Exiled (2 page)

Jarrod lowered his staff and hurried toward them, taking Freya’s hand and turning to watch. Above them, the sky lit with flashes of white, a great clap of thunder rumbled, and the sky turned crimson as a crack opened up between the worlds.

Three figures appeared, hurled out of nothing. They crashed to the ground where Jarrod had stood moments before and lay unmoving. Cass had seen this enough times to know the reaction was normal. The experience disoriented even the strongest, and it usually took a few minutes to come around. She recognized Shayla immediately, her long, dark red hair spilled over the green grass. And that was definitely Tallon lying on top of her. So far so good.

She turned to the third figure, and her grip on the gun tightened.A tall man with fair hair. Something about the still figure caused a shiver of unease to trickle through her. When he pushed himself up onto his knees, she caught her first glimpse of his face.

The world stopped.

Even after a thousand years, she knew him instantly, but her mind rejected the information.

“No.” She shook her head. The hand holding the pistol dropped to her side, and the gun tumbled from her numb fingers.

It couldn’t be.

“Who is it?” Freya asked.

But Cass couldn’t speak the name. She wasn’t sure she could speak at all. Her throat felt tight, and she struggled to breathe, as though the air had been sucked from the atmosphere. Taking a step back, she came up against the standing stone behind her.

“Cass? Are you all right?” Fuck no—she wasn’t all right. She didn’t know what she was, but “all right” did not come into it. Swallowing hard, she ran a calming mantra through her head. She hadn’t needed them for so long, though once they were all that kept her sane. From old habit, the words flowed through her mind, and she was able to think again.

Callum.

Long dead. Yet...now in front of her. He couldn’t be real. The last few days—seeing Jarrod again—had awoken the old hurts and fears. This was just a manifestation of the strain she’d been under, a figment of her tortured imagination.

Ignore him. Concentrate on the others.

And maybe he would vanish as quickly as he’d appeared.

Shayla had wriggled out from beneath Tallon and scrambled to her feet. She looked around the clearing, her gaze alighting on their small group, fixing on Freya. Her eyes widened. She raced toward them, hurling herself into her mother’s arms, hugging her tight. Finally, she pulled free and stepped back. She reached out and stroked down the mark on Freya’s cheek.

“Then there were three,” Jarrod murmured.

Cass realized he was right. As the Goddess had foretold, three witches with the mark, together for the first time. Shayla, Freya, and herself.

Shayla turned to him, a somewhat forced smile on her lips.

“Thank you for saving my mother.”

“I think it was the other way around.” Father and daughter studied each other—this was their first meeting. The similarities were obvious when you saw them together. Both had dark red hair and green eyes with the same slightly exotic tilt. Shayla was over a foot shorter than Jarrod though. Tallon moved up behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders. And with that first touch, Cass realized they must have carried out the choosing ceremony. They were bonded, mated as one.As she had been with Callum.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him moving toward them. It took all her force of will to stand her ground, while every cell in her body urged her to run from him.

She’d nearly destroyed a whole world for love of this man.

Now, she found it hard to believe she had ever experienced such intense emotion.

Never again.

In the early years, she’d survived by cutting his memory from her mind, much as she had cut the mark from her face. And she’d locked what remained of her battered emotions away deep inside and built a wall around them; an impenetrable wall that nothing and no one could breach.

There were no cracks in the wall. She was just in shock.

Her hands shook, and she shoved them in the pockets of her jeans. Then took them out again, reached down, and picked up her pistol from the grass. For a second, she thought about shooting someone or something, but she rammed it in the holster instead.

“Casterix?” How long since anyone had dared to call her that? His voice sounded different, rusty as though he hadn’t used it in a while.

Everyone and everything faded from her consciousness, leaving her focused on the man in front of her. He looked the same, fair hair fell to his shoulders. High cheekbones, gray eyes brimming with wonder, the most beautiful mouth she had ever seen on a man. She’d been drawn to him at first sight, had known in that moment that he was the one. She had chosen him, had loved him beyond reason.

Now, with a rush of relief, she realized she could study him objectively. See him as a man she had once loved. But no longer; that had been another time, another world, another woman.

She was different now and she didn’t do “love.” He reached out for her. No way could she allow him to touch her, at least not until she was certain she had her shit together.

But the stone pressed hard at her back, the roughness scraping her skin.

“Don’t,” she warned, her voice almost a whisper.

The hand dropped to his side and pain filled his eyes. She couldn’t take this.

So she bolted. Racing past him, through the gap in the stones, and down the hill. Her breath was coming hard and fast by the time she stopped at the parking place. Resting a hand on the roof of the car, she waited while her heart rate slowed.

Callum was back from the dead.

The man she would have died for, had nearly destroyed a whole world for, had somehow managed to overcome the laws of life and death and return to her. If a little late.

Too late.

Muted voices drifted down from the hill. She didn’t want to see them right now; certainly, she couldn’t face being stuck in a vehicle with them. After shrugging out of the shirt and the shoulder holster, she tossed them into the trunk. As she crossed the road, she entered the cool shadows of a stand of trees. She’d make her way back to town on foot, cross-country.

She could cope. Nothing touched her these days. Soon she would be back to normal. She would go join them, find out what had happened on Arroway, and decide their next move.

But first, she needed a drink. Or two.

Jarrod had done a great job of blending in with the people of Earth, but he couldn’t totally hide what he was or the power that radiated from his tall figure. All eyes in the bar were on him as he strode across the room to where she hid in her dark booth in the back corner. Cass glanced past him, half expecting to see Callum’s tall, cloaked figure trailing behind, but Jarrod was alone, and the tension seeped from her limbs.

How the hell had he found her? Oh yeah, he was a warlock— he’d probably waved his magic stick a few times and conjured her up. She’d had way more than two drinks. But once she’d started, she couldn’t stop. Or didn’t want to. The scotch was a warm buzz in her brain. She could get rid of that in a second with her magic, but that would waste a whole afternoon of drinking. And what did it matter? She was alone or had been; she could do what she damn well liked.

“Hey there, bro.” She raised her glass to him as he sank into the seat opposite, but then realized it was empty. “You want a drink?”

“Why not?” She rose briefly and waved her glass in the general direction of the barman. He nodded and brought over a bottle of scotch and another glass. “There you go, Cass.” He quirked an eyebrow in Jarrod’s direction. Cass didn’t think she’d ever come in here with anyone before—this was a first. She didn’t introduce them.

“You come here often?” Jarrod asked, taking a sip of his drink and grimacing. He wasn’t used to the alcohol on Earth yet. Probably wouldn’t have the time to get used to it. They’d all be heading back to Arroway. All except for her. She could never go back.

“Sometimes.” He considered her for a moment, his head cocked to one side, his green eyes serious. “Are you okay?” Was she? She settled on a direct answer. “No.”

“Just no?” She nodded, but he deserved more. Once, long ago, Jarrod had been closer to her than anyone. That had been before Callum had come on the scene. “I will be. I’m just a little...shocked.” She took a gulp of scotch while trying to decide if she wanted to know what was going on. She’d forced herself not to think all through the afternoon.

But she could hardly ignore Callum’s return from the dead.

“Tell me,” she said.

He shrugged. “Tell you what?”

“Hey, don’t you start being difficult; that’s my prerogative.” Jarrod had always been the nice twin. “Tell me everything. I presume they’ve told you what happened, how...” She hesitated, still reluctant to say the name out loud. She took a deep breath. “How did Callum come back—is he even real?” She wasn’t sure whether she wanted him real or not. He should have stayed dead.

“As real as you or me.” No, she was sure after all—it would have been much better if he were a figment of her imagination. “Shit. I thought maybe I’d imagined him.”

“And that would be good?”

“Hell, yes.” She’d worked bloody hard to cut him from her life. “Don’t you want him back?”

“Hell, no.”

“The two of you have a second chance.” Inside, she felt the first stirrings of anger and that frightened her. She’d kept her emotions in check for so long it had become second nature. The younger her, the pre-Callum, pre-’I nearly destroyed the whole world’ her, had always been hot-headed, quick to anger, but also quick to laugh. She hadn’t allowed herself either emotion in a long, long time. “A second chance at what?” she asked. “A second chance to destroy the whole fucking world? Maybe I’ll try for Earth this time.”

“You don’t have the power here,” Jarrod pointed out.

“That’s a relief. Perhaps you can do it for me—waggle that stick of yours about a bit more.” He grinned. “Perhaps I will.” A witch’s power came from the land, from Arroway. Exile from their world also meant being cut off from their magic. They could still do minor tricks and illusions, but here on Earth, any real magic was impossible, which was why Jarrod had performed the summoning spell. A warlock’s magic was different, not tied to Arroway. As long as they had their staffs, they were as powerful here as on their own world.

“So come on, tell me what you’ve found out. How did Callum return?” He took a sip of his drink and sat back. “It seems he never really went. Or at least, only briefly. Your spell—the one that nearly destroyed the world—pulled him partly back and then dumped him in a limbo between life and death.”

“Jesus. For a thousand years?” She’d done that to him and hadn’t even known.

“Yes, alone. He nearly went insane—a weaker man would have, but he forged a life there, found a way to view the outside world. He saw Shayla, saw the mark, thought it was you come back to him. When she and Tallon did the spell to take them back to Arroway, he countered with a spell of his own and drew her to him.”

“He always was powerful.”

“Tallon was desperate. He searched for her but eventually ended up at the stones on Arroway where he met Malachai.” A rush of hatred washed over her. “Bastard.”

“Yes. Tallon pretended he was still hunting for Shayla to kill her as he’d been ordered. He used Malachai’s power to find Shayla and bring her back. Shayla had told Callum you were still alive and he followed her out. Saved her and Tallon from a certain death.”

“Did they kill him—Malachai, I mean?”

“Sadly, no. Apparently Callum was about to chop his head off when I did my little spell.”

“Bugger. That was bad timing.”

“Definitely.” She stared into space, thinking about what he’d told her, forcing her mind back to the night she’d returned to find Callum murdered.

Callum had never been a supporter of the Order. He had always gone his own way. Cass had been the most powerful witch ever born, and the Order had wanted to keep her in their control.

They had urged her to choose Malachai. As if she would have ever chosen that snake. She’d hated him from the time they were children growing up together. He’d been friends with Jarrod but never with her. He didn’t even like women. But that hadn’t mattered to him because she would have given him the one thing he did love. Power.

Anyway, she’d taken one look at Callum and known he was the one. Malachai, by then well on his way to his dream job as head of the Order, had been enraged. He’d waited until Cass was away and murdered Callum, stabbed him through the heart.

“He still loves you,” Jarrod said, breaking into her memories.

She slammed her glass down on the table. Of course, Callum loved her; the bond between chosen mates was unbreakable. Even she hadn’t broken it, just hidden it deep inside her to make the pain bearable.

“It doesn’t matter. Don’t you understand—I can’t allow myself to love him. I daren’t risk it a second time. I have to keep him out.”“You’ve become good at that.”

“I’ve had to,” she snapped.

Jarrod studied her in the dim light, and she locked her muscles to stop herself squirming under the intense scrutiny.

“It’s not only the risk,” he said. “You don’t believe you deserve him back. You’re still punishing yourself for everything that has happened on Arroway—”

“That’s because everything that happened is my fault.”

“No,” Jarrod said, his tone fierce. “It wasn’t your fault—only Malachai’s.”

“I should have had better control.”

“And you’ve punished yourself ever since. And it’s not only Callum—you won’t let anyone close. I’ve seen the way you fend off Freya’s advances. She wants to be your friend and you push her away.”

“I’m a dangerous person to have as a friend.”

“No you’re not. You’re loyal and brave and will do anything for the ones you love.”

“Yes—I’ll do anything,” she said not hiding the bitterness of her words. “Look what I did last time. I won’t risk that happening again.”

“You were never a coward.”

“I understand the stakes better now. What happens if I relax my guard, allow myself to love him again and I lose him? What will I do this time? What would you do if Freya was killed?”