Anya Bast - Witch Blood

Just as they had always underestimated her.

It was ego. The daaemon thought themselves to be superior in every way to the aeamon . What the daaemon didn’t understand was that the spell that been cast to allow the birth of witches so long ago had been born of Eudae and had linked the aeamon eternally to this land. Witches were more in tune with the daaemon ’s own planet than they were.

Thomas looked up and moved his arms, his muscles flexing. A beard shadowed his face, but Claire knew he was handsome under the hair. Strong chin, black eyes that held heat and anger barely banked, full lips that seemed made for traveling over a woman’s skin. She responded to him like a woman did to a man. She couldn’t help it. He was the first eligible male she’d ever encountered. Eligible, but a prisoner.

Selfishly, she wanted to keep him, to seduce him. She wanted something here, someone who was totally hers. But this man didn’t see her, not the way she would have him see her. His whole heart and mind was centered on Isabelle .

And Claire was going to do all she could to see he got back to her.

She’d been sent to tend Thomas and act as translator because she was the only person besides Rue who spoke his language. Soon the daaemon would realize what a mistake that had been.

“Claire,” he greeted, his voice strong and sure. Good. When she’d first been sent to him, he’d been sick and broken.

She nodded, walking near him and setting her burdens to the floor — a bucket of hot, soapy water and a rag. Secreted on her person she also had a razor, a package of food, and medicine rolled up in a bit of cloth, even antiseptic wash for his mouth.

Claire had been instructed to care for Thomas, to keep him alive — barely alive — so that the questioning and beatings they put him through during the day didn’t kill him. She’d been doing her job.

Well.

Much better than the Ytrayi had ever intended.

His magick was fierce and strong, fiercer and stronger here on Eudae than on Earth because his homeland fed him. The daaemon wanted Thomas weak enough that he couldn’t use his power. She wanted him strong enough to break out of here. And tonight she had everything in place.

The Ytrayi thought they had her under their thumb. It was time she showed them how mistaken they were.

Smiling to herself, she dipped the rag into the water and placed it to his skin. Carefully, she wiped clean the grime and dried blood from his body. Every night she did this, wiped away the evidence of the beatings he received and tended his wounds. She took her time, took her pleasure in the hard satin stretch of his body and the way his skin quivered under her touch. Undoubtedly, he fantasized it was his lover who caressed him. Claire didn’t care so long as she was the one with her hands on him.

Isabelle could have him tomorrow. Until then, he was hers.

Tonight, she did not speak. Normally, in soft, hushed murmurs, she tutored him in ways to use his magick against his captors. Claire had learned a lot in the twenty-five years she’d been trapped on this rock. She’d learned far more than Rue realized.

When she picked up the razor and set it to his face, he jerked away from her. “You’ve never shaved me before,” he rasped.

She smiled and her face hurt from it. Claire couldn’t remember the last time her mouth had moved that way. “For Isabelle,” she admonished him. “You don’t want to go to her looking like…what is that creature? I can hardly remember…a yeti?”

He swallowed hard. “Is it time?” He sounded like a starving man being offered a three-course meal.

Her smile lingered in response to the barely leashed eagerness in his voice. She slid the razor over his face, ridding it of the three week’s worth of hair. “Your magick is curled deeply in you now, trained by me and ready to strike. I believe you’re ready. Have you been acting weak and broken in front of Rue and the others?”

He nodded.

“Have you been casting the glamours I’ve been feeding you to make you appear dirty and injured?”

“Yes.”

She smiled. Smiling felt nice once her muscles grew accustomed to it. “Good.”

After she’d fed him the flatbread and meat she’d tucked into her pockets, let him wash his mouth, and administered the final dose of high-powered medicine she’d had to steal daily from the doctors, Claire stood and backed away from him. “Demonstrate,” she commanded.

Magick prickled along the nape of her neck. Her own earth magick responded to his tap with a low purr in the center of her chest. She closed her eyes and sighed into it. Around her the entire cell pulsed, breathed like a living thing for a moment. The walls expanded outward and then inward. The ceiling cracked. Dust and rock rained down and the floor beneath her feet rumbled.

Claire opened her eyes, shivering a little at the display of power. “Yes, you’re ready to take on the daaemon .”

Even in the dim light of the cell, his expression tightened and his eyes glowed with eager threat. She’d fed him charms over the course of the last three weeks, so many that he should have enough tricks up his sleeve to make it from his cell to the doorway. Everything was ready.

When Rue had put her in charge of keeping Thomas alive, she’d answered him with properly downcast eyes…but in her mind, she’d begun planning this.

They’d never broken her, the bastards.

She tapped her magick, drawing it straight up from Eudae herself, and the chains binding him snapped. Thomas couldn’t touch those chains…but she could.

Thomas straightened his long, broad frame just as the guards threw the door open. His show of magick would not have gone unnoticed. The two hulking daaemon stopped short just inside the doorway and Thomas struck like a lightning bolt, raising power and directing it at them. It pulsed along her skin, tasting of a place she couldn’t remember but missed with all her heart, tasted like home , and then the guards were down. Dead, Claire had no doubt.

Losing no time, they stepped over their bodies and raced down the corridor of the prison before more guards arrived.

At the end, they turned the corner and ran straight into an entire group of daaemon .

ISABELLE LEANED OVER A SHEAF OF PAPERS IN THElibrary, squinting against the exhaustion that had overtaken her. The room was dark, but for the light illuminating her immediate area. Micah and the others helping them on this project had long since retired.

She was no scholar, didn’t even have a college education, but since Thomas’s disappearance she’d had a crash course in lots of esoteric subjects she’d never had cause to be interested in before, like the nuances of Aramaic and the delicate intricacies of earth magick.

Until now the Coven had had no reason to delve into historical documents kept by non-magickals, but since their witchy origins had been revealed, Micah had been procuring them and scouring them for any information that might fit in with what they’d received from the Duskoff. In the process, knowledge that needed to be closely guarded from the warlocks had been discovered. If Thomas hadn’t been trapped over there, they would’ve let it stay buried forever. It was quite practical and some of it very dangerous.

Mumbling to herself, she read the line giving her trouble for the fiftieth time and then double-checked the three translations she had, trying to figure out which one fit with rest of the text.

She sat back, rubbing the bridge of her nose and closing her bloodshot eyes. “I really need to let Micah handle this,” she mumbled to herself.