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  Shea tossed a quick glance through the leaves at the brightly lit house behind her.

  No sign that anyone was after her. Yet. Clinging to a branch, she pulled her shoes free and then tossed them, one after the other, over the wall. Her bare feet walked up the heavy limbs of the oak until she was within reach of the top of the wall. Leaning out, she held tight to the tree with one hand and reached for the wall with the other.

  Don’t look down, she told herself, focusing solely on the top of the cinder-block wall. She bit back her fear, released the tree and clambered onto the wall, stretching out flat atop it. She threw a quick glance at the street below.

  Torin’s house was set back from the main road, where streetlights threw soft golden circles of light. Here by the wall, there was only more darkness. Better, she thought. Staying out of the light would help hide her. She swung over the edge, dug her toes into the wall, then carefully dropped to the ground. Blindly, she searched for her shoes, tugged them on, then hurried toward the road.

  She hated having to be anywhere near the main street, since Torin would be following her soon. But what choice did she have? She wasn’t even sure where she was.

  Her heels tapped lightly on the asphalt and she cringed at even that slight sound. But better to risk the noise than to step on something and injure herself before she got a running start.

  Her breath came in uneven gasps and her long red hair fell in tumbled curls around her shoulders. Her gaze continually swept her surroundings and she jolted at every brush of wind against a bush. Somewhere down the road a dog howled and Shea shivered.

  Overhead, clouds raced across the sky. The ever-present wind tugged at her hair, her clothes, with icy fingers and through it all, the pulse beat of the ocean thrummed in the air.

  At the corner, Shea pushed her hair back from her face and paused in the shadows, scanning the road in front of her. Not much traffic. Must have been later than she’d thought. The residents were all tucked in behind their privacy gates, secure in their elegant mansions. And with any luck, none of them would ever know she had been there.

  She stepped into the street, avoiding the circles of light thrown from the old-fashioned streetlamps. Thankfully, this part of Malibu obviously preferred form over function. If they’d had the more modern lights here, she would have had a much harder time remaining unseen. As it was, she had to move quickly, walking on grass and gravel, trying to get as much distance between her and Torin as possible. Then she would be free to lose herself in a new identity.

  The tightness around her chest loosened with every step. She would survive. She’d done it before. She could do it again. This time was no different.

  But it was different.

  The last time she’d disappeared, she hadn’t been a murderer. Now she was. She’d killed that man who had attacked her. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t meant to. Mistake or premeditated, he was just as dead. She bit down on her bottom lip and told herself that it was an accident. She’d never hurt anyone in her life until today.

  Shea swiped one hand across her eyes, wiping away the sting of tears with impatience. Being sorry wouldn’t accomplish anything. Wouldn’t change anything. What had happened, happened and there was just no going back.

  So she would go forward.

  And what about the fire? The pulse of energy that had jolted from her fingertips? What was she supposed to do about that? For ten years, she’d been denying that she was a witch to anyone who would listen. Now, though, that argument wouldn’t work, even with herself. There was magic inside her, whether she wanted it or not. And she really didn’t.

  Even being suspected of witchcraft was dangerous.

  To actually be a witch was usually a death sentence.

  Frowning at her own scattershot thoughts, Shea told herself that she’d do what Torin had said and would learn to control it. Just because she apparently carried magic within her didn’t mean she had to use it. She would stop the magic. She’d figure it all out. But she’d do it her way, on her time. She wasn’t going to trust anyone. Certainly not a man who could manifest the very flames she was terrified of.

  On her own, she’d be safe.

  It was the only way.

  She smiled to herself, ducked beneath the overhanging branches of a jacaranda tree, lacy leaves tickling her skin. The soft slide of her shoes on the grass was the only sound except the ocean. Even that lonely dog had stopped howling. Maybe that was a good sign, she thought.

  She was free. The danger was behind her and safety lay within reach.

  A deep voice erupted from behind her. “Gotcha!”

  Chapter 5

  “Gone?” Torin narrowed his gaze on the housekeeper. Anna was practically vibrating with agitation. Her eyes kept shifting to avoid looking directly into his and she had her hands fisted so tightly at her waist that her knuckles were white.

  To save time, Torin started for the staircase, wanting to see for himself that Shea was indeed missing. He heard Anna and Rune right behind him, but didn’t bother looking back. Instead, he merely growled, “What do you mean, she’s gone?”

  “Just what I said. I know you told me that no one was to go in her room,” Anna said a little breathlessly as she hurried to keep up with him, “but I heard an odd noise and thought it best to check it out.”

  “And . . .” He hit the top of the stairs, took a sharp left and stalked down the hall, gaze fixed on Shea’s open door.

  “And, nothing,” the older woman said. “She wasn’t there.”

  “Where in the name of the gods could she have gone?”

  Rune’s viciously muttered question reverberated in Torin’s mind. Along with another one all his own. Why would she go? Foolish woman. She knew she was in danger. Hadn’t he just saved her from a mob only hours ago? Why would she risk running?

  Had he pushed her too hard, too fast? Had he expected too much too soon? No, he told himself firmly. It had been aeons! How patient was he to be, damn the witch!

  With those questions and more running through his thoughts, Torin walked into Shea’s room and opened up every sense he possessed. He closed his eyes, reaching out to her, trying to locate her as he had done through countless centuries. There was a bond between Eternal and Witch and no matter how tenuous those strings of attachment grew at times, they were never completely severed.

  Unless . . .

  He threw a look at Rune. “There’s nothing. I can’t feel her at all.”

  “Then she’s been captured. They’ve probably got white gold on her to tamp down her power.”

  White gold inhibited magical abilities. For Eternal and Witch alike. It was like a dampening field where power was muffled and connections were nearly impossible to maintain. Torin couldn’t use the very magic that bonded him and Shea to track her. Once that power was shut down, his link with her was if not shattered, then at least muted.

  He walked to the balcony and stared out at the night and the world beyond his compound. Here he’d offered her safety. He’d offered her power and the mating that would usher them both from the dark past into a future unstained with old sins and bitter regrets.

  And she’d fled from it.

  “By the stars,” he muttered, “what was she thinking? Does she really trust herself to the compassion of humans?”

  Rune came up beside him and clapped one hand on Torin’s shoulder in camaraderie. “You said yourself, she doesn’t remember. Doesn’t know yet who and what she is. Or what you are to her.”

  Torin turned on him, fury bubbling like a black brew. “And I’m to be patient for how long? For centuries, we’ve waited. Now that the time’s come, I should have taken her the moment she entered this house. I thought to give her time to adjust. To accept that the mating would begin.” He pushed away from the balcony rail and shook back his long fall of black hair. “No, patience has not served any of us. Now I will find her and we end this. Finally and at last, we end it.”

  Rune stared at him for a long moment before nodding a
greement. Torin didn’t care whether his fellow Eternal shared his sentiments or not. Nothing mattered now but Shea Jameson. And may the gods protect whoever was trying to keep her from him. Because Torin was devoid of mercy.

  He set one hand on the railing and vaulted over the balcony. He landed softly, just beyond the bush that had obviously broken Shea’s fall. Idiot woman, did she not realize what she risked by putting her own life in danger? Did she really believe that the humans of this world were more trustworthy than her Eternal?

  Chapter 6

  More scared than she’d ever been, Shea fought back as strong hands grabbed her and dragged her off her feet. Before she could take a breath to scream, a heavy hand dropped over her mouth. She tried to bite it, but failed.

  “Lock her down!” A different voice, deeper, whispered the command. More than one man was circling her, touching her, wrestling her to the ground.

  “Watch her hands!” someone else muttered viciously.

  Her hands. The energy pulse. The fire. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, but she wasn’t going to allow them to hurt her, either. She lifted both palms, but dropped them again when she was slapped so viciously that her head snapped to one side and tears spurted from her eyes.

  Still, she kicked out wildly, and in her blind attempt to free herself, connected with someone. She heard a grunt of pain. Then another man grabbed her ankles and held her still. Shea bucked in their grasp, writhing and struggling, but they were too strong and there were just too many of them.

  Fear rose up fast and thick inside her. Her mind raced and her heart beat so frantically, she felt as though it would pop out of her chest. She’d been caught. Before she’d made it a mile from Torin’s home, she’d been found and trapped. And if she didn’t think fast, she was going to disappear at someone else’s hands.

  Something cold draped around her neck and even while she struggled, Shea sensed a weight dropping onto her soul. She felt heavy, leaden. Her body wasn’t affected by whatever they’d done to her, but her soul was being crushed. She tried to lift her hands, but couldn’t find the will. The spark of energy she’d felt that afternoon when she’d faced the mugger was blocked up inside her, struggling, as she was, to escape.

  “Stupid witch,” one of the men whispered, so close to her ear that she felt his hot breath on her skin, “you think we’ll give you a chance to fry us the way you did that poor bastard today?”

  Oh, God. “I didn’t—”

  Someone slapped her again, but she couldn’t see who. It didn’t matter. They were all against her. All of them working in concert to keep her from escaping. They might as well have been one entity. In the darkness the men surrounding her were merely darker shadows. Moving, constantly moving, as if they were being careful to not make themselves targets.

  She couldn’t hurt them—and they knew it, so their caution was simply born of their underlying fear. That she understood. Hadn’t she been living with ripe, glorious fear for more than ten years herself? Hadn’t she jolted at every knock on the door? Every ring of the phone? And what good had any of it done her?

  She’d still ended up here, a captive lying in the dirt, with strangers’ hands moving over her as she lay trapped. Whatever “power” she might have had was asleep. And she wished to hell it wasn’t.

  Yes, this afternoon she’d killed a man with magic and had been sorry for it. Now, she would give anything to have that power at her command. She had to get away. And there was no chance of escape now. That strong hand stayed cupped over her mouth while she was forced onto her stomach. Bits of dirt and gravel dug into her face. Her arms were wrenched behind her back and a plastic zip tie was fixed around her wrists, digging painfully into her skin.

  She moaned and squirmed against the restraints until a new voice entered the fray and Shea stilled to listen.

  “It’s her, isn’t it?” A woman’s voice, excited, breathless. “I was right. I knew it, I told my husband when I saw her at that man’s balcony, ‘that’s the woman from the news,’ I said. The witch who killed that poor man today.”

  That was how they’d caught up to her, Shea thought with an inner groan. A civilian had spotted her and turned her in. But who did the woman call? Who were these men and what were they going to do to her now?

  “Yeah, it’s her, lady,” a man said in a voice hoarse from too many cigarettes. “Now get on back to your house. We’ll take care of this.”

  Take care of it how? Shea wondered frantically. Were they going to kill her? Torture and rape her first? Witches had no rights and she knew that a grateful public would no doubt pin a medal on anyone who could prove he’d killed one.

  Suddenly Torin was looking much better to her. Now she wanted nothing more than to be back in that luxurious room with the tall, fierce-looking man standing between her and danger. If that made her a coward, she was willing to live with it. But since she was on her own, she had to try to reason with the men hulking around her.

  How many were there? Three? Four?

  Her heartbeat thundered in her ears and the taste of fear was sharp and bitter on her tongue. She squirmed ineffectually against the man holding her from behind, but managed to twist her face free of the other man’s hand.

  “Stop, please . . . I’m not what you think.” Lies. She was exactly what they thought she was. What she’d denied being for ten long years. And the worst part? They all knew it.

  “Hear that?” a man on her right said, then mocked in a falsetto tone, “Please.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” another one told him. “She might spell you.”

  If only she could.

  Someone snorted, then ordered, “Go get the van.”

  Van?

  They were taking her somewhere. And how would Torin ever find her?

  She shook her head, desperate now to somehow reach these men. “I don’t know any spells. Really. I’m not what you think. I’m a sixth-grade science teacher. That’s all. This is a huge mistake.”

  Her only hope was to convince the men she was innocent. But, she reminded herself, mistakes happened all the time these days and women still disappeared.

  “Gag her.”

  “No!” She was already bound—if they gagged her too, she didn’t think she could stand it. Shea pulled in a deep, terrified breath. She was out of time, out of hope. No one was riding to her rescue. There was no cavalry and she’d just run from the one person who might have kept her safe.

  She was falling into a hole of her own making and now she could do nothing to keep it from growing even deeper. She was flipped over onto her back and despite her pleas, one of the men leaned down to fix a gag to her mouth. And she got her first good look at her captors.

  Black uniforms. Yellow armbands. Gold badges that winked in the indistinct light.

  The Magic Police had finally caught up with her.

  Chapter 7

  Torin noted Rune jumping down after him, but he didn’t wait for his old friend. Instead, he followed the fading scent of his woman and rushed across the yard to the wall. Through the blind rage and the pressing need to find her, a flicker of admiration rose up inside him.

  She’d climbed the damn tree and scaled the wall to escape him. Shea Jameson was a woman of strength. A witch of great power. And one with a spine stiff enough to take risks she had no business considering. While he could stand to one side and respect her formidable will, he resented the fact that she had risked her life rather than trusting him to protect her.

  When he found her, he would make sure he convinced her never to defy him again. She would trust him because it was by damn his due. Hadn’t he been at her side when death had claimed her, lifetime after lifetime? Hadn’t he been waiting for her soul to be reborn so that he could once again pick up the mantle of protector?

  Would this not prove to the woman that he had earned his place at her side?

  Once on the street, he followed her trail, running through the darkness, at home in the shadows as he was nowhere else. The roar of the ocean
thundered in the background as waves crashed against the cliffs. Lights blazed in the houses he passed, but he paid them no mind. What did he care for civilians when his mind was focused solely on his witch?

  Torin stopped dead when her scent abruptly disappeared. He caught no sign of her on the wind and even reaching with the deeper senses of an Eternal gained him nothing. Shea had disappeared as completely as if she’d stepped into a hole in the earth. Muttering darkly under his breath, he dropped to one knee to closely examine the ground.

  There’d been a fight here. A struggle. She’d been forced to the ground by three—four men. And a woman. Torin frowned to himself as he recognized the scent of one of his neighbors. A nosy older woman forever spying on the world outside her own home. She must have seen Shea at the house and reported her. Which meant those who had taken Shea were no doubt official agents.

  That was something, he told himself, even as a wild, frantic urge to find her swamped him. Officials, though cruel, rarely killed the women they captured outright. They would take her to a camp. Somewhere they could interrogate her. Lock her away. From him.

  The rage already blistering Torin’s insides flashed into a consuming inferno as he felt the lingering traces of Shea’s fear and panic. He looked up, long hair lifting in the wind as his eyes narrowed on the dark road stretching out before him. Human males had grabbed his woman and if they had hurt her, he told himself, then they had best hope their God was looking out for them.

  Rune ran up to join him as Torin stood. Cold, vicious fury burned within him, strangling every breath, flooding him with an iciness that was as black as the night surrounding them.

  “Gone,” he said, the one word ground from his throat like jagged glass. His body tensed, his huge hands curling into fists at his sides. He couldn’t feel her. Couldn’t sense her presence anywhere. And that meant only one thing.

  Whoever had taken her had locked her powers down.