Godric pulled the letter from his back pocket and unfolded the map. He glanced at the sea and then up at stars before pointing up the rocky coastline. “The coordinates should be another mile or so up the shoreline.” He folded up the papers and shoved them back into his pocket. “Ready?”
I nodded, taking a deep breath before he slipped an arm around my waist and ran, carrying me above the ground at a speed that made me feel as though I were flying.
When we stopped again, we were farther from the ocean, up the crags a bit, and staring at a large wooden cabin. Smoke curled from the chimney, and something I didn’t understand rippled through the air around me—the same thing I’d felt when the man came into the hotel—like a magnetic current that I couldn’t see. We walked at a normal pace along the front path. Worried tension flowed through Godric’s muscles.
The door swung open as we neared, revealing a man holding something long and metallic in his hands. He struck an impressive figure, blond hair and blue eyes bearing straight into my being.
Godric immediately stepped in front of me and raised his hands into the air. I leaned to the side and peered around him. “We seek Demetra and Rhea, sisters of Calliope Hart. We mean you no harm.”
“Calliope!” A female squeal came from inside the cabin before a small woman with black hair and blue eyes emerged. “Put that gun away, Stavros. This is my sister. I can feel her magick.” She wore a long blue skirt that swished about her furry brown boots. Her top half was wrapped in a long purple sweater that looked much warmer than the tee-shirt I had on.
“Callio—” The woman started toward me and then stopped, staring first at me and then at Godric. “You’re in a new body with the same name?”
Another woman followed behind her, totally different and still not familiar to me at all. “Rhea, what is it?” The tall willowy blonde in a thick white sweater, blue jeans, and black boots halted when she saw Godric and me as well.
“Who are you?” Rhea asked, pinning Godric’s gaze instead of mine.
“Godric Deveraux. Calliope is my mate.”
Both women’s mouths dropped open. Their eyebrows rose in surprise. “Well damn,” the blonde stated…still staring at Godric in disbelief.
“What Demetra means is that Calliope’s curse would typically kill anyone she cared about…except you’re already dead.”
Curse? “He did die,” I said, stepping around to stand next to Godric. The memory of experiencing his heart stopping. Of thinking I’d lost him. That I was alone. I trembled and sucked in a quick breath. I was cursed? Would he die again if we…
He slipped an arm around my waist and pulled me close, as if sensing I needed his presence to feel safe. Calm. Reassured that he was indeed alive—at least as alive as a vampire could be. But the worry had already started to spread through me like a virulent poison. I couldn’t lose him, even if it meant never being with him again. I would forego anything to keep him safe.
“A vampire’s heart doesn’t beat,” Rhea said, her tone leaning toward a scoff. “You’re a loophole Daddy didn’t consider. There’s no way he died.”
“I was a hybrid. My Djinn half died, and I woke up fully vampire,” Godric answered.
The small black-haired woman—my sister Rhea—tapped her chin. “Interesting. Small favors from the universe. I’m sure Daddy dearest will be quite miffed when he realizes his heart-stopping error.” She smiled. “Figures Calliope’s mate would be the one being the curse couldn’t kill.”
“He’s here,” Godric said, his voice a low rumble. “Your father.”
“We know,” the male Rhea had called Stavros spoke this time. “He’s been waiting for you to arrive.”
“We just assumed it would take a century or so before that happened,” Demetra said, stepping closer to us. “You had someone with you when you died. Someone who knew about the letters you write to yourself. It is the only explanation for you in a new body with the same name.” She glanced at Godric. “I assume you knew it was Calliope’s reincarnated soul because you are mates?”
Godric nodded.
“But she doesn’t remember anything, does she?”
“I’m right here, you know,” I said, unable to help the slight rolling of my eyes.
“Let’s get inside, Rhea. We don’t know how long we have before he realizes you’re here.” Stavros motioned toward the door with an urgency that made me step forward.
“We saw him in the hotel,” Godric answered.
“Wait! So he saw you?” Rhea said, her body snapping to attention.
I nodded.
“Damn it to hell and back.” Rhea made a growling sound. “He’s coming. We have to do this now.”
“Do what?” Godric stiffened against my side.
Demetra reached to touch his arm. “We have a way to give you Calliope back. All of her. We need her back to beat our father.”
Godric moved toward my sister.
All of me. The idea that I could be whole again. Remember the man at my side. Remember my past. Remember…myself. “You mean you can give me my memories? Now?”
She nodded. “Yes, but we don’t have much time before Daddy dearest tracks you here, and the wards will only hold for so long.” Demetra’s eyes sparked with a simmering rage. “We are finally ready to be free, Calliope. We’ve just been waiting for you. All you have to do is put his essence back inside him.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about, but then I didn’t understand much of anything in this mind.
“When we saw the soul stones die, we knew the clock had started counting down. One way or another, we knew you’d eventually come here,” Rhea said before taking Stavros’s hand. “Please, we have to hurry.” She turned to the man next to her. “Stavros, we need the book.” He nodded and rushed into one of the back rooms.
I glanced up at Godric, hoping for reassurance. Everything about this world was foreign. These women were strangers. I was a stranger to myself. He was my only link to what had been. I knew we were linked—more than that. We were special to each other. Mates. He would protect me. My heart and soul believed that fact absolutely.
He squeezed my hand and kissed my forehead, an action that quieted my chaotic brain. “We should at least hear them out. See what they’re proposing.”
“Yes,” I whispered. If they had a way to restore my life to me, I wanted it. As long as it didn’t cost me the man next to me. “Will I still love you?”
“You are my mate, Calliope.” His voice broke on my name. “I won’t let anything change that. I promise.”
He didn’t sound completely convinced, and it wasn’t really an answer, but I let him lead me into the cabin behind the others anyway. The wood panels on the walls and floors were honey-colored. Everything was wood, just like the hotel. Rugs covered the floor. Random blues and oranges popped in the decorations they’d chosen, giving the rather large cabin a friendly, warm atmosphere.
My heart thudded in my chest, and I took a deep breath. I could do this. I could. I had to. For me. For Godric. I had to find my way through this.
“Lander, we need you out here,” Demetra called. A man similar in stature to Stavros came through a doorway on the far side of the living space. Lander also had light wavy hair and the same piercing blue eyes. Brothers?
Rhea turned her attention back to Godric and me. “You both need to kneel on the floor, facing each other. Put your palms together and stare into each other’s eyes. The four of us will start chanting. Once you have the words in your head, join in. Both of you.”
“And no matter what happens, you must remain touching to the end,” Demetra added, her firm tone adding extra emphasis to her command.
A loud thump on the front door drew all of our attention followed by an angry shout that their magick wouldn’t stop him.
“He’s already here. Hurry!” Demetra shouted.
“How will we know when it ends?” Godric asked, following Rhea to the center of the living room. He helped her move the large iron and glass coffee table to th
e side so there was space for us to kneel on the dark blue rug in the center of the room.
“You’ll know. Don’t worry,” Demetra spoke reassuringly. “I know this is a lot to take on faith. But we have no choice.”
Stavros returned to Rhea’s side, carrying an old leather-bound book. Rhea took it gently from his hands and flipped through it until she found the page that made her eyebrows raise. “Ready?” she asked, flipping her attention between Godric and me.
“Yes,” Godric answered, his tone a deep rumble in his chest.
“Calliope?” she asked, worry thinning the confidence in her voice. The shouting outside the cabin was so loud. He was moving from the front to the back. Each time he pushed on the wards I could feel something shake the air surrounding us. It was terrifying.
I knelt to the floor and nodded. I had to do this. I needed my memories back. I wanted to be bonded to Godric. This had to be what I’d been missing before. After he’d bitten me, fed from me, there had been a connection, but it wasn’t enough. I craved more from him than I could explain. I hoped this ritual would fulfill that void.
Godric knelt in front of me. I held out my hands, palms facing him. He mirrored my actions, placing his cool skin against mine.
Demetra came to stand opposite Rhea. Stavros and Lander took position behind Godric and me, creating a ring around us. They linked hands, closed their eyes, and Rhea began whispering a chant. I didn’t understand the language, although that didn’t mean anything, because I recognized very little in the world around me. A few moments later, Demetra added her voice to the chant. Then Stavros. Then Lander. Until all four were chanting in unison.
Colored light rose from my skin. From Godric’s skin. Purple and blue and white. It swirled around our arms and connected hands like wisps of flame. The flame didn’t burn, though. My arm looked normal. Not even the tiny hairs were singed. The same happened to Godric. More leaping colored light that acted like fire, but didn’t burn. And he didn’t pay it any mind. Just kept his focus trained on me.
Only me. The colors swirling around our arms mixed with the deep sapphire of Godric’s eyes. Mate. Mine. The words were clear in my mind as if I had spoken them myself. Emotion crested in my chest, and I leaned into his support as fear rushed into the forefront of my mind.
The fear that I would lose him if I loved him.
The fear that my father would yet take away the only man Fate had created just for me. I’d lived with this fear for…thousands of years. The memories of my previous lives rushed through my mind until I came to the one that just happened. The one where I’d been killed because his sister had used me as a distraction. Godric had a sister. Asa. We’d gone to rescue his niece, Manda. The traitor. All of it came flooding back.
How I’d met him outside of the castle in town.
How I’d wanted him. Been called to his side before I understood what was happening. How I’d wrestled with telling him about the curse. I’d fought my urges. Blocked his at every turn. I’d kept him safe by sheer willpower, but when I’d reincarnated, I’d lost that fear. It hadn’t existed.
Tears burned down my cheeks. The moment I realized his heart had stopped was the next stop on my memory tour. The gut-wrenching, soul-crushing guilt nearly made me drop to my hands and feet on the floor.
Instead, Godric laced his fingers with mine and held on tight.
By some strange twist of fate, he was alive because he’d been a vampire—dead and alive at the same time. He had survived the curse my father had put on me to cheat me from love. The universe had found a way to give me what I’d never thought I could have.
He wouldn’t die from my curse. But my father was here. He’d seen us. He would be coming, and he would take everything from me, starting with my sisters and ending with my mate. And then I would die, missing him and knowing it was my fault. I could’ve protected him. Kept him away from me. Out of this crazy hell my father had created for me.
I pulled on my hands, trying to separate us. We couldn’t do this. I couldn’t tether him to a woman he would never be able to have. It wasn’t fair to him or me. My father was right outside, punching his way through the protection wards. He’d be here any second. And he’d kill Godric just to make me suffer more.
“Please,” I begged, the words no more than a silent whisper on my lips. “You have to let me go.”
“Never.”
Chapter 43
GODRIC
I clutched her hands tighter.
It’d all come back. The fear in her eyes. The way she’d distanced herself when we’d first met. The way she’d fought to keep me at arm’s length. It all rushed back with the force of a tidal wave, trying to rip us apart, but I wasn’t going to let her go.
Mine.
She was my mate, and by the gods, I would fight for her no matter what.
She’d known about the curse, and she’d tried to keep us apart. I didn’t even care that she’d known and didn’t tell me. She hadn’t known she would die. And it hadn’t killed me…just the part I should’ve moved on from a long time ago. Now I was one being. With one purpose. And a fresh path ahead of me. No more looking back at the life I’d had. At the family who’d deserted me.
I had a new family now. Calliope. And whoever came along with that package.
The magick tingled along my skin, and suddenly, I could hear nothing but the chant, over and over in my mind. We both began speaking at the same time. My eyes closed of their own accord, but I continued to see swirls of color dancing in the darkness.
Then I felt her—Calliope. Her soul joined to mine, and for a flash of a moment, I felt every pain, every sorrow, every joy she’d ever experienced. I gasped for air I didn’t need to breathe, but it was motor memory driving the wagon, and I didn’t have a choice in how I reacted. My poor mate. The torture she’d endured because of her father.
My eyes flew open. We all stopped chanting at the same time. The spell had finished, but something was wrong. I could feel—magick. In a way I’d never been able to before. Magick had always felt like a gentle magnetic current, invisible, but present. But now the currents were visual. I could see them all as if they were individual wavelengths.
Calliope’s was red and wavy with a little hook in the beat every now and again. Mine was green and jagged. But her sisters and their husbands shared a similar magickal radio wave to Calliope’s, each with a unique color and distinctive recurring pattern. Were the husbands Sirens, too?
My gaze met Calliope’s as the air around us shuddered and then something broke. The magick that’d been holding their father back had shattered. A moment later, the front door splintered into a thousand pieces, and cold air blasted into the room. We all turned to face the incoming intruder. The man we’d seen at the hotel entered, carrying a small yellow-blanketed bundle in his arms. A baby?
“You bastard!” Demetra leapt forward, but Lander caught her arm before she left his side.
“Your wards were good, daughter. But you should’ve known nothing would keep me from getting what I want. I’ve waited a long time to find your sister.” He glanced directly at my mate. “I assume whoever was cloaking you died? My condolences.” His mouth turned up in a grisly smile. “The new body is nice, not as curvy as the last, but pleasant nonetheless. I don’t believe you’ve ever been a redhead before. Too bad, it would’ve been fun.”
Sick monster.
The beast within me raged, and my fangs lengthened behind my closed mouth. If he didn’t know I was a vampire yet, I wasn’t going to give him a reason to find out. I reigned in my bloodlust and made sure my eyes didn’t shift to red, even though every thought in my mind divined different scenarios where I would tear him limb from limb. Not only for what he’d done to my mate in the past, but what he was openly threatening even now.
He pulled a silver chain from beneath his shirt. A silver gem hung on the end of it, glowing ever so slightly. “You will give back what you took and accept your punishment. Or this baby will suffer the consequences of yo
ur rebellion as well.”
Calliope’s pulse sped up, and she sucked in a small breath before recovering her composure. “Give Demetra her child, and I’ll go with you.”
“No,” I hissed under my breath. I wasn’t about to lose her to a psychopathic father, intent on only the gods knew what kind of evil.
She turned to me and kissed my cheek. “I love you.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “I’ll find you again. I promise.” Then her voice dropped to an even lower decibel. “Do what Rhea says.”
What was that supposed to mean? Find me again?
“Not if I have anything to say about it. You’re mine, Calliope.” The monster holding the baby spat out each word with a hatred I couldn’t understand. “You’ve been mine since your wretched mother abandoned you and your sisters into my care when she selfishly took her own life.”
Through my peripheral vision, I caught an almost silent exchange between Calliope and Rhea over my shoulder. Calliope seemed to mouth the word ready before she turned to face her father again.
“You broke our mother, you sick bastard.” Calliope stomped toward her father. The flare for dramatic was unlike what I’d witnessed from her before. Her normally calculating decisiveness had taken a mental hiatus. “What was I supposed to do?” Her voice pitched higher. “Be okay with watching my mother end her life so that you would never lay a hand on her again? Be okay with you molesting my sisters and I in her place?”
“Fix it, or I’ll make sure this baby grows up to know the same pain you felt.”
“You deserved to be impotent for thousands of years. You deserve far worse,” Calliope hissed out the words.
Everything in me screamed to stop her. Every instinct said he was going to hurt her. But I didn’t move. Rhea and Stavros were calm. Even Demetra and Lander, although frantic over their child, remained still. Only their racing heartbeats gave them away. Whatever was happening, I refused to be the one who ruined it. For once my age and practiced control afforded me the strength I needed.
Sanctuary, Texas Complete Series Box Set Page 134