Sorcerer's Legacy (8 page)

“I do, Ian. I love you.”

He smiled, this time with his eyes. “I love you, too, Becca. Always.”

He kissed her gently, brushing her mouth lightly, teasing her lips apart with a swipe of his tongue. With a whimper, she opened to him, sliding her tongue along his in an intimate dance.

She allowed her mind to drift. Fog and mist swirled around his body in the distance. They floated closer, feet never touching the ground.

Their bodies twined; their mouths met; their souls fused. Bright light burst, blinding her and heating her body. Lightheaded blackness began to suck her under as her lungs began to burn.

His voice whispered in her head, a port in the storm.
Trust me.

I do. Always.

***

“What the fuck did you do, Chairman?”

Cyrus stalked toward him, fury turning his normally stoic face into a mask of rage. Rage pulsed off him, bouncing off Ian in waves. His emotional barrier crumbled. Aware they were in the lobby, Ian checked to see who else was around. Thank the gods only Myron stood guard at her desk, flipping her ever-present cards.

Ian didn’t need this shit this morning
.
He pulled himself together as best he could. Sleepless hours grieving had robbed him of the peace he’d found since arriving at Wiccan Haus, since finding Becca Jones.

He faced Cyrus who stood with a stiff, someone-pissed-in-his-oatmeal stance.

“What did you do to Becca, Branson?”

Fear gripped his heart. “What do you mean? Is she hurt?”

Cyrus’s nostrils flared.

“No, she’s just lost.” He poked a finger in Ian’s chest. “What did you do? What the fuck kind of magick did you do to her?” His gaze dropped to Ian’s hand where a ruby ring glinted on his pinky. “Did you wipe her memory so you could steal that scroll and her ring?” Cyrus grabbed Ian’s shirt and twisted. “You bastard. You sicken me.” With an impatient shove, he thrust Ian away from him like a steaming, stinking bag of dog shit.

“What’s wrong with her?”
Oh, fuck. What have I done?

“Like you care, you asshat.” With a glance at Ian’s face, he clenched his jaw, seeming to reassess the situation slightly. “She’s walking around in a daze, and she doesn’t remember you at all. As if part of her mind is gone.”

Ian scrubbed his hands over his scruffy face. He knew better. Of course, he knew better. Wiccan code warned every spell must be done with the right intention. Whatever energy sent out inevitably came back threefold.

After mating their souls—and allowing himself a few treasured moments of true peace and tranquility—he’d cast a spell to wipe any memory of him from her brain. He’d spared her the pain of losing their love.

He’d cast the spell also to protect her from her heritage. She’d descended from Myrddin the sorcerer, and magick ran in her blood. If she never knew, she’d never develop those powers and never be in danger.

Ian had to see her to know what side effects the spell had created. Cyrus stood in his way.

“Where is she?” Ian had to determine if she was fine.

“Why? You already know all there is to know, don’t you?”

“Do you?”

“Yes, and I tried to warn you, Chairman.” Cyrus sneered the title, his lip curling in disgust. “She’s an innocent, but she deserves to know who she is, what she is. You left her defenseless. Sooner or later, her abilities will present, and she’ll question her sanity. Or she’ll discover her ancestry another way and everything may come back to her.” The big man’s eyes narrowed. “What will you do then, Chairman?”

Helplessness, double what he’d arrived with, hammered him, along with a strong sucker punch of fury to the chest
.

Fuck, what the hell does Cyrus expect from me? What do any of them expect? I don’t need this shit. Why the hell do I have to shoulder all the responsibility?

Anger coiled in his belly and the muscles in his biceps tensed. He shoved Cyrus back. Hard. Cyrus stumbled a couple of steps before planting his feet and clenching his fists. Ian ground his teeth and balled his own fists, ready to take on the dangerous Rowan brother. Heedless that Cyrus would surely beat him to a bloody pulp, Ian could not control his baser emotions.

Trixie’s voice caught his attention. “This way, Becca. We’ll have some breakfast.” She spoke as if to a child.

Ian turned his head, dread sliding into his heart, displacing the furious tension.

Becca.

Trixie, ever serene, guided Becca with her arm hooked through hers. Confusion and frustration rammed into his gut. Ian could not shut out the emotions slamming into him, especially not his mate’s. His own sorrow and loss almost brought him to his knees.

He turned back to Cyrus to apologize.

Thunk.

Sharp pain erupted from his jaw. He wiggled it, wincing from the sting to test it. It wasn’t broken. Cyrus’s anger sapped slightly; he absently rubbed his knuckles.

Ian sighed. He had no desire to fight back. He deserved a beating for hurting Becca with a thoughtless, selfish spell. Ultimately, he’d erased her memory to avoid his own guilt. He’d gladly have taken the backlash. Instead, sweet Becca suffered.

Worse, he couldn’t take it back, couldn’t undo what he’d done.

***

Having everyone’s emotions bombard him drove Ian mad. To get away, he ran the trails on the island. Lungs burning, muscles like jelly, he pushed until he reached exhaustion. Breathless and depressed, he stumbled over a root near where the wolf had attacked them.

If only he’d trusted his powers to protect her. If only he’d fully taken her as his mate, taken her into his world, into his life.

He lay on his back and stared up into the overhanging branches. Had sorrow so besieged Myrddin after sending his woman and their baby away that he’d gone crazy? The historical record supported the crazed wild man in the Welsh woods legend. He’d gone on to become a powerful sorcerer. Would he have been so powerful with a mate?

“Ian?”

Again, Trixie appeared. He’d understood her to be one of the human Wiccan Haus staff. Maybe he was confused. Anything seemed possible at this point.

She stood over him for a moment, seeming to ponder his prone position on the ground. She dropped to the ground and folded her legs in her familiar pose. With a tilt to her head, she gazed at him.

“Ian. You are troubled.”

Her serenity grated on his frayed nerves. At least
her
emotions weren’t beating him up.

He huffed out a breath. “Thought Cemil was the empath.”

Her eyebrow raised and one corner of her mouth quirked, acknowledging his sarcasm. “I don’t have to be psychic to recognize pain.”

No, his pain probably radiated from him like a reactor in terminal meltdown. Anyone not deaf, dumb, and blind could see how fucked up he was.

“How is Becca?”

“Lost. Strange how she doesn’t know who you are.”

Pain seared through his veins, but he clamped his lips shut. Trixie seemed a lot smarter than anyone gave her credit for. Smart people kept their mouths closed and their ears open.

“You’ve broken her, Ian.”

“I—”

“No, just listen. She’s lost her sense of who she is. And I suspect you’re feeling a bit the same. You think you’re protecting her, but by taking away her knowledge of the scroll and the ring, you stole a part of her.”

Trixie easily rose to her feet and pinned him with a pitying look. “The thing is, you need her.”

He shook his head. His inner voice—or maybe Myrddin—called him a liar.

She frowned at him. “You need her to ground you. As an empath, emotions are electrical impulses that can overload your system. Strong feelings are like lightning, but when you are grounded, you can channel the power into the earth safely.”

He could not deny the truth of her statement. He’d hoped the experience of being with Becca would carry him through the worst onslaughts of fury, passion, and anxiety. In fact, sending her away decreased his ability to control his reactions tenfold.

“You need her as your mate, too. You’re meant for each other. I see it. I feel it. Make it right.”

“I can’t.” He hated the helplessness smothering him.
Fuck.

“Sarka can.” Trixie shrugged. Nobody liked asking Sarka Rowan for help. With her razor-sharp tongue and acidic attitude, nobody liked asking her anything.

As Trixie ran off down the trail back to the Haus, he considered her observations. She’d nailed him on every point. The answer was simple yet hard to swallow. Prostrating himself before Sarka, the Dark One, tore at his pride, yet he must.

He dragged himself to his feet and shuffled along the trail in Trixie’s wake.

A stiff drink—or three—would give him liquid courage before facing the dark sorceress in her lair.

May the gods take pity on me.

Here we go.

“So you made a huge fecking mess, did you, Chairman?”

Ian detested needing help. He especially hated to petition Sarka Rowan for it. The staff called her the Dark Sister or simply the Dark One not only for her black hair and olive skin. Her soul and personality exuded an ominous edge, like a rabid wolf hiding in a cave ready to attack. Though the Syndicate members appreciated Cyrus’s service and sacrifice, none truly trusted Sarka. Her mighty powers raised concerns within the ruling body, as she refused to socialize with or participate in any committees. Naturally, the Syndicate feared the unknown.

He swallowed against a tiny frisson of uneasiness threatening to lodge in his throat.

Clothed in a black dress that emphasized her long, lean body, she stood from her chair and one of her eyebrows winged up. With one hand on her hip and the haughty raise of her chin, she personified the strength and grace of a prima ballerina about to take the stage as the black swan. And the danger of a coiled, hissing cobra.

Frustration and desperation roiling inside his stomach, he dug his nails into the palm of one hand and pushed the door shut with the other. His control frayed with each passing second.

“I need your help.” His voice trembled. She’d heard it; her smirk confirmed it. Her glee at his situation irritated him, infuriated him.

“What is the problem?”

There she stood, so smug in her safe little world.

He reined back his anger. She had not caused his problem. He hadn’t caused it either.

“I need to regain my center, my focus.”

After a careless shrug, she glided to the desk and rested her hip against it. “I understood you’d taken care of that.”

He clamped his eyes shut and muttered a string of multilingual curses. The crystal ball in the corner caught his attention, the gray mist within swirling around like a tempest in the storm. How much had she seen of his visit in the telling orb?

She laughed. “That’s your problem, Chairman. You can’t control everything. You can’t control what’s happening inside you.”

His jaw hurt from the pressure he exerted holding back his furious words, or, worse, spells. It wouldn’t do to loose his magick on Sarka. Dark, beautiful, and as powerful as he was, she’d eagerly engage in battle. He had to listen.

“You’re like Spock.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Sarka?” His impatience boiled just beneath the surface.
It won’t take much more.

“Did you ever watch the show? The original?”

He both envied and hated her serene composure. Gritting his teeth, he nodded.

“Like Spock, you see emotion as a weakness. To avoid your empathic ability, you lock it down, never allow it to see the light of day. You spit at the gods when you do that, you know.”

He shifted his feet, irritation flooding him. He hated having to stand and listen to this drivel. He needed help. Not a fucking psychoanalytic comparison to a TV character.

“You know, Spock was half human and half Vulcan. Like Myrddin in the legend who was sired by a demon and human woman.” Her eyes narrowed. “Is that what you’re afraid of, Ian? Letting your emotions out to play will turn you evil?”

Reality punched him in the gut. He hated she had to show him the truth.

“Yes, I’m fucking terrified of how furious I am, how crippled I was when those bastards attacked my son. My son! I want to kill them. Every fucking one of them!” he yelled, unable to lower his voice. Like poison, it burned his throat as the words spilled forth. “They planned to use him to hurt the Syndicate. They attacked Cassidy, killed innocent women and children. They wanted Rekkus’s babies. Dana.... They would’ve killed Dana.”

He rambled. He could no more stop his words from tumbling from his mouth than he could stop the world from spinning. His body trembled, his muscles clenched tightly to keep from falling apart. “I couldn’t put her in danger....”

Becca’s face flashed in his mind. A fist grasped his heart and squeezed. He gasped at the pain, true and fierce. He pressed his hands to his chest, bending over with the agony.

A cool hand guided him to a chair where he sank into its cushion. Sarka, not known for her kindness and compassion, had given it when he’d needed it.

He took a couple of steadying breaths, the pain in his heart still throbbing. He glanced at her, now calmly pouring a cup of tea near the window. She sipped slowly then carefully placed the china cup on its saucer. She stood in front of the cupboard where it sat, her feet planted apart and her arms at her sides.

A frisson of suspicion sped up his spine.

“You need Becca.”

“No!” He shot out of the chair and bellowed the word. “No.”

The house shook from the ferocity of his denial, but Sarka stood her ground. “She’s your mate. Your intended.” Her voice rose with the increased vibration in the room.

“No.” He threw his hands out in front of him, stunned when a gust of wind pushed Sarka back a step. She retook her ground, face hard.

“And you’re part of her. She came to find who she was. She found you, may the gods help her.” Her words thundered above the gusts and rumbling of the floor.

He stared at Sarka, her black hair swirling in the wind.

All the frustration, all the fear, all the rage exploded. Lightning sparked from his fingertips, the air crackling with his power encircling him like a tornado. Books flew off shelves, ceramic crashed against walls, papers tossed about like autumn leaves.