Visions of Magic a-1

by Regan Hastings

  Shea heard the madness in the witch’s voice and knew that if she continued to listen to the dark magics taking her over, she would soon be no better.

  “You’ll see,” Kellyn assured her. “Besides, it’s not as if we’re killing the Eternals. We’re just putting them where they won’t be able to interfere in our business again. And with the mating ritual unfinished, his soul will die and he’ll never be a threat again. It’s all very easy, Shea,” she whispered. “All you have to do is say ‘yes.’ ”

  The word echoed in her mind. She tasted it, tasted the aftereffects and looked into her own soul to see if that was who she really was. Her gaze shot to the curve of the stairwell leading to the chapel and Haven beyond. But no one was coming to help them.

  This was her test, Shea thought. This was the moment her soul had spent eight hundred years preparing for. The moment when she would discover if she had grown, evolved-or if she was no better than she had been on that long-ago night.

  She shifted her gaze to Torin, trapped in a cage, his immense strength and courage locked away by a crazy witch with delusions of grandeur. His eyes shone at her. The emotions he directed at her were clear in his gaze. Faith. Love. Beacons in the darkness where she battled for control of her own destiny.

  I love you.

  His voice rippled through her mind and she felt the power of him within her. The branding tattoo on her skin burned with a fire that reminded her of who she was. How far she had come and how far she still had to go.

  Her fingers played across the glossy black surface of the silver she held and she smiled at the Eternal who had so completed her. With his help, she could resist the call of the darkness.

  She would not bow down to greed again. She would not play the puppet to dark powers. Would not give up all that mattered in a quest to find the ephemeral. Would not succumb to temptations of the past that would destroy the future she wanted so badly.

  “Catch!” she shouted and tossed the black sliver to him. Instantly, he shoved his arms between the bars of white gold, called the fire and captured the Artifact in the flames.

  “What are you doing?” Kellyn’s shriek of fury pierced the air.

  “What I have to!” Shea answered, whirling around to lift both hands and push her powers at the black-haired witch. Fire flashed from her raised palms as it had on that first day so long ago. Only this time she was in control.

  With a howl of rage, Kellyn disappeared.

  Shaking from head to foot, Shea dismissed the witch and raced to Torin. She focused her powers on the locking mechanism and when it sprang free, Torin stepped out of the cage and she threw her arms around him, holding tight.

  He held her with one arm while he balanced the Artifact in a ball of flame in his free hand.

  “You had me worried for a moment or two,” he said finally.

  “I had me worried, too,” she admitted, kissing his throat, his jaw, then going up on her toes to plant a hurried kiss on his mouth. She could trust him with her whole truth. He had seen her face her demons and win. She grinned up at him, feeling the sweet rush of peace race through her. “But I did it. I’m okay.”

  “More than okay,” he told her, pride shining in his eyes. “Where’d you send Kellyn?”

  She looked over her shoulder at the empty inner yard of the castle. “I’m not sure,” she said. “My powers aren’t cohesive enough to tell yet.”

  Torin frowned and grabbed her hand. “She’s a teleporter. So wherever she is, it won’t take her long to get back. We’d better finish this.”

  Inside Haven, Torin felt his breath leave him as he stared at his witch. She was transformed into something more beautiful than he could ever have imagined. Here, in the sacred halls of Haven, the Artifact was neutralized and the witch who had reclaimed it had become, at long last, what she was meant to be.

  Shea wore the traditional robe, baring her left breast proudly as she moved with the regal dignity of a queen. She was the living, breathing epitome of pure, untainted magic. Her hair, skin, clothing were white and glowed with a brightness equaled only by the sun. On her bare breast her branding tattoo dazzled with a flaring, inner light.

  She was literally the essence of magic, the power of creation and life. She was female in all her power and glory. Her green eyes shone with a strength of purpose he’d never seen there before and his pride in her knew no bounds.

  Under the watchful eyes of Mairi, Damyn and Torin, Shea walked slowly across the great hall, lit by the wall torches. Shadows and light flickered wildly around the room, dancing over Shea as she carried the black silver in her cupped hands.

  There was no danger now.

  She had passed her test.

  She had reached Haven.

  Without hesitation, she lifted her hands to the first of three fire cages, set the shard of the Artifact into the flames and stepped back. Bowing her head, crossing her hands over her heart, she began to chant. The past is gone

  Yet still lives

  My test is won

  This Artifact I give

  I am home where I was meant to be

  My debt is paid through eternity.

  The earth shook, sparks erupted from the flames and the bright light that had encompassed Shea slid from her to the cage surrounding the black silver. The flames, enriched by pure magic, burned even more fiercely and the dangerous shard was locked away.

  The empty fire cages beside hers flashed with dancing flames and Shea knew that there were more cages behind these first three. All were flashing with fire, all awaiting the Artifacts that would be returned to Haven.

  As the light left her, Shea was once again herself and yet so much more. She felt changed, but in a way that made her proud. She’d accomplished what she had set out to do. She’d righted a wrong, found the love of her life and won immortality to boot.

  The test had been hard, but the rewards were tremendous.

  And she couldn’t have done any of it without Torin. Without the other half of her soul. Without the mate who made her life worth living.

  She smiled at Mairi and Damyn, inclined her head in a gesture of respect to the once and future High Priestess of her reborn coven, then walked slowly, deliberately, to Torin.

  He’d had faith in her even when her own faith had crumbled. He’d remained steadfast and loyal even when she had had no right to ask it of him. He had loved her through the eons and had waited for her to become what he had known she could be.

  Outside, the full moon shone down on the castle where all of this had begun so many centuries ago. And in Haven, there was a sense of fulfillment as the first debt was paid.

  Shea felt as if she and Torin were the only two people in the world. She wrapped her arms around her mate’s waist and held on to him. The warmth of him felt so right. The heat of her bare breast pressed to his naked chest burned through her and she welcomed the mating burn as the tattoo completed itself. With her task finished, the thirty days at an end, the mating was fulfilled.

  Closing her eyes, she let the moment register so that she would always be able to draw it up in memory and recall the instant she and Torin had at last become one forever.

  She had come so close to losing him that she couldn’t bear the thought of being apart from him. Not even for a moment.

  “It’s done, Shea. Your promise has been kept and you are the most amazing woman I have ever known.”

  “Our promise was kept, Torin. And I am the woman who loves you more than life. More than eternity.”

  The branding tattoos on their skin suddenly erupted into a flash of fire and heat, scorching them each with an inner blaze of eternal warmth as the images were seared into their skin for all time. Their mating was complete at last.

  They each held on to the other and when that blast of heat ended, leaving them shaken but still linked together, Shea rested her head on Torin’s broad chest. Smiling, she whispered, “Your heart’s beating.”

  He took her face in his hands and kissed her with the promise o
f forever between them. “It beats only for you, Shea. And now we have an eternity together.”

  “It won’t be nearly enough,” she said, smiling through the sheen of tears blinding her.

  “Never enough,” he agreed.

  Mairi sighed, reached for Damyn’s hand and smiled at Shea and her mate.

  “Can you feel it?” she asked, her eyes shining with expectation. “The very air shivers. The second sister is Awakening.”

  Read on for a sneak preview of the next novel in the Awakening series, VISIONS OF SKYFIRE Coming from Signet Eclipse in October 2011.

  Teresa Santiago opened her arms to the sky as if welcoming a lover. The storm raged overhead, and its energy and power filled her like long-dammed water rushing onto a floodplain. She felt it all and gloried in it. The sweep of sensation, the pulse of strength.

  Lightning flashed and its charge slammed into the ground at the feet of the tall woman who stood amid the white-hot bolts like a pagan god.

  Snaking across her eyes, whipping around her throat, her long black hair flew out around her in the charged atmosphere. Her fingertips practically vibrated with power as lightning danced to her whims.

  Electrified white bolts cracked across the black sky, then forked into the desert floor. Sand geysers erupted all around her as energy sizzled and burned. Thunder roared. Clouds roiled. Juniper and manzanita dipped and swayed with the wind. Behind her, the ocotillo plants waved their skeletal limbs, scraping at her back like a demon demanding attention.

  But she ignored every distraction-including her own apprehension. Exhilarating as it was to command nature in such a way, a part of Teresa cringed, horrified at what she was now able to do. The lightning danced, plowing into the earth at her feet, again and again. Every cell in her body sizzled from the near contact. She felt as if she too were electrified, and that small horrified part of her wanted to run and hide from all of this.

  But she held her ground. She couldn’t turn her back on the very legacy for which she had been in training most of her life. Now that it was here, magic opening up inside her, she would simply have to find a way to master it.

  Four days ago, she had had the first dream. A terrorfilled nightmare in which flames chewed at her skin while demons howled and crowds cheered. She’d jolted from sleep in a sharp panic, her own hair wrapped around her throat like a noose as she gasped for air that wouldn’t come. She had known then that her abuela’s prophecies were coming true.

  Then the magic appeared. Small things at first. Sparking a match without striking it against something. Approaching the television and it coming to life. Lightbulbs shattering at her touch. Streetlights blinking out when she brushed against the pole.

  And today… she had followed her instincts, somehow knowing that the lightning was calling to her. At the first sight of a storm on the horizon, a deep well of power had opened up inside Teresa, as if it had been waiting for nature’s fury to completely awaken. She had driven into the desert outside Sedona, Arizona, to meet that storm head-on. To walk into the maelstrom and somehow master it.

  For more than an hour now, she had worked, pulling down the lightning, trying to direct it to specific targets-because what was the point of having the power if she couldn’t control it? And in this time, when witches-and even those suspected of witchcraft-were being locked away or worse, she needed that control. Her new power would make her a magnet for disaster. She had to be able to draw on her own strengths to protect herself and those she loved.

  “Come on,” she whispered. “Focus, Teresa. Make it work.”

  Red sandstone rock formations surrounded her. With sunlight slanting across them, the rocks had always seemed to glow a brilliant orange and red. Now, under a forbidding gray sky, they were filled with shadows, their wind-carved surfaces taking on shapes of faces that seemed to watch her.

  She was just outside Red Rock State Park and hoping that both the weather and the harsh terrain would keep tourists at bay.

  October in Arizona meant cooler temperatures and an influx of the visitors who came to Sedona not only for the natural beauty but to gather at the many vortexes in and around the city. The vortexes were sites of spiritual ceremonies; they drew the mystical and the curious every year. Teresa had gone to a few ceremonies herself over the years, knowing as she did that there was far more to the spiritual plane than most people suspected.

  Now, though, she drew on the spirituality of this place to open the heart of her magic. She waved one hand, directing the lightning toward a tower of red sandstone rocks. The jagged bolt of pure power slammed into the ground twenty feet away from the target, and she knew that wasn’t nearly good enough. If she were attacked, “close” wouldn’t save her life.

  Teresa fought to hone her magic. To perfect the power that had begun to quicken inside her only days ago. She had known what was coming all her life. What she was destined for. But the mystery had been when her magic would appear. The world wasn’t a good place for witches these days, but magic ran in her blood, stretching back through her family’s maternal line for generations. She should have been able to draw on that legacy, but in the face of this new and overwhelming power, she was lost.

  She stood tall, her cowboy boots planted far apart, to give her a sense of stability she was sorely lacking. Gritting her teeth, she concentrated and swung her hand out again to direct another whip of lightning across the desert. Instantly, a jagged bolt flew-in the wrong direction.

  “No!”

  Teresa shrieked as her black truck exploded into a fireball. Flames jumped into the air, plumes of smoke twisted in the wind and flaming tires shot off the body of the truck like Frisbees from hell. As thunder rattled the sky and the wind howled, Teresa stared at the smoking hulk of her truck.

  “Son of a bitch.” She kicked the sand and thought not only of the incredibly long walk back home she had to look forward to, but also about her now burned-to-a-crisp cell phone. She couldn’t even call someone to help her. She was stuck in the desert-no water, no food, no way home.

  She’d grown up here, so she wasn’t a stranger to the desert. But the thought of a long walk back to town through the rain with the storm chasing her sent her stomach to her knees. Add that to the fact that she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she was being watched. ..

  Steeling her spine, she pushed thoughts of unseen watchers to the back of her mind. If they were out there, somewhere, there was nothing she could do about it. The important thing now, she told herself as she stared at the fire, black smoke billowing, was control. Just how in the hell was she supposed to protect herself from the dangers coming if she couldn’t manage her own powers?

  What good is it to be a witch, she demanded silently, if you can’t freaking control the magic? Disgusted, she muttered, “Could this day get any worse?”

  As if the gods were answering, Teresa heard a distant pulsing beat, like the heartbeat of a giant. The thrumming sound seemed to jolt up from the desert floor to her feet and into her chest, where it pounded along with her own suddenly galloping heart. Stunned, she just stood there, trying to assimilate it when she realized something else.

  The sound was getting closer.

  She whirled around, her gaze searching, straining to see past her surroundings to whatever was coming. Her own heartbeat was pounding in time to that otherworldly sound. She scanned the dark skies in all directions. The shadows of the craggy mountains jutted up from the desert, scratching at a sky still churning with ragged bolts of lightning.

  Thunder boomed, but just beneath that awesome noise and power, there was something else. Something low-pitched and dangerous, like a tight-throated growl from a predator. Fear tightened into a hard knot in her belly. She trembled, swallowed hard and felt her breath catch in her lungs as she found the source of that growl. Against the lowering gray clouds, there was a darker spot.

  A blot of black that was headed right for her. An instant later, Teresa identified the heavy, beating sound. The whup-whup-whup of helicopter bla
des churning through the air. Heart sinking, she looked around at the emptiness surrounding her and knew she was in deep shit.

  She’d come into the desert to be alone with her burgeoning magic. But being alone also meant that there was no one to help her. Though, if that helicopter was what she thought it was, no one could have helped her anyway.

  As the chopper closed in on her, she saw the bright yellow slash across its belly. Black and yellow. The MP’s colors. Magic Police. They’d found her. Somehow, they’d found her, and she knew that if they got their hands on her, she might as well be dead.

  A captured witch had little hope of escape and every expectation of execution. Though not until after torture and imprisonment, of course. Fear nearly choked her. She wasn’t ready for this confrontation. She’d had no time to prepare. To conquer her magic and make it work for her.

  The power she had been relishing only moments ago now felt like an anvil tied around her neck. She was about to be captured, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. She couldn’t even hop into her truck and make a run for it.

  She had no weapon and the helicopter was even closer now.

  Weapon.

  She didn’t need a weapon; she was a weapon.

  “Now’s the time, Teresa,” she muttered, instantly lifting both hands high over her head. All around her, lightning danced, pulsed. The air was scorched from thousands of volts. Her hair lifted in the wind; her eyes narrowed on the helicopter. She stabbed one hand toward it, and a lightning bolt sizzled past the black beast, barely missing it. The chopper dodged, dropping several feet in an instant and turning slightly to allow someone to stand in the open doorway.

  Someone with a gun.

  “Damn it!” Teresa dove for the ground as the first crack of bullets chattering from the automatic weapon enveloped her. Still too far away, she thought wildly, but not for long. She ran toward an outcropping of sandstone rocks. Yes, there might be snakes in there, she thought, but out here, there are bigger dangers. She crouched behind a sand-encrusted boulder and jabbed her hand at the chopper again. And once more, lightning split the sky, racing to do her bidding. But it still missed the damn target.