Visions of Magic

Chapter 22



“Shea!” Torin threw himself on top of her even as his eyes scanned the hillsides, looking for the shooter. Blood poured from a wound high on her shoulder. He stanched the flow with his bare hand, but he knew it wouldn’t be enough.

They couldn’t risk staying here and they couldn’t leave with her bleeding out. She wasn’t immortal—not yet, anyway—and if she died, the Awakening was finished before it began.

That thought slammed into his mind and he shoved it right out again. “Screw the Awakening, Shea. I won’t let you die. Do you hear me?”

“Torin?” Her voice was too soft, too fragile. He’d rather have her shouting at him than the sound of pain coloring her words. “What happened?”

“You were shot.” Blood continued to seep from her shoulder, trickling through his fingers, running across his hand. In the darkness, the blood looked black, but he knew it was bright red. Knew that she couldn’t stand to lose much more.

“Shea, you’ve got to trust me,” he said, mouth close to her ear. “Can you do that?”

She tried to move and gasped at a sharp stab of pain.

“Don’t move,” he ordered. “Just talk. Can you trust me?”

“Yes, I trust you,” she said, closing her eyes and biting down on her bottom lip. “I don’t know why, but I do.”

“That’s good enough for now.” He wouldn’t think about the sting of his witch not knowing why she should trust him. Or about the centuries he’d spent at her side. Now it was all about stopping the bleeding so he could get her to safety. “Reach out and take my free hand with yours.”

She barely moved her arm, whether from pain or fatigue or just plain shock, he didn’t know. Didn’t matter.

His fingers threaded through hers and he tried not to notice the chill in her skin. How much blood had she lost?

“Now center yourself, Shea.”

“What?”

“Call on your magic.”

“I can’t.” Her head rocked tiredly from side to side.

“You can,” he insisted as her blood continued to pour across his hand and into the dirt. Panic like he’d never known before took a vicious bite of his very soul. “You shut down my Viper while we were doing ninety miles an hour. You can do this.”

“Can’t. Cold.”

“You’ll be warm soon enough,” he muttered. “Now focus. Pull on your strength, your energy, feel it move into my hand, joining us.”

He felt a slight sensation of her power, a small trickle of warmth when he needed a tide. Her pain washed over him, staggering him. His connection to her was growing, though, so he took as much of her pain as he could. He had to force her to ignore the rest.

“That’s it, Shea. Do it. Damn it, forget the pain and focus. Feel my hand in yours, feel me reaching for your power.”

The trickle increased, linking the two of them with wispy threads of heat. He felt it and nodded, ready now to try to heal her. “I’m going to call on the flames to seal your wound.”

“Burn me?”

“It won’t burn you. Remember? The flames are magic. But I can’t heal you on my own.” Even as he concentrated on the woman who meant more to him than his own existence, another part of Torin was aware of their surroundings. The dark, high grasses where any number of enemies might be hidden. The ridge from which the shot had come.

Was the hunter even now preparing to make another attempt on her life? Would she be taken from him at the very moment they had been destined to join? No. He refused to lose her. Not again. Not in this life.

Overhead, stars glittered and in the darkness he called on the fire that formed the core of him.

More of her power moved into him and his fire burned hotter, brighter. “Our energies must be blended, joined. Trust me, Shea. Don’t fight it. Give me your magic and trust me.”

She nodded, her face pale against the grass. Only yards away, cars flowed along the freeway like fish in a river. Never stopping, never noticing anything around them. But they couldn’t have seen Shea and Torin even if they were looking for them. The magic soaring around them moved like fog, a thick gray mist to conceal and protect.

The flames rushing through Torin’s body, racing to the hand he held to Shea’s shoulder, were the brightest light in the shadowy world they inhabited.

“Do it, Torin,” she whispered, eyes locked with his. “I trust you.”

His heart swelled as his own magic burst forth in a rush. His hand erupted into flames and caressed her injured shoulder with a magical balm that made her sigh and squirm beneath him. Their hands linked, their powers as one, Shea breathed easier, and seemed to gather herself as her body healed.

The joining was strong, rich, and filled him with a sense of rightness that he’d waited several lifetimes for. This was the woman who was his other half. The heart and soul of him. He would never lose her again.

He watched as the wound closed and the angry red flesh paled and smoothed into unbroken skin beneath his hand. She took a breath and let it sigh from her lungs—and Torin could have sworn he felt her relief as his own.

At last Torin pulled his hand free, inspected the wound and smiled to himself. “It’s done.”

“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” she admitted and slowly sat up beside him.

She looked down at their joined hands and watched, bemused, as Torin’s flames licked at their fingers in wavering bursts of bright orange and yellow.

Finally, she lifted her gaze to his. Lit by the starlight, she said, “You’re amazing.”

“Together,” he corrected, “we are amazing.”

She nodded. “I’m starting to get that. Now what?”

“Now we discover how these people are tracking you. But not here.”

“Where, then?”

“I know a place.” He wrapped his arms around her, called on the flames and in a breath of light and heat, flashed them both away.