Spell Bound (Darkly Enchanted) Read Online Free Page A

through the next two-hundred years. In every single picture, Harry stood somewhere in the background, looking exactly as he did today.
Not such a shock, considering all Gabriel knew about the world. Still, Gabriel didn’t know what Harry was. He wasn’t Enu , a human of magical Etruscan descent, like the streghe and the versipelli . And not Fata, an Etruscan elemental being such as the winged folletti and the goat-legged salbinelli .
Harry was something else. Someone you didn’t want to fuck with. He was ancient, older even than the cursed streghe , though no one wanted to piss him off by asking just how old. Everyone who came through The Spyder’s doors learned to get and stay on Harry’s good side. And those who didn’t…well, nobody had actually dared get on Harry’s bad side since Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance.
Gabriel was no exception.
In the hallway outside the club, he entered the darkened alcove that held a perpetually out-of-order phone. At least, out of order for those who didn’t know how to use it.
Without lifting the handset, Gabriel checked to make sure there were no eteri from the strip club wandering around then punched in four digits on the base. After a two-second lull, the rumble of well-oiled pistons warned him the back wall was about to swing open. When it did, a rush of air blew out and Gabriel stepped into the holding room, the wall shutting behind him as an overhead light came on. One by one, more lights clicked on down the descending hallway.
Sliding out of his leather duster, he hung it and the arsenal it held in one of the empty lockers lining the wall.
From his right boot, he pulled his pugio, the short silver dagger he’d inherited from his dad, and put it in his coat pocket. In his jeans and t-shirt, he’d stand out some. But everyone who came to DownBelow thought they knew who and what he was—just another Etruscan descendent with a little inherent power, an Enu who worked construction for an eteri firm out of Philadelphia.
Last, he took off his boots and socks and let his bare feet settle into the dirt floor, soaking in the undiluted power of the ley line running beneath the city. Above, in the concrete streets and brick buildings, magic still flowed strong enough to make Reading one of the most powerful old cities in North America.
But down here, in the earth itself…Goddess, it was like injecting pure heroin into his veins. And, yeah, he’d been there, done that, in that dark period after the deaths of his dad and brother.
But magic wouldn’t give him the problems drugs would.
He stood for a few seconds, eyes closed, letting the power seep into his body, mingle with the arus in his blood. Let it cleanse some of the anger that’d been building the past week. Sweating out the alcohol would take a little more time, but it’d take a lot more than five or six liters over three days to seriously affect him.
The disappointment would take longer to dissipate and that was the real bitch. He’d thought for sure he’d had a decent lead this time. Dario, that bastard, had eluded him again.
He shook his head. He’d deal with that later.
Tonight, he’d let himself get blown away by the band, maybe get laid before going to ritual. Yeah, getting laid would go a long way toward clearing his head.
Opening his eyes, he realized he heard music. The steel door at the end of the tunnel muffled most of it, as did the dampening spells covering every inch of the ceiling, walls and floor.
Still, he could feel it in his bones, his blood beginning to pound in rhythm. Queen, maybe, though it wasn’t anything he recognized, and his dad had loved the band.
By the time he reached the door, they’d moved onto something else, something with a slower beat that made him think about sex. Now that he’d started thinking about it, he couldn’t stop. And since he couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten laid, he figured it was too long.
There were bound to be a few willing female lucani . After a