Page 50 of A Touch Charmed

Audrey clung harder to Wes. “It’s him.”

“I know, baby. We’ll handle it.”

My head whipped in their direction. “You know him?”

Wes kept his voice steady and his eyes on the man. “The two of us have been seeing him in dreams for weeks. We thought he was Ophiuchus.”

“He’s not.” My magic rose through my sternum again, urging me to look deeper and find the truth, but I couldn’t quite get there. “I don’t know who he is, but I think he created the curse.”

“What?” Audrey’s voice had gone thin and reedy with shock.

My magic pounded my ribs and swooped in my stomach. I raised my chin and stared into the depths of those soulless eyes. “I don’t think the curse was created by a god at all, but a man who wished he could be one.”

The forked-tongue man opened his mouth, releasing a swarm of walnut-sized wasps. They launched from his lips, then peeled away from his head. As more wasps formed, bits of him began to disintegrate. Until there was nothing but a smoking pit in the shale where he’d stood. Ice fired out of Wes and Audrey’s palms as they encased the swarm before it could reach us. One by one, the wasps shattered on the rocky shoreline.

“What’s next?” Wes asked.

“I’m not sure.” I scanned the beach, but nothing stood out beyond the frozen shards that released wisps of black smoke as they melted. The curse had already hit us with the snake, the arrows, and the wasps all in one go. It surprised me that it had anything left.

The sky rumbled, followed by more crackling leaves. Dark clouds hovered overhead. The moon and stars disappeared, swallowed into the murky abyss. Black rain fell from the sky, scalding my skin, melting it off my bones. Wes and Audrey threw up a net of ice and lightning. It shielded us from the acid downpour as I healed everyone’s injuries.

“What are we supposed to do now?” Finn asked.

“Wait for it to burn itself out.” Wes gritted his teeth, the strain of holding up the net took a toll on his energy reserves. “It shouldn’t be able to keep this up for long.”

Wes wouldn’t be able to keep it up for much longer either. Audrey had paled and a bead of sweat rolled down her temple. It cost them more than they had to give to hold me and Finn under the protective netting as well. My gaze darted between the Finn and the dark clouds that didn’t appear to be waning. We needed more magic, more power on our side.

I grabbed Finn’s face. “Kiss me.”

“Now?” Even in the heat of battle, it warmed my toes to see the temptation in his eyes.

“Yes. Remember what happened to your garden?”

Understanding lit his features. He gave me the kind of smile that sent a rush of heat through me. “Let me just state for the record that I fucking love how this magic works.”

He gripped me around the waist, pulling me against him. His sawdust and spice scent surrounded me as his lips crashed against mine. Our tongues tangled together as he dipped me, still holding my body close to his. A soft moan escaped my lips and he took the kiss deeper.

“Really you two?” Wes let out a grunt of disgust. “Now?”

As Finn continued to kiss me, clear and pearlescent light flowed out of our palms. It wrapped together and shot into the sky, parting the black clouds and stopping the rain. Our light burned hot and bright enough to compete with the stars and left a twinkling afterglow in the air as it dried the acid and turned the curse to vapor.

Wes and Audrey dropped the net, panting as they leaned against each other, fully spent. Finn pulled back, his blue eyes sparkling like sapphires. How had I gone so long without seeing that look in his eyes? How could I have forgotten that kissing Finn had always had the power to beat back the dark? I pressed a hand over his heart just to feel it beat against my palm.

We glanced warily at each other, but the curse wasn’t finished with us yet.

Sulfur tinged the air. The tempo of the crackling leaves increased, heralding the next attack. It had already pulled out all the weapons we knew about and one we didn’t. Whatever it threw at us next had to be worse than our wildest nightmares.

“Everyone get on the ground,” I yelled.

The crackling stopped and a large beast, definitely not from this world, swooped out of the sky. Its greasy black wings looked as if they’d been constructed from hardened motor oil. Iron spikes coated its head and arms. The body was shriveled and gray. A half-decayed carcass with wings and six-inch nails. Where the legs should’ve been, twin black snakes writhed against the air. They snapped at the air, prepared to bite the first thing they landed on.

It dove for us, stabbing its claws into Audrey’s back. The creature’s snake legs sank their fangs into Wes. Panic filled his eyes. His frame vibrated as he clung to Audrey, tethering her to the ground, but his hands seized up. The poison had already begun to paralyze him.

Finn moved in a blur, ripping the wings off the monster and the heads off the snakes. I scrambled to grab Audrey as Wes lost his hold. My hand brushed the gray and withered wrist of the beast. As it dropped her, she blasted it with ice followed by a thick bolt of lightning. It shattered, taking the scent of hellfire with it.

I lifted Wes’s arm and drew the poison into my mouth. Just like it had been with Finn, the healing process was horrific. Melting organs, blood blisters, heart stopping. All the classics.

The moment his eyes fluttered open, he scrambled to his feet and kneeled beside Audrey, where she lay on her stomach in the sand, her eyes glassy with pain. Her entire back had deep and jagged gouge marks, as if she’d backed into a chainsaw. Blood pooled around her sides. Wes tried to clean her wounds with his rain. His hands remained steady, but his face… I’d never be able to get his look of pure terror out of my mind.

---