The Enchanted: One Breath: Dark Sorcery, #4

By Cheyenne McCray

A "Dark Sorcery" Novella

 

San Francisco's D'Anu gray magic witches are in an epic battle. But even if Sydney can use her gray magic and ancient Druid powers to save the world, can she risk losing her heart to handsome D'Danann warrior Conlan?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cheyenne McCray LLC
• Release date: Sep 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781939778284

Cheyenne McCray

Cheyenne McCray is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today best-selling author who grew up on a ranch in southeastern Arizona and has written over one hundred published novels and novellas. Chey also writes cozy mysteries as Debbie Ries. She delights in creating stories of suspense, love, and redemption with characters and worlds her readers can get lost in. Chey and her husband live with their two Ragdoll cats and two small dogs in southeastern Arizona where she enjoys going on long walks, traveling around the world, and searching for her next adventure and new ideas, as well as hand embroidering crazy quilts and listening to audiobooks. Find out more about Chey, how to contact her, and her books at https://cheyennemccray.com.

Book preview

The Enchanted

THE ENCHANTED

A DARK SORCERY NOVELLA: BOOK 4

CHEYENNE MCCRAY

Cheyenne McCray LLC

Copyright © 2023 by Cheyenne McCray LLC

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual business establishments, events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

CONTENTS

Beginnings

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Excerpt: The Shadows

Cheyenne McCray

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Also by Cheyenne McCray

About Cheyenne

Kayce Lassiter,

My martini glass clinks yours!

Love,

Cheyenne

BEGINNINGS

One Breath was previously published as Breath of Magic in the No Rest for the Witches anthology. It has never been available in a separate volume until now.

I hope you enjoy this novella while you spend a little more time in my world of witches, warriors, warlocks, and the Fae.

Cheyenne

1

If only she could fly like Conlan, she could get herself out of this mess.

Sydney Aline gritted her teeth and clutched the ledge over her head as tightly as she could. The toes of her jogging shoes barely reached a much narrower ledge on the outside wall of the abandoned hotel.

Her and her damned divining.

She sure hadn’t seen this coming. What good was a D’Anu witch who couldn’t divine her own future? Especially when it involved dangling from a friggin’ ledge.

The adrenaline pumping through her body helped keep her moving and glued to the side of the hotel. Sydney took a deep breath and started to inch her way toward one of the hotel’s second-floor windows.

Now that she was up close and personal with the building’s wall, she could smell the age of the bricks and the pollution coating them.

Once she reached the window, if she held on to the ledge with one hand, she could use her other to release her magic and open the window. End of problem.

Please let it be that easy.

She’d scraped her fingers raw catching herself when she’d slipped from the third-story ledge that was now above her head instead of under her feet. She’d been creeping along, doing just fine, until a part of the footpath crumbled.

She’d slipped and barely grabbed an intact part of the ledge. She could have fallen three stories instead of one. Even though she was a witch, she wasn’t likely to bounce and recover from that kind of fall.

Now she just had to get to that window.

And Conlan. Where was that Tuatha D’Danann warrior, anyway? The one who could sprout a pair of wings whenever he wanted to. The one who, sure as the goddess, could help her out, right about now.

That gorgeous hunk of a man who makes me hot with just one look.

Sydney groaned and moved another inch closer toward the window. Her arms ached and trembled. The only reason she should be thinking about Conlan at this moment was to save her butt. Dear Anu, how she hated being in a position where she needed his help.

Okay, skip that thought. Her pride would remain intact if he would return from scouting for demons, swoop down, and get her out of this mess.

When she had climbed up the corner of the building, she’d been so sure she could just ease herself toward the window because that ledge was fairly wide. She wasn’t afraid of heights. Well, maybe right now she was.

She hadn’t been crazy about the idea of him flying her up there, so they had planned to meet at the third-floor window. No biggie. She’d just started without him.

Another inch.

She bit her lower lip, putting all her focus into making it to the second-floor window instead.

When she’d divined that they would possibly find a dark warlock here—a bastard named Darkwolf who happened to be in possession of an evil god’s stone eye—she’d certainly not seen herself outside in the foggy, dreary, San Francisco afternoon, clinging to the side of a hotel.

Too bad her Doberman familiar, Chaos, wasn’t here to alert Conlan to her situation. She could use Chaos’s magic to bolster her own. But his barking might draw Darkwolf’s attention—if she had divined correctly and he really was here.

Her skin felt sticky against her body armor, which was covered by her T-shirt. Her jeans stuck to her legs, and her arms were coated with the fine mist from a heavy fog.

At least she’d spelled her glasses to resist fog so that she could see on these kinds of days, which were frequent in San Francisco.

The body armor had been supplied by Jake Macgregor, captain of the San Francisco Paranormal Special Forces. Right now it was weighing her down, making it harder for her to move.

Slowly she worked her way toward the window. She did her best to ignore the pain in her arms and legs from clinging so tightly to the ledge, and from the tenseness in her body.

The wind whipped up, causing her hair to fly into her face and get caught in her glasses. Now she could see only out of one eye.

Sydney wanted to scream. But she couldn’t let Darkwolf know she’d figured out his hiding place if he was here. Then he’d likely change locations and none of her sister D’Anu witches would be able to find him.

Not to mention the D’Danann warriors. The warriors were winged Fae fighters from Otherworld who had been helping the witches repel an invasion of demons.

Four of the warriors and witches had paired up—a witch with a warrior—and had been tracking Darkwolf for the past few days, each searching one quadrant of the city.

Now, Sydney was sure she had finally figured out where Darkwolf was and she was going to fall to her death before she caught the S.O.B. If Darkwolf was here, she’d contact the other witches and D’Danann before making contact with the warlock.

Darkwolf had started the whole invasion. The warlock bastard had summoned powers and beings too great for him to control, even with his with dark sorcery.

For starters, he’d called on Fomorii demons who worshiped the ancient, wicked god Balor, and his murdering bitch of a wife. Now, both Balor and Ceithlenn were here with the Fomorii, and things had gone from horrible to impossibly worse.

Sydney ground her teeth. They’d been dealing with the totally evil goddess for weeks now.

Because Darkwolf had brought her to San Francisco, the she-goddess from hell had been able to slaughter thousands of humans and call her husband up from the depths of Underworld.

Balor was here, now.

Thank Anu, Balor hadn’t found his eye yet. And he wouldn’t, if Sydney could keep herself alive and snag Darkwolf before he forked it over.

By the Goddess, when I get my hands around that warlock’s throat...

Taking a deep breath, she moved another inch closer to her destination. Now maybe two feet away.

Her hair was driving her crazy the way it was stuck in her glasses.

I don’t know enough swear words to express how I feel right now.

On the other side of the window she was headed toward was a balcony with sliding glass doors. Why couldn’t she be closer to that?

Whose bright idea was it anyway, to walk along a ledge to get in through the window on the third floor?

Mine, stupid.

Before Conlan left to scout out the rest of the hotel by flying around it, she’d told him she planned to climb up to the third floor and walk along that wide ledge to the first window.

Conlan had raised an eyebrow and given her a look that said, Yeah, right, only probably in Gaelic, and likely not that charitably. More like, You should know better than this, but you ’re a big girl. If you want to break your neck, who am I to stop you?

His teasing winks and sexy looks had made Sydney wonder what it would be like to kiss him—to more than kiss him.

Only she didn’t get involved with the playboy type. She didn’t do casual sexual relationships, and Conlan had one-night-stand written all over him.

Sydney grunted as she worked her way along the ledge. She would get herself out of this.

She neared the window. Her arms were nearly numb and her fingers felt like she was shredding them with every movement she made along the ledge.

One would think that as a descendent of the Ancient Druids and as a witch who practiced gray magic, she’d be able to use her powers to get along this ledge a little faster. But like other D’Anu witches, she had to have her hands free to use her powers.

Friggin’ inconvenient.

Almost there.

When Sydney finally reached the window, she almost cried with relief. She was going to do this. She was going to make it.

Carefully, she pried the fingers of her left hand from the ledge. All her weight was now on her right hand and the toes of her jogging shoes.

Trying not to make any sudden moves, she lowered her left hand and blue sparkles of magic flowed from her palm to the window. She heard the click of the window unlocking. She tensed her jaw and moved her hand from the left to the right, opening the window with her magic. It made a screech like nails across a chalkboard that grated along her spine and sounded loud in the foggy afternoon.

What if Darkwolf heard it?

Sydney reached her left hand up to grasp the ledge again so she could climb in through the window.

The fingers of her right hand slipped.

Terror ripped through her as she scrambled to grab something. She came up with air.

She fell.

A scream tore from her throat.

At the same time she let loose a magic rope from her palm. It shot straight at the balcony on the other side of the window.

The rope wrapped around the top railing. She jerked to a hard stop. For a moment all she could do was hang onto the rope as it swayed beneath the balcony.

Sydney’s heart beat as if it would explode while she clung to the blue magical rope with one hand. With a burst of effort, she swung her other hand up and