It was cold, but that was easily remedied. A wave of their hands and they felt only the kiss of the wind, not its bite. Torin laid her down on the bed and stretched out alongside her. Shea snuggled in, pillowing her head on his chest, listening to the silence within, still puzzled by the fact that a man so richly, thoroughly alive could have no heartbeat. She kissed the spot where beneath his shirt, the mating tattoo coiled.
“If you begin doing that,” he warned quietly, “there will be no talking.”
“Right,” she said, feeling the sparks within her ignite. Being close to him only made the magnetic pull between them that much stronger. Shea ached to feel his warm skin against hers, feel his hard, thick body pumping into hers. Her core tingled and her breathing became fast and shallow as she fought to resist the lure of the mating. “Okay,” she said after a long minute. “Talk first. Then sex.”
“I agree,” he said, his arm tightening around her. “So, that night. I’ve told you most of it already, but you’re now remembering it for yourself, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Everything Torin had already told her still resonated inside her. And as her memories had risen to the surface of her mind, she had seen it all so clearly, as if a part of her were trapped on that long-ago night and she was doomed to relive it over and over again in some twisted sort of loop. Like a mental journal, the pages of her life flipped past, showering her with the long-dead echoes of horrific sounds and scents and colors.
Yet, despite everything, there was a small, very secret part of her that was… excited by the memory. There was a dark place within her that relished every scream, every jolt of terror, every moment of danger that clung to the ancient images.
In the deepest part of her heart, Shea worried not about Torin’s trustworthiness but about her own. She couldn’t tell him what she was feeling. What she was dreading. But the truth was, Shea was terrified that along with her newfound powers the woman she had once been was being awakened.
That witch had been willing to lose everything that mattered to her in her quest for knowledge and power. What if she hadn’t evolved as much as Torin thought she had? What if the darkness was still there inside her, simply locked away behind a door of secrets?
“You and your sisters would listen to no one,” he said, his voice soft, low with memory and regret. “You were set on a dark path but couldn’t-or wouldn’t-see it. There was hunger for knowledge, yes. But more, there was the promise of power. Power such as no one had ever known before.”
The afternoon sunlight, the luxurious ship, the tumult of her present life all faded away as Shea closed her eyes and let the lost images inside her rise. She saw it all, experienced it all, as his voice continued.
“The coven drew down the moon, gathered their energies and pushed their combined strength through the Artifact.”
She saw it, as she had that long-ago night. Lightning whips of white light, brilliant in the dark. Jagged, scorching, the air sizzling as bolt after bolt jumped from witch to witch, the light itself growing, becoming something else.
“The black silver glowed and hummed with the accumulation of power. Lightning was everywhere, like a living beast.” He paused, lost in his memories. Shea shuddered as her own mind continued playing out the scene.
“There was a blinding light,” he said in a whisper. “Brighter than the sun at midday. And in an instant, everything changed. The Artifact opened a portal.”
“The Hell gate,” Shea said, feeling the sudden rush of a twisted sort of excitement along with a growing sense of dread.
“Yes,” Torin whispered. “Demons poured from the opening in numbers too many to count. Lucifer himself appeared and laughed at our feeble attempts to contain his minions. To restrain him. But we had no choice. We could not stand by and watch this legion descend on an earth unable to defend itself.
“We Eternals fought them, killing some, tossing more back through the gateway to their hell. But as the battle raged, we tried to get to you. The coven. Our witches. The strength of your circle kept us out, unable to reach you. Unable to help you. All we could do was fight the creatures your spell had released.”
Shea heard the hiss of the candle flames, battling the sharp wind. Heard the shrieks of the demons and the shouts of the Eternals. She heard her own voice, rising with those of her sisters as they realized at last what their greed and arrogance had brought them to. They chanted then, despite the fear, despite the battles raging around them, and the voices, once lost in time, resonated once again in her mind.
“The coven,” Torin went on, “seeing at last what they had done, joined the battle. Banding together, they worked as one. As they had joined their powers to open the portal, they directed their energies at closing the very door they had pried open.”
She remembered. More, she lived the memory. Her heart, her soul, sang with the growth of the shadows. She felt the seduction of the dark calling to her as she fought with her sisters.
Lucifer, the fallen angel himself, with his dark eyes and magnificent features, had met Shea’s gaze deliberately. And she had realized, even through the tumult happening around her, that he knew her most secret yearnings. He knew that even as she fought him, she wanted to join him. When he gave her a sly smile and encouragement that whispered in her mind, Shea had reached for what will she possessed and spurned his invitation.
Yet, even then, when she did all she could to undo the damage caused… there was a corner of her heart still yearning for the darkness.
Now, she had to wonder. What did that make her? Was she truly as evil as Martha and her Seekers believed? Would she turn on Torin and the world? Would she surrender to the shadows she’d railed against so long ago?
“Shea?”
“Yes, sorry,” she said softly. “My mind wandered.” Into places best left alone, she added silently. “Finish, Torin. Tell me what happened next.”
He sighed, and slipped one hand beneath her shirt, sliding his palm over her skin, soothing each of them with the intimate caress. “The coven fought back. Somehow, their linked abilities were strong enough to push Lucifer back through the gateway, most of his demons with him. The portal sealed shut moments later.”
“That wasn’t the end.”
“No,” he told her. “The portal was closed, but not permanently. The beast lurked behind a magical barrier, all too close to a defenseless world. And so the last great coven charmed a spell of atonement. Sentencing themselves to eight hundred and ten years of life without their powers. Without the memories of who and what they had once been.”
Everything in Shea went still as his voice brought to the surface the memories of that one moment that had sealed the fates of the witches for centuries to come.
“Incarnation after incarnation,” he said, “each of you lived a life that was devoid of magic. All in the hopes that when the time ran out, you would have evolved enough to turn your backs on the greed and arrogance that had governed you. That you would finally be able to destroy the Artifact, thus permanently closing the gateway to Hell.”
She remembered. And as she did, tears rained down her cheeks. For the mistakes made. For the atonement still incomplete.
“When the spell was spoken, the witches broke apart the Artifact that had stood in the center of their coven for thousands of years.”
The physical pain of that action sliced through Shea again as it had on the long-ago night. The powerful black silver Artifact was shattered by the very magic that had created it in the first place. They had betrayed all that they were. They had turned their backs not just on each other but on their ancestors, the founders of the very coven they had destroyed. At the moment the Artifact was shattered, each of the witches who had been entrusted with it felt that same splintering of her soul.
“A shard of the Artifact was entrusted to each of the witches. The coven disbanded and the women of power drifted apart, with each of them hiding their piece of the Artifact in secret.” Torin eased himself up on one elbow and looked down at he
r. “The waiting time began, with centuries crawling past, one after the other, until now. The Awakening is your time, Shea. The broken shards of the Artifact must be brought back together and finally destroyed. Or the world will never be safe.”
With his words, her mind and soul opened to the call of the Artifact.
She felt the ancient stirrings and trembled.
Chapter 41
Rune found Odell in Sussex.
Tall even for an Eternal, Odell stood nearly six feet seven. His broad shoulders and square jaw only added to the image of a man best left alone. His dark brown hair hung past his shoulders and was usually held in place by a leather thong at the nape of his neck. He wore black leather, always, and the suspicious gleam in his pale gray eyes was as ever present as his legendary temper.
Not the man you would have guessed would be at the head of an underground safety network for witches and accused human females. But he was probably the best man for the job, Rune told himself. Odell had little patience and no sympathy with the mortal world’s attempt at stamping out all practitioners of magic.
Sitting in Odell’s country estate just outside Brighton, Rune drank the glass of Paddy’s Irish Whiskey he’d been handed, then held it out for a refill.
Odell obliged with a grin. “I didn’t expect to see you, Rune. With the Awakening upon us, I thought you’d be out after your witch.”
He shrugged. “She hasn’t awakened to her powers yet.”
“Neither has mine,” Odell admitted, stretching out his long legs in front of him. “When last I checked in on her, she was burying herself in research books, looking, if you can believe it, for a ‘cure’ to witchcraft.” He shook his head solemnly. “Riona’s a bloody scientist in this lifetime. Don’t know how I’ll put up with her when it’s our time.”
Rune laughed. He knew Odell was as anxious for his witch to call to him as Rune himself was. After centuries of waiting, of torment, the end was in sight. These last few weeks of waiting were going to be a trial.
He studied the amber liquid in the Waterford crystal tumbler, took a sip of the smooth, rich whiskey and said, “I can beat that. My witch gives guided tours of the Mexican desert.”
Odell’s eyebrows lifted. “A desert, you say? Better you than me. All that sand? No cold winds? No soft rains? No. It’s all I can do to live here, in England, rather than in Ireland where me and my witch belong.”
With ties to ancient Eire, Odell and his witch, as if by design, had yet to return to Ireland. In all her incarnations, Riona had never returned to the land of her birth-as if her spirit were deliberately punishing her. Taking the atonement one step further by keeping her from the country she loved.
Rune couldn’t seem to relax, despite the comfort of Odell’s home. He’d sought Egan and had come up empty. More, there had been no trail of him. No hint of where he might have gone or who might have seen him last.
“I don’t understand it,” he muttered, staring at his whiskey as if looking for the answer to his question in the bottom of his glass. “There was no trace of Egan in Scotland. Anywhere.”
Odell laughed shortly and shook his head. “Did you expect to find him standing on his doorstep, waiting for you?”
Rune scowled at his old friend. “No, but I expected there to be some sign of him. Some clue to where he might be.”
“He’s not a child,” Odell snapped, then took a breath and leashed his temper. “You said yourself that the waiting is an agony, Rune. Is it any wonder that some of us disappear from time to time? Centuries we’ve been kept waiting, dangling on the end of the witches’ leashes. We’re Eternals, man, not tame dogs to be told when to come and when to go.”
“I didn’t say that,” Rune argued, realizing that he’d said the very same things all too recently to Torin. “But with the Awakening on us now, we should all be aware of where our witch is and what’s happening to her.”
“What makes you think he isn’t?” Odell leapt up from his chair, stalked to the liquor cabinet and poured himself another splash of Irish. He kicked it back, then slammed the tumbler onto the closest table. “He owes no one an explanation of where he goes and what he does, Rune. He’s no doubt keeping an eye on this Kellyn from afar. Waiting for her powers to awaken, just like the rest of us damn fools.”
Rune stood up too, facing down the man he’d called friend for thousands of years. “Her powers are awakening. She’s a teleporter, and a damn strong one, from what I saw. So if it’s all kicking into place, where the hell is Egan?”
Odell scowled at him, fierceness carved into his features. “How am I to know? You come to my home and start fuming at me over another Eternal’s problems? What sense is that, man?”
“I didn’t start fuming until you started shouting, dumb shit.”
Instantly, the fury on Odell’s face drifted into an expression of amusement. “Well, you have me there. All right, then. Since you can’t find your stray Eternal and you’ve clearly nothing better to do with your time than drink my whiskey…”
Wary, Rune watched his friend. “What?”
Odell slapped his palms together and scrubbed them briskly. “I thought I might convince you to come along with me on an adventure of sorts.”
He’d been on an adventure with Odell once before, in 1014. He’d ended up a part of the battle against the Ulstermen and was witness to the death of the last hereditary high king of Ireland, Brian Boru. The war had been a glorious one, though, as Rune remembered it.
“What sort of ‘adventure’ is it this time, old friend?”
Odell winked and grinned. “I’ve a raid planned on an internment camp just outside Crawley.”
“A raid?”
“Aye,” Odell told him. “The camp’s not far from Gatwick. Authorities fly the women in from all over England and Scotland, then trundle them off to the Crawley camp. I’m going in tonight to spirit away those sentenced to death.” His features went hard and cold. His Eternal gray eyes were as icy as winter fog. “There are six slated to be put to the fire in the next week. I’m getting them out. And if you’re not too busy, I might be able to use your help.”
Rune smiled. He couldn’t find Egan. Had no idea where to look next. So. Until he came up with a better plan, he’d do what he could here, with Odell. A raging battle with mortal prison guards sounded good to him at the moment. “I’m in.”
Odell grinned and slapped him on the back hard enough to send a lesser man through a wall. “Excellent. We’ll go now.”
“Where do we take them once we’ve got them free?”
Odell laughed and the sound boomed in the otherwise still room. “That’s the best part. The closest Sanctuary is in Ashdown Forest. One of the biggest tourist draws around these parts.”
“Are you crazy?” Rune demanded.
“Not at all,” Odell told him, already calling on the fire and becoming a giant pillar of flame. “Hide in plain sight and those who chase you never find you.”
“If he’s not crazy,” Rune said as his friend flashed out of the room, “then I certainly am.”
An instant later, he followed Odell into the heart of the enemy.
The sea air was cold.
The ever-waxing moon tossed pale light onto the surface of the churned-up waves, highlighting them with an otherworldly green phosphorescence. There was music drifting into the air from the Queen’s Room ballroom on the third deck. Shea stepped through the open terrace doors to the private verandah off their suite. She followed the music as if she could see the notes hanging in the air.
The song playing was an old one. If she’d had to make a guess at its age, she would have put it somewhere in the forties. It was slow and sad and bluesy, with a wailing saxophone that touched something inside her deeply enough to bring tears to her eyes.
“You cry?”
She didn’t even jump when Torin came up behind her. What did that say? she wondered. Was she getting so used to him now? Or was she on such a high alert at all times it was simply impossible to s
tartle her anymore?
“Shea,” he said, wrapping his arms around her, pulling her back to his front. Resting his chin on top of her head, he asked, “Tell me why you’re crying.”
“It’s silly,” she said, staring out at the moon-dropped diamonds of light on the surface of the ocean. “I’m not even sure why. It’s the music, I guess. It sounds… lonely.”
“There’s more to your tears than music.”
She tipped her head back to look up at him. “Of course there’s more, Torin. We’re almost to England. Two more days and then what?”
“Then we do what we must to end this. Or at least, our share of it.”
“Easier said than done,” she whispered, turning her gaze back to the sea and sky. “I don’t know where I hid my piece of the Artifact. I don’t even know where Haven is.”
“You will.”
“You sound so sure,” she said and heard the envy in her own voice. “I wish I was.”
Tiny white lights rimmed the edges of the ship’s decks. It looked like a fairyland at night, Shea thought. Hundreds of people were on the decks below, but here, on the verandah, she and Torin were the only two people in the world. No one could see them here. They were alone with each other and the night.
“Your confidence is growing, Shea. I can sense it in you.”
“Not quickly enough,” she said.
He chuckled, a rare sound coming from him. “You always were impatient.”
Being reminded of her past self did nothing to heighten Shea’s self-confidence. Yes, she had been impatient. And greedy. And reckless. Did she still have those traits inside her? Were they strong enough to resurface? And if they did, could she stop herself from making the same mistake she’d made so long ago?
“Call the fire.”
Her thoughts splintered. “What?”
“Call on your fire, Shea,” Torin told her. “As you did on the day we met, when you stopped the attacker.”
“When I killed him, you mean.”
“Shea-”
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