Visions of Chains

by Regan Hastings

  “Mom, what are you doing?” Deidre’s voice was thin, reedy with pain and the cloying pull of the white gold embedded in her body.

  Darius and two others moved in on him, leaving Dante standing in the background behind Cora and Kellyn. Finn would get out and when he did, they were all going to die.

  Then Kellyn crouched beside Deidre with a hypodermic. The needle jammed into Deidre’s arm and she slumped bonelessly to the floor.

  “DEIDRE!”

  Chapter 40

  Deidre woke up in a cell with white gold bars. The arrow was gone from her shoulder, but a white gold chain lay around her neck, sending that sweeping arctic sensation through her body, dampening her power. She sat up on her cot and pushed her hair back out of her eyes. The room smelled of disinfectant and made her nose tingle with every breath. Her vision was blurry—thanks to whatever they had shot her up with—and Finn was nowhere in sight.

  Finn. Memory rose up and she saw him, struggling against his bonds, his captors. She remembered Darius and Kellyn and her mother—and she remembered Dante, there in the room with her enemies.

  “God, I’m an idiot,” she whispered, taking a long look around her cell. She’d convinced Finn to trust her Secret Service agent and look where that had landed them.

  Okay, enough self-pity. Now it was time to find a way out.

  A door opened and Kellyn walked in. “Finally.”

  Deidre stood up. She was still a little wobbly and the white gold around her neck made her feel weak, but she would face whatever came next standing on her own two feet.

  “Thought you were going to sleep forever,” Kellyn mused, moving close enough to drag her fingertips across the white gold briefly. She shuddered, rubbed her fingers together as if to wipe away the chill, then stepped back. “Honestly, you witches and the white gold thing. How do you stand it?”

  “We witches?” Deidre asked, gaze locked on her enemy. “You’re one, too.”

  “Oh, this?” Kellyn waved one hand up and down her own body. “This body’s just a rental. See.” She wandered the close confines of the room while she talked, her needle-thin heels tapping relentlessly against the white tile floor. “Thanks to you bitches, eight hundred years ago I slipped out of Hell. I do owe you a big thanks for that, but maybe later.”

  “You’re a demon.”

  “Wow.” Kellyn’s eyes went wide with pretended amazement. “Nothing gets past you, does it?” She sighed. “Yes, I’m a demon. Spent the last several centuries hanging around, having fun, waiting for you and your sisters to start the Awakening. Then, I hopped a ride on one of the chosen and”—she shrugged—“here I am.”

  Didn’t make sense. But then what did, lately? “How did you know who Kellyn was? No one knows who the chosen ones are. Not until they’re called.”

  “Oh,” Kellyn told her with a slow smile. “Your mother knew. Well, mother isn’t really the word for her.”

  Her mother knew? Had known all along? That meant—

  “Shut up, Kellyn.”

  Deidre watched Cora enter the room, followed by Darius and Dante. Her gaze narrowed on the man she had thought of as a friend, but he looked impassive, as if betraying her had meant nothing to him. Slowly, Deidre looked back at her mother. “What do you want from me?”

  Cora gripped the white gold bars in both hands and squeezed. Her blue eyes were dark with shadows and her mouth was tight. “I should think that would be obvious, Deidre. I want the Artifact.”

  She shook her head. “Are you a demon too?”

  “I’m something you can’t even conceive,” Cora whispered and her features blurred, shifting, as if the very bones in her body were unstable. They reformed themselves in a blink and she was once again the woman Deidre had always known.

  Thinking fast, Dee knew she couldn’t give this woman the Artifact—with its power, she would be unstoppable. She could turn the world into a graveyard—and probably would. The only way out of this then, Deidre told herself, was to find the Artifact and use its dark power herself to stop them.

  She had enough of her memories to know that it was a dangerous move. That the Black Silver would spark dark energy inside her. That she would have to fight against it with everything in her. But there was no other choice. If she stayed locked down here, with white gold around her neck, she would never be able to escape them. Would never find Finn—wherever he was—and she would never defeat the woman watching her now with a reptilian gaze.

  “So what’s it going to be, Deidre?” Cora asked pleasantly. “Do you give me what I want, or do I hand you over to a torturer and get the information that way?”

  “I’ll find it,” she whispered, looking from Cora to Kellyn and then to Dante. Shifting her gaze back to her mother, she said, “I can sense the Artifact’s presence. But I can’t do it with this chain around my neck—or with these bars so close to me.”

  Cora frowned and Kellyn shook her head. “Oh no, don’t be stupid,” the demon snapped. “She only wants out so she can escape.”

  Cora studied Deidre’s face and then slowly shook her head. “She’s not that foolish. She knows I’m holding her Eternal. And even immortals will die if you take their heads . . .”

  Deidre swayed under that mental image, then lifted her chin defiantly. She wouldn’t let them see how scared she was, not anymore. If she was going to die, then she was going to go out fighting—just as Finn had taught her. “How do you know about Eternals? What are you and what did you do with my mother?”

  Laughing now, Cora said, “Foolish child, I am your mother. I’ve been in this body for decades. I chose this body because I knew it was destined to give birth to you.”

  Sickened, Deidre couldn’t say anything. She could only look at the woman in front of her and wonder how she had never once seen past the façade that Cora had presented for all those years. Seemed impossible now, but the proof was looking right at her out of eyes that seemed both familiar and strange.

  “You possessed her.”

  “I stepped into her,” Cora corrected. “Oh, not like my little demon friend over there. She’s got her witch trapped inside her own body clamoring to be free.”

  Deidre winced at the image.

  “But when I took this body, I separated the soul and sent it wherever tiny spirits like hers go. This body is mine. For now.”

  “How? How did you know that she would give birth to me?”

  “Are you under the mistaken impression that I’ve come to illuminate you in some way? I haven’t.” Cora leaned forward, putting her face next to the bars. “Enough questions. Just know that I can kill your Eternal with one command. Don’t fuck with me.”

  A mindless, all-encompassing anger roared through Deidre and shook her right to the bone. But she couldn’t show any of it. Had to do exactly what her “mother” had taught her to do all those years. Put on a stoic face. Let no one see that you’re worried. Funny, now she needed that advice to fight the very woman who had given it to her.

  “I understand,” she said. “I’m accustomed to being used by you. Now, if you want that Artifact, get me the hell out of this cage.”

  “You’re crazy if you do this,” Kellyn snapped.

  “We’ve come too far to stop now,” Cora told her, never taking her gaze from Deidre. She waved Dante toward the cell and Darius lifted the small crossbow he’d already used on Deidre once.

  Cora warned, “We’ll have white gold arrows aimed at you every moment. You’ll be under our control. You try anything and your Eternal dies.”

  Deidre nodded and let her gaze stray to Dante. He managed to avoid her accusatory stare though, as he waited for his orders.

  Cora straightened up, met her gaze for a long moment, then nodded. “Do it.”

  Chapter 41

  Finn now had a taste of what Egan had endure
d.

  Draped in white gold chains, he was secured to a wall, unable to move or flash out. Unable to reach Deidre, unaware of what was happening to her. Unable to fight back against the two men currently beating the crap out of him. No wonder his friend had lost his grip on sanity.

  He lunged forward, the manacles on his wrists digging into his flesh, white gold burning him with an icy cold. Rage rolled through him like a damn freight train. The flames that were such a part of him were buried beneath the magic-killing metal and the men in front of him knew he was powerless.

  The chains rattled ominously as he pulled and yanked at them. And still they didn’t budge from the stone wall at Finn’s back.

  “Big bastard, ain’t he?” One of the men said, drawing his right fist back for a punishing blow to Finn’s jaw.

  “Yeah, but it’s not doing him any good, is it?” His partner countered with a crushing fist to Finn’s abdomen.

  Narrowing his eyes on his attackers, Finn blinked blood from his vision and glared his fury because that was all they’d left him. His broad chest ran with blood, since the white gold was hampering his natural healing abilities, his face throbbed incessantly and if he’d had a heartbeat, it would have been racing.

  A single-minded chant repeated over and over again in his mind. Deidre . . . Had to get to Deidre . . .

  A door across the room opened and both of his attackers turned to look.

  Joe walked in and Finn felt a short, painful jab that had nothing to do with physical pain. His friend? Here? Was Joe a traitor? Working with the president? Fresh fury and agony swamped him. There would be retribution for this—he swore it.

  “Who the hell are you?” One of Finn’s captors demanded.

  “None of your damn business,” Joe said. Then he shot both men with a single shot to their heads. Before they dropped, he was on his way across the room.

  Finn choked out a laugh. “You had me worried there for a second.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” While Joe found the keys on one of the dead men and unlocked Finn’s manacles, several more men, wearing dark suits entered the room.

  Finn flinched, but Joe reassured him. “It’s okay. They’re friends.”

  Finn wasn’t so sure but with his hands free and the white gold chains shoved off of him, he felt a slow swell of his power returning. The wounds on his body began to heal, but there was still too much white gold in the room for his strength to come back fully. That would change though, as soon as he got out of here. He had to find Deidre. He focused on the connection they shared through the Mating tattoo, but couldn’t feel her. Either she too was surrounded by white gold or she was—

  No. She wasn’t dead. That he would feel. The emptiness would crush him. The flames that were such a part of him lay dormant beneath his skin, struggling to get free.

  An older man walked toward them, leaving the others who had come in with him to hover near the doorway.

  “Finn,” Joe said with a smile, “I want you to meet my father, Samuel Rooney. The vice president of the United States.”

  The instant the white gold chain was off her neck, Deidre felt the pulse of her power rush back in, filling her veins, her muscles, every inch of her body. It hummed inside her and she felt . . . good.

  “Get on with it,” Kellyn snapped, arms folded across her meager chest. She stood under the North Portico, in essence the White House front porch, watching from what she probably thought of as a safe distance. If Deidre had her way, Kellyn would never be safe from her.

  Two Christmas trees, lights blinking cheerfully, flanked the double-door entrance to the White House. Cora dismissed the two guards usually on duty. She had Darius and Dante with her and apparently didn’t want any other witnesses to what would happen next.

  Deidre glanced briefly at Dante. He gave her a slight, barely perceptible nod and she frowned, wondering what the hell that was supposed to be. An apology for turning traitor and betraying her? If so, it was a pitiful attempt.

  “Do you sense the Artifact or not?” Cora demanded.

  Late November cold seeped through Deidre’s clothes and turned her breath to vapor. She ignored everyone around her, closed her eyes and reached out with her magic. She concentrated solely on the feel of the Black Silver. It had only just begun to call to her in the last day or so. Like an oil spill on her soul, blackness swam toward her. The dark energy pouring from it hummed inside her like a tempting lure. Use me. Be with me. The pull of it was mesmerizing and Deidre was now forced to open herself to it completely.

  “There.” One whispered word and the atmosphere on the porch ignited.

  “Where?” Cora bit off the word.

  “Follow me,” Deidre said and headed down the steps into the cold, dark night.

  “Vice president?” Finn repeated, looking from his trusted second-in-command to the man standing beside him. There was a startling resemblance.

  Samuel Rooney held out one hand to him. “My son wanted to tell you before,” he said. “But I insisted he keep my secret.”

  Finn looked at the man’s hand but didn’t take it. “Why?”

  “Because he’s had doubts about Cora Sterling for years,” Joe said, irritation plain in his tone. “Just recently, she’s gotten worse and Dad was worried. Damn it, Finn, we just saved your ass. Doesn’t that buy us at least a little faith?”

  Nodding finally, Finn shook the vice president’s hand, then released him.

  Samuel Rooney met his gaze steadily. “Cora Sterling is unstable. She’s threatening world leaders, letting alliances fall apart and about to declare martial law.” His jaw clenched, he added, “I love my country and I’m willing to do whatever I can to save her from destruction. So, I wanted to tell you in person, that you will have my full support if you can bring Cora down.”

  A simmering moment of silence passed. Finn glanced at Joe, then told his father, “That’s the plan.”

  Deidre allowed the pull of the dark energy to lead her down across the north lawn. She walked along the circular drive that led to Pennsylvania Avenue. She passed the circular pool and fountain, dormant now for winter and when she came to the wrought iron gates at the end of the drive, she stopped.

  Her blood was humming with energy, dark and light. She clung to the light and followed the dark.

  “Open the gates!” Cora’s order was obeyed instantly and the creak and groan of cold metal sounded like the screams of dying souls.

  Dante, Darius, Kellyn and Cora followed Deidre, staying right on her heels as she hurried across Pennsylvania Avenue, empty of cars. There wasn’t a soul around. It had to be after midnight and with the curfew in force, people didn’t risk arrest for late-night strolls.

  They were alone, the small group of enemies, the only sound in the stillness, the crunch of their feet in the snow.

  “Where the hell is she taking us?” Kellyn murmured.

  No one answered, least of all Deidre. She wasn’t even thinking about those who followed her now. All she could concentrate on was the burn of the dark magic sliding through her system. Her lungs were tight, making each breath more difficult than the last. But her steps were sure as she led those behind her into Lafayette Park.

  The seven acres of greenery and trees, directly across from the White House, was known, along with the Ellipse, as the President’s Park. In their winter glory, the trees were bare and it was a world of dark and light, white and gray and shadows crept quietly all around them.

  Deidre didn’t hesitate. She walked faster, every step bringing her closer to the dark energy dragging at her, teasing her senses. She heard those behind her scurrying to keep up and didn’t care. All that mattered now was the Artifact and how she could use it to free herself.

  If she could resist the dark, sensual lure that had snared her and her sister-witches in that long-ago time.

 
She stopped dead in front of the statue of President Andrew Jackson astride a rearing horse. The sculpture was bronze and had been in this spot since 1853. A dusting of snow covered the statue and the moon suddenly appeared from behind a bank of clouds to pour down a silvery light that encompassed the statue and the small crowd of people in front of it.

  “Well?” Cora demanded.

  “It’s there,” Deidre said, lifting one arm to point. “The plaque. That’s the Artifact.”

  “What?” Kellyn scoffed and snorted dismissively. “Out in plain sight all this time and we never felt its presence?”

  Deidre whipped her head around to glare at her. “It wasn’t meant for demons to find.”

  Kellyn’s eyes narrowed and she took a step forward. Cora stopped her with one raised hand. Then she turned to Darius and ordered, “Pry it loose.”

  He handed his crossbow to Dante. Picking up a huge rock, he slammed it against the plaque methodically, hoping to knock it from the stone, but nothing happened. Deidre smiled to herself. The Black Silver was thrumming in the air, sending waves of power at her in silent welcome.

  Someone must have brought the Black Silver from Europe long after she handed it off to that sea captain. How it had landed here, in DC, reforged into a plaque for a favored president, they would never know.

  “Not coming off, ma’am,” Darius finally admitted.

  Cora scowled, looked at Deidre and said, “Get the damn thing and hand it over if you ever want to see your Eternal again.”

  Lies, Deidre thought. Cora had no intention of letting her or Finn live beyond tonight. So all that mattered was keeping Cora from taking the Artifact. Deidre walked up to the statue, laid one hand on the plaque and, instantly, the Black Silver became liquid. It released its hold on the stone and poured itself into Deidre’s waiting hands, where it reformed itself into the Celtic knots she remembered so well.