by Hazel Hunter
She was still shaking when Colin's thrusts became wild and uncoordinated. He slammed into her one last time, collapsing so that his weight was draped over her back. She held them both up for a moment, but then she collapsed slowly and easily to the bed.
Colin rolled off of her, removing the condom to take care of it, but then he was back again, cuddling up to her back and moving aside the mass of her hair to kiss the back of her neck.
“What are you going to do now?” he whispered into her ear.
She made an irritated noise, hoping that she could simply put him off, but the hand stroking her face was insistent.
“Is this what you want to do forever?” he asked. “Do you always want to be running, taking jobs from people you don't trust to do things to people who never did you any harm?”
She sighed. “You're really not going to let this go, are you?”
“I'm afraid not.”
She wished that she were feeling anger, but she was aware that she was not. It was not anger that made her heart feel as heavy as an anchor. It was not anger that made her feel as if her head were too full or that her throat was caught. She knew that it was grief.
Selene said none of this. Instead, she rose and walked away from the bed. She could feel Colin's eyes on her, and she slipped on a silk robe that was lying over the back of a chair. Despite what they’d just done, she wanted—she needed—a barrier between them.
The robe had no tie, so she was forced to hold it closed. When she finally looked up at Colin, he met her eyes. Silly man.
“I don't think you understand what I've been telling you,” she said softly. “Or perhaps you do, and you are simply hoping for a different outcome. In either case Colin, you must understand how sorry I am. I'm not made for the Wiccan world. I had what felt like the perfect coven for almost a year. For almost a year, it was like those people were my family. I didn't need my abusive stepfather or my negligent mother. Instead, I had these people, both older and younger than me, who truly cared about who I was, what I wanted. That didn't work out so well.”
“It didn't work out so well because your coven master was a monster who took advantage of someone he was meant to protect,” Colin protested, but she waved her hand for silence.
“There must be something wrong with me,” Selene said, almost to herself. “It has to be something about me. But after being on my own for so long, it’s the only thing I know. It's how I live.”
Something about her words seemed to incense Colin, and before she could tell him to stay where he was, he was on his feet, one hand lightly clasped around her wrist.
“Is it what you know or simply what you've come to accept?”
She looked up at him, stung, and to her horror, she could feel the tears that had been threatening, prickling at her eyes.
“What do you think?” Selene cried, unable to keep the cool and rational tone any longer. “Don't you think that I would have jumped at the chance to find a family, to be with you if I thought there was even a sliver of a chance of us making it work? Don't you think that I wouldn't have thanked every god that ever lived or died for that?”
He looked stunned, but she had no time to stop and consider that. She couldn't. If she let him in, with his bold spirit, his gentle touch and his sweet smile, she would be lost. She would be seduced into coming back to the Wiccan world with him, and when she lost him, it would only be more hellish, more unbearable, than anything she had ever experienced before. She couldn't risk it, and she shook his hand off her arm.
“There's nothing in the Wiccan world for me,” she told him, her voice heavy and dead. “I don't want it, it doesn't want me. Please... It hurts to know what you offer, but it hurts even more to know there is nothing that you can do about it.”
“It's not a story, and it's not a lie,” he protested. “I don't want to take anything away from you. I just want to make sure that you get the reality that you have always wanted and still need. I want to make sure that you are going to be happy, and I want the chance to make you happy.”
Her laugh was twisted and harsh, and made him flinch.
“Enough. You told me you would always hear me out, that if I wanted things to stop that all I would have to do is to say so. Well, I'm saying it now, Colin. I'm telling you that I don't want you here. What you offer, doesn’t exist. Not for me.”
“Selene…”
“I know you, Colin,” she said softly. “I know you, and I know what you want. What I'm telling you is that I cannot give it to you. I'm so sorry, but I cannot. You're asking for forever.”
Colin opened his mouth to speak, but then he closed it and nodded.
“You're right,” he said. “I am asking for forever. I didn't know until you said it, but that's what I want with you. We could have that, but if you don't want it, if you are afraid of it, there's nothing that I can do.”
He stood up, and she slipped into the living room to allow him the privacy of dressing. She sat on the couch, curled up and miserable as she ever had been. Bitsy awoke from her nap to come investigate. Selene concentrated on petting the ferret's head just right, making her little friend purr for her.
She knew when Colin appeared in the doorway, dressed impeccably in black and with that damnable pin on his lapel. She heard him put on his coat.
“Would you use your gift if I asked you?”
She looked up startled. “What?”
“If I asked you to take these last few days from me, would you?”
Selene thought she knew what pain and loss were, but the thought that she would be the only one who remembered their time together, who remembered the passionate chase across the city, who remembered the last few hours, the thought defeated her. She knew once and for all that this was all there would be for her, but she could not stop herself from giving Colin this mercy.
“I could if that was what you wished,” she said. Her own voice sounded ghostly to her, like that of a woman long dead. He smiled a little, a sad and fugitive thing.
“I don't. But I wanted to know if you would. I've always known you as a loving woman, and I want to remember you that way.”
She didn't know what to say. So she watched as he put on his coat. It occurred to her how silly it was that he wore it. If he wished, he could simply flip from place to place without ever worrying about something like winter cold or slush.
“Are you going far?” she found herself asking.
It was a stupid and inane question, but she wanted to know.
“Oddly enough, no. My hotel is right down the street, around the corner. I wanted to be close to you.”
Bitsy cheeped sadly next to his shoe. He reached down to gently tumble her over and scratch her belly.
“Goodbye, Selene.”
She thought that he would stop and kiss her, on the mouth in anger or on the forehead with regret, but he did neither. The door opened, the door shut, and he was gone.
Selene laid her head down on her knees and started to cry.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
COLIN COULD HAVE blinked over to his hotel room in less than a second. He knew he had the power to spare. His body all but thrummed with power, and he knew it was because of the time he had spent with Selene. There was a world of potential, love and life there that beckoned to him, that called to him. But all he could do was turn away from it.
He wondered why he wasn't angrier at her. She was turning from something that generations of Wiccans had spent their lives looking for. When they found it, the bond forged was one that could last for centuries. The fact that she was willing to turn away from it—and from him—stabbed him to the heart.
Colin walked through the cold street. It was a beautifully clear night, and despite the fact that it never really got dark in Chicago, there was something calming about the way the snow was drifting down. It would be another cold winter, and though Colin tended to gravitate towards the northern climes, he wondered if it was time to find a different place to do his job.
A change of
scenery was appealing. He thought about warm sands and bright blue skies, places where the temperature never wavered by more than a few degrees. That was a pleasant thought until he realized that Selene wouldn't be with him. He spun around and slammed his fist into a lamp post. The pain was bright, sharp and sudden. Though it wasn't what he wanted, it was far better than what he had been feeling.
A part of him wanted to go back and to shout at Selene. To argue, to cajole, even to bribe and beg if he had to. Though he almost turned, he forced himself to keep walking. He had left behind innocents that he could not save. He had lost comrades and friends that he considered family. He came from a time when war was the natural order, and where loss was something to be accepted as proof that one could still feel anything at all.
None of it had ever felt like this.
The losses he had felt in his past, they had been like losing a limb. This was more like losing himself. And he had never felt older. He found his hotel and went into his room, and started to pack. He needed to get out of Chicago. Hell, he needed to get out of the United States.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SELENE SPENT A few hours in fitful sleep, waking up briefly to wipe at her sore eyes before tossing and turning for a little longer. She was in pain the likes of which she had never known before. No matter how she moved, she could not find a place where the raw emotions didn’t chafe.
Still hours before dawn, she finally rose and turned on her computer. Her employers were depending on her, and she needed to let them know that this latest job was impossible. It had happened before, and she would have to forfeit her fee, but that mattered very little to her at this point.
She logged on through the secure setting, and she could tell right away that there was something wrong. The system had never stalled on her before. She had never seen the login screen time out, and the options she had in front of her were severely limited.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. The organization that used her skills was shadowy, and she had always had a feeling that it was powerful. Some of the people they had sent her against were known around the world, some of them evil, evil people. Still the organization had access to them, and on her dark days, she could feel their hand hovering over her, ready to strike her down like a bug or an ant.
Bitsy could sense her unease and pressed her sharp nose against Selene's ankle. She was so preoccupied by what she was seeing that she pushed her pet aside, nervously paging through the portal that her employer used to contact her.
She was just getting ready to trash the computer and gather up her resources for an early morning escape when a red flash told her she had a sudden urgent message waiting for her.
Biting her lip, Selene opened it up.
RUNRUNRUN
WE ARE SORRY
WE COULD NOT STOP THEM
RUNRUNRUN
WE ARE SORRY
WE COULD NOT STOP THEM
RUNRUNRUN
The message played over and over again, and an eerie burst of premonition crawled up Selene's spine. She knew that it was a default message, something that had been left to play over and over again even if the sender was not monitoring it. Even if the sender was dead.
Selene stood up abruptly, forcing the computer into a shut down. She knew what she needed to do and she did it quickly and efficiently. She tore out the hard drive, and she threw it in the sink. She pulled a vial of corrosive liquid out of the cabinet and poured it over the drive. The drive had not stopped spitting when Selene threw on her t-shirt, her jeans and her shoes. She scooped Bitsy into her bag, but that was all the time she had before her apartment door was kicked in.
Spitting with anger, she reached for her power, but before she could do anything, there was a hissing sound and the room filled with smoke. It stung her eyes and filled her lungs. Somehow, in the midst of her mindless panic, she had the presence of mind to drop her bag and kick it away. Though Bitsy squeaked, the two figures who entered the smoke-filled room did not seem to notice the ferret.
Robbed of her best defense, Selene lashed out with feet and fists, feeling a gratifying heavy kick land on what must have been a shin. Someone swore, but someone else grabbed her, and at that point, a dark hood was placed over her head, she was tied hand and foot, and lifted completely off of her feet. From the heavy footfalls and the jostling, she could tell that she was being moved.
She thought of Bitsy. She knew that her familiar was a very clever beast, and she remembered how enamored the ferret had been with Colin.
Find him, she thought. Find him please.
She could feel herself being placed carefully in the trunk of a car, and when the lid closed and the engine started, she had never felt so very alone in her entire life.
Please find him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HE KNEW THAT he should have been on the road hours ago. He knew that. However, getting on the road, reporting himself back to headquarters or calling in for his new assignment all made leaving Chicago feel so final. It would mean that his mission to find Selene was officially over, and right now, Colin wasn't sure that he could deal with that.
Colin was older than the country he currently stood in, and he knew when he needed to listen to his gut. Something told him that he had unfinished business in Chicago, and he wasn't sure that it was the obvious.
He had spent the early morning hours trying not to think about Selene. Thinking of her was like touching the place a tooth had been, or like an injury newly struck. However, he might as well have told himself not to think about the way the sun rose or the shadows that moved slowly across his hotel room. He could still smell her hair, could still feel the way her body opened for him with sweetness and love. He knew it was love. But the torturous thing was that he suspected that she knew it as well. They were in this hell together.
His smartphone rang. Though Colin expected Stephan to make another snide remark, instead he got a crisp greeting and a slight hint of worry.
“Colonel, it’s Corps business.”
“What's up?” he asked, frowning. Stephan was good at his job, but casual to the point of insolence. He wasn't used to a Stephan who was this serious.
“Templars, and possibly in your neck of the woods. Have you run into them yet?”
Cold water started to trickle down Colin's spine.
“No, what the hell are you talking about? They've been as still as the grave since that raid back in March. I thought we had killed most of the bastards.”
“It's like trying to kill moles. There's always a few more left, and after a while, they start to repopulate. We're pretty certain about this one. The covens of Chicago are in lock down. The local witches and warlocks are moving into communal safe houses until the alert is lowered.”
Colin whistled.
“That's serious,” he observed.
“Damn right it is,” Stephan said. “There are two prowling the area, and they're old, tough and insane. The commandant wants to send someone down to assist you.”
Colin raised an eyebrow. He hadn't been sent help without asking for it since he was four hundred years old, and now he was almost twice that age.
“What are my orders until my backup arrives?” he asked.
“Stay put, keep your phone on, and be ready if anything wants to jump out of the shadows at you.”
“I got it. Anything else?”
Stephan paused.
“What's the situation on the rogue?”
“She declined to return to the Wiccan world.” Colin had to force those words past a dry throat.
“Right.” Stephan's voice was as cold as that of any executioner. “Then she doesn't get our aid.”
Colin understood. Or at least that’s what he told himself. There were only so many resources the Corps had to offer, and those had to be reserved for those who lived under its rule.
“I understand. Anything else I need to know?”
“No, that's it. I'll see about getting someone out to your location sooner rather t
han later, but as it is, I'd rather you were quiet than anything else.”
They bid each other goodbye, and Colin sank back down on the bed. He was someone who preferred action to waiting, and he could already feel the time draw out.
He went to his weapons case, the one that could only be opened with the right combination, the one that Stephan had bespelled to be impossible to open unless the opener was a Wiccan. He cracked the case open and looked over the items inside.
There were his daggers, which most members of the Corps preferred to wield, but the pride and joy of his kit was his sword. It was a short sword, most similar in build to a Roman legionnaire's weapon. He had seen the ancient remnants of the Romans in England when he was just a child, and when the time came to choose his own weapons as a full-fledged member of the Corps, he had chosen the gladiolus.
It was small, but it could be held easily and used quickly. It gleamed in the low light of the hotel room, and he made a few practice swings with it before putting it through the sword drills that were like second nature to him.
He knew that he was likely going to work himself into a frenzy if he weren't careful, and some part of him simply didn't care. There were men out there, dangerous men who wanted to see every witch and every warlock burned for the simple crime of their birth, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Colin was working himself up to a serious sweat when he heard a frantic scrabbling at his door. He paused in confusion, because after all, his hotel room was indoors, and then crossing the room in two strides, he pulled the door open.
At first, he didn't recognize the creature outside his door as Selene's Bitsy. The poor animal was wet, making her fur stick out in sad yellowish spikes, and she refused to sit still. Instead, as soon as the door opened, she emitted high-pitched squeaks that Colin could only define as war-cries, and she danced about as if she had cornered a cobra.