Blood Spells

“Holy shit.” Brandt stepped past her, trailing his hand across the small of her back as he moved onto the wide strip of soft limestone sand that separated the curving cave walls from the lagoon. He was staring up at the circle of sky. “I didn’t know there was a cenote at El Rey.”

“The door was hidden somehow. Maybe the sinkhole was too.” She came up beside him, looking not at the sky but at the swirling water.

The Maya—and the Nightkeepers living among them—would have sacrificed their most prized possessions into the cenote, imbuing the water with a power all its own. She stared into the dark pool, trying to sense the magic, which Hannah had described as a humming red-gold haze. She didn’t hear any hum, didn’t see any red-gold, but there was definitely something in the air.

The equinox was in full effect, the fireworks were building to their finale, and she was standing beside a man who fascinated her, compelled her, made her want. And, as he took her hand and twined their fingers together, she knew he felt the same—knew it deep down inside, the same way she wanted to believe that the two of them being there at that moment, together, wasn’t a coincidence.

He looked down at her, his eyes shining with the thrill of adventure and the heat that built between them. “It’s beautiful,” he said, his voice rasping on the words. “And so are you.”

The simple statement curled warmth through her as she reached for him and he reached for her.

They came together in unison for their first kiss, bodies flowing together naturally, aligning perfectly.

When their lips touched, the fireworks reached their finale, lighting the sky red and yellow, and making the earth tremble.

Heat flared through Patience; her center turned to liquid warmth, her muscles to pulsing need. Oh, yeah, she thought. Or maybe she said it; she wasn’t sure of anything beyond the feel of his body against hers, all hard muscles and a vibrant energy that called to something within her.

She heard a humming noise, though she couldn’t have said which one of them made the sound; it seemed almost to come from the air around them as it gathered and grew, seeming to circle them, going faster and faster.

What the hell? She grabbed on to Brandt, digging into his solid strength when the spinning buzz gained traction, becoming a vortex that sought to pull her away from him. She screamed and clung, but he was already gone. Then she was rushing, spinning, moving at incalculable rates of speed while somehow staying still.

Gray-green whipped past her, scraping off the layers of innocence and enthusiasm, and aging her six years in the space of a few seconds.

Not yet! Patience cried in her soul. They needed to know what happened next, how the two of them had gotten their marks when the barrier was sealed, the magic disabled. They needed to know about Brandt’s debt, and why the Triad magic had stalled. What was more, she wanted to know what their first time had felt like, what they’d told each other in the aftermath. Maybe remembering the past would help her figure out what the hell had gone wrong in the present.

She didn’t return to the vision, though. Instead, her body took shape around her with the tingle of neurons reawakening to the real world. But as it did, she realized that she had brought a piece of the vision world out with her: desire.

Heat raced through her veins, lighting her up, making her feel things she hadn’t felt in what seemed like forever. Excitement thrummed through her as the memory of her and Brandt’s first kiss morphed to the sizzle of a new one in the present. Her lips were locked to his, their blood, power, and heat mingling. Exultation flared as a shudder ran through his body and he awoke, a testosterone-laden Sleeping Beauty coming to life beneath her kiss.

Oh, thank you, gods. The etznab spell had worked.

Relief hammered through her, but before she could say anything, he deepened the kiss, going from participant to leader between one breath and the next. Flames danced behind her closed lids as his free arm came up to wrap around her, catching her in a hard embrace that lit her senses with urgent desire.

His taste was fresh and new once again, his touch wildly exciting as he dragged his hand down her body to the place where the hem of her long-sleeve tee had ridden up to bare the skin above her jeans, which were soft with wear and rode low on her waist. His big hand closed on her hip, his fingers digging in with the inciting pressure of a rough caress that was echoed in his ragged groan.

Her excitement flared higher at the sound. It had been rare for him to ease up on his vicious self-

control, rare for her to be able to push him past that point. If he was teetering now, it meant that she wasn’t alone in being caught partway between then and now, riding a wave of relief and sex magic.

She didn’t delude herself by pretending that the magic wasn’t part of what was happening between them. But at the same time, she couldn’t make herself care. She wanted sex. With him. Now.

When oxygen ran low, they ended the kiss and drew apart, both breathing hard and fast. She opened her eyes to find him staring at her with a hint of the wonder that was rocketing through her, along with the sense of “there you are.” It felt like they had been looking for each other for months now, years.

She knew the intensity was an illusion of the sex magic, making the joining seem like so much more than it would otherwise, but she didn’t care. She wanted to lose herself in the moment and forget about all the rest. Most of all, she wanted to hold on to the warm glow of love and desire that lit his expression right now.

But even as she watched, the glow dimmed. “The Triad spell didn’t work,” he said in a low rasp.

“We know. The nahwal warned us.” She braced for his withdrawal, the return to business-first Brandt.

Instead, he reached up and brushed his knuckles across her cheek as he had done that night. Until she saw the wetness, she hadn’t realized there were tears.

“The vision . . . ,” he began, then trailed off. Something shifted in his eyes; they heated with molten gold, turning to those of his younger self. “I saw you in town that day. You were coming out of some bar with your friends, but I didn’t see them. I only saw you. I froze for a second, and it was too long—

you were gone. I spent the rest of the day searching—hotels, bars, whatever. By the time it got dark, I was pr—hoping to hell you’d be on the beach for the fireworks . . . and that you would feel what I was feeling.”

Oh, Brandt. New tears stung the corners of her eyes, but she willed them back. “I felt it too. It felt like this.” Knowing she was probably making a mistake, that this was going to hurt when things went wrong again, she leaned in and locked her lips to his.

She didn’t care. She wanted this, wanted him.

He kissed her back, openmouthed, in a blatantly carnal demand that she met and matched, her body vibrating with need and arousal. Heat slapped through her alongside wonder when she found that although it was morning and they were in their bedroom, the moment she closed her eyes, she was right back in the night-dark cave, being held in the arms of a stranger while fireworks lit the sky.

She kissed the stranger who was her husband, not letting herself think of yesterday or tomorrow, of marriage or magic. The only thing that mattered was that moment and the things they were making each other feel. She didn’t care that the feelings were coming from the mirror spell or a backlash of the magic she’d poured into their mated bond to bring him back. She cared only that he was alive, that they had recovered a piece of their shared past . . . and that it was a memory worth holding on to.

Although she didn’t know how their first kiss had ended, she imagined how it had gone from there, putting herself into the fantasy.

When Brandt reversed them in a smooth, powerful move, so he was above her, pressing into her, the yielding mattress at her back became the soft limestone sand at the edge of the subterranean pool.

When she dragged his T-shirt up and off, so she could stroke the hard-edged leanness of his chest and abs, following the feathery line of coarse, wiry hair from the wings of his collarbones to the yielding elastic of his bike shorts, the long, masculine groan she elicited from him echoed off water and stone.

And when they wrestled the remainder of their clothes off and shoved aside the bedding, leaving them twined together, fully naked and exposed, the excitement of skin on skin came with a hint of the forbidden when