Visions of Magic a-1

by Regan Hastings

  Shea’s mind whisked back to that last day with her aunt, her only family. She’d been granted a “private” visit with Mairi, in an openly bugged room, mainly because the MPs and BOW were hoping to catch Shea saying something incriminating about herself.

  But they’d been disappointed. She and Mairi had cried together, had tried to make sense of what had happened and then they’d prayed, futilely as it turned out, for a presidential pardon.

  There was no hope to be found. Not when there were dozens of witnesses ready to testify that they had seen fire leap from Mairi’s hands to engulf the abusive exhusband trying to drag her off. Self-defense hadn’t even come into the trial. A witch, people said, had nothing to fear and was instead herself a living, breathing weapon.

  Mairi, stunned by what she’d done, unable to understand how it had happened, hadn’t been able to explain a thing. She had been too traumatized to even attempt to save her own life.

  The general public hadn’t wanted an explanation anyway. What they wanted was blood. Eye for an eye. They quoted the Bible-Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Reporters followed Shea, as Mairi’s only living relative, waiting for her to display the same kind of power. It was hereditary, pseudoscientists claimed on every nightly talk show. In the blood. If Mairi was a witch, then it stood to reason her niece would be, too.

  And Shea had been all too worried that they were right.

  When Mairi was tied to the very modern steel pole in the middle of a gas grid, Shea had stood there, keeping her gaze locked with her aunt’s. Every instinct she had was yelling at her to run. To get as far from what was happening as possible. But she couldn’t. She had to stay. For Mairi. So that her aunt could die knowing that not everyone in the room relished her suffering.

  As the prison guard had flipped a single switch, gas rushed from pipes beneath Mairi’s feet. Then another switch provided the spark that ignited a conflagration. In seconds, Mairi was in the middle of an inferno.

  Her screams still echoed in Shea’s dreams.

  After that, Shea had disappeared. She’d left everything she had known. Walked away from her job, her apartment. She’d had no friends to lose, since they had slipped away as soon as Mairi was arrested. Shea cut her dark red hair, dyed it a nearly invisible shade of dark blond and became one of the people she used to give dollar bills to when she passed them on the street. For a while, she stayed in shelters, not trusting any city long enough to remain in one place for more than a night or two.

  But after a year or so she took a job as a waitress, working for cash, no questions asked. She rented a room from her boss and even briefly made a friend. For six months, she had lived like a regular person. Then a news program ran a “Whatever Happened To…” segment, starring her. They’d showed clips of Mairi’s execution and shots of Shea tearfully defending her aunt to news media that couldn’t have cared less.

  She ran again that night.

  And hid in one big city after another. She’d managed to stay under the radar, avoiding BOW and the MPs, always staying one step ahead of them even as she kept up a facade of normalcy. Finally, a year and a half ago, she’d retaken her own name and accepted a job doing what she loved. She’d thought at the time that the principal who hired her was broad-minded enough to overlook the fact that Shea’s aunt had been executed as a witch. She had to wonder now if perhaps Ms. Talbot hadn’t hired her as a favor to BOW so that they could keep an eye on her.

  Whether it was true or not, all of that was over.

  Now she knew she was what they had long suspected her to be. The accusations were true. They knew what she was capable of. And so did she.

  “We’re not there yet,” a deep voice said. “Don’t let down your guard until we’ve handed her over. No telling what a trapped witch will be able to do.”

  Trapped.

  She really was. She was on her own.

  Under different circumstances, she would have found the situation laughable, since that was the reason she’d left Torin’s house-to be on her own, trusting no one but herself.

  See how well that had gone.

  “White gold stops their powers for real?”

  Oh, God, that was what they’d put around her neck the moment they’d grabbed her. White gold. No wonder she felt as though there was a lead weight pressing on her soul.

  Shea turned her head toward the speaker, the youngest, most excited one of the group. He leaned forward, bracing his forearms on his thighs, and watched her as if he expected her head to start spinning around. As if he were looking forward to watching it. He licked his lips in anticipation and she shivered again before turning her head away.

  “Yeah,” someone else said and Shea closed her eyes. “White gold shuts their power down flat. Don’t really know why. Something about it being a conglomeration of an element of the earth or some damn thing.” He snorted and Shea sighed. “Doc Fender figured it out about eight or nine years back and we’ve been using it ever since to trap these bitches and keep ’em compliant.”

  “Any of ’em ever get away?” the young one asked. “I mean, you know, do magic even with the white gold chain around their neck?”

  Shea listened carefully, longing for a ray of hope. She was disappointed.

  “Not a one. The white gold shuts ’em down, makes’em as helpless as kittens.” He drew a breath and released it. “Supposed to act like a sort of a blanket, covering up what they can do.”

  “Then why do we have her tied up and gagged?”

  “Just cuz she can’t use magic don’t mean she can’t scratch your eyes out or kick your nuts up into your throat. You want to risk it?”

  Disgusted with herself for not doing exactly that back when they’d first captured her, Shea tried to ignore the conversation rolling around her. She didn’t care what they had to say anymore. They were just the henchmen. The guys who did the dirty work for the Bureau of Witchcraft. It was BOW she was worried about.

  The MPs were probably taking her to an internment center. If she was lucky. If not, she would just vanish until her body was discovered in a culvert somewhere. But no, she thought, if they were going to kill her, they could have done that already.

  She stared out the back window of the van and groaned as the wheels hit something in the road. Her body jostled and every square inch of her felt the ache. But pain wasn’t important. What she wanted to know was where she was headed and what she could expect.

  Was it only yesterday afternoon when she’d warned her student Amanda Hall to run because her mother wouldn’t be leaving whatever camp she’d been taken to? Now… less than twenty-four hours later, Shea herself was in the same situation. Ironic? Or just punishment?

  She had killed, after all. There was no denying it.

  Outside the van, freeway lights flashed by and the roar of traffic sounded like a caged beast trying to get inside the van.

  “Did she really kill a man today?” the young voice again. “She looks so… helpless.”

  “Helpless? Not likely,” someone growled with a snort. “Bitch flipped that poor son of a bitch the bird and he went up like a tiki torch at a barbecue.”

  A couple of the men laughed and Shea closed her eyes on a wave of sorrow. She’d have to live with what she’d done-if she was allowed to live at all.

  “Shut up, Dave.” The strongest voice spoke up again. Then he leaned out over Shea so she could look up into his face.

  He had dark eyes, short dark hair and a jaw that looked as though it could have been carved of granite. The name stitched into his uniform read L. HARPER. In another life she might have found him attractive, until she looked into his eyes long enough. His dark eyes were filled with hatred. There was nothing soft or merciful about him and as his gaze met hers she tried to cringe back from his hard stare.

  “Don’t you get fooled by how a witch looks, kid,” he said, speaking to the other man as he stared into Shea’s eyes. “They’re all evil. Right down to the core. Kill you as soon as look at you and do whatever they hav
e to, to escape.”

  Shea shook her head wildly, trying to silently argue with him, but he wasn’t buying it.

  “Don’t try the big sad eyes on me, witch,” he murmured, leaning in so that he could speak in a whisper. “I’ve seen what your kind can do. And I’m not going to rest until you’re all locked up or burned at the stake. With any luck, you’re going to end up just like your aunt did.”

  Tears fell from the corners of her eyes and streaked into her hair, but Shea couldn’t stop them. Fear clawed at her chest, scraped at her throat. She looked up into those eyes and saw her own death written there.

  And though it was far too late, she silently screamed for the one person she believed could have saved her.

  Torin!

  Chapter 9

  Torin faced an ugly truth. He had no idea where Shea had been taken. She could be at any one of several internment camps-or she might have been killed outright.

  But even as that thought registered, he rejected it. Though he couldn’t sense her, he had no doubt that if she were dead, his body would feel her absence. It had been so in the past and he had no reason to suspect that it had changed. She lived. But where was she?

  “Which do we try first?” Rune’s voice, sounding as irritated as Torin felt, shattered his thoughts.

  Scowling into the night, Torin considered their options. They had already followed the scent of Shea’s captors as far as they could. But the trail had ended on the 405 freeway, close enough to a transition that the car carrying Shea away from him could have gone in either of two directions.

  A decision must be made. Any action was preferable to a stalemate.

  The challenge lay in forcing himself to think like a human. Their minds were convoluted; logic rarely reared its head. The mortals he’d known over the centuries were driven by fear-which led to mystifying choices that often left Torin wondering how they had managed to survive as a species. But now, to find his woman, he must find a way to guess what these particular humans would do next.

  There were two internment camps within driving distance of Malibu. The first lay deep in the Angeles National Forest, surrounded by hundreds of acres of emptiness. Secluded, far from any city, it would be the more difficult of the two to infiltrate, since there was nothing but open space around the camp itself-leaving any who approached visible to the guards standing watch.

  The other was on Terminal Island in Long Beach. Closer, but far easier to find a way in. With the city surrounding it and the busy traffic of a harbor, he and Rune would hardly be noticed. Once a prison, it had been turned into a detention camp when the first witches were discovered. The camps were all heavily guarded, he knew. And their fences were laced with white gold that would tax the Eternals’ powers. His choice was which location to try first.

  He was tempted to take the closer route, investigate the camp in Long Beach. But if Shea were not there, the authorities would be on alert from his visit and all of the camps would be strengthened, making the Angeles Forest camp that much harder to penetrate. The same would hold true once he and Rune invaded the old FEMA camp in the woods, but even on high alert Long Beach would be easier to breach.

  “We go to Angeles Forest,” he said finally. Decision made. But before he left he threw another long look at the freeway stretching out toward Long Beach.

  He would find her. Wherever she was.

  No one could keep her from him.

  Chapter 10

  The Terminal Island internment camp used to be a federal prison. It squatted on an artificial island between Los Angeles Harbor and Long Beach Harbor. Back when California was still a Spanish territory, the island was little more than a mudflat known to locals as Rattlesnake Island. But in the early twentieth century, the feds built a prison there and called it Terminal Island. The name had always had a sort of funereal feel to it, in Shea’s mind. But she’d never really noticed it much unless she was driving over the Vincent Thomas Bridge to San Pedro.

  Now, though, everything had changed. The island had been emptied of everyday criminals when witchcraft was exposed and now it housed hundreds of suspected witches. Turned out people were more afraid of magic-casting women than they were of common murderers.

  “What that says about people, I don’t know,” Shea whispered to herself, carrying a set of sheets along with a flat pillow and a threadbare blanket in her arms. She marched behind a heavily armed female guard and two other prisoners. She wasn’t the only witch to have been captured tonight.

  Fluorescent lights cast an ugly glow over the sickly green walls and the faces of women peering through their barred cell doors. Shea felt dozens of stares fixed on her and she could only suppose that watching the arrival of new prisoners was the sole entertainment the women in here got.

  She tipped her head back to look around and saw that above her there was another whole floor of cells. She wondered just how many women had been tucked away in this prison and forgotten. Her stomach churned and the heaviness on her soul felt worse than ever. The white gold chain around her neck continued to send icy threads of misery throughout her body as if reminding her that there was nothing she could do to free herself.

  She took a deep breath and cast sidelong glances to the cells she passed on her walk. Women of all different ages and races stared back at her, hopelessness glistening in their eyes as they watched the latest arrivals.

  Soon, Shea thought, she’d be one of them. Just another rat in a cage, locked away until someone, somewhere, decided what was to be done with her. And though the thought of being shut up behind bars terrified her, the noise in the prison was the worst part.

  The incessant clang of steel bars slamming shut. The desperate sobbing, and under it all the softly pitched crackle of women’s voices rising and falling to the rhythm of the sea just beyond the prison walls. A guard shouted, a woman cried out and somewhere close by another prisoner moaned as if she were dying.

  Despair clung to the walls and tainted every breath Shea drew. Panic was clawing at her, closing her throat so she could barely breathe, filling her eyes with tears she refused to shed. She wouldn’t give her jailers the satisfaction of seeing how scared she really was.

  The female guard pushed the first woman in their line into a cell and slammed the door shut. The clang jolted Shea out of her thoughts and sent a cold ball of lead dropping into the pit of her stomach. Again they walked, continuing on past the rows of cells, their measured steps drowned in the cacophony of sound.

  Shea’s mind continued to turn to the fierce man who had rescued her less than a day ago. She’d run from him, thinking that he was too dangerous. Too connected to the visions that haunted her. Would she have been in deeper trouble if she had stayed with him? Right now, she couldn’t imagine that.

  The guard stopped and the prisoner in front of Shea stepped into a cell, the metal door sliding shut behind her with a finality that was soul shattering. Then it was only Shea, following the grim-faced guard.

  An hour or so ago, the men who had captured her had reluctantly turned her over to the prison guards and Shea had been almost grateful. Yes, this was prison and God knew when-or if-she’d ever get out again. But at least, she’d told herself, she was away from the more imminent physical threat the men had presented.

  Her arms tightened around her burden and the scent of bleach wafted up to her from the well-washed fabrics. She wore a pale blue jumpsuit and white sneakers with no laces. Her hair was loose and still damp from the supervised shower she’d been forced to take on arrival.

  The tiny humiliations that had been heaped on her made all of this seem even more surreal. A bored prison guard had run her fingers through Shea’s long, thick hair, looking for concealed weapons. Another guard had watched Shea strip and then searched her discarded clothing. She tried not to recall the degradation of the strip search. And thinking about the inoculation the nurse had made as painful as possible only made her want to cry, which was useless. Then there was the open shower area that almost reminded Shea o
f high school gym classes until the water came on and it was icy cold. Two female guards had kept watch while Shea bathed as quickly as she could and then dried herself with a scratchy white towel.

  The only item she’d been allowed to hang on to was the white gold chain around her neck, lying like ice against her skin. The cold sensations sank deep into her spirit, blanketing whatever she was or might have been.

  This was her life now, she thought, glancing into the cells as she passed, watching woman after woman meet her gaze, then look away. A few stood, chins lifted, quietly defiant, but they were in the minority. Most had been beaten, emotionally if not physically. They, like her, were trapped in a cage designed to hold them forever.

  There was no presumption of innocence for a witch.

  “In you go.”

  Shea looked at the guard in front of her and then turned her head toward the open cell door. Swallowing the bitter taste of fear and regret, Shea walked into the narrow, cheerless room. Pale green walls here too, in a cell no bigger than six feet by five feet. There was a slender bunk covered by a thin mattress, a bare toilet and a tiny sink with buttons rather than faucet handles. A single hard chair was the only other appointment in Shea’s new home. Glancing around, a fathomless well of desolation rose up within her. She let out a long sigh and slowly turned to watch the guard close the cell door, shutting her in.

  Smiling, the guard stepped close to the bars and Shea moved back two paces, driven away by the cold gleam in the guard’s eyes.

  “I heard about you,” the woman said, her voice nearly lost in the surrounding swell of sound. “Killed a man today, didn’t you? Enjoy it?”

  “Of course not,” Shea said, arms tightening around the bundle of bedsheets.

  “Sure, I believe you.” Sarcasm was thick in her voice and the woman’s eyes flashed with something dangerous. “Everyone knows what happened. Word spreads fast in a place like this. You used magic to kill a man.”