, set the pan aside and sat down to dig in.

Adam took a sip of his steaming coffee. "Hey, it was a good gamble. It would've solved all our problems if it had worked."

"Yeah, but it didn't work and now Thomas is out his car." Theo put a forkful of eggs into his mouth.

Claire picked up a piece of bacon with a grimace, nibbled a bit, and then set it aside. The eggs she seemed to like, though, and ate those with relish.

"So do I want to know what you ate in Eudae?" Theo asked before he forked more egg into his mouth.

Adam laughed. "I asked her that last night."

"The Ytrayi and other breeds aren't like the Atrika. They eat like you do." She glanced at him and shrugged. "It's all just different meat, vegetables, and fruit. The soil is different there, the water, everything."

"Is it true demons are cannibalistic?" Adam asked.

"Do we have to talk about this right now, Adam?" Theo replied. "Anyway, we already know they are, right? Or is your memory so short?" He swallowed hard. "Mine isn't."

"Well, sure, they eat us, Theo. I'm asking if they eat each other. Anyway, you brought it up."

Claire tried nibbling at a piece of bacon again. "In battle or in times of war all daaeman breeds are cannibalistic, even the Syari, the scholars. They eat their enemies alive as an intimidation tactic, but also to consume their magick and essential life energy. The Atrika were bred to be the ultimate warrior. They are always cannibalistic, no matter if it's in a time of war or not, and will eat their prisoners or any other Atrika that crosses them badly enough."

Theo laid his fork down and pushed his plate away.

"When you say bred, what do you mean?" asked Adam.

Claire's eyes widened. "You don't know the daaeman are genetically engineered?"

"No." Both he and Theo said it at the same time.

"We don't know how or by whom. They suspect some alien race tampered with the indigenous species of Eudae millions of years ago. Either that or another race did it and the daaeman breeds wiped them out, just as they wiped out every other race on the planet."

Adam set his fork down and sat back in his chair. "Wow. So the demons are like… super-enhanced beings."

She nodded. "That's why they're so hard to kill. Whoever bred the Atrika made them nearly indestructible. Even their blood is a weapon."

"Acidic," answered Theo. He was being positively extroverted this morning. "So it's only the Atrika who have acid for blood, not the other breeds?"

"Yes, that's why my favorite theory is the one that says the daaeman breeds were created to serve. The Atrika to fight. The Ytrayi to run things. The Syari to keep records. The Mandari to build. But the creators did their job too well and were taken over by their creations and were annihilated."

"So, basically, we're genetically engineered, too," answered Adam.

"I guess you could say that."

"Crossbred from demons and engineered by default. Thomas is going to love this," Theo murmured.

"And how jealous will Micah be that we got this information first?" Adam grinned and Theo grinned back.

Damn. The man was making progress.

Pain lanced through her, making Claire's vision dim for a moment. Wincing, she pressed her hands between her breasts and gasped. "Are you okay?"

She popped an eyelid open, "I'm fantastic. Peeling back the foreign magick seared to mine is tons of fun."

"Sarcasm isn't necessary."

Claire closed her eyes again. "Just let me work."

When she'd tried to go into one of the bedrooms to do this alone, Adam had forbidden her. He'd insisted on accompanying her even though she'd told him it could take her well into the night to accomplish this.

He sat on a chair, one long leg thrown over the arm, reading a book. She sat cross-legged in the center of the bed trying to separate the magicks. Theo was off being Theo somewhere. He was undoubtedly good in a fight and his power pulsed strong and palpable inside him, but she'd never met a more silent, gloomy man on Earth or Eudae.

Adam held up a hand. "Hey, that's great. Next time you turn white, gasp, and nearly pass out, I'll just leave you alone, all right?"

"Thank you."

Adam raised an eyebrow and went back to reading his book.

She closed her eyes again and returned to peeling apart the powers. It was, indeed, what she'd thought it was. Now that she'd had a few hours to fully explore it, she could tell. It was the elium. A mass of violent energy so great it was amazing she'd been able to absorb it all. No normal aeamon would have been able to do it. It was only because her magick had been tweaked and transformed by Rue that she'd been able to carry it.

And, oh, how she didn't want to carry it.

Now her goal was to extract the tendrils of it from her own power, to bunch it into a ball in the middle of her seat and build high walls around it. It was imperative that she regain control of her own elemental abilities, since she was more powerful than any aeamon on Earth. Her magick would be the most effective in coming battles. Truly, she was the only one able to fight the Atrika.

Two questions haunted her. Provided she was able to separate the magicks and bind the elium, would she be able to use any part of it as a weapon against the Atrika? Also, could she shed the elium and still live?

Claire was trying not to be pessimistic about either of those answers.

In fact, it was better not to think about it at all. Nausea having faded, she tried a new tactic. Instead of prying the magicks apart, she would call her magick away from the elium. Like to like. Focusing her attention deep into the Earth below her, she pulled directly from this foreign place itself. Dark and deep. Solid and strong. It filled her until her body became heavy and immovable as a mountain.

The magick came slow and sluggish since this was not the natural home of the aeamon. The magick of the elemental witches came from daaeman—from Eudae, not Earth. So it was harder to pull directly from the elements here.

Once she had a good draw on the earth below, the pulsing heart of Her, she moved to water. Casting tendrils of exploring power in a way no non-tampered-with witch would be able to do, she found moisture in the earth and tapped into the base source of its power. She pulled the essence of it within her until her mountain became soaked with dew — cool, life-giving, and refreshing.

Next she went for air. It was all around and easy to draw from, filling her with a lightness to counteract the mountain sensation of earth.

Last, she sent tendrils out to seek fire, usually the hardest of the elements for her to locate. Here, though, it was easy. The day was chilly and many people had fires lit in their hearths, just as Adam had lit one the previous night. She located one and trapped its unpredictable, destructive, fascinating energy and brought that, too, into her. It flickered to life in the seat of her magick, as warm and wonderful as she found a certain man who wielded it.

All four elements woven together mimicked her own special brand of magick. Tears slipped down her cheeks as she realized just how much she'd missed it. The elium had muddied everything, cut her off from her own power. It was like she'd been an amputee but now had miraculously regrown her missing limb.

Houses! She wanted the elium gone. If it couldn't be gone, she wanted it contained.

Using the borrowed power, she held it inside her, luring her own magick to it. Like to like. Bait to quarry. Nothing happened and Claire's hope sank to her toes.

Then, a flicker.

A pulse.

Like a great beast raising its head and sniffing the air for the scent of food, her magick took notice. And pulled. Hard.

The magicks began to separate. A blinding white-hot flash of pain — as if someone was skinning her alive — ripped through her. Her spine bowed backward under the force of it and her facial muscles contorted.

Underneath the agony, she vaguely understood that she could thrust the borrowed elemental power away and allow her magick to re-adhere itself around the elium. It would stop the pain, but she wanted the elium to lose its hold on her own power so badly that she held on to the bait and endured the separation. The pain was so great she couldn't even cry out. Her mouth opened in a soundless gasp of unbearable anguish.

Adam was there, but even though her eyes were open, she couldn't see him clearly. Claire saw only a dark shape. Strong hands eased her down onto the bed, stroked through her hair. He said things to her — soft, quieting, reassuring things — but it was like another language.

Darkness closed its fist around her. House-blessed nothingness… She sank into it willingly.

The special woodsy clean scent of soap and shampoo teased Claire's nose — the smell she'd come to identify as Adam. Her eyelids flickered open and Adam's face came into view. He'd bundled her in a blanket on the bed and tucked her against his body. She should have been toasty warm, but her whole body quaked with chill. The center of her chest throbbed dully and she remembered the peeling away of the magicks and shuddered.

"Hey," Adam said softly. "Okay?"

"I think so." She tried to get up, but he held her tight against him.

"Just relax a minute. You scared the shit out of me."

She frowned. That had to be just an expression.

"I was across the room and your entire body went tense. You tried to scream but couldn't and all the blood drained from your face." His voice took on an awed quality. "Your magick, Claire, it pulsed like the explosion of a tiny nuclear bomb. I absorbed the shock of it clear across the room. It shook the fucking walls. I got to you and a second later you were out like a light. What happened?"

She sighed, trying to organize her thoughts. Within her, her magick pulsed, just as it had done every day of her life before Rue had imbued her with the elium. A little to the left and up lay the elium itself in a hard little ball of ultimate power. A cancer within her. It was still connected to her power by snaky, sticky tendrils, but less than before.

"I pulled energy from the elements around me to coax my magick away from the elium." She swallowed hard and trembled, remembering the agony. "It worked better than I anticipated. It was fast and very painful."

"You've got your mojo back. I can feel it."

She concentrated, drawing the moisture from the air around her until she had a ball of it. "Yes." She smiled. "It is back."

"Fuck, Claire," Adam breathed, staring at the small, condensed orb of water floating above her hand. She kept it suspended there using air magick. "You're an earth witch. How the hell are you doing that?"

Kindling energy underneath the water, she engulfed the whole thing in a blast of white-hot flame, evaporating it. "I'm like no witch you've ever met, Adam."

It wasn't ego that made the words spill from her lips, it was truth speaking. For better or for worse.

Adam only stared down at her, apparently at a loss for a response.

She pushed up and faced him, holding his steady gaze. It hit her all at once. Her confidence, recently shaken by events, had returned. The heat of him, his scent, his proximity — all of it excited her. It made her body quicken, become lush and alive in a way she had not allowed in many years.

"I hold the magicks all of four elements within me, Adam. All those years with Rue, that's what he did. He experimented with the power inside me, my earth magick. He drew in the other three elements and changed my base earth power in a way that has never been done before. I don't have to store charms like a regular earth witch. I can draw from all four elements, sometimes two at a time — but never all four at once."

He stared at her for a long moment before speaking. "Claire, that makes you more powerful than any other witch on this planet."

Her mouth quirked. "Kind of a change of pace since on Eudae I was one of the weakest individuals."

"One of? There were demons weaker than you?"

"Some of the Syari class are fairly weak. Some in the Mandan. The rest… not." She grinned. "But don't worry, I can kick daaeman ass when I want to. Just ask Thomas. He watched me do it at his side on Eudae."

"I can feel the air magick." He shook his head. "You know about the draw, right? Air and fire, water and earth? I mean, I was attracted to you before, but now it's more… intense." His gaze flared hot.

Yes, she felt it, too. Fire and air held a natural attraction. Now that all her elements were unmuddied by the elium, she could sense the flicker and spark of her air and his fire meeting, checking each other out, rubbing up against each other.

The powers would find balance soon and the artificial attraction would ease, but she'd been drawn to him sexually before the elium had relented so it made the whole thing more extreme.

And, by his own admission, he'd been attracted to her, too.

Wow.

She lifted her gaze to meet his smoldering expression with interest. With her heavy-lidded gaze, she showed him exactly what she was thinking about. Sweaty things. Carnal things. Skin-on-skin things.

He cleared his throat. "Listen, if you're all right, I should leave. Thomas would kick my butt into next week for acting out any of the things currently going through my head."

Adam moved to rise and she put a hand on his forearm, stopping him. "Don't leave." "I really should, hate that word, should. It's ugly in any language."

He hesitated, and then settled back. After a moment, he reached out and touched her cheek. "Wow. Beautiful, intelligent, strong, and a powerful witch. You've got it all, baby."

She blinked, her smile fading. "You think I'm beautiful?" "You're kidding right? I think you're gorgeous." Her cheeks heated. "It's been a long time since anyone told me I was pretty."

"What wrong with those demons?" She smiled. "They're demons."

"Oh, yeah." His head dipped toward hers and the heat of him chased the chill from her bones a bit. "This is such a bad idea," he murmured. His gaze centered on her mouth.