The crimson witch

blended perfectly with the old and the face was as handsome as she remembered it.
        Carefully, she stripped off the remnants of the clawed and torn shirt and examined his other wounds. She marveled once more at the smooth muscles of his delightful body…
        She shook her head free of such thoughts and concentrated on healing that body. Healing it, nothing more…
        When this was done, she reached into his mind and planted the seeds of wakefulness so that he stirred and fluttered his eyes and looked up full into her face, locking his eyes on her green-green eyes. His gaze became fear-filled, then suddenly changed, melted into a gaze of curiosity. He raised his hands slowly and felt along his jaw line, ran his fingers over his cheeks, marveling at the smoothness of them. He dropped his hands to his sides, probed with his fingers for the places he had been slashed, realizing that they were completely gone, removed without the faintest trace. “How-”
        “I healed you,” she said contemptuously.
        “But I thought-”
        “Kell is a wise old witch. She made you immune to magics that are meant to harm you while leaving you perfectly open to magics that are to help and heal you.”
        “And you healed me so that you might kill me later? “He grinned.
        She snorted.
        “Well?”
        “Yes!”
        He grinned again, sat up. “Well, kill me then.”
        She looked at him, shrugged. “Later.”
        “No. Now.”
        She stood.
        He stood. “Now,” he said, opening his arms to her.
        She backed away.
        He approached her. “Kill me now if you're so anxious for the pleasure.”
        She started to levitate.
        He ran forward, grabbed her ankles and towed her out of the sky. “No you don't! You aren't running away again-just to come and make more trouble whenever your temper gets hot again.”
        “You were almost dead,” she said in a tiny voice.
        “Well, then kill me. Finish the job they started.”
        He tugged her against him.
        “No,” she said.
        “I'll spank you then.”
        “Please don't.”
        “I will!”
        “Please!”
        “Then kill me.”
        “I can't.”
        She was crying now.
        “Why not?”
        “Because-”
        “Because?”
        “Because-”
        “Because?”
        “Because I love you damn it!”
        She kicked him in the shin.
        He opened his mouth, recovered slightly, closed it, still astonished.
        She kicked him again. “Let me go!”
        “What did you say?”
        “You heard it, damn you!” She mumbled a curse at him.
        “I want to hear it once more.”
        He squeezed her arms.
        Behind, Kaliglia rumbled to remind them of his presence.
        “I love you, you overbearing bastard!”
        “But-”
        “Oh, shut up!”
        She kicked him again.
        “What are you kicking me for?”
        “To make you let me go.”
        He held her tighter.
        Kaliglia grumbled again, turned his back.
        “Let me-go!”
        He kissed her.
        She kicked his shin one last time. Then she kissed him, too, holding him tightly, crying and kissing and trembling against him.
        Kaliglia walked off toward the woods, hanging his head between a couple of trees and examining the way they would soon have to trod. If they were still going to the Castle Lelar, that was.
        Jake touched the double clasp that held her crimson robe about her.
        She kissed him.
        He kissed back.
        The robe slipped away, and the sun was dimmed by a greater light.
        Kaliglia began humming a tune the Sorceress Kell sang a great deal, drowning out all other noises behind…

Chapter Eight: A JOINING OF FORCES
        
        Kaliglia, after a discreet amount of time and after the noises of love no longer required his song to mask them, returned from his vigil of the forest floor and laid down next to them where they sat at the scene of the battle and the curing and the love-making, discussing strategy. After the preliminaries of the discussion had been passed and the embarrassment of all had been relieved quite quickly by Jake's open mood, Kaliglia and Cheryn agreed that the first manbat had most likely attacked out of sheer meanness, anxious for sport and lusting for the taste and smell of human blood. When Jake had slaughtered the first and