“Yet, you think you need defending.”
“Of course I do. Why the hell do you think I didn’t want to Mate with you now? Because I wasn’t there when you needed me. When you finally called for me—I wasn’t there. I’ve lived with that for centuries, Dee. Not something I’m proud of.”
Finn’s teeth ground together. He didn’t like thinking about that night. Hated remembering that the one time she had ever needed him he hadn’t been there for her.
Back then, he’d hungered for her like a damn madman. She’d been ethereal. Elusive. She gave him her body and withheld everything else. Her heart. Her soul. She had kept him at arm’s length always, insisting on going her own way. Then, it had frosted his ass. Now, he admired that same trait in her. So who really had been the one with the damn problem?
Like a blanket had been pulled from his eyes, Finn saw the past as it had really been. Not as his own damaged pride and fury had painted it all these centuries. He’d wanted her to be less than she was so she would need him. When he should have been at her side, proud of her strength.
God, what an idiot.
“Yeah,” he finally said. “I did come back to Haven that night. I felt your fear,” he muttered, reliving those moments when cold had dropped over him and he had known that she was in trouble. “I got back as fast as I could. The battle was already engaged. You were—”
“Wounded,” she said for him.
“Yeah.” He nodded and swallowed hard. “Blood pouring down your arm, dripping onto the ground and when I saw you hurt—I lost it.” He closed his eyes and let it come back. “I tore through demons to get to you. To protect you. To make up for not being there when you needed me.”
“You saved me.”
“No. I couldn’t save you from yourself. You and your sister-witches jump-started a damn war with Hell that night and none of us could talk you out of it.”
“I know—”
“But I’m going to save you now, Dee,” he said and reached for her. Yanking her close, he looked into her eyes and knew that the love he’d had for her back then, as deep and rich as it had been, didn’t even come close to what he felt for her today. “I never saw it until now, but your strength was what bothered me. Your confidence, your abilities, seemed to ensure that you would never need me. I let my own pride dictate what I did back then.
“This time I will for damn sure always be there when you need me.”
“But,” she said softly, “it’s not enough for me, Finn. You say I never needed you, I only wanted you. Well, now, you don’t want me, you just need me. To complete your mission or slap a Band-Aid on the past.” She poked him in the chest with her forefinger. “Well. I’ve been needed and used all my life. For politics or to look good or to be the right friend at the right time. I’m tired of being needed. Used. No one has ever wanted me, Finn. Just for me. Deidre Sterling.”
“Maybe it’s karma’s way of kicking my ass, twisting this all around like she has,” Finn muttered. “Making us each feel what the other had so long ago. Hell, need. Want. To me, they’re the same thing. I need you. I want you. Not for what you can give me but because I’m not whole without you.” He cupped her face, his thumbs tracing across her cheekbones. “You’re it, Deidre. Didn’t want you to be. Thought I was long past the hunger for you. But it’s more than that now. You’re air to me. Magical, mystical.”
He shook his head, his gaze moving over her features like a caress. “I thought I could walk away from you. Mate and then leave. Well, screw that. Damned if I’m going anywhere and you can just learn to live with it.”
“How can I believe that you’re not just trying to somehow salve your own conscience for what happened centuries ago? I want you to want me. Not her—not that witch I was so many years ago. Not what I can do. Just me. Deidre Sterling. And you don’t.”
He laughed quietly, slid his fingers into the soft hair at her temples and forced her to meet his gaze. “Now you’re the crazy one. You’re not listening to me, Deidre. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything. You’ve become the very center of me, Dee. Without you I’ve got nothing. With you, I’ve got everything.”
She trembled a little and he read wariness in her eyes. “I want to believe that.”
“You can,” he insisted, never breaking his gaze. “Because I swear to you—if it comes down to a choice between your life or saving the world? I choose you and fuck the world.”
She took a breath, held it, then laughed. “That’s really insane, you know.”
“Shoot me, I’m a romantic.”
Deidre laughed and leaned into him. “No, you’re not. But apparently, that’s okay with me.”
He wrapped his arms around her, felt his own little corner of the universe slide into place. “So are we good?”
She looked up at him. “We’re way better than good.”
“You keep throwing my own words back at me.”
“I have an excellent memory.”
“I’m getting that.” He kissed her forehead. “So, besides remembering what a dick I was, did any other memories pop up? Like what the hell you did with that damned Artifact?”
“Sort of,” she said, frowning.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Yeah,” she said wryly. “A romantic. That’s you.”
“Deidre—”
“I don’t know what it means. I saw myself—her—whatever, leaving Wales. She was headed for London. That’s all I’ve got so far.”
Finn bit down on his own impatience. It was not helping. “It’ll come.”
“In time?”
“We still have more than a week. We can do it. We will do it.” He reached down and peeled back the edge of her shirt. His fingers moved across the tattoo inching its way across her skin. A ribbon of linked chain was forming around her breast and would soon wrap under her arm and around her back.
His mark.
Damn, he was still a medieval guy, he supposed, because the thought of her wearing his brand made him hard as stone. He wanted to claim her again and again, revel in the knowledge that she was his.
“Guess we’d better try to open more memories.” He picked her up and headed for the bed.
Chapter 35
A howl of rage and pain shrieked through the sage-scented air of Haven.
Teresa cringed and looked across the table at Rune. “We can’t just leave him in there alone.”
Rune didn’t like it any more than his Mate did. Bringing Egan back to Haven had been their only choice. Locking him up was the only sane maneuver left to them.
Frowning, Rune admitted, “He’s better off alone right now, Teresa. Egan’s half mad with rage. I don’t trust him around you or the others.”
She dropped an uneaten cookie onto her plate. “So what? We get him out of one cage and put him in another?”
“It’s not a cage,” he grumbled, pushing away from the table.
Another howl sounded out, filled with pain and misery and so much fury it raised the hairs on the back of Rune’s neck. He swung out an arm and pointed off down the hall toward Egan’s room. “Did you hear that? Hell, Teresa, he’s hardly done more than that since we got him out of that damn cage at the bottom of the sea.” His voice dropped and his shoulders hunched as if distancing himself from the pain his brother was feeling. “I’ve known Egan for centuries and the Eternal sitting in that bespelled room? That’s not Egan.”
“Of course he is,” Teresa argued, going to him to lay both hands on his forearms.
Just the feel of her touch was enough to soothe him, Rune thought and thanked Belen, Danu and any other god that had had a hand in bringing them together.
He dropped his forehead to hers and inhaled the familiar scent of her. “He’s not who he was,” Rune corrected. “And what about his Mate? You
haven’t discovered anything about Kellyn yet.”
“No,” Teresa muttered, clearly frustrated. “She’s been charmed or she’s cast a spell on herself. It’s as if she’s drawn a blanket over her head, keeping us from seeing what’s beneath it. But we’ll get there.”
“I know you will.”
“See? You have faith in us, so have faith in Egan. He’s hurt and angry and who the hell can blame him?” She wrapped her arms around him and held on. “But he’s still Egan. Once his mind realizes that he’s truly free, he’ll come back to us. You’ll see.”
Rune wanted to believe her, but the madness in Egan’s gray eyes had chilled him to the bone. It had been days and Egan was no closer to regaining any semblance of self. He was still the raging, infuriated beast they’d pulled from the water.
And Rune worried that that was all he would ever be.
If that was true, then the Awakening was over and the world was in deep shit.
* * *
“We’ve got trouble.”
Finn and Deidre looked up from the map of the city they had been studying. Her head was spinning from all the new information, but she had a much better understanding of exactly which tunnels went where in the city now.
As the days passed, she and Finn were more and more the team they always should have been. Her heart was full and her soul more at peace than she ever would have believed. Even living a life on the run, hiding from federal agents, local cops and everyday citizens, couldn’t take away the satisfaction of knowing that she was doing what she was supposed to be doing. With the Eternal she had always been meant for.
But their little interlude was over and the world was once more interfering. Joe was standing in the archway, torchlight shifting shadows across features that were tight with resignation.
“What kind of trouble?” Finn asked and Deidre was amazed again at just how quickly her Eternal could go from relaxed lover to deadly warrior mode.
Joe walked into the armory, holding a small computer tablet. He tapped it on as he came closer.
“We get Internet down here and not phone service?”
“No.” Joe looked at her and shook his head. “This isn’t live. A friend downloaded what I’m about to show you and I loaded it up onto the tablet. It’s not good.”
Finn scowled and said, “Just show us.”
He did and Deidre went cold as she watched the raid at the BOW internment center play out on the screen. She saw herself holding her hands up, turning weapons around on the agents and flicking bullets to the floor as if she was dismissing lint from a black coat. Then she watched as Finn approached and flashed her out of the room.
All of it caught in living color.
Her heart actually sank. “What the��”
“One of the guards apparently used his cell phone to make a video of the raid. Never saw the bastard do it, either.”
This was definitely not good. If it had been up on the Internet . . . “When was it posted?”
Joe met her gaze. “It went up right after the raid.”
“That was a week ago.”
“Yeah. The feds pulled it but . . .”
Pulling it wouldn’t have helped and she knew it. Something like this went viral in a matter of minutes. No telling how many people had watched her perform magic. Watched her and Finn disappear in a column of fire.
“Oh, God.” Deidre looked up at Finn, saw the closed expression in his eyes and wondered what he was thinking. Her own feelings were fragmented, shattered into a million different emotions.
In a weird way, she was almost proud as she watched herself perform magic. But the reality was, she’d been exposed. This video had probably been around the world several times already. She’d put her mother in a terrible position and she couldn’t even imagine what was going on in the White House right now as a result of all of this.
God. It had been weeks since she’d read a newspaper or seen a news program. Life in the tunnels was so separate from everything, she may as well have been on Mars.
“Like I said, the feds took the video down,” Joe was saying. “Claimed it was being used to foment fear and violence.”
Great. Now Deidre was going to be the poster child for witchcraft. Fabulous.
“Taking it down doesn’t mean anything,” Finn said. “Hell, we’re proof of that. We’re standing here watching it after they pulled it.”
“Yeah,” Joe said. “And there’s more.”
“What’s left?” Deidre countered and appreciated the arm that Finn dropped around her shoulders.
Amazing, but since beginning the Mating, accepting him and who they were together, Deidre felt stronger than she ever had before. She knew her place in the world. She knew what was important and what was just clutter.
This was important.
“My friend also recorded something else.” Joe’s eyes were soft with sympathy as he looked at her. “You’re not going to like it.”
Nodding, Deidre said only, “Play it.”
Finn stood beside her, his body as tense as she felt. She leaned into him and lifted one hand to lay it atop her left breast, where her Mating tattoo was still growing. It gave her strength. Completed the connection to Finn that she had a feeling she was going to need.
Joe called up the next file and turned up the sound.
It was the White House press room and Deidre held her breath. Her mother walked to the podium, surrounded by frowning aides and Secret Service. She recognized Darius and in the background, Dante.
“Thank you for coming,” her mother said, looking directly into the camera. “I have a brief statement and I will not accept questions.”
Murmurs of disapproval rumbled through the room, but Cora Sterling only stiffened her spine and lifted her chin. Deidre knew that look. Her mother had been pushed to the brink and she was calling on every ounce of her fierce will to get through this.
Guilt nibbled at the edges of Deidre’s mind and she winced. God knew what her mother had been going through the last week. What people had been saying to her. Both houses of Congress were probably up in arms and oh, she didn’t even want to think about what the press had been saying.
Deidre knew all too well that some of the senators and congressmen were pushing for a repeal of the First Amendment. To temporarily get rid of free speech in an attempt to put a lid on the witch situation. With every fruitcake in the world going on blogs or simply standing on street corners trying to foment riots, some people thought the only way to calm everyone was to curtail what was being said.
Deidre didn’t think she could live with herself if she turned out to be the reason the Constitution was stomped into oblivion.
“As most of you know,” Cora began, her words coming fast, clipped. “My daughter, Deidre, was kidnapped two weeks ago. But for one short phone call, I’ve had no contact with Deidre since. I’ve prayed every night for her safety and I thank all of you who have joined me in that.
“Recently, a disturbing video was on the Internet. It showed Deidre wielding magic. Appearing to take part willingly in a raid at a BOW internment center.”
The reporters in the room took a collective breath—and so did Deidre. She reached for Finn’s hand and he curled his fingers over hers.
“The world’s newspapers, television news stations and Internet sites are now insisting that my daughter has not been kidnapped by terrorists at all—that she is a terrorist. I cannot tell you how harmful such lies are. The pain they have caused me personally and the damage these lies have done to the fight against cruelty to witches is immeasurable. So let me say this plainly,” Cora told them all, her gaze moving steadily over the reporters hanging on her every word. “The video is a fabrication,” Cora said flatly. “The White House has investigated, brought in experts to examine the original video and they have assure
d me that it has been doctored.
“Deidre’s kidnappers have altered the film to make it seem as though she has become one of them. As if she herself were a witch.”
“What?” Deidre murmured.
“Shh,” Finn urged.
The reporters in the press room began muttering to each other and the sound grew into an angry buzz, as if a swarm of killer bees had just dropped into the room.
Cora held up one hand for silence and instantly got it.
“These people are holding my daughter. She’s in danger. And now they’re stripping away not only her freedom, but her reputation.” A solitary tear tracked down Cora’s cheek as the camera zoomed in to capture the poignant moment.
“I promise you now, as your president, as Deidre’s mother, I will stop at nothing to find my daughter and bring her captors to justice. Thank you.”
The room erupted with questions shouted from the reporters. Camera flashes sputtered from every corner. One of the White House aides stood at the podium shouting for quiet as Cora turned, and surrounded by Secret Service personnel, left the briefing room.
Joe turned the tablet off and the sudden quiet was overwhelming.
“Oh my God. I don’t believe this.” Deidre’s heart ached. All she could see was the tear her ferociously controlled mother had allowed to slip past her guard. The guilt that had nibbled on her earlier began to chow down in earnest now.
She had always had a complicated relationship with her mother. Cora wasn’t the warmest human being on the face of the planet. And her goals and dreams had always taken precedence. But Deidre loved her and knowing that she was causing her mother not only personal anguish but professional pain was a hard thing to live with.
“Dee,” Finn said, his voice slicing into her thoughts with the finesse of a freight train. “You can’t go to her.”
“I know,” she said, even though her mind was racing with the notion of doing just that. The least she owed her mom was to show her she was all right.
“I mean it.” He jerked his head at Joe in a signal to get lost, and when they were alone again, he turned her to look at him. “I know what your mother means to you, but you cannot go to the White House. It’s just too dangerous. Whoever told your mother that tape was doctored is lying to her. Which means there’s someone around her who can’t be trusted.”
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