As for Terri… women caught up in the mob mentality of the witch hunt were pretty much out of luck. Unless the RFW took up Terri’s case, she had no chance of getting out of this camp.
And unless Torin found her, Shea was in the same boat.
“Why are you here?” Terri finally asked, then stopped and winced. “I’m sorry-shouldn’t have said that. I mean, I know about your aunt and-”
“It’s okay,” Shea said, not wanting to get drawn into a conversation about it. Especially not here. In places like this the walls really did have ears. There was no telling how many people were listening in on conversations. They weren’t even safe outside. A parabolic microphone or two could cover most of the yard.
As if Terri had remembered the same thing, she lowered her voice. “Are you… like your aunt?”
A few days ago Shea would have said no. Now, she was living a new reality. Now, she was dealing with the knowledge that she’d killed a man and was, very possibly, in jail for the rest of her life-at least until her execution. But she looked into the other woman’s eyes and saw compassion. Amazing just how good it felt to be offered understanding. Slowly, Shea nodded.
Terri smiled. “A month ago, that might have terrified me,” she admitted quietly. “Now, though…” She looked around the yard again. At the dozens of women, in a range of ages anywhere from eighty to teens, and she sighed. “There are other things more scary. There’s being snatched from your home in the middle of the night and locked away without a chance of even speaking to your own child. There’s fearing that you’ll never get out.”
“We really shouldn’t be talking about this,” Shea whispered, glancing up at the closest guard tower. The man wasn’t looking in their direction, but that didn’t mean a thing.
“They’ve already locked me up,” Terri said firmly. “They’re not going to shut me up, too. You know, before this happened, I was like anyone else, reading about magic and the witches and how BOW and the MPs were doing their duty to protect the people…”
Shea took Terri’s elbow and started walking. She wasn’t sure why, but somehow she had the feeling that it would be more difficult for their jailers to overhear them if they kept moving in and out of crowds. And she tried to subtly warn her student’s mother that being outspoken in prison wasn’t necessarily a good thing. “Terri…”
She walked and shook her head before giving Shea a half smile. “I know. I know they listen. I know they watch.” Her gaze slid to the side, where two female guards stood together, watching over the prisoners. “But I’m still a citizen. I still have rights.”
“Not really,” Shea told her.
“There’s a sad statement.”
“You have to be careful,” Shea said. “No one here is concerned about your ‘rights.’ To them, we’re less than human. They’d like nothing better than a chance to take us all down. So if you want to see Amanda again-do what you can to stay unnoticed. Don’t stand out in this crowd, Terri. Blend in. Don’t make waves. You might drown in them.”
She huffed out a breath. “Seeing Amanda. What’re the chances of that, I wonder.”
“Probably not good,” Shea admitted, then added, “but you’ll make it worse for yourself in here by not being careful.”
“I know that, but underneath all of the fear, I am furious,” she said softly and her voice toughened up as if to prove it. “I’ve met a few… interesting women here and the thing is, they’re no different from me. Not at the bottom of it, you know? I mean, we’re all just people. Some good, some bad.”
Oh, Shea wished she had met Terri under other circumstances. They could have been friends. Instead, they were prison mates with definite dates of expiration. “Yeah, the problem is, that doesn’t seem to matter.”
“All I’m trying to say is if people would just talk to witches, they wouldn’t be so afraid.”
“You’re right. But at the moment,” Shea told her, keeping her voice low, “fear’s in charge and logic didn’t even get a seat at the table.”
They walked through the yard, the breeze off the harbor carrying the smell of the sea and the illusion of freedom. Off in one corner, a lone woman sat with her knees drawn up, back against the wall, quietly crying to herself. Just seeing the emotionally beaten woman stiffened Shea’s spine.
She wasn’t going to be afraid. Not anymore. She was through being the helpless victim, racing through the dark, trying to avoid her enemies by disappearing into an uncaring crowd. Talking to Terri had helped, too. Terri had allowed her own sense of injustice to trump her fears and Shea could do no less.
Dropping one arm around the other woman’s shoulder, Shea said, “We’ll find a way out.”
And she realized she believed it. She wasn’t going to be locked away here forever. She’d find a way out even if Torin didn’t come for her. Damned if she’d let these bastards win. She and Terri would get out. Somehow. She wouldn’t be a statistic and simply disappear.
She wouldn’t lie down and die without a whimper.
Chapter 15
Torin felt her presence the moment he and Rune flashed into the internment camp.
Standing in one of the guard towers, he let the body of the guard he had killed drop at his feet. Quick snaps of the neck and both men in the eastern tower were dead. He didn’t spare a glance to where they lay sprawled across the floor. They didn’t matter. They were predators. Kidnappers and worse.
Rune was even now dispatching those in the north tower, but Torin couldn’t think beyond Shea. Through the foggy haze of the white gold dampening her powers, her spirit called to his and electrified the beast within him.
For two days he and Rune had worked out the logistics of getting her out of this prison. Now that the time was here, he knew there would be casualties he couldn’t prevent. Deaths he couldn’t stop. Yet he had no choice. This could be their only chance. The Awakening had come and there was nothing more important to him than securing Shea and together accomplishing their task.
He and Rune had mitigated the danger as much as they could, reducing the damage that would be done here today. Now, it was left to the fates. In late afternoon the yard was crowded with prisoners. Shadows pushed out from the walls, inching across the ground even as the first brilliant colors of sunset stained the sky. Torin focused his concentration on the women below, searching for the one witch who called to him.
His head snapped up as a burst of gunfire chattered from the south and west towers. The guards had seen them. But instead of firing at the Eternals in the towers, the guards concentrated their fire on the prisoners. As if to kill them all before any had a chance at escape. Bullets sprayed wildly across the open expanse of the yard below. Women shrieked and ran for cover. Some dropped where they stood, their blood running across the concrete in scarlet rivers. In their quest to stop Rune and Torin, the remaining guards cared nothing for how many women died in the attempt.
Torin cared.
He instantly flashed to the west tower. A guard hastily swung his gun around, but Torin was faster. The man died with a howl of protest as his partner pulled a knife and stabbed Torin in the back. Pain lanced through him but didn’t stop him. He dropped into a crouch, came up fast and knocked the guard off his feet. Once the man was down, Torin pulled the knife from his body and returned it to the guard. Blade to the heart.
Eyes wide, mouth forming the word no, the second guard joined his partner in hell.
Below him, the women’s screams scraped the air, but through the frantic shouts and pleas, he heard one voice calling him by name.
“Torin!”
He leapt to his feet, scanned the ground below him and spotted his witch on the far side of the yard. Her long red hair lifted like a flag in the wind and she waved both hands high over her head. He smiled to himself, noting that Shea Jameson wasn’t cowering. She was standing tall and proud and his unbeating heart filled with admiration.
They hadn’t broken her. Not yet. Not ever.
