MAGICK CRACKLED THROUGH every fiber of me, arcing along nerve endings, spitting from cell membrane to cell membrane. It filled me, all of me, swelling my insides shut and turning my bones to heavy, polished alabaster.
I pushed through it, fighting to clear my head.
My eyes were closed, and I forced them open. My magick-soaked vision painted Daniel in alien color. I could see through him, as if he’d been transformed into glass. His heart beat in slow, heavy thumps, a wounded animal trying to drag itself away. I could see the blood in his veins lurch with each throb.
He was dying in tiny ebbs and flows.
I can save him.
The sure knowledge became a stone in my mind, immovable, irresistible.
I began to draw energy to me. The room dimmed as I pulled, sinking low in the fabric of the world, making a depression where all the magick around me would pool and soak into me. I was a magnet, a sinkhole, a dwarf star.
The room darkened further.
Outside, a bird fell dead from the withering branch ’neath its tiny, clawed feet.
Multi-legged creatures lodged in the structure of the house stopped moving, a slaughter of microscopic lives.
It all fed into me, into my magick.
Inside me the magick roiled. I felt like a pot, overfull and on high heat. The mystical energy in my stomach simmered through my limbs. I had life. I had more life than I knew what to do with, and my head swam with the power.
I pushed the magick through my Mark.
It spooled out in a ribbon of pleasure that reached me deeper than just my arm. This was creation. I gave life, and it was glorious. I watched the energy pour from me into Daniel, filling him, making him whole in my eyes.
Making him real.
Making him mine.
Ecstasy rolled through the deepest part of me as our connection grew. Our skinsong sang across time and space. My mind was a lotus flower that opened to his, and I knew him. I could see his life laid like a tapestry before me, the texture of memory woven into who he was: a man of honor, still growing into his own skin but close, so close to the man he would be forever. He had no stain of guile, no taint of deception in him. My eyes followed a golden vein that ran from his heart, a crack of ore in a mountainside. As I watched, it widened, spilling energy into the magick I poured into him. The two mixed. The golden energy began to suffuse through my magick, running along the channel. It hunted, seeking the source of magick.
It found my Mark and slammed into me, and Daniel and I became one flesh.
I was overwhelmed. My essence and his slowly revolved around each other, a key turning until the tumblers in the lock set. I fell back, my hand sliding off the now-healed slick spot on his back. Daniel turned in one swift motion, fingers curling around my wrist, catching me before I crashed.
His eyes were bright, glittery, and a brilliant shade of sea-foam green. He gave me his boyish grin, the one that made his dimple so deep you could lose yourself in it. “Thank you … Mistress.”
Oh, damn.
Darkness swirled in the corner of the room, reality bending along curved lines. The Man in Black stepped through the gloom. He looked down at us for a long moment.
“What have you done?”