Visions of Magic a-1

by Regan Hastings

  They were on the final leg of their journey. In ten days, the moon would be full and their time would be up. As Torin’s flames enveloped her, Shea silently prayed that nothing would go wrong.

  Deep in the heart of the Sussex Sanctuary, Odell and Rune relaxed beside a campfire. Flames leapt and jumped into the night sky. Swirls of sparks flew briefly and winked out like dying fireflies. All around them, the community of women worked to integrate the newcomers, freed by the raid on the internment camp.

  “That went well,” Rune said, lifting his glass of beer in a salute to his friend.

  “It did,” Odell agreed. “Only three guards dead and six women freed.” He grinned. “Was a good night’s work.”

  “And they’ll be safe here?” Rune looked around. They were in a long-forgotten cavern beneath Ashdown Forest. In ancient times these carved rock walls and rooms had no doubt hidden away others, looking for peace from their pursuers. Today, it was alive again with the sound of desperate voices.

  “Safer than they were, for damn sure,” Odell told him flatly. When he spoke again, he smiled. “It’s ten square miles of ‘protected’ land. There are the tourists, of course, but Ashdown was the ‘home’ of Winnie the Pooh,” he added with a snort of laughter. “There are deer and all other manner of wildlife running all over the bloody place, so there are conservation people rabid about protecting it.” He looked up at the rock ceiling above their heads. “And these caverns were forgotten long ago. No one knows of their existence and they’ve been magically warded so they won’t be found.”

  “Sounds good,” Rune told him. “But they can’t stay here forever.” From down a long corridor came the sound of a woman softly weeping and his unbeating heart ached for the females caught in a web of treachery.

  “No, they can’t,” Odell allowed. “But it’s a good spot for now. There are other Sanctuaries posted around Britain and we’ll move some of the witches soon, make it less crowded down here.”

  Nodding, Rune said thoughtfully, “You know, the last time I entered a Sanctuary, I wasn’t exactly welcomed with open arms.”

  “Perhaps,” Odell told him with a grin and a wink. “But you come to this one as a friend of mine, so you’re trusted.” His smile faded and he shook his head solemnly. “These women have been pursued and tortured and terrified. Is it any wonder they’re willing to turn on the first male they see?”

  “No. It’s not.” Rune stared into the fire and said softly, “If the Awakening goes as planned, this will change. There won’t be a need for witch hunters. Witchcraft can take its rightful place in the world.”

  “Aye,” his friend said, a rueful note in his voice. “If it goes as planned. And how many plans my friend, have we seen blow up in our faces over the centuries?”

  “Yeah,” Rune agreed somberly. “There is that.”

  Torin risked the magic, using his powers, his energies, to flash them, in a series of jumps, to Wales. Their minds linked, thanks to the ever-increasing strength of the mating, he took them to a high, grassy knoll above the crashing sea.

  A cold, sharp wind swept in from the ocean, rushing past them to race across the countryside, sending villagers searching for their hearths. In the distance, heavy dark clouds gathered as if amassing their forces for an invasion.

  Torin was oblivious to everything but Shea. His focus was locked on her, his sharp eyes watching every inflection of expression cross her face. She looked both pleased and worried about being where they were and he could see the glint of recognition shining in her brilliant green eyes.

  As he watched, she walked closer to a burial mound that had been perched on the high cliff above Manorbier Bay for eons. A heavy, long capstone sat balanced atop two short, thick side stones. Centuries of wind and rain had pitted the stones deeply, but magic sang in the air around the mound.

  “King’s Quoit,” Shea whispered, resting the tips of her fingers against the damp, heavy stone. She closed her eyes and he could almost see magic pouring from the stones into her small, fragile hand.

  “You remember,” he said, his words nearly lost in the rush of the wind. He could see her not only as she was now, tall and proud, yet still hesitating over her own powers-but as she had been then, on that long-ago night. The coven had gathered here, at the edge of the cliff. Here, where the capstone sang with ancient power.

  There were other, more well-known standing stones. Circles of power, of magic, that stretched across the countryside. Today, they drew tourists and would-be scientists, looking to explain the unexplainable. But here, on this quiet cliff in an almost forgotten slice of Wales, stood one of the most powerful of all the stones.

  “I do remember,” she said, lifting her gaze to his. She turned her face into the wind, staring out at the sea, opening her arms wide, to welcome the gale that seemed to rush toward her. “My blood recognizes this place,” she said, as if she could hardly believe what she was saying. “This was where we came to call down the moon. This is where we stood to open the door, the night we doomed ourselves. The night we broke faith with everything we were.”

  “Yes.”

  She glanced down at the capstone, and reached out to touch it again. “The magic here is thick, and ancient.”

  “It is,” he said, moving around King’s Quoit to take her in his arms. “But it is not Haven.”

  “No.”

  “Can you find it?”

  She swallowed hard. His witch was worried, Torin reminded himself. Even if he hadn’t been able to see her expression, he would have felt her distress. She was wound up, her emotions tangled together into a knot of expectation, dread and excitement. The anxieties of the last few weeks were taking their toll.

  “I know where it is,” she said and lifted one arm to point. “It’s there. At Manorbier castle.”

  He frowned. “The castle itself?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked off in the direction of the twelfth-century castle. The Welsh countryside spilled out in front of them like a dark green quilt, dotted with sheep and hedges and the bright blues and pinks and whites of late-blooming wildflowers. Torin’s soul embraced being back in the land where all of this had started. Yet at the same time, he worried, not only for his witch but for the other witches and Eternals awaiting their turn at this journey.

  The Norman castle Manorbier had once been the center of their lives. There had been livestock roaming free in the land surrounding the castle and within the outer and inner yards a veritable village had thrived. Now, he knew, it all lay quiet but for the echoes of the past and the ghosts and shades that clung to the brown, bracken-covered stones.

  “I need to look at the castle, Torin,” she told him and he turned. “There’s a darkness down there.”

  “What do you sense?” His eyes were hard and his expression grim.

  “I’m not sure. I can feel something. I’m going to use the magic in King’s Quoit to help me with some astral projection and I could use an anchor.”

  “You have one,” he assured her.

  She clambered up onto the capstone and sighed heavily as the magic trapped within the stone seeped into her bones. “God, it feels good to be here. To feel this and know what it means to me.”

  Torin smiled, took her hand in his and held it tightly. “I’m here to guard your body as your spirit flies. Do what you must.”

  Shea stilled her mind, kept her breathing slow and measured and when she was ready, sent her soul on a search for hidden dangers. The earth fell away from her as she soared through sky and wind. A rush of freedom filled her and she knew that was the real danger of astral travel. You could become so lost in the sensations that you didn’t want to crawl back into a body that would feel leaden on your return.

  But she was on a mission and as she sailed over Manorbier castle, no more than a thought on the wind, she reached with her mind for whatever was waiting for them.

  She felt it first. A smudge of evil like a dirty fingerprint on a white door. She swooped in closer, trusting tha
t her disembodied spirit wouldn’t be sensed or noticed.

  Men and guns.

  Gathered, hidden behind the walls and tumbled stones of the castle. Waiting for them. But how did they know she and Torin were coming? Shea returned quickly to her body. It didn’t matter how their enemies knew about them. All that mattered was that the trap they had set wouldn’t work now.

  She came back with a jolt and looked up into Torin’s swirling gray eyes. “It’s a trap. There are men with guns down there and they’re just waiting for us to show up. They’re mostly around the inner yard-which, naturally, is exactly where we have to go.”

  He helped her off the capstone. “Then we won’t disappoint them.”

  “Right.” She nodded and looked from him to the castle far below. “Weird, isn’t it? Our past was filled with betrayals and pain-now the present is looking pretty much the same.”

  “Yes, but we are not the same as we once were, Shea,” he told her and pulled her close, holding on to her at the top of the world. “Nothing can defeat us if we stand together.”

  “We will, Torin,” she said, tipping her head back to look up at him. “We do this together.”

  She was still staring into his eyes as his fire wrapped itself around them both and whisked them to their past.

  Chapter 43

  The stone walls of Manorbier castle were studded with bracken and the snaking, climbing tendrils of dark green ivy. Long unused arrow slits, like empty eyes, looked down on the modern world, and walls that had once rung with shouts and laughter lay quiet in the afternoon gloom.

  Shea took a breath and let the scene sink into her soul. She was home, she thought and wondered how she could feel so sure about a place where she’d never been. But the answer was in her heart, her mind. Her very soul recognized this place as her spiritual home. As the land where she had been happiest-until the night everything had changed so drastically, so completely.

  She felt the spirits clinging to this place, their energies stamped for all time on the castle that had been home and safety. Shea almost expected to hear the clang of swords as warriors trained in the outer yard. She turned her head to look at the sweeping staircase leading from the buttery to the great hall and imagined servants scurrying to and fro, carrying meals hot from the ovens. She remembered parties in the great hall and the respect granted to her and her sister members of the coven.

  Before they turned from their legacy, life had been good here. At this castle, witchcraft was treated with deference. Shea and her sisters had been sought after for potions and healing, to attend births and deathbeds. They were seen as guides to the next world and the coven had protected those within these walls in thanks for the refuge granted them.

  “If only we hadn’t-” She broke off, looking up at the walls with the ivy creeping along the stones. Taking a breath, she sighed and admitted, “I can’t help wondering how things might have been different if we hadn’t turned our backs on who we were. On the Eternals.”

  “Shea…”

  “No,” she said, cutting him off by laying the tips of her fingers across his mouth. Shaking her head, she fought back a sheen of tears that clouded her vision. “I have to think of these things, Torin. I have to realize what I lost. What we all lost while chasing momentary glory, for God’s sake. We turned away from everything important to us, thinking that we knew best. That we could control the uncontrollable. We should have mated long ago, Torin. We should have joined. And I’m sorry I held myself back from you.”

  He caught her hand in his and kissed her fingertips, stroking her skin with his tongue. “The past is gone, Shea. All we have now is the present. And our future if we can claim it.”

  Staring into those pale gray eyes, she felt his belief in her and clung to it. “We will.”

  They crossed the wooden bridge and stepped through a short tunnel, stopping just before entering the inner yard. On the left was a “modern” caretaker’s cottage that looked to have been built more than a century ago. It was empty, thank heaven, Shea thought, reaching out with her power to scan for intruders. But there weren’t any tourists around, for which she was grateful. Because she felt those who waited for them. Felt their tension. Their eagerness to kill.

  Staying to the shadows, she whispered, “We have to pass through the inner yard. Haven is through the great hall and into the chapel.”

  “The chapel?”

  She grinned. “Through the chapel.”

  Torin nodded and said, “Wait here. I’m going to flash into the yard to draw our enemies’ fire so I can pinpoint their locations.”

  Shea took a breath and blew it out. Grabbing hold of his shirt, she said soberly, “Be careful. If you get shot, I’m going to be seriously pissed.”

  It was his turn to grin. “I’ll remember.”

  He was gone in a brilliant explosion of flames. An instant later, as if from a distance, she heard a shout, then a gunshot that shattered the air and wiped away all traces of the past.

  “Stop! ” Kellyn shouted at the idiot who had disregarded her orders and fired his weapon early. In a raging fury, she reached out to him, fisted her hand and watched as his eyes bulged and his throat closed. Without air, he dropped, lifeless, and his weapon clattered to the stones below. She scowled briefly at the dead fool, then glared at the chaos in the castle yard. Bullets were flying from every direction now that the one man had shattered the silence.

  The men sent to do her bidding were scattered all along the ivy-covered stone walls, each of them with a clean line of sight into the yard below. Before setting up this ambush, they had cleared out the caretakers and chased off the damn tourists.

  It should have been simple.

  If she had been doing this her way, it would have been over and done.

  The men her partner had sent had left their black SUVs behind the castle on Kellyn’s orders, rather than blocking the old portcullis with them. For God’s sake, they’d done everything but blow bugles to announce their presence. If she hadn’t been here to rearrange things, Shea and Torin would never have even approached Haven.

  As it was, they’d been alerted to the danger now. There was no hope to salvage the situation. Kellyn looked below and saw that Torin was already moving to fight their attackers. Shea was standing half hidden in the shadow of a stone staircase, lifting her arms, calling on the elements to protect them.

  Disgusted at the failure of yet another plan, Kellyn did the only thing that was left to her. Speaking into the radio in her hand, she ordered, “Concentrate your fire on the man. No one hurts the witch.”

  Bullets chewed up the lavishly tended lawn and spat chunks of stone from the surrounding walls. Rain dropped from the heavens and Kellyn cursed, knowing the storm had been called by Shea.

  This was all going to hell too fast.

  Shea watched her Eternal flash with dizzying speed from one corner of the yard to another, drawing their fire, never slowing. They couldn’t hit him; bullets smacked into stone walls and chewed up the tidy lawn. Finally, he came back to her side with a smile. “We’ve made our point. They know now we won’t be so easy to surprise again.”

  Reaching for Torin’s hand, Shea said, “Bring the fire.”

  Fingers linked, palms touching, they stood against their enemies, a united front. Shea waved her free hand and murmured a chant. From those who attack us in this field

  Moon, my Goddess, fuel my will

  Help me create a protective shield

  To honor you, no blood will we spill

  An invisible, magically created cloak lifted from the earth, reaching toward heaven, encircling Torin and Shea, protecting them both from the bullets flying around the inner ward of the castle.

  As the shield grew in intensity, Torin drew on their combined strength, called up his fire and sent it rushing out in a wall of flame that swept across the yard and into every nook and cranny of the walls. Men shrieked in terror and dove for cover and still the fire roared, flames churning, swimming, seeking the enemy.


  The men forgot about their assault in their haste to save their own lives. Bullets stopped. Guns fell to the ground. Rain pummeled the inner ward of the castle, coming down in such thick sheets that Shea and Torin were hidden from sight.

  They raced to the great hall and from there, Shea drew Torin to the chapel. As they ran down the passageways beneath deeply carved rock ceilings, their footsteps sounded hollow and like the beat of drums. The walls around them hummed with ancient energies and the swell of power seemed to rush at them from all sides.

  At last, though, they came to the far end of the chapel and faced a solid stone wall. Paintings done centuries ago still clung to the walls, faint images of their long-lost glories.

  “This is it.”

  Torin looked at her, then turned for another glance down the long passageway behind them. They were still alone. But for how long, he couldn’t guess. “Do what you must, then.”

  Nodding, Shea held his hand tightly, laid her free hand on the wall before them and whispered, “Haven.”

  An opening appeared before them. Dimly lit darkness was thick in the cavernous space beyond the wall, but there were flaming torches set into silver brackets that sent dancing flame shadows around the room.

  Torin stepped in front of Shea, protecting her from whatever they might find beyond the entrance. Walking through the aperture, they stopped when the wall behind them closed again, sealing them into the secret chamber of the last great coven.

  “Now what?” Shea whispered.

  “Now it begins,” a soft, familiar voice called out. “Welcome to Haven. We’ve been waiting for you.”

  Chapter 44

  Frustrated, Kellyn kicked the body of the man she had killed with a thought, then flipped her phone open. She hit REDIAL and waited. It rang only once before it was answered on the other side of the world.

  “Is it over?”

  “No, it’s not over,” Kellyn snapped. She glared across the inner ward at the stone walls of the castle. The Eternal’s fire had gone out, but the walls were blackened. “Your men screwed it up. Again.”