He pushed out of the chair and walked to her. “You’re right,” he admitted and caught the glint of surprise in her eyes. He smiled. “You thought I would argue with you.”
Nodding, she said, “Well, you’re the one who’s been insisting all along that my memories had to come in their own time.”
“True,” he said, sliding one hand along her arm, hearing her breath quicken at his touch. How glorious it was to know that his woman felt everything he did when they came together. That the magic they created affected each of them with the same sense of eager anticipation for their next joining.
Taking a breath, he said, “But you managed to awaken your memories, Shea. Perhaps telling you now will help you sort through them at a faster pace.”
He swept her up into his arms and carried her easily across the room toward the stairs.
“What’re you doing?” she asked, linking her arms around his neck.
“I’m going to tell you all I know,” he said, continuing on up the curving staircase to the luxurious bedroom on the second floor.
“And you have to tell me in the bedroom?”
He glanced at her and gave her a half smile. “It will take a while. You should be comfortable.”
“Uh-huh. You’re only thinking of me.”
“You are my mate, Shea,” he said softly, meaningfully. “I always think of you.”
Cora Sterling looked at her daughter and felt a surge of pride. Deidre Sterling was everything a mother could have hoped for. Brilliant, beautiful and strong-willed, she was, in essence, Cora told herself, a younger version of her mother.
Even a simple family dinner became an event at the White House. The Secret Service was always close at hand and the waitstaff from the kitchens tended to hover nearby, always ready to be of service.
But Cora didn’t want any distractions when her daughter was there for dinner. As soon as she was able, she got rid of everyone so that she and Deidre could talk. Once the room was empty, she broached the subject that had been worrying her for days.
“The RFW has been in the papers a lot lately.” She speared a bite of excellently prepared salmon.
“I know.” Deidre pushed her chin-length blond hair behind her ears and smiled. “It’s really exciting, Mother. Rights for Witches is growing faster than any of us had hoped.”
Cora nodded and took a sip of cold white wine. “But there was trouble yesterday on the Mall.”
A protest march at the National Mall had been scheduled for months. At most, people guessed there would be several thousand attendees. But more than fifty thousand people had shown up to march on the capital. The D.C. police were still sorting out all of the arrests they’d made. Even the most peaceful of protests somehow tended to engender violence of some kind.
All it took was one wrong word at the precisely wrong time and fireworks exploded, turning a demonstration into—in this case, at least—a near riot.
“The morning news was filled with coverage,” Cora said. “People climbing on the Lincoln monument, fighting, for heaven’s sake, in the Reflecting Pool. It was a disgrace.”
Deidre sighed and leaned back in her chair. “It was disappointing, I know, but every movement has its share of hotheads, right? I mean, the important thing here is just how many people showed up. It was incredible.” Her eyes shone and her smile flashed. “We never expected so many!”
“Yes,” Cora said wryly, “I know.”
Deidre winced a little at her tone. “I’m not trying to make things difficult for you, Mother. But this is important to me. I hate seeing how witches are being treated—rounded up and bundled off to internment camps? It’s practically prehistoric!”
Cora chuckled. “Not nearly so dramatic, honey. You know that I’ve been working to solve this problem . . .”
“Oh, I do,” Deidre told her, sliding a glance around the dining room in the president’s private quarters as if to make sure no one was left to overhear them. “And it’s great, really. But unless everyone steps up to protest what’s happening, nothing will really change.”
“It’s dangerous, Dee,” Cora told her daughter. “You could have been killed in that mob scene yesterday. If the Secret Service hadn’t been there to pull you out . . .”
“But they pulled only me out,” Deidre complained. “My friends were left to fend for themselves.”
Dropping her fork onto the Reagan china with a clatter, Cora said, “You can’t expect the agents to save everyone, Dee. You are my daughter. It’s their duty to keep you from harm.”
“Protect me but fry the witches. Is that it?”
“Watch your tone.”
Instantly, Deidre got hold of herself. “Sorry. Look, I’m doing what I have to do. I don’t expect you to approve, Mother, but you can’t stop me from this.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Dee,” Cora told her, reaching across the table to squeeze her daughter’s hand. “I can do whatever I like. Not only am I your mother, but I’m the president. If I think you’re in danger, don’t for one minute believe that I’m not going to act.”
Deidre looked into her mother’s eyes and what she read there must have convinced her because her attitude shifted and she said, “I’m sorry I worried you. I’ll try not to let it happen again. But I can’t promise to stop my work with the RFW. It’s too important. To me. To the world.”
Cora patted her hand and nodded. “I understand completely. But you must understand that I will do whatever I think necessary to ensure that you stay well.”
“Of course,” Deidre said and squeezed her mother’s hand. “So, let’s talk about something else. Did I tell you I found a condo I might want to buy?”
Cora sat back and watched her daughter, smiling at all the appropriate times, while she silently made plans to talk to the agents assigned to Deidre. Yesterday, her daughter’s safety had been compromised. She might have died.
Cora would not allow that to happen.
Chapter 40
I always think of you.
Torin’s words were simple, Shea reflected, but so profound. He was everything to her. She never would have thought that any two people could bond so completely in such a short time.
But these last few days had been the most amazing of her life. It was as if the magic itself was a living entity, separate from her, yet a part of her at the same time.
She was even dreaming about spells and enchantments. She woke up knowing the lore of crystals. She could create a talisman or craft a love spell. She could now list medicinal herbs and how they should be used. Her mind was filled to overflowing with the knowledge of the many lifetimes she’d lived. She remembered more every day. It was all there, in her mind, her heart. She had only to uncover the last of her own deeply buried secrets.
Torin carried her into their bedroom. She squinted against the bright afternoon light glancing off the water with a knife’s edge. Automatically, she dimmed the light, but kept the brilliance of it. Because she wanted the curtains open to the light. Wanted the terrace doors open to the wind.
She drew strength and energy from the elements of nature and felt the sunlight and wind and sea filling her cells, becoming a part of her.
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,” sh
e 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 her. “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 m
an 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.
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