Besides, she argued silently, how else could she explain any of this?
“You’re a witch. I’m your Eternal. It’s as it has been between us since the beginning.”
She breathed deep, drawing in the fading scent of the ocean as they raced in the opposite direction, headed God knew where. It was too much. All of it. Her Eternal. Centuries. Magic. How was she supposed to make sense of this? How was she supposed to know what to do? If her memories were true, then she had made the wrong call before. What was to prevent her from doing it again?
A fresh wash of sickness rushed through her.
“Stop the car!”
“No.”
Fury erupted inside her at the way he dismissed her need. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. She felt as if she were ready to burst. She needed out of that damn car. She needed to stand on her own two feet and try to remember who she was now. That was the woman she was interested in. Shea Jameson in the here and now. She couldn’t change the past, but she could, by God, have a say in her present and her future.
Something rose up inside her as if she had called for it. Rising, burning, it nearly choked her in an effort to escape. She surrendered to that feeling, rode the wave of it as it crested within her and moments later, she literally saw sparks flying in the air between her and the huge man in the driver’s seat.
Like flares lifting from a campfire, the sparks shone frantically, then went out, but ever more of them appeared, swirling like a swarm of fireflies. When she shouted “Stop!” a second time, a rush of power filled the word and the high-performance car sputtered and died.
“Damn it, I don’t know whether to be proud or pissed.” He cursed low and deep as he steered the coasting car to the side of the freeway.
They were near Irvine Ranch now and traffic blew past them as if they didn’t exist. Shea hardly waited for the car to stop completely before she opened the door and bailed. She heard Torin swearing viciously again, but paid no attention as she waved one hand in front of her, shattering the fence that bordered wide-open hills and valleys spilling along the freeway.
The wind screamed at her and the roar of traffic sounded as if it were twenty miles instead of twenty feet behind her. She ran, her feet stumbling on the uneven ground, and then she was in the high grass, still running. Above her, the first stars were bursting into the sky. The moon was a sliver, casting no light into the darkness, but she didn’t care about that.
She ran because she had to.
Because the haunting memories overtaking her were too much to handle.
Not just of the last few days, when she’d found out what it was to be locked down and helpless… but the memories of the past-of lives she’d lived and died. Memories of dark magic and chanting voices. And Torin.
Always Torin.
He caught up to her in a matter of seconds. His big hand came down on her arm and he spun her around to look at him. “Running away?” he challenged. “This is what you’ve become? A coward?”
“I’m no coward,” she shouted back, mortified to feel the sting of tears.
“Where would you go? Half the country will be looking for you by morning.”
“I don’t care,” she cried, her power rushing through her, as if now that it had been unleashed it was too much to control. Fire tipped the ends of her fingers like the tiny flames on birthday candles. She looked at them, surprised and yet somehow comforted at the evidence of her power, too. It was that other her, she assured herself. The one who had stood in moonlight and called on shadows. The witch who had opened something dark and embraced it with welcoming arms.
That wasn’t her.
“I just need to think,” she shouted, willing the flames on her hands out and then staring at them as if she couldn’t believe what was happening to her. “I need to figure out what it is I’m supposed to do.”
“You’re supposed to mate with me,” he told her flatly, grabbing her other arm and pulling her to him.
Yes, her body shouted, arching toward him, her breasts aching for his touch, his kiss. She could almost feel the warmth of his mouth around her nipple and she groaned with a need that was primal. All-consuming.
She wanted him. Needed him. But she’d had him in the past, she reminded herself, and nothing had changed. Nothing had stopped her from opening herself to the dark.
“According to my vision, we already tried that a few hundred years ago. Nothing happened.” Not true, her mind whispered slyly, reminding her of what she had found in his arms. The glory. The pleasure. The soulshaking orgasms.
Oh, God.
But she had not experienced a huge growth in her magical abilities.
“It’s different now, damn it. Don’t you see?”
She whipped her hair out of her eyes and fought back the hungry whispers in her mind. “How? How is now any different?”
“It’s the Awakening, Shea,” he said, his voice lost in the burst of something wild and fierce she felt at his words. “In all those other lives, we were working our way toward now. Toward this lifetime. The end of the spell cast so long ago. At last it’s begun. The time of atonement is here and you’re the first-we are the first…”
“What are you not telling me?” She could hear the unspoken words waiting to be acknowledged.
“Nothing.” He let her go, took a step back and shoved one hand through his long, dark hair. “It’s nothing. Another witch. When I was trying to find you. She said she was the first. Her name was Kellyn, but it can’t be so.”
“Does it matter who’s first, for God’s sake?” She laughed and didn’t like the sound of hysteria she heard.
His gaze speared into hers. “No. It only matters that you’re here. With me. And we have a chance to end what was started so long ago.”
She scrambled backward a few steps. “I talked to some of the witches in prison. They told me that a chosen witch and her Eternal share power when they mate.”
“Not a sharing, more of a merging. You will be stronger with the mating.”
Stronger. That could be good. Or terrifying.
“And what do you get out of it?” she asked, though she already knew she would go through with the ritual. She had decided that while she was in the camp. She was never going to be helpless to defend herself again. Not if she could prevent it. She would learn. She would remember. And she would become powerful enough to protect herself and any others who needed her help.
“I get you, Shea.” His gaze locked on hers and she felt the fire inside him burning all around him, like a halo of power and strength, wrapping him in its intensity until it had no choice but to burn outward, enveloping her as well.
“I’ve wanted you for lifetimes. Through all the years, through the centuries.” He took a step closer to her and his gray eyes swirled as if lit from within. She saw shapes and colors and shadows playing out in their depths. Sensed that he was feeling as tightly wound as she was-that his hunger was more than a match for her own. Something inside her woke up and stretched its arms, eager to accept him, to ease this soul-deep need Shea had never known before.
“You’re mine,” he said. “You always have been. As I am yours.”
They were alone on a darkened hillside, standing beneath a small slice of moon. and she could see him as clearly as if there were a spotlight shining down on them. Her body yearned and her heart ached and still her mind argued. She had to understand what was happening and how to control her powers. She had spent years taking care of herself and she needed to be in on what was happening in her life.
“In this merging, your powers grow, too?”
He inclined his head.
“What kind of growth? I mean, do you get super hearing or X-ray vision or something?”
One side of his mouth tilted into a smile. “No. My abilities will be strengthened. I’ll be able to flash-travel for longer distances without resting. I’ll be stronger physically, more able to protect you. And our minds will connect, allowing us to communicate without words.”
>
“You’ll be able to read my mind?”
He shrugged. “Not so much read as hear you when you reach for me. And you will be able to do the same.”
“Would this happen for you with just any witch?”
“No.” He swore it to her. “Only you, Shea. Only you are for me.”
She felt the truth of that, as if the knowledge had been stamped on her heart and soul at the beginning of time. She’d only needed to hear it to recognize it. He was hers. As he had always been. And still, Shea needed to be an equal in whatever came next. In whatever the two of them faced.
“Torin, I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time.”
“I know,” he said, watching her. “But I have been close, Shea. Always.”
She took a breath and let it out slowly. “Okay, but my point is, I’m not the kind of woman who just turns her own safety over to someone else. If we’re going to be together, then you have to treat me like a partner-not a damsel in distress.”
He gave her a quick, unexpected grin that left her nearly breathless at his sheer physical beauty. “I have never considered you weak, Shea. Or less than an equal. We are a unit and will act as one.”
That was good, she thought. She didn’t want to be in the dark about anything anymore.
“Where are you taking me, Torin?”
“Away.”
“How far?”
“Tonight-to a safe house.”
“Not what I meant,” she said. “I have to be a part of this, Torin. You just said we were a unit. So tell me what you’re planning.” Shea wasn’t about to let herself be kidnapped again, either, not even by her supposed destined lover.
“It depends on you,” he told her, his hair flying about his face in the sharp wind. “Only you know where we have to be. I’m keeping nothing from you, Shea. The answers you seek are buried in your memories. Once you open yourself to them and your powers, you’ll know where we need to go.”
True again. And again, she felt a soul-deep recognition of something that would have seemed like fantasy only weeks ago. The Awakening was about her. Her memories. Her powers. She was going to need all the strength she could find. Just as, she thought, looking up into Torin’s eyes, she was going to need him beside her.
The flutter of energy pulsing through her made Shea smile in spite of everything and gave her a sense of completion. All her life, she’d felt as though there had been something missing. Some piece of her lost. Now at last she was finding it.
“Okay, I think the power thing has started.” God, a few days ago that statement would have terrified her. She had been ready to run not only from the authorities but from what she had sensed in herself. Now she welcomed that surge of something… extra.
She was a witch. Like her aunt before her. Like the thousands of women worldwide who were coming into unexpected skills and talents. Like the women already living with power and the fears that accompanied it. She was a member of a proud sisterhood that had survived throughout the centuries despite witch trials and persecution. It was past time for her to take pride in who she was and learn to use the gifts given her.
In fact, Shea’s newfound sense of self believed the more strength and power the better. “How do I get my powers to open up completely?”
“Sex. With me. Now.”
Chapter 21
The tracker worked perfectly.
A tiny silver chip in the witch’s gorgeous hide and they could find her anywhere she went. The GPS gave her location and no matter what she did to block it, that signal would continue, leading him right to her. Each witch had a coded signal, so each one could be identified by the frequency her transponder gave off. He had her. Just as he’d known he would.
Landry tracked witches. And when they escaped, he got them back. Dead or alive.
He knew his orders. The higher-ups wanted this witch alive. But, he told himself with a small smile, “Accidents happen.”
He set the scope to his right eye, leaned his weight on his elbows and took a breath, letting half of it slide from his lungs. Then his finger tightened on the trigger and the high-powered rifle jumped in his arms.
The witch fell and the big man with her covered her with his body before Landry could get off another shot.
“But one’s enough if you do it right,” he assured himself and slipped down the hillside, losing himself in the high meadow grass.
Chapter 22
“Shea!” Torin threw himself on top of her even as his eyes scanned the hillsides, looking for the shooter. Blood poured from a wound high on her shoulder. He stanched the flow with his bare hand, but he knew it wouldn’t be enough.
They couldn’t risk staying here and they couldn’t leave with her bleeding out. She wasn’t immortal-not yet, anyway-and if she died, the Awakening was finished before it began.
That thought slammed into his mind and he shoved it right out again. “Screw the Awakening, Shea. I won’t let you die. Do you hear me?”
“Torin?” Her voice was too soft, too fragile. He’d rather have her shouting at him than the sound of pain coloring her words. “What happened?”
“You were shot.” Blood continued to seep from her shoulder, trickling through his fingers, running across his hand. In the darkness, the blood looked black, but he knew it was bright red. Knew that she couldn’t stand to lose much more.
“Shea, you’ve got to trust me,” he said, mouth close to her ear. “Can you do that?”
She tried to move and gasped at a sharp stab of pain.
“Don’t move,” he ordered. “Just talk. Can you trust me?”
“Yes, I trust you,” she said, closing her eyes and biting down on her bottom lip. “I don’t know why, but I do.”
“That’s good enough for now.” He wouldn’t think about the sting of his witch not knowing why she should trust him. Or about the centuries he’d spent at her side. Now it was all about stopping the bleeding so he could get her to safety. “Reach out and take my free hand with yours.”
She barely moved her arm, whether from pain or fatigue or just plain shock, he didn’t know. Didn’t matter.
His fingers threaded through hers and he tried not to notice the chill in her skin. How much blood had she lost?
“Now center yourself, Shea.”
“What?”
“Call on your magic.”
“I can’t.” Her head rocked tiredly from side to side.
“You can,” he insisted as her blood continued to pour across his hand and into the dirt. Panic like he’d never known before took a vicious bite of his very soul. “You shut down my Viper while we were doing ninety miles an hour. You can do this.”
“Can’t. Cold.”
“You’ll be warm soon enough,” he muttered. “Now focus. Pull on your strength, your energy, feel it move into my hand, joining us.”
He felt a slight sensation of her power, a small trickle of warmth when he needed a tide. Her pain washed over him, staggering him. His connection to her was growing, though, so he took as much of her pain as he could. He had to force her to ignore the rest.
“That’s it, Shea. Do it. Damn it, forget the pain and focus. Feel my hand in yours, feel me reaching for your power.”
The trickle increased, linking the two of them with wispy threads of heat. He felt it and nodded, ready now to try to heal her. “I’m going to call on the flames to seal your wound.”
“Burn me?”
“It won’t burn you. Remember? The flames are magic. But I can’t heal you on my own.” Even as he concentrated on the woman who meant more to him than his own existence, another part of Torin was aware of their surroundings. The dark, high grasses where any number of enemies might be hidden. The ridge from which the shot had come.
Was the hunter even now preparing to make another attempt on her life? Would she be taken from him at the very moment they had been destined to join? No. He refused to lose her. Not again. Not in this life.
Overhead, stars glittered and in the darknes
s he called on the fire that formed the core of him.
More of her power moved into him and his fire burned hotter, brighter. “Our energies must be blended, joined. Trust me, Shea. Don’t fight it. Give me your magic and trust me.”
She nodded, her face pale against the grass. Only yards away, cars flowed along the freeway like fish in a river. Never stopping, never noticing anything around them. But they couldn’t have seen Shea and Torin even if they were looking for them. The magic soaring around them moved like fog, a thick gray mist to conceal and protect.
The flames rushing through Torin’s body, racing to the hand he held to Shea’s shoulder, were the brightest light in the shadowy world they inhabited.
“Do it, Torin,” she whispered, eyes locked with his. “I trust you.”
His heart swelled as his own magic burst forth in a rush. His hand erupted into flames and caressed her injured shoulder with a magical balm that made her sigh and squirm beneath him. Their hands linked, their powers as one, Shea breathed easier, and seemed to gather herself as her body healed.
The joining was strong, rich, and filled him with a sense of rightness that he’d waited several lifetimes for. This was the woman who was his other half. The heart and soul of him. He would never lose her again.
He watched as the wound closed and the angry red flesh paled and smoothed into unbroken skin beneath his hand. She took a breath and let it sigh from her lungs-and Torin could have sworn he felt her relief as his own.
At last Torin pulled his hand free, inspected the wound and smiled to himself. “It’s done.”
“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” she admitted and slowly sat up beside him.
She looked down at their joined hands and watched, bemused, as Torin’s flames licked at their fingers in wavering bursts of bright orange and yellow.
Finally, she lifted her gaze to his. Lit by the starlight, she said, “You’re amazing.”
“Together,” he corrected, “we are amazing.”
She nodded. “I’m starting to get that. Now what?”
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