Visions of Magic

by Regan Hastings

  Sliding along her body, he caressed her skin, kissed every inch of her as he worked his way down, past her breasts, her abdomen, to the very heart of her. He parted her thighs with the touch of his hand. She opened for him eagerly, willingly. He dipped first one finger, then two, into her hot depths and watched her face as she lifted her hips into his hand. The mating tattoo burned a dark, bright red around her breast and an answering fire sizzled on his own skin.

  He felt the mark chasing down along his spine and knew that Shea was experiencing the same. The brand was nearing completion and now it would burn fiercely whenever they came together. A reminder, he thought, of what they had earned. What they had become.

  Moving now, Torin knelt between her thighs and watched her smile as she lifted her hips to welcome his body. But he wanted something more from her first. Wanted to take and give and feel her shatter.

  Scooping his hands under her behind, he lifted her off the bed and held her, suspended. “Drape your legs over my shoulders, Shea.”

  “Torin . . .” She bit her lip and did as he asked.

  He kept his gaze locked with hers as he lowered his head to taste her most intimate flesh. At the first swipe of his tongue, Shea groaned aloud and took a sharp, quick breath. That soft sigh of sound fed the desire pumping through him.

  Torin licked and tasted and nibbled at her core until she was breathing in ragged gasps and twisting in his hold. She rocked her hips wildly, desperate for the release he kept pushing her toward. She fisted her fingers in his hair and held his mouth to her when the first ripples of sensation coursed through her and Torin felt every jolting surge of pleasure as it shook her to the bone.

  Only when the last one had dissolved, leaving her body trembling with release, did he ease her back onto the mattress. He buried his body within hers in a long, hard stroke, laying claim to all she was. She urged him on with tiny, barely heard cries of ecstasy.

  He felt lightning-like whips of energy snapping between the two of them. They moved together in a tender symphony of rhythm. Her body tightened around his, liquid heat, clenching down, pulling him deeper, deeper, until Torin was sure he would never completely be apart from her again. The fires between them burned and flared. He reached for her hand and twined their fingers together.

  The mating fire erupted, burning brightly over their joined hands as their bodies shattered together, each of them jolting into a climax that was all the stronger for the sharing.

  In the darkness, two decks above, the tip of a cigarette glowed in the darkness like the eye of a demon.

  The watcher smiled.

  Chapter 42

  “It’s time.” Kellyn spoke into her phone and idly plucked a stray thread from her plum-colored silk shirt. “According to my contact, Shea and Torin are very close now. They should be right where I expect them sometime in the next twenty-four hours. I’ll need to have everything in place well before so we’re ready to go at a moment’s notice. I’ll handle all of the arrangements.”

  “Kellyn,” the voice on the phone said patiently, “we’ve discussed this before. You’ve given me the coordinates for this confrontation and I’ve already made the arrangements. When we hang up, I’ll notify them to set up immediately.”

  Rage swarmed like dragonflies in the pit of her belly, but Kellyn bit back her frustration and kept her voice cool and disaffected. She’d come too far to lose her temper now. She still needed this connection. So she took a breath and said, “I’m sure you remember how badly the Seeker operation ended.”

  “Yes, but my instructions weren’t followed,” the caller insisted. “And those who made the mistakes have been dealt with. This time it will be different. My own people are taking care of things rather than subcontracting it out. There won’t be any blunders this time—I won’t stand for it.”

  Neither would Kellyn. Which was why she wanted to be in charge. However, there were still reasons for maintaining this relationship, so she would give it another try.

  “Now, if the coordinates you gave me haven’t changed . . .” the voice continued.

  “They haven’t.” Kellyn knew exactly where the witch and her Eternal were headed. It might take Shea a bit longer to recall everything, but Kellyn’s memories had returned some time ago. The past was wide-open to her and the future, if maneuvered correctly, shone with promise.

  “All right, then,” the voice said with confidence. “I’ll make the call. Everything will be set up and waiting within the hour.”

  “Fine.” Kellyn forced a smile and looked down on the street traffic in front of her hotel. Yes, the view had changed, but any view that could be seen from the very best suite in a luxury hotel was a good one. She laughed to think of Shea and her Eternal, darting across the countryside, staying in tacky motels and abandoned homes. All to avoid detection, she thought—for all the good it had done them.

  Between the trackers implanted in Shea’s body and the scrying Kellyn had been doing, the witch and the Eternal had been chased from one edge of the country to the next. She had enjoyed her magical meetings with Shea and was looking forward to the next time they met. Kellyn would talk Shea into turning her back on the coven and joining forces with her. Then the two of them would hunt down the other Awakened witches, each in turn. And in the end, the Artifact and the power would be theirs.

  Smiling, she realized she was in a much better mood as she told her partner, “I’ll go directly to the coordinates and make sure your people are set up correctly.”

  “That’s a good idea. I’ll contact them, let them know you’re coming and that they should do as you order.”

  “Excellent.” Nothing she liked better than men snapping to attention.

  “Fine then,” the caller said easily. “And Kellyn, see that nothing goes wrong this time. I don’t want the witch dead. She’s no good to either of us unless she’s alive.”

  “I know that even better than you.” Kellyn hung up and tossed the phone onto a nearby chair.

  She didn’t need to be reminded about anything. Especially not by one who had only recently joined in the hunt.

  Kellyn had been waiting for this for centuries.

  “Soon,” she whispered, chuckling as a pedestrian rushed into the street and was smacked by a taxi. “Soon, I won’t need anyone. Shea and I will take charge of the Awakening and nothing will ever be the same.”

  Shea and Torin were the first to leave the ship.

  Actually, they left before the ship landed in Southampton. The moment they were close enough to shore, Torin flashed them out, leaving behind the luxurious interlude.

  But time was passing and she had no room for regrets or looking backward. Torin had been right, of course. The moment she had set foot on British soil, she had known exactly where they had to go. Was it a sense memory? Was it a clue left behind in her subconscious when her memories were unlocked, allowing her to recall her past lives?

  “Shea?”

  “I know where to go,” she said. “Pembrokeshire, Wales. But just get us close. I want to do a spell before we go to Haven. Make sure we’re not walking into a trap.”

  “Good idea.”

  They were on the final leg of their journey. In ten days, the moon would be full and their time would be up. As Torin’s flames enveloped her, Shea silently prayed that nothing would go wrong.

  Deep in the heart of the Sussex Sanctuary, Odell and Rune relaxed beside a campfire. Flames leapt and jumped into the night sky. Swirls of sparks flew briefly and winked out like dying fireflies. All around them, the community of women worked to integrate the newcomers, freed by the raid on the internment camp.

  “That went well,” Rune said, lifting his glass of beer in a salute to his friend.

  “It did,” Odell agreed. “Only three guards dead and six women freed.” He grinned. “Was a good night’s work.”

  “And they’ll be safe here?” Rune looked around. They were in a long-forgotten cavern beneath Ashdown Forest. In ancient times these carved rock walls and rooms
had no doubt hidden away others, looking for peace from their pursuers. Today, it was alive again with the sound of desperate voices.

  “Safer than they were, for damn sure,” Odell told him flatly. When he spoke again, he smiled. “It’s ten square miles of ‘protected’ land. There are the tourists, of course, but Ashdown was the ‘home’ of Winnie the Pooh,” he added with a snort of laughter. “There are deer and all other manner of wildlife running all over the bloody place, so there are conservation people rabid about protecting it.” He looked up at the rock ceiling above their heads. “And these caverns were forgotten long ago. No one knows of their existence and they’ve been magically warded so they won’t be found.”

  “Sounds good,” Rune told him. “But they can’t stay here forever.” From down a long corridor came the sound of a woman softly weeping and his unbeating heart ached for the females caught in a web of treachery.

  “No, they can’t,” Odell allowed. “But it’s a good spot for now. There are other Sanctuaries posted around Britain and we’ll move some of the witches soon, make it less crowded down here.”

  Nodding, Rune said thoughtfully, “You know, the last time I entered a Sanctuary, I wasn’t exactly welcomed with open arms.”

  “Perhaps,” Odell told him with a grin and a wink. “But you come to this one as a friend of mine, so you’re trusted.” His smile faded and he shook his head solemnly. “These women have been pursued and tortured and terrified. Is it any wonder they’re willing to turn on the first male they see?”

  “No. It’s not.” Rune stared into the fire and said softly, “If the Awakening goes as planned, this will change. There won’t be a need for witch hunters. Witchcraft can take its rightful place in the world.”

  “Aye,” his friend said, a rueful note in his voice. “If it goes as planned. And how many plans my friend, have we seen blow up in our faces over the centuries?”

  “Yeah,” Rune agreed somberly. “There is that.”

  Torin risked the magic, using his powers, his energies, to flash them, in a series of jumps, to Wales. Their minds linked, thanks to the ever-increasing strength of the mating, he took them to a high, grassy knoll above the crashing sea.

  A cold, sharp wind swept in from the ocean, rushing past them to race across the countryside, sending villagers searching for their hearths. In the distance, heavy dark clouds gathered as if amassing their forces for an invasion.

  Torin was oblivious to everything but Shea. His focus was locked on her, his sharp eyes watching every inflection of expression cross her face. She looked both pleased and worried about being where they were and he could see the glint of recognition shining in her brilliant green eyes.

  As he watched, she walked closer to a burial mound that had been perched on the high cliff above Manorbier Bay for eons. A heavy, long capstone sat balanced atop two short, thick side stones. Centuries of wind and rain had pitted the stones deeply, but magic sang in the air around the mound.

  “King’s Quoit,” Shea whispered, resting the tips of her fingers against the damp, heavy stone. She closed her eyes and he could almost see magic pouring from the stones into her small, fragile hand.

  “You remember,” he said, his words nearly lost in the rush of the wind. He could see her not only as she was now, tall and proud, yet still hesitating over her own powers—but as she had been then, on that long-ago night. The coven had gathered here, at the edge of the cliff. Here, where the capstone sang with ancient power.

  There were other, more well-known standing stones. Circles of power, of magic, that stretched across the countryside. Today, they drew tourists and would-be scientists, looking to explain the unexplainable. But here, on this quiet cliff in an almost forgotten slice of Wales, stood one of the most powerful of all the stones.

  “I do remember,” she said, lifting her gaze to his. She turned her face into the wind, staring out at the sea, opening her arms wide, to welcome the gale that seemed to rush toward her. “My blood recognizes this place,” she said, as if she could hardly believe what she was saying. “This was where we came to call down the moon. This is where we stood to open the door, the night we doomed ourselves. The night we broke faith with everything we were.”

  “Yes.”

  She glanced down at the capstone, and reached out to touch it again. “The magic here is thick, and ancient.”

  “It is,” he said, moving around King’s Quoit to take her in his arms. “But it is not Haven.”

  “No.”

  “Can you find it?”

  She swallowed hard. His witch was worried, Torin reminded himself. Even if he hadn’t been able to see her expression, he would have felt her distress. She was wound up, her emotions tangled together into a knot of expectation, dread and excitement. The anxieties of the last few weeks were taking their toll.

  “I know where it is,” she said and lifted one arm to point. “It’s there. At Manorbier castle.”

  He frowned. “The castle itself?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked off in the direction of the twelfth-century castle. The Welsh countryside spilled out in front of them like a dark green quilt, dotted with sheep and hedges and the bright blues and pinks and whites of late-blooming wildflowers. Torin’s soul embraced being back in the land where all of this had started. Yet at the same time, he worried, not only for his witch but for the other witches and Eternals awaiting their turn at this journey.

  The Norman castle Manorbier had once been the center of their lives. There had been livestock roaming free in the land surrounding the castle and within the outer and inner yards a veritable village had thrived. Now, he knew, it all lay quiet but for the echoes of the past and the ghosts and shades that clung to the brown, bracken-covered stones.

  “I need to look at the castle, Torin,” she told him and he turned. “There’s a darkness down there.”

  “What do you sense?” His eyes were hard and his expression grim.

  “I’m not sure. I can feel something. I’m going to use the magic in King’s Quoit to help me with some astral projection and I could use an anchor.”

  “You have one,” he assured her.

  She clambered up onto the capstone and sighed heavily as the magic trapped within the stone seeped into her bones. “God, it feels good to be here. To feel this and know what it means to me.”

  Torin smiled, took her hand in his and held it tightly. “I’m here to guard your body as your spirit flies. Do what you must.”

  Shea stilled her mind, kept her breathing slow and measured and when she was ready, sent her soul on a search for hidden dangers. The earth fell away from her as she soared through sky and wind. A rush of freedom filled her and she knew that was the real danger of astral travel. You could become so lost in the sensations that you didn’t want to crawl back into a body that would feel leaden on your return.

  But she was on a mission and as she sailed over Manorbier castle, no more than a thought on the wind, she reached with her mind for whatever was waiting for them.

  She felt it first. A smudge of evil like a dirty fingerprint on a white door. She swooped in closer, trusting that her disembodied spirit wouldn’t be sensed or noticed.

  Men and guns.

  Gathered, hidden behind the walls and tumbled stones of the castle. Waiting for them. But how did they know she and Torin were coming? Shea returned quickly to her body. It didn’t matter how their enemies knew about them. All that mattered was that the trap they had set wouldn’t work now.

  She came back with a jolt and looked up into Torin’s swirling gray eyes. “It’s a trap. There are men with guns down there and they’re just waiting for us to show up. They’re mostly around the inner yard—which, naturally, is exactly where we have to go.”

  He helped her off the capstone. “Then we won’t disappoint them.”

  “Right.” She nodded and looked from him to the castle far below. “Weird, isn’t it? Our past was filled with betrayals and pain—now the present is looking pretty much
the same.”

  “Yes, but we are not the same as we once were, Shea,” he told her and pulled her close, holding on to her at the top of the world. “Nothing can defeat us if we stand together.”

  “We will, Torin,” she said, tipping her head back to look up at him. “We do this together.”

  She was still staring into his eyes as his fire wrapped itself around them both and whisked them to their past.

  Chapter 43

  The stone walls of Manorbier castle were studded with bracken and the snaking, climbing tendrils of dark green ivy. Long unused arrow slits, like empty eyes, looked down on the modern world, and walls that had once rung with shouts and laughter lay quiet in the afternoon gloom.

  Shea took a breath and let the scene sink into her soul. She was home, she thought and wondered how she could feel so sure about a place where she’d never been. But the answer was in her heart, her mind. Her very soul recognized this place as her spiritual home. As the land where she had been happiest—until the night everything had changed so drastically, so completely.

  She felt the spirits clinging to this place, their energies stamped for all time on the castle that had been home and safety. Shea almost expected to hear the clang of swords as warriors trained in the outer yard. She turned her head to look at the sweeping staircase leading from the buttery to the great hall and imagined servants scurrying to and fro, carrying meals hot from the ovens. She remembered parties in the great hall and the respect granted to her and her sister members of the coven.

  Before they turned from their legacy, life had been good here. At this castle, witchcraft was treated with deference. Shea and her sisters had been sought after for potions and healing, to attend births and deathbeds. They were seen as guides to the next world and the coven had protected those within these walls in thanks for the refuge granted them.