Linda Robertson - Wicked Circle

Their guide’s trembling eased. He blinked. He gasped.

Liyliy flicked the foamy drool from his chin. “Zevon,” she whispered. “You are a sweet boy, untried, but with such a dirty mind.” On all fours, her body assumed a position both sexual and predatory. “Oh, what I could do with you. To you.” She kissed him, lightly, then rougher. In an instant she had heaved him upright by his head, squeezing him tightly to her. Zevon tried to shove her away.

Mero felt them tap the line again. This time, however, it was not a minimal touch but a seizing grasp, dark and barbed, with ravenous hunger. He brought the necklace out from under his shirt and clutched the amber-filled pouch, pouring his own power into the stones. “Liyliy!”

She released Zevon and spun on Mero. In an instant her smooth skin grew wrinkled, like crumpled paper, and—screeching—she attacked.

Pain stabbed through her body, but Liyliy leapt unfalteringly. Wings appeared behind her, lifted her into the air, then angled so she could descend and swing a foot—now a clenched talon—at this man’s head. Meroveus. She recognized the liar. He’d been here when she and her sisters had been tricked, bound into stone. He had not been the one who’d performed the spell, but he had been part of the ruse. For that, he deserved her wrath.

Her strike connected with enough force to cast him into the air. As he was thrown backward, her head swelled to twice its size and her body transformed.

In landing, the man’s ponytail was trapped beneath him. In skidding across the floor, his head was drawn back, thrusting his chin up and exposing his neck. The man’s elbow smacked the floor hard enough that he released the pouch.

Liyliy pinned him with her talons around each of his biceps.

“We are hungry!” she snarled, thrusting her new owl-like beak toward his throat just as her skin prickled over with gooseflesh. On either side of her hooked nose, quill tips burst forth in large circles around her eyes, and from the deepest of her wrinkles black and gray feathers sprouted. The hair atop her head retracted into her scalp at the same time as a thick mass of feathers tore through her skin.

She felt torn apart, but his confounded expression was worth it. “We will sate our stomachs! On you if not him!”

Meroveus buried his fingers into the feathers upon her legs, and a surge of energy surrounded them as he channeled power to his hands and discharged it into her aching flesh.

Screeching pitifully, Liyliy beat her wings, wrenching away from him.

He grabbed the pouch around his neck once more, and as he stood, the sting of his wrath bit her again though he no longer touched her. Worse, her sisters cried out as well and fell, writhing on the floor.

Liyliy fought.

She flopped this way and that, talons skidding, wings flailing, trying to reach through the pain, to reach him and flay him with her claws, but with each attempt the pain redoubled, and her sisters’ cries were like daggers in her ears.

“Release us!” they cried piteously.

Meroveus let go of the pouch and all the torment disappeared.

Liyliy thought to rip him limb from limb, but her exhausted body collapsed in a heap, and she screeched as her body reverted to its naked, human form. She didn’t have the strength to even lift her head from the cold floor. She hated any weakness—and doubly so when it was her own flaw. Her sisters crawled to her and wrapped her in their arms, cooing to her.

“I did release you,” Meroveus scolded them. He went to Zevon, who was still shaking. “He aided me! He gave you language! Is this the thanks we are to receive? Physical attacks?” With a steadying grip on Zevon’s shoulder, he said, “They are not worthy of their freedom. Remain here. I will put them back.”

“No!” Liyliy’s sisters cried.

The man ignored them and reached to the pouch necklace. Turning, he walked toward the stairway.

“No, no,” Ailo and Talto pleaded.

The words were foul to Liyliy’s ears, and the tears on their cheeks were pollution. She would not cry. She would not beg. But she would not go back to the numb stone, either. She was smarter than that. She understood what men of power wanted. Her sisters needed her.

In a voice barely above a whisper, a voice brittle like cracked glass, Liyliy said, “You . . . you are our lord.”

The haste of Meroveus’s departure lapsed. He turned back, and the full measure of his suspicion was scrawled across the lines of his face. Liyliy’s sisters had cradled her on the floor, but now she lifted her head. The pouch on his necklace is the source of his dominance. “We obey you,” she said. “Just feed us.”

His chin lifted. “Do you think I have not planned for your hungers?”

“You did not say as much!”

“I had to give you language first. You gave me no chance. Reckless impulsiveness is not a quality I will tolerate. I believe it is that kind of behavior that led to your confinement.” He cursed quietly in the old language she would understand. “Now I cannot trust you.”

“What oath will satisfy you, lord?”

Mero considered it. “Swear upon your sisters’ heads that you will be obedient, Liyliy.”

She hesitated for a second, knowing that responding too quickly or too slowly would send a message she did not wish to convey. “I swear upon my sisters’ heads I will obey you, lord.”

Seemingly satisfied, he nodded. “Clothe yourself, Liyliy.”

From nothing, the gray silk writhed up and around her once more. And her scheming commenced.

It occurred to me that ringing a doorbell wasn’t exactly an action I’d expect of a violent trespasser—but it could be an indication of a more despicable kind of intruder. Whoever this man was, he’d circumnavigated the wards, and I didn’t want him in my house. Wait. He did more than just get past my protections—I hadn’t felt the alarm of anything triggering the wards at all.

I strode toward the door, reaching for the knob.

“Milady!” Ivanka put a restraining hand on my arm. “Let me.”

Zhan snorted and tucked her wet hair behind her ears. “Maxine and I tried that when we first arrived. The E.V. is adamant about answering her own door.”

Ivanka fixed me with her “intimidating” stare. “Bad idea.”

The reward for her effort was seeing my “firmly resolved” stare. “Let go.”

The command made her withdraw. As I opened the door, a blast of cold air hit me like a frozen slap. My heart was pounding, and I was grateful for the separation of even a flimsy screen door between myself and this mysterious man. I said nothing.

Before me, long and pale fingers rose slowly to lower the hood of the robe.

His raven hair was worn in a non-styled manner, simply combed straight back over his head, where it hung almost to his shoulders. Add to that a trim beard, and all that darkness steered my focus to his blue eyes, his slightly sunken cheeks and a mouth that seemed a fraction too wide.

At first, I thought him bony and underweight, but as my consideration lingered, it occurred to me that he did not emit the forlorn and pitiful hunger of the emaciated. What he did radiate . . . I couldn’t put my finger on. Even so—and regardless of the fact that he was dressed for a long-gone era—I found him attractive.

“Persephone,” he whispered.

Granted, when most people go to someone’s house, they know whose door they’re knocking on. I hated being at a disadvantage with people on my porch, but that was something I was learning to accept. A lot of people recognized me since I’d been on TV. “Who are you?”

Palms out in a benign gesture, he said, “Call me any name you find worthy of me.”