“Who are you?” she whispered a second before they crashed…
“Robin!” The biggest of the men snapped, slapping a fist between them.
Making Nixie stumble backward and land on her butt once again.
“I was falling and…” She frowned. What was going on?
They’d been falling, hadn’t they?
The man named Robin stared at his hands with a quizzical frown marring his brows. “What is this dark magic?” he murmured, then his hypnotic blue eyes locked on hers.
And she thought that maybe they could have stared at one another forever, locked in each other’s gazes, but for the men that suddenly tackled her to the ground.
“Get off me!” she screamed, bucking and writhing beneath their absolute hold.
Confused, terrified by everything that had happened and was happening, Nixie tried to turn to mist, tried to escape back into the safety of her lamp, but Robin held up his hand.
“Stay!” he said, and instantly the order locked her limbs in place.
“John, Maurice, Thane,” he snarled at the three men, “get off her now.”
The one named John shoved his hand harder into her neck, making her gasp and claw at him. She could not leave, and so she tried in vain to suck in air, but his grip was too strong for her to overcome.
Her vision began to fade to black and just before she passed out, she saw Robin reach down for the big man’s shoulders, saw him toss him to the ground, and then he was reaching out a hand to her, looking as if he couldn’t understand his own actions.
Throat a sore mess, she grimaced as she took his hand and was lifted gently to her feet.
His touch was so warm, so…safe?
She rubbed her head. What was going on with her?
Robin looked as if he wasn’t sure whether to join in with his friends or shield her.
“You saw that demon, Robin, to defend it!” John spat, jumping to his feet.
But Robin ignored his friend and turned to her still wearing the same quizzical look of before. “Were you trying to kill us?”
Only now was she starting to try and piece together the last few minutes.
The men looked as though they’d just survived a sandstorm. Their flesh was rubbed raw, their hair poking up in every direction. There were open cuts below John’s eyes, causing trails of blood to go toward his mouth.
The other two men looked just as bad.
Only Robin looked unscathed. Sort of.
His cheeks were muddied and dirt-smeared, but he didn’t look cut open. Had she done that on purpose?
She didn’t think so. In fact, she hadn’t thought of much of anything when she’d been released. There’d been a flash of panic so swift and violent that she’d simply reacted.
Shaking her head, she rubbed her aching throat. “No. I didn’t. I was just—”
“Liar!” John came forward, raising his hands.
“No.” Robin held out his arm, blocking the big man’s way back to her. “She speaks truth.”
Nixie shivered under the brutality of his gaze. John and Robin… Robin and John… Those two names kept playing around in her head, so familiar, so…
She gasped, looking at them both as if for the first time. “Robin Hood and Little John?”
But this time Robin wasn’t quick enough to stop John; he came at her, his hands clenching on to her shoulders so hard and tight she thought he’d break the bones.
“We must send this devil back to Hell, Robin.” John shook her so hard her teeth rattled.
“Enough!” Robin snapped. “Genie, come to me!”
The magic of ownership, of his mastery over her, engulfed her body, moving like a living flame through her blood. With an inarticulate cry of pain, joy, terror, and uncertainty, she shoved John off her as though he weighed nothing and then flung herself into Robin’s arms, wrapping her own around his neck in a powerful vise-like hold. To think she’d never know the joy of freedom again, only to have it suddenly thrust upon her, her mind was at a total loss on how to handle itself.
“You are real,” she gasped, “you’re real. Oh dear God, you’re real.”
And then like a light switch flipping off, Nixie’s head went blank and she sank to the ground like a rock for the second time.
*
“What in the blue blazes just happened?” John growled, and glanced at the women very clearly passed out on top of Robin’s feet.
In disbelief, Robin could only stare, at a total loss as to what had just happened. He’d rubbed the lamp, she’d come out and attacked them, and then they’d locked eyes and the entire world had floated away.
Blinking, he turned on John in a daze. “Did she and I fly off the ground?”
Jaw clenched, John gave him a confused frown. “Fly? No. But you’ve been acting possessed ever since she grabbed your hands. I say you put her back in that cursed lamp and toss her into the deepest pit.”
Maurice and Thane both nodded. “Aye,” they said in unison.