Visions of Magic a-1

by Regan Hastings

  Her every breath was a seduction. Her touch was fire and passion to the point of madness. Her power shone around her, glistening in a pale yellow aura that throbbed with the beat of her heart.

  Soon, he thought, his own heart would finally beat in tune with hers. Soon, they would be linked forever. Joined as they were meant to be joined.

  Shea ran her fingers lightly across the mating tattoo on her breast and Torin hissed in a breath, feeling her touch on his own skin. She smiled into the mirror and waved one hand in front of her. In a flash of movement, she was dressed in the traditional garb of a mated witch.

  Her left breast was bare, his brand on her skin glowing with a fiery red light. She looked like a princess of old, both demure and erotic, and Torin’s body hungered for her.

  “I didn’t think I’d be able to wear this robe,” she said thoughtfully, first watching her own reflection and then meeting his gaze in the glass. “But now, it seems right, somehow. To be here, to be wearing this. To have you with me. It’s all… right.”

  “Come to me, Shea,” he said, lifting one hand and stretching it out to her. He dissolved his clothing with a thought and nearly groaned aloud at the relief his body felt, being freed from its tight confines.

  She turned and walked around the bed to sit on the mattress beside him. Torin lifted one hand to cup her bare breast and she closed her eyes on a sigh as his thumb stroked across the tattoo and her hardened nipple.

  “You are magnificent,” he whispered, rising up to claim that nipple with his mouth. His tongue and teeth toyed with her sensitive skin, hitching her breath, making her shiver with need, with an all-consuming desire.

  He suckled her and she held his head to her breast. Her fingers slid through his hair and he felt each of her fingertips as he would have a match flame against his skin. Burning into him, searing him with the fires they created together. He drew and pulled at her nipple until he felt her body quiver in his grasp. Only then did he release her long enough to grab her at the waist and swing her atop him.

  She tugged at the hem of her long white skirt until it was up past her thighs. She wore nothing beneath the traditional robe and Torin reached to stroke her center. Rubbing his thumb across her core in a circular motion, he watched as she knelt over him, rocking her hips in a rhythm he set.

  “Take me inside you, Shea,” he ordered, his voice thick with the need pressing down on him, strangling him.

  Smiling down at him, she did just that, lowering herself, inch by tantalizing inch, to sheathe him inside her body. Damp heat surrounded him and his mind blanked out. All he could do was feel the sensations she aroused in him. Lightning arced between them, sizzling in the air, charging them both with magic, as rich and pure as anything he had ever felt before.

  Making love here in Haven, where centuries of magic had lived and thrived, seemed to magnify what lay between them. As they joined, power sang in the air. He looked up at Shea, her branded breast bare, her head thrown back, her long, silky hair lifting in the rush of magic. Her arms swung wide as if accepting a gift being handed to her.

  She rode him, rocking her hips to his, engulfing him, taking all that he was inside her-and when her first release crashed down on her, he experienced that torrent of sensation right along with her. Her sheath fisted around him, holding him tight, squeezing him until at last Torin gave himself over to the undeniable force of the last stages of the mating ritual.

  The next few days passed in a blur of awakened memories and gathering magics. Shea worked with her aunt, practicing the ancient rituals, reacquainting herself with the witch she had once been. But it was more than magic and the ability to wield it. She fought to become a warrior witch, training with both Torin and Damyn. Her aunt’s Eternal was strong and patient and between him and Torin, they managed to give Shea the rudiments of self-defense in an extremely short amount of time.

  And through it all, Shea grew and expanded. Her mind, her heart, her soul, all responded to being within Haven’s walls again. It was as if she was reconnecting, not only with her former self but with her sister witches. The women who had gone on before her.

  Etched into the passageway walls that snaked throughout Haven in a dizzying maze of corridors and rooms were images of long-dead witches. Their features carved into stone and outlined in silver, they seemed to look out on the present from the mists of the past. Their gazes were fixed and compassionate. When she recognized her own features from past incarnations carved into the wall, Shea felt a sense of continuity. She had been here before and now she had returned. This time, she thought as she looked into those faces of the past, the coven would redeem itself. This time, the memories they made would be of pride and fulfillment.

  There was safety here in Haven, she thought, sitting near the fire in the chamber she shared with her lover-her mate. Tradition. There was a peace that called to Shea even as she prepared to leave to complete her quest. And there was Torin.

  Above and beyond all else she was feeling, there was her connection to her Eternal. This man for whom she would risk anything. This man from whom she was hiding her darkest fears.

  “Shea,” Torin whispered in the firelit darkness, “you should be sleeping.”

  “My dreams woke me up,” she said, not adding that it was the dark thrill that had called to her soul, had shot her from a dream-filled sleep into a guilt-induced terror.

  He left the bed, came to her and knelt at her side. “A dream? Tell me.”

  Shea reached for his hand and clung to the hard, solid strength of him. Her fears ratcheted in her chest until drawing a simple breath became a fierce act of will.

  “You know,” he said, firelight playing across his features. “You know where we must go.”

  “Yes,” she said, meeting his gaze and hoping he couldn’t see the dark edge of hunger shining in her eyes. “I know where I hid the Artifact.”

  “Then we go. First thing in the morning.” He stood, drawing her to her feet, to lead her back to bed.

  “Torin, wait.” She leaned into him, wrapped her arms around his middle and burrowed in close. “Just hold on to me for a minute, will you?”

  “For eternity,” he pledged, his arms closing around her.

  She hoped so, Shea thought, closing her eyes, only to see again the dark images that had awakened her.

  Shea saw herself holding her shard of the Artifact high, moonlight glinting off its dark surface. She felt the push of the black silver as it crept along her skin, sinking into her heart, her very bones. She watched helplessly as her eyes and hair turned black.

  As her mouth curved into a smile and her hand reached out to strike Torin down.

  Chapter 46

  The blackened ruins of a long-dead castle stood on a cliff overlooking an angry sea.

  Torin had drawn on the magic and in a long series of jumps had flashed them all the way to southeastern Scotland. The trip had taken two days, since they’d rested to ensure that both of their energies weren’t overly drained. It would have been too risky to be close to the black silver in a weakened condition-not to mention the fact that they had no idea if their pursuers would once more ambush them.

  Shea had worked spells and used astral projection, but she hadn’t seen any trouble coming. Only long days and one long night spent in Torin’s embrace. The mating sex was richer, deeper now, as if each of their souls had claimed a slice of the other, bonding them so completely that there was no Shea without Torin. No Torin without Shea. As it was meant to be. Their minds were attuned. They didn’t need to speak their thoughts to be heard. And still the mating connection continued, incomplete yet overwhelming.

  The wind moaned as it ran through the knee-high grasses and across the rocks. A sudden slash of sunlight spilled out from behind a cloud and the baaing of sheep in the fields made the scene seem like a painting come to life.

  Only ten miles from St. Andrews and the tourists who streamed through Scotland, this cliffside ruin might as well have been on another planet.

&
nbsp; Shea stepped out of Torin’s arms and took a deep breath of the cold Scottish air. The scent was familiar, teasing a series of vignettes to spring to life in her mind. A blazing forge with a blacksmith bent over the fire. A maid hurrying down long hallways with fresh linen. A kitchen boy stealing a cookie and dodging a slap from the cook. Tiny things all, taken separately, were no more than a blink’s worth of time. Taken together, they were, simply, a lifetime.

  “It’s still here,” she whispered, her gaze taking in both the castle and the cliffs beyond. “I was worried that maybe erosion would have sent the castle sliding into the sea.”

  Torin stepped up behind her, laid one hand on her shoulder and asked, “The shard is here?”

  “Yes,” she said, speaking quietly enough that she wouldn’t disturb the ghosts still going about their daily business. Even though she couldn’t see them, she felt them. Spirits who either couldn’t or wouldn’t move on, but instead clung tenaciously to the familiar. “It’s on the chapel wall.”

  “A church?” Torin turned her in his arms and looked into her eyes. “You put a shard of the Artifact that Lucifer himself was after in a chapel?”

  She smiled and lifted one hand to cup his cheek. “Hate to use a cliche, but as I recall, it seemed like a good idea at the time.” Shea turned to look at the castle again. “I was scared, Torin. After that battle with the demons, we’d literally had the hell scared out of us. We each knew how potent the black silver was and how important it was to hide it where it would be safely kept for eight hundred years.”

  “And you chose this place.” His gaze lifted to sweep the surrounding area, searching, as always, for a potential threat. “Why?”

  Shea looked up at him. “Now it’s you who doesn’t remember.”

  He frowned and shook his head. “Remember what?”

  “This castle.” She swung one hand out to encompass the hulking skeleton of a once-fortified, lovely place. “The Mackay built it for one of his daughters, Nessa. We came to her wedding here one spring. And it was here we first-”

  A slow smile curved his mouth as he ran one hand up and down her arm. “I remember now. It was the first time you came to my bed.”

  “Yes, but it was more than that, Torin-it was the first time I felt completely safe. In your arms, I didn’t think about witchcraft or power or knowledge. There was only you.”

  “If that were true, love, none of this might have happened,” he said quietly.

  Shaking her head, Shea reached up to hold his face between her palms. This she wanted him to know. To understand, before they set out on the last leg of this quest that would eventually unite them forever.

  “It was true, Torin. With you, there was peace and passion and laughter.” Her hands dropped and she bowed her head as if subconsciously apologizing for the woman she had once been. “But when I was with my sisters, I forgot everything I had with you. I listened to the demands of my own greed and let what was really important to me slide away.”

  Turning around, she leaned back against him and stared at the castle where she had found love and then lost it again so long ago. “So when I had to hide the Artifact-keep it safe-I brought it to the one place where I had known safety. However briefly.”

  “Shea, you had only to reach for me,” he said, wrapping his muscular arms around her. “Then or now, I will be here for you. Always.”

  “I know that,” she told him and took a quick, sharp breath, deliberately releasing memories that were as dust now. Time had moved on and she couldn’t, no matter how much she wished it, reclaim what had been lost. But if she completed this task, finished atoning for what her earlier self had been a part of, she could perhaps find what she had not cherished nearly enough in the past.

  With her Eternal at her side, Shea felt strong. Capable. The threads of their mating were rapidly tying them together and that bond continued to strengthen every day.

  Still, she felt something else. Something she had yet to confess to Torin. The dark pulse of the Artifact called to her, as it had so long ago. She felt its pull, like an insistent song repeating over and over again in her mind and heart. It was there, just beneath the surface, tempting, teasing, reminding her what she had felt in that moment of supreme power, just before her ancient world had crashed down around her.

  And a part of her wanted it.

  Shea swallowed hard and fought the feeling. Fought the instinct that had her clamoring to go into the castle ruin herself to retrieve the Artifact shard. She wanted to be alone with that darkness. To feel the sweet sweep of power rushing through her. And so she kept her secret to herself, hoping that if she ignored it, nothing would happen. Nothing would go cataclysmically wrong.

  Taking her hand in his, Torin said, “Let’s go and get it. The sooner we’re back at Haven, with that thing stored away, the better off we’ll all be.”

  “Right.” She nodded, took another deep breath and walked with him across the field and back into her past.

  The interior of the ruin looked less picturesque.

  Fallen stones tumbled on top of each other and bracken and ivy were slowly covering everything, like a rich green cloak, dotted with autumn wildflowers. Torin could have simply flashed them to the chapel wall, but there was something about this place, about this task, that had them both preferring to walk.

  It was hard going and perhaps that was as it should be, Shea thought. She clambered over huge stones, and with Torin’s help, scaled a short wall that looked about to topple. The chapel was at the back of Nessa’s castle. Shea remembered the girl’s wedding day, when there were flowers gathered and hung from trailing ribbons along the castle walls. Musicians had played, voices lifted in song and whiskey had flowed like water.

  Now, only the wind sang through the stones.

  “There it is,” Shea said, pointing to a wall with chunks as big as her fist missing. “The chapel’s through there.”

  “I remember.”

  She looked around, worrying at her bottom lip. “It looks as though the doorway’s been blocked forever. There are so many stones and vines, we’ll never get through there.”

  “For this,” he told her, gathering her close, “we’ll call the fire.”

  She clung to him and when the flames rose up around them, they flashed from outside the walls to within the enclosure. Shea let go of Torin and stepped across the broken flagstone floor. A flutter of noise swept past her and she shrieked in surprise, ducking and covering her head.

  “Just a bird,” Torin said, looking around. “Doves have built nests in here.”

  She laughed a little at her own edginess and continued across what had once been a tiny, beautiful chapel. Grass and heather sprouted up from between the stones beneath her feet and the roof was gone, the sky stretching wide overhead.

  “Sad,” she whispered, remembering it all as it had once been.

  “It is,” he agreed in a hushed voice as low as her own.

  Letting go of memory and the inevitable march of time, Shea turned to the west wall of the chapel. Her gaze landed instantly on a torch bracket. Hanging at a tilted angle because of the shifting of the stones, the black silver she had magically twisted into the shape of a simple tool, still hung where she had left it so long ago.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” Torin asked the question but didn’t wait for an answer. He stalked forward and reached out one hand to grab it.

  “Stop!”

  He did, turning his head to give her a quizzical look. “What is it?”

  How to explain, she wondered frantically. How could she tell him that every beat of her heart, every inch of her skin was compelling her to take that shard of mystical metal. To hold it once more. To feel that heavy darkness draping over her in a wild, sensuous pump of energy and power.

  She couldn’t even explain it to herself.

  All she knew was that she needed to touch the black silver. She had to be the one to take it from the wall.

  “Let me,” she said, moving past him to reach up
for the bracket she’d forged and hidden so many centuries ago. The burn of power from the Artifact reached for her, as if the metal itself recognized her and welcomed her back.

  Shea’s fingers closed around it and with a twist of magic she pulled it from the wall, holding it close to her. She felt it then. A burst of black energy that swept through her entire system in the blink of an eye. In the space of a heartbeat, she tipped her head back, clasped the Artifact to her breast and smiled widely at the churning sky overhead. Dark clouds gathered in an instant and thunder rumbled like the call of angry gods shouting down warnings.

  But Shea heard none of that.

  She was wrapped in the silky strands of a power so immense it stole the breath away. How could she ever have given this up? How was she able to walk away from the pulsing strength slipping into every cell of her body?

  How would she ever let it go again? God, the swell of power inside her was unimaginable. She hadn’t realized, hadn’t known. Her mind raced with possibilities and she smiled.

  “Give it to me, Shea,” Torin said, his voice harsh and strained.

  “One minute,” she said, sighing as if to a lover as the black threads unspooled through her veins.

  “Shea!”

  He grabbed hold of her, giving her a hard shake that brought her up out of the darkness. “What? What is it? We have it. Everything’s good,” she said.

  “No, it’s not,” he told her, glaring down into her eyes. “You changed. The second you touched that damn thing, you changed.”

  She twisted free of his grasp, still clutching the Artifact to her with greedy fingers. “What change? I’m still me.”

  “No. Your hair, your eyes, even your clothes are turning black, Shea! It’s taking you over and you’re letting it. You must resist its call.”