“Lennox, stop,” Rogan growls at me, his strong arms wrapping around me as though he’s readying himself to pin me down.
I spot a pile of pink grains and reach out to grasp a handful.
“I don’t want to hurt you, please!” he commands again.
Twisting in his hold, I shove my palm full of Himalayan salt right in his eyes. He shouts and bats my hand down, rubbing the sting from his vision as I wiggle away. The bag of laurelwood slides inches further as I scramble for it. I curse and stretch out as far as I can, my fingertips skimming the plastic. Just another inch. Hands grab my hips and start trying to pull me away.
I screech and reach with everything I have. Suddenly the bag is in my grip. I don’t know how it happened as I was being dragged further from it, but it’s in my grasp. Without hesitation, I flip onto my back as Rogan pulls me closer to him. His eyes are alight with ferocious determination. He doesn’t look angry, more like an apex predator about to down the prey in its sights.
Let’s see what he thinks about my foot in his neck. I kick for all that I’m worth, and he stops pulling at me to guard himself. He assumes I’m going for a crotch shot, and when his hands drop down, I aim for his neck instead. He gasps and grabs for his throat, and a victorious cheer goes off inside of me. Skittering back, I rip the bag open with my teeth and start throwing laurelwood around his bent over form. My breaths come fast and panic-filled as I scramble to my feet and rush to encircle him before he recovers from my assault. Wood chips fall to the ground in frenzied throws, and just when Rogan looks up at me with promises of retribution written all over his face, I close the circle.
A light moves through the ring of laurelwood, confirming its completion, and unsteadily I step back and exhale a sigh of relief.
He’s trapped.
I’m safe.
Rogan watches me, his chest heaving from his efforts to stop me. I want to smile, crow something childish liketake that, asshole, but the way he’s looking at me steals the wind from my overconfident sails. A smile tilts one corner of his mouth, and I watch as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small switchblade. The blade slashes down his palm, and he tilts his hand to allow the drops of blood to fall to the floor inside the laurelwood circle.
“Your magic is bound to me, Lennox. Did you forget that?”
Well, shit.
With each vermilion drop, my heart rate picks up. I look around the mess that is now my shop, hoping against hope that somehow the solution to this new problem will be sitting right there in front of me. The Blood Witch starts chanting, and it tears a gasp from my lips as I feel a pull on the magic nestled at my core. A buzzing feeling overcomes me as a current of power flows from my veins into his.
Fuck, is this what Hoot feels when I use my abilities? No wonder he’s been trying to choke me to death with his noxious farts. I rack my brain for a way to make it stop, but once again my lack of attentiveness in Witch 101 is coming back to bite me in the ass. I could scream in frustration at being such a shitty witch heir, but my lungs feel cold, and I feel like I’m being stripped of my essence from the inside out.
Words pop up in my mind, disjointed and unhelpful as the Blood Witch pulls on my magic to free himself from my laurelwood prison. I can practically hear Grammy Ruby’s voice spouting off the different languages that witches use for their incantations, but none of it is helpful as a flicker goes through the barrier separating me and Rogan Kendrick. I can think of nothing that will give me the upper hand as he siphonsmymagic with each second that passes.
And then it comes to me.
“Tedas ruk shaw aus forin veHemamancer.Ise hiruse ou fooiq tork shin iei.”
Rogan shoutsnoas the last syllable leaves my lips, but the heat that slams into me denies his plea. My feet lift off the ground as a blazing force bows me to its will. I’m all at once consumed by power as I do to him exactly what he did to me. I bind his essence, his magic, to mine, making us both a conduit for each other’s abilities. I seal the circle between our souls, and then I collapse in a battered heap on the floor as the power ebbs and I’m left seared inside and reeling.
“What did you do?” Rogan coughs out, his voice pained and gravellier than it was before.
“What you deserved,” I retort, my own tone mimicking that of a chain-smoker of fifty years. If he thought I was just going to sit idly by while he treated me like some magical gas station, then he just learned how wrong he was. If you take from me, I’ll take right back. I’ve always been an eye for an eye kind of girl. Let’s see him command me now.
Rogan tries to push to his feet, his corded arms shaky and his legs stiff. On the second try, he finally gets himself upright and fixes me with a glare. I’m still on the ground, and if I have it my way, I’m just going to take a little nap before I’m forced to start cleaning up the mess that’s one hundred percent Rogan’s fault.
“You tethered us,” he accuses, his lichen-laced eyes all the more beautiful for the fury floating in them.
“No, fucker, you did that,” I argue, trying and failing to get up myself. No way am I going to let this prick lord over me, disdain dripping from his every word. Maybe I can stand on a downed shelf, bring us closer in height. My arms do their best impression of over-boiled noodles, and I give up. Screw it, standing is overrated.
“Icreated an anchor,youtethered us!”
“What the hell does that even mean?”
“Tethering makes our power reliant. They’re no longer individual sources of magic, they’re linked.”
“How is that different from what you did?” I demand.
Rogan releases an exasperated huff, and if I had the energy and Giselle Bundchen’s legs, I’d kick him in the throat again.
“Familiars are a one way connection for a reason. We pull magic and energy from them as an extra layer of protection for us. We can also siphon magic and energy into them to be stored in the event that we get overloaded to the point of danger or death. The witch decides and takes or gives what he or she needs. But it doesn’t work the same if the link is full circle. Both the witch and the familiar then have control, and that’s dangerous. You just tainted a link that was meant for protection, and now calling on the familiar bond will be dangerous for both of us.”
Well, isn’t that just perfect. I haven’t even taken my magic for a proper joy ride yet, and already I’ve wrecked it.
