looked around quickly to see where they were. Beach, jump. Freeway, jump. Parking lot, jump. Middle of an intersection-shriek and jump.
By the time they “landed,” Shea was shaken and just a little bit nauseous. She let go of Torin, took a breath and bent at the waist, letting her head hang down as she fought to settle her stomach. Not easy since she thought sure she’d left her stomach behind two jumps ago.
“You all right?”
“I will be,” she said, more steadily than she felt at the moment. “The important thing is I’m out of that prison.”
“No,” Torin corrected. “The important thing is to keep you out. We’re not safe yet. We have to keep going.”
Shea straightened up and whipped her hair back out of her eyes.
She really was inside a completely different world now, Shea thought. Traveling by fire. Sending a friend to a sanctuary. As she quickly considered her new reality, she also acknowledged that she had been relieved to hear about the sanctuaries. Witches were organizing to save themselves and others. They, like she, had decided not to lie down and die with a whimper-and knowing she wasn’t alone in her fight made her feel stronger somehow.
Turning to look up at him, she said, “Just give me a second to get my stomach back where it belongs before you do that fire thing again, okay?”
He gave her a slow smile. “Didn’t like it?”
“It was… amazing,” she admitted, though her insides were still a little shaky. “But not looking forward to doing it again real soon.”
He shook his head as he stood there like some fallen avenging angel, his gray eyes sweeping their surroundings, constantly vigilant. Finally, he looked at her. “No. From here, we’ll drive.”
“Thank God.” At least a car she understood.
“We have to keep moving,” he said. “BOW and the MPs will be looking for you. We have to get lost. Quickly.”
Then he took her arm and dragged her behind him across a well-lit parking garage. He stopped in front of a sleek black sports car that looked so fast, so powerful, she half expected it to growl at her in greeting.
“Get in.”
“Are we stealing somebody’s car?” she asked, even as she headed for the passenger side. “Don’t we have enough people chasing us?”
He shook his head. “It’s my car. I have several I keep in different locations-just to ensure that I have one when I need one. So get in.”
“Right.” She got in, strapped the seat belt into place and instantly slumped against the black leather seat. She hadn’t even been aware of just how much tension was trapped inside her body. Until it all released at once, leaving her feeling as wobbly and insubstantial as a wet noodle.
He fired up the engine and Shea smiled. The car did growl. As he peeled out of the parking space, she asked, “Where are we going?”
“Safe house for tonight.” The muscle-bound car streaked through the parking garage like a hungry cat chasing down prey. Its tires squealed against the concrete floor and its engine seemed to echo with a rumble throughout the structure.
She leaned her head against the seat back and barely noticed as parking lights flashed past like lightning bolts in a dark sky. As Shea’s mind drifted, Torin drove on, steering the car onto the freeway and into the night. And as he drove, visions filled her mind and in those visions, lightning did crack against the heavens.
Voices rose out of the past, whispering, chanting. As the words formed in her mind, Shea shifted uneasily and the power within her howled. Moon, our Goddess, we call to thee
Your daughters call on your power
Bless us now with your bounty
Before us let our enemies cower.
Over and over again, the voices rose and fell like waves on a churning sea. Shadows swirled through her mind and her heart as what she had been fought to exist once more.
Shea moaned and fell deeper into the past, into the images hidden in her own memories. As Torin steered the car through the night, Shea walked through mist, her sisters at her side.
She felt power churning in the air and smiled. Whips of lightning skittered through the clouds, illuminating them from behind. Wind tore at their clothing and hair and shrieked an accompaniment to the chanting of the gathered witches.
A pentacle lay etched into the dirt, candles at each of its five points. Despite the fierce wind, the flames on the wicks of those candles burned tall and straight with hardly a flicker of movement. Shea followed the others and formed a circle around the great star on the ground.
She felt, more than saw, others there as well. They were on the fringes of the circle, lost in darkness, yet somehow she knew they were trying to reach the witches. Stop them.
But nothing could have stopped them.
As one, the witches dropped the white robes they wore and stood skyclad, all of them, their skin glowing in the pearly half-light of moon and the bolts of lightning. Long hair flew about their heads and in their eyes-reflected around the circle-was a hunger and a thirst that Shea recognized, while instinctively, a part of her pulled back from it.
But the past can’t be rewritten and she was no more than a ghost in this scene-an unwilling observer, trapped in the body she used to occupy. And so she was caught, a fly in a web, forced to relive this moment, this terror.
Her mind fought against it, but the memories had been hidden too long. They came rushing from the darkest corners of her brain with an inevitability she couldn’t turn from.
A full moon slid out from behind the clouds and jagged streaks of lightning still cracked and sizzled overhead. The storm was in the very air, charging each indrawn breath with power pulled from the elements of earth and sky.
The women of the circle lifted their arms and their voices came together to make their demands. The hushed whispers were lost in the wind, but the words had a power of their own and seemed to pulse in the night. We await the knowledge and the power
We who gather are as one
We embrace the dark and spurn the light
We demand your strength and your might
“Oh, God!” Shea sat bolt upright in the car seat, breath heaving from her lungs as she looked at the Eternal beside her. “What did we do?”
Chapter 19
Landry Harper was pissed.
All that work capturing the witch, only to have the assholes in charge of the prison let her escape.
His hands tightened on the steering wheel as he drove through traffic near his home. He’d been called out, ordered to find the witch. Again. The GPS tracking signal put her somewhere in his territory and if she was there, he’d find her. It was what he did.
He hadn’t always, he remembered. Once he’d been a teacher, like her. Once he’d faced classrooms filled with young faces etched with boredom and had tried to teach them history. Until his own world had shattered and then what had once happened in ancient Rome had become less important than what was happening now. History was being rewritten. The entire human race was under attack. And it was up to people like him to protect the innocent from the damned.
His gaze shifted to the photo attached to the dashboard of his jeep. A smiling woman looked out at him from the faded image and everything in him tightened with determination. Focus. She hadn’t seen her attacker coming. Hadn’t known that the neighbor she trusted would one day “lose control” of a power no one should possess.
