Chapter 16
Warning sirens screamed to life.
Torin knew they had little time to spare. The tower guards were dead, but there were more just like them throughout this prison. In seconds, reinforcements would rush into the prison proper.
His gaze swept the yard again, searching out the dangers, pinpointing where he would need to be to get his woman to safety. His knife wound was deep and painful, but nothing he hadn’t experienced before in centuries of battle. He hadn’t the time to spend healing himself. He would need all of his powers focused on the escape.
He flashed to Shea’s side and she threw herself at him. Instantly, the world righted itself again. She was alive and in his arms, and the rest he would deal with.
“Torin!”
She held on tightly to him, her face buried in the curve of his neck. As if she knew she belonged there, accepted what they were and always had been to each other. This, he thought, would make the coming days easier. To have her acceptance, her cooperation in the task ahead would make all the difference.
But cooperation or not, he wouldn’t be letting her out of his sight again.
With her body pressed to his, he felt the chill of the white gold chain around her neck seep into him, sending ice racing after the fire in his veins. She was stronger than she thought, he told himself. Even with the drain of the white gold at her slender throat, he felt her magic bubbling with her.
Despite the chill of the dampening element against him, his body responded immediately to her presence. Heedless of the danger, he was hard as iron and aching to begin the ritual. But his mind overruled his dick. This time.
“We have to go,” he said, glancing over as Rune flashed in to stand beside him. The Eternal’s gaze swept the crowded yard-the screaming women, the wounded prisoners stretched out across dirty asphalt, the remaining guards who were running for cover to wait until their cavalry arrived.
“I know,” Shea said. “I’m ready.” She released him, took a step back, then reached out and grabbed the hand of the blond woman standing beside her. “I mean, we’re ready.”
Of course this wouldn’t go smoothly, Torin told himself with an inward groan of frustration. Never once in centuries had Shea stopped surprising him.
“Damn it!” Rune’s curse was deep and vicious.
Shea shot him a dark look. “I wasn’t talking to you.” Then she shifted her gaze to Torin’s and he felt the strength of that stare hit him hard. “This is my student’s mother. She’s not a witch. And if she doesn’t get out of here, they’ll kill her. They’ll torture her for information she doesn’t have.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Rune told Torin.
“We don’t have time to argue about it, either,” he shot back, before turning his gaze back to his witch. “You insist on this?”
She met his gaze squarely. “I do.”
Nodding, Torin looked at the other woman, who watched him through stunned yet resolute blue eyes. He took her measure and noted that she hadn’t shrunk back from him, though a man appearing from a tower of flames had to have shocked her. “Your name.”
“Terri. Terri Hall,” she said, words tumbling from her mouth as she reacted to the dangerous situation. “And I do need to get out of here. I have to get to my daughter.”
“Torin,” Rune interrupted, “there’s no time to save another. We had a mission and we’ve been here too long already. More guards will be coming.”
But Torin was looking not at Rune but at Shea. Her green eyes were locked with his and she was measuring him, seeing who and what he was. He sensed that her memories of their shared past hadn’t cleared yet. And so the choice he made now would decide much for her. He knew this moment would brand him in her eyes for all time. Could she trust him and learn from him? Or would he be as uncaring as those who would see her dead?
The choice was a simple one.
“Take the woman,” Torin told Rune flatly.
Shea smiled and Terri blew out a relieved breath. From somewhere in the distance more shouts lifted into the air. He didn’t like leaving these other women to the less than tender mercies of the guards, but there was nothing he could do to help them. Not yet, anyway.
“You have to get her to safety,” Shea insisted, spearing Rune with a commanding stare. “You can’t just get her out of here and then dump her somewhere. She needs to be safe. And not only her. You’ll need to take her daughter and mother, too.”
Terri gasped in surprise.
Rune’s mouth worked as if he longed to tell her no, but to his credit, he remained quiet until he muttered a curse and simply asked, “Anything else?”
Pride in his woman prompted Torin to smile at his friend’s fury.
“Yes,” Shea snapped, unamused. “They’ll need money and I want to know where you’re taking them.”
“Money’s not a problem,” Torin replied. The Eternals’ god, Belen, saw to it that his warriors had all they needed to survive in a human world. “As for safety, there are places. Sanctuaries.”
Shea looked to Torin, demanding, “Where?”
He scanned the area again, knowing time was short and the guards would soon locate them.
“The closest one is in the Uinta Mountains of Utah,” he said. “The camp is well hidden. Both witches and human women are welcome to hide there. It’s far from civilization and the witches there have laid down wards and protective spells so that their camp is overlooked by those who would search for them.”
She nodded and looked at her friend. “Terri? Is all of this okay with you?”
The blonde shot a wary look at Rune. She had little choice but to risk going with him. It was that or die, never seeing her child again. Torin wasn’t surprised when she spoke.
“Sounds good. And thanks for getting my mom and Amanda out, too.” Her gaze shifted around the prison enclosure, briefly taking in the bodies of the fallen women. She shivered and swallowed hard, lifting her chin in a show of defiance. “Always wanted to live in the mountains. Besides, the farther from here, the better.”
“We go, then,” Rune said. First, he reached out one hand toward the chain around her neck. “This must come off.”
“If we don’t get rid of the necklace, the white gold will drain Rune’s powers slowly, making it harder for him to protect you and your family,” Torin said.
“Do it.” Terri tilted her head to one side and barely flinched when Rune’s fingertip blazed into flames that touched her skin and didn’t burn. The necklace dropped unheeded to the ground. She lifted one hand to rub her neck, then stared at Rune as if wondering if she was jumping from the frying pan into a living, breathing fire.
“Trust them,” Shea said and those two words filled Torin with pride.
Rune held out one hand to Terri. “If we are going, woman, we must go now.”
“Right.” Terri linked her fingers with his and as the flames rose up to swallow them, Shea actually heard Terri laugh.
“Now are you ready?” Torin asked, reaching out his hand to free her of the draining white gold links at her throat.
Gunfire erupted in the distance. Shea took a breath and nodded. “God, yes. Let’s go.”
Flames raced from his body to the links against her neck. Seconds passed; then she sighed as the hated necklace dropped free of her body. “That feels much better.”
Guards shouted, women screamed and yet more gunfire blasted the air. Wrapping her arms around Torin’s neck, Shea held on tight and whispered, “Get us out of here.”
With a whoosh of sound and a bright flash of flames, they vanished.
Chapter 17
“Madam President, the director of the Terminal Island detention center is on line two. He said you’re expecting his call?”
