The Calling (11 page)

The house was old, a part of the city left over from the nineteenth century. The worn stonework had a faded elegance, and the thick tangle of wisteria vines reminded me of the Briar Rose fairy tale. A sleeping princess hidden behind a wall of thorns…But Killian was no fictional princess, and I was no rescuer prince. Now that I'd found it, what on earth was I going to do?

I crossed the street to another pay phone and called Bree again. She'd just gotten back to the apartment.

“I found it,” I told her. “It's right on the corner of Central Park West and Eighty-seventh. Have you heard anything from Hunter?”

“Nada,” Bree answered. “Any idea where he might be?”

Nothing immediately jumped to mind. Hunter was always so careful and secretive about his work. He told me only what he thought I needed to know.

“Um…there's a Mexican witch's shop he took me to off Hudson Street. She's the one who told him about the woman he's searching for. She might give you the address.”

“I'll find her,” Bree promised. “But first I'll leave a note here in case he comes back.”

“I'm going to stay here and keep an eye on the house,” I told Bree. “If you find Hunter, will you tell him to meet me here?”

“Okay. But call me again in twenty minutes,” Bree ordered. “I want to know that you're safe.”

I promised I would. Then I sat down on one of the park benches that offered a clear view of the house. It was not a day for sitting outside. The air was damp and bitter cold. Within a few minutes I could hardly feel my feet.

But I could feel the house. Even though I was across the street from it, I could sense powerful magick wrapped around it.

I thought I saw a flicker of movement in one of the upper windows, and a knot of dread lodged itself in the middle of my chest. I wished I could go off searching with Bree, I really did. The idea of staying here on my own across from this house that practically oozed evil terrified me—especially knowing that Ciaran might be inside.

I hunkered down in the cold, concentrating on the house. No one came in or out. Nothing more moved in the windows. Even the wisteria branches barely moved in the icy wind. There was a bleak stillness about the house that suddenly made me wonder if I was wrong and the place was completely deserted. Magick can fool most people, I reminded myself. But not me.

I extended my senses to see what sort of magickal defenses or traps there might be. I picked up resistance at the door, a warding spell of some sort, but it didn't feel very serious. The house wasn't nearly as heavily spelled as Cal and Selene's house had been. I couldn't sense any electronic security systems, either, just the requisite New York combination of heavy-duty locks on the door. Only one of those bolts was actually shut. Strange.

I glanced at my watch. It was nearly three o'clock. I wondered if Bree was having any luck finding Hunter. Was there some way I could find out what was going on in the house at that very moment? I could search for Killian's aura.

I concentrated, trying to remember what it had been like. A pattern traced itself in my mind's eye so clearly that I could almost hear Killian's voice. And then what I was hearing were cries. I felt the struggle again, the helplessness, the overwhelming sense of terror and despair.

The vision was gone as quickly as it had come, but I knew what it meant. Killian was in the house, captive yet reaching out, crying for help. Maybe he wasn't calling to me specifically, but I had an awful feeling I was the only one who had heard him.

I couldn't wait for Hunter to show up. “Hang on, Killian,” I muttered. “I'm coming.”

I stood up and immediately began to tremble. Who was I kidding? I was a seventeen-year-old witch with all of two and a half months' experience in my craft. And I was about to go up against a coven of evil Woodbanes and the witch who'd killed Maeve and Angus? Maeve and Angus had been trained in Wicca from the day they were born. If they hadn't been able to stop Ciaran…The odds were beyond insane. Ciaran had killed Maeve, his
mùirn beatha dàn
. What would he do to me, her daughter?

Yet I couldn't discount the dreams and visions. I was sure I'd had them for a reason. I could almost hear Hunter reminding me that according to Wicca, nothing is random. Everything has a purpose. I wouldn't have been given those visions if I hadn't been meant do something about them. Even the fact that the school boiler had burst now seemed part of some inevitable plan. I was here in New York City because it was my fate to save Killian.

“Goddess, help me,” I murmured. I drew in deep breaths, calming and grounding myself. I had all of Alyce's knowledge and more raw power than most blood witches ever encounter. I was strong, stronger than I'd been three weeks ago when Hunter and I had fought Selene and defeated her. If Ciaran was in that building, didn't I owe it to Maeve to try to stop him once and for all?

I can do this, I told myself. I was meant to do this.

I walked up to the house and stepped onto the first of the three stone steps—and stopped as a feeling of dread snaked around my insides and whispered in my mind,
Turn away. Come no farther. Go back.

I tried to step onto the second step, but I couldn't. Terror immobilized me, the feeling that taking that one step would seal my doom.

It's a repelling spell, I told myself. It's designed to keep you out. But there's nothing really behind it. I willed the spell to show itself to me. There was a moment of resistance before I saw a glimmering on the winter air. The rune Is—the rune of obstacles, of things frozen and delayed—repeated again and again, like a series of crystalline icicles. I visualized the warmth of fire melting the runes of the warding spell, and within seconds I felt their power weaken.

The spell snapped, and I reached the top step. I found another spell on the door itself. I felt a surge of exhilaration as I realized I knew exactly what to do. It seemed so clear. Either the binding spells weren't all that complicated, or I was stronger than I realized.

This time I drew power up from the earth, from the roots of the wisteria, from the bedrock below. I gathered all the energy poured into the city streets by the myriad inhabitants of New York City. A boisterous, defiant power swelled inside me. I let it build, then flung it at the spell that guarded the door. The spell shattered. The one bolt that had been shut on the other side of the door shot open. And I stepped into the house, nearly surfing on the wave of my own magick.

I stood in a high-ceilinged foyer. The floor was inlaid marble, patterned in black and gray. A staircase led to the upper floors. I sent a witch message to Killian. Where are you? Lead me.

The next instant I was flat on my back, hit with a binding spell stronger than anything I'd ever experienced. It forced my arms flat against my sides, clamped my legs together, pressed down on my throat so I couldn't utter a sound, compressed my chest so that I fought for every breath. Oh, Goddess. Maybe I wasn't as strong as I'd thought.

Quickly I cast a spell to loosen all bindings.

It did nothing. My mind reeled in panic.

I tried the spell that had worked so brilliantly just a few minutes ago. I extended my senses out and down, searching for a connection with the ground beneath me. The hollow echo that came back was mystifying. It was as if the earth itself was empty, flat, drained of anything to give. And I was left in a place where waves of dark magick swirled around me.

Alyce, I thought. Surely Alyce knew something that would help. A spell came to me then for bringing light in the midst of darkness. I began to visualize a single white flame, growing brighter, hotter, blazing through all the dark energy, consuming it, purifying the space around me.

I almost blacked out as something that felt like a blade of jagged ice plunged into my stomach. It's an illusion, I told myself, remembering how Selene had attacked me with pain. I willed myself to go beyond it, to keep picturing the flame devouring the darkness.

Another blade drove into my back. “Aaagh!” My own strangled cry panicked me. I felt the icy blade cut through skin, muscle, bone, and the flame in my mind guttered out.

As if to reward me for losing the spell, the pain stopped.

I glanced down at my body. There were no bloody knife wounds. They had been an illusion. But the binding was real. I couldn't move. I glanced around me, searching for the source of the power that was holding me prisoner. There—I felt magick like a dark, oily cloud swirling across the town house's pristine floor. The magick of several witches, working together.

Nausea rose in the back of my throat. I was completely overpowered. What had I done? How could I have been naive and stupid enough to believe I could go up against an entire coven of Woodbanes? The second I'd walked into the house, I'd walked into their trap.

A slight figure in a black robe and a mask walked toward me. The mask showed a jackal's face, carved out of some sort of dark wood and horribly exaggerated, with an enormous snarling mouth. My fear ratcheted up another notch. Other masked figures appeared: an owl, a cougar, a viper, an eagle.

“We've got her,” the jackal said, in a voice so perfectly neutral, I couldn't tell if it was male or female.

“Where's Killian?” I demanded. “What have you done with him?”

“Killian?” the witch in the owl mask repeated. The voice was distinctly female. “Killian isn't here.”

“But you're going to drain him of his power!” I said stupidly.

A giddy, high-pitched laugh erupted from the jackal's mouth. “Oh, no, we're not.”

“We never wanted Killian,” the owl said.

“You've been misled,” the viper agreed, and all of them burst out laughing. The viper's narrow golden eyes glittered as it stared at me. “You're the one we're going to drain.”

“You're the one we're going to drain.” The words echoed in my ears, and I suddenly saw it all with sick clarity.

My dreams and visions—they had all been premonitions of what was to be my own ordeal in this house. Not Killian's. Somehow the council got that one key detail wrong when they interpreted the dream. The wolf cub on the table wasn't Killian. It was me.

Some rational part of my mind wondered why I'd appeared as a wolf cub, but before I could make sense of it, the jackal said, “You will come with us.”

I stared up defiantly. “No.”

The figure waved a hand over me, and I was suddenly on my feet, the bindings loosened just enough to allow me to follow like an automaton. Fury at my own traitorous body swept through me, but I could no more resist the spell to follow than I could break the binding spell.

I followed through a parlor and a dining room, through a kitchen to another staircase, this one leading down.

We descended the stairs into a cellar. How could I possibly escape? The cellar door would close, and terrible things would be done to me.

The cellar was lit by a few black candles set in wall sconces. The owl held out a robe made of a thin, shiny brown fabric. “Take off your clothes and put this on,” she said.

The robe spooked me. I flashed on an old movie where they burned witches at the stake and made them wear robes like this for their execution. “What's it for?” I asked.

The witch in the hawk mask drew a sign in the air, and I doubled over again in agony.

“Do as you're told,” the jackal said.

They watched me change, and I felt the dull burn of shame over my terror as I took off my clothes and put on the robe. Then I was forced down into a chair, and two more masked figures—a weasel and a jaguar—came into the cellar with a steaming cup. They forced me to drink its contents. It was some sort of hideous herb tea—I recognized henbane, valerian, belladonna, foxglove. The smell was so revolting, I gagged with every sip.

When I'd drained the last sickening drop, they left me. I felt the liquid moving through me, slowing my thoughts, deadening my reflexes. Then my body started to tremble uncontrollably, and I was hit by a wave of dizziness. If I'd been able to move from the chair, I'm sure I would have fallen to the floor. The floor itself seemed to be swaying, the walls spinning. Menacing shadows crawled in the corners of my field of vision.

I took a deep breath, trying to center myself. I whispered a quick spell drawn from my Alyce memory, and after a few moments the hallucinatory shadows receded a little. The dizziness and sluggishness remained, though.

At last I heard footsteps on the stairs. The owl and weasel returned. “He's ready for you now,” the owl said.

I had no doubt of who was waiting for me. Ciaran. My mother's
mùirn beatha dàn
, the one she'd loved. The one who had killed her.

The owl waved a hand over me and muttered an incantation. Again I stood and followed with jerky motions. The dizziness didn't pass, but I found I could walk through it.

We walked up to the first floor, through the kitchen, and then up the main staircase to the second floor. I was led into a wood-paneled room lit by candles. A fire glowed in the fireplace. I was shoved into another chair. The two masked witches left and shut the door.

Ciaran stood in front of the fireplace, his back to me. He wore a robe of deep purple silk with black bands on the arms. I fought down a wave of nausea. My mother's murderer.

He turned to face me, and for a disorienting moment the trembling and the nausea vanished. In their place I felt surprise and a massive sense of relief. This wasn't Ciaran. This was the man from the courtyard and the bookstore, the man with whom I'd had such an affinity, the man in whom I'd placed such an immediate trust.

The nausea returned an instant later as I realized just how badly I'd misplaced that trust. Now I could feel the darkness of his power, like a cyclone of roiling blackness.

Ciaran watched me.

“I never asked your name,” I said, my voice once again my own.

“But you know it now, don't you?” he asked. His face was harsh in the firelight, his eyes unreadable dark slashes.

“Ciaran,” I said quietly.

“And you are Morgan Rowlands,” he replied courteously.

Oh, Goddess, how could I have been so blind? “You've been playing with me all along,” I said. “You knew who I was even before we met.”

“On the contrary,” he said. “I only realized you were the one Selene destroyed herself over when we talked in the bookstore.”

“H-how—”

“I became curious when I sensed how powerful you were. So when we got to talking about scrying, I decided to find out more about you. My scrying stone is bound to me. Even though you were the one holding it and I was on another floor altogether, it showed me what it showed you. I saw—was it your sister?—coming out of the Widow's Vale Cineplex. The name Widow's Vale rang a bell, and then when you gave me your name, that clinched it. Truthfully,” he went on, “I hadn't planned on taking care of you quite so soon, but when you just put yourself in my hands like that, I couldn't pass up the opportunity, could I?”

“The owl at the window last night—?”

“Was spying on you,” he confirmed. “But then, we were already on the alert. We've been watching the Seeker ever since he came to the city. It was easy to discover what his mission was, and after that it was child's play to set the trap, feeding you the clues that would bring you to us. I gave you the vision of Killian in the candle's flame and the vision you had today. I even helped you break the warding spells on this house. My dear, you should have known you don't have that kind of ability. Not at your level.” Ciaran regarded me with a rueful smile.

I'd been such a fool. Time and again he'd manipulated me. And I'd never even suspected.

“Tell me.” His tone sharpened with the command. “Where's the Seeker now?”

“I don't know.”

His dark eyes raked me. How, I wondered, had I ever thought him distinguished and trustworthy? All I saw in him now was the predator, waiting to devour his prey.

Ciaran steepled his fingers. “Perhaps I shouldn't have blocked the messages you tried to send,” he murmured, as if thinking aloud. “Perhaps I should have made it easier for him to find you.” Then he shook his head. “No, he's clever enough that he'll find you anyway.”

I sagged, despairing, as I understood what Ciaran meant. If Hunter did find me, then he would be destroyed along with me.

There was a knock on the door, and the hawk witch entered the room. I watched in disbelief as she handed Maeve's pocket watch to Ciaran. “We found this in the girl's jacket.”

Ciaran's face went totally blank for a moment. Then it grew pale and distorted. “Leave!” he snapped at the hawk. Then he whirled on me. “Where did you get this?” he demanded.

“You should know!” I lashed back, glad for the chance to tell the truth. “You gave it to my mother before you murdered her!”

Ciaran stared at me, his eyes wide with undisguised shock. “Your mother?”

And I realized that Selene had never told him who I was. She'd never told him I was Maeve's daughter.

He bolted from the room then. I took it for the last moment of triumph I would ever know. I'd actually shaken the leader of Amyranth. And I'd only have to pay for it with my life.

Exhaustion descended on me like a heavy cloak. I hung my head, let my eyes close, giving in to the drug they'd fed me.

That lying, manipulative wench Selene! She knew this girl was Maeve's daughter and she never told me! What other secrets did she keep from me?

Maeve's daughter! You wouldn't know it from the girl's looks. She doesn't have Maeve's delicate, pretty face, the sprinkling of freckles across her nose, the soft waves of reddish-brown hair. All she has of Maeve is her power. Though there's something about her eyes that's damnably familiar.

How did Maeve and Angus manage to spawn that one without my ever knowing? And how the bloody hell did she find out what happened at the end? Even those who knew Maeve didn't know we were
mùirn beatha dàns,
and no one, save Maeve and Angus, knew about how the fire started. All witnesses are dead.

Selene couldn't have told her. Selene knew nothing of what was between me and Maeve. Or…did she? I've never been sure just what Selene did and didn't know. All of which raises the question: What else is there that Selene didn't tell me about this girl?

My thoughts are heaving like the sea. There's something at the edge of my mind, a disturbing presence on the edge of consciousness. It has a truth to show me.

Damn it. What is it? What is it?

Hunter, putting the silver chains of the
braigh
on David Redstone…Mary K., huddled in a corner of Selene's study, confused, frightened, and spelled…Cal, absorbing the cloud of darkness that Selene hurled at me…His beautiful golden eyes…

No! I started out of my stupor, shaking and grieving at the images that kept parading in front of me. For a moment I couldn't imagine where I was. Then memory returned. The house with the vines. The masked witches. Ciaran.

I was now in a much larger room. My head ached, and I felt even dizzier than before. With effort I focused my eyes on the ceiling, on the leaves and vines and ornate plaster molding, all horribly familiar. Black candles flickered from sconces and from an elaborate silver candlestick atop an inlaid ebony cabinet. Black drapes covered the windows. I cast out my senses. They were frighteningly weak, but I could still faintly detect objects of power inside the cabinet—athames, wands, crystals, animal skulls and bones, all emanating dark magick.

I was lying on a large round table, my hands and feet bound to it with spelled ropes. The table was made of some sort of stone, inlaid with patterns in another stone. Garnet, I thought. There were deep grooves in the surface of the table. The panic I'd felt in the visions returned full blown, and for a few useless minutes I struggled against the bonds.

Panic never helps, I told myself. Focus. Find a way out of this. But it was so hard to think through the haze of Amyranth's drugged tea.

I called on the spell that was binding me to reveal itself. I saw the faintest glimmering of something that might have been a rune before it winked out. I tried to summon the spell again. Nothing happened, and I felt another jolt of panic. Breathe, I told myself, just breathe.

But it wasn't easy. What had happened to my precious magick? I couldn't connect with it, couldn't feel it.

It's mine, dammit, I thought furiously. No one—especially not Ciaran—is going to take my magick from me.

Maybe I lost consciousness again. I'm not sure. I never heard a door open or close, never heard footsteps, but suddenly Amyranth surrounded me. Witches in robes and animal masks formed a perfect circle around the table. Jackal, owl, weasel, cougar, eagle, bear, hawk, viper, jaguar, and a wolf. Predators all. The masks seemed distorted, horrible caricatures of the animals they represented, but I could also tell there was something wrong with my eyesight. It was impossible to say how accurate my perceptions were.

My visions and dreams had come together. Even through the haze of the drug, I could appreciate the irony of it all—if we hadn't tried to prevent my dream from coming to pass, none of this would have ever happened. Never try to mess with destiny.