No. She shook her head and stumbled back from him. But she risked a glance down and saw that he was right. Her blue jeans were now black. Her dark green sweater was also black and as she shook her head, she saw that her long auburn hair was now as black as night.
“Oh, God…” Fear rose up inside her, as thick and rich as the power she felt simmering inside the black silver. This was what she’d known so long ago, she thought. This battle between herself and the hunger that could corrupt a soul and twist it beyond imaginings. Her heartbeat thudded heavily in her chest as she realized that she was becoming what she once was and couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t end it. Couldn’t seem to pry her fingers off the Artifact.
“History’s repeating itself, Shea,” Torin said, his voice sharp as a blade, his pale eyes locked on her face.
Shea looked into his gaze and saw her own reflection staring back at her. But this was the face of a long-dead witch. One who’d gambled and lost. One who had so endangered her soul, she’d set herself on an eight-hundred-year journey of atonement. And for what? So that she could make the same mistakes over and over again?
A battle rose up within her. A battle for supremacy.
The witch against the power of the Artifact.
Against her own hunger.
Chapter 47
Shea’s terrified gaze fixed on his. “Torin, it’s much stronger than it was in the old days. It’s as if it’s been gathering power through the centuries and the longer it was here, unused, untapped, the stronger it became.”
“You must fight it, Shea,” he told her, coming toward her, one slow step at a time, as if sneaking up on the magical metal she held so closely. “If our mating bond is shattered before completion, if you pull away from me now, both of our souls will die.”
She hadn’t known that, but she instinctively recognized it as truth. A truth she couldn’t allow to happen. She shuddered, a great, wrenching, full-body shudder that snapped her teeth together and locked her bones in a painful grip.
Lightning slashed the sky in jagged bolts. Thunder shook the ruin. Even the ground beneath their feet seemed to roll and quake with the gathering power.
“Take it,” she ground out. “Take it from me, Torin.”
He looked into her eyes and shook his head. “You have to give it to me freely, Shea. You have to willingly give away that power.”
She knew he was right. Her mind was shrieking at her to do it. To uncurl her tight fingers from the black silver. Hand it to Torin and reclaim her own soul from the darkness. But it was so hard to fight her body’s demands. Hard to fight against that rush of magic spilling into her.
Shea locked her gaze on Torin’s. She gathered herself and concentrated solely on the Eternal in front of her. In his pale gray eyes, she saw love. Acceptance. Loyalty. She clung to the strength of those emotions. She thought of her own journey. All she’d been through in the last month. Her soul felt divided, one half leaning toward the light, the other toward the dark. She was torn, literally, between two desires, each of them as strong as the other.
And there was Torin. Still standing in front of her. Steadfastly watching her with love, with trust. She nodded, reached for her own strength deep within herself and slowly she forced herself to stretch out her cupped hands to him. To painfully open her cramped fingers from around the black silver, which had shifted shape in her grasp, becoming once more a slice of an ancient Celtic knot.
She looked down at the metal lying in the center of her palms, felt herself yearn, then deliberately released it.
Torin caught the Artifact, then reached out to grab her as she dropped in a dead faint.
Shea woke up, drew a deep breath and was relieved to feel that she was her true self again. She picked up a long hank of her hair, glanced at it and sighed to see the familiar dark red. “Torin?”
She sat up, looked around the ruined chapel and finally spotted her Eternal in the shadows. “Torin? Are you okay?”
“It is… difficult.” His voice sounded hollow, different.
Scrambling to her feet, Shea rushed to him, drawing him from the darkness, only to see that the changes that had overtaken her were now affecting him. His familiar gray eyes were black as pitch. His hair was even darker than before and his clothing too was night black. “Oh, God.”
Had he saved her only to lose himself?
He kept one hand fisted around the Artifact and she knew the burn of power he was experiencing. She reached for him and wasn’t dissuaded when he lurched backward, away from her touch. Insistently, she laid one hand on his broad chest and let the connection between the two of them strengthen him.
“You have to drop that thing, Torin,” she told him, her gaze searching the black pits of his eyes, looking for a flicker of recognition there. “Let it go. Now.”
“One of us must carry it back to Haven,” he insisted, lines of strain etching themselves into his features. “Better me than you. We’ve already seen it affects you far more deeply than it does me. I can survive it.”
He was fooling himself. The changes sweeping through him might be happening more slowly than they had with her, but they were just as damaging. Just as dangerous.
It was as if he were far away from her already and Shea knew she didn’t have much more time to reach him. She needed to get him to listen to her, as he had her. Sliding her hand up to cup his cheek in her palm, she shook her head and whispered, “We’ll find a way, Torin. But we can’t hold it. Neither of us can.”
He closed his eyes and she felt the battle raging within him. He was drawing not only on his own formidable strength but their combined essences to fight his way back from the dark.
“Look at me, Torin,” she said softly, waiting until his eyes opened and fixed on her. The blank, empty stare was unsettling, but she refused to be cowed. He had saved her; she could do nothing less for him. “You have to drop the Artifact. We’ll solve this. But I need you with me.”
He hissed in a breath and held it, caught in his lungs. She watched as emotions flashed across his face so quickly that it was hard to identify one from the other. All she knew was that she needed him. Wanted him. Loved him.
She hadn’t once said that word. Not to him. Not to herself. She’d hidden from it, like a coward. She’d become his mate, become his partner and still had withheld that word. Why? To maintain that one last link to the self-sufficient person she had once been? Was it fear? Was it cowardice? God, she hoped not. Just as she hoped that confessing to him now would be enough to release him from the grip of dark magic.
“I love you, Torin,” she said, her eyes shining with promise. “Do you hear me? I love you. Come back to me now.”
The Artifact hit the stone-littered ground with a hard thump and Torin swayed unsteadily as the black power drained from him as quickly as it had stolen over him.
He gave a harsh, short laugh and scraped one hand over his face. Then his eyes shifted to hers and Shea released a pent-up breath when she saw the swirl of gray that she knew and loved.
“The bloody thing’s a trap,” he said, reaching for her, pulling her into him so tightly she could hardly breathe. “Carrying it back to Haven’s going to be a challenge.”
“Can we shift it, magically? Maybe use a spell to transport it back separately?”
“God, no,” he said, burying his face in the curve of her neck. “I don’t trust the damn thing one bit. Who knows how it might react to a spell? It’s so powerful, Shea. I had no idea.”
“You beat it, though,” she murmured, nestling against him.
“Because of you.” He captured her face between his palms and turned her eyes up to his. “Because of what you gave me.”
His gaze moved over her features like a caress. She felt the tenderness welling up inside him and everything in her responded.
“I felt your love,” he said, “and that was enough to draw me back from the edge. Without you…” He shook his head and shifted to glance at the shard of black silver lying at their feet. The green
grass around the Artifact was now brown and dead. As if just the touch of that dark magic was enough to suck the life from the ground. “I understand now, I think. What you and the coven felt so long ago.”
“It’s seductive,” she whispered, her gaze, too, fixed on the knot of black silver. Even knowing what she knew, she had to fight to keep from reaching for it. From fondling it. From feeling the black rush of energy swimming through her veins again.
“More than anything I’ve ever known before.” He tucked her in close to him again and wrapped his arms around her, seeking comfort, or offering it. “In the past, we, the Eternals, couldn’t comprehend how you could all turn your backs on what was right and just, for the sake of the promise of more power. But now…” His arms tightened like steel bands around her.
“I know. And a part of me still yearns for it,” she admitted at last. “I haven’t wanted to say anything to you about this, Torin. But ever since we arrived in England, I’ve felt it so strongly. The Artifact calling to me. Whispering to me. And something inside me is listening.”
His fingers threaded through her hair and held her head to his chest, as if by the strength of his will, he could keep her safe. Deny the very words she was confessing.
“But you didn’t listen, Shea. You let it go. That counts as well.”
“I hope it’s enough,” she said. “Because this thing is like nothing else on earth.”
“It devours your soul, one nibble at a time. It’s as if it’s happening so fast and yet so slowly, you can’t even see what it’s doing to you until it’s too late.”
She heard the wariness in his voice and she shared it.
“How are we ever going to carry the damn thing back to Haven safely?”
He took a breath and let it out again in a rush. “I have an idea about that. But it will still be dangerous.”
Shea squeezed him tightly, burrowing in close, as if trying to crawl inside his body completely. “It’s not like we have a choice, Torin.”
“True enough.” He gave her one last, hard hug, then released her. “Let me tell you what I’m thinking. Then we’ll go.”
Kellyn was waiting.
She hated Wales.
Hated the cold. The wet. The wind.
Frustration and fury bubbled together inside her, creating a stew of dark emotions that rose up and threatened to choke her. But her strength of purpose, her will, conquered those more intransigent emotions and beat them into submission.
She wasn’t about to let her own eagerness ruin a well-thought-out plan. This time it was her plan, done her way.
If she failed-which she deemed impossible-she would have no one to blame but herself. And better that way than having to deal with incompetent morons, no matter how well motivated.
Rain suddenly poured from a leaden sky, drenching her in seconds. Irritated and now soaked, Kellyn waved her hand and created an opulent cave in the side of the mountain. God knew it wasn’t a five-star hotel, but she couldn’t afford to leave the proximity of Haven. Her scrying mirror told her Shea and Torin were on their way back. If she missed them…
She shook her head, provided clean, dry clothes for herself, then created a fire. Easing down onto a makeshift bed of silk pillows and warm blankets, she watched the flames, losing herself in the mystic call of fire and darkness.
Chapter 48
The fire cage Torin constructed to contain the Artifact was a huge drain on his energies.
Especially since he had not only to cage the black silver but also to flash himself and Shea back to Haven. Their return trip was taking much longer. Even his strengthened powers were no match for the black silver. The jumps were shorter and the breaks to rejuvenate themselves were longer.
He glanced at his witch, read the fatigue in her green eyes and knew that her powers as well were being drained. They were linked so closely now, it was their combined energies being used to safely transport the Artifact to Wales. And the journey was taking its toll on both of them.
He hated knowing what this was doing to her and hated more the fact that he could do nothing to change it. Without their working together, the Artifact would never get back to Haven. He turned his gaze on the damn thing, resting on a now blackened rock beneath one of a pair of yew trees. They no longer set it on the ground, not knowing if the magic spilled into the earth or just blackened the patch of grass it rested on. Instead, they set it on rocks or suspended it from tree limbs with rope they fashioned magically.
Anything to keep from actually touching it. The effect it had on them was too severe to risk exposure to it again. Even with their combined magics, they might not be strong enough to resist its lure.
“We’re nearly there,” Torin said quietly, his voice barely carrying over the hiss and spit of the campfire between them.
They hadn’t risked staying in a hotel or a B and B. Not only were they in constant danger of being pursued or attacked, but carrying the Artifact was an invitation to disaster. So instead they had camped alongside a river just inside the border of Wales. By morning they would be at Haven. Despite their flagging magical strength, Torin was tempted to continue on, get this business done. But he didn’t dare chance it.
If Shea needed him, he must have his full powers to draw on.
“I know,” she said, deliberately avoiding looking at the Artifact.
Torin understood. He too felt the pull of the dark reaching for him and she must feel it even more so. Shea was a direct descendant of its creators. A single link in a long chain. It reacted to her presence like a living thing and maybe, he thought, that was exactly what it was. Created from the breath and magic of the original coven, it was brought to life by the powers of the universe. Was it so hard to imagine that over time, it would grow stronger?
Become something else?
That thought was more disturbing than he liked.
Shea’s gaze moved over open fields and a lake where the reflection of the nearly full moon shone like a spotlight from the heavens. Then she lifted her eyes to the sky and the moon itself, high overhead. “It’s almost full now. Tomorrow, our month is gone.”
“And we’ve succeeded.”
“Have we?” She flicked an uneasy glance at the Artifact and worry glittered in her green eyes. Rubbing her hands up and down her arms as if to fight off a soul-deep chill, she reminded him, “That thing is still here. Its temptation is still buzzing around us. We haven’t gotten it to Haven yet. Anything could happen. For all we know, there’s another ambush aimed at us right this minute.”
“We’re safe here, Shea.”
She looked at him. “How do you know?”
He moved around the fire to sit beside her, then drew her onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her. Leaning back against the gnarled trunk of one of the centuriesold yew trees, he said, “We set up wards, remember? No one can see us. No one will find us. Between both of our magics, we’re safe.”
“But that thing,” she argued, refusing to look toward the Artifact again, “it doesn’t want to be locked up, Torin. I can feel it.”
“Whatever it is, it won’t beat us,” he said, tipping her chin up to look directly into her eyes. “Not if we stand together.”
“How can you even trust me?” she asked. “I touched it and changed.”
“As did I,” he reminded her.
“Yes, but you didn’t want the change. That’s the difference-I did,” she admitted. “At least, a part of me did. The same part that still wants to grab that thing and use it as it was meant to be used.”
He shook his head and slid one hand beneath the hem of her shirt. His fingers unerringly found the tattoo encircling her breast. She shivered as he stroked each individual flame and teased her nipple until she wanted to squirm in need.
“How can I not trust you?” he countered. “You felt the pull of it. Your body and heart changed beneath its magics and still you resisted. You turned your back on what it promised. You chose atonement. You chose to do the right thing and you always wil
l.”
“I wish I were that sure,” she admitted.
“You should be,” he insisted. “You’re not the witch you were so long ago. You’ve grown through the centuries. Your soul has been tested time and again and always you have met the challenges you faced with your head high and your honor intact.”
She smiled and leaned her head on his shoulder while his fingers continued to caress her branding tattoo. “If I remember those past lives correctly, it was pretty close a time or two. I didn’t always want to do the right thing.”
“True,” he acknowledged. “But you did, whether you wanted to or not. I was there, remember. Even when we weren’t physically together, I was there, watching over you. And I saw your growth. I saw you fight to become the soul you are today. I have no doubts about your heart, Shea. How can I?”
She sighed softly and felt just a tiny bit of the weight on her shoulders slide free. “You make me feel as if it’s all going to work out. As if I really am who you believe me to be.”
“Trust me in this, Shea. You are a part of me.” He nudged her face up so that he could look into her eyes and she could read the truth of his words shining out at her. “You are the best part of me. We are one and nothing will ever divide us again.”
He bent his head to claim a kiss and Shea met his passion with a rising one of her own. It wasn’t just desire pushing her, though; it was a need for tenderness. For the feel of his love wrapping itself around her, blanketing her in the warmth of the strongest magic of all. She linked her arms around his neck and leaned into him, feeling the burn of the branding tattoo on her breast and along her spine.
She accepted his need and offered him hers.
Sighs and whispered promises filled the air. And when their bodies as well as their spirits joined beneath the soft, pearly light of the moon, it was as if the goddess herself blessed them.
Yet still the Artifact shone darkly, its menacing promise alive in the night.
It was time.
Visions of Magic a-1 Page 28
