If Wishes Were Horses Read online

He didn’t want to delay Linda in getting to Sarah with the coven, so Justin took the forest paths. He had not bothered with a shirt, so the perspiration gleamed on hisshoulders. His bare feet pounded the earth, and blood roared in his ears. He felt the texture of Sarah’s skin under his damp palms, the scent of her hair brush his nose andmouth as he drew in gulps of air. Her blue eyes, wary, distrustful. Glazed with desire. Her smile. Her quiet words to him in the deepest part of the night, murmured againsthis ear as her arms came around his shoulders.

  She was his. His to love, his to protect. Danger was a scent around her that grewwith every stride he made toward her, fueling his body’s speed until there was no hesitation in his movements, even when his instincts guided him off the path to take a more direct route to her house. His spirit rose within him, pulling on the energies of thenight, the energies that were a part of him. His legs lengthened, grew even stronger. He felt the weight of the antlers on his skull, weapons of defense as much as the flashing dark hooves and the powerful muscles that gathered and sailed him over fallen trees inhis path. He was an eternal force of protection, the will of man and God coming together for one purpose. To save life, and love. To protect.

  He heard the chanting as he got closer. He broke from the clearing behind Sarah’shome and saw them, five women in contemporary dress, everything from hastily pulledon jeans to nightshirts and slippers. Appearance had been irrelevant. They had comeimmediately, knowing what they faced. They drew toward the house from the five cardinal points, shrinking the circle, binding what was inside the four walls of thatcottage. Justin sensed the creature, knew it was there, and rage filled his senses.

  He brayed out a challenge that reverberated through the clearing. Linda’s eyes widened as the stag leaped over the boundary of the circle and charged past, the pointsof his antlers glowing like swords in the moonlight, his hooves cutting across the earth with lethal purpose.

  “Great Lady,” one of the coven murmured.

  “Blessed Lord,” Linda whispered. The stag gathered itself and leaped. He wentthrough the front bay window, glass exploding like shards of rain and shimmering on the beast’s withers. The powerful melding of Justin and Herne, the forest god, stormed forward to protect what was theirs.

  “Take the circle inside,” Linda cried out, running forward.

  * * * * *

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  Sarah lay before the fire, her beautiful body bare and licked by the firelight, theincubus buried between her legs. Justin saw all this as he crashed through the window. His momentum did not slow. He moved forward in a run as the incubus pulled out of her body and leaped up. They met over Sarah’s inert form.

  The creature seized his antlers to slow his charge. Justin was aware his form had shifted again, so now he had the appearance he had in the circle, only instead of a costume, he was still a genuine melding of man and stag, with human legs and arms but the strength and antlered deer head of Herne. The tawny hair of the stag ran in astripe down the center of his broad back.

  Justin’s rage propelled them both back to the stone hearth and he pinned theincubus there for a moment. The incubus dissolved and reformed outside of the cage ofthe antlers.

  Between Sarah’s legs, he had possessed Justin’s appearance, but now as he re-materialized he took his own face. It was not what the monks recorded. He had the

  form of a tall and handsome man, the man he had once been on the mortal plane, though in the being’s eyes Justin saw the hatred that had turned to evil intent. Perhaps the monks and those who had died or almost died at his hands, being so close to God, had seen his inside as his outside.

  “You lost what I gave you last time,” the incubus spat, and Justin heard the words in his mind, as well as aloud. “You become greedy.”

  “I won’t lose her to you,” Justin responded grimly. “She should be allowed to choose. You shouldn’t be allowed to take that from her. And you’re trapped here. You can’t leave.”

  Linda and the summoned members of the coven slid into the room, one through theopen shattered window, two from the hallway entrance, two from the kitchen entrance, keeping the circle locked in place.

  The creature’s gaze darted around the room, and Justin felt him throw out his senses, test the strength of the binding. A moment of panic warred with fury on theincubus’s face. “Will you keep me locked in your circle forever? You can fight me and Iwill never tire, but even with the force of Herne called into you, your human body will fail you. She will still be mine, and though I’m bound in this circle, they will not be able to stop me from taking her life.”

  Justin looked toward the fire where Sarah lay on the rug. Her eyes were vacant, her body sinuously moving, still responding to the impact of the incubus on her senses, but he could also see the rigidity of her shoulders, the tightness of her face, and knew shewas in there, fighting. Losing.

  The rage died from his eyes, replaced by hard purpose. “You’re right.” He nodded, stepping back. “This isn’t about you and me, anyway. This is about me and Sarah.”

  He turned his shoulder to the incubus and bent over Sarah, letting the strength of Herne go, so the flesh that came against Sarah’s flesh was all human, all Justin. Her eyes

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  focused, blinked hazily, and he was there, holding her, his hands on either side of her

  face so she could look into his eyes.

  “Sarah,” he murmured.

  She vaguely felt Linda’s presence, her and the other women. Justin’s words penetrated her mind, forcing her to grapple with the situation.

  “Trust me, Sarah,” he murmured. “Whatever else we are, you know when I hold you what it is between us. Trust me. Follow me.”

  She had little other choice in this moment, but she knew, looking up into his serious eyes, that she could trust him. He had not been completely truthful with her, but it was clear that now was the time to accept and forgive, even if she could not understand.

  “Okay,” she whispered, and forcing that word over her vocal cords was the hardest thing she had ever done, as if the acknowledgement had to be dragged from under a pile of rocks at the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean. A wisp of pleasure trickled through her mind at the flare of approval in his eyes. She was so tired and yet so aroused at once, willing and wanting him to do anything with her, and she would let him, drifting in a haze of pleasure and dreams.

  His eyes darkened and the handsome blonde man beside him moved. No, melded…no, it was like two blurry images coming together, only they hadn’t been blurry, but now they were one. It was Justin’s hands touching her, but she felt them both, two presences kissing her lips, but Justin was in the forefront. The other was just apleasurable, non-alarming shadow that added caresses in places that one person could not caress all at once. She felt hands on her breasts, and a mouth sucking them even as Justin kissed her lips, and his hands slid down to her hips, parted her legs. She gasped, bowing up as if touched by fire, for now his hand was there, his fingers, but so was another’s, heat balanced with cold.

  “Take us both in, Sarah, heat and cold, life and death. You’re the one that can bring

  the balance.”

  She felt them, one overlaid on the top of the other, but just enough off rhythm thatthe slide into her body had a double stroke to it, the ridge of two heads rubbing her flesh, heat and cold, rousing her nerves with the contrast. Justin’s arms were aroundher. Justin, warm, solid, real. Though the other was there, too, powerful, mesmerizing, arousing, he had nothing to offer her heart. The more she opened to Justin, the more she felt what he could give to her, would give to her, if she’d only let go of her fears.

  Her back curved up as she felt the incubus’s mouth on her, just over where Justin thrust into her. That mouth sucked her clit even as Justin’s cock found the right place deep inside her. Fingers crept under her, caressing her, making her open wider. The two temperatures shivered up her nerve endings and set off a spasm
of ripples in her lower belly.

  The incubus had his hands on her breasts, while Justin’s chest rubbed them with hisslow, deliberate movements. The incubus quickened, a seesaw inside her juxtaposed to Justin’s slow, pumping strokes.

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  Her body was overloading on sensations, hovering on the edge of explosive orgasm, but there was so much, she couldn’t. There was something wrong with it, like a vibrator on so high it was deadening the same nerves it was intending to stimulate. She felt like she was in a choke hold and she could not draw breath to make the leap.

  She was open to both beings, man and spirit, but more than her body was being called by one of the men. It was toward that one her soul turned in desperation. She feltit, as she knew she had felt it that first over-the-top night with him. The power of Earth,of the Divine. Of a Fate that could not be denied. Him. Her.

  “Sarah,” Justin whispered, his eyes glittering like the blade of a weapon. “Let go for me, Sarah. Feel me within you. Just the heat. My body against yours, my cock within you, my hands on your body. That’s all there is, just the two of us.”

  The chanting of the women increased, and the power emanated off Justin as he used it, gave her breathing space, cleared a space in her mind she needed. His face muscles quivered with the effort. She reached up, pushed through the thick presence of the incubus between them and cupped his jaw in her hand. “Kiss me, Justin. Please…before I die.”

  “You’re not going to die,” he said fiercely, and he plunged through the incubus’s spirit as if he were smoke and covered her mouth with his own.

  Heat, wet, life. Demanding she live, he caught the fading strands of her strength with his, wrapped them around his consciousness, binding her to him, and drove them both off the edge of that pinnacle.

  Sarah screamed with the force of it, and it was just his force, for the flood of liquid heat inside her brooked no intrusion. He used the power and resistance in her soul with his own magic to call whatever power would aid them, bringing the Lord and Lady down into their coupling and shoving the incubus back on his heels, outside their

  joining which had no place for him, into the cold prison of the circle.

  The magic grew as the climax continued, and Justin’s gaze flicked briefly up to Linda, just behind Sarah’s head. The witch nodded and the tone of her chant changed, a chorus of destruction and creation both, two parts of the whole.

  The incubus snarled and tried to escape, charging at the circle’s boundary, but the women had joined hands and the binding held firm. For a moment he became more solid, the image of the corporeal form he had been, a handsome man carrying his hatred stamped on his face and on his existence. His body began to fade, and Sarah’s glazed eyes registered the gradual impression of the firelight shining through his form.

  Justin chanted softly, firmly against Sarah’s ear as he continued to stroke within her, hard and strong. In between the words she heard his murmured caress to her.

  “Mine.”

  Sarah clung to him, simply held on as the aftershocks of her climax rippled through her with each stroke. She desperately clung to the light that was him, her promise of life, of survival.

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  The incubus wailed. The coven grimly continued its work. His body’s transparent state began to blur, a fading into amorphous colors. Tendrils of his form grasped at Justin’s shoulders, but they lost their purchase as the cloud of energy floated upward, still within the circle’s boundary, but with no control of its direction any longer.

  “There is hope for you, demon,” Linda’s voice resonated through the room, and thepower of the Goddess was in her face.

  “You have been rendered powerless on this plane. You are no more than a seductive whisper in a woman’s ear, able to turn her heart only for a passing thought. You no longer have the power to command mortal souls to your will, or transfer the seed of men to her womb. If you ever wish to be more than a shadow again, ever wish to achieve the grace of a new life blessed by My Love, you shall have to find thatfoundation you lack, and suffer and sacrifice for it, until you rectify your past harm.

  “I pitied your pain, but transgressions demand recompense. Go, my child.”

  In an eerie movement, very un-Linda like, the priestess raised her hand, her two fingers crooked, and waved him away. His form dissolved as if swallowed by the air.

  Sarah was suddenly conscious of the hum of her air conditioner, the refrigerator in the kitchen, the ice maker tumbling more cubes into the catch tray. Innocuous, comforting sounds. She was also aware of a pounding in her head that was growing stronger, overwhelming everything else, including the weakening beat of her heart.

  “Justin,” she whispered. “Hold me. I’m so cold.”

  They had been too late to save her, but they had defeated the incubus. He wouldn’t hurt anyone again. Sarah accepted that, too tired to do anything else. The world became Justin’s alarmed face, then just his eyes. Her life force slipped out of her, a breathagainst the press of his lips onto hers. She wished she had the strength to touch his faceonce more. Darkness closed in, and all wishes faded into dreams.

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  Chapter 16

  Beeping. She knew what beeping meant. It meant you were alive, barely. When shewoke up in the hospital after the drug shooting, she had learned how badly she was hurt by the erratic rate of that beeping heart monitor. She had learned first off that the fact she was aware of the beeping was good, very good, no matter how offbeat or slow

  it was.

  This was slow, but the rhythm tended to increase once consciousness came, becausethat was when the pain hit. She wasn’t disappointed.

  The gunshot wounds had been a centralized focus of the agony that radiated throughout her system. This was a throbbing ache with no source point, as if her entirebody had been tumbled down a hill in a drum.

  “Hurts.” She whispered it, and tears rolled out of her eyes at just that movement.

  “I know, baby. I’m here.”

  His hand on hers, his voice rough with emotion. No man had ever thought to call her baby, ever thought she might need that. Hell, she hadn’t thought she needed it. But he had. He was there. He hadn’t taken off, he had fought the bad guy with her. He had covered her back, her whole body if she wanted to get literal about it. He had been there, protected her, stopped evil.

  “Don’t go,” she said, a breath of sound, but he was bent forward, close enough to hear.

  “I won’t.”

  * * * * *

  Two weeks later, the hospital had pumped enough fluids and painkillers into Chief Sarah Wylde to give her body the chance to recover from the mysterious incident that had lowered her entire body below freezing. Astonishingly there had been no frostbite or amputation. The cold had simply stopped the function of her vital organs for a dangerous amount of time.

  According to the police report, Justin Herne had found her in her home and hadused CPR to keep her heart beating. Eric Wassler suspected he had used everything up to and including selling his soul to Satan to keep her alive.

  Marion’s police chief stood outside her door now. Pale as a ghost she was, but she was propped on some pillows and smiling at something the nurse had said. Justin hadgiven them a moment alone, choosing to stand in the hallway, but he hadn’t gone far

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  away. Wassler could still see him out of the corner of his eye, hovering in the waiting

  area.

  Her men had sent all sorts of balloons and flowers that she’d finally been able to

  have in her room when they moved her out of the Gainesville critical care area.

  She saw him and smiled wider, holding out her hand in a gesture of affection somewhat uncoplike, but permissible due to the circumstances, and since she was female. He was glad for it, for it gave him the chance to give her cheek a kiss and her frail body a hard hug.
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br />   “Damn, I didn’t realize quite how much I liked you,” he said roughly, holding her at arms length. “Aren’t they feeding you in here?”

  She chuckled and waved at the assortment of chocolates. “I get to go back to solid

  foods Monday. My system is too weak to do digestion. I’ve been tempted to bolt down a box and just suffer the consequences, but the nurses have terrified me with graphic descriptions of throwing up my internal organs if I do one thing they don’t tell me I can do. You should have come sooner.”

  “I did.” He pressed her hand. He had visited her often as she hovered between life

  and death, one of many who had.

  “I’ve been here before, Eric,” she said, sobering. “I’m still not ready to go.”

  “Glad to hear it, but let’s not test it again, okay? I think you’ve made your lifetime quota of near misses.” He cleared his throat. “Sarah, I need to…I’m going to ask you once. I asked Justin, and he said it was for you to say. Your symptoms. The lowered temperature…”

  She nodded. Her blue eyes had a serenity in them, he realized, something shehadn’t had before. Her first brush with death and her divorce had brought her demons. Her second brush appeared to have dispelled them.

  “It was the same thing, Eric. Justin was right. It wasn’t something of this world,

  though I suspect it was created by it. It’s gone now, thanks to Justin and the coven, and we don’t…it’s no longer a police matter. There won’t be any more victims in our county, or anywhere else. Not from this perp.”

  He studied her for a long moment. He knew her to be level-headed, a great cop, and there wasn’t a trace of delirium in her eyes, just practicality. He also knew if she thought there was still a threat, they’d be having to tie her to the bed to keep her from going after it.

  “Okay,” he said, and left it at that. The report on Lorraine Messenger was a closed file, and since Sarah was not filing a criminal report on her illness, so was this. He put a hand over hers again, squeezed. “You get back to work soon, hear? Dexter’s getting delusions of grandeur, being in charge.”