Hexed

Mick. “Dragon sacrificing his blood that others might live. So noble is the dragon. The one who wants to drag me to his Pacific island and trap me there.”
    “Hey, I’d go with him,” Maya said. “I’d love some beach time.”
    “He’d pen me up in his lair,” I said, my voice dripping scorn. “His mate, he calls me. More like his pet .”
    I smacked the man I loved with a wave of water that washed him off his feet. Mick responded with fire that slammed me back onto my ass. A dragon after being drained by a Nightwalker is still five times more powerful than an ordinary human being.
    I was on my feet again, my magic—both Stormwalker and Beneath—gathered in my hands. My mind’s eye found all the wards in the walls and over the windows and in the doors, the hex clinging to them like a sticky black infection.
    All I had to do was burn away the infection, every atom of it, and the wards would be clean. The hex had doubled in strength, and the task would take all my power, but I could do it. I knew the walls would melt into rubble under such forces, and we’d be buried alive by three stories of hotel, but at least the magic of the sorcerer, who’d dared to penetrate my realm, would be gone.
    I raised my hands. Water and white light streamed out of me, and I opened my mouth to cry the words of power that would begin the cleansing.
    And found myself falling over the stool and to the floor, crushed by a blanket of blackness that sucked out every bit of my power and left me helpless.
    Nash Jones, the walking magic void, had tackled me. He pinned me to the floor in the perfect law-enforcement technique for subduing a suspect, his magic-null field absorbing storm power and goddess power alike.
    I screamed and screamed as my magic drained. It was like having my soul ripped out. I beat on the floor, but Nash was a big guy, and I couldn’t dislodge him.
    Mick crawled to me. “Back off, Jones. I think she’ll be all right now.”
    If being weak, magic-less, aching, exhausted, and for some reason, hungry, was “all right,” then sure, I was. I lay limply on the floor as Nash got off me and to his feet, our mighty sheriff none the worse for wear.
    Mick lifted me into his lap. “You okay, baby?”
    “Sorry,” I croaked.
    He kissed my forehead and cuddled me close. That was my Mick. Forgiving me for turning into a crazy, murderous, insulting bitch who’d just tried to kill him. Times like these kept our relationship strong.
    Dear gods.
     
    WITH ME DOWN for the count, my head pounding with the worst magic hangover I’d had in months, and Mick still weak from the blood draining, Nash took charge. Back in the lobby, he grilled us all for possible answers to the predicament.
    Ansel wasn’t there—fairly sated, he’d gone back to the relative coolness of the refrigerator, which he said would keep his blood thick and his hunger down for a while. But the bloodfrenzy still danced in his eyes, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he’d need to feed again.
    As Nash stood like a drill sergeant grilling his troops, my gaze strayed to Maya. She huddled in one corner of a sofa, her elegant legs pulled up under her, her beautiful eyes riveted to Nash. She loved the idiot, and one day, I was going to smack him upside the head and make him understand that.
    “The best thing to do is the summoning,” Cassandra repeated stubbornly. “I will give myself up, John Christianson will have his revenge, end of problem.”
    “Like hell you will,” Pamela growled. “I’m not letting that asshole kill you.”
    “But this all-powerful sorcerer is the cause of this hex thing, right?” Nash asked. “And if he’s dead, no more spell?”
    Nash didn’t have much knowledge of magic—only what he’d learned, reluctantly, from me and Mick—but he was good at grasping essentials.
    “I think so,” Cassandra said. “Some hexes can outlast their creator, but this one is so intense, it needs big magic to keep it up. If the ununculous dies, I’m sure this hex would go or at least weaken enough for someone like Mick to break it.”
    “Then we kill him,” Pamela said. “Simple as that.”
    Cassandra wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “If it were that simple, someone would have killed him a long time ago.” The Cassandra I knew would never wipe her runny nose with anything but an antibacterial tissue. She looked awful, her hair dangling loose from its French braid, her eyes red-rimmed in her sallow face.