Visions of Magic (35 page)

 

“Aunt Mairi?”

A tall, lovely woman with waist-length flame red hair smiled at her. Firelight from the wall sconces flared across her features in light and shadow that made her look ethereal. A ghost. Which was all she could be, Shea told herself. Anything else was impossible. A trick. Or maybe even a trap.

Shea shook her head and threaded her fingers through Torin's. “No,” she whispered. “It's impossible. You died. I
saw
you die. I was there. They burned you at the stake and—”

Mairi Jameson smiled and hurried forward. “Oh, honey, don't be scared. It's really me. I didn't die that day. Damyn—” She turned and held one hand out to the man standing behind her, drawing him to her side. “My Eternal saved me. He flashed me out of the fire and brought me here.”

“Your . . .” Shea looked up at Torin, who was grinning at the other Eternal. “You know him?”

“I do,” Torin said, stretching out one hand to the other man. They clasped forearms and smiled at each other. “I haven't seen him in centuries. Not since—”

“Better we discuss that another time,” Damyn interrupted, moving to drape one arm around Mairi's shoulders.

“It's really you,” Shea said, still reeling from shock and wonder.

“It's me, sweetie. Really.”

“I don't believe this. You're alive.” Shea released Torin's hand and rushed to her aunt, gathering her up in a tight, hard hug. “Why didn't you
tell
me?” she demanded, torn between hysterical laugher and tears.

“I couldn't,” Mairi explained, pulling back to really look at Shea. “Damyn explained that we had to wait until your powers Awakened and then wait for you to find your way here.”

Of course he had, Shea thought. Hadn't Torin waited until she was actually attacked before rescuing her? So he could make sure her powers had Awakened?

“I can't believe you're alive and . . .” Shea took a good look at her aunt and for the first time noticed just how she was dressed. She wore a one-shouldered white togalike garment. Gathered at the waist, it fell in a straight column to pool on the floor, dusting the tops of her bare feet. But the most startling thing about the dress was that Mairi's left breast was bare. A mating tattoo of dark red roses encircled her nipple and swirled around behind her back to curl against her spine. Her Eternal's broad bare chest bore a matching brand.

The look was both sensual and powerful. Although Shea didn't know if she could bare her breast like her aunt dared. “You're mated.”

“Of course,” Mairi said, “and I wear the traditional dress to show both my pride in my mate and in the joining. To let all know that we are one.” A frown creased Mairi's features and she reached out to take Shea's hand in a firm grip. “You have mated as well, haven't you?”

“Yes, well, nearly,” Shea replied. “It hasn't been a full month yet.”

Smiling her relief and pleasure, Mairi said, “Yes, I know.” Her gaze touched both Shea and Torin. “Time is running out, Shea, and there are forces lining up against you. Working actively to keep you from completing your quest.”

“We know,” Torin said shortly. “We were ambushed in the inner ward of the castle.”

Mairi glanced at Damyn. He nodded, called the fire and flashed out.

“Damyn will check to see that the intruders are gone. Do you have any idea who they were?”

“They could be anyone. We've been tracked ever since leaving California.”

Mairi's eyes looked worried. “I'm afraid our enemies are more powerful than we fully know yet.”

“What do you mean? Do you know who was behind this attack?”

“No,” she admitted, frowning a bit. “I've scryed, looked into the future and the past, but the enemy masks himself—or herself—too well.”

“It doesn't matter,” Torin said quietly. “They will not be allowed to stop us.”

Mairi gave him a brilliant smile. “You're right, of course, Eternal. Thank you for reminding me. Now, you both must be tired. Why don't you rest and—”

“I don't want to rest, Mairi,” Shea told her aunt. “I want some answers. I want to know what's going on and exactly what I have to do.”

Mairi's grass green eyes met hers and slowly she nodded. “Very well. We'll talk. Then you'll rest. Come. Let me reacquaint you with Haven.”

Shea followed her aunt, keeping her fingers entwined with Torin's. As Mairi talked, Shea felt her own memories thicken like syrup and spill through her mind. She remembered this place. Remembered ancient times, when the walls rang with laughter, when she and her sisters worked spells and gathered knowledge.

She remembered her chambers here. She remembered leaving Haven to meet Torin for sex—just as she recalled withholding herself from the mating. Being unwilling to share her power, even for the chance at immortality. Even with the promise of her own powers growing with the joining.

Her long-ago self had wanted to master her powers on her own. She hadn't wanted to join permanently with her Eternal for fear of losing any part of herself to the joint whole.

And that obstinacy and arrogance had cost her much.

“Don't do that, Shea,” Mairi said, sending Torin a quick look, silently asking for some privacy.

Torin looked at Shea, bowed his head and flashed out, leaving the two women alone.

“Do what?” Shea countered, her footsteps echoing on the stone floor. “Remember? Isn't that what I'm supposed to be doing?”

“Don't look back with anger—it does no good and only splinters your energies just when you'll need them most.”

“What about the anger I feel at you, Mairi?” Shea asked, stopping suddenly to whirl around and face the aunt she loved. “Can I remember that?”

“Shea . . .” Mairi's features were concerned, her green eyes filled with regret and sorrow.

“Ten years,” Shea said, refusing to be swayed by the intense emotion radiating from her aunt. “Ten years I spent alone. Hunted. Afraid. You were all the family I had left. You're the one who raised me when I lost my parents. I watched you die and I was all alone. I had
no one
, Mairi. I mourned you. I cried for you. And all that time”—she threw her hands up high and looked around at the stone walls shot through with veins of silver—“you were here. With your Eternal.
Safe.
How can I not be angry about that?”

“I don't know,” Mairi said, moving in close to take Shea's hands in hers. “I know it's asking a lot of you. I only know you have to find a way to release that anger or it will carve an opening in your soul for the darkness to creep in.”

Shea shivered.

“I can't blame you for being furious with me,” Mairi said. “But I didn't have a choice, Shea. Just as you now don't have a choice. We are what we were meant to be. We are the chosen. We are the remnants of the last coven. We owe a debt. To nature. To the world. And we must pay it.”

Scrubbing her hands up and down her arms, Shea looked around the cavernous main hall. Images dotted the walls—carved from rock and embedded with silver, the magical charms hummed with power.

There were pentagrams, of course, and simple circles as well. Signifying the sacred ring, the circle was the ancient and universal symbol of unity and female power. Then there were circles with a single dot inside at the center, the Bindu, symbolizing the circle as woman and the dot as man, joined as one. There were circles quartered in equal lines of silver, the Medicine Wheel, symbolizing nature and the four elements. There was a carving of a snake, devouring its own tail, meaning life, rebirth.

And there was the spiral. It dotted each wall, over and over again. The silver spiral, Shea knew, was a symbol known all over the world since time began. It represented the female and the birth, growth, death and rebirth of the soul.

All magical. All powerful. The symbols were powerful enough on their own, but defined by the silver of the ancients, they generated a field of such magnitude even drawing a simple breath in their presence seemed to fill the body with strength and courage.

All of which Shea desperately needed.

In the torchlight, the silver winked and glistened as if alive. As if the heartbeats of long-dead witches had been caught in these walls and now they were silent witness to their descendants' actions.

She felt another shiver course along her spine, twisting her with cold, with an icy fear that lingered in the pit of her stomach. All of this power triggered not only her memories of unity and strength but other, darker memories as well. Her mind and soul remembered how she had once been drawn from the light to embrace the dark.

And that small part of her that longed to do it all again grew stronger.

“Shea!”

Mairi's voice brought her up out of her thoughts, but some of them must have lingered in her eyes because her aunt's features instantly filled with concern. “What is it? What are you remembering?”

“Too much,” Shea admitted, as a powerful tendril of fear snaked through her system.

C
ora Sterling paced the Oval Office, her thoughts moving too quickly to allow her to sit behind her desk. “What do you think, Parker?” she asked, sending a quick look at her chief of staff.

Parker Stevens was an old hand at Washington politics. He knew the ins and outs better than anyone else. Who to trust. Who to buy. Who to bury. Cora couldn't imagine doing without his advice.

Or his skills in the bedroom.

“Madam President,” he said, “I think it's time you called the prime minister and told him that our escaped witch is in Britain.”

She stopped and looked at him from across the room. Impeccably groomed, Parker had steel gray hair, piercing blue eyes and a hard jaw that was, at the moment, locked into an expression of distaste.

“You can't be serious,” she said.

“I am. We want Shea Jameson back home, where she can be the figurehead for your reforms.” He walked toward her with measured steps. “Our informants tell us she's in England somewhere and unless we get the help of their government, we're going to be hard-pressed to find her.”

Cora didn't like that one bit. Turning, she stared out the wide window at the lawn and gardens, looking chill and dank on a late-September day. Summer was finally over and autumn was sneaking in, heralding the coming of winter. Cora felt a like sense of cold creeping over her.

“I don't want to owe Graham any favors,” she muttered. “The last time he was here, he put up such a fuss about international internment camps, the press had a field day.”

“I know,” Parker said, coming up behind her and, showing her a rare touch of affection outside her bedroom, laid both hands on her shoulders. “But we need him. We'll find a way to leverage his help without bowing to the international internment camps.”

“You think so?” She looked up at him, unsure until she met his steady gaze.

“I know it. Make the call, Cora. You'll still be in charge. I'll see to it personally.”

For one brief moment, Cora allowed herself to react like a woman, and not the president. Leaning into her lover's embrace, she lifted her face for his kiss and then gave herself up to the sensual treats he was so damn good at.

When she finally broke free again, she tugged at the hem of her gray silk shirt and smoothed her hair back. “Parker,” she said with a smile, “I don't know what I'd do without you.”

He chucked her chin, then took both a figurative and a literal step back, once more becoming her most trusted aide. “Madam President, you'll never have to find out.”

 

“Shea, I know you're feeling overwhelmed—”

“You could say that,” she said, cutting her aunt off as she turned to stare at her. “First, Torin told me I was the first Awakened witch. But how can that be if you've been here ten years?”

Mairi smiled, hooked her arm through Shea's and led her across the great hall. As they walked, she said, “I'm the High Priestess—or I was, long ago. The keeper of the flames. The watcher. A guardian of sorts, of our coven. Of our sisters and traditions.”

“High Priestess?” Shea echoed.

“Sounds lofty, doesn't it?” Mairi asked with a small chuckle. “But all it means is that I was once responsible for our coven. It was my duty to see that we learned and grew, and that our coven served its purpose by serving the goddess Danu.” She stopped and tears filled her eyes. “I failed. Not only myself, but all of you as well. I surrendered to the same greed and arrogance that the rest of you embraced. It was my responsibility to see that our sisters were given guidance. Helped along the path. I turned my back on all that we were.”

“Mairi—” Shea heard the pain in her aunt's voice and all of her own fears and resentments faded away in her need to offer comfort.

“No, I should have filled my sisters' hearts with my love and spiritual guidance. Instead, I left them open to the darkness and then I joined them there.” She sighed and a solitary tear spilled down her cheek. “I have much to atone for. As do we all.”

“Isn't that why we're here?” Shea asked quietly, patting her aunt's hand in a gesture of love and solidarity.

“Yes, you're right,” Mairi answered, smiling through her tears. “I can't tell you how much I've missed you, Shea. To have you here now is a gift beyond measure. And imagine,” she added with a grin, “you're the first to come home.”

Shea laid one hand on her aunt's arm. “There's another witch who claims to be one of us.”

“What?” Confusion was etched on Mairi's features.