Marked By Magic by Christa Wick
Chapter Twenty-Four
A timid knocklanded on the door to Quentin's study.
"Open," he rumbled.
A woman in her early twenties entered the room, head down and hands clasped in front of her.
"Angelica," he said, not attaching her father's name because he could not remember who among his church had fathered the girl.
Whichever bastard son of his it was, the woman had been born with no latent abilities, rendering her useless for anything other than menial chores, bringing in money for his operations by selling drugs or whoring her out in a variety of ways, and reconnaissance.
Reconnaissance was exactly the use to which he had put her the past few days.
"Remove your coat," he ordered. "And put it on the rack."
Spelled crosses of metal and wood knocked lightly against each other as she unthreaded frail arms from the sleeves and stood on tiptoe to put away the jacket.
For Quentin, the many crosses sewn into the fabric were meaningless symbols to him and the magic he practiced. The null spells he had embedded in them, however, made anyone fully human, virtually undetectable to the wolves, witches, and budding latents.
Quentin's enemies would have to be close enough to the woman to see her with human eyes, smell her with a human nose, or hear her with human ears.
"Make your report," he ordered, his gaze returning to his journal and the quill he held. Without even the smallest trace of magic in her, the woman wasn't worth looking at, at least not with clothes on, her body covered in dirt, and her ratted hair twisted through with twigs.
Quentin had taught his church to look down on all women, even the ones they took as wives and the daughters born to them. It made it easier for the men he selected as his Hunters to capture latents, to do what they must with them, then deliver them to him to drain away the magic, the torture they had already experienced closer to a stubbed toe than the hell he put them through to amplify the magic within them.
Asia, at least he thought that was her name, walked to within a few feet of his desk, then dropped to her knees.
"One of the vans left," she said, her voice studiously calculated so he wouldn't accuse her of mumbling or speaking at a volume above her station within the church.
She pulled a ruby cabochon and a shard of amethyst from her map case and placed them at the edge of Quentin's desk.
"These glowed when the van passed me."
He took the stones and rolled them between his fingers.
"So the cub and the wolf-witch have left," he murmured.
He tossed the ruby in a drawer, then held his hand forward, palm up.
"And the other gems?"
The woman brought forth a topaz and a fiery diamond.
"Nothing."
Quentin nodded, his blank expression hiding the relief he felt. He would not need to hunt his daughter down to take her life. More than that, she seemed trapped in the house now that she had met her other half.
An earlier scout had reported a few minutes of chaos among the wolves at one point early in the clan's discovery of the mansion. All of the wolves outside had dropped to the ground in agony.
He fingered the diamond, his gaze tracing a fracture that had occurred at the same moment the wolves had seized and shuddered in the dirt.
Done with listening to the woman, he swept the stones into the desk and pulled out a plastic baggie filled with pills the size of baby aspirins. They melted like baby aspirin, too.
"Come around," he ordered, turning his chair and spreading his thighs.
The woman crawled on her hands and knees. The flash of revulsion she had offered at his command was gone by the time she reached him.
Her gaze searched for the pill. Seeing it in his outstretched hand, she delicately pinched the pill and placed it under her tongue. Her pupils dilated almost instantly, every light in the room suddenly too bright.
"Closer," he ordered, unthreading the buttons on his pants.
Still on her hands and knees, she obeyed, her face hovering over his crotch.
Loathe to touch her, to have any contact other than with her lips and tongue, Quentin ordered the woman to pull her hair to one side. She complied in a slow and clumsy manner, the drug he had supplied making her feel like she was floating.
"All the way," he ordered. "I want to see your mark."
She answered with an uncoordinated nod, switching hands and straining to expose the blue crescent on her neck, the symbol's placement exactly where the common carotid artery was closest to the surface.
Quentin skimmed a finger over the spot then pushed on the back of her head, signaling her to proceed.
It would be the last time she took him—or any other man—in her mouth.
