Visions of Magic Page 7

  Still the sirens blared, shattering the night. Women up and down the cellblock screamed and cried out for help. At the end of the long, dark hall, the steel door swung open and a wide swath of light slashed through the shadows. Guards shouted. A burst of gunfire chattered outside the walls and in response the caged women shrieked and moaned.

  The dark-haired witch never broke eye contact with him. “I can tell you what you need to know,” she said quickly. “But not unless you get me out. I don’t need your help after that. I can teleport.”

  The abilities granted to witches were wide and varied. If this witch was a teleporter—one who had the ability to shift across distances, much like an Eternal—then he could leave her to her own devices once she was free. And he needed to know what she knew.

  Torin bit off another curse and threw a look down the hall at the group of guards rushing inside the prison.

  “Get me out and I’m fine,” she said, words tumbling from her mouth in a desperate rush. “But I’m marked for execution and unless you help me escape, the knowledge you need dies with me.”

  “Damn all of this straight to hell.” He was caught. If he wanted her information, he must free her. Besides, he was wasting time standing there arguing with her. “Stand back.”

  Reluctantly, she did.

  Torin brought forth the flames, fighting the drag of the white gold surrounding him. The fire burned for him as always, although diminished slightly. He centered the flames on his right hand. The living fire crackled and spit as he reached toward the lock on the white gold cell bars. He’d have only moments before direct contact with the gold began to affect his powers. If this took too long, he could find himself as trapped as the witch—and forced to fight his way out. Though that wouldn’t present a problem, it would take time he didn’t have. He had to risk it, though, for the information she offered. He laid his burning fingertips to the locking mechanism and instantly felt an icy draught push through the flames, flooding into him. Torin held fast, his gaze fixed on the lock, his powers centered on the task.

  Flames fought with ice. The witch urged him to hurry. The prisoners continued to shriek and scream.

  “Stand down!” a guard shouted, running now, heavy footsteps echoing through the hall, despite all the noise.

  Torin paid him no attention, but the women in the cells were doing all they could to slow the guards. Bits of food, books, magazines flew through the bars, aimed at the armed men. The prisoners were risking everything to help one of their own escape. No doubt in the hope that one day it would be their turn.

  Rune appeared in a flash of flame alongside him just as the lock gave way.

  “What the hell?” he demanded, looking from Torin to the witch rushing out of the cell.

  “Not now,” Torin told him, reaching for the witch even as she threw herself into his grasp. He fought through the dampening effect of the white gold, called on the flames once more and let them engulf him and the witch as a deadly hail of bullets flew at them.

  Chapter 12

  Sounds echoed softly in the cavernous prison as the women settled in for the night. Sighs and sobs and whispered prayers were a constant murmur that sounded like the rush of wind through trees. The darkness was alive. With the fluorescent lights off, the only illumination came through each prisoner’s narrow window. The glass was dirty and beyond the pane were heavy bars that Shea suspected were also coated in white gold. But at least she had one small slice of the outside world to cling to.

  Alone in her cell, she did her best to shut out the murmuring, the despair. With her bed made, she lay on the hard mattress and stared out that window, wishing she were anywhere else.

  Somewhere out there Torin was looking for her. She was convinced of that. No man who had promised a mating ritual with the seriousness he had would allow her to escape him. And now that she was praying he’d show up, the question was, would he be able to find her?

  She closed her eyes and focused her thoughts on the tall man with the fierce gray eyes. He’d called himself an Eternal. Her Eternal. Why did that sound familiar? That one word seemed to resonate with her. She brought his face into her mind and concentrated with everything she was.

  How odd, she noted absently, that only hours ago, he had been the enemy. Now, he was hope. Before, she’d worried that he was somehow connected to the strange dreams and visions that had been haunting her. She no longer cared. She’d take the dreams. Whatever he had planned for her had to be better than this.

  With his image firmly in her mind, she finally slept and the dream came.

  She was at home, in a small cottage on the edge of a thick wood with a stream rushing nearby. A peat fire burned in the hearth and herbs hung from the ceiling rafters. There was a wide window overlooking a garden that looked lush even in the moonlight. Everything was in its place. Warm throws and pillows rested on the pair of chairs drawn up to the crackling fire. Pots and jugs lined shelves where several precious books were carefully stacked. The bed was wide and lumpy, covered with a quilt she’d pieced together herself.

  In her dream, Shea recognized this place. She was herself and yet at the same time she was someone else. Someone in a different time. The woman who lived here. Worked here. Loved here.

  She turned and caught her reflection in the shiny bottom of a copper pan. Familiar, yet strange. The green eyes she recognized, but the thick black hair was different. Her face was heart-shaped and her lips were red and full. She was . . . another.

  In a dream that was so real, she smelled the peat smoke, tasted the warm, earthy scent on her tongue. Even in sleep, she felt flustered, as confusion spiraled through her mind. How could she be so at home in a place and time that wasn’t hers? How could she know that there was a village just a mile or so away? And that the herbs hanging over her head were for medicinal uses?

  She rubbed the forehead that wasn’t really hers and yet was, and tried to make sense of things.

  Then the door behind her crashed open, slamming into the wall. Heart racing, Shea spun around to face the giant of a man filling the open doorway. His long black hair was braided at his temples. He wore a simple homespun shirt and brown leather pants tucked into heavy brown boots.

  His gray eyes locked on her and her still-frantic heart leapt in her chest. She knew those eyes. Had known them, she now thought, through countless lifetimes. Something inside her loosened as even in the dream she felt pieces of a puzzle slide inexorably into place. Then she wasn’t thinking at all. Every inch of her body burned with a hunger that she recognized. Embraced. An icy wind slid through the room to caress the flames and send them dancing and writhing, making twisting shadows on the rough-hewn walls.

  “You weren’t waiting in the village,” he accused.

  “Do I look like a woman to take orders?” she asked, but her voice was flirtatious.

  “You look like my woman,” he told her and slammed the door closed, shutting out the world.

  Shea felt the thrill of that simple statement whip through her like a stray lightning bolt. Her gaze met his for a long minute; then she rushed to him, throwing herself against him.

  His hard, strong arms came around her, lifting her off the floor. The scent of him filled her senses, as his heat seeped into her bones and kindled fires inside her that seemed on the brink of eruption. Carrying her, he stalked to the bed in the corner and dropped her to the mattress. She tossed her hair back out of her eyes, licked her bottom lip and tugged up the hem of her floor-length skirt, showing him her legs, loving the glitter in his eyes as he watched her.

  “Is it a battle you’re in the mood for, Torin?” she asked on a sigh. “Or is there not something else you would find more pleasurable?”

  “There is at that,” he said and tore his clothes off, tossing them to the floor.

  Shea inhaled sharply, letting her gaze slide over his muscular, battle-scarred body. He was a warrior like no other. She couldn’t imagine her world without him in it. She ached for him. For his touch. For the taste
of him. Every time he came to her, it was as the first time.

  Magic.

  She shivered as that word danced through her mind with a surety that felt natural. As if that word were as much a part of her as her eyes, her breath. Not for the first time, she felt as though there was. . . something she should know. Remember. A flash of an image rushed through her mind and was gone in an instant. High cliffs. A cave. With a fire caged within.

  Frowning, she tried to grasp the image. Instead, it niggled at the edges of her brain, teasing a memory that refused to be born.

  “What is it?” he asked, reaching for her, pulling her up to sit beside him.

  “Nothing. ’Tis nothing,” she whispered, not wanting him to think her mad, and unwilling to waste cherished time with him on foolish ramblings. And yet . . . “’Tis only that I feel sometimes as though there’s a part of me lost somewhere.”

  He stared at her for a long minute, then ran one hand over her breast in a slow caress. “Seems to me that all the parts are where they should be.”

  She sighed and arched into his touch, craving that sizzle of heat that slipped from his skin to hers. He had become as necessary to her as breathing and she wanted nothing more than to relish his hands on her body. Still, she said softly, “You laugh, but there’s something amiss, Torin. Something I must—”

  “Hush now, lass,” he said, laying one finger across her mouth. “Don’t fash yourself over this. When the time is right, you’ll know. You’ll have it all. That time is not now.”

  His pale gray eyes stared into hers and Shea could have sworn she saw shadows moving there in those depths. Shadows of things that had been, things that would be. Her breath stilled while her heartbeat quickened.

  She shook her head, embarrassed by her foolishness and wild imaginings. And when she looked again into his familiar eyes, she saw only her own reflection staring back at her. Smiling, she asked, “What do you know of it, you great beast?”

  He grinned at her, one corner of his mouth lifting as he pulled her off the bed and onto his lap. Pushing her skirts out of the way, he had her straddle him, her bare thighs atop his.

  “Beast, am I?” he asked, slipping one hand beneath the fall of her skirt to slide his fingers up the length of her leg and toward her hot, damp center. She shivered in his arms and sighed out his name.

  “Beast is what you are,” she said then, “if you don’t give me what we both need.”

  “Then name me Torin,” he said, lowering her onto his gloriously hard body. “For a beast I won’t be.”

  He pushed himself home and she welcomed the invasion of his body into hers. She groaned and arched her back, swiveling her hips to take him higher, deeper. The thick fullness of him claimed her completely, as if he had been made to join his body with hers.

  His fingers at her hips, he gripped tight and urged her to move on him and so she did, because it was all she wanted, needed. Her body sang under his touch, her blood burned and her soul shattered. Again and again, she took him deep, hard, rocking on him, setting a rhythm that he matched and controlled.

  Their eyes locked and when the first of the pleasure ripples coursed through her, she looked into her beast’s eyes and almost—almost—found what she was searching for.

  Chapter 13

  “They shot you.” The witch pushed out of Torin’s arms once they’d reached the nebulous safety of the treeline and stared at the bloodstains on his shirt.

  “It’s nothing.”

  He’d flashed from the prison just as the bullets went flying, but still a couple of them had caught him. The bullets had passed through, doing little enough damage that he would be healed by the morning. Torin was unconcerned about a few bullet holes in his flesh. Compared to a slice from a broadsword, they were barely more than insect bites. Instead, he focused on the situation.

  Yes, they were free of the prison, but not free of the danger. The guards would soon pour out of the camp and begin searching the surrounding woods. They’d have to be long gone by then.

  Before he could say anything else, Rune spoke up. “You want to tell me why you rescued her?”

  “She knows of another Awakened witch.”

  Rune shot the woman a dismissive glance. “Impossible. She’s lying. Yours is the first.”

  “Shows how much you know,” the witch snapped. She shot a look over her shoulder at the camp as more lights burst into life until the whole compound blazed like a sun in the darkness.

  Torin had no patience for arguments between Rune and a witch. There was little time and all of it mattered. He couldn’t bear thinking of Shea in a place like this. Surrounded by enemies with no one to turn to. He had to find her.

  “You say you know who we are,” he said. “Then you know Eternals can sense the Awakening. We feel the changing pulse in the weave of the universe as one of the chosen comes into her powers.”

  “Apparently,” she countered, moonlight glinting in her eyes, “you’re not as all-knowing as you would like to think.”

  “Then tell me of this witch,” he said, demanding the answers she’d promised him in exchange for her rescue.

  “Take this off of me first,” the woman insisted, pointing at the white gold chain draped around her neck.

  “You would bargain with me? Again?” He glared at her, but the witch held her ground.

  She lifted her chin, met him stare for stare and said, “I would bargain with the devil himself to get as far away from here as possible. I can hardly draw an easy breath with this damn thing around my neck. You know I can’t take it off myself. So if you want your answer, free me.”

  Rune snorted. “You’ve a hell of a nerve. We’ve already saved you. We can just as easily leave you here for the guards to find. With that chain on your neck, you won’t go far.”

  Torin nodded, watching her to judge her reaction. He knew he wouldn’t leave her to the mercies of the prison guards. As an Eternal it was his nature to protect all women—especially women of power. But she didn’t have to know that.

  “You’re not going to leave me here. You can’t,” she argued simply. Her gaze shot from Torin to Rune and back again. Her short, spiky hair somehow made her look elfin, vulnerable. “You want the information I hold, so you’ll do as I ask and take this weight from my neck.”

  When Rune would have continued the argument with the stubborn witch, Torin held up one hand for silence. Behind them, the compound was coming alive. The double doors swung open and a dozen or more armed guards spilled through. The searchlights were a brilliant white against the surrounding darkness and Torin knew they had only moments before they were found. He could grab the witch and flash away with her. But he didn’t want to be hampered with the woman in his search for Shea.

  The choice was a simple one. Get the information she held or not. Save her or let the guards reclaim her.

  The answer was, there was no choice. He would do what he must—as he always had. Without a word, he gathered the fire, focused its strength and touched the tip of one finger to the center links on the white gold chain lying against her skin. The witch held perfectly still, her gaze locked with his.

  The flames he called forth were the very essence of magic, so they didn’t harm her skin, but a moment after he had channeled his power, the chain’s links had melted. Then he simply flicked the offending antimagic device to the ground.

  The witch smiled, inhaled deeply and stretched languidly as if she were a cat stepping from a confining cage. She sighed in relief before saying, “Thank you, Eternal.”

  Unmoved by her gratitude, Torin dismissed it. “Thank me by keeping your word. Tell me who is this Awakened witch and where is she?”

  She slanted her sharp blue eyes on him. A smile curved her mouth as she said, “Her name is Kellyn. And she’s standing in front of you, Eternal.”

  Then she swept out her arms, tipped her head back and whispered something that struck him as old and powerful. She laughed and was gone an instant later, in a shimmer of movement that see
med to ripple the very air.

  “A teleporter,” Rune muttered in disgust.

  “As we are,” Torin reminded him. He glanced out to where the prison guards were beginning a concerted sweep of the area. “I don’t care that she’s gone. But if she was telling the truth, something is very wrong. If Kellyn is Awakened, how is it we didn’t sense her coming into her power? And where is her Eternal?”

  Eternal and witch were closely bound by the link between them, one created by fates and the old gods. The Eternals, who were created to protect these few special women, instinctively felt when one member of the coven was Awakening. At that time a ripple of awareness moved through the Eternals and the sister witches of the coven. Like a pebble tossed into a lake, the effects of the Awakening echoed within them all.

  So how could they have missed the Awakening of another witch?

  “What do you mean where is he? Who is he?” Rune replied.

  Over the centuries, the Eternals had drifted apart, each of them watching over the many incarnations of his witch. But being witness to a mate’s life and death over and over again during the course of hundreds of years eventually took a toll on all of them. Some elected to disappear, to seek solitude and remain apart from their brothers until the time of the Awakening. Not the wisest course, Torin thought, but understandable.

  Still, that left the remaining Eternals with the problem of locating those who had gone missing when they were needed. Now, with the Awakening at last upon them, those absent Eternals should be making themselves known again—if only to guard their own Awakened witches. So if Kellyn had been telling the truth, where, Torin wondered, was her Eternal?

  “Should have caught the witch before she teleported out,” Rune told him. “Forced her to talk. Tell us all she knew.”

  “We’ll find her again,” Torin said, letting the problem go for the moment. Nothing was as important to him as locating Shea. “Just as we’ll discover who her Eternal is and why he isn’t with her. But for now—”