For LindaMarie.
By Heather.
A spell in three syllables. The spark of the thought, the hiss of the wick, the curl of smoke released like a breath. Her spell.
"Cassandra."
That voice... Viscous, poisonous. Black.
Cassie turned, eyes pulling from memory the illusion of the man called Jack Brunswick. Tall, dark, a handsome face drawn with a brisk, cruel hand. And the eyes -- empty, gleaming mirrors of a darkness without end.
"Father," she said. "I've come."
Black John smiled, frosting her skin and focusing her thought. His gaze lingered over her thigh, her hand, her face, and the Master Tools hummed in response, pulsing in rhythm with her heart and the walls around them. He seemed an extension of the room's shadows, of the distorted house she'd resurrected from cursed soil and now held in thrall.
Here was the manifestation of those pieces of her she was so desperate to define; pieces slowly being strangled by a destiny she never asked for, and no longer wanted. Magic was her heritage, a map to an inner topography so long lain unexplored, and when mysteries unfolded within ritual and routine, when she called the quarters before the Circle, wearing the Master Tools with the authority of birthright...that was the destiny that strained to burn, to consume.
Her fingers flexed around the hilt of the dagger.
Slowly, he crossed the room, and with each step, Cassie felt the silver cord recede further and further into the void that was her intent. His presence hummed through her blood as the physical form before her solidified beyond the reach of doubt and into realization. She held no fear, only the certainty of the inevitable. Her Power had willed this into being. Her Power had pulled this house from the past and willed into being. She had called him home.
She held up the dagger, the blade a sliver of ice in her palm. His fingers curled around the hilt. They both stood, unmoving, absorbing their connection within the sanguine glow of Number Thirteen. Witch and witch. Father and daughter.
She didn't flinch at the sudden motion of his arm, or the burst of pain that split her palm. The blade's point became a burning star of awareness at the hollow of her throat, his eyes shining with the reflection of her pale, upturned face and her blood.
"How do you enter?"
His voice vibrated through the stained blade and into her core, forced itself into her gut and cunt with primal brutality. She felt magnetic, pulled taut with recognition, a circle without end. Was this how her mother had felt in his presence? Electric and overcome, begging for violation?
No. The diadem pulsed against her forehead. Her Sight was clear. She was strong, stronger than them all. Trembling with the promise of resolution. Blood seeped from between her knuckles. I am not Alexandra. I am not afraid.
"In power," she said.
The flat of the blade ran a caress along her collarbone before its edge sliced through the insubstantial fabric of the shift, sternum to navel. The chilled air snapped against her skin, her nipples instantly drawing into small, tight beads. He caught her chin. His breath filled her ear.
"I am Power." Her pelvis sighed against his thigh, hungry for friction. His hand pulled at the green leather garter encircling her thigh, fingernails kneading, buckle grinding into her flesh. "I am what thrums, and aches, and bleeds."
The silver cord hardened, twisted, withered. Cassie's head fell back as teeth and tongue moved at her chest, scraping and lapping the truth from within. He was eating the weakness from her, cutting her loose from this dead weight of compliance and useless self-control. Fingers in her mouth, pressing her shoulders into wood, into stone, into earth. She clutched at hair and soil, riding the tide of energy that swirled a hurricane in mind and body, ripped her from the foundations that she herself had worked to build.
But it was never for herself. This -- this was hers.
"Father."
She emerged naked into sky; emerged without breath, a pounding in her abdomen and a spell trembling from tongue to clit. When she lifted her head, the dagger was buried in the patch of grass between her legs. She sat up, took hold of the hilt and allowed her gaze to travel down the hill, to the line of houses dotted along the length of Crowhaven Road. Her voice cut like a bitter wind over the bluff, over the vacant lot of Number Thirteen.
"Power have I over thee."
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