Mark of the Witch

by Maggie Shayne

“God help me, I should have,” he whispered. “The memory feels so real to me, so present. Not like something that happened three thousand years ago, but like something that’s alive right now.”

  “I know.” My words caught in my throat. I had to take a breath, swallow to relax the muscles enough to go on. “It feels the same way to me.”

  He stared into my eyes and gently brushed my hair away from my face with one hand. His mouth was close to mine, so close that his breath fanned my lips, warm and soft. Something felt like raging waters, rising and pounding against the walls of my heart from within, swelling it and trying to break through. I fought to hold my feelings in, but I knew somewhere inside that it was a battle I could not win. Nor even keep fighting for very long.

  “Tomas,” I whispered.

  His mouth closed over mine, and he held me hard against him, our bodies practically melding. I felt him shudder as my fingers twined in his hair and his arms closed even tighter around me. One hand moved upward to cup the back of my head as he bent over me, feeding from my lips like a hummingbird feeds from a lily, and we turned like dancers as we kissed.

  And then there was a sound, like stone scraping over stone, echoing all around. We pulled apart only a little. Our lips stopped mating, but his arms stayed around me as we both searched for what was making that dark, deep sound.

  Some of the stones in the domed ceiling were moving, and light came spilling through from somewhere beyond them, filling the room. I tried to peer into that light, knowing it couldn’t be coming directly from the sun, since we were down far too deep in the earth—that stairway had been endless. And yet what looked like natural light beamed, from five equally spaced openings, forming a circle enclosed in the larger circle of the domed ceiling itself.

  “It must be some kind of mirror system,” Tomas said. “We must have triggered it when we stepped through the arch.”

  “And look, five again. Five points inside a circle. Just like a pentacle.” I drew my eyes away from the light and looked around the newly bright room. It was lined with shelves, which were in turn lined with books. Moving to the nearest one, I touched a spine with great reverence, gently pulling the volume from its spot. The cover was very old, the lettering on it foreign to me.

  Tomas walked up and looked over my shoulder at the cover. “That’s Hebrew. This is The Lesser Key of Solomon the King.”

  “Ceremonial magicians use the rites in this book,” I said and stopped. Then I jumped in headfirst. “For summoning angels and demons.”

  “We’re in the right place, then.” He scanned the rest of the books, his eyes eager and sharp. There were perhaps a thousand titles, or at least that was my best guess. “But how do we even know where to begin?”

  I walked around the room slowly, my gaze moving up and down the shelves. The books’ spines were all illuminated now, but none of them seemed to jump out at me any more than the rest.

  And then I paused. Because one high shelf held something that wasn’t a book at all. It was a small wooden chest, with a rounded top and a small antique iron lock dangling on the front.

  I stopped in front of it, staring, my heart tripping over itself in surprise. It was my chest, or its twin, anyway. “Whatever it is, it’s in that box,” I told him.

  “How do you know?” he asked, coming to stand close beside me.

  “Because I have one that looks exactly like it. Not old or anything. A replica. Cheap. I bought it at a flea market years ago. I was never sure why I liked it, but I did. It’s where I keep all my magical supplies.”

  He nodded.

  “Can you get it down for me, Tomas? I can’t reach.”

  Standing on tiptoe, he was able to just reach the bottom of the chest. He inched it out over the edge of the shelf with his fingertips, and then farther, until its own weight tipped it forward into his waiting hands.

  The chest was about two feet wide and maybe eighteen inches high at the top of its arching lid. Mine was maybe a third its size. He carried it to the center of the floor and set it down. “The next thing is to get it open.” He tugged experimentally on the lock, an ancient-looking iron padlock without any keyhole. “It’s solid. It’s not going to give.”

  “Then we’ll have to take the whole thing with us.”

  He looked up at me and swallowed hard. “It’s going to be hard enough to get out of here undetected, Indy. The firefighters will have declared the library safe by now. People will have come back in. We can’t exactly come popping up out of a hidden passage beneath a statue carrying a stolen artifact from a hidden sublevel.”

  “Then we may be stuck here until after hours. Maybe we can sneak out in the dead of night without drawing too much notice.”

  His lips pulled tight at that notion. “I don’t like leaving Rayne out there with no one but Dom to protect her. She’s too close to all this.”

  I looked at him, looked at the box, looked at the light shining down around us. “Maybe there’s another way out.” My eyes were back on that box again. It felt as if it was pulling me to it. I was itching to get at it—alone.

  Why don’t I want him here when I open it?

  It didn’t matter why. My gut had led me true so far, I had to go with it. “Tomas, why don’t you take a look around, see if you can find another exit? I can take a closer look at this box while you do.”

  He studied me for a moment, tipping his head slightly to one side before apparently making up his mind. “Okay. Yell if you need me. I won’t go far.”

  “All right.” I held up my BlackBerry. “Take this. You might need it.”

  “Thanks.” His hand brushed mine as he took the phone from me and our eyes met, and his beamed something into mine. It felt like tenderness. Like…more.

  I watched him walk away, then sat down with the box in front of me, turning it this way and that, and examining it all over. Its sides were smooth wood, broken only by the metal-lined seam of the lid. Metal bands divided the lid into thirds, black iron and clearly old. The lock on the front was intricate, decorated with embossed swirls and vines. And then I tipped the box onto its back and caught my breath.

  The underside was painted—and brightly, too. There was a black-and-white grid, like a tic-tac-toe board, with gold borders and colorful symbols in each square. Nine of them, and one more at the head of the board.

  I touched that lone symbol, the most familiar one—the Eye of Horus, with its curlicue eyeliner and vacant stare—drawing my fingers over its smooth surface.

  And it lit up.

  I caught my breath, jerking my hand away. I heard a rumbling sound then, either around me or inside me, I wasn’t sure which. I pressed one hand to the floor, looking up in fear of the room collapsing around me, but the rumbling died slowly away.

  Okay, okay, something is definitely up here. I stared at the glowing eye for a full minute, as it slowly faded and finally blinked out again.

  Then I studied the other symbols, and I realized what they were. They came from the major arcana of the Tarot. Death. The Hanged Man. The Lovers. The Hierophant. The Tower. The Magician. The High Priestess. The World. The Empress.

  As I studied them, I knew what I had to do. The cards were like chapters of the story of my past life. Perhaps if I touched them in the right order…

  What was I first? Not a lover, a witch.

  Rayne’s words echoed in my mind. You’ve been a witch for more than three thousand years. Okay, then. First, the High Priestess. She sat on a throne between black and white pillars, the crescent moon at her feet, a sacred scroll in her arms.

  I touched her.

  She lit up.

  The Lovers had to come next, for I had fallen in love then and was in love still. Yes. I pressed my fingertips to the image of the nude male and female forms standing beneath the sheltering arms of a benevolent god.

  It lit up, too.

  Which one next? The Hierophant? That had to be the High Priest who ordered my death. Death, skeletal and frightening upon his white horse? No, the
Death card stood for change. My eyes lit on The World. In some decks it was The Universe, and it symbolized death far more than the Death card did. It stood for death and rebirth. And that fit.

  I touched the woman who stood amid an endless circle with the elements surrounding her in all directions.

  The third square lit up, and I heard the distinct snapping of the ancient padlock. As I set the box into its correct position once more, I saw that the lock was now hanging open. Carefully, shaking with anticipation and more, I removed the lock and lifted the lid.

  A blinding beam of white light blasted at me from inside the box, and I instinctively averted my face, throwing up one arm to protect my eyes. Then, as it faded, I lowered my arm, dared to look inside.

  I saw an array of parchment pages rolled together and secured by a leather tie. Inside the raised lid, there were words.

  I read them aloud. “For the Eyes of Spirit alone.”

  “How did you know what that said?” Tomas asked softly.

  I was startled by his presence, not to mention because I hadn’t even heard him return, but I didn’t turn, couldn’t look away as my focus sharpened and I realized that the words I was staring at were not in English.

  “That’s Akkadian,” he said softly.

  “But when I looked at it just now, it looked like English.” I took the scrolls from the box and held them to my chest. “I can’t read them until I see Rayne.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “The Eyes of Spirit are given to a witch during the third initiation. I don’t have them.”

  “But Rayne said that sort of thing is given by spirit.”

  “I don’t care. Look, I’ve come this far. I’m not looking at these until I’m sure I’m supposed to.” I lowered my head. “Okay, it’s stupid, but I keep visualizing the Nazis when they looked inside the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark. You know. Indiana Jones.”

  “Your namesake.”

  I rolled my eyes, feeling as if I was slowly emerging from a trancelike state. I closed the lid and turned to look up at Tomas at last.

  Just the sight of him made my heart seem to swell up in my chest. God, I felt a lot for that man.

  “I found another way out,” he said. “Great timing, huh?” He offered his strong hand and I took it, dropping the scrolls back into the chest with the other. “Let’s go.”

  I surged to my feet, stumbled and sort of slammed into him. His arms shot around me, an automatic reflex to keep us both from falling over. But then they stayed there. I laid my head against his chest—I just couldn’t resist the urge. And when I felt his heart beating there, it did something to me. Poured gasoline on the sparks that had been flying between us since the day we’d met.

  “Tomas.” I breathed his name so softly I didn’t know if he’d heard me. It wasn’t like me to be all soft and whispery. Not like the old me, anyway. Being around him seemed to have unearthed a new me. One who was all about hearts and flowers, whispers and softness, and the warmth of skin against skin.

  “I can’t stand this much longer,” I confessed, lifting my head.

  He looked straight down into my eyes. “Neither can I.”

  “Then kiss me already.”

  His lips rose a little at the corners. Like he wanted to smile, but he didn’t. Not quite. And then he lowered his head and his mouth found mine, and we kissed like teenagers after prom.

  I was shaking all over, and that surprised me. I hadn’t expected it. But the kiss didn’t end, and I didn’t want it to. Ever. So when my knees got all jellylike, I just let them melt and held on tighter. We staggered around a little, turning in slow circles, his feet shuffling, mine just going along for the ride, while our mouths kept each other busy. I wound up with my back against a stone wall. It felt cool, and his chest and his arms felt warm. I used the wall to hold me up and held him tighter. I would not in a million years have planned to wrap my legs around his waist like a spider monkey, but that was exactly what I did.

  And that took things deeper. Hotter. He was moving against me, and I was writhing and moving, too, until the only thing keeping it from being actual sex was our clothes. His mouth slid off mine and traveled a path along my jawline and down to my neck, and damn if that wasn’t the hottest thing ever. His lips moving over that sensitive skin, nipping now and then like the world’s sexiest vampire, just teasing his way to the big bite at the end.

  He cupped the back of my head with one hand and bent his head lower, nuzzling his way into the scooped neck of my tank top, pushing impatiently at the fabric and managing to get a mouthful of breast, though not the best part. Not yet. But even that made my skin tingle, my nerves jump. I clutched his head with both hands, thinking, more, more, more.

  And then my breast was fully exposed and he was lapping at the peak while I panted.

  I love you!

  What the fuck? I went still. Whose voice was that? And did I say those words out loud or only in my head?

  Seeming to pick up on my sudden jolt of ice water, Tomas lifted his head, met my eyes, and then slowly, gently, lowered me to my feet again. “I want you so much I can’t think about anything else,” he told me.

  “Me, too.”

  “But I can’t.”

  I almost rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t. “I know your vows are important to you.”

  He lowered his head, turned away from me. “There’s something I haven’t told you.”

  “So tell me.”

  He met my eyes, and his were dark with emotion. “I faxed a request to leave the priesthood, and for a dispensation from the vows of celibacy.”

  “Oh, Tomas, tell me you didn’t do that for me.” I moved closer to him, sliding my palm up over his back, to his strong shoulder, still shivering with need and arousal. His head was low. As if he were ashamed of what he was admitting to me.

  “I did it before I met you. I explained everything in my letter, including Dom’s belief that I was chosen for this mission and my intent to fulfill it before leaving the priesthood. But I knew this life wasn’t for me even then.” He lowered his head. “You’re the first person I’ve told.”

  “I’m touched you felt you could share it with me.” I didn’t know what to say. “I left my faith, too, you know.”

  “You weren’t a priest.”

  “Or even a priestess. But I am now.”

  He nodded. “And to be clear, I’m not leaving my faith. I love my belief system. I just don’t think I was cut out to be a priest.”

  “I can say without doubt, Tomas, that if the Goddess Herself told me that I had to give you up for Her, I’d tell Her to take a flying leap.”

  His head came up, and he was smiling. It was a pained smile, but a smile all the same. “Aren’t you afraid she’ll strike you with lightning for saying things like that?”

  “She’d be laughing with me and telling me she liked my spunk.”

  “I like your Goddess,” he said.

  “I’m pretty fond of your savior, as well.”

  His face softened. “I’ve been tearing myself up wondering if this was the right decision. I’m allowed to withdraw the request right up until it’s approved, and every morning I wake up wondering if this is the day I make that call. But every time I look at you, I’m sure it was the right decision.”

  “So…”

  “So I’d feel better about this if I could manage to keep my hands off you until I’ve been officially excused from my vows.”

  I drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. I didn’t want to say what I was going to say, but I would feel like a total ass if I didn’t. “This is a big decision, Tomas. Are you absolutely sure you’re not doing it based on leftover memories, or guilt, or any of that crap from this past-life thing we had together? I mean, even though you weren’t aware of it, on some subconscious level you might have remembered it all. Felt guilty.”

  He thought for a long moment, his eyes roaming my face in a way that was almost like a touch. “I’m not sure of anything
right now, Indy. Except what’s between us. That’s real.”

  I lowered my eyes, because suddenly there were tears in them.

  He slid an arm around my shoulders. “Let’s get out of here, okay?”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  16

  They followed the tunnel Tomas had located, heading toward the wafting, autumn-scented air and ever-growing pool of light. It hit Tomas that this journey was just like the one his soul had been taking. He’d walked through darkness, accepting a life that seemed like the one that was expected of him. Believing in Father Dom’s insistence that he had a calling while never truly feeling it himself. Always, he’d been waiting for that passion, that fire to light his way toward his purpose, to light a fire in his soul. But it had never come.

  Until he’d met Indy. And that was a whole different kind of fire.

  He’d been drawn to the light of that fire, and it had only grown brighter. She’d breathed delicious, fresh, living air into his life. And he’d felt like he was inhaling for the very first time.

  He was making the right call. He was more sure of that now than ever.

  The literal light they were following through this dark underworld turned out to be coming from a streetlight near what resembled a storm drain grate above the place where the subterranean passage came to an abrupt end. The sun had set by then. A ladder with only three rungs was affixed to the facing wall.

  Tomas stepped up onto the first rung, hooked his fingers through the grate and pushed experimentally. The thing rose without even token resistance, because it turned out to be hinged on one side. Who’d have thought?

  He lifted it only a little, then lowered it again and looked down at Indy. She was holding the box to her chest, looking up at him and tempting him to get lost in her eyes again. “Ready?” he asked, indulging himself in just looking at her.

  “Yeah. Ready.”

  “I have no idea where we’re going to emerge, so let’s do it fast and hope to avoid notice.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.” He drew a breath, swallowed hard, and pushed the grate up and over onto its back, rapidly climbing out but maintaining a low crouch. He took a quick look around. They were near the boulder where they’d been supposed to meet Father Dom hours ago. There were people around, a small crowd milling outside the building where Jon had been found. But mostly their backs were to him, and the boulder made for a good visual distraction. Still crouched, he reached back down first for the box, which he set behind the rock, and then for Indy. Her hand locked onto his, and he helped her up and out. Then he replaced the grate. They got to their feet, brushed themselves off and looked around casually, trying to determine whether they’d been seen.