Visions of Magic (16 page)

K
ellyn reveled in the freedom to do and be whatever she wanted. Thank the moon she was out of that hideous internment camp. For a second, she thought about the look of stunned shock on the faces of the two Eternals. Then she smiled and dismissed them for the moment.

She waved a hand at the ATM machine and instantly it spat out hundreds of dollars. She smiled again and tucked the money away in the designer bag she'd helped herself to at the department store inside Union Station. A train station for most of its life, the Beaux Arts building was today something of a national treasure, Kellyn mused.

Once a center for train travel, now the building with the arched ceilings and intricately carved plasterwork and acres of marble flooring was home to an upscale shopping center. Which, Kellyn told herself, was exactly what she had been looking for. After too long in prison drab, she'd
needed
to see something stylish. A chance to get lost in a well-dressed crowd and entertain herself with the game of using her power to obfuscate herself when she wanted to.

Of course, she could have spelled herself any clothing and accessories she wanted. It was nothing to snap her fingers and materialize a Coach bag or a glorious pair of Prada shoes. But it was more fun to walk into a store and walk back out with whatever she desired, knowing no one would—or could—stop her.

“Really, humans are just so simple,” she whispered, glancing around at the traffic streaming up and down Massachusetts Avenue. D.C. in late September was still hot and muggy, but she didn't care. With a chant and a burst of power, she regulated her own temperature so that she was perfectly comfortable.

She took a breath and caught the scent of banked power. There was another witch here somewhere, no doubt trying to hide amid the throngs. The Awakening witches weren't the only women of power on the earth. Witches had been here since the beginning of time. But they had kept their magic a secret until that first Awakened witch had made her former lover a tiki torch. Now, none of them was safe.

Her eyes narrowed as she slowly surveyed the people around her. Witches were plentiful, but those on the loose were a dying breed. Most were either in prison or in hiding. For one brief moment, Kellyn considered finding the witch, seeing if perhaps she might become useful. But there were so many people, each of them with mind whirling, that picking the one witch out of this crowd would take more work than she was willing to invest.

She wasn't here to collect stray witches. Leave that to the Eternals. Like the ones who had rescued
her.

Bless the fools,
she told herself with another smile. With that damn white gold around her neck, she might have ended her existence right there in the damn prison. And what a waste that would have been.

She stepped out onto the sidewalk, moving with the crowd, keeping the rhythm of the city under her feet so that she was just another pedestrian. A faceless person lost in the crowd.

At the corner, she stopped to wait for a green light and noticed an old man wearing threadbare clothes, sitting on a curb beside a grocery cart towering with his possessions. He held a hand-lettered cardboard sign that read HOMELESS
.

Well, duh,
Kellyn thought. She watched as mortals walked past the old man, eyes averted. Going on about their busy lives, their oh, so important lives, they didn't even slow down as they hurried down the street. It was as if as long as they didn't notice him, he simply didn't exist.

And something inside her burned. Before she could think twice about it, she walked toward the old man, who stared up at the crowd through bleary eyes. Her gaze swept quickly over the laden cart, noting everything from papers and cans to be recycled to a dog collar and leash and several copies of
National Geographic
magazine.
His treasures,
she thought wryly, as she dipped one hand into her bag and pulled out a hundred-dollar bill.

Offering it, she said, “Take this. Get off the street for a night.”

He saw the money and a delighted smile curved his mouth. He then turned those rheumy blue eyes to her, and his smile withered and died.

“No,” he muttered, shaking his head as he staggered to his feet.

“What?” Kellyn watched, astonished, as he hurriedly pushed his sign into the mess inside the cart.

Someone bumped into her in their hurry to cross the street. She hardly noticed.

“No, no, won't see,” he whined in a singsong voice, shaking his head until his long gray hair floated like snakes in water about his head.

“What are you talking about? I'm offering you help,” she said, in case he'd missed the whole point of this exercise.

He actually flinched, hunching his shoulders until he looked like an elderly turtle. “Won't see the dark inside her,” he sang to himself. “Won't see it, not there.”

Kellyn glanced around, to see if anyone was listening to the old man, but naturally, no one was. What was it he saw when he looked at her? From somewhere deep inside her mind, a voice cried out, demanding to be heard, but Kellyn shut it down. Just as she dismissed this one old man.

She crumpled the hundred-dollar bill in her fist and squeezed. Someone else crashed into her and this time Kellyn whipped her head around, prepared to fight.

“Jeez, sorry, lady,” the kid in baggy jeans and a faded T-shirt said. “Power down, huh?”

Power down?
Not likely. Her power was rising, filling her, nearly choking her with the urge to burst free and obliterate her surroundings. Even Kellyn was shaken and nearly breathless from the eagerness writhing inside her.

The kid stared at her until his skin paled and his eyes were wide and horrified. Kellyn saw his fear and drank it in as ambrosia. This was what she thrived on. Fear. Horror. The old man was no more than a blip. Everyone else looked at her and saw only what she wanted them to see. She smiled, and the teenager grabbed up his skateboard and darted into the crowd, dissolving into anonymity.

Kellyn stared after him, fighting for control, holding on to the reins of the power within her even as her skin tingled.

A whimper caught her attention and she swung back around to see the old man shuffling away from her as fast as he could. The broken wheel on his cart sounded out a quick
whappeta-whappeta
as he went, his shoulders hunched as if expecting a blow, and still he threw a look at her over his shoulder.

“Won't see,” he chimed again, “pretty lady with the dark inside. Won't see it. Not there, not there at all.”

People stepped away from him as if he were somehow contagious. The crowd pushed into the street as the light changed, and Kellyn was still standing, rooted to the spot, watching that crazy old man run from her.

It was as if he'd somehow sensed what was crouched inside her. Was he so much more attuned than the rest of these ignorant humans?

Interesting.
She watched him go and thought about following. Killing him. Watching the light drain from his already ruined eyes. But what would be the point? Even if he tried to tell someone what he'd glimpsed of her true nature, who would believe him? Hell, who would
listen
to him? She'd bring more attention to him with his death than he would ever draw alive.

“No,” she whispered. “Leave him to his misery.”

Shaking her head, she dismissed the old goat and walked down the street, feeling a hot breeze ruffle her spiky hair. She had things to do and no time to waste on unimportant details.

Pausing at a newsstand, she let her gaze scan the headlines quickly.

 

 

She smiled to herself.

“More than one,” she murmured.

T
orin heard the shower running and tried to pull his mind away from the image of a naked Shea standing beneath the hot, steaming water, soap bubbles clinging to her skin . . .

“You said you called Odell,” Rune prompted, shattering Torin's thoughts. “Did he know of this Kellyn?”

“He did,” Torin said, stalking to the front window and staring out into the night. The mountain was quiet, the sky black with stardust spread across its width like pinpricks of light through a sheet of velvet. The wind rattled the window glass and whispered across the top of the chimney.

Satisfied that they were still alone in the dark, he focused again on his friend. Before calling Rune to check in, Torin had placed a call to Odell, an Eternal based near his witch in London.

Odell was still watching, waiting for his witch to enter the Awakening. Meanwhile, he was spending most of his time breaking witches out of internment camps in the English countryside. He was running his own private underground railroad, spiriting witches and hunted humans to safety.

“Odell says Kellyn's Eternal is Egan.”

“Egan.” Rune muttered something unintelligible and then admitted,“I haven't seen him in a couple of hundred years. After his witch's last incarnation, he disappeared.”

“It's not good to be too alone,” Torin muttered, though he could appreciate why Egan had felt compelled to find solitude. Watching your witch live and die again and again took a toll on even the most stalwart Eternal. Unless, of course, like Odell, you found something else to keep you occupied.

But even if he were thousands of miles from Kellyn, Egan should have felt her Awakening. Maybe this Kellyn had been lying, he thought. But why? What would she gain?

And if she was an Awakened witch, why hadn't Egan been called to her?

“Alone is what we do best,” Rune reminded him.

“That was true for too long. But not anymore,” Torin said. “Find Egan.”

“A little busy here. Getting these women to Sanctuary, remember?”

“Right. Yes.” Torin turned to look toward the bathroom when he heard the shower turn to the massage head, water pounding in regular rhythm. He muffled a groan at the image that filled his mind. Shea, thighs spread beneath those pulsing jets of water, trembling, gasping, helpless to stop her own pleasure from crashing over her.

His body hardened like rock. His breath caught in his chest and the flames that made up his soul threatened to engulf him, burn him to ash.

“We could get Cort to look for him,” Rune was saying. “They were friends back in the day.”

Torin forced his mind to the task at hand. “Yes. Good. Call him, then.” A moment passed. “Where are you and the women?”

Rune laughed shortly. “Vegas, of all places.”

Torin bit back an oath. “Are you insane? With all those people—”

“What better way to get lost than in a crowd?” Rune interrupted. “We're halfway to Sanctuary. I'll have them there by tomorrow. But I spent most of my reserve energies flashing them all here. Didn't want to risk getting in a car down in the L.A. area. Too many people looking for us to be safe on a damn freeway.”

Torin remembered the sound of a gunshot and Shea's body crumpling at his feet.

“Good point.” Since he knew Rune couldn't have transported more than one of the females at a time, he realized that the Eternal had made dozens of trips. Ferrying first one, then the next of the women and their belongings along a long, dangerous trek. “Can you get a car easily enough?”

With word of the prison break hitting every news channel and paper, they both knew the authorities would be watching everyone more closely.

“I keep a car here in a garage. It's safe enough. I'll have the females to Sanctuary by tomorrow night.”

“You got rid of the tracker on Terri?”

“Yeah,” Rune said. “Trust me when I say she didn't like it much. That woman's got a hard right jab. But it's out and we should be clear. Meanwhile, I'll call Cort. Get him moving on the Egan situation.”

“Good.” Torin listened as the shower massage changed gears, the pulses coming faster. He took a breath and let it out slowly. “I'll stay in touch. Don't know where we'll be by tomorrow.”

“As long as you get the job done. The clock's ticking, Torin, and we can't lose.”

That statement didn't deserve an answer, so Torin didn't give him one. He flipped the phone closed and tossed it onto a nearby table.

Then he turned and headed to the bathroom as if he were being pulled by an invisible cord.

 

The shower was incredible. A walk-in, with no door or curtain separating it from the room, it was constructed of sandy-colored tiles that were smooth as glass on the walls and the wide, built in bench, yet felt rough beneath her feet. Four faucets jutted from the walls at different angles and the air was filled with steam.

Shea stood under the pulsing streams of hot water, turning her back to the jets, letting the rhythmic blasts of heat pound against her shoulders, her neck. She'd been running for years. From the feds. From herself. Her destiny.

Now, there was no more running. There was only this moment and the next and the next. She wasn't alone anymore, either. There was Torin. And though a part of her still held back from him, unwilling to trust, to share completely . . . another part of her welcomed him.

And that side of Shea wanted him desperately.

She burned for him. Her body turned to liquid heat with just the thought of him. Knowing he was in the next room made her yearn to call out to him, to draw him to her. Yet she resisted. Once she'd opened that door, there would be no going back. Ever. She would be fundamentally changed and that scared her. She felt the power inside her, bubbling, churning, frantic to be free.

But what happened when it was released?