“The moon’s energies poured into me. Like a water faucet turned on full, it just kept coming. The mystical force of it was staggering and it was all over me. Inside, outside. I felt it sliding through my skin into the air and then wrapping itself around me again and seeping back in.” Her voice trembled and he cupped her branded breast with his palm to ground her. “I tapped into something that I wasn’t prepared for. I don’t know why it happened, what exactly I freed….”
“You freed yourself, Teresa,” he said, with a slow smile in the face of her confusion.
“What?”
“You said your memories returned. Can’t you recall the reason why the moon reacted so to your spell?”
Her features twisted as she tried to make sense of what was no doubt a spill of information flooding her mind. Eventually, she sighed and admitted, “No. No idea. I told you, the memories are there, but they’re all tangled up in knots and I’ll probably spend the next fifty years trying to work them free.”
“You were the moon’s priestess,” he said, his own memory nearly choking him now. “In the coven, on that last night so long ago, it was
you
who called down the moon. You who asked her blessing on the magic you all created. You who turned her gift into a weapon.”
“Oh, God …” She slipped out from under him, rolled off the bed and crossed the room in jerking, halting steps. At the window, she peeled back the edge of the dark red drapes and stared out at the night. Beyond the lamplit emptiness of the parking lot, there was the jungle, with the moonlight glimmering softly over the darkness.
He came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her trembling body and said, “Tonight, you welcomed the moon back into your life, into your spirit. You reclaimed what you had once lost and its power staggered you.
“As it was meant to be.” He kissed her forehead, then reached down, grabbed her behind and lifted her, setting her legs at his waist. She hooked her feet at the small of his back and as their gazes met, he said, “The moon has forgiven you, Teresa. It blessed you tonight with the energies it has been holding on to for centuries, in wait for you. Now it’s time to forgive yourself. And to remember.”
She nodded solemnly and he could see in her eyes that acceptance was growing within her. His witch amazed him anew. Her power was strengthening, as were her confidence and inner control. Her heart was full and ripe and he felt her determination to finally succeed at what they needed to accomplish.
She had withstood tonight what might have broken other women and still held her head high and faced her past with the same resolve that she claimed her future.
Leaning in, Teresa kissed him. Softly. Sweetly. In a benediction of sorts that tugged at Rune’s heart and made his soul ache to forever be a part of hers. This one woman had somehow taken his battered, unforgiving nature and turned him into a beast who lived only to protect her.
“You’re right,” she said, then smiled briefly. “I may not say that often, so you should enjoy it while you can.”
“Noted,” he answered wryly, tightening his grip on her behind, kneading her flesh until she sighed with pleasure. That one soft sound jerked his cock to life and in an instant his body was ready for hers again.
“In the rush of visions and images I saw tonight,” she was saying, “one stood out. My grandmother. I saw her. She was alone and she was holding something out to me. A twist of metal.”
“The Artifact?” Rune asked, suddenly still.
“I think so,” Teresa said, frowning as she tried to recapture the image in her mind. “It looked Celtic. And it was black and shiny, like a thousand suns were trapped inside it.” She shook her head. “My
abuela
knows something, Rune. Tonight, I’ll search the Sanctuary library for Serena’s spell book. But tomorrow we should go to Chiapas.”
“Tomorrow,” he said solemnly. Then slowly, he moved his hands on her behind, stroking her center, running his fingertips across the hot, liquid core of her until she groaned and twisted in his arms.
Touching her wasn’t enough for him, though. He wanted to be inside her again, feel her heat lock around his body and hold him deeply within. He wanted that mating connection to burn more fire into his skin and to sear his soul with the same magic.
He walked her to the nearest wall, and slammed her back against it; then, keeping his gaze locked with hers, he pushed his shaft high into her welcoming sheath. She cried out his name as he took her, and Rune knew what the real magic was.
Chapter 49
S
he lit two of the candles she had left and hoped it would be enough. Dimensional magic wasn’t something she was going to take lightly, but it was imperative that she get hold of Serena’s spell book.
From the wash of memories still knotted together in her mind, Teresa had learned that most witches kept shadow books—magical journals where they recorded their spells and other important information. Whatever she had once known as Serena would be in that spell book. She had to find it.
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
She glanced over at her lover, sitting not a foot away from her. He looked worried—and who could blame him. He remembered more clearly than she did the last time she and her sister witches had played with dimensional portals.
“Ready or not, I have to do it,” she said as a flicker of apprehension slithered through her.
She wasn’t even sure how to do the spell, but she sat cross-legged on the floor, lit her candles and tried to focus on the book she wanted.
Serena’s spells.
She spoke, creating the words to a spell that seemed to echo in the small motel room.
Open dimensions let me see,
A peek back through eternity.
Serena lived and died as me
Find my book in the library.
She felt a rush of comfort and slowly opened her eyes. The air in front of her solidified, bending and twisting as if creating something from nothing. She watched as a shining ball of energy formed and floated three feet off the floor. Her breath came fast and hard in excitement. Despite her crappy rhyming skills, it looked as though she’d done it.
“You opened the portal,” Rune whispered.
A swell of pride filled Teresa as she stared into the wobbling sphere before her. It shone with the light of a million suns, yet somehow it didn’t hurt her eyes to look at it. The dimensional orb pulsed with power and shimmered with the magic that formed it.
She shot Rune a quick smile and then turned her gaze back on the doorway to the Sanctuary library.
“Now all I have to do is find the book.” Steadying herself, she reached out, unsure what to expect. When her fingertips brushed the surface of the sphere, a buzz of energy skittered through her system. It was a little like a static charge, she thought with a grin, and pushed her hand beyond the edge and into the heart of the orb.
She sighed at the contact and closed her eyes as she focused completely on the book she searched for. There were thousands, maybe
millions
of books in the library. She knew that because within the sphere each volume flew past her fingers, allowing her to skim across them, divining their contents. Finally, though, she felt a jolt of awareness when her fingers came into contact with the particular book she sought.
She stopped the slide with a thought, curled her fingers around the book and slowly brought it forth from the dimensional portal.
The moment she had completed the task, the sphere blinked out of existence and the only light left in the room was that of the two candles she had lit before beginning her spell.
“Is that it?”
Teresa held the hand-tooled leather journal in both hands, her fingertips stroking the soft, faded material. She took in the carved sun and moon, the interlinking ribbons of power that streamed back and forth between the two. She felt the sense of ownership zinging in her bloodstream. As if her heart recognized the antique book even if her eyes didn’t.
“Yes,” she whispered. “This was Serena’s.”
She untied the rawhide strings that held the journal closed, flipped the book open, and her breath caught in her lungs. The slanted handwriting. The Old English spelling. Even the sight of the faded ink itself. All rose up inside her in a wave of memory so thick, so rich, that her eyes filled with tears that blurred her vision and rained down her cheeks. The woman she had once been called out to her from the heavy vellum pages. Treachery and betrayal flooded her soul along with a nearly tangible sense of hopelessness and regret.
While her heart bled quietly for the doomed woman who had once held this book precious, Teresa could only hope that the answers she needed so desperately would be found in its pages.
Chapter 50
“W
hat’s wrong?” Rune glanced at her from the corner of his eye.
“Nothing,” Teresa said, waving one hand in dismissal of what she was feeling. “It’s just … weird, to be riding in a car with you.”
He smiled briefly, never taking his gaze off the winding stretch of road spilling out ahead of them. The tires hummed on the cracked asphalt and the wind from their passing was a constant whine. “No choice really. You have to read the book and you can’t do that while we’re flashing in and out, traveling by fire.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said, keeping her head down, her gaze fixed on the ink-filled pages in front of her. “It’s just weird. So normal, I guess. Even Chico’s freaked out.”
He scowled as the bird hopped back and forth between Rune’s and Teresa’s seats. The irritating whistle continuously poured from the creature’s throat and Rune gritted his teeth in response. The bird had somehow managed to find them at the motel the night before and Rune’s suspicions burned. What the hell kind of bird was it, anyway?
“Well,” Teresa added, “normal except for you buying a brand-new car with a suitcase full of cash.”
Rune didn’t even comment on that. For him, as for every other Eternal, money was no problem. Getting hold of the money hadn’t been an issue, either, since Eternals had access to incredible stores of assets through any number of banks. Buying a car from a dealer outside the city had been the only logical choice. Paying cash meant he had avoided certain paperwork and he preferred to leave no paper trail to mark their passing. It hadn’t been difficult to get the owner of the dealership to forgo a few legalities in exchange for hard currency.
“Have you found anything yet?”
“I’m not sure,” she muttered in disgust. “It’s so hard to read her-my-
our
writing.” Shaking her head, she flicked him a quick look. “Just the spelling is enough to give you a headache and she-I wrote so damn small….”
“Paper was expensive back in the day,” Rune mused. “No one wasted space.”
“Great. Just great. So all I have to do is thumb through about a million spells and some petty gossip about Serena’s neighbors. No problem.” She turned another page gently, as the paper was old and brittle. “This could take forever.”
“No, it won’t,” he said. “You’ll find what we need, Teresa.”
“You sound confident.”
“I am,” he said, giving her another quick look.
The road ahead was empty. They drove along a twolane highway stretching out to the horizon like a dusty gray ribbon tossed down and forgotten. The sky was heavy with clouds, but patches of blue dotted the expanse. The Chiapas landscape spread out on either side of them—lush meadows and green valleys soothed the eye, and in the distance, mountains high enough to be snowcapped jutted skyward.
“Hey,” she said a few minutes later, “I think I might have found something.” A smile colored her words, and when he looked at her, she was grinning at him. “You were right. I did find it. At least, I’m pretty sure I did. It says …”
She broke off suddenly and pointed. “Wait. Turn off here. That dirt road on the right. It leads to my grandmother’s village.”
He made the turn and floored it, dirt and gravel kicking out in his wake. The ride was a jouncing one, but that couldn’t be helped. Rune knew they were in a race—not only against time but also against those who were after them. His instincts were jangling, warning him to hurry. To get this done and get his witch out of Mexico as quickly as possible.
But that warning, he told himself a moment later, had come too late. He saw the first body lying in the street. Blood had seeped into the dirt around the dead man, telling Rune he had been killed at least a couple of hours earlier.
“What?” Teresa said on a horrified gasp. “What happened?” She whipped her gaze from side to side and saw, as Rune did, more bodies.
Outside stores, across open doorways, in the road itself. Survivors wandered the dusty street in a daze, looking around at the fallen, at the twists of smoke lifting from the still-burning homes. A woman wailed beside the body of a man and lifted her eyes to heaven as if asking
why.
Rune’s instincts were screaming. Half the village was dead.
“Oh, my God,” Teresa whispered, dropping Serena’s journal into the duffel bag at her feet and zipping it closed. She turned horrified eyes on Rune. “My
abuela
. Rune—”
“Where does she live?” His voice was hard with banked rage as he threw the car into PARK and shut off the engine. The air was still, as if haunted by the violence staining the small village. Only the weeping of those left alive shattered an otherworldly silence. Even Chico was quiet, as if he sensed that something was wrong.
“She lives on the outskirts of town. An old cabin.”
Nodding, he said, “Get out of the car. We’ll flash there. Quieter and faster. No one here will pay any attention to us, magic or not. They’re too … destroyed.”
She grabbed the duffel, swung it over her shoulder and clung to Rune when he came to her side. “Hurry, Rune.”
The flames came, carried them away and deposited them just outside her grandmother’s home. It looked exactly as she remembered it. Neatly tended flower beds displayed a wild profusion of color. To the side of the house was an herb garden, and surrounding the old cabin were sheltering trees that offered shade from the tropical sun’s searing heat.