by Tamara Gill
She was losing him.
Nooooooo.
Charity clawed onto his magic like it was a tangible thing.
Where he goes, I go. He needed to open a rift for her, but maybe he couldn’t, maybe he’d used all of his strength just to get here.
And his hands locked around her wrists, solid and sure. She felt the twist open within him, felt the rift slash open in the air behind her, a tear in the fabric of time. It vibrated along Toren’s magic, burning a trail into her own.
Air swirled around them. The curtains above the sink pulled from the wall, rod and all. Appliances flew off the counters, crashing against walls. Toren yanked her down as a chair sailed over their heads. Her little iron bistro table fell to its side and scraped across the linoleum, splattering the soup. Everything was spinning around them.
Her entire apartment had become the apex of a hurricane, earthquake, and tornado. With them in its eye.
Toren's gaze locked hard onto hers. “Do not.”
Too late. She was committed.
The ceiling pulled away into a black maelstrom of swirling, floating debris. Her kettle, block of kitchen knives, toaster, everything swept upward. Cupboard doors ripped off their hinges. The countertops groaned, tearing from their bases. Her sofa launched from the other room, banging against the wall, splintering the arched opening between the two rooms.
Everything flew around them, sucked up through the ceiling.
He clenched his jaw and bore down. She felt it, the opening of a rift. It broke apart the world, splitting a jagged slash in her kitchen. It wasn’t like simply disappearing when Aldreth dragged him back before. Not even close. It wasn’t like anything she’d ever heard of.
Charity was pulled from the floor and swept up into the roaring maelstrom. Toren's hold on her wrists yanked hard. She squeezed his arms. The flow of magic between them stretched and thinned. She grasped at it, trying to hold on. They swirled around and around until she couldn't distinguish anything. It was all just a tumbling nauseating blurred mass.
The electrified whirling atmosphere pulled at her. Scraped across her bones. Fillings seemed to loosen in her teeth. Volcanoes erupted. Lava buried mountains and rogue waves ravished shores. Charity's skin peeled from her muscles.
Her kitchen was gone. Her apartment was gone. The world was gone.
She screamed, but the cry was snatched away in the roaring storm. She clung to Toren even as the vortex tried to tear them apart. She shot her magic out to remain ahold of his. And missed. The tenacious hold ripped away.
Toren shouted, his mouth working though she'd never know what he said for all at once he was wrenched away and something hard slammed into her.
She dropped with a whoosh, forcing the breath from her lungs.
The air stilled in abrupt silence.
Everything was quiet. Except the ringing in her head. She thrust her magic out, looking for Toren. Nothing. She couldn’t feel him, couldn’t feel his magic. It was just gone. He was just gone.
Shaky, Charity lifted her head. She was sprawled stomach down in the dewy grass, as naked as the day she was born.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Charity sprang up. She faced a tall and impossibly wide stone-fitted wall. She couldn't even see how far it went to either side.
She glanced at the green forest behind her, and then looked up at the bottom underside of a balcony about thirty feet above. Or perhaps it was a jutting turret castle thing that was casting a shadow over her head. Had she made it? Was she in Toren's time then?
Her nerves jangled like the keys of a jailor.
“Toren,” she shouted and stepped toward the wall—
And was thrown back onto her butt, her body prickling like she’d stuck a fork in an electrical outlet.
Ouch. Scrambling up to her knees, she reached forward and felt the pulsation graze her fingertips like an invisible barrier of crackling energy.
Not electricity. Magic. A spell.
That was the thing about witches. They were sort of like lesser sorcerers. They had a lot of the same abilities and could work a lot of the same type of magic, just not with the same amount of strength or oomph to it. Plus a witch’s magic didn’t just bubble out of her core like a healer’s or sorcerer’s did. A witch had to pull her magic out with the use of spells and potions and all sorts of magical objects. Yes, some witches even used wands as a focal object to call forth their magic and be able to focus it where they wanted it to go—as clichéd as that sounded.
Witches could also enhance the strength of their magic using spells and incantations to bind it with dark magic or even make deals with demons to become more powerful and more in control of being able to pull what is already inside them out from their core.
Because of this, witches—even good witches who never considered going dark side—had a bad reputation within the magical community.
The magical barrier buzzed across her palm.
No wonder Toren had been so roughly snatched away inside the weird time rift. This had to be Aldreth's castle with a spell around it to keep unwanted magic users out. While he'd been dragged back inside, the spell had repelled her.
Guess that explained the lack of guards around the area. Who needs soldiers when you have magical walls? Unless of course this was the back of the castle. There weren't any doors she could see. Maybe she could find some guards in the front.
Charity frowned, the realization of what she was up against rising to insurmountable odds. The spell Aldreth created just to make a barrier this size and constantly maintain had to be tremendous. Huge. She knew the witch was powerful. She’d have to be in order to conjure a spell on those bands strong enough to hold a sorcerer of Toren’s potency. It was a testament to his strength that he’d been able to slip their hold for even a short amount of time. But an entire shield around her castle too?
Her heart squeezed and then seemed to drop to her toes. A cooling breeze shivered across her skin.
She was in the friggin thirteenth century, still unable to get to Toren and naked as a hairless weasel.
This wasn't exactly what she'd had in mind.
Her first priority: Clothes. She couldn't exactly expect a shopping mall to crop up. However, if there were guards near the front gates, supposing there were even gates...for all she knew this was like Rapunzel's magical tower with only one way in or out. She eyed the balcony above again. Naw, don't borrow trouble. There had to be gates where she'd find guards and somehow pinch a uniform or something.
Plan made, she darted across the tall meadow grass and into the surrounding tree line for cover. Ow ow ow ow. Tiny rocks didn’t exactly make for easy walking. Safe in the shadows, she glanced back at the wall and walked straight into a tree.
A tree that grabbed her and rolled with her to the ground.
Why did this keep happening to her?
She was flat on her back squished beneath a long hard body. A curtain of black hair fell to one side of both their faces.
Hope blossomed in her chest. Had he somehow managed to remain out of the dungeon? “Toren?”
The long body stiffened. “Do not speak my brother's name, witch.” The guy—obviously not Toren—pushed upward, balancing on his elbows over her. Grey eyes, not blue, glared down at her, but the features, even the scowl, was so similar to Toren's, this man could only be his, well, brother.
“Col?” she guessed.
“Up here, lass.” Another voice replied amicably and Charity's gaze snapped beyond the massive Scotsman currently using her as a recliner and up into half a dozen more faces frowning down at her. She picked Col out easily as the fresh-faced tousle-haired youngest, who also bore an uncanny likeness to his eldest brother. Shapeshifter, the histories said of him, which made the scowling lug-not-in-any-hurry-to-get-off-her, Shaw.
Moon sifter. Whatever the hell that was.
“Get off me.” She shoved against him, well aware of how her breasts jiggled against his chest, and immediately stilled. Um. Perhaps he better stay right
where he was for the moment.
Crap. She was in some deep trouble. Sure, she'd managed to piggy-back upon Toren's magic and get herself to his time, but she'd also been separated from him with no way into the castle dungeon where she'd thought she'd simply be able to get those spelled wristbands off him and they could escape the dungeon together. It shouldn’t be too hard for her to figure out the spell and get them off because they weren’t spelled to her magic like they were to Toren’s. After that it'd be no problem for him to send her back to her own time and done would be done.
It had sounded so simple when she laid the plan out in her mind.
She'd been an idiot to think Aldreth wouldn't expect someone to try and get inside through magical means. The entire Limont Clan were the most powerful magic wielders of all time! Then again, she’d thought if her magic was connected to Toren’s magic while they rode through time, she’d end up exactly where he was. Inside already.
How was she supposed to know? It’s not like anyone had ever done this before.
“Let her up, Shaw,” the young one said. “Can ye not see you’ve frightened her to shivering?”
Shaw grunted, still not budging an inch. His hip bone dug into her thigh. “She's shivering because we caught her performing a witch's ritual while skyclad.”
“I am not—”
Shaw's large palm clamped over her mouth. “Quiet you. We’ll brook no foul spells coming forth from your wicked lips.”
Charity continued telling him that she was not a witch and exactly what he could do with his assumptions, although it came out as muffled gibberish which all the men ignored.
“I do not believe that's the witch,” one of the others said. He sported a perfectly clichéd Scottish red beard that could use a little one-on-one with a hedge trimmer, but he also had kind eyes and was immensely endearing since he at least seemed to be talking some sense.
Shaw rolled his eyes. “'Course it's not Aldreth. I do have eyes. But she's a witch nonetheless, working a spell out here for her mistress.”
Charity argued that she wasn't a witch at all, stupidhead, against his hand, which of course came out muffled and useless and completely ignored. If she was a witch, he’d be a toad already. A big bulgy one. With lots of warts.
“So, what do we do with her?” Col leaned his palms against the tip of a longbow.
Charity widened her eyes, more than a little interested in the answer to that question as well.
“Take her with us for now.” Fluidly, Shaw was on his feet, his hand removed from her mouth and was hauling her up in all her sheer naked glory on display.
“Wait!”
Before she knew what was what, Col's long plaid blanket thing was off his shoulder and wrapped around and around her, pinning her arms against her sides and a long cloth was shoved insider her mouth and tied behind her head seconds before Shaw bent and plowed his shoulder none too gently into her belly, lifting her off her feet and off they went, higher up into the forest.
Folded over his shoulder and without the use of her arms to brace herself, Charity swung with the rhythm of the big jerk's gait. Her cheek kept slapping his firmly muscled back, which she was sure made all the maidens around her swoon after him, but thudding against those muscles hurt. She felt lightheaded, her scalp tingling from her hair hanging down and all the blood rushing to her head.
They climbed up into the dense forest while she called them every name she could think of and some she made up, not that they could understand her beneath the gag, though she was certain at one particular savory curse, she felt Shaw's back ripple with quiet laughter.
She hated him the most. If he would've only taken ten seconds to hear her out she could have explained everything.
The Highlanders skirted a circle of large standing boulders, and then trudged through a stream. Freezing water splashed up at Charity's face. The forest and dirt and brush blurred around her. Her stomach hurt, jostled on stupid Shaw's shoulder and collarbone. The beginnings of a headache pulsed behind her eyes.
“I'm going to be sick,” she shouted against the wadded material, but of course they couldn’t understand her and nothing was done to ease her discomfort. Did these men never need to take a rest? Stop to pee? Anything?
Friggin robotrons.
Clenching her muscles against the nausea, Charity closed her eyes, hoping to ride it out. Although it really would serve Shaw right if she upchucked all down the back side of his exposed legs.
They ran on and on and when she was dumped on the ground, it took her a moment to realize the world had stopped rocking.
Blinking, she looked around to get her bearings. She was alone in some kind of cave. Well, er, not a cave then, but some kind of small lean-to structure with long branches lashed together and curved into a type of dome and more piney bows making up the walls. Muted sunlight filtered in between the branches. Not exactly an airtight enclosure. Furs, blankets and satchel packs, even some axes and longbows were scattered about or leaning up against the leafy walls.
Ha! They shouldn't have left her alone near weapons.
CHAPTER NINE
Rolling to her side, Charity tried to figure out where the end of the plaid she was mummified within was so she could get her arms free. She gouged at the dirt with her heels while she squirmed side-to-side in an attempt to loosen the overly long cloth.
The blanket serving as a door lifted and Shaw ducked inside, paused and scowled at her. Col entered next, though his features lightened with an amused grin. “Ye look like a fish floundering on land, lass. Here, allow me to assist.”
He crouched down and pulled her to a sitting position to begin working on the knot behind her head. “Be still, 'tis caught in your hair.”
“Col.” Shaw growled like a worked-up watchdog. “Be wary. She's a witch.”
The door-blanket-plaid-whatever was thrown aside once more.
“We'll soon know the right of that.” Stooping to enter the low entrance was the most stunning woman Charity had ever seen. Thick auburn hair swayed around the thin yet curvy form. All that was needed was the soft gray gown to loosen and expose one shoulder and a bit of breast for the woman to look like the heroine on the cover of a historic romance novel.
Col got the gag unknotted and pulled it roughly out. Charity jerked her head away from him. “I'm not a witch.” She spit out fluff from the gag. “I’m Charity Greves from Seattle and all of you are brutes and morons.”
“Sea-at-all?” Col’s nose scrunched up. Shaw merely shook his head, arms folded over his broad chest.
“'Course she’s no witch.” The cover model crouched before her, gown puffing up around her. Her lips pressed tight and her forehead wrinkled in thought. “Anyone can see that. She's a Healer Enchantress. A powerful one.”
“Healer?” Col's brows shot up, disappearing beneath his overlong bangs.
Powerful? Charity restrained from snorting. The girl just proclaimed her not a witch, which the guys seemed to buy into, so she wasn't about to argue the point. But powerful? That was stretching it a bit.
“You're certain?” Shaw frowned.
The girl gave him a bland look that had the perpetually angry warrior lifting his hands in a gesture of surrender.
Across Charity, Col and the girl shared matching grins. Both of their lips hitched up at one corner, popping out identical dimples.
Wait a minute. Siblings. The sister, what was her name? Irene, Deena or something. An empath. Just by proximity, she'd be able to feel if Charity's magic breathed of witchcraft or touched upon healing.
“Verra well, Edeen, she's not a witch.” Shaw leaned over them all. “Then what was she doing traipsing about skyclad outside Aldreth's lair? And why was Toren's name the first to cross her lips?”
“Now that is a fair question.” Edeen's brow arched just like Toren's had.
Three expectant faces turned toward Charity. She wiggled her arms inside the cumbersome plaid. “Get me out of this and I'll tell you. And for the record, I don’t traip
se.”
Shaw leaned even closer, bending low over Col's head where the young man crouched next to her. “You'll tell us now.”
Charity's pulse stormed to life. His glare alone was brittle enough to crack windows.
“Ye best answer the question.” Edeen folded her arms. Where she'd seemed to be on her side for all of half a minute before, it was clear that when it concerned her brother, Charity's welfare wouldn't be the priority.
“I healed Toren,” she blurted out. Why not? She'd come to help Toren, and by extension, his family anyway. They should be grateful to her.
The brothers and sister glanced at each other uncertainly, faces leaching of color.
Shaw recovered his composure first. Of course he did. “The witch brought ye in to heal Toren? She's hurt him that badly then?” Something changed in his eyes, like a flashlight beam suddenly flickering across a raw vulnerability that lay hidden far deep down. It tugged at something in Charity's belly. Seeing it was difficult so she looked to the others who wore their concern openly. Nope, that wasn’t much better.
“No,” she whispered, the tone resonating with the worry she'd glimpsed in the siblings. The last thing she wanted to do was cause them any more concern, their rough treatment aside. “Toren came to me.”
The dark veil in Shaw's eyes snapped back into place. “Our brother is imprisoned by the Alduein witch. He could not come to you.”
Charity wiggled on her bottom. It was growing numb. She was tired of the defenseless position. Instead she jutted out her chin. “He traveled through a time rift. He said he searched for a healer who Aldreth couldn't threaten. He merely wanted a little reprieve so he could endure longer for his clan to get away.”
The three went uncannily still, each with varying expressions of wariness.
“That sounds like something Toren would do.” Col nodded. “Clever. Still imprisoned, yet he’s thwarting Aldreth at every turn.” He turned to Charity, one eye squinting as he asked, “Was he hurt terribly?”