Nadya/Nadia Ch. 07

"You're all like me," Nadia said in amazement.

The five women smiled, and the one she guessed was Ember held out her hand. "Come on," she said. "We'll bring you to our home, and explain what you are, and you can decide what you want to do. You'll be safe there. There's a lot of magic around this place. I don't feel mages, but we need to leave."

Nadia reached out and placed her hand in Ember's, and the group of women disappeared.

The women reappeared in a large bedroom, where three more silver eyed women with straight black hair, also barefoot and wearing the skimpy white dresses, were waiting for them.

Nadia stared. "How many of you are there?"

"You make nine," one of the women said. "I'm Selene. I'm the ancoră for this sabat. You're Nadya, correct? Ember told us a little about you."

"I'm not Nadya, I'm Nadia," Nadia said. "I had to get us out of there because she wasn't strong enough."

"Is there another woman where you were?" Ember asked. "Do we need to go back?"

"I don't think we can," Myth said. "I can't remember where we were."

"We were just there," Ember said.

"What do you remember about it?"

Ember frowned. "Nothing."

"None of us sensed mages, who else could make us forget?" Musette asked.

"Do you know where we were?" Raven asked.

"No," Nadia replied. "I can remember being in a house, and talking to someone. But I don't know where I was. How did you find me?"

"You were so upset the night we met I was worried when I didn't hear from you, so we went to your apartment. We could sense your magic and searched for you with it. It led us to you, but not to where you were, if that makes sense."

"Why were you at that house?"

"There was a man, he said he was trying to help me figure out what I am and what to do about her, I think. He said I was in danger from mages and vampires and shifters and he would keep me safe."

"But who was he? Who is 'her'?"

"I don't know who he was. It's strange, I can remember conversations we had, but not the sound of his voice, what he looked like, or anything about him. 'Her' is Nadya. This is going to sound crazy, but there are two of us in here." She waved a hand up and down her body. She explained how she'd always been trapped but had recently become stronger and been able to change her appearance and emerge to take over their shared body. "Can you tell me what kind of witch we are?"

"Well," Selene said slowly, "I don't know what the other one of you is if she's not like you, but your silver eyes and black hair are a dead giveaway. You, child, are strygoi."

"Strygoi," Nadia said, rolling the word around in her mouth as if she could taste it. Finally, an answer. "What's a strygoi?"

"Strygoi are the most powerful kind of witch."

"He said I was strong," Nadia said.

"Who?" Selene asked.

A flash of green eyes went through her mind, but she couldn't remember his name. "The man that was trying to help us," she said slowly. "Can you tell me more about the strygoi?"

Selene nodded. "Most witches typically favor earth, air, fire, or water elements in their craft, and rely on using incantations and all manner of ingredients in their spell casting and channeling. We need no spell components and we're not limited to use a single kind of magic. We can do almost anything just by thinking about it."

"So our kind of magic is what? Purer somehow?"

"No, not purer, we use the same kind of magic," Selene thought a moment. "You could say we use it in a more raw form."

"How does that make us stronger than other witches?"

"Think of witches as different kinds of electricity," Bijou said. "The power a weak witch channels is like the spark you could get out of a battery. Stronger witches channel power that could run all the gadgets and appliances in house."

"So a strygoi channels what? 220 volts rather than 110?"

"No, child," Selene said. "If you want to continue the electricity analogy, compared to other witches a strygoi channels storms of lightning. The more you're around us the more your magic will wake. You'll find it easier to do things and you'll just know things."

"Just like riding an incubus," Nadia muttered.

"What did you say?" Selene asked.

"Sorry," Nadia apologized. "I don't know why I said that."

"Don't apologize," Selene said. "Every girl should get to ride an incubus at least once."

Nadia gaped.

"Don't look so shocked. We are strygoi. We are at our strongest when our emotions are running high, the more primal the better, and there's nothing more primal than sex with an incubus."

"You, Selene? You had an incubus?"

"Mmmhmmm." Selene's eyes went distant as she remembered pleasures from her past.

"Damn," Raven said. "As long as I'm making Alaric suffer maybe I should try an incubus."

Selene didn't answer, lost in her memories.

I'm starting to feel jealous," Viktoria said.

"I totally want an incubus now," Myth said.

"Selene!" Ember shouted.

With a great effort Selene returned to the present. "What?"

"Just the look on your face was making us think all our men are inferior," Bijou said.

"They are, child. Vampires can be trained, but an incubus...well, let's just say there's nothing like what an incubus can do." Selene shook herself out of her memories completely and looked at Nadia. "I used to know someone that said 'Just like riding an incubus' but it isn't a common phrase. I just wondered how you knew it. Do you know an incubus?"

"Were you shacking up with an incubus the whole time I was worried about you?" Ember teased.

"No? I don't know," Nadia said, frowning. "I remember being at the house, and learning about magic, but I don't remember an incubus." She frowned. 'I don't remember anyone else there even though I know someone was."

"Then you likely at least saw an incubus," Selene said. "Did he mark you?"

"Mark me?"Nadia frowned. "What do you mean?"

"An incubus knows you're going to forget about him, so sometimes they leave a mark as a reminder. It'll look like a bruise, it will take a long time to fade, and you'll likely wonder how you got it or write it off as you bumped into something and don't remember. But if the incubus really liked you he can leave a little of his magic in the mark, and if you touch it, well, let's see if he marked you first. No point in getting your hopes up. I don't see anything on your neck."

"Oh, he wouldn't have touched my neck," Nadia said.

"Why not?"

"Because of something a vampire did to me. Her. A vampire hurt Nadya."

The women exchanged looks that Nadia couldn't decipher.

"Did you mark him?" Selene asked, before Nadia could ask about what their looks meant.

"How would I have done that? Bitten him?"

"No, you would have had to give him a little bit of your magic. He couldn't ask you for it, you would have had to offer it freely."

"What difference does that make?"

"It's a subtle difference, but basically it's like asking someone to do something for you and someone just doing it. It has more meaning if you don't have to ask."

"I don't think I did that."

Ember stood and tugged on the sleeve of Nadia's jacket, saying, "Come on, off with your jacket. I want to see if he marked you."

"What if he marked someplace personal?" Nadia protested.

The strygoi laughed.

"There's no such thing as a shy strygoi," Leilani said. "We only wear these dresses to appease our men. They don't like it when we're naked around other people."

I'd rather be naked. Nadia had a brief flash of memory of herself spitting the words at someone. She shrugged. She was comfortable in her own skin. She removed her jacket and sat down to remove her hiking boots. She set each one carefully to the side.

Musette let out a wolf whistle and laughed when Nadia looked up at her. "Just some encouragement," she said with a cheeky grin.

Nadia found herself grinning back and stood. She turned her back to Musette and looked over her shoulder at her, then gave her a wink and slowly bent forward at the waist. Bent over, she shook her ass at Musette for a moment, then lifted one foot and tugged her sock off. She straightened and twirled the sock in the air, spun, and threw the sock into Musette's face.

"You're going to be trouble. You're definitely one of us," Musette laughed. She reached into a pocket that shouldn't be possible in her skimpy scrap of a dress and came out with a crumpled green bill that she tossed at Nadia.

"Hey, that's a nice sock," Viktoria said. "It's worth way more than a dollar."

"That was a twenty! I expect the other sock, too," Musette retorted.

They laughed and just to make Musette wait for her other sock Nadia pulled a glove off and tossed it at Viktoria. She crossed her arms and waited.

Viktoria laughed, obligingly reached into a not-possible-pocket, and threw a green bill at her.

Nadia whooped and scooped it off the floor. "These are the only clothes I have. I need to fund buying a new wardrobe." She pulled the first layer of her shirts off over her head and flung it at Leilani. Her jeans came off next, and she tossed them at Ember. Her next shirt went to Raven, and her leggings to Myth. Bijou got her tank top, and Selene her second glove. She stood in her bra and panties and one sock amid a shower of cash, but her skin was unmarked.

"Sorry to disappoint you ladies," she said, pulling off her other sock and spinning it through the air at Musette. "But it doesn't look like —"

"He marked your foot!" Ember exclaimed. Everyone crowded around and looked at Nadia's foot, where a mark that looked like a bruise showed darkly against her pale skin.

"That doesn't seem very erotic," Raven said. "I was expecting more from an incubus."

Selene was frowning. "Not to be indelicate, but that's not the first place an incubus would choose to mark. Maybe you shouldn't touch—"

Her warning came too late as Ember prodded the mark on Nadia's foot with a finger at the same time Nadia did. A spiraling pattern of more marks became visible and made their way up Nadia's leg, around her hip to her back, and back around to her front. The spiraling marks continued all the way to her shoulders, stopping just before they reached her neck.

An assault of flashes of memories washed over her and Ember and everyone touching them: green eyes darkening to almost black staring into hers, a kiss, a bite, an orgasm, a thrust, staring down into green eyes, a mouth on her nipple, a kiss on her forehead, fingers inside her, a wicked smirk, her back arching, the taste of apples and cinnamon, her hands tangled in black hair, a tongue on her clit, filling herself as she slid down his cock, feeling herself being fed on and the sexually charged magic being poured back into her.

Gasping Nadia pulled her foot away from Ember and fell onto her butt. The connection broken, each of other woman fell or sat back too.

"Damn," Ember said. "I feel like I just cheated on Stryx."

"I need a cigarette," Leilani murmured.

"I need..." Musette paused. "I don't know what I need."

"I need an incubus," Raven said. "I definitely need an incubus."

"Good thing Jael can't assassinate a memory," Viktoria said.

"You all saw all of that?" Nadia asked.

"Oh, honey, we didn't just see all of that," Bijou replied. "We all felt all of that, too."

"Your other leg is bare and there's a gap in between the lines around your torso," Myth said. "I wonder what you have to do to see if there are more marks."

"He probably left those for Nadya," Nadia said. "She was with him, too."

"Your incubus must love you very much," Selene said.

"I think I wanted to love him," Nadia whispered. "I think Nadya did love him."

"Then it's just as well you left him when you did," Selene said gently.

"Why?" Nadia asked plaintively.

"Because of how a strygoi comes into her full power. The first strygoi was created when a vampire fell in love with a powerful witch."

"I thought vampires couldn't love anyone," Nadia said. "They only live to prey on people." She frowned, not sure how she knew that, but sure it was right.

"It is true that most vampires don't have the capacity to love. But this one did, and he loved his witch with his inimă — his heart and soul, even though it should have been impossible for him to have either as a vampire."

"She was his Dragă," Ember breathed.

"Yes," Selene agreed. "The bond only works between a vampire and his Dragă. It's why strygoi are so rare. There aren't many vampires who are capable of creating one."

"But no vampire loves me," Nadia said. "How can I be strygoi?"

"If you are a powerful enough witch being around another strygoi can wake the magic in you, but a strygoi needs the blood and venom of a vampire that loves her to unlock her magic fully."

"That's why my magic is locked behind a door I can't open," Nadia said.

"You can't become fully strygoi until you find your vampire. That's why it's just as well you left your incubus now. Your magic would have become unstable and fought against you, and you would been miserable as you slowly went insane. I am sorry, child," Selene said, grasping her hand.

"My magic did fight against me," Nadia said. "It attacked me and abandoned me for days. I couldn't feel anything." Another memory flashed in her mind. A glimpse of a man burned and bleeding. "I had to hate him to get it back."

"While we wield more magic than any other, at times it wields us, too. An incubus doesn't have the blood or venom your magic needs regardless of how he felt for you, or you for him," Selene's voice was kind as she delivered the devastating news. "Strygoi magic would never have accepted an incubus."

*****

Elijah watched his witches leave. He'd felt it when the wards on the house vanished—the wards he'd created by channeling Nadya's and Nadia's own magic into them as he drained it from them. He'd thought he'd been so clever using their own magic to create them. It insured that they wouldn't be able to go outside until they controlled their own magic—he'd thought that would only happen when the block had been dissolved—but he hadn't considered at the time that it would also make it simple for them to just walk out the door.

He stood at a window, taking care to remain hidden behind a curtain, but it had been a needless worry. His silver-eyed witch hadn't looked back once as she left him. He watched as she manipulated the wards on the grounds— wards made from his magic—so easily. He'd known she was powerful even before he'd seen the source of her magic, but the way she turned aside and moved each ward, controlling it without breaking it, amazed him. He would never be able to control someone else's magic like that, much less so effortlessly. To get through as many of someone else's wards as he'd constructed he'd have to break them and there would be backlash.

It took a long time, but Nadia patiently coaxed each ward to move just a little bit, opening a path between them until she reached the end. As she stepped past the last one she shook herself and looked around, and he knew with that last step she had already forgotten him.

He wondered what she would do now. The night he'd taken her from her apartment he'd had the driver take him to a safe house near the city which few knew about, and from there he'd brought her to his house, which no one knew about.

He couldn't teleport, but a demon could easily travel the Paths, similar to the Ways typically associated with how the Fae traveled between places. The demon in him, though not at full strength, had inherent knowledge about how to travel a Path, and combining that with his witch blood he'd been able to use magic to construct several Paths between places in the city, the safe houses he used, and his home in the middle nowhere.

A mage questioning the driver, a shifter that had her scent, or a vampire that had taken her blood, might be able to track them to the safe house, but the trail would end there. There was no way for any danger to follow her here.

So when she said she knew how to leave, he thought she'd discovered the opening to the Path that would take her back to the city. Her just walking out the door into the forest wasn't how he expected her to leave him, but his witches were always doing the unexpected.

There wasn't any transportation here and the nearest road was miles away. He'd packed some of the junk food and chocolate milk as a joke, a last reminder of him to her, but if she planned on walking through the forest it would serve an actual purpose now.

There was nothing in the forest that would harm her, and he had every intention of following her to make sure she was safe until she got where she was going. But she never started her hike, she stood still, just waiting.

He took an involuntary step back when five women suddenly appeared around Nadia. They all had the same straight, ebony hair as she did, and when they looked around he saw their eyes were silver.

He could taste when Nadia and Nadya were lying to him, and they'd both told him they didn't know any other witches. That had been the truth, so how was this possible?

The Woman on the Phone had said silver-eyed witches weren't possible, and yet here were six impossible things in front of his house. A house no one should have been able to find. Nadia has just crossed the wards, how did they find her so quickly? Did silver-eyed witches have some way of tracking each other?

A slew of questions ran through his mind. Where had they all come from? Were they all as powerful as Nadia? Were there more of them? Could they help his witches? Would they keep them safe? Why had they all been killed before?

He was tempted to run outside and confront them. He liked to think he would have if the new witches had threatened Nadia in any way, although what he could have done was a mystery. He had barely been able to handle one silver-eyed witch in a rage, with five or six of them arrayed against him there was probably nothing he could do.

He sucked in a breath as one of the silver-eyed witches held out a hand and Nadia took it. She didn't seem to fear them, but she hadn't feared the vampires, either.

The women vanished.

Elijah backed away from the window, practically flew down the stairs and sprinted from the front door to the place Nadia had vanished. He searched for some trace of a spell he could use to track them, but there was nothing.

He went back inside and stalked through the empty house. It had always been too big for one person, but it had never felt so empty.

*****

The Dream Walker decided once she got where she was going this time she was never, ever, going to travel again.

She'd entered the dreams of a coven of witches and had them come to her sanctuary. The process had been painstaking and taken days, but they'd finally been able to help her transfer the wards from her dwelling and the grounds around it onto a crate.

While not the most glamorous or comfortable mode of transportation, it was the only plan she'd been able to come up with for how she'd be able to travel. Fortunately she didn't have to go very far, but even not very far still felt like too far while she was trapped in a box. They'd been driving for what felt like hours. Surely they had to be close now.

The time passed slowly, and it didn't help she was worried about Elijah. She'd tried to reach him several times over the last couple days, but he wasn't answering his phone and that wasn't like him.

She was also curious. She wanted to meet the silver-eyed witch, and not just because she shouldn't exist. She wanted to meet the woman than had captivated the incubus.

And for the first time in a very long time, she felt hope. If a silver-eyed witch had somehow come back into the world maybe other impossible things weren't so impossible.

She wondered if the incubus was enough to keep the witch calm. For all she knew Elijah wasn't answering his phone because the witch had brought the house down on his head. She was almost worried enough to look into his dreams, but she'd never crossed that line with him. She made a point of staying out of the dreams of those she knew.