The Horned Mage: Books 1-5 Read online

  Whereas Jadeite was dark, curvy, and leonine, Lexus put me in mind of a cheetah. She was black too, but with a lighter complexion and a smattering of freckles across her small, feline face. Her frame was lean and athletic—if she hadn’t dropped out of high school this year she might have managed a track scholarship to Forester. Her clothing was about as opposite as Jadeite’s as could be and still constitute being called clothes, all tight and short and strategically ripped. The only thing classy about her attire was the elegant silver necklace that hung down between her modest breasts.

  Jadeite had once explained to me that it was a family heirloom, or at least, an heirloom from Lexus family. It had belonged to Lexus great grandmother and been passed down the family line all the way to the wild child standing next to me.

  “Go away, Lexus,” Jadeite said, handing me back my phone.

  Lexus ignored her and slid into the booth beside her stepsister, pressing in close. “Heya, sis. How’s it going, Horn Dog?” she jerked her chin up at me.

  I shrugged. “Alright I guess.”

  She grinned. “Sounds like it. You guys got big plans tonight, huh? Where’s it going down?”

  “Life is about more than parties, Lexus,” Jadeite said through clenched teeth.

  Seriously I could feel all kinds of sisterly love going on between these two. Not.

  Lexus smirked. “Sure, but you’re seriously going to tell me that as a college girl you don’t got an in to the best parties in town?”

  Truth was that Jadeite probably did know where the best parties were but she’d never really been interested in that scene. At eighteen and a high school dropout, Lexus just wasn’t quite in enough with the college crowd to get into the parties hosted by students or fraternities. Not that the locals didn’t know how to party, but Woodhurst was a small town with a far from thriving economy. Short version: college students did bigger, wilder parties.

  Jadeite rolled her eyes. “Even if I did, I wouldn’t be telling you about them.”

  “Why not?”

  Jadeite slammed a hand on the table. “Because you should be in school! Not running around with Bullet and Dipshit—

  “Dicario,” Lexus interrupted.

  “—and getting involved with their fucking meth-ring. You’re better than that.”

  Woodhurst’s underground was small but, at least how I understood it, tight knit and had two primary vices: booze and meth. I knew Lexus drank, I mean who didn’t at her age, though I sincerely hoped she didn’t do meth too.

  “Whatever.” Lexus stood up, tucking her hands into her barely-there pockets. “I ain’t turning my back on my friends. They need me. Buy you go on trying to be your dad—soon as you get your degree you can walk out on us too.”

  “Lexus!” Jadeite called, but she was already across the restaurant and heading out the door.

  Jadeite settled back into her booth and ate her burger, not looking at me. This wasn’t any of my business and we both knew it. I’d just seen something that I definitely wasn’t supposed to see and her embarrassment was more than evident. Shit.

  “So,” she said. “We’ll work on breaking your curse tonight then?”

  I shook my head. “After how excited you were about getting your pet fairy—”

  She jabbed a fry at me. “Do not call them fairies!”

  I laughed. “Alright, summoning and contracting your familiar, I think I can wait a day.”

  I’d been living with my curse for all my life. What was a few more hours? I could wait. Probably.

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I mean this planetary thing is kind of rare right?”

  She nodded. “Relatively. I’d have to wait until summer to try again.”

  “There you go.” And her being home might offer her a chance to patch things up with Lexus.

  Her stepsister was absolutely wild but I knew that Jadeite cared deeply for her. Lexus’ dropping out of high school had been a painful blow that had really damaged their relationship. In Jadeite’s mind, an education was the only way either of them were ever going to do better than what they had now and Lexus giving us was little short of betrayal. Not that their family was terribly hard up for money, it was just that when her father disappeared so did his income and a single woman with two teenaged daughters, one of which was going into college, did not have a lot of income to spare.

  “Take the night, do your summoning thing, and we’ll give Hardin’s spell a shot tomorrow or something. Deal?”

  Jadeite smiled at me. That smile that only I ever got to see. “Deal.”

  Chapter Three

  It turned out I really couldn’t wait.

  I live in a run down two story house a little over a block away from the university with three roommates, each crazier than the last. Sure the water smelled funny and half the windows were covered in cardboard to replace the panes shattered by the countless tenants who had stayed there before me, but the rent was cheap and cheap was good. Jobs weren’t exactly forthcoming and my scholarship only took me so far. Besides, it was right next to the school and that counted for a lot.

  The first thing I did when I got home was seclude myself in my room and boot up my laptop to peruse the attachment on Deirdre’s email. Cutting through all of the discussion portions I was eventually able to break it down into a relatively simple, if not exactly easy to follow, set of instructions. The spell would require several fairly pricy items, way more set up time than I was comfortable with, and undisturbed concentration. I was short on funds but might—might—be able to pull off the first part, but there was no way I was going to be able to get quiet time to focus and set up in this place, not with walls so thin I could hear the videogames being played all the way down in the living room.

  But the more I read the more I realized that the spell was actually doable. Hardin tried to make it sound like it was fifty kinds of complicated but the truth was that all I needed was the spell ingredients, a shit ton of time and focus, and a reasonable understanding of how to tap into my personal magical abilities. Without any affinities this was actually something I was fairly good at. I couldn’t do a whole lot with my magic, but tapping it was something I’d been doing for as long as I could remember.

  For me, tapping my magic always felt like sticking my tongue into the gap left by a freshly missing tooth. Weird and habitual. Only, unlike with a tooth, that weird feeling never really went away. I was forever aware that something was missing inside of me.

  What sealed the deal though was when it turned out that there really was a party tonight and all my roommates were going. I was never going to get another chance like this. Sure I’d told Jadeite I could wait, but that was before I knew that I was going to have this opportunity. The stars might be aligned for her ritual but that would come again and all of my nutso roomies being out of the house at once so was not. I had to jump on this.

  I shot her a text message: Hey, can’t wait! It’s going down at my place tonight. You gonna be there?

  I ran some errands gathering the ingredients for the spell and just about wiping out my monthly allotment of funds (I’d be living off of ramen for a while) before she texted back: Hell yeah!

  That was good. I was worried about raining all over her fairy parade. My heart actually lifted a little in my chest and I walked proudly back into the house laden with ingredients. She cared enough about breaking my curse to put off her familiar summoning. That was a pretty big deal.

  Grinning like an idiot, I went about setting things up in my room, pushing all of my furniture and dirty laundry to the walls and sprinkling a circle of powdered gecko bone, crushed chrysanthemums, and essence of lightning several feet across onto the floor. I didn’t understand how most of these ingredients worked, but that was the difference between a theorist and a practitioner—I didn’t actually have to in order to use them any more than I needed to know how a combustion engine worked to drive a car. Good to know, certainly, but not, stri
ctly speaking, necessary.

  Or at least I hoped that was the case. Essence of lightning wasn’t cheap.

  Nor were the four leaf clovers dipped in mercury or the amethyst geode I had to position opposite each other on either side of the circle. As I understood it, I was basically setting up an electrical circuit, only with the circle acting as the power and these two items were supposed to act as the conduits with me situated between them. According to Hardin it had something to do with thaumaturgical polarity.

  What the fuck ever—just break my curse!

  My roomies were out by the time I was halfway done and I was able to begin tapping my personal magic, charging the circle and conduits as I set them up. I briefly began to wonder where Jadeite was but dismissed the thought. I really couldn’t afford to worry about where she was right now—she could have changed her mind, ended up having a deep heart-to-heart with Lexus, or needed to run some kind of errand—and I needed to keep my mind on the task at hand or it wouldn’t work.

  I situated myself in the center of the circle and tapped my personal magic harder than I had ever tapped it before. I had printed out a sheet filled with the incantation I was to recite and had it taped down to the floor in front of where I was sitting. Mostly it was a jumble of vowels and awkwardly placed consonants but I figured if I recited it often enough I’d eventually get it right.

  Eventually was not to come soon.

  I felt my magic being pulled out of me to flood the circle as I recited the words, felt it flood the room and engulf me—and then go nowhere. I resisted the urge to scowl and redoubled my efforts, chanting, focusing on breaking my curse, on getting rid of it and finally being a real mage. I was about to learn what my real potential was.

  The magic built and built and so did my frustration. Sweat poured from my forehead and down my spine, soaking my shirt. I could feel my face growing hot and the magic in the circle begin to roil, as if it could sense my anger and was responding to it. That probably wasn’t a good thing. It didn’t matter. I finally had the means to be free of this curse and dammit, I was going to take it!

  I pushed on, feeling my mouth go dry and my legs cramp up. My body felt like it was a coiled spring—though whether one that was ready to be sprung or one that had been left taught too long and could no longer retake its true form, I could not tell. It began to feel as if the magic was pressing against me, like there was simply too much of it filling the bedroom to allow for both me and it to occupy the same space.

  And as this happened, I finally began to run out of magic. I didn’t realize that it was happening at first because I’d never come close to doing it before. I had plenty of magic to use, but I’d almost never been able to make full use of it. Simply put, I’d never before been able to cast a spell that could use this much magic—I struggled far too often with the smaller spells to ever attempt a larger one. Until now.

  But I knew what would happen if I did run out of magic. Best case scenario, I’d be in a coma for a week. More likely I would die or burn myself out completely and never be able to cast a spell again. That thought interrupted my chanting and I paused for a moment, catching my breath. That was a mistake because as soon as I did I realized how sore I was. How tired.

  A voice in the back of my head told me that I could just give up now. That no one would blame me or even know. I could always try again later or get someone else to help me.

  I grit my teeth and told that voice to fuck off. I was doing this. Me. Nobody else. I was going to break my curse or I was going to burn myself out trying. What the hell was the point of having a bunch of magic if you couldn’t actually use it? I dug deeper and started chanting again, just as the distant sound of a door opening reached me.

  “Hello?” called a familiar, feminine voice from the first floor. “Anyone here?”

  Dammit not now!

  I could feel my concentration slipping. I pushed aside the sound of the voice and of footsteps in the house and dug into the anger the interruption had sparked, feeding it into the spell. The magic snapped and the pressure I’d been feeling suddenly became a concentrated blow that lifted me off my feet and slammed me backwards, crashing me through the door and into the hallway.

  My entire body tingled with energy as if I was a metal conductor charged with electricity. I tried to get up. Failed. Tried again and this time succeeded, strength returning far faster than it had left.

  I felt strong. Powerful. My erection strained against my boxers, tenting my blue jeans and my heart pounded in my chest. My senses were sharper. I could hear the shocked gasp of a young woman from the end of the hall, smell the faint bit of sweat that clung to her skin.

  I stared at her through a cloud of lust and adrenaline. I wanted her. And I was going to have her. I strode towards her feeling more powerful than I had ever felt in my entire life, My chest thrust forward, my head held high, and magic coursing through my veins.

  She started to speak, to say something, her words coming out in a nervous, high pitched tumble, but I waved my hand and magic flowed from me and into her. Even as she scrambled backwards I could already sense her arousal responding to my magic and building and match my own.

  I shed my sweat-soaked shirt, letting it fall to the floor behind me in a crumpled heap.

  She started to turn, to try and vanish down the stairway she’d come up, but I grabbed her wrist and my magic flowed into her, primal and pure. She moaned as it reached deep inside of her and stroked her core.

  I pulled her to me and pressed her against the wall with my body even as I crushed my lips to hers. My tongue thrust into her mouth and she eagerly reciprocated. Her hands stroked my back, clawing at my skin—whether to pull me closer or to dissuade me I don’t think she knew.

  One of my hands cupped her ass through the denim of her denim cutoffs and pulled her hips tighter against mine so that she could feel my erection straining to reach her. I could feel the heat of her sex even through our clothes. She liked this. She wanted this. Wanted me.

  That thought was intoxicating.

  My other hand reached for her chest, found a modest sized breast beneath her cropped t-shirt. She moaned a protest into my mouth and broke our kiss, panting and staring up at me.

  I didn’t give her the chance to say anything and ripped her shirt open. She gasped and made to cover herself. I pulled her hand away and ripped her bra off next, leaning down to capture her dark brown nipple between my lips.

  She gasped, a sharp sound of shocked pleasure. And she was mine. All resistance fled from her and we toppled to the floor in a tangle of limbs, my mouth reclaiming hers as she gyrated against me, alternating between lifting her chest and groin to better reach me. I swallowed down each of her gasps and moans as my hands explored her body, claiming every inch of her.

  I rubbed between her legs, pressing the denim of her short shorts against her sex, enjoying the heat and moisture I could feel building there. With a quick snap I undid the clasp of her cutoffs and yanked them and her panties down at the same time. She lifted her ass to help me up and I saw her engorged sex, bare of all hair and swollen with desire. A drop of girl-cum trickled from her nether lips and down to the crack of her taut ass.

  She gasped and stared up at me. I tore my eyes away from her sex to look over her tight, athletic body, pausing for a moment to admire her pert breasts, before moving up to dark eyes set in a feline face.

  “Lexus,” I said, her name coming out as a growl.

  “Oh, god, Caleb,” she moaned. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”

  I had no memory of removing my pants but I was naked from the waist down. I lunged forward, grabbing her by the hips to pull her to me, spreading her legs on either side of me, my engorged cock coming to rest against her pussy. I let myself slide between her slick folds without entering her, rubbing up over her clit and feeling her heat, soaking my member with her juices.

  “Please,” she moaned. “Please, please, please….”

  I l
et a hand drift up over her stomach, pausing to cup her breast before settling over her heart. I throbbed against my palm even with her flesh and ribs between us. I could feel each and every pulse.

  “You’re mine,” I growled and thrust inside of her.

  She was so wet I barely felt the hint of resistance her pussy put up. The faintest scent of blood reached my newly enhanced sense of smell. She was tight, so tight and hot, but her pussy welcomed my cock as if she had been made for me.

  Lexus cried out “Yes!”

  And we both began thrusting, her hips rising to meet my every downward thrust. I pounded into her as hard as I could, faster and faster, pausing only a moment, burying myself deep, as I felt her entire body tense up with her first orgasm.

  I began again, stretching and claiming her pussy with every savage stroke. She was mine. All of her, and my magic agreed, pouring into her with every thrust of my cock, flooding her body with pleasure as I filled her with my flesh. She screamed again in pleasure, shaking beneath me and began calling out my name.

  “Caleb! Caleb! Caleb!”

  “You’re mine,” I growled again. “Say it. Say your mine!”

  “I’m yours! Oh god, I’m yours!”

  A dam inside of my broke and my magic snapped out, spilling from me and into her along with my orgasm. I buried myself deep inside of her and roared my triumph, feeling my seed fill her up even as she shrieked once more and her entire body clamped down on me. My magic filled her, racing up from her sex, through her body, to settle into her heart. I could feel it pulsing there with every ecstatic beat.

  Finally I collapsed on top of her, thoroughly spent and breathing hard.

  I forced myself onto my elbows after a moment so that I wouldn’t crush her and Lexus stared up at me, a look of shock mingled with an expression I didn’t recognized. Probably because her eyes were no longer deep brown but a bright, vivid green. Instinctively I understood that she was mine, that somehow my magic had claimed her and made her a part of me.