“Soon,” she whispered, chuckling as a pedestrian rushed into the street and was smacked by a taxi. “Soon, I won’t need anyone. Shea and I will take charge of the Awakening and nothing will ever be the same.”
Shea and Torin were the first to leave the ship.
Actually, they left before the ship landed in Southampton. The moment they were close enough to shore, Torin flashed them out, leaving behind the luxurious interlude.
But time was passing and she had no room for regrets or looking backward. Torin had been right, of course. The moment she had set foot on British soil, she had known exactly where they had to go. Was it a sense memory? Was it a clue left behind in her subconscious when her memories were unlocked, allowing her to recall her past lives?
“Shea?”
“I know where to go,” she said. “Pembrokeshire, Wales. But just get us close. I want to do a spell before we go to Haven. Make sure we’re not walking into a trap.”
“Good idea.”
They were on the final leg of their journey. In ten days, the moon would be full and their time would be up. As Torin’s flames enveloped her, Shea silently prayed that nothing would go wrong.
Deep in the heart of the Sussex Sanctuary, Odell and Rune relaxed beside a campfire. Flames leapt and jumped into the night sky. Swirls of sparks flew briefly and winked out like dying fireflies. All around them, the community of women worked to integrate the newcomers, freed by the raid on the internment camp.
“That went well,” Rune said, lifting his glass of beer in a salute to his friend.
“It did,” Odell agreed. “Only three guards dead and six women freed.” He grinned. “Was a good night’s work.”
“And they’ll be safe here?” Rune looked around. They were in a long-forgotten cavern beneath Ashdown Forest. In ancient times these carved rock walls and rooms had no doubt hidden away others, looking for peace from their pursuers. Today, it was alive again with the sound of desperate voices.
“Safer than they were, for damn sure,” Odell told him flatly. When he spoke again, he smiled. “It’s ten square miles of ‘protected’ land. There are the tourists, of course, but Ashdown was the ‘home’ of Winnie the Pooh,” he added with a snort of laughter. “There are deer and all other manner of wildlife running all over the bloody place, so there are conservation people rabid about protecting it.” He looked up at the rock ceiling above their heads. “And these caverns were forgotten long ago. No one knows of their existence and they’ve been magically warded so they won’t be found.”
“Sounds good,” Rune told him. “But they can’t stay here forever.” From down a long corridor came the sound of a woman softly weeping and his unbeating heart ached for the females caught in a web of treachery.
“No, they can’t,” Odell allowed. “But it’s a good spot for now. There are other Sanctuaries posted around Britain and we’ll move some of the witches soon, make it less crowded down here.”
Nodding, Rune said thoughtfully, “You know, the last time I entered a Sanctuary, I wasn’t exactly welcomed with open arms.”
“Perhaps,” Odell told him with a grin and a wink. “But you come to this one as a friend of mine, so you’re trusted.” His smile faded and he shook his head solemnly. “These women have been pursued and tortured and terrified. Is it any wonder they’re willing to turn on the first male they see?”
“No. It’s not.” Rune stared into the fire and said softly, “If the Awakening goes as planned, this will change. There won’t be a need for witch hunters. Witchcraft can take its rightful place in the world.”
“Aye,” his friend said, a rueful note in his voice. “If it goes as planned. And how many plans my friend, have we seen blow up in our faces over the centuries?”
“Yeah,” Rune agreed somberly. “There is that.”
Torin risked the magic, using his powers, his energies, to flash them, in a series of jumps, to Wales. Their minds linked, thanks to the ever-increasing strength of the mating, he took them to a high, grassy knoll above the crashing sea.
A cold, sharp wind swept in from the ocean, rushing past them to race across the countryside, sending villagers searching for their hearths. In the distance, heavy dark clouds gathered as if amassing their forces for an invasion.
Torin was oblivious to everything but Shea. His focus was locked on her, his sharp eyes watching every inflection of expression cross her face. She looked both pleased and worried about being where they were and he could see the glint of recognition shining in her brilliant green eyes.
As he watched, she walked closer to a burial mound that had been perched on the high cliff above Manorbier Bay for eons. A heavy, long capstone sat balanced atop two short, thick side stones. Centuries of wind and rain had pitted the stones deeply, but magic sang in the air around the mound.
“King’s Quoit,” Shea whispered, resting the tips of her fingers against the damp, heavy stone. She closed her eyes and he could almost see magic pouring from the stones into her small, fragile hand.
“You remember,” he said, his words nearly lost in the rush of the wind. He could see her not only as she was now, tall and proud, yet still hesitating over her own powers-but as she had been then, on that long-ago night. The coven had gathered here, at the edge of the cliff. Here, where the capstone sang with ancient power.
There were other, more well-known standing stones. Circles of power, of magic, that stretched across the countryside. Today, they drew tourists and would-be scientists, looking to explain the unexplainable. But here, on this quiet cliff in an almost forgotten slice of Wales, stood one of the most powerful of all the stones.
“I do remember,” she said, lifting her gaze to his. She turned her face into the wind, staring out at the sea, opening her arms wide, to welcome the gale that seemed to rush toward her. “My blood recognizes this place,” she said, as if she could hardly believe what she was saying. “This was where we came to call down the moon. This is where we stood to open the door, the night we doomed ourselves. The night we broke faith with everything we were.”
“Yes.”
She glanced down at the capstone, and reached out to touch it again. “The magic here is thick, and ancient.”
“It is,” he said, moving around King’s Quoit to take her in his arms. “But it is not Haven.”
“No.”
“Can you find it?”
She swallowed hard. His witch was worried, Torin reminded himself. Even if he hadn’t been able to see her expression, he would have felt her distress. She was wound up, her emotions tangled together into a knot of expectation, dread and excitement. The anxieties of the last few weeks were taking their toll.
“I know where it is,” she said and lifted one arm to point. “It’s there. At Manorbier castle.”
He frowned. “The castle itself?”
“Yes.”
He looked off in the direction of the twelfth-century castle. The Welsh countryside spilled out in front of them like a dark green quilt, dotted with sheep and hedges and the bright blues and pinks and whites of late-blooming wildflowers. Torin’s soul embraced being back in the land where all of this had started. Yet at the same time, he worried, not only for his witch but for the other witches and Eternals awaiting their turn at this journey.
The Norman castle Manorbier had once been the center of their lives. There had been livestock roaming free in the land surrounding the castle and within the outer and inner yards a veritable village had thrived. Now, he knew, it all lay quiet but for the echoes of the past and the ghosts and shades that clung to the brown, bracken- covered stones.
“I need to look at the castle, Torin,” she told him and he turned. “There’s a darkness down there.”
“What do you sense?” His eyes were hard and his expression grim.
“I’m not sure. I can feel something. I’m going to use the magic in King’s Quoit to help me with some astral projection and I could use an anchor.”
“You have one,” he assured her.
She clambered up onto the capstone and sighed heavily as the magic trapped within the stone seeped into her bones. “God, it feels good to be here. To feel this and know what it means to me.”
