Calabi Chronicles: Bloodstone Read online

  Aideen woke with a start, the beat of her heart traveling through the stone to pound against her palm. The pressure in her chest grew and she realized that she was holding her breath. Letting it out, she drew deep calming breaths and relaxed her hand. When she was sure that she could stand, she got up and pulled the couch from the wall, once again releasing the hidden panel and pulling the book from the safe. Heart still pounding, she sat down at the workbench and continued her translation.

  “The ritual is complete and all I have for my efforts is a tantalizing glimpse of the witch. Soft petal pink lips in a delicious part, the verdant eyes half-concealed behind lids heavy with sensual delight. Even now, I feel myself growing stiff as I think of her and the sweet torment that I would visit upon her for denying me what is mine.”

  Aideen closed her eyes, the image of his intense blue stare causing the pressure that had remained lodged in her chest to reach down and squeeze at her thighs. She could feel his mouth pressing against her breasts as it formed the accusatory word of recognition. Her nipples grew hard and she ran a distracted hand over them to brush the sensation away. She thought of a second book concealed in the wall safe. Pocket-sized and covered in a cheap black vinyl, the pages filled with her father’s minute handwriting.

  No. Aideen shook her head as if the violence of the motion could cast away what she was considering. Memories of childhood participation in her father’s ceremonies surfaced. His zealous devotion to the Ancient Rede, the hours spent in meditation to the goddess. The unyielding requests for blood and his cold indifference to her after she had relinquished her sacred virginity to the neighborhood rebel at the age of seventeen.

  She had performed her first scrying ceremony at the age of five, her mother already a year in the grave. Her father, Gerald, had woken her from a deep slumber and half-led, half-dragged her to his study. There, where only candlelight—shadows dancing—illuminated the room, he had explained to her the preparations that preceded his waking her. As sleep sought to claim Aideen, her child’s head drooping with fatigue, he had roughly tapped the underside of her chin. Then he made her stand in front of a scrying bowl and poked, prodded and cajoled her until she sang the odd rhymes her mother had taught her. With Aideen’s song complete, he had been rewarded, she tortured, with nightmare images that played along the water’s surface.

  Aideen blinked that long ago night and its illusions away. Her mind, once again filled with Cenn, his exposed chest and stomach rippled with muscles, and the thin ladder of black hair that promised a tangled garden of delight. Unaware of her movements, Aideen walked over to the wall safe and pulled out the little black book. She flipped through it until she found a description of a scrying ceremony. She glanced at the small calendar on the wall behind the clock radio and frowned to see that the moon was not in its most favorable phase. Her father, meticulous in all things, would have waited, his curiosity—and the image of Cenn—postponed until the most opportune time.

  There is a rare power in you, Aideen, and you have squandered it on that boy. Gerald’s admonishments filled her head. She pushed them aside and grabbed a flashlight. In the showroom, she went to the display of dried herbs from which she pulled small bags of rose, hyssop, jasmine and sea salt. She tossed the little bags into a silver bowl she had grabbed from the locked display case next to the register and returned to the storeroom, hoping none of the garda on patrol had noticed her flashlight bouncing around the store.

  Her father’s book called for a weeklong fermentation of the ingredients. His obsessive precision irritated Aideen and she merrily dumped the ingredients into the bowl and mixed them together with the plastic spoon she had pulled from Ricky’s coffee cup. Rummaging through Ricky’s locker, she found the incense he burned, ostensibly for “mood”, but really to hide the smell of the pot he smoked when she was away from the store.

  Aideen lit the incense and several of the candles kept in the storeroom for those days when Dublin’s spring storms knocked the power out. With the other lights off, she slipped the smock off and began to undress, the damp spot between her legs growing wetter as her bra came off and the cold air licked at her nipples.

  She held the Bloodstone in her left hand while she coaxed the smoke from the incense to pool over the bowl. The words she had chanted as a five-year-old child returned to her and spilled forth with the melody of her matured voice.

  Over hyssop, rose and jasmine,

  Over the very sea, I scry.

  Reveal to me, eternal eye,

  The truth I seek but do not ken.

  Slowly the smoke swirled into a vision of the man in her dreams. His robes were gone as he stood before the same scrying bowl that she had seen before. The tattoos that adorned his chest crawled along his back. That broad expanse was filled with the endless weaving of roots from the Tree of Life, blue vines unfurling over his thickly muscled thighs. For a second time that night, a mesmerized moan escaped Aideen’s mouth as she saw Cenn’s cock, stiff and straight, rising from the black mass of curls. She willed him to raise his head from the bowl. Look at me, Cenn Cruach, I command you.

  Aideen gasped when he heard and obeyed, the blue eyes piercing her as he issued his own command. Come to me, witch. It is I who commands you.

  Aideen collapsed against the stool, the sudden movement of her body dispelling the eddy of smoke that lay atop the bowl. With unsteady hands, she reached down and pulled the smock from the floor. She put it on and fumbled with the tie as the thickness of the air around her threatened to send her crashing to the floor.

  She pinched out the candles and incense and put them on the floor, along with the bowl. The Bloodstone still in her hand, she turned the lights back on and returned to the book.

  “Exhausted, I swore I would not seek the sorceress again until I had further rested, but her body calls to me. And so I dared to summon her again tonight. Ah, sweet temptation. She drives all thought of the Bloodstone from my mind although she holds it to her as she dares to command me. She stood before a silver bowl, smoke dancing against her pale white skin. Pink nipples erect and begging to be suckled. A golden triangle pointing down to paradise. My tongue grows thick at the thought of tasting the sweet nectar that flows from between her legs. I swear I will have her and the stone.”

  A swoon threatened Aideen and she took a step back from the book. With the book in hand, she moved to the couch and tentatively turned the page.

  Nothing! She flipped the remaining pages, each one revealing aged white vellum devoid of content. In desperation, she tossed the book onto the couch and grabbed Meyrick’s notes from the workbench. She folded and unfolded the scrap of paper as she read Meyrick’s insane babbling. In slow motion, she felt her body slide to the floor, the Bloodstone still clutched to her chest. This cannot be the end! her mind screamed as she passed into darkness.

  Chapter Three

  Aideen woke halfway through Monday. The clock and her stomach told her it was late afternoon. Asleep on the floor through the remainder of the night, she had never released the stone. But the constant contact with the Bloodstone had rewarded her with its eternal secrets, shown her the key to obtaining her deepest desire.

  Rising from the linoleum, she walked to the couch on stiff legs. She picked the book up and placed it in the wall safe, reluctantly setting the stone beside it for safekeeping. After she re-secured the panel and pushed the couch back in place, she went into the shop’s small bathroom and relieved the pressure that had built in her bladder as she slept on the cold floor. Finished, she splashed water on her face and patted it dry with paper towels. In the storeroom, she retrieved her clothing from the floor and dressed before leaving the store to grab a bite to eat and pick up a few supplies that she would need for the night ahead.

  When Aideen returned to the store, she placed a shopping bag in the bathroom and plopped a second one on the workbench before setting an alarm and stretching out on the couch for a light nap. When the buzzer roused her at eight, she was dreaming of Cenn. She could stil
l feel the rough caress of his hands on her breasts and the tickle of his coarse facial hair against her thighs. She cupped her breasts and gave them a gentle squeeze as the last of the delirious sensations he had aroused ebbed from her body.

  The clock radio, still bleating at her, drove Aideen from the couch. She viciously switched the alarm off and grabbed the smock from its peg by the door. In the bathroom, she filled the sink with water and measured more dried herbs into it before she stripped. She dipped her long, blonde hair into the water and then whipped it back, rubbing the water that dripped from her head into her cheeks before grabbing another handful and cleaning her arms. She looked in the mirror, her gaze skipping a half-finished tattoo, and watched her nipples grow hard as she massaged the water onto her breasts in slow circles. Her hands traveled over her stomach, a smile curling her lips as she parted her labia and scooped another handful of water, stroking the smooth skin until it was squeaky clean and her clit was a rigid nub of live wires. With the same slow, sensual caress, she cleaned her legs and feet and then squeezed the last of the water from her hair. The floor was a jumble of wet clothes and puddled water and she shrugged at the mess. If she was still in the shop when the sun rose tomorrow, she would deal with it then.

  Concealing her naked body with the smock, she crossed the showroom floor and disappeared into the storeroom. She refreshed the water in the scrying bowl and added new dried flowers and sea salt. She removed the smock and rubbed rose oil over her breasts and thighs. The clock radio flashed 9:30 at her and she hurried to the wall safe, emptying all its contents except for the stack of cash she kept for extra special purchases. She put the safe’s contents on the workbench before she strapped on a stylish velvet hip pack that she had purchased earlier in the day. She had no way of knowing whether the pack would survive the trip, but she put Cenn’s book and her father’s inside. She spilled the contents of a cheap velveteen pouch into her palm, a glittering of ceremonial jewels peeked at her before she scooped them back into the pouch and then into the hip pack.

  Remaining on the workbench were the Bloodstone and a scian d’scairt, a ceremonial dagger so named from its placement into the diaphragm of the person being sacrificed before the priest would slice an opening in the victim’s gut to allow the entrails to be pulled from the body and read by the priest. With the scrying bowl in the center and surrounded by incense and candles, Aideen picked the Bloodstone up with her left hand and the scian with her right. With the flat of the knife, she shepherded the smoke over the bowl as her chant slowly built in volume.

  Cenn’s naked form smoothed across the water as he summoned her in return. A slow fire lit in her stomach. Its warmth slowly coiled between her legs as she watched Cenn masturbate above his scrying bowl, his seed spilling onto the surface and forming small pearls before sinking. Aideen brought her left hand, still gripping the Bloodstone, over her bowl and raised the scian to her arm. Beginning at one edge of her wrist, she sliced a thin gash to the other side, her blood dyeing the water a dark crimson.

  She continued to chant, the gentle stream flowing from her wrist building to a flood of red that obliterated Cenn’s image and threatened to overfill the bowl. Aideen stumbled over the words as the candles blew out and she was wrapped in darkness.

  Chapter Four

  “You have answered my call in the flesh, witch,” Cenn said as he pulled Aideen into a kneeling position before him. His voice was filled with a warm pleasure that rippled through her and cleared the red haze that clouded Aideen’s mind. “And brought the Bloodstone with you, I see.”

  Naked but for the hip pack, and shivering, she swayed into contact with him. Her forehead rested against the sharp angle of his hip, her blonde hair intertwined with his blue-black pubic hair. The blood on her wrist was congealing to a slow ooze and she struggled to lift her hand.

  Running a hand through her hair, Cenn pulled her head back until her moss green eyes met the depthless blue of his gaze. Bending slightly, he brought her right arm up and pulled the scian from her hand, tossing it across the room.

  “Who are you, sorceress?” Cenn demanded. His hand still forced her head back, her lips centimeters from his cock, which slowly bobbed to life. The tangy smell of the semen he had produced during the ritual bit into her taste buds and she groaned lightly.

  “No sorceress am I,” Aideen said, offering both the Bloodstone and her body to him.

  Cenn’s grip relaxed and he shifted hands, cupping her head close to him while his other hand curled around the stone. Aideen nestled her face against his stomach, his scent filling her lungs and forcing her eyes closed in sleepy satisfaction. Aroused, his cock grew rigid, its stiff mass pressing against her cheek.

  Cenn tossed the Bloodstone onto a nearby pallet and gently tipped Aideen’s head back. He ran a finger over her lips and her tongue darted out, gracing the tip with a slow lick before closing around it in a kiss. A shudder passed over his body and his cock pulsed forward in search of her seductive mouth.

  “What are you then, if not a sorceress?” he asked, his words slurred as he gazed into her eyes.

  “Yours,” Aideen answered, her hand traveling up the inside of his leg to lightly stroke his thigh. “To do with as you will.”

  Cenn dropped down to both knees and pulled Aideen to him. Fear that he would send her away twisted through her stomach and she pressed a kiss against the hollow of his throat with trembling lips. Holding her left wrist up, Cenn squeezed until the blood flowed fresh. His own wrist bore a fresh cut and he pulled at the scab then joined their wrists, which he locked between their bodies. Aideen felt the sweet press of his cock against her mound and she parted her legs, throwing her head back as he slid into her.

  “Open your eyes,” Cenn commanded and she did. His gaze held hers as the long strokes of his cock pushed her mind over the edge of ecstasy. “On your word,” he said, his breath torn from him in ragged gasps as he struggled to hold himself in. “Say that you are mine.”

  Aideen tried to peer past the deep blue of his eyes, past the hint of desperation and dark secrets that clouded his soul. Cenn’s blood mingled with her own and she knew that, whatever there was to discover, she would stay with him, her body and soul at his command. “Yes,” she moaned, pressing her mouth against his as her body jerked in wild release. “I am yours, forever.”

  Book 2: Sorcerer’s Apprentice

  Chapter One

  Cenn looked at the sleeping form of the witch. Her long frame was stretched across his mattress, a heavy woolen blanket hiding the soft curves his hands had explored a few hours before. Her long blonde hair was partially fanned across her face and he gently pushed the hair back.

  He glanced at her face to see if she was awake and was instantly lost in contemplation of her exquisite features. Taking in the heavy fringe of her eyelashes, the full, pink pout of her mouth, he felt his erection begin to return. By the gods, he wasn’t sure what he had done to have this creature beside him, pledged to him for eternity, but he knew he would already do anything to keep her.

  His fingertips outlined the perfect shell of her ear and caressed the curve of her neck before stopping at the incomplete image of a firedrake just below her collarbone. It was a powerful symbol, only half done and stretched as if she had been marked with it quite young. His confusion seemed to reach the witch in her sleep, her muscles tensing beneath his touch.

  The woman stirred, turned until she was on her back. The movement pulled the blanket down far enough to expose one breast. The coarse rub of the wool over the sensitive nipple brought it to a hard, pink point. Cenn cupped the breast, pulled the nipple taut before covering it with his mouth. She moaned in her sleep and brought her hand up to caress his cheek. Her willingness to receive him even in sleep sent another arc of need through his body. Yet, his own instant readiness to possess the witch distressed him and he rose from the mattress.

  Cenn’s gaze caught the black velvet pouch she had worn slung around her hip and he let his hands play over it. The ends of
the odd buckling material that she had called “plastic” had fused in her journey to him, as had the “zipper” made from the same material. He had cut the hip pack from her body before claiming her a second time, but its contents were still unknown. Curiosity pricked his mind as he wondered what other marvels the mistress of the sacred Bloodstone had brought with her.

  Memories of the witch’s more evident gifts urged him to return to her sleeping form and awaken her with the gentle teasing of his swollen tip against her silken pink clit. He tried to content himself with watching her, instead. She reached along the mattress, her mouth parting in a sultry sigh as she searched for his warmth. One of her shapely arms curled around his pillow and his chest tightened as he remembered the firm grip of her hand on his cock, the energetic pumping while she laved her tongue along the tip with her own sex pressed heatedly against his hungry mouth.

  “Ah, witch,” Cenn moaned and quietly returned to the bed. “How is it that you can cast spells even as you sleep?”

  Crawling onto the mattress, Cenn rested his upper body between the small valley formed by her canted hip and outstretched leg. He eased the blanket over her hips and his gazed raked the exposed flesh. Her cunt was still flushed from their earlier passion, still glistened with his seed and her own wet nectar. Cenn thumbed the spongy exterior of her vagina, slipped the honey-slick pad over her rosy nub. Again, she moaned in her sleep and lifted her ass to meet his probing tongue. He massaged her clit, rolled it between thumb and forefinger as her body fully awakened to his touch.

  She reached down, stroked the dark crown of hair and absently murmured his name. “Cenn.”