Spell Bound (Darkly Enchanted) Read Online Free Page B

night at DownBelow with the band, they’d be aching for it and most knew he’d be good for a few hours, at least.
Laying his left hand against the bare steel, he gave a shove with more than just raw force. He put a little power in it, making the metal warm to the touch. A lock appeared in the center of the rectangular door. Pulling out the silver key he always wore around his neck, he inserted it in the keyhole. The key had been made by his mother and blessed by Laran, the Etruscan God of War. Laran would be at the ritual tonight. And He’d probably be pissed off at Gabriel for missing the last one.
Something else to worry about later.
Right now, he pushed through the door and into the dizzying rush of DownBelow.
* * *
“Leo, honey, you having a good time?” Shea asked.
Leo’s head whipped around as he sat at the back of the wooden stage, mostly hidden from the crowd behind the drum kit. The band was between songs but gearing up to go again.
Though he never smiled—not once, not since she’d carried him out of their parents’ house sobbing, before he’d set the entire place on fire with the touch of his hands—he did have one expression that indicated maybe, just maybe, he might smile one day.
His dark eyes widened as he nodded, excitement radiating from him like heat. A set of bongos lay on his lap. Probably Tessa’s, the band’s percussionist.
“Hey, Shea.” A small brunette with bright green eyes bounced across the stage. She wore a short, pink dress that looked like a pair of baby doll pajamas Shea had had as a child. With her wavy, chestnut hair, pointed features and petite frame, Dilby managed to pull it off without looking like a pornographic Shirley Temple. “You’re done for the night?”
“Hey, Dilby, thanks for bringing Leo down. I’m sure he was bored stiff in the dressing room.”
The girl smiled, the expression making her look almost as young as Leo. Shea had no idea how old Dilby really was. Or what she was. She wasn’t Enu . Or rather, she didn’t feel Enu to Shea. She was probably Fata , though her ears weren’t pointed like the linchetti and she didn’t have a folletta ’s wings. Her legs were regular human legs, unlike a salbinelli ’s goat legs. She was probably gianes , a female wood elf.
Still, Shea never asked because she never wanted to answer the same question.
“No problem,” Dilby said. “Tessa’s out of town so we’re hurting for percussion. And Leo, my man,” she flashed a smile at the boy, who stared back with adoring eyes, “is a rock god, aren’t you, hon?”
Leo nodded again and, for a few brief seconds, Shea held her breath. She willed him to speak, to say something. Anything. Blessed Goddess, the kid hadn’t said more than a hundred words since he’d seen their parents lying in pools of blood. His screams for them still reverberated in her nightmares.
Of course, he didn’t say a word, and she and Dilby sighed in unison. When they left, Dilby was the person Shea would miss most.
As if she’d read her mind, Dilby flashed a rueful smile, ruffled Leo’s inky black hair and headed back to center stage. The guitarist, a guy named Caeles who looked to be about twenty and had the pointed ears of a linchetto peeking out from beneath curly brown hair, started to pick out the opening notes to My Chemical Romance’s “Dead,” and the crowd began to writhe.
Leo picked up the beat without hesitation, little hands smacking the skins. He nodded to Shea before closing his eyes to concentrate.
“I’ll be right up here,” she said, though he probably hadn’t heard her. That was okay. He knew she’d be there if he needed her.
Walking up a few rows into the mostly empty seats facing the back of the band, Shea sat on the warm stone, heated from below. From her vantage point, she could see the entire club.
Who would ever guess that beneath this city was a perfectly formed amphitheater? Though tiny in comparison to the architectural wonders built by the ancient Romans in