The Forbidden Read online

  Time to take care of business.

  She flipped her blades back into her boot sheaths. When they were safely tucked away, she returned to the window where she had first seen the blonde warlock.

  Silver raised her hands and projected gray tendrils of fog through the windowpane. The fog streaming from her fingers slowly crept along the floor, growing thicker and thicker, until it was swirling around all three Balorite warlocks like dark chains of mist.

  The fog caught the attention of one of the males. “What the—?” he said at the same time he dropped to his knees from the power of Silver’s magic.

  It was too late for the man. It was too late for all of them. With fierce concentration, Silver wrapped the fog around the three warlocks, forcing the other two to kneel. Their eyes became vacant, unseeing, as her power over them expanded.

  At the same time her anger grew, and she tightened the fog around the three, causing them to gasp, choke, and sputter. A sense of satisfaction flowed through Silver that shouldn’t have been there. She shouldn’t feel pleasure at causing any living creature pain.

  An icy feeling gripped Silver, quick and sudden, like cold fingers closing around her heart. Grabbing her, yanking her toward the dark. Her vision blurred and she clenched her teeth to maintain her control over the Balorites.

  A man—no, a warlock—appeared in her mind, blocking out everything around her. She no longer saw the Balorites, no longer saw the window, or anything else.

  Only the warlock.

  He was stunningly handsome, dark-haired with high cheekbones, a cleft in his chin, and a sensual look in his dark eyes. “Darkwolf,” someone whispered in her mind. “Darkwolf.” A face to a name she’d heard so many times but had never been able to scry.

  The Balorite high priest motioned to her, drawing on her gray magic, calling to her to join him. The call was sensuous, seductive.

  And powerful. So very, very powerful. She could feel the need for that power growing within her. Could feel herself sliding closer to it.

  Dark sorcery… So alluring. So masterful.

  The warlock’s mouth curved into a carnal smile and Silver shivered.

  Her gaze dropped from Darkwolf’s face to his chest. A black stone eye dangled from a chain around his neck, against his bare skin.

  Something about the eye vibrated to her. Called to her like Darkwolf had.

  Then it began glowing, a vicious horrible red.

  The eye looked directly at Silver, seeing straight through her, straight into her soul.

  Terror ripped through her and the real world crashed down. She reeled, barely maintaining control of her witchcraft. She yanked herself away from the call of the dark and almost collapsed onto the fire escape.

  Oh, goddess! What in the Ancestors’ names just happened?

  Her breathing came hard and heavy, her body weak with fatigue. It took all she had to maintain her hold on the warlocks with more force than was necessary, just long enough to project thoughts to the bastards—gray magic needed to get them to obey her.

  “You will not attempt to escape,” she ordered the warlocks with her magic. “You will tell the Paranormal Special Forces everything you know about the dead witches and the kidnapping. Everything.”

  The moment she finished her spell, the fog stopped flowing from Silver’s fingers. Her glamour failed. She collapsed onto the fire escape.

  She braced her back against the wall, her breathing heavy, her hands braced to either side of her on the metal grill. Knots twisted in her belly and perspiration coated her skin.

  The glowing eye. Goddess, the eye.

  She couldn’t get it out of her mind.

  Had something like this happened to Copper before she vanished?

  Lately, every time Silver used gray magic, the call to the dark had grown stronger and stronger. But this time she had seen Darkwolf. And it was the first time she’d felt herself slipping over the fine edge between white and black.

  How much longer could she fight it off?

  Jake reached her side before she knew it. “Dammit, Silver.” He squeezed her knee with his large hand, his gaze raking over her, taking in how exhausted she was. “You’ve overdone it again. You should let me handle things.”

  “Sure—shoot and ask questions later,” Silver said between breaths. “Just get them. We need to find out how to locate their stronghold. We need to stop all these murders.”

  We need to find Copper.

  The PSF captain spoke into the transmitter on his vest, and within seconds she heard the front door crash open and the shouts of officers as they trained their weapons on the warlocks and began searching the small apartment.

  The first time she’d led the PSF to a scene that hadn’t been cold.

  Thank the Ancestors they had saved that child. There would be no killing tonight, at least by those three warlocks.

  And that was the crux of it, really.

  Silver also helped the PSF because she was against killing of any kind. When things were going down on a paranormal crime scene, she wanted to make sure the suspects were under control. She didn’t want the perps to attack and force the PSF officers to fight back. She used gray magic to control those committing the crimes.

  Even if she did tweak it just a bit to make a few suffer— but only the ones who had hurt other people.

  Silver and Copper had learned gray magic from Mrs. Illes and an ancient Grimoire the elder witch had given them. The Grimoire had been handed down through time from gray witch to gray witch.

  Gray magic was anything that helped, but could risk disrupting the natural order and might cause indirect harm to a living creature or subvert a creature’s natural will. Gray witchcraft could call on minor energies or good to neutrally aligned beings outside the witch’s control—a definite no-no by D’Anu standards.

  The risk of using gray magic—if a witch’s own wishes, angers, wants, needs, or emotions flowed into it, it could become about personal gain and power instead of the general good. Touching gray, a witch could sense the immeasurable and powerful flow and pull of dark sorcery.

  Almost tap it. Just another inch.

  Silver’s belly clenched and she gripped the fire escape railing tighter. Gray magic could draw her so close to the dark. Just like when Darkwolf had called to her.

  After Jake climbed down the fire escape, she waited a few long moments for her strength to return. Her arms ached, her head throbbed, and she felt as if she were going to throw up. When it came to using gray magic, there was always a price to pay.

  But how high would that price climb?

  From the shadows across the street. Hawk watched the rest of the events unfold. The special unit managed to not attract attention from neighboring homes. He had to admire them. They were efficient, stealthy, and quick.

  For humans.

  Hawk ground his teeth at the thought of the little girl he’d held so briefly in his arms. If it had been his daughter, Shayla, he would have ripped apart the warlocks responsible. Humans and witches had softer ways of dealing with fiends.

  Unfortunately.

  Pushing aside his anger, he focused on the witch named Silver while she climbed down the fire escape. She was lithe and slender, her movements fluid and graceful. After the Great Guardian had sent him through the veil, Hawk had followed Silver from her residence to where she led the law enforcement officers to the girl and the warlocks.

  While he was watching, the intense urge to assist the witch and the child had come to him, and he’d been compelled to aid her. When Silver had drawn the daggers, she did it with such speed and agility that he had nearly been taken off guard, and his admiration for her had grown.

  The witch was beautiful. He remembered every detail—her silvery-blonde hair peeking from beneath her black cap, her delicate features, small nose, and her stormy gray eyes. Anger at the warlocks had emanated from her in waves. From where he watched it was easy to see the fury still raging within her.

  Her powerful gray magic, it h
ugged her like a lover. Gray magic that had sent Hawk to this very witch. The Great Guardian of the Elves had Seen that Silver was the one.

  When Silver reached the bottom of the fire escape, she swung off the edge and landed on her feet in a crouch, one hand on the ground. From beneath her jacket sleeve he saw a silver snake bracelet curled from her hand up her wrist, its eyes glowing in the night like amber flame. A silver pentagram flashed at the hollow of the witch’s slender throat, its amber center matching the snake’s eyes.

  He shuddered at the thought of snakes. He hated the slimy little bastards.

  Silver strode toward the house with the officer she had been working with, then vanished through the doorway and into the dark building.

  Impatiently Hawk waited for the witch to reappear as it drew closer and closer to the time he would have to return to Otherworld.

  Silver marched toward the decrepit house after she’d had a chance to recover from using her gray magic, and once she had shaken off the vision of Darkwolf and the eye—as best she could.

  She was determined to be in on the questioning of the warlocks. This was the first time they’d made it to a scene where no dead witches lay beside an inverted pentagram at a cold crime scene. Silver wondered what use her scrying was if she couldn’t reach the witches in time to help them.

  Jake strode a little ahead of her, his long legs eating up twice the distance and making her work to keep up with him. They had known each other for just over a year now, since the time they had met at the PSF headquarters.

  Once they had even come close to becoming lovers—but not that close. A couple of months after they had met, they had gone on two dates, and both had been disasters. Humorous in hindsight, but disasters nonetheless.

  Wooden stairs creaked beneath her boots as she moved smoothly up the stairs to the porch. She shook her head at the memory of the first date, when Jake took her for sushi and she’d had a violent allergic reaction to the whitefish. All those red spots—and his suit jacket never recovered from her, ah, ridding herself of the toxin.

  And then there was the second date, when Jake’s broken ankle, thirty hornet stings, and her black eye made it clear they were not meant for each other. She did tell him not to try to climb that trellis to get her a rose. He just wouldn’t believe her when she told him about the hornet’s nest.

  When they could laugh about it they decided it best they remain friends and work together to solve paranormal crimes throughout the city. She thought of the lug more as a big brother now, and he was as overprotective as one.

  Now, they walked up the stairs to the third story, this time the traditional way, through the front door.

  Silver glanced at Jake. “A man somehow got on the balcony with me. How did he get past you?”

  Jake halted on the wooden staircase and caught her by the arm. “What man?”

  She frowned at him. “The one who took the girl to one of your team members.”

  “No one got by me, Silver.” He shook his head and the lines at the corners of his mouth deepened as he returned her frown. “Jameson is the one who ended up with the girl. He thought McNulty handed him the child, but she doesn’t know anything about it.”

  “Well, damn.” Silver moved up the stairs, mulling over the strange man and his appearing/disappearing act. No, he wasn’t a man. He was definitely something other.

  But what?

  When they entered the room where the warlocks were being held, someone turned on the lights, making it so bright Silver had to blink to regain her vision. As soon as her eyes adjusted, she narrowed her gaze at the warlocks and had the intense desire to tighten the fog binding them.

  Their wrists were cuffed and each kneeled placidly on the carpeted floor near the pentagram. They were incapable of harm right now. Silver shouldn’t want to hurt them, but she had the strong desire regardless.

  PSF officers had high-powered rifles trained on each of her captives. The room was silent save for the sounds of cloth brushing cloth as the officers shifted to make room for Jake and Silver. Each officer was dressed like a SWAT team member, only no identification marked their clothing. The highly secretive PSF left no clues behind.

  Remnants of the gray fog still swirled around the warlocks. For a second, Silver’s vision of the handsome warlock and the red eye flashed before her and air felt trapped in her lungs. With a shudder, she shook off the images and tried to breathe.

  She raised her chin and strode toward the Balorites, her booted heels thumping on the thinly carpeted floor.

  “Why did you kidnap the girl?” Silver said to the blonde woman, who looked almost angelic. The warlock had smooth, unblemished skin and clear green eyes that looked so innocent.

  A slight smile flickered across her face. “We needed her blood for the ceremony,” the warlock said calmly in her trance-induced state, as if it were nothing to sacrifice a child.

  The mere thought sent flames throughout Silver’s body. She clenched her fists. “Why?”

  “Darkwolf was supposed to bring new initiates.” The woman stared vacantly ahead. “We need blood for the conversion.”

  At the sound of Darkwolf’s name, Silver felt as if she’d been slapped.

  Her vision.

  The eye.

  She blinked, shoving the images away, and focused on the woman. “Why are witches and warlocks turning up dead?”

  The Balorite female gave a slight shrug with one slender shoulder. “If their magic isn’t strong enough during the conversion ceremony, they die.”

  “Only the strongest witches,” one of the male warlocks added as he cut his blue gaze to Silver, “can be turned to serve Balor.”

  * * *

  With one hand clasping the pentagram at her throat for comfort, Silver jogged down the wooden steps inside the boardinghouse beside Jake.

  By the time they’d finished grilling the warlocks for information, what little they had learned was that Darkwolf had been performing the ceremonies in different places throughout the city to avoid being caught. He had an agenda, but the warlocks couldn’t tell her exactly what that was.

  All they knew was that the powerful high priest was searching for practicing witches and warlocks with strong powers. In addition to the others in his Clan, he’d only found one or two more who hadn’t died, while at least a dozen others had passed away during the conversion ceremony. Those who resisted were most at risk of dying.

  None of the dead witches were D’Anu. When Silver asked if the warlocks knew anything about a witch named Copper, each had stated she or he had never heard the name.

  Until tonight, Silver had believed that Darkwolf was unaware of the descendants of the Ancient Druids, the most powerful of witches in the world. Yet, after her experience on the fire escape, Silver had a feeling Darkwolf now knew who she was, and that thought alone caused the hair to rise along her arms.

  They had also learned from the captured warlocks that there was a Balorite Clan meeting hall. However, only a few key warlocks knew where it was located, and those clan members led the lesser warlock initiates in cars and to the hall blindfolded. Unfortunately, the three they had captured this night were among the lesser warlocks.

  Silver’s and Jake’s boots thumped on the wooden porch and she turned to him when they stopped. “I’ll see you tomorrow night. We’re going to find these bastards.”

  Jake’s look pierced her, as if he could see how upset she was. “Are you all right? This one shook you up a bit more than usual.”

  She brushed him off with a little wave. “I’m fine.”

  “Let me walk you to your car.” His mouth tightened into a grim line. “What about the man you saw on the fire escape?”

  “You know I can take care of myself.” Silver really hated when men went chauvinistic on her. “I’ll pull a glamour,” she said, even though she knew the being who’d rescued the girl had seen straight through her last one.

  Jake paused, then gave a single nod. “Tomorrow night.”

  She di
dn’t bother to answer. Her mind still churned over what had happened, and her emotions were too raw. She hurried down the porch steps and strode away.

  At the same time, she drew her hand down in the air in front of her, effectively vanishing from his sight and anyone else’s. She pulled off her black cap and let her long silver-blonde hair tumble around her shoulders to the middle of her back and stuffed the cap into her jacket pocket.

  Silver shivered. Despite the glamour, she felt as if she was being watched. Perhaps by the being who rescued the girl?

  Shaking off the feeling, she walked around the corner, away from everything that was happening and into the darkness.

  This time the night didn’t feel like a friend. It raked at her like demon claws and she shuddered. The hair on her nape prickled and Silver almost stopped mid-stride.

  Blood rushing through her veins a little faster, she reached the alleyway, bent and flipped her stilettos out of her boots. The knives gleamed in the pale glow of a nearby streetlight.

  Someone grabbed her arms from behind, so fast it had to be something inhuman.

  Her heart slammed in her chest. Her skin went cold.

  Why hadn’t she seen him? Before she could blink the person—the being—had pinned her wrists at her back, holding them fast in one hand. Her daggers slipped from her fingers and clattered to the ground.

  A large palm clamped over her mouth before she could scream.

  The masculine scent immediately invaded Silver’s senses, along with the smell of leather. Terror ripped through her like scissors cutting her flesh. With her wrists bound she had no power. Not even an incantation or a mind spell would work without the use of her hands.

  She kicked backward with one boot and connected with something solid. For a second she was gratified when she heard a male grunt of pain. The next thing she knew, she was being dragged into the dark alleyway, deeper and deeper.

  Anger pushed away fear. Adrenaline rushed through her, replacing the exhaustion she suffered after using gray magic. But she still couldn’t hold on to her glamour and it slipped away. She kicked and struggled and wished her hands were free so that she could blast the bastard with a ball of spellfire.