The Witch and the Dragon Ch. 21

"Good girl," he whispered brushing his lips over hers. He tossed her veiled skirt over one shoulder and slipped her thong over his wrist just before swinging her up into his arms. "We'll hang these close to the fire to dry."

He strode back to where the others were gathered. Seth was scooping out soil for the fire pit and the girls gathered kindling.

Zak set Alluna upon a smooth stone near where the fire was to be built.

"Shouldn't I help?" she asked gazing up at him from beneath her long dark lashes.

Zak preferred to have her sit still where he could keep an eye on her and know she was safe...but...

"Do you want to help?"

"Of course," she clutched her fingers together. "I'd like to be useful too."

Zak smiled, letting his eyes trail down her ripe little curves, all bare and golden brown. He knelt in front of her, grasping her hands to bring them to his lips. "Promise me you'll stay near the girls."

Her lips quirked in a small smile, her amber eyes going over his face, his hair. "I promise," she whispered.

He didn't want to walk away from her, but she was hungry, and he needed to help Remi catch something for them for dinner.

He gave her one last kiss over her knuckles, loving the way she drew in her breath before letting it out in a dreamy sigh.

Zak stood, his grin growing broader at her obvious attraction to him. Her eyes lowered taking in every inch of his body. Squaring his shoulders, he walked back to the edge of the river, shaking his long, wet hair so that it brushed his ass. When he peeked back at her over his shoulder, she was licking her lips wide-eyed. Zak bit the insides of his cheeks to keep from laughing. She was so precious.

Several hours later, they sat around the fire. Zak had pulled Alluna to sit between his legs, with her back resting against his chest. She'd fed from his fingers and he could see her trying not to nod off into sleep. He leaned back and coaxed her to curl up against his chest. After a few minutes, he felt her body go lax and her breathing deep and even.

He looked up in time to see Lucien and Eriel come through the trees. A small waif-like girl clung to Lucien and the bastard looked extremely pleased with himself.

"What gives?" Remi asked before Zak could utter a word.

Eriel plopped down between Seth and Zak. "We found her in a tower room."

Zak's eyes narrowed when Lucien sat close to Eriel. He pulled the girl into his lap and she snuggled like a shivering frightened pup. Lucien's red devil's wings opened slightly to cocoon around them a bit. His fingers caressed the girl's raven hair. Her eyes were huge and bluish green. She looked like a little doll.

"Lucien," Zak began.

Lucien's arms circled the small female and he lifted his pale eyes to glare at Zak.

"She's mine," he whispered.

"You're out of your fucking mind," Zak hissed.

Lucien's arms tightened around the girl. She burrowed closer regardless, hiding her face against Lucien's chest.

"So you're planning on taking her back to hell?" Remi spat.

Lucien shook his head. "I escaped."

"They'll find you, Luke," Seth said now. "They'll drag you back."

Lucien swallowed, his shoulders hunched over the girl he held. Zak's heart squeezed a bit at the terror he saw in the man's eyes.

"If I stay close to Erie they wouldn't dare bother me."

Eriel grinned.

Remi scoffed. "So you plan on forming a threesome with the reaper?"

Lucien looked at Eriel, who'd turned to bat his lashes at him. Lucien frowned. "She's for me only."

"What about you?" Eriel chuckled waggling his brows.

Lucien went pale and leaned back from the reaper. "If you touch me I'll..."

Eriel's brow rose. "You'll what? Kill me? Then who'll keep the demons at bay?"

"He can come back home," Anniel blurted. "We have an entire level of reapers onboard."

"That's right," Rowie added with an excited grin. "He can stay with them. They'll protect Luke."

Zak watched the girls move over to their ex-second in command. He still couldn't bring himself to trust him so easily.

"You have to renounce the demon sword," Remi said.

Lucien frowned at him. "Renounce."

Remi's brows drew closer together in a scowl. "You're fallen. You belong to them. You have to renounce Lucifer's sword and take your divine sword."

Lucien barked out a scornful laugh. "Divine sword? Right." His voice dripped with sarcasm.

"Why not?" Zak questioned.

Lucien's eyes narrowed. "Because my fucking Dominatio never lifted a finger to help me all the years of..." Lucien closed his eyes with a shudder. When he opened his eyes again, they looked icier than ever. "Never."

"But, Luke," Anniel argued, "Remi's right. You have to walk in the path of light. You should be an archangel—"

Lucien turned his head into the girl's hair. "It's too late for all that. I just want to be left the fuck alone, by God and Lucifer."

Zak shook his head regretfully. "You have to pick—"

"I pick me," Lucien snapped, his devil's fangs glinting in the firelight. The glow in his eyes intensified. "I serve myself."

Zak pressed his lips together. Things would not end well with Lucien. And now, he was selfishly dragging an innocent with him.

***

"Alluna. Alluna, wake up."

Alluna stirred from sleep, roused by mama's stern voice. Blinking her eyes open, she found herself lying upon a mound of dirty rags in the dungeon.

"Oh," she gasped rising to her knees and sweeping her dark hair from her face. "Oh, no. Not again."

Mama was dressed in her ceremonial robes with her hair swept up in her usual elaborate coif that included twigs and colorful leaves. Mama's lips were twisted in contempt.

"You're friends are proving to be more problematic than I'd bargained for. This time I used a stronger spell." Mama suddenly grinned. "At least they helped lead me to the completion of my ritual items. I have my dragons, vampires, werecreatures and the dark prince himself. Now follow me so that we can finish this. I'm most anxious to take my place as ruler of this planet."

"Ruler? But my father is—"

"Is going to be my consort," mama said over her shoulder.

Alluna rose and quickly followed mama out into the long corridor that lead down into the sacrificial chamber. "But the king is hand fasted to..."

"Queen Lucresh? She has gone away with my brother, Dresh."

Shock rolled through Alluna.

"It's a long story," mama sighed. "I've always wanted King Lumar, so I devised a love potion to give him, but that stupid Fae princess from the northern continent came for a visit after my potion was delivered to the king. Thinking it was wine he shared it with her and well..." mama rolled her eyes and motioned to Alluna. "You were conceived. Everything turned into a mess after that. I had to erase the princess's memory of the king and of having given birth to you, and then the stupid king made an alliance with the eastern regions and hand fasted to the object of my brother's desire. It's all so unfair, you know."

"But I don't understand why you would subject all of creation to devastation by bringing out the angel of destruction's other. What does one thing have to do with the other?"

Mama grinned over her shoulder again as Alluna continued to follow her. "I made a pact with a devil to aid in the release of the dark god, Lucifer. In return, I get the man I desire as well as the crown to rule absolute over this planet. I have so many people to punish for having ridiculed and hated me."

Mama's voice had gone deep at the end of that sentence. Alluna's eyes narrowed on mama. Tall, broad-shouldered and narrow hipped. Mama had no breasts. Alluna reached out and sung her to face her.

She was not female like Alluna was female.

Mama's eyes narrowed coldly.

"You always ridiculed my body... my curves..."

"What of it?"

"You're not really a woman are you?"

Her ears rang and spots danced before her eyes from the stinging slap mama gave her. Her arms were gripped tightly, bringing tears to her eyes. "I'm a special woman, you little shit," mama hissed a hairsbreadth from her face. "I was forsaken at birth, cursed, with a man's body. But I am a woman at heart. Now, If you don't want me to carve up your very pretty friends, I suggest you come and help me with the summoning ritual."

Alluna choked back a sob. She didn't want mama to hurt Zak or the others. She had no choice but to help the evil sorceress do her dirty deed.

***

It was that fucking nightmare again. Zak shook his head with an angry snarl. It felt as if he'd had too much to drink and his senses were boggled. Blinking, he tried to focus on what was around him even as he tugged sluggishly at the heavy chains binding his wrists and ankles to a cold stone column.

Images swam before his eyes, a watery version of the god-forsaken dungeon they'd all escaped from the night before. Alluna stood in the center of the circle with Lucien by her side.

To Zak growing horror, Luke did not look at all normal. His eyes were completely white, no icy-blue irises visible, and those sightless orbs stared straight ahead at nothing in particular... like there was no one at home in that blond head.

Dark fluid rained down in delicate little patters from the ceiling. Raising his eyes, Zak stared horrified at the sight of Eriel nailed to an upside down cross, his blood pattering down upon the altar in front of Alluna and Lucien. The pitiful girl that had been clinging to Lucien the night before, lay upon the altar, naked, her wrists and ankles bound. Eriel's blood ran in rivulets across her little breasts and belly.

Zak tried to scream when Lucien lifted his demon sword. Alluna closed her eyes and chanted in a low voice, holding her hands out, pointing to both mirrors to either side of the altar.

Lucien's body seemed to convulse a moment, his hands shaking with the sword pointed down over the girl's heart. He blinked and his eyes began to appear in all that white blankness.

"No... please don't make me... do this," he begged with a whisper.

Alluna's evil mama stepped close to the edge of the protective circle, hands raised. "I command you to fulfill your take, slave. The blood of Satan compels you."

Power flowed from clawed fingers into Lucien, and Zak saw what little humanity remained vanish.

Lucien's wings spread wide, their color the deepest crimson like Remi's hair. The demon sword descended, the gleaming tip sinking into the girl's chest to slam into the stone beneath her. Blood spurted, bathing the blade in crimson. Virgin's blood.

Alluna cupped her hands around the blade, where it entered the girl's body. Light emanated from the wound and Lucien slowly drew the blade out. He stepped back and Alluna seemed to gather power from the bleeding wound.

"Alluna, no," Zak muttered.

To either side of him, Remi and Seth were rousing also, but shadows were creeping closer, distorting reality around them. Zak saw the presence of thousands of devils in those shadows.

Alluna lifted her hands, a ball of light in her palms. Her eyes glowed like golden hellfire and some unseen wind had her hair blowing back from her face. Had he not loved her so much, he'd be scared shitless right about now. But this was his sweet Luna, not some evil crazed witch about to unleash Satan upon the universe. At least that's what he hoped. Besides this was just a bad dream, right?

Zak—Devon's voice whispered through his mind. What's going on? I feel so much evil around all of you.

Remi cursed and yanked at his chains. "R-Rowie?"

She was almost directly across from them, her head still bowed down, unconscious. Remi gave an inhuman roar and began struggling harder in his restraints. Blue-white fire began licking up his body the way it usually did was he was going ballistic.

"Remi-Remi-no," Seth exclaimed with a slurred voice from Zak's left side. "You'll kill us all. Don't shift."

Zak blinked harder and panted, adrenaline kicking in. God, this was no dream. This was real. Devon, help us.

But even as those words echoed out to his commander, Alluna's hands pointed back to the mirrors.

He saw them clearly now. Two Davariels. His jet wings beat against a blast of wind in each mirror. His hair billowed out behind him and he seemed to have a female clinging to his waist, fighting to hold on. Davariel opened his mouth and cried out from the effort, his fingers reaching out trying to touch the glass. Both mirrors revealed the same thing. One was the real Davariel, the other was his evil other.

The glass began to crack.

"Alluna hold the portals while the dark prince opens the portal of the realm of reflections with the anointed demon sword," the sorceress ordered.

"Alluna, no," Zak shouted with more force.

Power bloomed brighter from Alluna's hands and entered both mirrors. The force of power caused the female clinging to Davariel's waist to slip. Davariel's legs curled up to hold her, but the movement caused him to lose momentum and he spiraled away, vanishing into the mists as his heart-rending cry of anguish echoed through the dungeon.

The horde of devils pouring into the dungeon screeched in outrage. The sorceress was swallowed up by the wave of devils. Zak saw pieces of body parts flying around outside the circle of protection. They scratched and hissed around Alluna's bubble of protection, but she had already grown weak from overusing her powers to breach the mirrored portals and it finally collapsed. The circle was broken.

Zak fell face first onto the dungeon floor as the sound of swords clashed all around. By the time he made it to his feet, the air around him was waving as if caught in a ball of fire, and most of the devils were crumbling into dust. Devon had opened a portal and had come through with fifty reapers.

Rushing toward Alluna, who was trying to beat back a handful of devils attempting to drag the wounded girl off, he saw Devon, Seth and Remi hacking at the ones trying to drag Lucien into a glowing crevice in the floor.

Alluna's hand shot up, a spark flashing from her fingertips. Zak jumped back in time before his head was bashed in when the wooden cross holding Eriel crashed upon the altar. Again, the air distorted and the devils trying to yank the girl away dissolved into ash. Eriel's eyes were black. Weak from blood loss and nailed to a cross, he was still powerful enough to kill the devils once close to them.

"Lucien."

Devon's anguished cry rang out in the now silent dungeon.

Zak pulled Alluna's shivering body against him and looked back.

Devon kneeled on the ground, his nails scraping against the crack where the glowing crevice had been. It was closed now... and Lucien was gone... again.

***

The past could not be undone, but the spell used to erase the Fae princess' memory of King Lumar and Alluna was removed by Devon. Alluna met the woman who'd given her life, a pretty, blonde haired faerie, with big violet eyes. Princess Aona was shy and soft spoken. It was her sweet request that kept King Lumar from making good on his word to sentence the father of Alluna's babes to death.

Zak faced her father and confessed his love for Alluna and his intention to keep her as his permanent mate.

With his blessing and after having extracted a promise from Zak to bring Alluna back for frequent visits, the king allowed them to go on their way.

Now, Alluna cuddled upon Zak's lap in the warmth of their star cruiser

"Where'd Dev go?" Anniel asked.

"L-O-S. He's petitioning for new Master Guardians for Arboria," Zak answered.

"The old ones are in deep shit," Remi added.

Seth nodded. "They all knew what was going on and did nothing to stop it or their crazy Master Guardian brother."

Alluna suddenly sat up straighter in Zak's lap. "Rayne. What happened to my Rayne doll?"

Zak frowned at her. "Doll?"

"Well, I guess she wasn't really a doll, but the girl mama used for the sacrifice? We should bring her with us."

Zak shook his head, his hand coming up to cup her cheek. "I'm sorry, Luna, but she disappeared. We brought her into your father's kingdom, but she took off on her own."

Alluna bit her lip. "I hope she's okay. I don't know where mama stole her from."

Zak took a deep breath. "You really shouldn't call that evil thing mama anymore. Aona is your real mother."

Alluna bowed her head. "I know. It's just habit, I guess."

"Remuel and Zakreel are on their way to Vildminoria with Drakken. They'll be there a few months and then Devon's taking them in." Seth commented.

Alluna looked back at the Alpha Angels in the cruiser's cockpit. "What happened to the mirrors in the dungeon room?"

"We destroyed them," Zak answered.

Alluna chewed her lower lip. "What will happen to Devon's father?"

Zak shrugged. "No one knows, but life would not be easy for him if he were to come back."

"He can't come back. The prophecy clearly states—"

"But what if the prophecy is wrong?" Rowie interrupted her mate.

"Or what if the blond, black-winged angel isn't Davariel this time around?" Anniel added.

No one spoke.

Alluna snuggled against Zak again, remembering the tears and cries of pain and anguish from the angel she'd seen in the mirror. His face was identical to Devon's, but his eyes... Davariel's irises were bigger, his hair a wealth of gold flowing down his back between jet wings. His beauty had almost overwhelmed Alluna. It was perhaps what had saved them all. It made Alluna react and instead of killing him, she sent a pulse strong enough to push him away from the portal entrance. Time ran differently in the Realm of Shadows. It might take him a few more siglons to be able to make it that close to the mouth of the portal again.

But he would eventually find his way again. She'd seen the blind determination in his electric blue eyes.

***

He really had wanted to let her have her own room. He really did. But when he told her he'd let her have his room and he'd be bunking in with Seth, she'd broken down in tears, literally sobbed, falling to her knees clinging to his legs and begging him not to leave her again.

Alluna hiccupped in her sleep, as if still remembering him almost walking away to sleep elsewhere.

Remi had scowled at him while Rowie tried her best to soothe the hysterical girl.

When smoke began billowing from Rem's nostrils, Zak had rolled his eyes and scooped Luna up into his arms and strode into the room. He placed her down on the bed and then curled his body around her, promising her he'd stay.

"I won't leave you, Luna. You're mine."

So he tried, but his heart wasn't made of stone. She wanted him and he wanted her. She carried his babes in her belly, they belonged together now no matter how unorthodox their coming together. There was no more spell no charms nor potions between them but real emotion and bonding. Alluna needed him and he needed to be needed.

***

Alluna woke with a start. She began to sit up, but a heavily muscled arm had her pinned against an equally muscled torso. Zak snored softly behind her.

Why had he tried to leave her the sleep cycle before? Did he no longer want her? Was his love for her the product of the spell she'd unwittingly cast upon him the very first time they'd met?

Alluna slipped out from under the warmth of his hold and paced back and forth at the foot of the round bed.

How could she win Zak's heart? What should she do to capture and hold his love? She glanced down at his sleeping form.

He wore a pair of white drawstring pants that were loose and low enough to show the dimples over each cheek of his rear. His thighs were thick as well as his claves and his ginormous feet were beautifully arched. He'd unbound his hair and it spilled gloriously over the edge of the bed in molten waves.