Riley had never tried to do anything even remotely like this before, yet somehow she knew exactly what to do. When Leah gathered her fury, all her emotions, and screamed, sending a visible, jagged spear of dark energy from the circle aimed at Riley, it didn't find its target as a weapon, but as a tool.
It was almost like the Taser attack that had really started everything, only this time Riley wasn't caught, wasn't trapped, and was a long, long way from defenseless. And this time she didn't discharge her strength into the earth but channeled the sheer energy flung at her, took from it what she was determined to have, and then sent what was left streaming back to its source.
But when it returned to Leah, it was white-hot and burning, and her second scream shattered the night even as the energy shattered her circle of power. There was an almost blinding burst of light, the scream was cut off as though by a knife, and then it was over.
The candles were gone. The salt scattered to the winds. And clean moonlight shone down on the two women closest to the altar, one of them just beginning to stir and the other a crumpled form on the ground.
"Is she dead?" Ash asked.
"No," Riley answered. "But powerless now. Jenny was drugged, but she's coming out of it. She should be fine."
"With a stomach full of blood, she's going to be sick."
"Well, after that, she'll be fine. I don't know if she'll go back to being a satanist, but she'll live."
"Thanks to you."
She turned and looked at him, smiling. "Thanks to us. Hello. I remember you."
Ash was smiling as well. "Good."
Jake struggled to rise from the ground, his "What the bloody hell is all this?" several octaves higher than he, perhaps, would have preferred.
Riley glanced at him, and then said to her soul mate, "I have a feeling the debriefing is going to take some time."
"That's okay," Ash said, pulling her into his arms. "We have time."
EPILOGUE
Gordon admitted he'd been feeling uneasy about Leah for weeks before he called me," Riley said. "It was nothing he could put his finger on, just a feeling something wasn't right. When all the supposed evidence of occult activities began turning up, he thought maybe that was it, that somebody'd put a hex on her or something like that."
Ash raised his eyebrows. "A hex?"
"Hey, we've all seen weirder things, believe me. And Gordon's Louisiana roots run deep. Thing is, stories his grandmother told him clash with his Duke education, so he has a tendency to doubt his own instincts when it comes to the paranormal."
"Duke, huh? I guess that also explains why he's drawling one minute and talking like a college professor the next."
"Yeah, that explains it." Riley leaned against the deck railing and gazed down the beach, where a bonfire burned brightly-surrounded by a rather sober group of satanists. It was Friday night, and they were having their scheduled "marshmallow roast."
"I don't think they're having much fun," Ash noted.
"No. Too much to take in, probably. Even though they weren't involved, they got too close to the dark side for a while. The very dark side. That tends to give people pause."
"I can see how it would."
Riley smiled slightly, without looking at him. "But not you, right?"
"Any pausing I did was early on," he said. "Back when we were both cranky about falling in love. Once we fell, there really wasn't anything to be done about it. Except enjoy."
"Glad you added that last part."
"Probably a good thing I can. I mean, I'm hitching my fate to a clairvoyant ex-military FBI agent who specializes in the occult and has the power to yank me out of a sound sleep in the middle of the night and draw me miles to her side in order to help her defeat the evil spawn of a serial killer."
Riley chewed on her lower lip for a moment, and said, "Well, when you put it like that…"
"I'm a very brave man."
"Yes. You are." Riley turned and smiled at him in the bright moonlight. "Bishop's going to try to recruit you, you know." It wasn't quite a question.
"I had a feeling."
"Well, we'd make a hell of a team."
Ash pulled her into his arms. "We already do, love."
It was all the answer Riley needed.
