Linda Robertson - Fatal Circle

“Bindspoken,” he repeated, rising from the floor. I bent my legs up to make room for him on the couch. “Still. Why would a Bindspoken witch hang with waeres?” His warm hands rubbed down my lower leg and tickled across the top of my foot, then slid upward again.

“The witches can’t associate with him; my touch had a shocklike effect on him. Maybe it’s camaraderie, a sense of being a social outcast he shares with waeres.”

Johnny shrugged. “Did you get what you needed?”

“Yeah. More than I thought I would.”

He grinned merrily. “That’s what happens when women go shopping.”

Spoiling anyone’s good mood first thing in the morning was terrible, but I had to tell him. No delays. “Johnny, he told me something about you that you don’t know.”

“What?”

I sat closer to him, wrapping my arms around my bent legs, trapping his hand under mine. “He said someone long ago must have figured out that you were the Domn Lup. He suggested that this person had you tattooed as a means to make your magic relinquish its power into the art and colors of the pictures, thereby locking that power up. He said we’d have to find out who did it and persuade them to unlock it.”

He let that sink in.

“Is my memory locked up, too?”

“He didn’t mention that specifically, but it seems logical to think so. If all of this is unlocked, it could come back along with your ability to change at will without the struggle and pain.”

“Why didn’t he tell me?” His voice was clipped.

“Beau said that, being Bindspoken, he knows what it’s like to have your power cut off from you. He said it was pointless to tell you until someone who could help you, someone like the Lustrata, showed up.”

“He knows that’s you?”

I nodded. “I’m supposed to be able to help you figure this out.” Gripping him tighter, I went on. “He said there’s a spell in the Codex that we must do.”

“A spell?” he echoed indignantly.

“Yes. Magic is not the same threat to you since you’re Domn Lup. Beau said that’s because you are magic. And the ‘we’ I referred to is you and Menessos and me.”

“Why’s the vamp got to be involved in finding out who did this to me?”

I bit my lip. “This won’t directly find out who did your tattoos. That’s going to be a multistep process. This is step one.”

Johnny snorted disapproval. “What does this spell do—wait, let me guess. There’s binding involved.”

“It takes from each of us two pieces of our soul—”

“Soul?” Johnny stiffened.

“Beau said that in order to maintain our own ‘soul balance’ within ourselves, we’d have to take pieces of each other even as we gave up pieces.”

Johnny stood, his hand falling away from mine as he strode across the room.

I bit my lip waiting, studying the dragon and foo-dog tattoo on his back.

Finally, he paced back. “I’ll do anything you ask, but don’t tell me I’m supposed to give part of my soul to the vamp, and take part of his in trade.”

“I’m not going to ask you to do this. I’m going to tell you what’s been presented as the solution. Either you volunteer, or you don’t. If the three of us don’t agree on this, it won’t happen at all.”

“And if this spell doesn’t happen?”

Having to be the one to present him with the first of his unpleasant choices of real leadership hurt my heart. “If this doesn’t happen, then I can’t stop WEC from rendering me Bindspoken. If I can’t tap into the energy and magic, then I can’t help you find the person who tattooed you, and your power and your memory may stay locked up forever.”

He sighed heavily and paced away again.

“I’m sorry, Johnny. I know. Doing this will cost you; not doing it will cost you. You just have to decide which of these two evils is more acceptable than the other.”

“This is why I didn’t want to be pack leader,” he muttered. “This shit sucks even on small-time local pack levels.” He didn’t return for a long, long minute. “How does this stop them from harming you?”

“If I’m correct, then if pieces of my soul are elsewhere, as in my soul is incomplete, they cannot bind it down. Like they can’t close the door because there’s other things in the way, the pieces of yours and Menessos’s souls.” Instantly, I was willing to bet that the gateway the fairies used, the one Xerxadrea wanted me to seal shut, worked on the same principle.

“Why wouldn’t they just work their Bindspoken ritual on us all?”

“How would waeres everywhere react to learning that WEC had damaged their Domn Lup?”

“Good point.” He resumed his place on the end of the couch and drew my legs across his lap. He draped one arm over the couch back, ran the fingers of the other up and down my shins. “But how will waeres everywhere react to learning that their Domn Lup is bound to some vampire?”

“He’s not just any vampire.”

“Oh, right. He’s the lord of the northeastern quarter of the U.S.A.”

“He’s more than that.”

His mouth crooked up on one side, unimpressed. “Oh, yeah?”

“Do you want to bear the burden of another ultimate secret that cannot be revealed unless he reveals it first?”

Johnny studied me, silently earnest. His hand rested on my knee, heavy and hot.

Yes, I haven’t told you everything.

Then Johnny looked away.

Yes, you know what a burden a secret can be. Do you want the knowledge, and the responsibility?

I waited. It was his decision. I wondered if Johnny, through the deeper bond Menessos had implemented between Johnny and me, had somehow heard those thoughts. I could almost hear him weighing the pros and cons of his answer: he didn’t want to know anything more about Menessos. But I needed him to voluntarily agree to soul-sharing with the vampire.

And the stakes are too damn high to even consider making that decision without knowing all the facts.

He shifted, brought down the arm draping the couch back. “Tell me.”

“He is the original vampire and he is yet alive.”

I watched him struggle with this information. Surprise. Disbelief. Waiting for the punch line. Suspicion rose, followed by doubt. Rejection of the idea came next. Then deliberation. Concession of plausibility. Conversion. Acceptance. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“I’m not.”

His hands were both in motion then, stroking me, knee to ankle. “Not centuries old. Millennia old?”

“And alive. That’s why he doesn’t smell like the rest of them.”

“And how he moves around during the day!”

I nodded. “He doesn’t die. He really sleeps.”

He covered his face with his hands and groaned. “That’s just . . . mind-blowing.”

“Johnny, do you see what the three of us are to each of our own respective kinds?”

“Oh, I see it.” His hands fell limp into what little of his lap wasn’t covered by my legs. “I see a binding between the three of us makes it all tidy, and this soul-sharing is the means to force us to work together as we have pieces of our very souls lodged in each other. I can never strike at him, and he can never strike at me.

“Menessos and I will be each side of the scales the Lustrata must balance. You’ll always be in the middle.” I couldn’t tell if he was just working it out audibly or if he was getting angry, so I stayed silent. “This isn’t just about today, either. I mean, sure, it’s about the needs we have right now. But this will project into the future. It keeps us from striking at each other. And what if the day comes when we need to? You said the old witch claimed the red fairy was mad. What if the vamp goes mad? We’d be stuck.”