balance on the astral—for every light, a shadow, for every spike, a depression. Floating, her mind moving free of her body, Lily spread her questing thoughts wider, opened her heart to the bits of consciousness caught within the flowing bands of energy and life.
She had no idea how long she sat, arms spread wide to capture the slightest sensation, when a ripple passed through her. The fragile wave of energy was slightly out of sync, not part of the ethereal rhythm of the astral plane. The anomaly was so slight that Lily had to consciously reach for it. She concentrated all her senses on the dissonance, that tiny bulge of energy moving across the astral bands, rather than with the flow.
The bulge paused, almost as if it were aware of Lily’s perusal. Without any defined form, it still managed to project a sense of curiosity, as if it wondered who or what she was, why she was here, what she searched for. Then, as Lily opened to the energy, something changed. She sensed darker emotions, hate and malevolence growing and expanding, taking shape as the bulge of energy slowly spun. Caught in the swirling strands of power, Lily stared at the thing, at the way the energy swirled and clumped and slowly morphed into . . . oh, shit.
A pair of shimmering teal blue eyes—familiar teal blue eyes—blinked slowly and locked on Lily. Sebastian? But how? Why?
She gasped, covered her lips with icy fingertips. It had to be him, and yet she saw only the eyes. The color was magical, as true as the brightest tropical lagoon with dark, liquid pupils, perfectly human-looking eyes framed in thick lashes, staring at her out of swirling darkness. No face, no sense of gender, though she had no doubt she looked into the eyes of the man who had been her lover just last night.
Only now, there was a sense of evil surrounding him, an ugly nature the beauty of his eyes couldn’t disguise. Not merely the darkness she’d felt in him, but a truly evil nature that was every bit as wrong as his father’s.
Yet even so, Lily’s body reacted in pulsing need, a tightening of womb and nipples alike, a flowering of moisture between her legs—sensual heat unlike anything she’d experienced with any other man. Only with him.
Physically captured in a power she couldn’t explain—something as sensual as it was terrifying—Lily struggled, but her muscles wouldn’t obey. She tried to scream a warning, but her lips formed only the sound of his name.
“Sebastian?” Barely a whisper before her voice was silenced. Those gorgeous blue eyes seemed to widen in surprise even as Lily sensed Eve’s desperate attempt to pull her free. She wanted to go to her friend, to her goddess, but the power in those mesmerizing eyes sucked her down, deeper into a shimmering pool of power, until she was nothing more than a wisp of energy. A tiny breath of life clinging to a mere shred of reality.
A scream. Far, far away, she heard an angry scream.
“No. You can’t have her. Go! I command it!”
Lily sensed a small pop, as if a tiny bubble had burst. Then all was darkness and silence as she tumbled bonelessly into utter emptiness.
Blinking rapidly, shaking his head in confusion, Sebastian pushed himself up from the wood floor in his bedroom and leaned against the edge of the bed. As his head slowly cleared, the pain set in. Every muscle, every joint, every bit of him inside and out ached. His stomach lurched, and he thought he was going to throw up. A few deep breaths brought the nausea under control.
For now. He gazed about, wondering how he’d ended up here. He’d been lying spread eagle in the midst of the pentagram, his body naked, his wrist bleeding when he’d cast the spell.
The last thing he recalled was staring through heavy mist and seeing Lily. On the astral? Only his spirit should have moved from the place of magic he’d created, but somehow, he’d either been tossed out of the pentagram or he’d made it here, entirely across the big room, on his own. He couldn’t remember.
Blood dripped slowly from the shallow cut he’d made across his wrist, pooling on his naked belly, but otherwise he didn’t think he’d hurt himself. He was erect. Now that was weird, but he was hard as a post, his cock and balls aching. No matter. He turned slowly. Clutching the frame of the bed for balance, he