Over the last few days, bits and pieces of magic lore and ritual had come to her. Reading the old spell book had opened the door in her mind just a little wider, to allow memories to creep in. Images, thoughts, just appeared in her mind as if they had always been there and she simply hadn’t been open enough to recognize them for what they were.
She knew that a waxing moon was a good time for renewal spells. For starting over. For working toward goals.
And what better goal than staying alive and solving her own private mystery?
Heat pressed around her and a soft wind sighed past, bringing just a breath of coolness to her skin. She wore jeans, a T-shirt and boots that she had conjured magically. Starting across the parking lot, she kept to the shadows and practically tiptoed, to keep her steps as silent as possible. She paused every few seconds to listen, but all she heard was the sound of a dog barking in the distance and a few lonely crickets chirping wildly.
The motel office was around at the front of the building and the room she and Torin had taken was at the very back of the motel. Since the fire in Arizona, she hadn’t been willing to put any innocents at risk, so she had insisted on staying as far from everyone else as possible.
There were only a few cars in the lot. She hurried past them, hoping no one glanced out their windows to see her. This was a risk and she knew it. Just as she knew that everything depended on her regaining her lost memories. Should she have remained in her motel room, safe but ignorant? Or was it better to trust her instincts and call down the moon while hoping for the revelation she needed?
She had no doubt what Torin’s opinion would have been. But this was her choice. Her decision. She wasn’t being reckless. She was being proactive.
Torin would be furious if he returned and found her outside, unprotected. And maybe it was foolish, she told herself. But at the same time, if she didn’t find a way to unlock her past life, her past mistakes, how could she ever correct what had once gone wrong?
She kept her head down and hurried across the darkened parking lot. Across the street, there was a row of trees and beyond them, she knew, was a meadow. She’d seen it when they had arrived earlier that afternoon.
Shea sent furtive glances up and down the quiet road, then darted for the treeline. She pushed past the low-hanging branches and inhaled the scent of pine. Fallen needles under her feet cushioned every step, as if even nature were helping her remain hidden.
She kept walking when she reached the meadow, wanting to get as far from the road as she could. There were no homes within sight and the silence was cathedral-like. The only sounds were the soft sigh of the wind through the knee-high grasses and the distant roar of an engine as it traveled along the road.
She didn’t have much time and she knew it. Torin would be back soon. She wanted to be in their motel room waiting for him.
Alone beneath the moon, Shea glanced up at the wide night sky. A hazy light seemed to filter down from the heavens and as she drew the night into her lungs, she felt the power of nature slide through her veins. This was witchcraft at its best, she thought, not even sure where that insistent thought had sprung from. A witch and the night. This was where power was to be found and knowledge gathered. This was where the heart of her strength resided.
She’d always loved the night. Even as a child, she’d felt drawn to the darkness. To the sweep of stars overhead. To the phases of the moon. More comfortable in shadows than in bright light, Shea had never asked herself why she was so much more a night person than anything else. It just… was.
Now, at last, she understood.
Her body felt alive. The hot, damp air clung to her like a lover’s hands. She ached for Torin’s touch and knew that the pull of the moon combined with her connection to her Eternal was ramping up the desire she always felt for him.
But then, what better magic was there than sex well done?
Shea?
Jolting, Shea realized that Torin’s voice was whispering into her mind.
Are you safe?
She focused her power on reaching out to him. Closing off the fact that she was outside and on her own, she simply assured him, I’m fine. Just working on a spell.
That was true enough anyway.
I will return shortly.
Which meant, she thought as she closed her mind to him, that she didn’t have much time.
Smiling, she shook her hair back from her face and accepted that the time was right. But this was magic and she had learned from her dreams and memories that high magic was best done skyclad.
She glanced around her one more time, just to make sure she was alone; then she took a breath, snapped her fingers and the clothes she’d manifested that morning vanished. She stood naked and warm beneath a sliver of moon.
The wind kissed her skin and the cool white light of the moon seemed to seep into her body, filling her with a sense of peace that was welcome, soothing. As if the moon had been waiting for her, hoping to be discovered again.
“I’m here now,” Shea whispered, surrendering to that peace washing over her. She tipped her head back to stare up into the heavens. Her long hair brushed the bare skin of her back. She lifted her hands, palms up, as if to catch the pale light drifting over her. Her eyes wide, she fixed her gaze on the milk white crescent, the center of who and what she was.
And as she stood in that soft light, words came to her Words of power. Words of supplication.
“Goddess, hear me. I seek answers,” she said, her voice strong and even. “I seek truth. The life I led is long past, but its echoes remain. Help me find my way, Goddess. Fill my heart with strength and my mind with truth.”
Her words sounded overly loud in the pervasive quiet. It was as if the very earth had taken a breath and held it. Shea felt as though she were balanced on a thin wire stretched between her past life and the present. As if one wrong step on either side would end her quest before it began.
And still, she stood beneath the moon, welcoming its light, its strength as its elemental power slid through her. The wind kicked up, caressing her with suddenly icy fingers. Goose bumps raced along her skin. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears. She waited, silently beseeching the moon to open the doors of her mind and give her access to all she had once laid claim to.
Her hands remained cupped, drawing down the power of the moon, pulling it within herself.
“Mother moon, hear me,” she said in a whisper. “Grant me the knowing. Help me in the Awakening.”
In the next moment, she swayed as if an invisible weight had been dropped on her. Her breath was strangled in her chest and her mind expanded as hundreds of images appeared in her thoughts as if someone had whisked away a concealing curtain.
Shea gasped at the rush of information, trying desperately to make sense of everything she was seeing, feeling. She invoked the moon again, whispering, “Show me. Teach me. Help me find the path.”
Moments ticked past and she was lost in the magic of the moon. Light filled her, streaming through her body, along her arms, to the tips of her fingers. She felt the swell of rising power and gave herself over to it. Her body hummed with heat and life and strength. She felt the innate talents she had carried through centuries stir within her. She experienced the complete joy of knowing that this was what she had been meant for.
Shea smiled with satisfaction as the past came to life in her mind.
“Well, look what we have here.”
Shocked, she came up out of the moon magic as a drowning woman breaching the water’s surface. She struggled for air that felt too thick and hot to breathe. Her mind felt muddled with the onslaught of too much information absorbed too quickly. For a moment, she didn’t even remember where she was.
Then she saw the man walking across the moonlit meadow toward her and she remembered everything.
“You’re a witch, aren’t you?” he asked, then answered his own question. “Sure you are, standing out here naked as the day you was born, looking up at the moon. You doing a spell,
witch?”
“No,” Shea said softly, realizing that no matter what she had gained with this spell, she’d risked her own safety by coming into the night alone. She should have waited for Torin, she told herself. But it was too late now for regrets.
She faced the man and watched him warily as he approached. About forty, with graying hair and a beer belly, he smiled, but it didn’t touch his eyes. In one hand, he held a pistol, barrel pointed at the ground. With the other, he scrubbed at his whiskered jaw as if trying to decide what to do next. He let his gaze move over her with open admiration.
Shea shuddered with revulsion as his eyes washed over her like a mud slide.
“You’re a pretty one,” he mused, “I’ll give you that. But you’re still a witch.” He lifted the gun and casually aimed it at her. “Seems to me, I could shoot you right here and nobody’d think nothing of it. Hell, they’d probably thank me.”
And give him the reward. But he didn’t know she was the witch everyone in the country was searching for. That, she thought, was at least one thing she had going for her.
Should she run? No. He’d only chase her down-or shoot her. Besides, Shea told herself, she’d be damned if she ran again. She was through hiding from what she was. Done apologizing for her existence to a society that was so blinded by its own fear it couldn’t see the wonder of magic or the women who wielded it.
She wasn’t the witch she had been only two weeks before. She wouldn’t ever again allow herself to be captured or used. She wouldn’t allow anyone to put their hands on her. Not ever again. Times had changed. She had changed. She’d learned far too much to ever go back to what she used to be.
This one man thought he would capture her. Terrorize her. She looked at him and he suddenly seemed small and far less frightening than he had only a moment ago.
He was in for a surprise.
“Yes,” she said, “I am a witch.”
His eyes widened as if he hadn’t really expected her to admit it.
Shea snapped her fingers and instantly she was wearing the clothing she had zapped off herself only a short while ago. Maybe it had been a mistake to give this man proof that she was a witch, but damned if she’d stand there naked in front of him, letting him look at her as if she were the last steak at a barbecue.
“Got some power, do you?” he asked, raising the gun higher, taking aim at a spot right between her eyes. “Think that’ll be enough?”
Not so very long ago, on that last day at the school when a man had jumped out at her, she had been terrified. She’d reacted instinctively-killing him without even meaning to. This time was different. This time, she wouldn’t lose that hard-won sense of control.
He reached out and Shea let him grab hold of her. She needed him close. And the closer he was, the less likely he would be to shoot.
The power she felt beneath the moon washed over her in a lush, clean sweep of amazing magic. Through her fear, Shea felt her own strength rising.
“Not gonna fight me, huh?” He grinned as if he’d just been given a present. “Good for you.”
She smiled, reached up and laid two fingers against his forehead. He dropped like a stone and was snoring before he hit the ground.
“Yes,” Shea said softly. “Good for me.”
Chapter 36
The moment Torin stepped into the motel room, he knew something was wrong.
Gaze narrowed, he swept the small room thoroughly with one quick glance. Shea wasn’t there. He opened his senses to her, instantly dropped the bags of food he’d brought and flashed to her side in the middle of a moonlit meadow.
“God!” She slapped one hand to her chest and staggered backward. “You scared the crap out of me!”
He grabbed her and held her close, wrapping his arms around her and pressing her tight to his chest until the steady beat of her heart calmed the fury churning inside him.
“How do you think I felt when I returned to the room and you were gone?” If he had had a beating heart, it would have stopped the moment he realized she wasn’t where she was supposed to be. Now that they had mated, the protective instincts he felt for her were more all-encompassing than ever before.
“I told you not to leave the room-” He stopped, looked down at the snoring man at her feet. “Who is that?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. He came up out of nowhere while I was drawing down the moon.”
Torin gaped at her. “He saw you working a spell?”
“Yes.”
“Woman, do you have no idea of the dangerous cloud we exist under?”
She pushed away from his grasp, folded her arms over her chest and said, “I know exactly what danger we’re in. Just as I know that unless I remember what we need to know, we’re not going to be able to complete this quest, or mission or whatever the hell it is.”
“And you thought to regain that memory in public? Where anyone could see you?” While he was gone? When he thought of everything that might have happened to her without him at her side, it chilled him to the bone. “Do you trust me so little that you couldn’t wait until I returned? So that I could be with you? To guard you?”
“If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t be with you.” She blew out a breath and shook her head. “This wasn’t about you, Torin. I felt the call of the moon and I went with it. I knew what I was doing. I knew the risks. I’m not some stupid heroine in a bad horror movie.”
He pushed one hand through his long hair. “You took the same kind of chance those women invariably do.”
“No, I didn’t,” she argued. “I’m not helpless. I can take care of myself.” She pointed at the man curled up in the grass, sound asleep. “There’s my proof.”
Hating to admit she had a point, Torin was forced to acknowledge, at least privately, that she had managed to protect herself. Then he noticed the gun lying beside the sleeping man. “Did he threaten you?”
“Of course he did, but I handled it,” she said, lifting her chin in a show of defiance.
So she had. A mixture of pride and impatience battled inside him. She was coming into her own, but at the same time, he worried that she would become too confident. Take one chance too many. If she had made a mistake and this man had shot her-She wasn’t immortal yet. She could still die. And if the Awakening were stopped before it was complete, he would die with her. Soulless. Empty. There would be no eternity together. Not now. Not after finally experiencing a true union with her after so many centuries of solitude.
“You should have told me when our minds connected,” he said.
“You would have stopped me,” she answered.
“Probably.”
“You should be proud of me, not angry,” she said and he detected a slight quaver in her voice in spite of the brave front she was presenting. So the encounter with this nameless attacker had shaken her more than she wanted to admit. But even with her fear, she had maintained control of the situation. She had saved herself.
“I am pleased you are well, Shea. And that you were able to dispatch that human.” He waved one hand at the snoring man in dismissal. “But striding into the unknown alone was a foolish choice.”
She bristled, but better she be furious with him than dead.
“I survived.”
“This time.”
“Torin…” She went to him and laid both hands on his forearms. Her touch soothed him instantly. “I know we’re in this together. I know you want to protect me. And I can promise I’ll be careful. But that’s all I can promise. If something needs doing, I’m going to do it. Okay?”
No, he thought. It wasn’t okay with him that she put herself in danger. But he would find a way to protect her in spite of herself. Besides, the deed was done and now he needed to know what they could expect from the man once he woke up.
“I can hear you thinking, you know,” she said softly. “You’re not protecting your thoughts.”
“It’s just as well,” he snapped. “You should know what it does to me when you’re in danger.
”
She moved toward him and laid one hand on his broad chest. “I get it, Torin. But you have to know what it does to me to do nothing. To sit on the sidelines and let you take over.”
“I’m not taking over. I’m protecting you.”
“I need to know how to protect myself, too,” she reminded him.
“You wouldn’t if you would listen to me,” he grumbled.
Shea actually laughed and he had to smile at the sound of it. She was not going to be caged, he thought. Not by her pursuers. Not by him.
Torin nodded at the man on the ground. “How long will he sleep?”
“I’m not sure. A day. Maybe two.”
A short laugh shot from his throat. He could well imagine the man’s consternation when he woke up. He would be confused and muddled and wondering when and how he had lost control of the situation. Torin knew that feeling himself. Trying to control Shea Jameson was an exercise in futility.
“Will he remember you?” he asked quietly, looking at the man and wishing he were awake so Torin could vent some of the banked anger choking him.
She frowned a bit. “Yes. I put him to sleep, but I didn’t know how to alter his memories.”
Nodding, he made up his mind. “We will eat and then leave. We can’t risk him waking early. When he does rise, he’ll no doubt contact the authorities. And if he realizes who you are…”
“I know,” she whispered, lifting her face into the wind. “But, Torin, I had to do it.” Her gaze met his, silently asking for understanding. His support. “I had to do what I could to find the answers we need.”
He did understand. He didn’t like it one damn bit, but he understood the call of the moon to a witch. Knew that a woman like Shea would never be satisfied for long wandering in the darkness. She had a need to be in charge of her own life-and who was he to try to keep her from it?
“Did you discover what you were searching for, Shea?” he asked, pulling her closer, ignoring the insensible mortal at his feet. “Did you find the truth?”
“Yes,” she said, moving into him, snaking her arms around his middle. “I did. My memories are awake now. At least, most of them are. They’re just so jumbled together, I’ll need time to sort them out.”
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