When one of his men silently signaled a question, Parnell simply nodded and drew one finger across the base of his neck.
The first volley of machine-gun fire erupted instantly. Bright lights flashed and the sound was a cacophony in the stillness. Yet the woman on the phone was shouting so loudly, Parnell could still hear her.
He paused for a moment and wished the guns were trained on her. But then, she would get what was coming to her eventually. As anyone who crossed him did.
“Witnesses are being taken care of,” he told her when she wound down long enough to take a breath.
“Yes, I can hear that,” she snapped. “Very subtle, Parnell.”
He stiffened at the condemnation in her tone. “You wanted me to handle it? I’m handling it. We’ll find the witch.”
“In time for it to do any good?”
The guns fell silent and the night crowded back in. He glanced over his shoulder at his men, moving through the crowd. Kicking bodies out of the way, they were simply making sure the dead were
actually
dead. He wanted no survivors slipping away to tell stories about strange men asking questions about witches.
He had enough to deal with as it was.
“Let me do my job,” he told the woman and snapped the phone closed. Holding the offending thing on his palm, he called up the fire and held it until the phone was nothing more than a blackened, melted pile of plastic and wire.
Then he brushed his hands free of both the phone and the woman and headed to his car, calling for his men to follow.
He still had a witch to find.
Chapter 26
R
une pulled Teresa close, lowered his head and kissed her until her blood boiled in her veins. She felt as if she had a fever. Her skin was suddenly too tight. She was hot and yet shivering, as if her body couldn’t make up its own mind about what to feel.
Rune’s hands moved up and down her back, cupping her bottom, holding her close to the hard thickness of him. The fever inside her burned hotter until even breathing became a challenge. His mouth took hers, his tongue sliding inside to taste, to claim. She felt the urgency in him and reveled in it. Her hands moved through his long, thick hair, holding his head to hers. She surrendered herself to what only he could make her feel and trembled with the force of what he was doing to her.
Behind her, the hot water rushed from the underground springs, sounding like the roar of a caged animal. Above her, crystals hummed with energy, spilling all that they were into the already charged air. She felt it all, but mostly she felt
him.
This was monumental.
This was the moment when the Mating ritual would begin. Once this step was taken, she knew there was no getting out of it. She wanted this to happen and yet a part of her held back. That hesitant part of her would have jumped away from the cliff she was about to leap from with all the judiciousness of a cowardly bunny.
Eternity.
With that word resonating in her mind, Teresa pulled free of his kiss and struggled for air. She was on fire. There were no flames, but she felt the fire, licking at her skin. Burning her so completely that she knew once the Mating began she would surely be nothing but ash.
When she looked up into his eyes, she saw the fire there, too. Swirling in the liquid silver of his eyes. She was caught for a long moment, just looking at him, feeling the power shimmering around them.
“You’re scared?”
His voice was rough, strained, as though he was fighting an inner battle to get control of himself. She knew what he must be feeling.
“A little,” she admitted. “My grandmother didn’t know much about the Mating. Only that it would seal Eternal and witch together for eternity. That’s a long time.”
His hands dropped from her arms and he took a step away from her. His already familiar eyes narrowed and in the dancing torchlight, he looked every inch the deadly warrior that he was.
“I’ve already waited an eternity for you,” he said. “This time I thought it would be different. This time, I had hopes that you would have learned from the past. Grown. But now is no different than before. Other lives, other times,” he whispered with a shake of his head. “But always the same.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You, Teresa,” he ground out. “I’m talking about what you’re doing right now. Do you not see it?”
What Teresa saw was the frustration glinting in his eyes and she fired the same look right back at him.
“What?” she demanded. “I want to take a minute, think about this, and that makes me the enemy?”
He laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “Centuries it’s been, Teresa. Countless lives and opportunities wasted, because
still
you refuse to make that leap of faith.”
Stunned, she simply stared up at him. Her body was still buzzing, but her brain was taking over and it was getting pissed. Didn’t seem to matter that he had said pretty much what she had been thinking just before he pulled away. She hadn’t been trying to start a fight, for heaven’s sake. She had just needed one damn minute.
“What happened to all of the ‘your past lives have nothing to do with now’ stuff you fed me a couple of days ago?” she countered.
“I tried, but you are proving to be the same woman. You have no faith.”
“What am I supposed to have faith in?”
“Me,” he told her. “Us. And if not that, then at least in yourself. You say you know about the Mating, but still you stall, you stand back, clinging to your old life, unwilling to accept the new.”
“I think I’ve done a hell of a lot of accepting,” she shouted, stabbing his broad chest with the tip of her forefinger. “Do you even realize what’s happened to me lately?”
“Yes,” he said tightly, glancing down to see sparks of energy snapping from her finger to his chest and back again. “You lost it all. I know. But now, when you could gain so much, you turn your face from it. You turn from
me
. Just as you always have,” he finished with a mutter.
“I’m not—”
He was on her in a heartbeat. His hands gripped her upper arms and he lifted her right off the floor as if she were no bigger than a child. When they were at eye level, he said, “I opened some of your memories to you. Can you deny what I’m saying? You’ve always done this, Teresa. Chosen yourself over your duty. Over
me.
Am I to stand by and watch you throw away our last chance to make right what you and your sisters fucked up so long ago?”
“I didn’t ask you to step back,” she argued. “I just wanted a minute to catch my breath. Is that so terrible?”
“You wanted the chance to back away.”
“You don’t know me,” she told him, bracing her hands on his shoulders, digging her fingers in for purchase. “All of this talk about who I was, the lives I don’t even
remember
—that has nothing to do with me. With who I am
now.
”
“Who you are now comes from what was before. How can the past not matter?”
Furious, mainly because a part of her wondered if he wasn’t right about all of this, she shoved him, putting all of her strength into her hands as she pushed at his massive chest. Sparks of light swept from her fingertips, like droplets from sparklers on the Fourth of July, singeing his shirt. Instantly, she was horrified and patted at him to make sure she hadn’t set him on fire.
“Damn it, what good is this magic if I can’t control it?”
“You will gain control through the Mating,” he told her, ignoring the flash of light sparking at the tips of her fingers. “We are meant to join. To balance each other. To focus our magic into one honed force.”
It sounded right, she told herself, but that small, doubting voice in the back of her mind still shrieked out warnings. It had always been this way. Through the years of training, of studying, she had prepared for her duty and dreaded its arrival.
She could see his point of view, even if she didn’t want to. She had known him less than a week, yet her entire life had been leading her to him. So maybe she should allow for the fact that he knew more about this whole thing than she did. Damn. She really hated being rational.
“Put me down, Rune. Please.”
He did and she wobbled a little unsteadily for a second. Not surprising, really, since desire, fury and magic were mixing into a thick, debilitating stew inside her. Hard to straighten out just what she was feeling, what she was thinking, when a pair of gray eyes were fixed on her, waiting for her to make the mistakes another woman had made in another time.
She knew those memories were locked away inside her and she would do all she could to free them. But even if the time came when she could recall every moment of each of the lives she’d lived before this one, she would still be Teresa. And he had to realize that.
“I don’t remember those lives you’re still holding against me,” she said finally. “The images you showed me earlier were hard for me to accept. But I still don’t
remember
them. It’s more like watching a movie starring a completely selfish heroine.
This
is my life. This one, Rune. And despite all the years of training, what you’re asking of me is all new.”
He folded his arms across his chest and stared down at her. “I know that.”
“So blaming me for what I did back in the day is probably not the best way to make friends.”
A reluctant smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “No, probably not.”
“Thanks for that much, anyway.” She reached up and pushed her hair back from her face. The roar of the water rushing into the hot tub had become just background noise. Steady. Like her own heartbeat. The heat in the room filled her and the steam rising from the surface of the water shone from the colorful brilliance of the crystals in the wall.
This whole thing, she thought, was out of some wildly twisted fairy tale. An immortal and a witch, chased by enemies, stranded in the desert, sharing a magical cave filled with gleaming crystals. But in this story, the hero and heroine were so busy butting heads they weren’t getting anywhere. And she was willing to admit to her share of the confrontations.
Sighing, Teresa reached out and took one of his hands in hers. The sizzle and flash that shot through her at his touch was almost familiar in days filled with too much change. “Whoever it is you remember from our past, it’s not me. Whatever you think, that’s not me.”
“We will see,” he said.
Irritation rose up and quickly died away. Yes, she’d had a hard time of it, but so had he. Maybe she could cut him a little slack. “Look, I know what we have to do and I’m not trying to back out. I just want to know what you expect from me.”
“I expect you to be beside me,” he told her, rubbing his thumb across the back of her hand in long, sexy strokes. “I expect you to be my mate as I will be yours. To join our energies, to channel our magic into finding the Artifact and returning it to Haven. I expect you to do what we must.”
She nodded and watched his thumb moving over her skin as if she were mesmerized. “That’s it? You’re not expecting … love?”
He laughed shortly. “My heart doesn’t even beat, Teresa. If it once knew how to love, it’s forgotten now and I’ve no interest in reacquiring the knowledge.”
She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. How could they possibly succeed when neither of them was willing to invest everything? If each of them held back, would either of them be able to do what they had to, together? But what choice did they have except to try?
“All right, then,” she said quietly. “How do we do it?”
“We start like this.” He snapped his fingers and they were naked. Torchlight flickered over the walls, firing the crystals and shimmering on their skin.
Danger still resonated between them. They weren’t safe and wouldn’t be until all of this was over. Maybe, Teresa thought, that emotion was feeding into what was sweeping through her now. She had nearly died today. And again in Sedona. And both times this Eternal had saved her, at great cost to himself.
Life was too damn fragile, she told herself. And too short, despite the fact that she had led many lives. Each one of them had been too short; she knew it instinctively.
There was a nebulous connection between her and Rune, yes, but despite what he was thinking, he didn’t
know
her. He knew the woman she had been through the centuries, but
this
woman—Teresa of the here and now—was new. And he had no idea who she was.
That would come, she supposed. They had thirty days to complete the Mating and find the shard of the Artifact she had hidden so long ago. One cycle of the moon. As they worked together toward a common goal. As they became physically closer, their bodies bonding, their souls intertwining.
Her heart wasn’t involved and she wouldn’t allow it to be. But her body burned and she was witch enough,
woman
enough, to accept the sexual pull between them for what it was.
He caught her left hand in his right and folded his fingers over hers. She did the same and then held her breath as her gaze locked with his. This was a moment filled with more tension than she had ever known.
She was about to pledge her life to this Eternal. The step she had been waiting for all her life was here and the reality of it was a little more intimidating than she had expected.
Eternity.
Not just the human version of until death do we part, this was literally
forever.
When that thought settled in, a flurry of images raced through her mind, leaving her clinging to Rune’s hand as her world was rocked. The present fell away and the past rose up to claim her.
Chapter 27
T
eresa felt the bite of the cold wind, the stinging needles of the rain and the sizzling punch of the lightning. And she smiled. It was all so much more than they had hoped. More than they had thought possible. She and her sisters faced the storm and welcomed it. They chanted as power surged through the air, jockeying from their pale bodies to the sky and back again. As if the witches and the universe itself were charging each other with enough power to change the world.