The Horned Mage

Book 1

Broken Curse

By Liam Lawson

Copyright © 2020 by Liam Lawson. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

A Note From the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

A Note From the Author

This is not the first publishing of The Horned Mage. Caleb and the gang were among my earliest forays into writing urban fantasy with a decidedly adult bend, then under a different penname. For personal reasons, the originals were taken down and I moved on to writing other things, such as An Orc at College, which was heavily influenced by The Horned Mage. I debated long and hard about re-releasing The Horned Mage, concerned that it might be too similar to An Orc at College, however, several things acting in concert changed my mind. I’ve come to feel that the voice I use to tell Caleb’s story is distinct enough, and his world different enough (though still similar) from Trorm Coldstorm’s to stand on its own. If you read the original release, you may note some changes. I’ve given the series another edit and am pleased to share it with you once again.

Please enjoy…

Chapter One

I was frozen in place. Not literally, thank my dear and fluffy Lord, because I was pretty sure that Professor Cristobal Hardin was fully capable of enveloping my entire body in a block of ice. Not that it made much difference now, with every eye in the class turned upon me. I’d never really gotten used to people looking at me, although given that I sported a pair of black, six pronged antlers, I really should have. When people stare at me, I have to resist the urge to flinch and drop my eyes.

The reason for their attention on me now though had nothing to do with my antlers but rather, the question the professor had just asked me and which I had totally and completely missed because I’d been staring at my best friend, Soraya Cabal, and imagining us making vigorous animal love. The location hadn’t mattered too much to my imagination—that had instead been focused on thinking about what her curvy body looked like beneath the usual jeans and hoodies she wore. Thank God she had no idea how bad I had it for her or our friendship would be completely ruined.

Of course, her dark and intelligent eyes were also fixed on me, filled with a curious, and maybe a little mischievous, light. She was enjoying my predicament. Wicked woman. What the hell had Professor Hardin just asked me? Her smirk gave me no clue.

“Mr. Marshal,” Prof. Hardin’s said. “We’re waiting.”

I was supposedly lucky to have gotten into Hardin’s class. Normally he only taught magical theory at the upper levels and his classes always filled up fast. I’d barely squeezed in at the last minute, much to Soraya’s delight.

I was about to admit defeat and admit that I didn’t know—because it was either that or crack a witty joke and I was fresh out of those, when Soraya tapped a single word on her heavily scribbled on, and more heavily doodled, notebook.

“Uh, affinities?” My voice lilted a bit at the end making my answer a question.

“Correct,” Prof. Hardin agreed. “Magic is difficult to use at even the best of times, but with an affinity for a particular area, such as Mr. Marshal’s affinity for friends who are better at paying attention than he is, one can manage spellwork under less favorable circumstances. Sometimes even with relative ease within the breadth of their affinities.”

I sighed as he went on and slumped into my seat. A lot of this stuff I already knew—everyone did. Working with magic was hands down one of the hardest things anyone anywhere could do and unless you had an affinity for a particular area, or rarely areas, casting spells meant working your ass off. All that stuff I knew and understood completely. It was all the theoretical crap the Prof. got into about why affinities worked the way they did or didn’t that threw me off. It seemed like every dead white guy out there had something to say on the subject and keeping them all straight was a pain in the ass.

It also didn’t matter a whole lot to me. I was majoring in magical theory for two reasons. One, my freaking antlers. They’re part of a curse put on me that cut me off from any affinity I might have for magic. So long as the curse was on me, I was stuck with a pair of antlers and a complete inability to cast even the most basic spells unless I was willing to dedicate countless hours to study and practice. I had a lot of magical potential stored up inside of me, but with no affinities, I had no easy means of actually putting it to use. Which I’d thought was what Magical Theory was supposed to be about.

Two, my freaking antlers again. See that curse also got me a full ride scholarship to Forester University. Not exactly prestigious and in the middle of freaking nowhere, but hey, anything to get away from my adopted family and on out my own. It seemed kind of like a joke to me that the school would pay so much money to teach someone cursed to have no affinities for magic to be a mage, but I wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. This was only my second semester at Forester, but I’d already learned the first rule of academia: if it makes sense, it’s wrong.

Okay, maybe there’s still another reason for picking this area of study. I had hoped, maybe hoped a little too much, that by learning the fundamentals of magical theory, I’d be able to devise a spell that would lift my curse. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I dreamed about one day ripping away the curse and discovering a plethora of magical affinities beneath it, like flipping a switch and becoming a superhero mage. At best I probably had one or two affinities and probably for something silly like butterfly magic. If that was the case though—I’d take it. I wanted—no, needed—to know what I was capable of beneath the curse.

Hardin went on for a while longer before releasing everyone. He also mentioned something about a paper being due next week, but Soraya would have written it down, so I’d ask her what the assignment was later. Probably at the last minute because I’d forget about it.

I was halfway to the door when Prof. Hardin called my name again and this time beckoned me over to him. I exchanged glances with Soraya. She shrugged and we agreed to meet up in a bit at our usual lunch spot.

A few moments later it was just myself, Prof. Hardin, and his TA, Lilian She. She was a cute, leggy Chinese girl with a pair of no-nonsense glasses and a professional dress that failed to hide her tight yet supple physique. Soraya had told me that Lilian was the lucky one who got to grade all our regular papers.

I had to pull my eyes away from her to focus on the much less interesting, but no less intimidating, Prof. Hardin. He was lean, with dirty blonde hair, glasses, and dressed like you’d expect a college professor to dress, only a little more stylish. He somehow made his classically academic attire look like a fashion statement.

“Sir?” I asked when I drew up to him.

“It’s Caleb, isn’t it?” The Professor asked, looking at something on his tablet. “Caleb Marshal?”

I swallowed. Shit, was I in trouble? “Yes.”

“You emailed me about your curse at the beginning of the semester?”

I thought that it still was the beginning of the semester, though now that I thought about it I guess we were a few weeks in. Dang, it was going fast. “Yes, sir.”

“It’s a remarkable bit of spellwork that’s clinging to you,” he said looking up from what I realized was some sort of diagram. “No amateur put this on you. Does your family have any history with the fae, or perhaps you had a grandparent who offended a dragon?”

A dragon? He thought that a dragon had laid this curse on me? Shit, I was never going to break it. “Not that I know of. I bounced around foster homes as a little kid and then was adopted. I’ve had these,” I tapped my antlers, “for as long as anyone can remember.”

“Remarkable,” he said. “I would very much like to make a case study of your curse, if you don’t mind.”

A what?

My confusion must have shown on my face because he continued. “I want to study your curse and make a theory about how it works.”

That didn’t sound so bad. It also didn’t sound like he was interested in breaking it. “I’d rather just get rid of it.”

“Well after I write my paper on it, I’d be more than happy to test my theories.”

I grimaced. “That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“I’d also be willing to give you extra credit in my class for your participation,” he went on. “Given that without any affinities of your own the practical exams are going to be particularly challenging for you.”

Wait. “You mean, I won’t be able to pass your class unless I let you study my curse?”

He shrugged. “Not necessarily, but I would think that today’s lesson would have made you more keenly aware—without affinities, magic is very difficult to work with.”

“But you think you can break my curse.” I said. “If you did that, then I’d be able to know what my affinities are. I’d be able to give your course a fair try, like the other students.”

“Caleb,” he said, slowly. “Do you understand how rare a curse as complex as yours is? It’s a real work of craftsmanship. It was either crafted by a very skilled mage or a nonhuman entity altogether. Either way, there is much to be learned by studying it.”

“I don’t mean to be stubborn here, but I’d rather just get rid of the thing. I mean, great for studying it and all, but knowing about it’s not really going to help me, is it?”

“Not yet,” he admitted. “But think long term. What about graduate school?”

Okay, I liked college, but I really wasn’t into all this theoretical crap. And where the hell was I supposed to find money for graduate school? I was barely skating by on my scholarship. If Prof. Hardin got his way it was sounding like I’d be stuck with my curse for years to come and work was hard to come by for a guy with antlers. Sure, employers aren’t supposed to discriminate but you know what, they sure as hell do. Especially in a small town like Woodhurst, Texas.

“Not really interested in it,” I admitted. “Mostly I just want to break my curse.”

He pursed his lips.

“Give it some thought,” he said after a minute. “And get back to me.”

He strode from the room, and Lilian followed after him, pausing to hold the door open for me. She gave me a sympathetic look before we parted and went our separate ways.

Chapter Two

Happy Burger was the best restaurant in Woodhurst. Admittedly this wasn’t saying much when one considered the town’s diminutive population, but hey, the burgers were good. Their mascot though, was absolutely terrifying. They probably would have gotten more business without the damn thing scaring away half of their customers. Someone had tried to make a cheeseburger into a smiley face and ended up creating something that belonged in a cautionary cartoon about child predators.

Soraya had introduced me to the place when I’d first arrived in town. She was a local girl and knew all the best places to get food or entertainment. Meeting her had probably been the luckiest thing that had ever happened to me. And that was why, despite her serious hotness, I couldn’t bring myself to make a pass at her.

Soraya wore baggy jeans and a big old hoodie and her hair hung in a glossy curtain of waves down to her midback. She was golden skinned, average height, and above average curvature with heavy breasts, pronounced hips and butt, with a tiny waist—most of which was completely hidden beneath her baggy clothing, which was almost enough to make her look heavy. Almost. If I hadn’t seen her without her hoodie on a few memorable occasions, I might never have known the glorious figure she was hiding beneath those layers. She didn’t get up from our usual table when I walked in but smiled at me, dark eyes twinkling. Damn I had it so bad.

“What did Prof. Hard-on want?” she asked when I sat down at our table. “Anything about your curse?”

I brought her up to speed, pausing only to order a triple stack burger when the waitress interrupted.

“That dick,” she said when I was finished. “What are you going to do?”

“What else can I do? Let him study me, I guess.” It wasn’t like there were a whole lot of alternatives here. Deny him and fail the course. Accept the extra credit and maybe one day he’d break it for me and get his name in some journal that nobody but other professors would read.

“Anyway, what are you up to this evening? Anything fun?”

She grinned. “The planetary alignment is just right for me to try summoning a summer sprite.”

“It’s February.”

“Shut up, I know that.”

“Then shouldn’t you be trying for one in, I don’t know, summer?”

“I don’t want to wait until summer to try this when I’ve got a good opportunity right here and now.” She sat up straighter in her seat. “This time tomorrow I’ll have my first familiar. Or at least my first contract.”

Soraya’s father had been a powerful bruja, a Latin American form of mage. I say had been because we were pretty sure he as dead. He’d skipped town years ago to try and make it big, and then stopped calling home. I had no idea how Soraya felt about him, but considering she was majoring in thaumaturgical contracts—the specialization of binding magical agreements between magical creatures and magical practitioners—it seemed to me that she was following, if not exactly in his footsteps, then at least the same general path. I had no doubt that Soraya would become an accomplished and respected warlock in the next few years.

“Cool,” I said. “Want me there?”

She offered me an apologetic smile. “Yeah, but you can’t. It’s got to just be me, or the spell won’t work.”

My phone chimed with a text message. It was from an unknown number and said simply: check your email.

“Huh, that’s weird.” I said, holding it up for Soraya to see before following the instructions. Checking email on my phone was not my favorite but it was quicker than waiting to get home. Compared to my fellow students, I was a technological idiot.

Several emails had piled up in my inbox but the one at the top was from Lilian, Prof. Hardin’s assistant, and it had one hell of a big attachment. No way was I opening that on my phone. I read through the email, got about halfway through, and then had to reread it. It wasn’t that it was long, it just warranted a rereading.

“What is it?” Soraya asked, leaning forward across the table.

I looked up and into her eyes, which brought me back to reality. That and the way her hoodie stretched across her hefty breasts. God, I bet they were just as gorgeous as her face.

She blushed and brushed a wavy lock back behind her ear and I realized that I was staring. “Uh, here.”

I handed the phone over and she read through it. Then she did a double take and stared back at me.

“Lilian sent you Prof. Hardin’s research on your curse,” she said, then looked back at the phone. “I mean, not just his research, but his theorized spell—oh my God, Caleb! This is awesome!”

I could only nod. Apparently, Lilian hadn’t thought that Prof. Hardin had the right to keep it from me. And he had been keeping it from me. Just from what I’d sent him he’d already worked out a possible way to break the curse and he’d wanted me to go on living with it, struggling to cast even the most basic spells, just so that he could keep studying it.

“That bastard already knew how to fix me,” I muttered.

“Yeah but Lilian officially rocks,” Soraya said. “This looks like it’s going to be a major spell to cast. You’ll definitely want some help.”

I nodded eagerly. Soraya was still learning her magical affinities but there was no doubt which of us was the better spellcaster. Even if I hadn’t been cursed there was no way I’d be able to keep up with her. Soraya’s mind simply soaked up spells and magical instructions like a sponge.

“This is going to be an awesome night!” Soraya exclaimed.

“Hell yeah it will, whose ready to party?” asked a new voice and Soraya’s stepsister, Scarlett, stepped around me to stand at the edge of our table. “Who’s bringing the beer?”

Whereas Soraya was dark, curvy, Scarlett put me in mind of a cheetah. She was Latina too, but with a lighter complexion and a smattering of freckles across her small, feline face. Her frame was lean and athletic—if she hadn’t dropped out of high school this year, she might have managed a track scholarship to Forester. Her clothing was about as opposite from Soraya’s as could be and still be called clothes, all tight and short and strategically ripped. The only thing classy about her borderline sluttish attire was the elegant silver necklace that hung down between her modest breasts.

Soraya had once explained to me that it was a family heirloom, or at least, an heirloom from Scarlett’s family. It had belonged to Scarlett great grandmother and been passed down the family line all the way to the wild child standing next to me.

“Go away, Scarlett,” Soraya said, handing me back my phone.

Scarlett ignored her and slid into the booth beside her stepsister, pressing in close. She lowered her gaze and batted her eyes at me. “Hey, Caleb. How are you?”

I shrugged. “Alright I guess.”

She grinned and bit her lip. “That’s good. You guys got big plans tonight, huh? Where’s the party going down?”

“Life is about more than parties, Scarlett,” Soraya said through clenched teeth.

Seriously I could feel all kinds of sisterly love going on between these two. Not.

Scarlett smirked at Soraya. “Sure, but you’re seriously going to tell me that as a college girl you don’t got an in to the best parties in town?”

Truth was that Soraya probably did know where the best parties were, but she’d never really been interested in that scene. At eighteen and a high school dropout, Scarlett just wasn’t quite in enough with the college crowd to get into the parties hosted by students or fraternities. Not that the locals didn’t know how to party, but Woodhurst was a small town with a far from thriving economy. Short version: college students did bigger, wilder parties.

Soraya rolled her eyes. “Even if I did, I wouldn’t be telling you about them.”

“Why not?”

Soraya slammed a hand on the table. “Because you should be in school! Not running around with Bullet and Dipshit—

“Dicario,” Scarlett interrupted.

“—and getting involved with their fucking meth-ring. You’re better than that.”

Woodhurst’s underground was small but, at least how I understood it, tight knit and had two primary vices: booze and meth. I knew Scarlett drank, I mean who didn’t at her age, though I sincerely hoped she didn’t do meth too.

“Whatever.” Scarlett stood up, tucking her hands into her barely-there pockets. “I’m not turning my back on my friends. They need me. But you go on trying to be your papi—soon as you get your degree you can walk out on us too.”

“Scarlett!” Soraya called, but she was already across the restaurant and heading out the door.

Soraya settled back into her booth and ate her burger, not looking at me. This wasn’t any of my business and we both knew it. I’d just seen something that I definitely wasn’t supposed to see, and her embarrassment was more than evident. Shit.

“So,” she said. “We’ll work on breaking your curse tonight then?”

I shook my head. “After how excited you were about getting your pet fairy—”

She jabbed a fry at me. “Do not call them fairies!”

I laughed. “Alright, summoning and contracting your familiar, I think I can wait a day.”

I’d been living with my curse for all my life. What was a few more hours? I could wait. Probably.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yeah, I mean this planetary thing is kind of rare right?”

She nodded. “Relatively. I’d have to wait until summer to try again.”

“There you go.” And as a bonus, her being home might offer her a chance to patch things up with Scarlett.

Her stepsister was absolutely wild, but I knew that Soraya cared deeply for her. Scarlett’s dropping out of high school had been a painful blow that had really damaged their relationship. In Soraya’s mind, an education was the only way either of them were ever going to do better than what they had now and Scarlett giving up was little short of betrayal. Not that their family was terribly hard up for money, it was just that when her father disappeared so did his income and a single woman with two teenaged daughters, one of which was going into college, did not have a lot of income to spare.

“Take the night, do your summoning thing, and we’ll give Hardin’s spell a shot tomorrow or something. Deal?”

Soraya smiled at me. That smile that only I ever got to see. “Deal.”

Chapter Three

It turned out I really couldn’t wait.

I lived in a run-down two-story house a little over a block away from the university with three roommates, each crazier than the last. Sure, the water smelled funny and half the windows were covered in cardboard to replace the panes shattered by the countless tenants who had stayed there before me, but the rent was cheap and cheap was good. Jobs weren’t exactly forthcoming, and my scholarship only took me so far. Besides, it was right next to the school and that counted for a lot.

The first thing I did when I got home was seclude myself in my room and boot up my laptop to peruse the attachment on Lilian’s email. Cutting through all of the discussion portions I was eventually able to break it down into a relatively simple, if not exactly easy to follow, set of instructions. The spell would require several fairly pricy items, way more set up time than I was comfortable with, and undisturbed concentration. I was short on funds but might—might—be able to pull off the first part, but there was no way I was going to be able to get quiet time to focus and set up in this place, not with walls so thin I could hear the videogames being played all the way down in the living room.

But the more I read the more I realized that the spell was actually doable. Hardin tried to make it sound like it was fifty kinds of complicated but the truth was that all I needed was the spell ingredients, a shit ton of time and focus, and a reasonable understanding of how to tap into my personal magical abilities. Without any affinities this was actually something I was fairly good at. I couldn’t do a whole lot with my magic, but tapping it was something I’d been doing for as long as I could remember.

For me, tapping my magic always felt like sticking my tongue into the gap left by a freshly missing tooth. Weird and habitual. Only, unlike with a tooth, that weird feeling never really went away. I was forever aware that something was missing inside of me.

What sealed the deal though was when it turned out that there really was a party tonight and all my roommates were going. I was never going to get another chance like this. Sure, I’d told Soraya I could wait, but that was before I knew that I was going to have this opportunity. The stars might be aligned for her ritual but that would come again and all of my nutso roomies being out of the house at once so was not. I had to jump on this.

I shot her a text message: Hey, can’t wait! It’s going down at my place tonight. You gonna be there?

I ran some errands gathering the ingredients for the spell and just about wiped out my monthly allotment of funds (I’d be living off of ramen for a while) before she texted back: Hell yeah!

That was good. I was worried about raining all over her fairy parade. My heart actually lifted a little in my chest and I walked proudly back into the house laden with ingredients. She cared enough about breaking my curse to put off her familiar summoning. That was a pretty big deal.

Grinning like an idiot, I went about setting things up in my room, pushing all of my furniture and dirty laundry to the walls and sprinkling a circle of powdered gecko bone, crushed chrysanthemums, and essence of lightning several feet across onto the floor. I didn’t understand how most of these ingredients worked, but that was the difference between a theorist and a practitioner—I didn’t actually have to understand them in order to use them any more than I needed to know how a combustion engine worked to drive a car.  Good to know, certainly, but not, strictly speaking, necessary.

Or at least I hoped that was the case. Essence of lightning wasn’t cheap.

Nor were the four-leaf clovers dipped in mercury and the amethyst geode I had to position opposite each other on either side of the circle. I was basically setting up an electrical circuit, only with the circle acting as the conduit and these two items were supposed to act as the power with me situated between them. The circle would not only transfer this power into me and my curse, it would enact my will, thereby telling the power what to do. According to Hardin it had something to do with thaumaturgical polarity.

What the fuck ever—I just wanted it to break my curse!

My roomies were out by the time I was halfway done, and I was able to begin tapping my personal magic, charging the circle and conduits as I set them up. I briefly began to wonder where Soraya was but dismissed the thought. I really couldn’t afford to worry about where she was right now—she could have changed her mind, ended up having a deep heart-to-heart with Scarlett, or needed to run some kind of errand—and I needed to keep my mind on the task at hand or it wouldn’t work.

I situated myself in the center of the circle and tapped my personal magic harder than I had ever tapped it before. I had printed out a sheet filled with the incantation I was to recite and had it taped down to the floor in front of where I was sitting. Mostly it was a jumble of vowels and awkwardly placed consonants. I figured if I recited it often enough, I’d eventually get it right.

Eventually was not soon in coming.

I felt my magic being pulled out of me to flood the circle as I recited the words, felt it flood the room and engulf me—and then go nowhere. I resisted the urge to scowl and redoubled my efforts, chanting, focusing on breaking my curse, on getting rid of it and finally being a real mage. I was about to learn what my real potential was.

The magic built and built and so did my frustration. Sweat poured from my forehead and down my spine, soaking my shirt. I could feel my face growing hot and the magic in the circle begin to roil, as if it could sense my anger and was responding to it. That probably wasn’t a good thing. It didn’t matter. I finally had the means to be free of this curse and dammit, I was going to break it!

I pushed on, feeling my mouth go dry and my legs cramp up. My body felt like a coiled spring—though whether one that was ready to be sprung or one that had been left taught too long and could no longer retake its true form, I could not tell. It began to feel as if the magic was pressing against me, like there was simply too much of it filling the bedroom to allow for both me and it to occupy the same space.

As this happened, I finally began to run out of magic. I didn’t realize that it was happening at first because I’d never come close to doing it before. I had plenty of magic to use, but I’d almost never been able to make full use of it. Simply put, I’d never before been able to cast a spell that could use this much magic—I struggled far too often with the smaller spells to ever attempt a larger one. Until now.

But I knew what would happen if I did run out of magic. Best case scenario, I’d be in a coma for a week. More likely I would die or burn myself out completely and never be able to cast a spell again. That thought interrupted my chanting and I paused for a moment, catching my breath. That was a mistake because as soon as I did that, I realized how sore I was. The exhaustion hit me almost right after.

A voice in the back of my head told me that I could give up now. That no one would blame me or even know. I could always try again later or get someone else to help me.

I grit my teeth and told that voice to fuck off. I was doing this. Me. Nobody else. I was going to break my curse, or I was going to burn myself out trying. What the hell was the point of having a bunch of magic if you couldn’t actually use it? I dug deeper and started chanting again, just as the distant sound of a door opening reached me.

“Hello?” called a familiar, feminine voice from the first floor. “Anyone here?”

Dammit, not now!

I could feel my concentration slipping. I pushed aside the sound of the voice and of footsteps in the house and dug into the anger the interruption had sparked, feeding it into the spell. The magic snapped and the pressure I’d been feeling suddenly became a concentrated blow that lifted me off my feet and slammed me backwards, crashing me through the door and into the hallway.

My entire body tingled with energy as if I was a metal conductor charged with electricity. I tried to get up. Failed. Tried again and this time succeeded, strength returning far faster than it had left.

I felt strong. Powerful. My erection strained against my boxers, tenting my jeans and my heart pounded in my chest. My senses were sharper. I could hear the shocked gasp of a young woman from the end of the hall, smell the faint bit of sweat that clung to her skin.

I stared at her through a cloud of lust and adrenaline. I wanted her. I was going to have her. I strode towards her, feeling more powerful than I had ever felt in my entire life, with my chest thrust forward, my head held high, and magic coursing through my veins.

She started to speak, to say something, her words coming out in a nervous, high pitched tumble, but my magic flowed from me and into her of its own accord, eager to build a connection between us. Even as she scrambled backward, I could already sense her arousal responding to my magic, growing to match my own.

I shed my sweat-soaked shirt, letting it fall to the floor behind me in a crumpled heap.

She started to back away toward the stairs she’d come up, but I took hold of her hand and my magic flowed into her, primal and pure. She moaned as it reached deep inside of her and stroked her core.

I pulled her to me and pressed her against the wall with my body even as I crushed my lips to hers. My tongue thrust into her mouth and she eagerly reciprocated. Her hands stroked my back, clawing at my bare skin.

One of my hands cupped her tight ass through the denim of her denim cutoffs and pulled her hips tighter against mine so that she could feel my erection straining to reach her. I could feel the heat of her sex even through our clothes. She liked this. She wanted this. Wanted me.

That thought was intoxicating.

My other hand reached for her chest, found a modest sized breast beneath her cropped t-shirt. She moaned a protest into my mouth and broke our kiss, panting and staring up at me.

I didn’t give her the chance to say anything and ripped her shirt open. She gasped and made to cover herself. I pulled her hand away and ripped her bra off next, leaning down to capture her dark brown nipple between my lips.

She gasped, a sharp sound of shocked pleasure. And she was mine. All resistance fled from her and we toppled to the floor in a tangle of limbs, my mouth reclaiming hers as she gyrated against me, alternating between lifting her chest and groin to better reach me. I swallowed down each of her gasps and moans as my hands explored her body, claiming every inch of her.

I rubbed between her legs, pressing the denim of her short shorts against her sex, enjoying the heat and moisture I could feel building there. With a quick snap I undid the clasp of her cutoffs and yanked them and her panties down at the same time. She lifted her ass to help me up and I saw her engorged sex, bare of all hair and swollen with desire. A drop of liquid trickled from her nether lips and down to the crack of her taut ass.

She gasped and stared up at me. I tore my eyes away from her sex to look over her tight, athletic body, pausing for a moment to admire her pert breasts, before moving up to dark eyes set in a feline face.

“Scarlett,” I said, her name coming out as a growl.

“Oh, Dio mios, Caleb,” she moaned. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”

I had no memory of removing my pants, but I was suddenly naked from the waist down. I lunged forward, grabbing her by the hips to pull her to me, spreading her legs on either side of me, my engorged cock coming to rest against her entrance. I let myself slide between her slick folds without entering her, rubbing up over her clit and feeling her heat, soaking my member with her fluids.

“Please,” she moaned. “Si, si, si….”

I let a hand drift up over her stomach, pausing to cup her small, pert breast before settling over her heart. It throbbed against my palm even with her flesh and ribs between us. I could feel each and every pulse.

“You’re mine,” I growled and thrust inside of her.

She was so wet I barely felt the hint of resistance her passage put up. The faintest scent of blood reached my newly enhanced sense of smell. She was tight, so tight and hot, but her body welcomed mine as if she had been made for me.

Scarlett cried out “Si!”

We both began thrusting, her hips rising to meet my every downward thrust. I pounded into her as hard as I could, faster and faster, pausing only a moment, burying myself deep, as I felt her entire body tense up with her first orgasm.

I began again, stretching and claiming her body with every savage stroke. She was mine. All of her, and my magic agreed, pouring into her with every thrust, flooding her being with pleasure as I filled her with my flesh. She screamed again in ecstasy, shaking beneath me and began calling out my name.

“Caleb! Caleb! Caleb!”

“You’re mine,” I growled again. “Say it. Say you’re mine!”

“I’m yours! Oh god, I’m yours!”

A dam inside of my broke and my magic snapped out, spilling from me and into her along with my orgasm. I buried myself deep inside of her and roared my triumph, feeling my seed fill her up, even as she shrieked once more, and her entire body clamped down on me. My magic filled her, racing up from her sex, through her body, to settle into her heart. I could feel it pulsing there with every ecstatic beat.

Finally, I collapsed on top of her, thoroughly spent and breathing hard.

I forced myself onto my elbows after a moment so that I wouldn’t crush her and Scarlett stared up at me, a look of shock mingled with an expression I didn’t recognized. Probably because her eyes were no longer deep brown but a bright, vivid green. Instinctively I understood that she was mine, that somehow my magic had claimed her and made her a part of me.

What that meant exactly I had no idea, but with the realization came the sudden understanding that I had just had sex with my best friend’s little sister.

“Oh shit,” I muttered.

The look of mingled shock and pleasure turned to hurt at my words. She looked away, biting her lip.

A chorus of cat calls and cheering came from behind us.

Chapter Four

The sound of other people in the house brought me out of my oh-shit-moment and plunged me into an OH-SHIT-moment.

I looked back over my shoulder to find a crowd of teenagers pressed into the stairway. Two boys in particular, one black and thickset, the other white and scarecrow thin, hollered encouragements and obscenities. There were other teenagers pressed together with them but those two seemed to be the ring leaders.

I stood up, trying not to look at the blushing form of Scarlett beneath me, and realized that my pants and boxers had at some point traveled down my legs to pool at my ankles. The realization that I should be embarrassed by my nudity hit me at the same moment that instead of bending down to pull my pants up, I instead stepped out of them and toward the crowd of teenagers, my not-quite-flaccid penis swinging between my legs, still coated with Scarlett’s secretions.

I didn’t bother hiding my anger as I stalked toward the crowd. One girl behind the two ringleaders held up her phone and momentarily blinded me with a flash as she snapped a picture.

I bared my teeth. They felt wrong in my mouth. Too large and too sharp. “Get out.”

Most of the intruders suddenly couldn’t get out of the stairway fast enough, screaming and laughing as they all but tumbled back to the first floor. From the sound of things though they hadn’t actually left the house, and ringleaders one and two were still in the stairway.

“Damn man,” said ringleader one, the thickset black man. And I say man now because when that I looked more closely at him, it was obvious that he and ringleader two, Mr. Scarecrow, were too old to be teenagers. They had simply looked younger at first glance because of the company they kept.

“I don’t think you heard me,” I said. “Get out.”

“Son, don’t be like that,” said Mr. Scarecrow. “It’s a fuckin’ party. I’m Bullet. This is Dicario.”

I blinked at him. The names sounded familiar but something else had grabbed my attention. “Party?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Our girl Scarlett, she told everyone about it. She’s with us by the way, but we’ll let you fuck her this once since you’re bein’ such a good host.”

Dicario grinned. “Next time you got to pay for it.”

I glared at them both. “There is no party. Get the hell out of my house.”

“Sounds like a party down there,” Bullet said, gesturing back down the stairs.

Only my anger kept me from cringing at the sounds drifting up to us. “Out.”

“Shit man, this don’t look like no party I want to be a part of,” Dicario said, scowling and puffing up his chest. “Give us our bitch back and we’ll be off.”

My eyes narrowed. “Your bitch?”

He gestured back behind my shoulder at Scarlett. I didn’t look back or take my eyes from him.

“Yeah, our bitch,” he said. “The one you just nailed to the fucking floor. By the way, you owe us fifty bucks for that pussy.”

“She stays,” I snarled. “You leave.”

“All-nighters cost extra,” Bullet said.

“She is mine. Not yours.”

Bullet lifted up his shirt to reveal a gun tucked into the waistband over his crotch. One hand reached down to grip it. 

He gave me a laconic grin. “Mr. Colt here says the bitch’s ours.”

I clenched my fists and magic surged forth in response to my anger, engulfing both of my hands in emerald green flame.

“Oh shit!” they both swore and jumped back. Dicario tripped and fell backward down the stairs in a tangle of limbs, screaming the whole way down.

Bullet caught himself before falling but dropped the gun as his hands windmilled about for purchase. The gun hit the floor and went off with a bang, putting a tiny hole in the wall and bouncing down the stairs as well.

“And I say she’s mine.” I kicked Bullet in the chest and sent him falling after Dicario.

My ears rang from the gunshot as I stalked down after them. I kicked the gun aside when I stepped near it, knocking the weapon far from either of the intruders’ reach. They were still trying to orient themselves, trying and failing to stagger upright and cradling their injuries. Neither was bleeding so they couldn’t have been in too bad a shape. My hands continued to blaze with the green fire as I approached.

The teenagers that had invaded my home with them had all suddenly gone very still and the quiet in the house was deafening. In the green light everything looked like a scene out of a horror movie.

“You’re going to leave now,” I said over their prone forms.

Nobody moved.

I don’t know why I started counting, but by the time I reached three almost every one of them was out of the house. Dumb and Dumber were still struggling to their feet but they were looking angry—I could see it in their faces that they were torn between whether or not to try and take me or to run.

A door somewhere else in the house slammed open and the morons rabbited, maybe afraid I’d summoned reinforcements.

A second later Soraya ran into the living room and nearly tripped over her own feet as she came to an abrupt halt, eyes fixed on me.

At the sight of her, my cock leapt to attention. She wasn’t dressed provocatively or anything. She wore the same hoodie and baggie blue jeans as always. But I knew how hot her body was underneath those baggy clothes and my cock apparently understood that.

My fresh erection made me pause. Since when did I get hard again so soon after coming? I mean, I’m a young guy and I recover fast, but not that fast. For that matter, when did I start conjuring green fire?

I stared down at my still burning hands as Soraya began to shriek. “Damn it, Caleb, put some clothes on loco white boy!”

Awareness that I was, in fact, naked, returned with a vengeance. The flames died and I covered my junk with my hands even as Soraya covered her face. Not well I noted, as she was peaking between her fingers.

“What the hell is going on?” she demanded, deliberately looking away from me. “Why were you on fire and why are you naked?”

My blue jeans flew down the stairs, hitting me square in the face and tangling on my antlers. I pulled them free, nearly ripping them on one of my prongs, and stepped into them, face burning.

“Who’s here with you?” Soraya demanded. “You know what, screw that—start with the other questions.”

“Um, I broke my curse,” I said haltingly. “I think.”

“You think?” She stormed over and jabbed in the chest with a finger. “You think? Do you have any idea how dangerous that was to do by yourself?”

“Um, not really? I mean, I kind of figured it was bad when I felt myself about to burn out, but it all sort of worked out.”

Soraya’s finger hadn’t left my chest and her eyes were affixed to my body rather than meeting my gaze. “You idiot.” Her eyes snapped up to me as she grinned and stepped in closer. “I’m so happy for—”

She cut off as movement at the top of the stairs caught her eye. “Who was that?”

I looked up at the top of the stairs but didn’t see anything.

“Will whoever’s up there quit being a creeper and get out here,” she shouted.

The anger on her face turned to shock as Scarlett showed herself. At some point she’d managed to pull her pants back up, but her bra was gone and she had to clutch the remnants of her t-shirt closed over her chest so that she wasn’t flashing us. Her shoulders hunched as she made her way down the stairs, not looking at either one of us.

“Who hurt you?” Soraya demanded, rushing to her stepsister’s side. “Are you alright?”

Slowly, Scarlett nodded.

Soraya took a step back, comprehension dawning in her eyes as she looked from me to her stepsister and back. “You with her? You with him? No. Hell no.”

“Soraya,” I started to say but she cut me off.

“You both stink of sex!” 

Scarlett cringed and I felt myself flinch back.

“You with Scarlett,” she said, hurt dripping from every word. “You with…my baby sister.”

“Stepsister,” Scarlett muttered.

Soraya spun around and slapped her.

Scarlett rocked back her eyes wide with shock. She opened her mouth ,but Soraya was in her face.

“Say something!” she screamed. “You got something to say? Say something—give me an excuse. Any fucking excuse.” She devolved into rapidfire Spanish for a good minute before finally switching back to English. “And give me my damn phone back!”

Scarlett tentatively reached into her jeans pocket, withdrew a familiar looking phone, and handed it over to Soraya. Her presence at my house suddenly made a lot more sense. She must have stolen Soraya’s phone back at the restaurant, read my text, and thought I was hosting a college party or something. Then she’d gone and told all of her friends.

Then I’d had crazy magic-induced sex with her in front of all of them.

Shit.

“Come one,” Soraya snapped at Scarlett, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her toward the exit.

“Soraya,” I said, moving after her.

She came to a stop and pointed a finger at me, glaring back with tears beading in the corners of her eyes. “Don’t. Don’t you touch me. Don’t you even speak to me.” 

I stood rooted to the spot as my best friend dragged her stepsister from the house and left me utterly and completely alone among the wreckage. I brought a face to my hand and rubbed my eyes through their lids. What the fuck had just happened?

Chapter Five

Two days later I was back in Dr. Hardin’s class and hating the world. I’d lost count of the texts and calls I’d made to Soraya. She hadn’t returned a single one of them and after a full day of not hearing back I’d grown so frustrated that I’d accidentally set my bed on fire. So now I smelled like smoke and so did my bedroom and I had no money to buy new blankets because I’d spent it all breaking the damn curse. I’d gone from being all but unable to cast spells to accidentally casting fire magic with a stray thought. Before that would have sounded almost like getting superpowers but living with the reality of it was it was fucking up my life. As evidenced by my current circumstances.

I still had no freaking idea what had possessed me to have sex with Scarlett like that. It was as if my magic had been awakened and it had an agenda of its own—like my affinities were self-aware or something. Which was stupid and terrifying. Regardless, I definitely had an affinity for fire and, I was willing to go out on a limb, for sex. That was two affinities that I figured every frat boy on campus would kill to have. Not that they were doing me any good.

My roommates had not been amused to come home and find the downstairs trashed but they’d gotten over it quickly—it wasn’t like they hadn’t done worse in our time living together. A gentle reminder of that and they’d backed the hell off. Or maybe that had something to do with my new teeth. They had grown sharper since the curse broke, almost like fangs. I’d bitten my tongue three times and was still tasting blood. Even more frightening though was how much I enjoyed that taste.

My mood seemed to be rolling off of me like a miasma because everyone was giving me space in class. Nobody sat near me. Not even Soraya when she finally walked in.

She walked through the door and I sat up straight in my chair, eyes riveted on her. She had to have seen me—I’m hard to notice what with my big ass antlers—but she never even looked at me. Instead she took a seat on the opposite side of the room just as Professor Hardin and Lilian She walked in. The Professor was in full on lecture mode when he entered and that prevented me from getting up and walking straight over to her desk to confront my maybe-former-best-friend.

Sure, I had admittedly fucked up, but I hated this. I hated even more that she was totally in the right.

I was so fixated in my frustration that I almost missed the professor stop his lecture to look at me. I met his eyes and held them. This was something else new that I’d discovered about myself. Whereas before I would have looked away and maybe shrunk down a little in my seat, now I met every look thrown my way until the looker looked away or something came up. Like they were challenging me, and I was incapable of backing down. 

I’d begun to realize that I’d been a bit of a pushover before. Maybe it had to do with my curse. Now that I could actually use my magic, I had a newfound sense of confidence. Or maybe it was the new aggression I’d been feeling roiling beneath my breastbone and simmering beneath my skin. Whatever the cause of the change was, there was no denying that before I’d been willing to roll over much more readily. Now…now I was feeling empowered and it had so much more to do with attitude than with magic.

Professor Hardin seemed to realize that he was locked in a staring contest with me and he cleared his throat and broke the lock. He was careful about it though. When he looked away, I didn’t get the sense that it was because he couldn’t hold my gaze, but rather that he was dismissing me to focus on something bigger. It made me bare my newly sharpened teeth.

Lilian had been watching the entire exchange and now she was simply watching me. She was trying, and failing, to school her face into a neutral expression but there was a fascination in her eyes that she couldn’t disguise. Had that been there before or was it still another side effect of my curse breaking? There was no way to tell right now.

Soraya might know but, again, she wasn’t talking to me. 

I tried my hardest not to brood throughout the entire class like some moody rock star and I think that I mostly succeeded. In part because my mood picked up as the class went on. My wondering about Lilian made me wonder if any of the other girls in class were looking at me different and then it was as if my awareness had peaked out. I caught girls glancing at me when they thought I wasn’t looking and blushing when they realized I’d seen them. It was more than a bit of an ego boost. I had a half decent chance of taking any one of them out for drinks later—if I’d had money to pay for drinks that was. And if there hadn’t already been a girl that I wanted to be with.

Unfortunately, Soraya steadfastly refused to acknowledge me when Professor Hardin wrapped up his class and she was out the door before he’d even finished speaking. I swore under my breath and put away my notes. I didn’t have a lot of them. That probably wasn’t a good sign.

Like the last class, Prof. Hardin called me to the front as everyone was filtering out. He waited until he, Lilian, and I were alone in the room before speaking.

He eyed me up and down. “You broke your curse I see.”

I grinned. “Yup.”

“Shame, it really was one of a kind. Elegant in its simplicity really.”

My grin turned into a scowl.

“How did you break it?” he asked. “I didn’t realize you were developing advanced thaumaturgical theories of your own.”

I shrugged and very deliberately looked at him and not Lilian. He didn’t know that she had sent me his formula for the spell that had broken my curse and I wasn’t about to throw her under the bus when she’d gone out of her way to help me. Not that her help had done me a whole heck of a lot of good.

“Guess I just sort of figured it out, you know?”

“Figured it out. I see. I look forward to seeing your paper then. I’ll be expecting a lot out of it.”

I blinked. “My paper?”

He blinked back. Slowly. “The one I assigned you last class? The one that is due, next class.”

“Oh,” I said, my stomach falling away. “That paper. Right. Gotcha.”

“I hope so,” he said. “You’ll be needing excellent grades if you hope to replace your scholarship.”

“Replace my scholarship?” Why would I have to replace my scholarship?

“Your scholarship is for individuals who are afflicted by a curse, correct?” he said in his lecturer voice. He already knew the answer to this question and understood that I did not. “You are no longer cursed. Don’t worry, I doubt that they’ll revoke your scholarship in the middle of the semester, but it would surprise me greatly if you qualified for it again come fall.”

Oh shit, I hadn’t thought of that.  But he clearly had. Had that been something he’d intended to pull on me if I had pressed for him to try and break my curse?

“Yeah, guess so,” I said.

He patted me on the shoulder and walked past me toward the door. “Shame. I might have gotten you some kind of paid internship. Finding work outside of the university in this town can be a bit tough.”

That condescending bastard. I bit my tongue to keep from saying something I’d regret later and winced as my teeth reminded me once again that they had become much sharper.

“You okay?”

I jerked my head up to find Lilian looking at me with an expression of sympathy.

“I’m fine,” I said, trying and failing to be nonchalant.

She offered a sympathetic smile. “He can be a bit of a douche when he doesn’t get his way.”

You think? “I might have noticed that.”

“It’s impressive, what you did.”

“Huh?”

“That was a pretty tough curse to break. From what I read Hardin figured you’d just about have to rip yourself apart if you tried casting that spell on your own.”

I had no idea how to respond to that, so I crossed my arms and settled for irritated. It seemed to be my default since the curse broke. “That might have been nice to know before I went and used it.”

She had the good grace to blush. “Yeah, sorry about that. I just figured you had the right to, you know, figure out how to handle the curse for yourself. You had deserved options. I didn’t think you’d actually try to break it on your own. Um, that is what happened, isn’t it?”

I nodded and tried not to think about what had followed the curse’s breaking. “Pretty much.”

She shook her head. “I figured you’d bring his work to someone who knew what they were doing and get them to help you out. I’m so sorry, that must have been…tough.”

Tough. That was a word for it. “It wasn’t an afternoon of flower picking.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” she said. “I’m glad it worked out. I think you have a lot of potential as a mage. Don’t let Hardin get you down.”

She thought I had a lot of potential? At least there was something about this week that didn’t suck.

Chapter Six

The walk back to my house wasn’t a long one but I took the opportunity to do something that I should have done days ago. I called Nicole.

Nicole is my adopted sister, four years older than me and always willing to give great advice. She was the best part of being adopted by the Marshals. We had a secret, she and I, something we could never tell anyone. At first it had made things awkward as hell between us, but then she’d realized she could trust me not to blab and something opened between us. She started to confide in me and me in her. I’d never get by without her support, especially now that Soraya was AWOL.

Nicole was fixing to graduate with a pre-med degree with the aim of becoming a naval doctor and understandably was crazy busy, especially with all the volunteer work and extra training she put herself through. We didn’t speak more than once every two or three weeks unless one of us really had something we needed to get off our chests.

Damn if that wasn’t me just then.

She answered on the third ring and I realized I had no idea where the hell to start.

“How about the beginning,” she said when I admitted as much. “That’s usually the best.”

I let out a feeble laugh. “Yeah, I’ve just got to figure out which beginning.”

“Oh boy.”

Oh boy was right. “Uh, I broke my curse.”

She shrieked. “That’s amazing, Caleb!”

“Not so good actually,” I confessed. “There’s something weird with my magic.”

“Weird how?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I started acting all funny when the curse broke and…I slept with my best friend’s stepsister.”

Her silence was audible over the phone. Finally, she said, “Lucky girl. You like her?”

“How is my best friend lucky for me sleeping with her stepsister?”

She sighed. “Not your friend, the stepsister. The girl you slept with. Is it serious between you two?”

Oh shit. “I um, haven’t given it much thought.”

“Caleb!”

I winced. “I’ve been trying to patch up my friendship.”

“Your friendship? Seriously, this can’t be a bros before hoes thing. Your best friend’s a girl.”

“Yeah, and that makes this like, a thousand kinds of awkward.”

“Why? Is there a reason you shouldn’t be with her stepsister?”

Not one that I was willing to admit. So instead I repeated “Scarlett is her stepsister,” hoping that that would somehow explain everything.

“And she’s a grown woman who can make her own decisions. Your friend should understand this or she’s not really your friend. Or was there something more than friendship going on between you two?”

“No,” I admitted, more reluctantly than I’d have liked. “Just friends.”

A thought suddenly occurred to me. “But I’m not really sure it was Scarlett’s decision.”

I could hear her scowl through the phone. “What do you mean?”

“Remember I said my magic was acting all weird? I think I maybe sort of put a spell on us. Things sort of happened really fast.”

“Caleb Marshal!” she snapped. “You mean to tell me that you had magical sex with a girl, literally magical sex, and you haven’t called or spoken to her since?”

Dammit, suddenly I felt even worse. I’d been an absolute ass to Scarlett. She was the one whose forgiveness I needed to be begging for, not Soraya’s. “You know, I called you so that you could make me feel better.”

“Sorry little bro, I’ll always give you a reality check. Now you go and apologize to that poor girl and tell your friend to get over it.”

“Yeah I’ll do—oh shit.” I’d come upon my house and found the front door kicked in. “I’m going to have to call you back. Someone’s broken into my house.”

“What? Call the cops!”

I could see my roommate’s cars in the driveway and hear their voices coming from inside so clearly whatever emergency had occurred it was past. I told Nicole so and hung up, promising to call her back later.

I walked into the house and stared about at the wreckage. What our uninvited house guests a few nights ago had inflicted upon our home was nothing compared to this. The home invaders had taken a bat to the sheetrock, putting massive holes in the walls and smashing our television into shards of glass and plastic. Our gaming consoles were missing, and the couch reeked of urine. Several lights had been shattered and doors broken down. My roommates were all missing things like watches, extra cash, and DVDs. The fuckers had even taken our beer.

“What the hell?” I asked my roomies.

They’d already taken inventory of their rooms and were now in the living room assessing the damage. The cops had already come and gone and basically said there wasn’t a damn thing that could be done about the missing items and next to no chance of catching the guys that did this. Ace detectives Woodhurst did not have, but even if they’d had better resources and training there probably wouldn’t have been much that they could do anyway.

“Does anyone know how to get the urine out of the couch,” asked Danny. As he’d been the one to provide the couch this didn’t seem an unreasonable question.

“No fucking clue,” said Tim. “Shit, they took my gas money. How the hell am I supposed to get to work now?” He worked in the next town over, about twenty miles south of Woodhurst.

“This wasn’t just a smash and grab,” Danny said. “I mean, they smashed sure, but if they wanted to rob us, they didn’t do a good job. Who smashes a TV? Or pisses on a perfectly good couch?”

It did seem unusually spiteful and my mind raced back to Bullet and Dicario. But I’d chased them out, hadn’t I?

Someone knocked on the threshold that used to hold our front door. I turned to find Scarlett cringing as she surveyed the wreckage. Her lip was split, and she had one hell of a shiner darkening the left side of her face.

“Hey,” she said, looking up at me.

Chapter Seven

A few moments later I’d carried her up the stairs—despite a half-hearted squeal of protest—and deposited her on my bed. I retrieved my first aid kit from beneath the bed, which our dickhead robbers had thankfully not stolen, and came up to find Scarlett blushing furiously. Then I realized what she might have thought I was doing, hauling her up to my bedroom like this, and felt my own cheeks heat up in return. I did not apologize though or try to explain myself. Instead I opened the first aid kit and set about tending to her busted lip with some Neosporin.

She made a face as the gauzy end of the cream-coated cue tip made contact. “I always hated how that stuff tastes.”

“Hold on a sec,” I said. “I’ll see if I can’t get you some ice for your face.”

She grimaced. “It looks that bad?”

“It looks like it hurts.”

She shrugged trying and failing to act tougher than she was, an illusion that was completely shattered when I turned to go down to the kitchen and she grabbed me by the sleeve of my shirt. “Don’t go.”

“It’s going to swell.”

“I don’t care.”

“I do.” But I didn’t go get ice. Instead I sat down with her on the bed and put an arm around her.

At first, she stiffened and then she melted into me with a huge sigh. “You said I was yours the other night.”

I had said that, hadn’t I? Several times.

“Who hurt you?”

She snorted. “Who do you think?”

Bullet and Dicario. “Why? I chased them out of here.”

“Yeah so they had to save face. Beat on me and then they came over to beat on your place. And they’re going to come after you again.” She looked at the wall on the far side of the room where a mirror hung. The glass had been broken by someone hitting it but it still worked well enough. “You weren’t around. You told them I was yours and then you…” her lower lip began to tremble.

I squeezed her tighter.

“You know I told her,” she said. “Soraya. I told her that she was the one you really wanted. Told her she should be with you.”

I wasn’t sure whether to flinch, flush, or beat my chest. “Why would you tell her that?”

“Because it’s true. She’s the one you want, not me. If I hadn’t stolen her phone she’d have been there instead. I know you want her. I can feel it.” She turned away from the mirror to look me at me with those magically green eyes. “I was just an accident.”

Her hand went to her chest in a reflexive gesture, found nothing, and fell back. For the first time I realized that she wasn’t wearing her heirloom necklace.

A surge of possessiveness washed over me. “You’re mine.”

She swallowed. “You don’t want me.”

I’d never been particularly close to Scarlett. We’d never spent enough time around each other to get anywhere near close, and the way she always acted like a bratty, party-obsessed wild child hadn’t exactly endeared her to me. I knew she ran with a rough crowd. I hadn’t understood just how rough. I was seeing beneath her mask now, the confident brat she used to keep herself safe from the world and was being allowed to see the vulnerable and unsure young woman underneath.

“I was stupid.” I had been stupid. Hell, I was being stupid now. I didn’t want Soraya any less but now I was suddenly reconnected with that same spirit of possessiveness that had urged me to claim Scarlett two days ago when I’d broken my curse. I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. Dammit this wasn’t going to end well.

“I like what you did to my eyes,” she whispered up at me.

So did I.

I leaned down and claimed her mouth with mine. I tasted the Neosporin and the blood on her lip as my tongue entered her mouth to lock with hers. She whimpered into our kiss and pressed herself tighter against me.

Images flashed in my mind; Bullet and Dicario coming after her. Dicario managing to land a couple of blows, his hand grabbing at her throat, her necklace ripping away as she tore free and ran. They were angry. Really angry. This wasn’t the first time they’d beaten her, but it was the first time they’d hit her face. Normally they hit her where the bruises wouldn’t show.

I remembered that the last time I’d seen them that the assholes had tried to make me pay for having sex with her. Had that been the first time they’d done that?

As if reading my mind, she shook her head.

“That was my first time.” She blushed and then said in a rush, “In there I mean, my vagina, I mean my pussy, I mean….” She blushed all the harder and couldn’t meet my eyes. “I’ve done anal with both of them. They didn’t want to spend money on condoms.”

“Assholes.”

She laughed. I realized what I’d said and then laughed too. Our laughter was too nervous to do anything to the tension that had built up around and in between us. It died an awkward death and was left to hang in silence between us.

Scarlett stood up from the bed, walked over and closed my door, and then turned around, hands going to the button of her jeans. “If that’s how you want me, you can have me that way. I don’t mind.”

She pushed her jeans down. They were so tight that they didn’t fall but had to be pushed. When she stood up, kicking off her shoes in the process, she revealed to me that she was wearing a lacy black thong, the gusset so low in the front that if she hadn’t been bare down there her pubic hair would have been showing. They were sexy as hell, and I realized, old. She had a safety pin holding the snapped waistband together on the side.

My hand reached out to travel up her lean, athletic thigh up to that safety pin low on her hip. She blushed and I hooked a finger into the waistband and dragged my finger to the front of her panties so that I could slowly pull them down to reveal her hungry sex. She gasped and I let the panties fall to her ankles.

She wasn’t looking at me but up at the ceiling, her eyes closed tight, lips pressed together. I slid a finger between her netherlips, finding her hot and slick. She winced and I withdrew my finger. I stood up and cupped her face in my hand, making her look at me. “Are you hurt?”

“J-just a little sore there still,” she gasped. “Totally worth it, just…could you please be gentle?”

For a moment, things seemed off to me. Some part of my brain knew that women who had just been beat up and run for their lives did not crave sex as soon as they got away. That just wasn’t how things worked, my rational brain shouted at me. And yet here she was, her pussy lips moist and swollen with need for me. I nodded my agreement, pushing all thoughts aside that might get between my fucking her brains out.

Scarlett let out a relieved breath. That little sigh turned into a squeal as I scooped her up and deposited her on my bed.

“W-what are you doing?”

I grinned at her. “I’m going to kiss it better.”

“Madre de dios,” she said as I lowered my mouth to her sex. “Oh, dios mio!” She gasped as my lips and tongue made contact. “OH SI!” she screamed as I began lathing her saturated sex with my licks and kisses.

I moved up and lapped at her clit with hard but slow strokes, my tongue pressed wide and flat to rub over each and every nerve. Her hands grabbed my antlers and pulled my mouth tighter against her entrance. I kissed, sucked, and lathered her sex with my mouth, teasing her entrance with my tongue and sucking her clitoris. She drenched my mouth and chin with her musky fluids, squealing and keeping a death grip on my antlers.

“Caleb,” she cried out. “Caleb. Caleb. Caleb!”

I shoved my pants down and pulled myself from her sex, breaking her hold on my antlers and letting my engorged length slide into her soaked entrance. She moaned and wrapped her legs around me, pulling me into her faster so that I was abruptly buried to the root inside of her. Scarlett’ entire body went rigid and her pussy began to contract upon my length, squeezing me and soaking my thighs and balls with her juices. I could sense she was close, so close, to release.

I fought against her grip so that I could withdraw far enough out to pound myself back inside. She squealed the first time I crashed back into her. Then moaned with every subsequent thrust until her back arched and she screamed with orgasm. 

I held her tight and rolled over, pulling her with me into a sitting position with her resting on my lap, my erection still fully embedded inside of her. She almost didn’t seem to realize that she had moved until her climax had fully ended and her eyes opened, widening in surprised. I gripped her hips in my hands and began helping her to lift up and down on my length.

“You set the pace,” I told her.

She looked at me with a mixture of emotions I couldn’t recognize, one hand coming up to my face, the other to balance herself on my shoulder. She began to move and my erection entered Nirvana.

She was slick and hot and tight. So very tight. Scarlett moved with deliberate slowness, clenching her Kegel muscles as she lifted up and then releasing as she let herself fall back down my length. We both gasped every time I bottomed out inside of her. Both of us broke out in a sweat and fought I could tell that she was fighting off her second orgasm even as I resisted my own.

This was so different from the first time we’d had sex on the hallway floor. There was still something primal about it, and definitely passionate, but there was also a new level of control, of understanding and intimacy between us that had been absent before. We weren’t in love, or at least I wasn’t, but we were making love. We were both choosing to, no magic involved.

I understood then that Scarlett had never been made love to. She’d had sex, after a fashion, but it had always been rough and half the time she’d only partly willing. I felt a pang of guilt as that knowledge flooded me. Had what we’d done together before been consensual? For either of us? Would she be honest with me now if I asked? Could she be?

It didn’t matter, because more information came to me. Bullet and Dicario had nearly raped her this afternoon. She was hurting much worse than she’d let on before. They’d managed to pin her down and delivered several swift kicks to her stomach. Something had distracted them, and she’d managed to kick one of them in the groin and run, though not before losing her beloved necklace. Damn she was fast. She’d run from their…meth lab, in what had once been an old hunting cabin outside of town, and straight here. To me. They’d been going to hurt her and then they were going to hurt me and both thoughts had terrified her with equal fervor and given her the energy to sprint all the way through town to my house.

She had warned me and now she was giving herself over to me. I felt a strange mixture of guilt and honor wash over me. She was giving me such a gift.

After Scarlett had a second, much smaller orgasm than the first, I stopped her movements and rolled her over again so that she was perpendicular on the bed, her butt just hanging over the end, allowing me to stand up, my erection still buried inside of her.

She stared up at me eyes wide, a trace of fear in them before I began moving and her face broke out into a grin. “Oh yes!”

I had promised to be gentle but neither of us wanted that anymore. I took her. I ploughed my length into her over and over again and brought her to another screaming orgasm. Her entire body seemed to be trying to go rigid and spasm all at once as I continued slamming into her so that her orgasm rolled into another. I couldn’t hold my own back any longer.

I shouted as I plunged as deep inside of her as I could go and let myself spill into her in a series of pulsing bursts. She pulled me into her, wrapping me in her arms and legs as I fell on top of her, pinning her to the bed beneath me.

We lay there together for a few moments before I became aware of the cheering from down below and remembered my roommates were home. Then remembered the paper-thin walls that had made me want to wait to leave before casting the spell that had broken my curse. I let myself slide from her hold to roll onto the mattress beside her.

Were we ever going to have sex without some kind of an audience?

Chapter Eight

It wasn’t quite dark out when I snuck out of the house, leaving Scarlett asleep and still naked in my bed. I’d paused to admire her nude form, my seed coating her sex and thighs, and been tempted to simply climb back into bed with her. The slight jiggle of her pert breasts with her every breath was especially enticing. But no. There was something I needed to do.

In the memories I had seen while we were having sex, I saw what Bullet and Dicario had done to her earlier, how they’d hurt her and stolen her great grandmother’s necklace. I was going to get it back. Her memories running from them weren’t exactly a clear montage of directions, but I found myself able to backtrack her path with surprising ease. I’d taken a flashlight and a backpack with a multi-tool and some Poptarts, figuring it would take me the better part of the night to find my way back to Dumb and Dumber’s meth lab.

Despite being on foot and needing to go off road to get to it, I made pretty good time. It only took me around two hours to get there. They had set up in a hunting lodge at the back of an elderly couple’s property. The couple either didn’t know that their old lodge was being used for something illegal or didn’t care. Either way, short of calling the police every time they thought that some hooligans were out messing around, there wasn’t much they could do about it. Not unless they wanted to bust out their own guns and take care of business—always a possibility in Texas.

I still circled around the property so as not to alert the property owners that I was there, cutting through a thick growth of forest to stay out of sight. I’d never been much of a hiker before, but it seemed to me that I moved quicker and more easily than I should have. I had vague memories of getting caught on every branch and briar when walking through the underbrush before.

Now though? I seemed to instinctively know where to step for clear, quiet travel and found myself not using the flashlight at all. I couldn’t see in the dark any better than I used to, but the moon was out and bright and since I was stepping right anyway there didn’t seem to be much point to using it, other than risking getting shot of Dicario or Bullet were out at their lab and eager to protect it. Thinking of them made me bare my teeth.

I should have been scared. I guess I was, but it wasn’t the kind of fear that I would have experienced last week. Last week if I had learned that there were a pair of psychotic drug dealers out for my blood, I’d probably have tried to go into hiding or to the police. Exactly what the police would do for me I couldn’t say. Give me a guard? That would last for maybe a week and then the nut jobs would come after me when the cops left. And hiding? I couldn’t give up school. I’d worked too hard to get myself here. Sure, I’d already broken my curse but this was my chance at a college education and I could actually cast some spells now with ease.

More than ease. 

I hadn’t done a lot with my green fire, but it had answered my call when I’d childishly started playing with it, using my magic like a lighter or something, flicking the flames on and off again. Just knowing that I could summon them was its own special kind of high. I mean, there wasn’t really a big call for fire magic in my daily life but hey—fire! It just might come in handy tonight if I had to use it as a weapon.

That thought occurred to me as I neared the edge of the woods where the lodge rested about twenty yards away, in a spacious clearing with a path leading up to it from a different part of the property, the tall grass worn smooth and flat by the continuous passing of truck tires. But it wasn’t the lodge or even the truck parked in front of it that brought me up short, but my own thought. Okay, yeah, I’d thought of my fire a bit as a weapon. But I hadn’t ever seriously considered burning someone beyond that one encounter with Dumb and Dumber in my house.

More disturbing still, the thought of burning them to a crisp didn’t actually bother me in and of itself, and I knew that it should. I had never been a violent person. I had also never been the kind of guy who would sneak into a meth lab to retrieve a stolen necklace for a girl knowing that the whack jobs who ran it wanted to kill me. And here I was having barely given a second thought before taking action.

I swallowed and felt my heart pounding in my chest. I clenched my fists and my jaw. I could do this. Who I’d been before…I could acknowledge now that that boy had been weak. I wasn’t him anymore.

I crouched low and snuck through the tall grass, moving as fast as I could while still keeping quiet, which turned out to be surprisingly fast, and I found myself pressed against the outer wall, listening just outside a window.

Dicario and Bullet were inside. They were speaking loudly, and I couldn’t tell if they were arguing or just drunk. The stink of cat piss and rotten eggs wafted through the window even though it was closed and made me gag. I’d never smelled a meth lab before, but I’d heard that they stank. This definitely lived up to the stereotype.

Another thing that I’d heard about labs like this one were that they were highly combustible. The men who had hurt Scarlett were inside, along with a whole lab’s worth of badness, and I was sitting right outside of it with the magical equivalent of a flamethrower. I almost reached for my magic to set the whole place ablaze before catching myself.

What the hell was I thinking? I didn’t kill people. I did not just blow things up. Yeah, this place probably should be blown sky high, but while people were inside of it? Who the hell was I that I’d even had that kind of thought, let alone been about to act on it? Scarier still, I knew, somehow knew, that killing Dicario and Bullet would not weigh upon my conscience at all. These thoughts and actions were becoming a dangerous habit—what the hell was wrong with me? I was so distracted by the thought that if it hadn’t been for the sound of the door closing, I might have been caught.

Both Bullet and Dicario had come outside, still talking loudly, and loaded something heavy into the back of their truck. I crouched low in the tall grass, leaning to the side so that my stupid antlers wouldn’t be sticking up to give me away. I could just see one of these dumbasses thinking I was a deer and taking a shot at me. Hell, they might take a shot at me even if they thought I wasn’t a deer.

Their truck roared to life and the headlights swept over me. Then they were away.

I breathed a sigh of relief, caught a taste of the foul air wafting from the lodge on my tongue, and wished that I hadn’t. I pulled my shirt up over the lower half of my face and made my way to the door as soon as the lights disappeared from sight. It was locked but made of a weak, rotten material that made a cracking sound when I pushed and swung inward, spilling moonlight into the lodge.

It was too dark to make out much, so I finally pulled out my flashlight and turned it on, sweeping it across the room. I had no idea what all I was looking at. It seemed to be mostly jars and jugs and tubes and an oven and more tools and guns than I could count. Sweet Christmas who needed this many guns or rusty hammers?

A bird cage rested at one end of the table with jugs on either side. I briefly wondered what was inside of it before moving on and discovered a squat, heavy gun safe against the wall opposite the bird cage. A clean square on the floor next to it suggested that there had been another safe here before, probably what they had loaded up in the back of their car.

Given that these morons had guns strewn about the place I was assuming it held something else entirely. I made my way over to it and stopped, realizing that it needed a combination and that I had no freaking clue what it could be. I didn’t know enough about my erstwhile drug dealers to hazard a guess. I began searching the place for a sticky note or something that they might have recorded the combination on. Nothing turned up.

I briefly considered trying to burn my way into it and scrapped that idea as soon as I had it. This place was probably a powder keg ready to go boom. No way in hell was I setting it off while I was still inside of it.

Damn if the safe wasn’t too freaking heavy for me to move on my own. It had sounded like those guys had been struggling to lift out just one on their own. Hell, it was probably heavy enough that they didn’t want to ruin the suspension on their truck by carrying more than one at a time. Given that I didn’t see a lot of other options though, and no sign of Scarlett’s necklace anywhere else, I began trying to tilt it over.

“If you want into the safe, I know the combination,” said a high-pitched voice behind me.

I jumped and instinctively conjured a ball of emerald flame in my hand.

“Put that out!” the voice shrieked. “Are you trying to blow us both up?”

There was no sign of the speaker, which did not reassure me, but I let the flames die and lifted the flashlight, ready to use it as a club if need be. “Who’s there?”

“Me, of course. Who else?” asked the voice.

“Nobody likes a smartass, Miss Invisible,” I said. The voice was so high pitched that it was hard to tell its owner’s gender, but it somehow felt like it belonged to a woman.

“I’m not invisible. I’m right here, Dumbass,” said the voice, and this time it was accompanied by a bell-like sound. I swept the light around until it came to rest on the birdcage.

I’d thought that it was empty before, but that had been because its occupant had been laying down. I blinked several times, my mind struggling to process what I was seeing.

Finally, I asked, “How the hell did those morons capture a pixie?”

The hand-high woman with gossamer wings standing in the cage brought her hands to her mouth and giggled. The sound chimed in the disgusting building, completely out of place. She was inhumanly gorgeous and most decidedly womanly. If she’d been human-sized, she could have been a swimsuit model. Fittingly enough, her hair was styled in a bright pixie cut.

“You’re funny, hunter,” she said. “I haven’t laughed since I was captured. And no, not by them. Their Lady captured me, the tricksy bitch.”

I blinked at her. Dicario and Bullet had a lady? Surely, she didn’t mean Scarlett.

“Right,” I said, trying to process that. “You said something about opening the safe.”

She cocked a shapely hip and smirked at me, though it was hard to tell in the dim light. I drew closer as she answered, noting her bright violet hair and the rather sorry shape of her wings. It looked to me as if they had once been possessed of color in my flashlight’s beam, I could see that it had been washed out.

“That’s right,” she said. “And I’ll tell it to you if you let me out of here.”

I frowned at her. The fae were supposed to be sixty kinds of tricky and seventy kinds of slippery. It was why they had entire collegiate courses dedicated to dealing with them. A course I might add, that I hadn’t taken. But I couldn’t just leave her in there. A thought occurred to me. I might have no intention of leaving her in that horrible bird cage, but she didn’t need to know that.

“That’s all your freedom is worth to you?” I said and pointed at her wings. “You don’t look so good there. What have they been doing to you?”

Her wings fluttered and created an angry shrilling sound. She stamped her foot on the barred floor of her cage and puffed up her cheeks. “They are stealing all my dust! It’s my dust to make and give—not theirs! And they put it in their poison. Poison!”

Dicario and Bullet had been lacing their crystal meth with pixie dust? Damn. That had to be some special kind of high. No way either one of them were smart enough to have thought this up though. It had to be this “Lady” the pixie had mentioned.

She stomped around her cage, beating her wings for a moment before stopped and pointing a finger at me. “You want to deal? We’ll deal. And no tricks or I’ll bite your eye out.”

Now that was a mental image. “Okay, let’s deal.”

“You let me out and restore me,” she said. “And I will offer you a boon.”

I crossed my arms. “You mean, like telling me the safe combination? That’s right where we left off. No deal.”

She fluttered her wings and looked away, cheeks reddening at having been caught.

“And you asked for two things from me this time,” I said, recalling her words. How exactly did one go about “restoring” a pixie to health? “You are the one in need, so you should be offering me more than I am offering you. That’s two things you want from me, so I want four boons.”

“Four!” She beat her wings and bounced around her cage. “Four, the nerve of it! You’d leave a little thing like me all helpless and alone at the mercy of those monsters?” She stopped leaping around to fix me with a pair of puppy dog eyes.

No, I wouldn’t, but I made myself hold a scowl in place instead of breaking down and opening the cage there and then like I wanted to.

She held up a hand with three tiny fingers. “Three boons! No more, no less. Three is a fine and fair number.”

That was still one more act in my favor than acts in hers. “Deal.”

“Deal and done.”

Something whooshed from the cage, reached inside of me to touch deep inside my magic, and rebounded upon the little pixie. She let out a little sigh as it entered her and sagged against the bars of her cage. 

“Give me the combination,” I said.

She did, slowly, as if just waking up from a good long nap.

I opened the safe to discover a cardboard box stuffed with cash, jewelry, and some things that I recognized as belonging to my roommates. Scarlett’s necklace had to be in there somewhere, but those goons could be back at any moment. I opened my backpack and dumped the box’s contents into it without checking them, and then zipped it back up.

“Now free me,” the pixie demanded. “We have a deal.”

I nodded and lifted the door to the cage. 

She zoomed out, glowing with a purple light as she streaked around the lab, knocking over jugs and bottles with abandon before careening into the oven. She stopped there and began fiddling with the knobs. I realized what she was doing a second later and raced for the door.

I leapt through just as the lodge exploded into a fireball. I was not nearly far enough away to escape and threw up my hands in a futile effort to shield myself. Emerald flames leapt from my palms to form a barrier between me and the explosion. Even as I was knocked off my feet, not a single tongue of orange-yellow flame touched me.

I landed awkwardly on my back, the contents of the backpack digging into me, and brought myself up onto my elbows.

The lodge was a towering pillar of fire.

Chapter Nine

As I lay there in stunned silence, watching the lodge burn a purple streak circled the flames and came to alight upon my belly. The little pixie collapsed in a heap, tiny body dripping with sweat and for the first time I became truly aware of her nudity. I’d noted her busty figure back in the lodge, only in the dark, I hadn’t realized she wasn’t wearing anything.

She gave me a wicked little grin.

I did not return it. “What the hell is wrong with you? I was still in there!”

That wasn’t even touching on whether or not the place should have been blown up or not. Never mind that I had been considering it just a few minutes ago, the fact was that I hadn’t acted upon the urge. Certainly not when I’d known people were inside the damn thing!

She shrugged. “You got out, didn’t you? Big tough mage like you, hunter, I’m sure a little fire wouldn’t phase you.”

And if I’d happened to die in the flames, she’d have been free of the remaining two boons she owed me. “Crazy pixie bitch.”

Her grin turned to a scowl. “You owe me restoration.”

In the firelight I could see that the color in her wings was all but gone. It must have taken a lot of whatever magic she had left in her to knock the oven over—the little psycho.

Over the roar of the fire I could distantly hear the sound of approaching vehicles. I looked down the dirt-road to see a pair of headlights turning to come down it. They were a good distance off but closing fast.

“Shit.” I grabbed the pixie, leaped to my feet, and raced for the woods.

“Restore me!” The pixie demanded as I sprinted through the tall grass.

I made it into the woods and nearly crashed into a tree. What little night vision I’d had before had been ruined by the fire and while I managed to avoid getting tangled in anything, for the moment I was left blind. I leaned against a tree, praying I was far enough inside the tree line that they wouldn’t be able to see me, and held my breath.

The pixie beat her wings and squirmed in my hand. “Restore me! That was part of our deal!”

Dammit, she was going to give us away. Her wings and voice carried like bell chimes through the woods, and no doubt, all the way to the burning lodge. If she kept this up when that truck finally got back there was no way Bullet and Dicario wouldn’t hear her.

“Okay, okay,” I hissed. “I’ll restore you, just keep quiet unless you want them to catch you again.”

That seemed to shut her up, but she still squirmed out of my hand. In a much quieter voice she said, “But you will restore me. Here. Now. No tricks.”

“No tricks,” I promised, wishing I knew how the hell I was supposed to restore her.

The pixie grinned and dropped from the air in front of me to land at the waistband of my jeans. In short order she had them undone and dropped around my knees.

“What the hell?” I demanded then slapped a hand over my mouth as the truck finally arrived, screeching to a stop in front of the roaring fire.

My boxer shorts followed next and my cock sprang up before the pixie, already hard and erect. I scowled, realizing that I had been hard for some time and hadn’t noticed. For how long though? Since I’d started hunting for Scarlett’ necklace, I realized, and then stopped thinking altogether as the pixie ran her naked body down the length of my shaft, her proportionately heavy breasts rubbing against me.

I groaned and let my head fall back. My antlers hit the tree trunk behind me. I didn’t care. A thousand diminutive kisses fell upon my shaft, circling the head. She beat her wings and a bit of purple powder encompassed my member for a moment before disappearing. It was as if every nerve ending in my shaft was struck by lightning.

Each and every sensation was magnified a thousand-fold. Her little hands and mouth set my skin on fire and made my member feel like it had swollen ten times larger. I wasn’t made of flesh and blood. My erection was iron wrapped in a taut layer of skin ready to burst. Each caress of her breasts, thighs, and wings was a detonation that threatened to set off a chain reaction leading to a massive explosion.

Bullet and Dicario were shouting at each other, loud enough to penetrate my fog of lust and be heard over the roaring fire. I couldn’t make out their words, but they were angry. More than angry. They were terrified. I could taste their fear. Delicious and satisfying in a way that I’d never before experienced, and it pushed me over the edge.

The pixie continued to dance about my member, grinding her full body against it and spiraling around. I’d never been to a strip club, but I had seen clips of pole dancing before—there had always been something phallic about the pole, especially combined with the erotic nature of the woman’s dancing. Now I knew what it was like to be that pole. To feel hands and legs wrap around me, to have my dance-partner’s body bump and grind and give herself over to my power, my erection the sole center of her world. 

My shaft throbbed in the pixie’s full-body grip and she shifted to straddle the mushroom head, grinding her diminutive sex against my slit. Her beating wings sent vibrations coursing down through my length and into my core. I exploded with enough force to dislodge her and send her careening into the ground in a massive spray of semen. More blasts followed and I bit my lip to keep from bellowing my pleasure and triumph to the world.

I don’t know that I blacked out per say, but I came to my senses a moment later and found the pixie on the ground, her naked body completely devoid of any evidence of our sexual exchange. As I picked her up, the firelight through the trees revealed that her wings were now a deep shade of violet and her skin glittered like a stripper’s.

She gave me a lazy grin. “Your seed is rich in magic, hunter.”

I was going to have to ask why she kept calling me that, but first I needed to pull my pants back up. No sooner had I managed that—awkwardly with one hand, because the damn pixie was just about passed out on a magical pleasure high and couldn’t be bothered to hover or stand on my shoulder—than a second car pulled up. This one was not a truck. I couldn’t tell the make or model, but from the general outline it was definitely a city car, not the kind you’d expect to see on the backroads of Woodhurst or on a ranch.

The figure that stepped out was backed by the firelight, so it was hard to make out details, but it was definitely a woman. She strode to the arguing figures, radiating cold fury. It fell over the men like a tidal wave. Instead of backing down, they began to argue louder, pointing fingers at each other. Somehow, I knew that this was a bad idea and recognized in this woman a fellow predator.

Predator? Since when had I ever thought of myself as a predator?

She said something and both Dicario and Bullet shut up. She said something else and they took a step back. And then they took off running.

Bullet wasn’t fast enough.

He made it only a few feet before the woman exploded and where she had once stood instead rose a black serpent easily as big around as the bright plastic tunnels kids climb through on playgrounds. How long she was I couldn’t tell, in part because she was coiled up, and in part because she struck so fast my eyes could barely follow. Bullet fell to her jaws, screaming as she lifted him up in the air, high, high, higher than the lodge and began tossing him in her maw so that he slid down her throat headfirst.

I stared at this, open mouthed. It had happened so fast. One minute there’d been a woman and two men. The next, a giant snake was eating one of those men and the second was running away. Straight for my hiding spot.

Worse, the snake was chasing after him.

I turned and ran, branches slapping into my face. Whatever grace I’d felt before that had allowed me to travel the woods unhindered was completely undone and I caught on every loose branch and root in my path until an unseeing Dicario crashed into me from behind.

We fell to the ground together in a tangle of limbs. Enough moonlight filtered down through the trees that he was able to make out my face and I was able to see the surprise and then the fury on his.

“You!” he shouted and punched me across the jaw.

I fell back the ground and reared back up, ready to throw down, but he was already up and crashing through the trees, making even more noise than I had been before. His wasn’t the only sound I heard though.

I didn’t know that snakes made noise when they slithered but I guess at that size anything will make noise. Underbrush and detritus crumpled with a loud shushing sound as the snake approached. I clenched my jaw to keep from screaming and rolled beneath a nearby shrub, willing myself to stay as quiet as possible and clutching the pixie close to my chest, covering her with my hands in case she decided to start glowing again.

The snake drew near in a whispered rush, bringing with it a dry smell like old paper and dust. My heart hammered in my chest, so loud that there was no way the snake couldn’t hear it. But then it passed by me, sweeping over the bush I was hiding beneath in pursuit of Dicario. I let out a sigh of relief and then choked on it as in the distance he started screaming.

I stayed where I was, paralyzed with fear. The giant snake had eaten two people and it was still out here. I could hear it making its way back toward the lodge, coming closer to me. It would pass by again, this time without any prey to distract it.

It came through the trees, this time at a far more languid pace. It almost appeared to be swimming through the forest, its golden eyes luminous in the dark. Up close I could see that the snake was not all black. In fact, it was probably mostly another color, but it was washed out in the starlight. It had dark markings over its not-quite-as-dark-dark body and two pale stripes running down its length on either side near the belly. I hadn’t spent a lot of time around snakes and had never seen anything quite like it before. Then again, I’d never seen a snake that had to be around fifty feet long, either.

I imagined that this was what surfers felt like when a great white swam past them at the beach. Only there was no getting out of the water with this thing. Hell, even assuming that I could climb a tree before it snatched me, all the thing had to do was raise itself up and pluck me from the branches. By the power of Greyskull, I hoped it was full after eating both Dicario and Bullet.

The snake slithered almost completely past me, its tail weaving through the foliage after its body.

Something moved against my lip, trickling down over my chin. I tasted blood. Dicario’s punch had split my lip open.

The snake stopped slithering. Far down its length it raised its head up into the air and flicked out a dark, forked tongue. I remembered reading somewhere that snakes scented their prey by tasting their air, which was why their tongues were always flicking in and out of their mouths. The head, guided by the flicking tongue, slowly turned to face me.

A litany of swearwords ran through my head and my hands tightened on the pixie, who beat her wings in protest. I’d forgotten she was there, and she glowered up at me, opening her mouth as if ready to give me an earful.

I cut her off. “I’m calling in a boon,” I hissed. “Pixie’s are supposed to be good at glamor and illusion shit, right? Hide me.”

“I just got my pixie dust back,” she protested.

“Dammit I am going to hold you right here with me and if that snake eats me it’s eating you too,” I snarled. “You owe me a boon now hide us!”

The pixie narrowed her eyes at me and then beat her wings furiously with a sound like bells caught in a windstorm. I was sure the snake would hear it and surge forward, but it never let up its languid pace. Purple pixie dust surrounded me in a familiar cloud and then vanished.

But I didn’t.

Shit!

I clenched my teeth and tried to will my heart to quit pounding against my chest. All I could do was stay quiet and hope that the snake didn’t think to look under my bush or lost the scent of my blood.

The snake drew to within a few feet and paused, tongue still flicking out to taste the air. It turned its head left and right, as if confused, and then began to shrink. A second later, Lilian She stood in front of me, scowling at my bush with her hands on her hips. Her tongue, no longer forked, flicked out to taste the air again, the gesture made all the more disconcerting by her now human appearance.

“Pixie magic,” she murmured and shook her head. “Those idiots.”

She turned and made her way back toward the burning lodge. In the distance I could hear a firetruck’s sirens blaring. Somehow, I knew though that she would be gone long before they arrived.

As soon as she was out of sight, I ran.

Chapter Ten

I didn’t get back to my house until the sun was up. At some point the pixie had slipped into my backpack and fallen asleep and I wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not. I trudged my way up the stairs to the front porch and the door swung open to reveal Scarlett wearing one of my old shirts and, from the quick look I got, nothing else.

The bruise on her face had faded and her split lip was almost completely healed up. I noted this about the same time as I noted the panic on her face.

“Where were you?” she demanded, throwing herself into me and wrapping her arms around my shoulders. “I woke up two hours ago and you were just gone.”

I patted her on the back, then figured screw it, and wrapped my arms around her in a warm embrace. The anger that had been bubbling off of her simmered down but didn’t entirely dissipate.

“Where have you been,” she demanded.

“I had some errands to run, come inside, I’ll show you.”

A few minutes later we were back in my room which definitely did not look like my room with the scorched bedsheets and broken mirror. Even the furniture hadn’t been replaced after I cast the spell to break my curse exactly where it had been, so it all stood just a little bit off. The place had never really been home, but it had never felt less like it before.

I sat down in the middle of the floor with the backpack and she joined me, sitting cross legged opposite it and eyeing the pack with undisguised curiosity.

“You can’t talk about any of the stuff that’s in here, alright?”

She nodded and I instinctively knew that she wouldn’t. Given her history I really shouldn’t have trusted her to keep anything a secret. But I did.

I upended the backpack and dumped the contents on the floor between us. Cash, jewelry, a few odds and ends, the naked pixie, and a freaking revolver that I hadn’t noticed before, spilled out onto the floor. How the hell had a gun gotten in there without my noticing? That was more than a little disconcerting. Almost as much as the realization that my favorite TA was a giant fucking snake that ate people.

The pixie hopped up, shook a tiny fist at me, and then zoomed out of the room.

Scarlett’s eyes went wide as she took it all in, bobbing her head up and down to look from me to the pile over and over before her eyes fixated on a single object. With a trembling hand she reached down and picked up a familiar silver necklace. Tears brimmed in her newly green eyes.

“You got this back,” she tore her eyes from the necklace to look me in the face. “For me?”

I nodded.

She brought a hand to her mouth and choked back a sob.

“There might be some odd questions over the next few days, some talk about something happening outside of town,” I told her. “You don’t know anything about it, got it?”

She nodded. “Got it.” She bit her lip. “But you’re going to tell me, right?”

I hadn’t planned on it to be honest, but I found myself nodding my head. “Yeah, I am.”

I told her everything, except the bit about the pixie using her body to jack me off. That was something that nobody needed to hear about. Ever. 

When I got to the part about the giant snake, Scarlett swore and made some comments about how disgusting that was. Apparently, she was not a fan of scaly critters. I told her that I knew who the snake actually was, and honestly debated sharing that information with her, but ultimately decided against it. I told her that she was probably safer not knowing, but that if it seemed she needed to know, I’d tell her. She reluctantly accepted this. In hindsight it was not one of my smarter decisions.

Finally, when I was done, she looked down at the money. “That’s a lot of cash. Do you know what you’re going to do with it all?”

“No idea yet,” I said. It was a lot, but not enough to live off of or pay for more than a light semester or two’s tuition. Still, more than I had now. I’d have to give it a proper count later after I’d gotten some rest. “I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

She grinned at me. “I’m sure you will.”

She got up and crawled into my laps. “Can you think of anything to do with me?”

I smirked at her as she wrapped her arms around me and pressed her naked sex against the tent forming in my jeans. “I can think of a few things. What are you willing to do for me?”

Her nipples poked out against her shirt and she gave a shuddering breath, eyes half closed. “Anything.”

I leaned in close, pressing my lips against her ear and whispered, “Go back to school.”

I pulled back, leaving her blinking in shock. “What?”

“Go back to high school and graduate,” I said. “I’m going to be here for a while, and you’ll be much better off with your degree than without.”

She stood up, eyes blazing with fury. “I’m half naked on you and you want to judge my life and—”

I cut her off. “Sit down.”

She sat down on the edge of my bed, mouth closed, her face a mix of shock and indignation.

“Did you forget that you are mine?” I asked her, rising to my feet. “Did you or did you not say that you would do anything for me?”

Trembling, she nodded her head. “I-I did. But I thought you meant—I don’t know, like sex type stuff.”

I felt my eyes flash and a grin spread across my face. I had no idea where this cocky attitude of mine was coming from, but I liked it.

“Oh, there will be plenty of sex-type-stuff,” I assured her. “But I don’t settle. If you want to be mine and stay mine, neither will you. You will find ways to better yourself. The better you make yourself, the better you can serve me.”

Serve me? Had I said that right?

The words though just about made her swoon, so I pressed on. “You’re going to become the best that you can be in all things, is that understood?”

Swallowing, she nodded again.

“Say it.”

“I understand.”

I grinned and surged forward to pin her to the bed. “Now, what was that about sex-type-things?”

# # # #

The next day I was back in Prof. Hardin’s class. I’d seriously debated whether or not to show up considering who all was going to be there. Honestly, I didn’t know who scared me more, professor who’d wanted to use me as a human guinea pig, the giant snake masquerading as his TA, or my best friend whose stepsister I was sleeping with.

In the end though I decided that I couldn’t back down from a challenge. How that made sense to me this week when I sure as hell knew that it wouldn’t have last week, I had no idea. But it did. So, I was back in my usual seat with my notebook and pens out, ready to take notes when Lilian and Prof. Hardin walked in.

I tried not to stare at Lilian as the professor droned on about some dead guy who thought that magic was life force or some shit. I tried not to wonder if he knew that she could turn into a giant snake. Or if anyone else in the room knew that she was a murderer who freaking ate people. I decided not. There’d be way more freaking out and this class would a hell of a lot more interesting.

Lilian seemed to notice my attention and gave me a curious look that quickly turned into a flirtatious smirk. Okay, that was scarier than anything else I’d experienced in the last few days. I returned my attention to Prof. Hardin, only to have it yanked away as the classroom door opened and a sheepish looking Soraya walked in.

“Sorry I’m late,” she faux-whispered, and made her way back to her usual seat beside me.

My heart soared. She was back!

“Hey,” I whispered as Prof. Hardin resumed his lecture.

“Hey,” she whispered back, and then we both had to pay attention as best we could.

Not that it did me any good because as the lecture came to a conclusion Prof. Hardin reminded us, “Turn in your papers on my desk on your way out.”

Everything he’d said over the last hour fled my brain. Paper. Oh, shit the paper! With everything that had been going on I’d completely forgotten about it. I froze, stock still in my seat as everyone else got up and made their way to the front of the classroom to turn in their work.

Soraya placed a hand on my arm. “Don’t worry.”

I turned to blink at her. How could I not worry about this? This was a damn big paper and if my grades slipped and my scholarship vanished at the same time, I might not be able to pick up school again in the fall.

“I printed it out like you asked me to,” Soraya said to me. “Sorry I was kind of late, you must have thought I’d forgotten.”

She reached into her backpack and pulled out two small stacks of paper, each stapled at the corner. I spotted my name on the top of one of them.

She’d written my paper for me.

I breathed a sigh of relief and accepted it from her before moving to the front of the room to turn it in with everyone else. Prof. Hardin gave me a scowl, like he knew I was cheating, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to prove it. Soraya wasn’t stupid enough to plagiarize something and was smart enough to write seven papers on any subject he gave us.

“You up for Happy Burger?” she asked as we walked out of the room.

“Absolutely,” I said, then thought of something. “I need to make a quick stop. Meet you there?”

A short while later I joined her at Happy Burger in our usual booth in the back. She stood up as I approached and pulled me into a hug. Oh, my dear and fluffy lord she felt good against me.

She sat down and before I could say anything she said, “Thank you.”

I stared at her, uncomprehending. “For what?”

Dammit, Caleb you idiot! She’s speaking with you again, don’t ask stupid questions and just accept it!

“For your talk with Scarlett,” she said. “I know I don’t have any right to be mad at you for getting a girlfriend, or whatever your relationship is with her. Not judging. It doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. Anyway, she had a talk with her mom yesterday and wants to finish high school. I know you had a talk with her about it. Thank you.”

I could only nod and hope that she never learned that her sister considered herself as belonging to me and that I had effectively ordered that she wrap up her education. No, no that was something that Soraya definitely never needed to learn about.

She fixed me with her dark eyes. “There’s some kind of magical connection between you two now, isn’t there?”

Dammit.

Slowly I nodded. “It’s kind of embarrassing.”

She smiled. Smiled. “I kind of figured. My guess is you either didn’t break your curse right or your curse was suppressing more than your magical affinities.”

That made sense. We spent the next few minutes discussing my affinities. Definitely fire, and I admitted while blushing, sex. She thought I might have one more, but we weren’t quite sure what it could be.

Eventually she asked, “What did you have to pick up, anyway?”

I grinned at her and opened my backpack. The pixie I’d rescued skipped out onto the table.

She’d been staying in my room ever since I’d rescued her though she’d never said why. Today I’d told her I was calling in my final boon and she’d all but leapt into the backpack to get it over with.

She looked around, made a face at the creepy smiling burger mascot, and then at Soraya before returning her attention to me. “You want to use your boon here?”

Soraya gasped. “You got a fae to owe you a boon? How?”

I grinned at her. “It’s kind of a long story.” I looked down at the pixie. “My friend is in need of a familiar. My boon is that you are to agree to a contract with her.”

Soraya gasped again and the pixie stomped her foot. “That is a very big boon!”

“I did you a really big favor,” I replied. “And you’ve been freeloading in my house. Don’t think I haven’t noticed those empty beer cans.”

The pixie beat her wings with a sound like bell chimes in a gust of wind.

“Caleb she’s perfect!” Soraya squealed.

The pixie spun around to take her in. “Yes. Yes I am.” She took a moment to consider Soraya and then said, “Very well. I shall be your familiar.”

“I’ll draw up the contract right away,” Soraya said. “Oh, Caleb thank you!”

She got up and I followed suit so that she could hug me. Damn her pillowy breasts felt good pressing into my body, even with several thick layers of clothing between us. 

“Of course,” the pixie said from the table. “You could instead use your boon to ask me what you are.”

Soraya and I both froze and pulled apart to look at the pixie who was smirking up at us. She casually picked a French fry up off my plate that was easily as long as she was tall and bit off the end off. I winced, remembering where that seemingly delicate mouth had been.

“I know what you are, Caleb Marshal. Instead of giving me to your friend to be bound, I could give you the answer. It might even explain why you had that curse put on you.”

I frowned down at her. The little bug had the absolute worst sense of timing.

“Take her up on it,” Soraya said. “That’s something that’s going to be hard to find out. And fae can’t lie. You should use your boon for this.”

Slowly I shook my head. “No, I’m using it to make her your familiar. You gave up your chance for those whatever they were the other night when you came over. Let me make this up to you.”

“You got Scarlett to go back to school,” she said.

“Yeah but that’s something for Scarlett. This is for my best friend.”

She grinned at me, and there may have been something a little sad in her eyes, but it vanished quickly beneath her enthusiasm. “Alright!”

If the bug knew what I was then chances are someone or something else would too. Hell, it might even be at the library. I’d lived my whole life with that curse over my head, what was another mystery to solve compared to that?

The Horned Mage’s adventures continue in Collateral Alpha!

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