Visions of Magic (31 page)

That witch had been willing to lose everything that mattered to her in her quest for knowledge and power. What if she hadn't evolved as much as Torin thought she had? What if the darkness was still there inside her, simply locked away behind a door of secrets?

“You and your sisters would listen to no one,” he said, his voice soft, low with memory and regret. “You were set on a dark path but couldn't—or wouldn't—see it. There was hunger for knowledge, yes. But more, there was the promise of power. Power such as no one had ever known before.”

The afternoon sunlight, the luxurious ship, the tumult of her present life all faded away as Shea closed her eyes and let the lost images inside her rise. She saw it all, experienced it all, as his voice continued.

“The coven,” Torin went on, “seeing at last what they had done, joined the battle. Banding together, they worked as one. As they had joined their powers to open the portal, they directed their energies at closing the very door they had pried open.
”

Yet, even then, when she did all she could to undo the damage caused
. . .
there was a corner of her heart still yearning for the darkness.

Now, she had to wonder. What did that make her? Was she truly as evil as Martha and her Seekers believed? Would she turn on Torin and the world? Would she surrender to the shadows she'd railed against so long ago?

“Shea?”

“Yes, sorry,” she said softly. “My mind wandered.”
Into places best left alone,
she added silently. “Finish, Torin. Tell me what happened next.”

He sighed, and slipped one hand beneath her shirt, sliding his palm over her skin, soothing each of them with the intimate caress. “The coven fought back. Somehow, their linked abilities were strong enough to push Lucifer back through the gateway, most of his demons with him. The portal sealed shut moments later.”

“That wasn't the end.”

“No,” he told her. “The portal was closed, but not permanently. The beast lurked behind a magical barrier, all too close to a defenseless world. And so the last great coven charmed a spell of atonement. Sentencing themselves to eight hundred and ten years of life without their powers. Without the memories of who and what they had once been.”

Everything in Shea went still as his voice brought to the surface the memories of that one moment that had sealed the fates of the witches for centuries to come.

“Incarnation after incarnation,” he said, “each of you lived a life that was devoid of magic. All in the hopes that when the time ran out, you would have evolved enough to turn your backs on the greed and arrogance that had governed you. That you would finally be able to destroy the Artifact, thus permanently closing the gateway to Hell.”

She remembered. And as she did, tears rained down her cheeks. For the mistakes made. For the atonement still incomplete.

“When the spell was spoken, the witches broke apart the Artifact that had stood in the center of their coven for thousands of years.”

The physical pain of that action sliced through Shea again as it had on the long-ago night. The powerful black silver Artifact was shattered by the very magic that had created it in the first place. They had betrayed all that they were. They had turned their backs not just on each other but on their ancestors, the founders of the very coven they had destroyed. At the moment the Artifact was shattered, each of the witches who had been entrusted with it felt that same splintering of her soul.

“A shard of the Artifact was entrusted to each of the witches. The coven disbanded and the women of power drifted apart, with each of them hiding their piece of the Artifact in secret.” Torin eased himself up on one elbow and looked down at her. “The waiting time began, with centuries crawling past, one after the other, until now. The Awakening is your time, Shea. The broken shards of the Artifact must be brought back together and finally destroyed. Or the world will never be safe.”

With his words, her mind and soul opened to the call of the Artifact.

She felt the ancient stirrings and trembled.

R
une found Odell in Sussex.

Tall even for an Eternal, Odell stood nearly six feet seven. His broad shoulders and square jaw only added to the image of a man best left alone. His dark brown hair hung past his shoulders and was usually held in place by a leather thong at the nape of his neck. He wore black leather, always, and the suspicious gleam in his pale gray eyes was as ever present as his legendary temper.

Not the man you would have guessed would be at the head of an underground safety network for witches and accused human females. But he was probably the best man for the job, Rune told himself. Odell had little patience and no sympathy with the mortal world's attempt at stamping out all practitioners of magic.

Sitting in Odell's country estate just outside Brighton, Rune drank the glass of Paddy's Irish Whiskey he'd been handed, then held it out for a refill.

Odell obliged with a grin. “I didn't expect to see you, Rune. With the Awakening upon us, I thought you'd be out after your witch.”

He shrugged. “She hasn't awakened to her powers yet.”

“Neither has mine,” Odell admitted, stretching out his long legs in front of him. “When last I checked in on her, she was burying herself in research books, looking, if you can believe it, for a ‘cure' to witchcraft.” He shook his head solemnly. “Riona's a bloody scientist in this lifetime. Don't know how I'll put up with her when it's our time.”

Rune laughed. He knew Odell was as anxious for his witch to call to him as Rune himself was. After centuries of waiting, of torment, the end was in sight. These last few weeks of waiting were going to be a trial.

He studied the amber liquid in the Waterford crystal tumbler, took a sip of the smooth, rich whiskey and said, “I can beat that. My witch gives guided tours of the Mexican desert.”

Odell's eyebrows lifted. “A desert, you say? Better you than me. All that sand? No cold winds? No soft rains? No. It's all I can do to live here, in England, rather than in Ireland where me and my witch belong.”

With ties to ancient Eire, Odell and his witch, as if by design, had yet to return to Ireland. In all her incarnations, Riona had never returned to the land of her birth—as if her spirit were deliberately punishing her. Taking the atonement one step further by keeping her from the country she loved.

Rune couldn't seem to relax, despite the comfort of Odell's home. He'd sought Egan and had come up empty. More, there had been no trail of him. No hint of where he might have gone or who might have seen him last.

“I don't understand it,” he muttered, staring at his whiskey as if looking for the answer to his question in the bottom of his glass. “There was no trace of Egan in Scotland. Anywhere.”

Odell laughed shortly and shook his head. “Did you expect to find him standing on his doorstep, waiting for you?”

Rune scowled at his old friend. “No, but I expected there to be some sign of him. Some clue to where he might be.”

“He's not a child,” Odell snapped, then took a breath and leashed his temper. “You said yourself that the waiting is an agony, Rune. Is it any wonder that some of us disappear from time to time? Centuries we've been kept waiting, dangling on the end of the witches' leashes. We're Eternals, man, not tame dogs to be told when to come and when to go.”

“I didn't say that,” Rune argued, realizing that he'd said the very same things all too recently to Torin. “But with the Awakening on us now, we should all be aware of where our witch is and what's happening to her.”

“What makes you think he isn't?” Odell leapt up from his chair, stalked to the liquor cabinet and poured himself another splash of Irish. He kicked it back, then slammed the tumbler onto the closest table. “He owes no one an explanation of where he goes and what he does, Rune. He's no doubt keeping an eye on this Kellyn from afar. Waiting for her powers to awaken, just like the rest of us damn fools.”

Rune stood up too, facing down the man he'd called friend for thousands of years. “Her powers
are
awakening. She's a teleporter, and a damn strong one, from what I saw. So if it's all kicking into place, where the hell is Egan?”

Odell scowled at him, fierceness carved into his features. “How am I to know? You come to my home and start fuming at me over another Eternal's problems? What sense is that, man?”

“I didn't start fuming until you started shouting, dumb shit.”

Instantly, the fury on Odell's face drifted into an expression of amusement. “Well, you have me there. All right, then. Since you can't find your stray Eternal and you've clearly nothing better to do with your time than drink my whiskey . . .”

Wary, Rune watched his friend. “What?”

Odell slapped his palms together and scrubbed them briskly. “I thought I might convince you to come along with me on an adventure of sorts.”

He'd been on an adventure with Odell once before, in 1014. He'd ended up a part of the battle against the Ulstermen and was witness to the death of the last hereditary high king of Ireland, Brian Boru. The war had been a glorious one, though, as Rune remembered it.

“What sort of ‘adventure' is it this time, old friend?”

Odell winked and grinned. “I've a raid planned on an internment camp just outside Crawley.”

“A raid?”

“Aye,” Odell told him. “The camp's not far from Gatwick. Authorities fly the women in from all over England and Scotland, then trundle them off to the Crawley camp. I'm going in tonight to spirit away those sentenced to death.” His features went hard and cold. His Eternal gray eyes were as icy as winter fog. “There are six slated to be put to the fire in the next week. I'm getting them out. And if you're not too busy, I might be able to use your help.”

Rune smiled. He couldn't find Egan. Had no idea where to look next. So. Until he came up with a better plan, he'd do what he could here, with Odell. A raging battle with mortal prison guards sounded good to him at the moment. “I'm in.”

Odell grinned and slapped him on the back hard enough to send a lesser man through a wall. “Excellent. We'll go now.”

“Where do we take them once we've got them free?”

Odell laughed and the sound boomed in the otherwise still room. “That's the best part. The closest Sanctuary is in Ashdown Forest. One of the biggest tourist draws around these parts.”

“Are you crazy?” Rune demanded.

“Not at all,” Odell told him, already calling on the fire and becoming a giant pillar of flame. “Hide in plain sight and those who chase you never find you.”

“If he's not crazy,” Rune said as his friend flashed out of the room, “then I certainly am.”

An instant later, he followed Odell into the heart of the enemy.

 

The sea air was cold.

The ever-waxing moon tossed pale light onto the surface of the churned-up waves, highlighting them with an otherworldly green phosphorescence. There was music drifting into the air from the Queen's Room ballroom on the third deck. Shea stepped through the open terrace doors to the private verandah off their suite. She followed the music as if she could see the notes hanging in the air.