"Poetic." She closed her eyes and leaned back against him. "But a wrecking ball and a building don't engage in mutual destruction when they meet."
The Twilight Key hung heavily around her neck. Its metal was both warm and cool against her skin. The artifact pulsed with each attempt at merging the energies. Almost like it was keeping score of her failures. Some family heirloom it was turning out to be.
"You're thinking too much." His breath stirred her hair as he spoke. One of his hands slid down her arm to cover her right hand. Divine power surged between them at the contact. "Feel the balance point. The place where light bleeds into shadow."
The Key chose that moment to warm against her skin. It was quickly followed by images flooding her mind. They were ancient memories of her ancestors wielding these same powers. Camael was right. They didn't force the energies together. They let them dance and find their harmony like old lovers reuniting.
"Oh," she breathed as understanding clicked. Her hands moved through the air. She drew patterns she’d never been taught. It was knowledge that had been passed down in her blood, but she didn’t have access to it before now. Light and shadow responded. They wove together in a display that painted the training room in shades of twilight.
"That's it." Camael's voice dropped to a place that made her shiver. His power wrapped around her like a blanket as she worked magic she never knew existed. "Now, hold it."
She managed to maintain the merged energy for almost a minute before it destabilized. The resulting backlash sent them both stumbling. Camael's arms wrapped around her waist. He kept her upright as the power dissipated.
"Better," he rumbled. He didn't immediately release her. And she didn't try to pull away. "You're learning to trust your instincts."
"The Key helps." She touched the artifact, which hummed under her fingers. "It's like having a link to the supernatural instruction manual hardwired into my brain."
His chest thundered against her back. "Your ancestors left you more than just tools. They left you their knowledge."
Before she could respond, the Key pulsed with urgent energy. New images crashed through her mind. Scenes of battles fought with these same powers. She saw her ancestors defending the barriers between worlds. They used light and shadow in ways that made her current efforts look like parlor tricks.
"Shit," she gasped as the vision released her. Her knees buckled, but she didn’t fall. Camael's grip kept her steady. "That was... intense."
"What did you see?" His voice carried equal parts concern and curiosity.
"Fighting techniques. Ways to use both energies in combat. It was severe..." She trailed off as the Key warmed again. Power gathered around her hands without conscious thought. "Step back."
To his credit, Camael immediately gave her space. Keeping the images in mind, she moved through forms that felt as natural as breathing. It was a wild experience, considering she'd never practiced them. Light and shadow responded to each gesture. They formed weapons and shields that shouldn't exist.
A slow whistle from the doorway broke her concentration. "Now that's something you don't see every day," Rami observed. He was leaning against the frame with his arms crossed. He looked like violence taking a coffee break. There was talk of him putting off a trip to New York. She had noidea what that meant and hadn’t bothered asking. She wanted the warrior to stay there. They would need his help. She was afraid she wouldn’t be enough. In each of her visions, her ancestors were never alone.
"How long have you been there?" Amelia demanded as she let the energy dissipate.
"Long enough to see you channel some serious mojo." He pushed off from the door and entered the room. "The others are gathering upstairs. We need to talk about what's happening now in the Quarter."
While she'd been playing magical dress-up with powers that could possibly save the day, Lucifer wasn't exactly sitting on his ass with a mint julep. The Prince of Lies had switched up his game plan faster than a casino dealer with something to hide. No more demon hordes doing the supernatural equivalent of a Mardi Gras murder parade.
The bastard was going subtle, and that shit was scarier than a tax audit in May. The corruption was seeping through the Big Easy like poison in the bayou. Now, he was using the kind of evil that didn't announce itself with fanfare and fireworks. It was more like the type that smiled while it slipped arsenic into your coffee.
The intel flooding in from their network painted a picture uglier than sin. The Dark Warriors were reporting surges of power that made their supernatural radar go haywire. The Rowan sisters had their hands full with wards that kept shifting like quicksand. And the vampire community? They were seeing things that made thousand-year-old bloodsuckers check their locks twice at dawn.
"I'll be right up," Camael told his second-in-command when he was finished giving his report. His ice-blue eyes remained fixed on Amelia. "We need to finish here first."
Rami nodded and disappeared upstairs, leaving them alone again. The tension in the room thickened until Ameliacould barely breathe. Or maybe that was just the effect Camael had on her when he looked at her like that.
Camael moved like a storm about to break. He was all lethal grace and barely contained power. "That Key around your neck?" His voice dropped to a place that made her bones vibrate. "The visions it's feeding into your brain aren't just some cosmic highlight reel. This is preparation for a war that's been brewing since before time learned to crawl."
"Tell that to my migraine." Amelia's fingers found the artifact. Holy hell, power was surging between the two of them like a live wire. "Every time I think I've got a handle on this unexpected inheritance, it downloads another batch of greatest hits straight into my cerebral cortex."
His massive hand covered hers where she gripped the Key. The contact sent awareness shooting through her. It had jack shit to do with magic and everything to do with how much she wanted to shove him to the ground and have her way with him. "You're wielding power that hasn't been seen since the universe was in diapers." The words rumbled through his chest as he stepped closer. Close enough that she had to crane her neck to maintain eye contact. "The fact that you haven't reduced the entire planet to its component atoms is a fucking miracle."
The air between them thickened until breathing became optional. His ice-blue eyes locked onto hers with an intensity that could've melted steel. Time stretched like taffy as he lowered his head toward hers. Her breath caught in her throat as she prayed that he didn’t stop.
The kiss, when it finally happened, was like getting hit by divine lightning. His lips claimed hers with a hunger that had been building since day one. One of his hands tangled in her hair while the other pulled her flush against him. Power surged between them, making the Key pulse against her chest like a second heartbeat.
Because timing was a bitch with a sick sense of humor, alarms screamed through the mansion like banshees having a party. To her dismay, he pulled away from her and went alert. She should have too, but she wasn’t a trained warrior. And he did things to her that left her dazed and aroused. She managed to snap to when she noted the wards lit up brighter than Vegas on New Year's. They were straining against multiple impacts that felt like supernatural battering rams.
"Incoming!" Jo's voice carried the kind of urgency that meant someone was about to have a really bad day. "The outer wards are failing faster than Raphael’s jaw when Kara came home!"
