She heard Finn and the others leave and knew she was alone now in the bright lights. Could the guards make out her face? Would they recognize her? Finn had called her name, but there must be millions of other Deidres in the world, so that wouldn’t give away her identity.
But if they did know her, then all hell was about to break loose. Her mother would be horrified and wouldn’t be able to protect Deidre from the laws that would demand she be locked away.
“Oh, God,” she muttered, and as her concentration slipped, so did the gun barrels. One daring man jumped forward, but Deidre recovered in time to urge him back with a slap of the gun barrel against his head.
She had to concentrate and think only about what she was doing. If she let her mind wander, this would be over and she’d be dead before anyone could arrest her. She knew Finn and the others were headed for the tunnel entrance. The Magic Police would never find it, as skillfully hidden as it was. So Deidre knew that as soon as they were in the tunnels, they would all be safe.
Or as safe as witches could be.
“Time to go.” Finn was back at her side and she almost laughed at just how sneaky the man was. She hadn’t heard a thing. Hadn’t seen him approach. He was just suddenly there.
“Right,” she said, ready for this night to be over. “Just one more thing. No point in leaving them with full magazines of ammunition, is there?”
“Nope.”
She felt his smile and shared it. Through the fear and anger and confusion, there was also a part of her that was really enjoying the sensation of magic in her veins. It was unlike anything she’d ever known and it was damn near overwhelming.
Flipping her hands over, she watched as the floating guns responded to her mental command and suddenly pointed downward, toward the ground and began firing. The guards shouted and bolted for cover, some of them sliding over the edge of the roof to drop two stories.
With the guns still rattling, bullets and sound tearing up the night, Deidre looked up at Finn and said, “I’m ready.”
But she wasn’t ready to be engulfed in flames.
Chapter 5
Haven, in Wales
Shea, Teresa and Mairi, three Awakened witches, gathered together in the heart of Haven to call on the magic.
They created a circle of power, kneeling around a silver bowl filled to the rim with crystal clear water. Behind them, in recessed niches carved into stone, living fire burned in flames of orange, yellow, gold and blue. Two of the recesses held cages magically constructed to contain pieces of Black Silver, returned to the coven by Shea and Teresa. A third recess waited for Deidre and Finn to complete their quest to retrieve the dangerous and ancient element.
The fire burned over the emptiness, around the cages. The flames snapped and hissed, casting dancing shadows across the witches and the room in which they worked.
Lines of silver threaded through the gray stone walls, flickering in the firelight, highlighting the ancient symbols of power carved there. The spiral, the Bindu, the snake that symbolized immortality and more. There were symbols from every known religion and some that had never been seen anywhere but in the sanctity of Haven. Here, the magic flowered. Here, power sang through the walls and the floors and enveloped the women who called this place home.
The Awakening was changing everything. The first three members of the last great coven of witches had completed their tasks and waited in Haven for the others to find their way home. Mairi, the once and future High Priestess of the Haven coven, looked at her sister-witches and, beneath her pride in their accomplishments, felt a tremor of worry snake through her. Until their task was complete, with every witch home and at peace with the past and the mistakes made, the world would be in danger.
Eight hundred years ago, she had led her sisters on a dangerous quest. They had turned their backs on their beliefs, their goddess, Danu, and even the Eternal warriors who were their destined other halves. They had embraced the dark, pushed too far in a search for more knowledge and power and in so doing, had ruined everything.
They had sought to open a portal to another dimension, focusing their immeasurable powers through the prism of a Black Silver Artifact. An Artifact that was born of blood and breath and fire a thousand years before the birth of Christ. The Black Silver was imbued with magic by its creators, the ancestors of the very witches who allowed it to be freed into the world.
A crest of interlinking knots, the Artifact, when whole, opened doorways into other dimensions and that was what had finally seduced the last great coven. They had hoped to grow their powers and their knowledge in other worlds, other times.
Instead, the gateway to Hell had swung wide and a horde of demons had rushed out, eager to claim this world for their own. When the doorway was finally closed again, despite the witches’ efforts, the seal was incomplete. Dark energy had been leaking into this dimension ever since, creating havoc around the earth.
In atonement for what their greed had caused, a spell was cast and the witches’ powers slept for eight hundred years. Now, the time of the Awakening was here and each witch would come into her power again—this time with the strength to turn their backs on the lure of dark power.
Finally the time had come, after generations of reincarnation, for the witches to at last secure that doorway. To gather up the pieces of the Black Silver and use it to ensure that Lucifer and his minions would never be able to use this gateway again.
But to achieve that, they would need all of their sisters and their Eternals to come home. And with one of the Eternals missing . . . that wasn’t going to happen.
“Are you ready?” Mairi asked, her voice calm, in spite of the roiling emotions inside her.
“Yes,” her niece Shea answered instantly.
“Sure.” Teresa looked at the other women and shrugged. “But all we know is that Egan was trapped at the bottom of the sea. There’s a lot of water on this planet . . .”
“True,” Mairi agreed, letting her gaze sweep around the room. She didn’t look at the power symbols, but at the faces carved into the stone walls. The faces of her sister-witches from so very long ago. Each of them was as familiar as her own features. Each of them dear. Each of them so very important to this cause.
And for this task, this locator spell, the three of them would draw on the magic that lived in this place. On the memory of those others, still far from home. Focusing their own knowledge and drawing on the gifts of the universe, they would try to find Egan.
“The best we can hope for,” Mairi told them, “is a clue. A sense of place. To narrow it down enough that our Eternals will have a chance at finding him.”
“If we had something of Egan’s to focus the magic on . . .” Shea began, biting at her lower lip.
Mairi shook her head. “So far, there’s nothing. His home in France had been cleaned out. Still, Damyn believes he knows of one more place Egan spent time in, so there’s still hope.”
She smiled at the thought of her Eternal, his bronzed skin stained with a Mating tattoo that matched her own, that of climbing roses. Damyn shared his strength with her, enhanced her magic and for a moment, she wished all three Eternals were with them, in the sacred circle. But this was work for the witches alone. They would have to draw strength from each other to make this work.
“Let’s begin.”
“Okay, but, how?” Teresa interrupted. She was the newest member to find her way home. She and her Eternal, Rune, had arrived only two days ago and her magic was still raw, untamed. As was Shea’s, Mairi thought, since her niece had been here only a month longer than Teresa. But in this, they were all apace. They would remember together. They would align their magic and feed off each other’s strengths and somehow, they’d pull it off.
“Link hands,” Mairi said softly, holding her hands out to both Shea and Teresa. When they were joined, forming a li
ving triangle, magic hummed in the air around them. The surface of the water stirred, as if someone had blown a breath across it. And in the tiny ripples, light and shadow formed and faded and formed again.
“Focus,” Mairi whispered, her gaze locked on the water, waiting for a clear image to appear. The other two witches joined her, centering themselves, their gazes also on the churning water.
Mairi took a breath, let it slide from her lungs and softly chanted,
We seek the one lost
To set him free
Follow the magic
And let us see.
Shea and Teresa picked up the chant and repeated it with her. Their voices chimed together and became more than words, more than a chant. The essence of magic rushed through them, around them, wrapping the three of them in a blanket of warmth and the shimmer of power.
As the spell worked, the surface of the water began to twist itself into a spiral, as if it were churning to go down a drain that wasn’t there. Faster and faster it spun, lapping over the edges of the crystal bowl, sprinkling the knees of the women kneeling before it. Then, as quickly as it began, it was over. The water stilled and an image formed.
Egan. Mairi took a sharp breath and stared at the haggard, tortured face of the Eternal. He was beneath the sea, trapped in a cage fronted by white gold bars. The flames of his magic coated his skin, but because of the water, burned faintly, more like the memory of fire than the living flame it should be.
But his eyes told the story of his suffering. His Eternal gray eyes, normally awash in shades of pewter and silver, were now black. As black as the treachery that had landed him there. As black as the deep ocean that held him.
Shea sighed and Mairi whispered, “Focus.”
She reached for him, across the miles, sending her thoughts to the trapped Eternal. Hear me, Egan. Feel the magic. Help us find you.
Mairi held perfectly still, using every scrap of magic she possessed. She centered herself and drew on the reserves of strength provided by the connection to her Mate and by her sister-witches, now holding her hands in tight grips. Their magic flowed from their fingertips into Mairi’s body until she felt herself expanding, blossoming, power filling her mind and heart and soul and then she tried again.
Egan!
She shivered, and beside her, Shea and Teresa gasped. As if he heard them, felt their presence, Egan stared out at them from the water’s surface and shouted, “Mare Superum!”
The magic winked out. The women slumped in their places and struggled for air. After a few moments of recovery, Shea looked to her aunt and asked, “Mare Superum? What is that?”
Mairi shook her head, both exhilarated and bereft. They had found him, but still didn’t know where he was. “I have no idea.”
Magic. He felt it. Dreamed it. Breathed it.
The dark water became lover and enemy. Surrounding him, invading, caressing him. Days and nights bled together. Weeks and months were links in a never-ending chain that stretched into eternity and beyond.
There was no change.
No light in his darkness.
There was only his rage.
And the rage was all consuming. All powerful.
He roared his fury and his voice was swallowed by the sea. He thought of the witches staring down at him and strangled the bead of hope that lay nestled in his chest near his unbeating heart.
Hope would change nothing.
Magic couldn’t save him.
The white gold bars of his prison dampened his powers. The water surrounding him smothered the living flames that were the heart of him. He was immortal. Eternal.
And trapped at the bottom of the ocean by the female who should have been his Mate.
Egan grabbed the bars of his cage despite the cold ache that swept through him at the contact. As he had so many times before, he rattled and shook them with the waning strength left to him.
Nothing.
No change.
He fell against the heavy wood and white gold enclosure at his back and stared out at the watery grave she had caught him in. Fury roared through his veins, as hot and rich and pure as it had been the day Kellyn betrayed him. The day she had sealed her own fate.
Because he would get out, he promised himself as madness crept closer. And when he did, he would kill the witch himself and fuck the Awakening.
Chapter 6
“What the hell was that?”
Finn let Deidre go the minute they were in the tunnels, yet far enough from the rest of the team that no one else would see. As the flames on his skin slowly faded away, he caught Deidre’s astonished expression. Eyes wide, she shook her head as if denying the whole thing had happened and took a quick step back. He read panic in her eyes and he couldn’t allow it to take root. He knew he had to stop her from discounting what she’d been through. She was Awakened and she would damn well stay Awakened.
Whether she wanted to hear it or not, he was going to tell her the truth. About who she was. About who they were, together.
“Magic,” he told her.
“Yeah,” she countered, pushing a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. “I got that.” She was still wild-eyed as if trying to figure out what she had done and coming up empty of explanations.
Finally though she said, “What I did back there . . . with the guns, the guards. That was magic.” She looked down at her hands as if she’d never seen them before. “I’m a witch. Sounds weird even saying it, but it’s hard to dispute what happened out there. But you—” She looked up at him again. “Men aren’t witches. And most men don’t go up in flames and then zap themselves and a passenger anywhere they want to go. So what the hell are you?”
Finn glanced back down the tunnel. His hearing was far sharper than a human’s and he had no problem discerning the scuffle of feet and the hushed whispers that defined his group’s passage. They were headed for one of the main chambers off this section of the underground. The room they used as their headquarters. He didn’t have enough time to go into a long explanation here, so he kept it short and less than sweet.
“What I am, is immortal. Who I am, is your Eternal. I’m here to help you Awaken your magic.”
She scraped her hands up and down her arms. “Yeah, thanks, but I think I’ve done that already. Remember?”
He laughed and was startled himself by the sound. “There’s more to it than the manipulation of metal.”
“I’ll bet,” she said, then looked up at him with a shrewd gaze. “You weren’t surprised at all by what I did. Everyone else was, me included, but not you. You knew. You knew that I was a witch when you told Shauna to bring me tonight.”
“Yeah.” He folded his arms across his chest and kept his eyes locked on her. He could almost see the wheels in her mind turning. “I’ve always known.”
“Always? What’s that mean?”
“It means,” he said with more than a little impatience, “that I have known you for centuries. Eons of time stretching back far longer than even I want to remember. It means you and I have what you could say, quite literally, history.”
“Riiiiggghhhttt.” She dragged that one word out so long, it was a sentence in and of itself. Nodding as she gave him a patronizing smile usually reserved for children. “Centuries. You and me. Sure. That makes as much sense as anything else that’s happened tonight.”
Finn had expected disbelief. The sarcasm he could live without. Down the tunnel, the group moved farther away from them. “We don’t have time for this right now.”
“Yeah, well, make time,” she said and folded her arms across her chest, mimicking his position. “And try to come up with some story that at least sounds real.”
Unbelievable. Who would have guessed that she’d accept her magic so easily and still fight him? “You want real? You got it. Bottom li
ne? You’re the reincarnation of a powerful witch. I was your destined Mate. Your guardian.”
She laughed shortly, but he just moved in closer and started talking faster. “Back in the day, you and your coven cast a dangerous spell that backfired big-time. It opened a gateway to Hell, allowing demons through into this dimension. Now, eight hundred years later, we have to find an ancient Artifact that you hid back then. And if we don’t, the world is toast. Clear?”
“Oh yeah,” she said after a long moment of silence. “Way clear. You’re nuts.”
“Damn it.” He grabbed her, pulled her in close and kissed her, hard and long and deep. The connection between them simmered in her veins—he knew it. What he had to do now was force her to remember. To feel the draw between them, that bond that was never severed, no matter how many lifetimes she had lived.
Their souls were bound. Always had been. If she wouldn’t believe his words, then she would damn well believe what he made her feel.
She struggled for a second or two and then her instinctive pull to him kicked in and she kissed him back. Finn hadn’t meant to give in to this; the kiss was simply a means to an end. But when she wrapped her arms around his neck and molded herself to his body, what the hell was he supposed to do? She had always been able to turn his blood to steam and his dick to stone. That hadn’t changed. Tongues tangled, their breath merged and flames erupted over his body, devouring them both in a dancing, living flame that dazzled the darkness.
It had been too long, he told himself as he swept his hands up and down her body before cupping her behind and pressing her tightly to his groin. That’s why he was instantly ready to find the closest flat surface and bury himself inside her. It had nothing to do with the Mating. Nothing to do with who she was or what they had once meant to each other.
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