Hallowed Circle

"Oh, I've got something I want to rub in all right." His pose faded and he reached down to give me a hand up, but somewhere in the stalks Erik gave a loud yelp. Joh

"Fucking spider bit me!" Erik shouted from somewhere in the field.

Joh

I slipped my hand into his and he easily had me back up on my feet.

With a devious smile, Joh

As he worked, I watched his face, remembering how swollen his eye had gotten after the encounter with Menessos. He'd earned it, lying to me by omission. But I couldn't forget his earnestness, his sincerity. Joh

And he wanted me. For all these months, he'd ke

So.

It seemed he'd been waiting for me. Hopelessly heart-challenged, relationship-disabled me.

Me.

Now we'd lived under the same roof for two weeks and although he made his desires clear every chance he got, he'd never forced the issue, never been overbearing or less than a gentleman, albeit a seductive gentleman with an unending talent for i

For a waere, sexual abstinence was ridiculous. Their libidos were stuck on hyperdrive—and he'd been denying himself, mastering himself. Or taking a lot of cold showers waiting for me to wake up.

Well, I had fully roused, and so had my yearning for physical satisfaction. Long ago, while in emotional pain, I dealt with a broken heart by convincing myself that my libido had overdosed on sleeping pills and would never get me into such hurtful trouble again. But my desires had awakened from the long coma and now seemed intent on making up for lost time. Problem was… had Joh

The rain-wet waves of his hair beckoned and my fingers strayed to those misplaced tendrils at his brow, caressing them away, lifting the cedar and sage scent of him to my nostrils. I wanted to touch so much more of him. Right now I yearned to—

No. He deserved my anger for the danger he'd put Nana and Beverley in!

I almost groaned aloud in frustration. For the last two weeks, that had been the biggest battle in my personal mental war about Joh

No one was harmed, my conscience reminded me. That was true—Nana was indignant about the whole thing and Beverley had spent her «hostage» time playing video games so she seemed no worse for the incident—but that wasn't the point. They could have been harmed, even killed, due to Joh

And I was also still waiting for him to explain to me how he'd managed an at-will partial transformation. He'd turned his hands to claws during his brief confrontation with Menessos. A waere just shouldn't be able to do that.

Under any other circumstances, it meant a waere had gotten close to a witch's spell energies and stirred up an incomplete transformation. Incompletes invariably lost their minds and never got them back. They remained stuck in a state between human and animal, crazed and vicious. Because of this, police officers were expected to shoot them on sight.

In addition to that un-waere-like talent, Joh

We'd been becoming more than "just friends" since saving the life of our friend Theodora, but when he pulled a fast switcheroo with the stake, I learned he was willful to the point of deceit if he thought it necessary. I couldn't fully trust him.

And furthermore, if he was deserving of trust and discovered I was still stained and would forever be controllable by Menessos, could he trust me?

The Wedjat tattoos sharpened as he squinted slightly, his focus intensifying. Surely he detected my pheromones. Desire. Anger. A scent cocktail that a waere would crave.

Our mutual sexual attraction was trying ardently to overwhelm rational thought. I clung to my shield—made of trust issues that should keep us divided and that fear in me that was unsure which part of me spawned this deep yearning—but my grip weakened more each day.

"Such a sad smile from my Lustrata," he whispered. He stood, hands sliding up my legs, hips, then under the fla

"I smell metal."

He smirked. "It's from the guitar strings."

"I never noticed it before."

The damn stain had amped my sense of smell too.

It was a vaguely familiar scent to me, now that he named it. I'd tried to learn to play on an acoustic guitar as a teen, and I'd picked up a dorm neighbor's electric one occasionally when the weather kept us all inside. I knew some chords; that was all.

Joh

Erik burst from the field at a run. When he saw us, he stopped, realized what he was interrupting, and said a quiet, "Oh. Uh. Sorry."

"Well?" Joh

"Whoever they were, they were fast. Practically flew outta here."

Flew? My spine stiffened.

Joh

"Nothing I could identify," Erik said. "You?"

Joh

"I'm going to increase the perimeter of my wards," I said.

"Good idea," Joh

I slipped away from them and started gathering my cut stalks.

"Just a spider bite," Erik answered.

"Aww," Joh

"That spider," Erik retorted, "was fucking mega-ginormous."

"Mega-ginormous?" I asked.

"Beyond giant and enormous," Erik replied.

"He drums and makes up his own words," Joh

Erik snickered. "It is a word."

"Right," we both said in response.

Defending himself, Erik said, "It is! I saw it on the Web."

Poking fun at him, I said, "If that spider was named Charlotte and she was writing on her web, I hope you didn't squash her."

"On the Internet," Erik clarified.

I turned to them with the stalks in one hand, the sickle in the other.

"Holy Hecate," Joh

"Huh?" Erik asked.

"Look at her!" Joh

I turned to look behind me.

"Not behind you— you," he said, laughing at me. "You look like Hecate with her sickle and stalks."

"Yeah, right, because Hecate is always depicted in plaid fla

"Of course," Erik said, still rubbing at the spider bite. "What do you think we're doing here?"

"Yeah," Joh

Though I'm a happy vegetarian, I know waeres need red meat. "I knew something was up with all that meat."