Rune smiled grimly as the shouts of the prison guards sounded, closer now. “Right. First witch first.”
Torin gave him a brief smile. “Exactly. We find Shea. We go to Long Beach—that’s probably where they’ve taken her. The prison there will be on alert after tonight’s business, so we’ll have to map out a plan.”
Rune smirked. “They can’t keep us out.”
“No, they can’t.”
“And if your witch isn’t there?”
Torin scowled off into the night, taking in the brilliantly lit prison with the women trapped behind its walls. Carefully tempered rage bubbled within him at the thought of his woman at the hands of prison guards. If they hurt her in any way, he would not leave a stone of their prison standing. “Then we keep looking. Nothing will keep me from her.”
They surrendered themselves to the magic in unison. Flames burst into life and they were gone an instant later. The guards saw nothing and the night held its secrets.
Chapter 14
Shea wandered the open area, grateful to be out of her cell even though there were walls topped with barbed wire surrounding her. She felt the heavy presence of white gold and knew there was plenty of that material placed around the edges of the prison as well. It seemed the chains around their necks were not nearly enough to assuage any fears the guards might have about their prisoners.
But at least, Shea thought, she could see the sky. She tipped her head back, watched seagulls wheeling and dipping in the wind above her and wished with all her heart she could join them.
The “exercise” yard was small, enclosed on all sides by yet more walls, with armed guards standing in turrets at each of the four corners. There were two guards at each post—one watching the prisoners and one scanning the open harbor. She shivered a little at the implication. They were all too prepared for any rescue attempts—not that people were lining up to help a bunch of accused witches.
She shifted her gaze away quickly, not wanting to be caught studying the guards. In the short time she’d been there, she had already learned to keep her head down. To stay under the radar. The nights were long and terrifying in this place. The guards wandered the darkened aisles, crashing their nightsticks against the bars just to watch the women in the cages jump.
Only that morning Officer Jacobs had shoved Shea’s face into a wall for daring to look directly at her. Then she’d used her nightstick to deliver a couple of quick blows to Shea’s side. The bruises had been horrific, but were already fading, thanks presumably to her newfound magic. The pain was spectacular, but more than anything it was the despair that continued to choke Shea. She couldn’t see a way out. Couldn’t think of a thing to help herself. And she had heard the stories of torture somewhere in the bowels of this place.
Sooner or later, she knew it would be her turn.
But it wasn’t only the guards she had to worry about. There were feds everywhere. Since her arrival, Shea had learned more than she wanted to know about Terminal Island.
The island itself was crowded with federal agencies. There used to be cottages here, before World War II, to house Japanese fishermen and their families, who lived on the island. But then war with Japan had broken out and the Japanese had been forced to give up their land and property and move to detention centers inland. The village was razed. Ironic that now there was a new generation of so-called un-Americans who had been sent to Terminal Island. The prison itself took up a small portion of this island once used for off-loading cargo.
New cottages and apartment buildings had been hastily built for the use of the jailers and their superiors. The entire place was a fortified, secured center. To keep the women in and others out.
She watched her fellow prisoners. Women rambled around the enclosure in pairs and alone. Some sat and talked quietly while others walked aimlessly, around and around in circles. One or two simply sat on benches and cried. Nowhere to go, nowhere to run, but being able to move outside the tiny cell they spent most of their time in felt like a vacation.
In the two days she’d been there, Shea had already noticed that the two distinct groups of prisoners—the ordinary human women swept up in a tide of fear, and the women of power, women with witchcraft humming through their veins—acted as one outside the cells. Though they were all different, they were also all in the same boat. Amazing, really, that women who would have, in the outside world, been the first to spit on a witch . . . in here, were compatriots with them. Linked together against a common enemy.
Their captors.
For years, Shea had been running and hiding. Odd to finally find a fatalistic peace in the very prison she’d been trying to avoid.
“Ms. Jameson?”
Shea jolted at the sound of her name and whirled around, expecting a guard, and then laughed silently at her own stupidity. No guard here would be calling her “Ms.”
A short blond woman with anxious blue eyes hurried up to her.
“It is you.” The woman grabbed Shea’s hand and held on, as if clinging to a life rope in a roiling sea. She took a shuddering breath, blew it out again and said, “I thought I recognized you, but I never expected to see you here. Although I never thought to find myself here, either.”
Shea’s mind scrambled to find the woman’s identity. In the last day or so she’d been through so much, seen so much, she could hardly string two coherent thoughts together beyond the one all-consuming one: Get Me. Out. Of. Here! But as the woman continued to talk, it finally dawned on Shea where she knew her from.
School. This was the mother of Amanda Hall. The very girl Shea had been talking to when all of this madness had started.
“It’s Terri, isn’t it? Terri Hall?” Shea said when the woman wound down.
“Yes,” She whipped her hair out of her eyes and looked around quickly, making sure no one was close by. “I met you at parent-teacher conference night last month. God, that seems like years ago now. Amazing how fast things can change. How long have you been here, Ms. Jameson?”
“Call me Shea. Just a day or two.”
“Then you must have seen my Amanda since my arrest. Is she all right?”
All right but terrified, Shea thought but couldn’t bring herself to say it. No more than she’d tell this poor woman that talking to her daughter had started the slippery slope and landed Shea in prison. Terri Hall was locked away from her daughter and Shea couldn’t even imagine the terror the woman must be feeling. Especially since, unlike Shea, Terri hadn’t done a damn thing to deserve this. Instinctively, she reached out to soothe and comfort.
“Amanda’s fine,” she said, squeezing Terri’s hand. “I saw her at school and told her to stay with her grandmother and not to go back to school.”
“Good, that’s good,” Terri muttered. “I still can’t believe any of this is happening. I’m not a witch, for heaven’s sake. One of my neighbors told the MPs that she saw me lighting candles and saying a spell.” She laughed shortly and wrapped her arms around her middle as she lifted her gaze to the soaring sky above them. “I was saying a prayer for my husband. He died last year.”
“I’m so sorry.” It was all crazy and getting worse every day. Ten years after the existence of magic had been revealed, and people were still reacting out of fear.
Terri nodded and sighed. “Thanks. I’m just so worried about Amanda. And my mom. What if they’re arrested next?”
Shea had no easy reassurances for her. She knew as well as Terri did that her family was now in even more danger. BOW and the MPs would be watching every move they made for who knew how long.
As for Terri . . . women caught up in the mob mentality of the witch hunt were pretty much out of luck. Unless the RFW took up Terri’s case, she had no chance of getting out of this camp.
And unless Torin found her, Shea was in the same boat.
“Why are you here?” Terri finally asked, then stopped and winced. “I’m sorry—shouldn’t have said that. I mean, I know about your aunt and—”
“It’s o
kay,” Shea said, not wanting to get drawn into a conversation about it. Especially not here. In places like this the walls really did have ears. There was no telling how many people were listening in on conversations. They weren’t even safe outside. A parabolic microphone or two could cover most of the yard.
As if Terri had remembered the same thing, she lowered her voice. “Are you . . . like your aunt?”
A few days ago Shea would have said no. Now, she was living a new reality. Now, she was dealing with the knowledge that she’d killed a man and was, very possibly, in jail for the rest of her life—at least until her execution. But she looked into the other woman’s eyes and saw compassion. Amazing just how good it felt to be offered understanding. Slowly, Shea nodded.
Terri smiled. “A month ago, that might have terrified me,” she admitted quietly. “Now, though . . .” She looked around the yard again. At the dozens of women, in a range of ages anywhere from eighty to teens, and she sighed. “There are other things more scary. There’s being snatched from your home in the middle of the night and locked away without a chance of even speaking to your own child. There’s fearing that you’ll never get out.”
“We really shouldn’t be talking about this,” Shea whispered, glancing up at the closest guard tower. The man wasn’t looking in their direction, but that didn’t mean a thing.
“They’ve already locked me up,” Terri said firmly. “They’re not going to shut me up, too. You know, before this happened, I was like anyone else, reading about magic and the witches and how BOW and the MPs were doing their duty to protect the people . . .”
Shea took Terri’s elbow and started walking. She wasn’t sure why, but somehow she had the feeling that it would be more difficult for their jailers to overhear them if they kept moving in and out of crowds. And she tried to subtly warn her student’s mother that being outspoken in prison wasn’t necessarily a good thing. “Terri . . .”
She walked and shook her head before giving Shea a half smile. “I know. I know they listen. I know they watch.” Her gaze slid to the side, where two female guards stood together, watching over the prisoners. “But I’m still a citizen. I still have rights.”
“Not really,” Shea told her.
“There’s a sad statement.”
“You have to be careful,” Shea said. “No one here is concerned about your ‘rights.’ To them, we’re less than human. They’d like nothing better than a chance to take us all down. So if you want to see Amanda again—do what you can to stay unnoticed. Don’t stand out in this crowd, Terri. Blend in. Don’t make waves. You might drown in them.”
She huffed out a breath. “Seeing Amanda. What’re the chances of that, I wonder.”
“Probably not good,” Shea admitted, then added, “but you’ll make it worse for yourself in here by not being careful.”
“I know that, but underneath all of the fear, I am furious ,” she said softly and her voice toughened up as if to prove it. “I’ve met a few . . . interesting women here and the thing is, they’re no different from me. Not at the bottom of it, you know? I mean, we’re all just people. Some good, some bad.”
Oh, Shea wished she had met Terri under other circumstances. They could have been friends. Instead, they were prison mates with definite dates of expiration. “Yeah, the problem is, that doesn’t seem to matter.”
“All I’m trying to say is if people would just talk to witches, they wouldn’t be so afraid.”
“You’re right. But at the moment,” Shea told her, keeping her voice low, “fear’s in charge and logic didn’t even get a seat at the table.”
They walked through the yard, the breeze off the harbor carrying the smell of the sea and the illusion of freedom. Off in one corner, a lone woman sat with her knees drawn up, back against the wall, quietly crying to herself. Just seeing the emotionally beaten woman stiffened Shea’s spine.
She wasn’t going to be afraid. Not anymore. She was through being the helpless victim, racing through the dark, trying to avoid her enemies by disappearing into an uncaring crowd. Talking to Terri had helped, too. Terri had allowed her own sense of injustice to trump her fears and Shea could do no less.
Dropping one arm around the other woman’s shoulder, Shea said, “We’ll find a way out.”
And she realized she believed it. She wasn’t going to be locked away here forever. She’d find a way out even if Torin didn’t come for her. Damned if she’d let these bastards win. She and Terri would get out. Somehow. She wouldn’t be a statistic and simply disappear.
She wouldn’t lie down and die without a whimper.
Chapter 15
Torin felt her presence the moment he and Rune flashed into the internment camp.
Standing in one of the guard towers, he let the body of the guard he had killed drop at his feet. Quick snaps of the neck and both men in the eastern tower were dead. He didn’t spare a glance to where they lay sprawled across the floor. They didn’t matter. They were predators. Kidnappers and worse.
Rune was even now dispatching those in the north tower, but Torin couldn’t think beyond Shea. Through the foggy haze of the white gold dampening her powers, her spirit called to his and electrified the beast within him.
For two days he and Rune had worked out the logistics of getting her out of this prison. Now that the time was here, he knew there would be casualties he couldn’t prevent. Deaths he couldn’t stop. Yet he had no choice. This could be their only chance. The Awakening had come and there was nothing more important to him than securing Shea and together accomplishing their task.
He and Rune had mitigated the danger as much as they could, reducing the damage that would be done here today. Now, it was left to the fates. In late afternoon the yard was crowded with prisoners. Shadows pushed out from the walls, inching across the ground even as the first brilliant colors of sunset stained the sky. Torin focused his concentration on the women below, searching for the one witch who called to him.
His head snapped up as a burst of gunfire chattered from the south and west towers. The guards had seen them. But instead of firing at the Eternals in the towers, the guards concentrated their fire on the prisoners. As if to kill them all before any had a chance at escape. Bullets sprayed wildly across the open expanse of the yard below. Women shrieked and ran for cover. Some dropped where they stood, their blood running across the concrete in scarlet rivers. In their quest to stop Rune and Torin, the remaining guards cared nothing for how many women died in the attempt.
Torin cared.
He instantly flashed to the west tower. A guard hastily swung his gun around, but Torin was faster. The man died with a howl of protest as his partner pulled a knife and stabbed Torin in the back. Pain lanced through him but didn’t stop him. He dropped into a crouch, came up fast and knocked the guard off his feet. Once the man was down, Torin pulled the knife from his body and returned it to the guard. Blade to the heart.
Eyes wide, mouth forming the word no, the second guard joined his partner in hell.
Below him, the women’s screams scraped the air, but through the frantic shouts and pleas, he heard one voice calling him by name.
“Torin!”
He leapt to his feet, scanned the ground below him and spotted his witch on the far side of the yard. Her long red hair lifted like a flag in the wind and she waved both hands high over her head. He smiled to himself, noting that Shea Jameson wasn’t cowering. She was standing tall and proud and his unbeating heart filled with admiration.
They hadn’t broken her. Not yet. Not ever.
Chapter 16
Warning sirens screamed to life.
Torin knew they had little time to spare. The tower guards were dead, but there were more just like them throughout this prison. In seconds, reinforcements would rush into the prison proper.
His gaze swept the yard again, searching out the dangers, pinpointing where he would need to be to get his woman to safety. His knife wound was deep and painful, but nothing he hadn’t experienced bef
ore in centuries of battle. He hadn’t the time to spend healing himself. He would need all of his powers focused on the escape.
He flashed to Shea’s side and she threw herself at him. Instantly, the world righted itself again. She was alive and in his arms, and the rest he would deal with.
“Torin!”
She held on tightly to him, her face buried in the curve of his neck. As if she knew she belonged there, accepted what they were and always had been to each other. This, he thought, would make the coming days easier. To have her acceptance, her cooperation in the task ahead would make all the difference.
But cooperation or not, he wouldn’t be letting her out of his sight again.
With her body pressed to his, he felt the chill of the white gold chain around her neck seep into him, sending ice racing after the fire in his veins. She was stronger than she thought, he told himself. Even with the drain of the white gold at her slender throat, he felt her magic bubbling with her.
Despite the chill of the dampening element against him, his body responded immediately to her presence. Heedless of the danger, he was hard as iron and aching to begin the ritual. But his mind overruled his dick. This time.
“We have to go,” he said, glancing over as Rune flashed in to stand beside him. The Eternal’s gaze swept the crowded yard—the screaming women, the wounded prisoners stretched out across dirty asphalt, the remaining guards who were running for cover to wait until their cavalry arrived.
“I know,” Shea said. “I’m ready.” She released him, took a step back, then reached out and grabbed the hand of the blond woman standing beside her. “I mean, we’re ready.”
Of course this wouldn’t go smoothly, Torin told himself with an inward groan of frustration. Never once in centuries had Shea stopped surprising him.
“Damn it!” Rune’s curse was deep and vicious.
Shea shot him a dark look. “I wasn’t talking to you.” Then she shifted her gaze to Torin’s and he felt the strength of that stare hit him hard. “This is my student’s mother. She’s not a witch. And if she doesn’t get out of here, they’ll kill her. They’ll torture her for information she doesn’t have.”
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