by Nora Roberts
He’d lifted a hand, was on the point of touching her hair, something he’d wanted to do since he’d first seen her. Now he dropped it. “Leave?”
“You don’t expect to sit around in New York and wait for the army to come to you? The portal’s in Ireland, and we have to assume the battle’s to take place in Ireland, or some mystical facet thereof. We need the portal, or at some point we will. So we need to go to Ireland.”
He simply stared at her as she loaded bottles and vials into a case not dissimiliar from his own. “Aye, you’re right. Of course, you’re right. We need to start back. A voyage will take much of the time we have. Oh, Jesus, I’ll be sick as six dogs sailing home.”
She looked over. “Sailing? We don’t have time for the Queen Mary, sweetie. We’ll fly.”
“You said you couldn’t.”
“I can, if it’s in a plane. We’ll have to figure out how to get you a ticket. You don’t have ID, you don’t have a passport. We can do a charm on the ticket agent, the custom’s agent.” She brushed it away. “I’ll work it out.”
“A plain what?”
She focused on him, then leaned back against the counter and laughed until her sides ached. “I’ll explain later.”
“It’s not my purpose to amuse you.”
“No, it wouldn’t be. But it’s a nice side pocket. Oh hell, I don’t know what to take, what not to take.” She stepped back, rubbed her hands over her face. “It’s my first apocalypse.”
“Herbs, flowers and roots grow in Ireland, and quite well.”
“I like my own.” Which was foolish, and childish. But still…“I’ll just take what I consider absolutely essential in this area, then start on books, clothes and so on. I have to make some calls, too. I’ve got some appointments that I need to cancel.”
With some reluctance, she closed her already loaded case and left it on the counter. She crossed to a large wooden chest in the far corner of the room, and unlocked it with a charm.
Curiosity piqued, Hoyt moved over to study the contents over her shoulder. “What do you keep here?”
“Spell books, recipes, some of my more powerful crystals. Some were handed down to me.”
“Ah, then, you’re a hereditary witch.”
“That’s right. The only one of my generation who practices. My mother gave it up when she married. My father didn’t like it. My grandparents taught me.”
“How could she give up what’s inside her?”
“A question I’ve asked her many times.” She sat back on her heels, touching what she could take, and what she couldn’t. “For love. My father wanted a simple life, she wanted my father. I couldn’t do it. I don’t think I could love enough to give up what I am. I’d need to be loved enough to be accepted for what I am.”
“Strong magic.”
“Yeah.” She took out a velvet sack. “This is my prize.” From it she lifted the ball of crystal he’d seen her with in the vision. “It’s been in my family a long time. Over two hundred and fifty years. Chump change to a man of your years, but a hell of a run to me.”
“Strong magic,” he repeated, for when she held it in her hands, he could see it pulse, like a heart beating.
“You’re right about that.” She looked at him over the orb with eyes that had gone suddenly dark. “And isn’t it time we used some? Isn’t it time we do what we do, Hoyt? She knows who I am, where I am, what I am. It’s likely she knows the same about you, about Cian. Let’s make a move.” She held the crystal aloft. “Lets find out where she’s hiding.”
“Here and now?”
“Can’t think of a better time or place.” She rose, jutted her chin toward the richly patterned rug in the room’s center. “Roll that up, will you?”
“It’s a dangerous step you’re after taking here. We should take a moment to think.”
“We can think while you’re rolling up the rug. I have everything we need for a locator spell, everything we need for protection. We can blind her to us while we look.”
He did as she asked and found the painted pentagram under the rug. He could admit that taking a step, any step, felt right and good. But he’d have preferred, very much, to take it alone.
“We don’t know if she can be blinded. She’s fed on magic blood, and likely more than once. She’s very powerful, and very sly.”
“So are we. You’re talking about going into battle within three months. When do you intend to start?”
He looked at her, nodded. “Here and now then.”
She laid the crystal in the center of the pentagram, and retrieved two athames from her chest. She placed these in the circle, then gathered candles, a silver bowl, crystal wands.
“I won’t be needing all these tools.”
“Fine for you, but I prefer using them. Let’s work together, Merlin.”
He lifted an athame to study its carving as she ringed the pentagram with candles. “Will it bother you if I work skyclad?”
“Aye,” he said without looking up.
“All right, in the spirit of compromise and teamwork, I’ll keep my clothes on. But they’re restricting.”
She removed the band from her hair, filled the silver bowl with water from a vial and sprinkled herbs on it. “Generally I invoke the goddesses when casting the circle, and it seems most appropriate for this. Suit you?”
“Well enough.”
“You’re a real chatterbox, aren’t you? Well. Ready?” At his nod she walked to the opposite curve from him. “Goddesses of the East, of the West, of the North of the South,” she began, moving around the circle as she spoke. “We ask your blessing. We call to you to witness and to guard this circle, and all within it.”
“Powers of Air, and Water, of Fire and of Earth,” Hoyt chanted. “Travel with us now as we go between worlds.”
“Night and day, day and night, we call you to this sacred rite. We cast this circle, one times three. As we will, so mote it be.”
Witches, he thought. Always rhyming. But he felt the air stir, and the water in the bowl rippled as the candles leaped to flame.
“It should be Morrigan we call on,” Glenna said. “She was the messenger.”
He started to do so, then decided he wanted to see what the witch was made of. “This is your sacred place. Ask for guidance, and cast your spell.”
“All right.” She laid down the sacred knife, lifted her hands, palms up. “On this day and in this hour, I call upon the sacred power of Morrigan the goddess and pray she grant to us her grace and prowess. In your name, Mother, we seek the sight, ask you to guide us into the light.”
She bent, lifted the crystal into her hands. “Within this ball we seek to find the beast who hunts all mankind, while her eyes to us are blind. Make keen our vision, our minds, our hearts so the clouds within this ball will part. Shield us and show us what we seek to see. As we will, so mote it be.”
Mists and light swirled within the glass. For an instant he thought he could see worlds inside it. Colors, shapes, movement. He heard it beat, as his heart beat. As Glenna’s heart beat.
He knelt as she did. And saw, as she did.
A dark place, mazed with tunnels and washed by red light. He thought he heard the sea, but couldn’t be sure if it was within the glass or just the roaring of power in his own head.
There were bodies, bloodied and torn and stacked like cordwood. And cages where people wept or screamed, or simply sat with dull and deadened eyes. Things moved within the tunnels, dark things that barely stirred the air. Some crawled up the walls like bugs.
There was horrible laughter, high, hideous shrieking.
He traveled with Glenna through those tunnels where the air stank of death and blood. Down, deep down in the earth, where the stone walls dripped with wet and worse. To a door scribed with ancient symbols of black magicks.
He felt the breath go cold in his body as they passed through.
She slept on a bed fit for a queen, four-posted and wide with sheets that had the sheen of silk and we
re white as ice. Droplets of blood stained them.
Her breasts were bare above the sheets, and the beauty of her face and form were undiminished since last he’d seen her.
Beside her was the body of a boy. So young, Hoyt thought with a terrible pity. No more than ten years, so pale in death with his cornsilk hair falling over his brow.
Candles were guttering, sending wavering light to flicker over her flesh, and his.
Hoyt gripped the athame, lifted it over his head.
And her eyes opened, stared into his. She screamed, but he heard no fear in it. Beside her the boy opened his eyes, bared fangs and leaped up to skuddle along the ceiling like a lizard.
“Closer,” she crooned. “Come closer, sorcerer, and bring your witch. I’ll make a pet of her once I drain you dry. Do you think you can touch me?”
As she leaped off the bed, Hoyt felt himself flying backward, tearing through air so cold it was shards of ice in his throat.
Then he was sitting within the circle, staring into Glenna’s eyes. Hers were dark and wide. There was blood dripping from her nose.
She stanched it with a knuckle while she struggled to get her breath.
“First part worked,” she managed. “The blinded part didn’t take very well, obviously.”
“She has power as well. She’s not without skill.”
“Have you ever felt anything like that?” she asked him.
“No.”
“Neither have I.” She allowed herself one hard shudder. “We’re going to need a bigger circle.”
Chapter 6
Before she packed, Glenna took the time to cleanse the entire loft. Hoyt didn’t disagree. She wanted no trace of what they’d touched on, no echoes, no dregs of that darkness in her home.
In the end, she put her tools and books back in the chest. After what she’d seen, what she’d felt, she wasn’t going to risk the pick and choose. She was taking the whole lot, along with her travel case, most of her crystals, some basic art supplies, cameras, and two suitcases.
She cast one longing look at the easel standing near the window, and the barely started painting resting on it. If she came back—no when, she corrected. When she came back, she would finish it.
She stood beside Hoyt, studying the pile of belongings as he did.
“No comments?” she asked. “No arguments or sarcastic remarks about how I intend to travel?”
“To what end?”
“A wise stand. Now there’s the little matter of getting all this out of here, uptown and into your brother’s place. At which time, I doubt he’ll be as wise as you. But first things first.” She toyed with her pendant as she considered. “Do we haul it all by hand, or try a transportation spell? I’ve never done anything of this scope.”
He sent her a bland look. “We’d need three of your cabs and most of what we have left of the day to deal with all of this.”
So, he considered the situation as well. “Visualize Cian’s apartment,” he ordered. “The room where you slept.”
“All right.”
“Concentrate. Bring it fully into your mind, the details, the shape, the structure.”
She nodded, closed her eyes. “I am.”
He chose the chest first as he sensed it held the most power. Its magic would aid him in the task. He circled it three times, then reversed, circled again while he said the words, while he opened himself to the power.
Glenna struggled to fix her focus. There was something deeper, richer about his voice, something erotic in the way it spoke the ancient tongue. She felt the heat of what he stirred on her skin, and in her blood. Then a swift and solid punch of air.
When she opened her eyes, the chest was gone.
“I’m impressed.” More honestly, she was amazed. She was capable, with considerable preparation and effort, of transporting small, simple objects some distance. But he’d simply and efficiently poofed a two-hundred-pound chest.
She could picture him now, in billowing robes on the cliff he’d spoken of in Ireland. Challenging the storm, charging himself with it. And facing what no man should have to face, with faith and with magic.
Her belly tightened with sheer and simple lust.
“Was that Gaelic you were speaking?”
“Irish,” he said, so obviously distracted, she didn’t speak again.
Once more he circled, focusing now on the cases that contained her photography and art equipment. She nearly yipped a protest, then reminded herself to have faith. Calling on it, she closed her eyes again, brought the guest room back into her mind. Gave him what she could of her own gift.
It took him fifteen minutes to accomplish what she was forced to admit would have taken her hours, if she could have managed it at all.
“Well that was…that was something.” The magic was still on him, turning his eyes opaque, rippling through the air between them. She felt it like a ribbon wound around both of them, tying them together. Her own arousal was so keen, she had to step back, deliberately break the bond between them.
“No offense, but are you sure they’re where we want them?”
He continued to stare at her with those fathomless blue eyes until the heat in her belly grew so strong she wondered it didn’t shoot fire from her fingertips.
It was nearly too much, this pressure, this need, the mad beat of it at every pulse. She started to step back again, but he simply lifted a hand and stopped her in her tracks.
She felt the pull, from him, to him, with just enough play for her to resist, to snap that lead and escape. Instead she stood, kept her eyes locked with his as he closed the distance between them with one easy stride.
Then there was nothing easy.
He yanked her to him so that her breath expelled on a quick hitching gasp, and that gasp ended on a moan when their mouths met. The hot, drugging kiss spun through her head, through her body, sizzling in her blood when she clung to him.
Candles she’d left in the room flashed into flame.
At once aggressive and desperate, she dug her hands into his shoulders and plunged headfirst into the storm of sensation. This, this was what she’d craved from the first moment she’d seen him in dreams.
She felt his hands on her hair, her body, her face, and everywhere he touched quivered. No dream now, just need and heat and flesh.
He couldn’t stop himself. She was like a feast after the fast, and all he wanted was to gorge. Her mouth was full and soft, and fit so truly to his it was as if the gods had formed it for only that purpose. The power he’d wielded had snapped back on him, inciting an impossible hunger that ached in his belly, in his loins, in his heart and cried out to be sated.
Something burned between them. He’d known it from the first instant, even ill with fever and pain while the wolves stalked beyond his fire. And he feared it nearly as much as he feared what they were fated to face together.
He drew her back, shaken to the bone. What they’d stirred was alive on her face, sultry and tempting. If he accepted and took, what price would they both pay for it?
There was always a price.
“I apologize. I…I was caught on the tail of the spell.”
“Don’t apologize. It’s insulting.”
Women, was all he could think. “Touching you in that way isn’t?”
“If I hadn’t wanted you to touch me that way, I’d have stopped you. Oh, don’t flatter yourself,” she snapped out when she read the expression on his face. “You may be stronger, physically, magically, but I can handle myself. And when I want an apology, I’ll ask for one.”
“I can’t find my balance in this place, or with you.” Frustration rippled out from him now, as the magic had. “I’m not liking it, or what I’m feeling for you.”
“That’s your problem. It was just a kiss.”
He caught her arm before she could turn away. “I don’t believe, even in this world, that was just a kiss. You’ve seen what we have to face. Desire is a weakness, one we can’t risk. Everything we have must be
charged toward what we have to do. I won’t risk your life or the fate of the world for a few moments of pleasure.”
“I can promise it would be more than a few. But there’s no point in arguing with a man who sees desire as a weakness. Let’s chalk it up to the moment, and move on.”
“I’m not after hurting you,” he began with some regret, and she aimed a single, quelling look.
“Apologize again, and you’re on your ass.” She picked up her keys, her purse. “Put out the candles, would you, and let’s go. I want to make sure my things arrived safely, and we’ve got to arrange for flights to Ireland. And figure out how to smuggle you out of the country.”
She grabbed sunglasses from a table, put them on. A great deal of her irritation faded at the baffled expression on his face. “Shades,” she explained. “They cut the glare of the sun, and in this case are a sexy fashion statement.”
She opened the iron gate, then turned, looked back at her loft, her things. “I have to believe I’ll come back here. I have to believe I’ll see all this again.”
She stepped inside, pushed the button for the ground floor. And left behind much that she loved.
When Cian came out of his room, Glenna was in the kitchen cooking. On their return, Hoyt had taken himself off to the study adjoining the living room, hauling his books with him. Now and again, she felt something ripple out, and assumed he was practicing some spells.
It kept him out of her hair. But it didn’t keep him out of her head.
She was careful with men. Enjoying them, certainly, but she didn’t share herself recklessly. Which is exactly what she’d done with Hoyt, and she couldn’t deny it. It had been reckless, impulsive and apparently a mistake. And though she’d said it had been just a kiss, it had been as intimate an act as she’d ever experienced.
He wanted her, there was no question of that. But he didn’t choose to want her. Glenna preferred to be chosen.
Desire wasn’t a weakness, not in her mind—but it was a distraction. He was right in that they couldn’t afford distractions. That strength of character and good solid sense were two of his appealing traits. But considering her own jumpy system, they were equally irritating ones.