Page 35 of Demon Loved (The Witches of Mingus Mountain #5)

“The Council sends its greetings,” the figure said. Its voice sounded human enough, but it still echoed off the alley walls with a strange sort of distortion, like it was being put through some sort of filter.

And it raised one hand. Resting in the stranger’s palm was a dark orb that glowed with odd colors that moved across its spherical surface, almost like animated oil slicks. Even from where she stood, Bree could feel the wrongness of the thing.

Immediately, Bill positioned himself so that his body blocked her from the device. “A dimensional anchor! Stand back, Brianna!”

A dimensional what? Some kind of magical device, she supposed, but how in the world would Bill Garrett even know about such a thing?

Her lips parted so she could ask the question, but before she could form a single syllable, a beam of oily, purple-black light shot out of the orb, aimed directly at Bill.

Except… was that Bill?

His form flickered, became something monstrous and huge, eight feet tall or more, with heavy black hair hanging down his back and coppery skin. Then he was Bill again, his face tight with strain.

Her mind tried to grasp what it had just seen, but she knew she had bigger problems to worry about right then. The energy that had shot out of the orb had wrapped itself around his wrists and ankles, binding him in place.

“You can explain yourself to my master,” the robed figure said, and the energy chains seemed to tighten and then pull him inexorably forward.

Once again, Bill’s form shifted, becoming that huge demonic creature. Its muscles strained as it tried to free itself from its bonds, but all its struggles didn’t appear to make any difference.

Not “it,” Brianna told herself. Bill. That thing…it’s him.

She didn’t know how or why, but she knew she’d have to worry about that later.

Right now, she had much bigger problems to deal with.

Whatever was going on with Bill, she knew she had to prevent that person in the hooded robe from doing whatever he or she was trying to accomplish. They could sort the rest of this out later.

“Stop it!” she cried out, and rushed toward Bill.

But…she passed right through him — or whoever he was…and realized his attacker had almost succeeded in tearing him from this plane of existence.

Her heartbeat was now a panicky drumbeat, all her nerve endings surging with adrenaline. She still didn’t know what the hell was going on, but she knew one thing.

If she didn’t act fast, Bill would be ripped from this planet and sent the Goddess knew where.

The world felt as if it was collapsing around her.

All she could see was the man she loved, his familiar face and form shifting back and forth between the person she knew and that improbably huge figure, all gleaming copper skin and night-black hair and eyes, a being whose head towered above her by at least two feet, maybe more.

Time slowed. There was Bill caught in his attacker’s energy field, but she realized there was so much more to the moment than that — the slow, steady pulse of the earth beneath her feet, the far more delicate energies of the stars wheeling overhead, the ancient wisdom of the night wind that played with the ends of her loose hair.

All these combined were so much more than the unstable, distorted power of the orb whose energy chains were trying their best to drag Bill away from this world.

Well, that wasn’t going to happen.

Her magic, which had always felt scattered and sparse to her, spread out over too many individual talents, surged within her.

Somehow knowing without knowing, she understood that her own powers and the energy of the earth beneath her feet — yes, and the energy of those terrible purple-black beams that were trying to pull Bill somewhere else, somewhere other — were all just a group of disparate frequencies.

Not exactly music, not quite, but she still guessed she would be able to control those frequencies, just as her fingers knew which chords to play while she strummed on her guitar or which harmonies to choose when she was working out the notes of a new song.

She lifted her hands, and the energies she’d sensed just a moment before now wrapped around them, making her feel as if she was playing an utterly new instrument, one without a corporeal form but which still could create its own unique harmonies.

Harmonies that would utterly destroy the evil magic pulsing from the oil-slick orb their attacker held.

At the same time, she found herself humming, and the sound that emerged from her throat somehow combined with the notes emanating from her fingertips, creating a song with its own power.

“What are you doing?” their attacker gasped, but she paid him no mind.

No, she needed to keep on with what she was doing…even if her conscious mind couldn’t quite comprehend how she was able to manage such a thing.

Blue-white light now drifted from her fingertips and moved toward Bill. When it touched the dark energy chains that held him in place, those bonds shuddered and then disappeared.

And as each chain was destroyed, he became more and more solid, as though whatever had been trying to drag him away from this dimension was losing more and more power.

The light emanating from her fingers grew even more solid, rippling across the dark little alley like the dancing currents in Oak Creek. One of those waves struck their attacker, who took several steps backward, his breath coming in heaving gasps.

“How are you doing this?” he demanded, voice cracking.

Brianna didn’t know. This was all coming from some subconscious force within her, something she couldn’t have even begun to understand.

The only thing she knew was that it seemed to be working.

With a sharp sound that made her think of ice breaking during a spring thaw, the orb in their assailant’s hand began to crack, dark energy seeping out like purple pus.

Sensing its weakness, she brought her hands together in a single abrupt clap, and at once the orb shattered into a thousand pieces. Bill sank to his knees, fully himself again.

“The Council will hear of this!” their attacker spat, and then dissolved into darkness.

Brianna gasped, even as the energy she’d summoned seemed to flow out and away from her, like waves receding from a shore right before a tsunami swept in. Her knees buckled, and she found herself falling.

But there was Bill, catching her in his strong arms before she collapsed to the pavement. He steadied her, holding her up, until he seemed to realize she could stand on her own. Then he let go and took a step backward.

During all of this, he’d looked exactly the way he had when she first met him. Those brief glimpses she’d caught during his struggle with their assailant told her that he was far more than what he pretended to be, however.

They could discuss that later. For now….

“What…what just happened?” she stammered as she stared down at her hands in confusion. They looked the same as they ever had, lightly tanned and with the nails cut short so they wouldn’t get in the way of her guitar or piano playing.

But she’d seen the blue light that had flowed out from them…had seen how that laser-clear light had somehow broken the dark chains that bound Bill in place.

Just what the hell was going on?

“That’s your true gift,” Belshegar told her, his voice hushed, almost awestruck. “You’re a harmonic — you can balance energies across dimensions.”

She’d never heard of such a thing, although she understood there were plenty of magical talents out there that she had no real experience with, just because they hadn’t occurred in any of the Arizona witch clans.

But she’d seen with her own eyes what her magic — her supposedly wimpy, unfocused magic — had just done.

It had cut through those magical chains as if they didn’t exist, had shattered the magical orb their attacker had held as if it had been as fragile as spun glass.

Not exactly the actions of someone with magic that everyone around her had thought was far weaker than average.

As best she could, she gathered her thoughts, straining to analyze and absorb everything that had just happened. Bill stood nearby, expression concerned and wary at the same time, as if he was just waiting for her to ask why his appearance had kept slipping.

Oh, she would ask…just not right now.

“Is that why my magic always felt…scattered?” she asked, trying to sort her racing thoughts into something halfway coherent. “Because it wasn’t one kind of magic, but sort of everything all at once?”

Bill nodded, now looking relieved. Clearly, he understood she wasn’t going to press him about the way his appearance had kept shifting during the encounter.

Well, not yet, anyway.

“You don’t create energy or destroy it,” he told her. “You harmonize it. And that, Brianna, is a gift much rarer and more powerful than you can imagine.”

She looked down at her hands again. They appeared completely normal, but she knew better.

“We should get you inside,” he went on, his gaze roving across the dark alley where they stood. “I don’t sense any other hostile intentions nearby, but I still think it’s better if we don’t stay out here.”

A point she heartily agreed with. The unnatural cold had disappeared along with their assailant, and as far as she could tell, everything had gone back to normal. Still, she knew she would much rather be inside her apartment.

Could these strange gifts that had just surfaced help her ward the place? Brianna didn’t know for sure, but she figured it couldn’t hurt to try.

They began walking down Main Street to her apartment.

The only real signs of life on the street were the sounds of voices and music drifting out from the Spirit Room and Paul and Jerry’s Saloon just a block away, but she still found herself heartened by them.

They told her she and Bill weren’t the only living beings in town, even though she couldn’t detect any sign that anyone had even noticed the altercation that had taken place just a few minutes earlier.

Thank the Goddess that she always left a light on inside the apartment. Right then, she didn’t think she could have handled walking into an entirely dark space. Her imagination would have conjured all sorts of attackers, even though she knew the place was empty.

All the same, she flicked on more lights as soon as she was inside, doing her best to send all the shadows fleeing. Bill came in and waited as she shut the door, his expression diffident, as though he knew the inquisition was about to start at any moment.

Once she was sure the door was safely locked behind them — for whatever reason, she feared the person in the hooded robe who’d attacked them far more than she did the person…creature…whatever…who faced her now — she turned toward him and set her hands on her hips.

“Okay, are you going to tell me just what the hell is going on?”