He walked to the balcony and stared out at the night and the world beyond his compound. Here he’d offered her safety. He’d offered her power and the mating that would usher them both from the dark past into a future unstained with old sins and bitter regrets.
And she’d fled from it.
“By the stars,” he muttered, “what was she thinking? Does she really trust herself to the compassion of humans?”
Rune came up beside him and clapped one hand on Torin’s shoulder in camaraderie. “You said yourself, she doesn’t remember. Doesn’t know yet who and what she is. Or what you are to her.”
Torin turned on him, fury bubbling like a black brew. “And I’m to be patient for how long? For centuries, we’ve waited. Now that the time’s come, I should have taken her the moment she entered this house. I thought to give her time to adjust. To accept that the mating would begin.” He pushed away from the balcony rail and shook back his long fall of black hair. “No, patience has not served any of us. Now I will find her and we end this. Finally and at last, we end it.”
Rune stared at him for a long moment before nodding agreement. Torin didn’t care whether his fellow Eternal shared his sentiments or not. Nothing mattered now but Shea Jameson. And may the gods protect whoever was trying to keep her from him. Because Torin was devoid of mercy.
He set one hand on the railing and vaulted over the balcony. He landed softly, just beyond the bush that had obviously broken Shea’s fall. Idiot woman, did she not realize what she risked by putting her own life in danger? Did she really believe that the humans of this world were more trustworthy than her Eternal?
Chapter 6
More scared than she’d ever been, Shea fought back as strong hands grabbed her and dragged her off her feet. Before she could take a breath to scream, a heavy hand dropped over her mouth. She tried to bite it, but failed.
“Lock her down!” A different voice, deeper, whispered the command. More than one man was circling her, touching her, wrestling her to the ground.
“Watch her hands!” someone else muttered viciously.
Her hands. The energy pulse. The fire. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, but she wasn’t going to allow them to hurt her, either. She lifted both palms, but dropped them again when she was slapped so viciously that her head snapped to one side and tears spurted from her eyes.
Still, she kicked out wildly, and in her blind attempt to free herself, connected with someone. She heard a grunt of pain. Then another man grabbed her ankles and held her still. Shea bucked in their grasp, writhing and struggling, but they were too strong and there were just too many of them.
Fear rose up fast and thick inside her. Her mind raced and her heart beat so frantically, she felt as though it would pop out of her chest. She’d been caught. Before she’d made it a mile from Torin’s home, she’d been found and trapped. And if she didn’t think fast, she was going to disappear at someone else’s hands.
Something cold draped around her neck and even while she struggled, Shea sensed a weight dropping onto her soul. She felt heavy, leaden. Her body wasn’t affected by whatever they’d done to her, but her soul was being crushed. She tried to lift her hands, but couldn’t find the will. The spark of energy she’d felt that afternoon when she’d faced the mugger was blocked up inside her, struggling, as she was, to escape.
“Stupid witch,” one of the men whispered, so close to her ear that she felt his hot breath on her skin, “you think we’ll give you a chance to fry us the way you did that poor bastard today?”
Oh, God. “I didn’t-”
Someone slapped her again, but she couldn’t see who. It didn’t matter. They were all against her. All of them working in concert to keep her from escaping. They might as well have been one entity. In the darkness the men surrounding her were merely darker shadows. Moving, constantly moving, as if they were being careful to not make themselves targets.
She couldn’t hurt them-and they knew it, so their caution was simply born of their underlying fear. That she understood. Hadn’t she been living with ripe, glorious fear for more than ten years herself? Hadn’t she jolted at every knock on the door? Every ring of the phone? And what good had any of it done her?
She’d still ended up here, a captive lying in the dirt, with strangers’ hands moving over her as she lay trapped. Whatever “power” she might have had was asleep. And she wished to hell it wasn’t.
Yes, this afternoon she’d killed a man with magic and had been sorry for it. Now, she would give anything to have that power at her command. She had to get away. And there was no chance of escape now. That strong hand stayed cupped over her mouth while she was forced onto her stomach. Bits of dirt and gravel dug into her face. Her arms were wrenched behind her back and a plastic zip tie was fixed around her wrists, digging painfully into her skin.
She moaned and squirmed against the restraints until a new voice entered the fray and Shea stilled to listen.
“It’s her, isn’t it?” A woman’s voice, excited, breathless. “I was right. I knew it, I told my husband when I saw her at that man’s balcony, ‘that’s the woman from the news,’ I said. The witch who killed that poor man today.”
That was how they’d caught up to her, Shea thought with an inner groan. A civilian had spotted her and turned her in. But who did the woman call? Who were these men and what were they going to do to her now?
“Yeah, it’s her, lady,” a man said in a voice hoarse from too many cigarettes. “Now get on back to your house. We’ll take care of this.”
Take care of it how? Shea wondered frantically. Were they going to kill her? Torture and rape her first? Witches had no rights and she knew that a grateful public would no doubt pin a medal on anyone who could prove he’d killed one.
Suddenly Torin was looking much better to her. Now she wanted nothing more than to be back in that luxurious room with the tall, fierce-looking man standing between her and danger. If that made her a coward, she was willing to live with it. But since she was on her own, she had to try to reason with the men hulking around her.
How many were there? Three? Four?
Her heartbeat thundered in her ears and the taste of fear was sharp and bitter on her tongue. She squirmed ineffectually against the man holding her from behind, but managed to twist her face free of the other man’s hand.
“Stop, please… I’m not what you think.” Lies. She was exactly what they thought she was. What she’d denied being for ten long years. And the worst part? They all knew it.
“Hear that?” a man on her right said, then mocked in a falsetto tone, “Please.”
“Don’t listen to her,” another one told him. “She might spell you.”
If only she could.
Someone snorted, then ordered, “Go get the van.”
Van?
They were taking her somewhere. And how would Torin ever find her?
She shook her head, desperate now to somehow reach these men. “I don’t know any spells. Really. I’m not what you think. I’m a sixth-grade science teacher. That’s all. This is a huge mistake.”
Her only hope was to convince the men she was innocent. But, she reminded herself, mistakes happened all the time these days and women still disappeared.
“Gag her.”
“No!” She was already bound-if they gagged her too, she didn’t think she could stand it. Shea pulled in a deep, terrified breath. She was out of time, out of hope. No one was riding to her rescue. There was no cavalry and she’d just run from the one person who might have kept her safe.
She was falling into a hole of her own making and now she could do nothing to keep it from growing even deeper. She was flipped over onto her back and despite her pleas, one of the men leaned down to fix a gag to her mouth. And she got her first good look at her captors.
Black uniforms. Yellow armbands. Gold badges that winked in the indistinct light.
The Magic Police had finally caught up with her.
Chapter 7
Torin
noted Rune jumping down after him, but he didn’t wait for his old friend. Instead, he followed the fading scent of his woman and rushed across the yard to the wall. Through the blind rage and the pressing need to find her, a flicker of admiration rose up inside him.
She’d climbed the damn tree and scaled the wall to escape him. Shea Jameson was a woman of strength. A witch of great power. And one with a spine stiff enough to take risks she had no business considering. While he could stand to one side and respect her formidable will, he resented the fact that she had risked her life rather than trusting him to protect her.
When he found her, he would make sure he convinced her never to defy him again. She would trust him because it was by damn his due. Hadn’t he been at her side when death had claimed her, lifetime after lifetime? Hadn’t he been waiting for her soul to be reborn so that he could once again pick up the mantle of protector?
Would this not prove to the woman that he had earned his place at her side?
Once on the street, he followed her trail, running through the darkness, at home in the shadows as he was nowhere else. The roar of the ocean thundered in the background as waves crashed against the cliffs. Lights blazed in the houses he passed, but he paid them no mind. What did he care for civilians when his mind was focused solely on his witch?
Torin stopped dead when her scent abruptly disappeared. He caught no sign of her on the wind and even reaching with the deeper senses of an Eternal gained him nothing. Shea had disappeared as completely as if she’d stepped into a hole in the earth. Muttering darkly under his breath, he dropped to one knee to closely examine the ground.
There’d been a fight here. A struggle. She’d been forced to the ground by three-four men. And a woman. Torin frowned to himself as he recognized the scent of one of his neighbors. A nosy older woman forever spying on the world outside her own home. She must have seen Shea at the house and reported her. Which meant those who had taken Shea were no doubt official agents.
That was something, he told himself, even as a wild, frantic urge to find her swamped him. Officials, though cruel, rarely killed the women they captured outright. They would take her to a camp. Somewhere they could interrogate her. Lock her away. From him.
The rage already blistering Torin’s insides flashed into a consuming inferno as he felt the lingering traces of Shea’s fear and panic. He looked up, long hair lifting in the wind as his eyes narrowed on the dark road stretching out before him. Human males had grabbed his woman and if they had hurt her, he told himself, then they had best hope their God was looking out for them.
Rune ran up to join him as Torin stood. Cold, vicious fury burned within him, strangling every breath, flooding him with an iciness that was as black as the night surrounding them.
“Gone,” he said, the one word ground from his throat like jagged glass. His body tensed, his huge hands curling into fists at his sides. He couldn’t feel her. Couldn’t sense her presence anywhere. And that meant only one thing.
Whoever had taken her had locked her powers down.
“Where?”
Torin turned his head to glance briefly at his friend. “No telling. I can’t sense her.”
Rune cursed under his breath and then quieted, gathering his own strength for whatever came next.
Torin felt the warmth of solidarity begin to ease away the ice within him.
“We follow the scents of her captors as far as we can.” He knew even the stench of humanity would dissipate with the wind and distance. But it was somewhere to start.
He lifted his arms and allowed the fire that was the essence of him to come. Flames danced and licked across his skin until every inch of his body hummed with the magical energy rushing through him. He felt his strength swell and build until finally it erupted, filling each of his cells with the power he had commanded for centuries.
He didn’t care if the old woman or any of his other neighbors glanced out their windows and saw him. Torin wouldn’t bother disguising himself or his true nature. The humans could do nothing to him and he had no time to camouflage himself simply to prevent them from having to admit the existence of even more magic.
Now he focused his mind on one thing.
Finding the men who had taken Shea from him.
Their scents were still clear to him, staining the very air with trace signatures. He easily picked up on the lingering sense of the men’s fear and arousal. These men enjoyed their work, he realized grimly-capturing and tormenting women, whether witch or not. Soon, Torin thought, he would show them the error of their ways. But first he would use them as they used the women they captured to feed their own base instincts.
He would allow these men to guide him to the only woman in the world who mattered.
He looked again at Rune and saw that he, too, was enveloped in living flames, the immortal soul of each Eternal. With the strength of the fire coursing through them, they could travel short distances in the span of a breath. Their magic was less complicated than the witches to whom they were bound. But their physical strength and their prowess at battle more than made up the difference.
Magic flowed through the Eternals, yet as powerful as they were, they faced limits that could leave them vulnerable to an enemy. Flashing themselves across distances took a toll and would eventually drain the very powers they depended on.
When they took someone else along for the ride, their powers were taxed that much more quickly.
Even Eternals required rest or the magic of sex to restore their body’s energies. But he couldn’t afford to waste time worrying about whether he would be strong enough to free Shea once he found her. Instead, he would push himself to the very limits of his abilities. And if an enemy caught him at a weak moment? He would still find a way.
For Shea, there was nothing he wouldn’t do.
Wouldn’t risk.
“We go now,” he ordered.
Rune nodded.
And in an instant the flames winked out and all that was left on the road were the ever-spreading shadows.
Chapter 8
“That wasn’t so hard,” one of the men said from the back of the van.
Shea lay at his feet, stretched out on a smelly gray carpet. There were no interior lights in what had to be a cargo van. A row of seats ran along each side of the vehicle while she lay like an offering on an altar in front of the men celebrating her capture. There were three of them back here with her, and one driving.
They’d sent four men to capture one witch.
She didn’t know whether to be amused, flattered or even more scared. Clearly, the worldwide fear of magic was growing. They were taking no chances anymore.
The shadows were thick inside the van, but as they whizzed along the freeway, the outside lights flashed across the faces of her captors like a rhythmical, painfully bright strobe.
She wasn’t comforted by what she saw.
These men looked hard and cold. Their features were taut and their eyes were bright with both fear and excitement. That didn’t bode well for her. The older ones were watching her warily, while the one young recruit in the bunch had more than curiosity shining in his eyes. There was a raw hunger there, too. Shea inched a little farther away from him.
The men noticed her slight movement and a booted foot came down on her middle. “You just lay there, witch. Don’t try a damn thing. You hear me?”
She shivered, nodded and avoided meeting their gazes again, not wanting to give them any reason to get rougher with her than they had already. Magic Police. Legal bullies, she thought, trying to keep her features from betraying her thoughts.
The MPs were one of the first agencies that had sprung up after magic had been outed to the world. Headlines around the globe trumpeted the news that all of those sleazy tabloid papers had been right all along. Magic did exist. The public outcry for protection from so-called deviants had resulted in every nation pushing through legislation to somehow identify and then secure supposed witches. It had sounded reasonable even to Sh
ea at the time, despite the fact that her own aunt Mairi had been the first witch to be captured in the United States.
Locating and securing women of power had seemed a logical response. Of course it would be safer for these women to be studied and kept from hurting anyone else. Her aunt hadn’t meant to kill, any more than Shea herself had.
While the general population ranted about public safety, Congress and other bodies like it had kept cool heads, talking only about security.
But even laws written with the best of intentions sometimes became another entity entirely over time. Mairi’s execution had heralded the first change. And during the last ten years, the agencies formed to keep witches secure had instead become jailers and executioners. All under the legal government stamp of approval.
People didn’t care what happened to a witch-as long as she wasn’t living in their neighborhood.
As with anything else, though, there were underground movements within movements. Just as BOW and the MPs had gained in authority and popularity, there were other groups equally dedicated in their own way to finding the witches. Religious zealots saw a witch’s power as an affront to God. The Seekers hunted witches in the hopes of somehow stealing their powers for themselves. The RFW, Rights for Witches, struggled and fought through the court system, claiming that a witch was entitled to basic human rights.
Everyone wanted something from the magic community, which was now so deeply in hiding that most of the women captured by hunters were ordinary humans, with no powers at all. Just as with the Salem witch trials so long ago, all it took was innuendo, rumor or an enemy with a grudge, and any woman could find herself locked away with little hope of eventual release.
Shea still couldn’t understand how any of this was happening-not in general, but to her in particular. Hard enough to accept that magic was alive and well. But to acknowledge that she was a witch was an even harder admission. She’d been denying the possibility for years. Ever since her aunt Mairi’s public execution.
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