Just determined.
“Ah,” Martha said, giving her a pleased smile. “I see you’ve heard of us. Isn’t that nice?”
“You don’t have to do this,” Shea told her, frantically racking her newfound memories for a spell, a chant, anything that might come in handy at the moment. But her mind was drawing a blank when she most needed it. “We’re leaving town. We would have been gone in another half hour.”
“Well,” Martha said, moving to the bed and dragging the floral bedspread off, “isn’t it lucky we showed up when we did, then? Tony? Hank? You keep a good hold on her now, while I wrap this blanket over her.”
“She’s hard to hold, Martha,” one of the men said. “We could use the cuffs.”
“Of course. Don’t know what I was thinking.” Martha turned and looked at a young man. “Michael, go fetch the cuffs from the car.” Then she turned back to wrapping the blanket around Shea’s body. “For pity’s sake, a woman tattooed. And on your breast, too! You would feed your babies with that awful ink covering what God gave you? You witches just have no shame at all, do you?”
It was clearly a rhetorical question. Shea tried to pull away from the woman. There was a fanatical light in those pale blue eyes that was damn unsettling. She was caught, she thought, shooting a quick look at Torin as he lay immobile on the floor. The blanket with white gold threads covered his body from the chest down and when he looked at her, she read helpless fury in his eyes.
“Her man there’s got a matching tattoo, Martha,” one of Shea’s captors said.
“So he does.” Martha turned around to look at him, flat on the floor. “Heaven only knows what that might mean. But, doesn’t matter much to us, now, does it? It’s not him we’re here for, anyway.”
“I don’t like the look in his eye, Martha,” one of the men offered. “Think we should just shoot him now and be done with it.”
Panic reached up and clutched at the base of Shea’s throat. Torin was immortal, yes, but what if they shot him in the head? What would that do to him? Besides, she couldn’t bear the thought of these maniacs shooting Torin at all.
Whatever she was going to do, she would have to do on her own. And fast. They had to get out of here. She couldn’t be taken by the Seekers. God knew where she’d end up. And even though Torin was immortal, she knew all too well that he could be wounded badly enough to put him out of commission.
“You might have a point, Tony,” Martha mused, as if trying to decide whether to have potatoes or rice with dinner.
“What are you going to do with me?” Shea spoke up into the charged silence, hoping that if she kept them talking, she could take their attention away from Torin and stall them somehow. Give herself time to come up with something.
“We’ll be taking you to Dr. Fender, dear,” Martha said, her tone as soothing as her eyes were mad. “He’s moved his laboratory to upstate New York, so we have quite a long trip ahead of us.”
Shaken, Shea drew a deep breath and swallowed hard. “You know who Fender is. Then you must know he’s a monster. He tortures women. Kills them.”
Martha slapped her. “Nonsense. He’s never harmed a human woman. It’s only witches he’s interested in! Now, no more of your witch talk. Fender is a great man. He’s at the vanguard of our movement. The light of knowledge in the darkness. Through him, we will be purged of your evil and take your powers unto ourselves for the glory of God.”
Shea’s gaze slid to Torin and she felt a surge of something hot and frantic pumping through her. She had to get them out. But how? These were not the kind of people she could reason with. And if she were to admit the truth, she didn’t much want to reason with them anyway. What she really wanted to do was howl and scream and throw punches and spells.
Martha was in her face again, turning her chin until their gazes met. “Don’t you get any ideas now, missy. Those cuffs we’ve got for you are white gold. You’ll be quiet enough for our little trip, I’m thinking. Give you plenty of time to say your prayers to whoever it is your kind prays to.” She paused and frowned. “What’s taking Michael so long? Shauna, you go check on him now.”
A woman standing at the back, her hungry gaze fixed on Torin, jolted into action and ran for the door. Apparently they all took their orders from Martha. Shea continued to search her memories. More desperately now, since she knew the moment the white gold cuffs were on her wrists, her magic would be dampened and she and Torin would be at the mercy of these . . . people.
From the corner of her eye, she caught movement. The young blond girl was edging closer to Torin. No one else seemed to notice. They were all too concerned with Shea, keeping her under control. But Shea kept one eye on the girl as she moved close enough to Torin to slip one foot beneath the blanket covering him.
What was she doing?
Slowly, the girl nudged the blanket aside, until Torin’s lower abdomen and more were exposed. The girl’s eyes widened in appreciation and to get an even better view, she accidentally pulled that blanket just a bit too far.
Instantly, Torin rolled out from under the weight of the white gold threads. The girl jumped back and shrieked. Martha whirled around, snarling, lifting the club she held in her left hand.
Torin threw a solid right punch into Martha’s jaw and the older woman dropped like a stone.
In their surprise, the men holding Shea loosened their grip and she pulled free, reaching into her mind for the words she needed. Lifting both arms high, she found the spell and quickly chanted, “Lock and key, from sea to sea, elements rise to free my lover and me.”
Instantly, the earth responded to her call. Wind howled through the room. Fire crackled at the base of the walls and a torrential rain pounded down hard enough to penetrate the old shake roof. Walls of water poured inside, drenching the would-be kidnappers. They screamed in fear and blind terror as Shea dropped the blanket, jumped at Torin and closed her eyes as he went to flames and flashed them to safety.
Chapter 39
Rune hadn’t heard from Egan in more than a century. He hadn’t thought anything of it, since he knew how hard the waiting was. He himself had vowed not to involve himself in his witch’s life again until the Awakening came. Too many years of hungering for her and at the same time starving was too much even for an immortal.
So he could understand Egan disappearing. But if this Kellyn truly was an Awakened witch, then Egan should have been with her.
After leaving Sanctuary and contacting Torin, Rune was determined to discover what had happened to Egan. He contacted other Eternals, but no one knew any more than he did.
Which meant he would have to go back to England. Start where he’d last seen Egan and track him from there. Rune hopped a plane to Heathrow and thought about Torin and Shea being forced to take a ship. Six days at sea didn’t sound like a great time to Rune. But he was guessing the mating sex was keeping them too busy to mind the delay in reaching their destination.
When the flight attendants came through announcing that they were beginning their descent, Rune stepped into the first-class bathroom. They were close enough now to England that he could flash out and not have to bother waiting for the jet to land. Besides, it amused him to think of the flight crew trying to figure out what had happened to one of their passengers once they discovered him missing.
They’d search the plane, check the manifest, and eventually convince themselves that the missing passenger never really existed. Or, he thought, they would simply realize that they had unknowingly been in the presence of magic.
With a quick grin at his own reflection, he went up in flames.
“Idiots!” Kellyn glared into her makeshift scrying mirror at the scene unfolding in the motel room in Ohio.
She should have spelled up a proper scrying tool. Then she would have had more detail. But after treating herself to a massage and a mani-pedi, she’d decided to simply enchant the mirror over the dressing table in her suite’s bedroom.
Though if she’d had a proper scry glass, sh
e might have been even more enraged. Standing before the mirror, watching the scene before her unfold in wavering, rippling images, she fought the urge to scream in frustration.
This should have been a simple operation. For pity’s sake, she’d practically handed Shea and Torin to the Seekers. How could they have screwed it up so completely?
She knew the moment things were going to take a bad turn. As soon as that teenager stole a peek at the Eternal’s dick, things were bound to go to hell. Although it was hard to blame the girl. Torin was, if nothing else, quite the specimen.
Surprising herself, Kellyn actually laughed aloud as she watched a middle-aged woman frantically trying to swim out of a motel room. Fool woman thought she could take her eyes off an Eternal for a split second? Sheets of water poured through the shattered roof, spilling down on the Seekers even as Shea and Torin flashed away in a pillar of fire.
In an instant the Seekers were alone in a destroyed room, looking like nothing more than drowned rats.
Pitiful. Just pitiful.
Sighing, Kellyn told herself to end the spell, but she was caught. Like one of the idiot drivers who slowed down on a freeway to watch an accident, she couldn’t seem to look away. Those morons in Ohio had not only blown the whole setup, they’d alerted the witch and her Eternal to the fact that Seekers were after them.
“That’s what you get,” she chastised herself. “Allowing someone else to set the Seekers on their trail. You should have done it yourself, as always. But really,” she demanded, staring into the continuing mess of the failed operation in the mirror, “am I supposed to do everything?”
As she watched the magical rain, wind and fire stop and the beaten Seekers making their way home, she realized that this mess hadn’t been a complete waste. At least she knew for sure that Shea was becoming more proficient with her powers. Calling down the elements had been a brilliant maneuver.
But then, the little witch had used astral projection to spy on Kellyn, hadn’t she? Surprising, really. She hadn’t thought Shea had that much backbone. But all the better knowing that she did. Kellyn had no use for a weak-willed woman, witch or not. She wanted women of strength at her side when she took from the coven what never should have been theirs in the first place.
She stared down into the scrying glass, waved her hand across it to close the spell, then looked closely at her reflection. Staring into her own eyes, she thought she caught a spark of something unfamiliar.
Laughing, she shook it off and tossed the mirror aside. She reached for her glass and took a long sip of the cold gold-colored wine.
“It’s not all bad,” she said to the empty room. “Shea’s powers grow, her Eternal’s worried and now there’s no place for them to go but back to the beginning.”
“Concentrate.”
“I am.”
Shea shot Torin a dirty look, then refocused her concentration on the matter at hand. She’d been working on her magical abilities constantly for the last several days. Ever since they’d boarded the Queen Mary 2 to sail to Southampton, England.
Waving her hand in a graceful gesture, Shea sent a tall crystal vase across the room to stand on the pedestal table at the foot of the curving staircase to the second floor of their duplex suite. She set the vase down gently, using only the power of her magic, and smiled to herself at the control she’d gained.
Now if only she could relax a little.
After escaping the Ohio Seekers, Torin hadn’t bothered procuring a car. He’d simply drawn on his immense strength and flashed them, in a series of jumps, all the way to New York. They’d used magic to reserve a deluxe suite, then paid cash for the accommodations on the Queen Mary 2, leaving the very next day. Torin had sneaked Shea aboard without anyone seeing her.
England.
She used to dream about visiting Europe. About backpacking through the countryside. Seeing new things. Meeting new people. Now she was finally going to get there, but she’d be in hiding. Not to mention praying that Europe had enough of their own witches to worry about and wouldn’t have her picture posted everywhere she went.
She wished she could enjoy this trip. She’d never dreamed she would be traveling in such luxury. But as tense as she was, it hardly mattered. At any moment she half expected someone to burst through the cabin door, trying to kill her. Torin hadn’t eased his battle-ready ways either. Whether he believed them to be momentarily safe or not, he was on constant alert. And though she appreciated it, Shea would have given anything for the two of them to really be able to forget about the world for a while and just be together.
Well, when he wasn’t giving her orders, that is.
She glanced around at the amazing suite. Booking at the last minute and paying cash for their tickets, Torin had reserved the Balmoral Suite on the tenth of thirteen decks, at the very tail end of the enormous ship. They were secluded from everyone else, in their own little world. Exquisite paintings on the walls, comfortable chairs and couches. An incredible view out the wide windows to the sky and sea.
It was a duplex suite. Upstairs were the bedroom and a marble bath with a sea window and a Jacuzzi; downstairs featured a living room, dining room and a private terrace where you could sit in deck chairs high above the other passengers. The suite was almost twenty-three hundred square feet. Almost twice the size of her old apartment.
He’d been right about this, Shea thought. At first she’d insisted that he was making a mistake by booking the most expensive suite on the ship. She’d thought they should hunker down in a tiny cabin in the bowels of the boat. Incognito, sort of.
But Torin had insisted that the rich were rarely bothered. They had access to twenty-four-hour room service and could elect to stay locked away in their suite and never see another passenger or member of the crew if they wished. When the maids arrived every day, Shea and Torin merely stepped onto the wide private verandah until they were gone again. Safer all the way around.
And a luxury she wished she could enjoy more thoroughly.
Still, it was annoying that he seemed to be right so often.
“Again,” Torin said from across the room.
She frowned at him. “Moving flowers from spot to spot isn’t exactly honing my skills, you know.”
“Controlling your power is the most important thing right now, Shea,” he said, and pushed up from the comfortable sofa to walk toward her.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Shea said when he was only a step away. “I sort of think it’s more important to remember where the hell we’re going and why.”
Torin grinned at the impatience in Shea’s tone. And it suddenly struck him how very seldom he had smiled in the recent centuries. But these last days with Shea, despite the danger, despite the constant threat of attack, had changed him. The mating had touched something inside him that he wouldn’t have believed existed.
Their matching tattoos were nearing completion and every time he saw his mark spreading over her shoulder and back from its beginning on her breast, Torin experienced a sense of rightness that he had hungered for all his long existence. His need for her increased by the day and he could barely manage to be in the same room with her without touching her. Tasting her. He wanted her safe. He wanted her happy. But mostly he simply wanted her.
Now she stared at him through narrowed eyes and he felt a flicker of pride rise up in him. These days on the cruise ship had been intense. For both of them.
They were hiding. True, in lush surroundings, but knowing that she was unable to so much as step out onto their terrace without first making sure she was alone was wearing on her. He could see it daily. Tension was ratcheting up inside her along with her powers and the mixture was difficult to bear. For both of them.
And yet, his witch stood tall and proud, refusing to surrender. Refusing to lie down and cry about her fate or what was expected of her. Her entire life had changed over the last couple of weeks, and yet she continued on, working toward the inevitable test that lay ahead of her.
Her powers we
re growing more quickly now. Since drawing down the moon and unlocking the door to her memories, she had triggered the release of her many gifts. Torin sensed her abilities developing at a staggering rate and knew that she fought daily for the control she needed. Her own need for knowledge was feeding her magical growth. And the mating sex was deepening those abilities, stirring to life old embers, echoes of past lives.
She would need every ounce of strength and will she possessed, he told himself solemnly. His mind raced ahead. To what they might face when they finally reached England’s shores. There were still too many unknowns before them. They had to locate Haven. They had to find the Artifact. And, they were running out of time. There were so many things that could go wrong.
“You’re worried,” she said.
“Some.”
Shea nodded, and walked to the windows that overlooked the sea, stretching out in front of them. At the horizon, sea and sky melded together into a seamless blue that seemed to slide into infinity.
“So am I.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “I still don’t know everything that I should and we land in three days.”
“It will come,” he assured her. “Once we’re in England, the sense memories will become thicker, more distinct.”
“Maybe.” She turned her back on the window to face him.
Backlit by the sun, she appeared to be gilded by a glowing golden light. Her dark red hair shone and though her green eyes were in shadow, he could have sworn he saw them flash with purpose.
“You need to tell me, Torin. What do you remember from that last night?”
Frowning, he started to argue, but she cut him off.
“We’re running out of time. My magic is growing, I know. But I still feel like I’m in this blind. I need more information and I’m just not sorting through the opening memories as quickly as I’d like.”
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