Visions of Magic

Chapter 25



Torin heard the shower running and tried to pull his mind away from the image of a naked Shea standing beneath the hot, steaming water, soap bubbles clinging to her skin . . .

“You said you called Odell,” Rune prompted, shattering Torin’s thoughts. “Did he know of this Kellyn?”

“He did,” Torin said, stalking to the front window and staring out into the night. The mountain was quiet, the sky black with stardust spread across its width like pinpricks of light through a sheet of velvet. The wind rattled the window glass and whispered across the top of the chimney.

Satisfied that they were still alone in the dark, he focused again on his friend. Before calling Rune to check in, Torin had placed a call to Odell, an Eternal based near his witch in London.

Odell was still watching, waiting for his witch to enter the Awakening. Meanwhile, he was spending most of his time breaking witches out of internment camps in the English countryside. He was running his own private underground railroad, spiriting witches and hunted humans to safety.

“Odell says Kellyn’s Eternal is Egan.”

“Egan.” Rune muttered something unintelligible and then admitted,“I haven’t seen him in a couple of hundred years. After his witch’s last incarnation, he disappeared.”

“It’s not good to be too alone,” Torin muttered, though he could appreciate why Egan had felt compelled to find solitude. Watching your witch live and die again and again took a toll on even the most stalwart Eternal. Unless, of course, like Odell, you found something else to keep you occupied.

But even if he were thousands of miles from Kellyn, Egan should have felt her Awakening. Maybe this Kellyn had been lying, he thought. But why? What would she gain?

And if she was an Awakened witch, why hadn’t Egan been called to her?

“Alone is what we do best,” Rune reminded him.

“That was true for too long. But not anymore,” Torin said. “Find Egan.”

“A little busy here. Getting these women to Sanctuary, remember?”

“Right. Yes.” Torin turned to look toward the bathroom when he heard the shower turn to the massage head, water pounding in regular rhythm. He muffled a groan at the image that filled his mind. Shea, thighs spread beneath those pulsing jets of water, trembling, gasping, helpless to stop her own pleasure from crashing over her.

His body hardened like rock. His breath caught in his chest and the flames that made up his soul threatened to engulf him, burn him to ash.

“We could get Cort to look for him,” Rune was saying. “They were friends back in the day.”

Torin forced his mind to the task at hand. “Yes. Good. Call him, then.” A moment passed. “Where are you and the women?”

Rune laughed shortly. “Vegas, of all places.”

Torin bit back an oath. “Are you insane? With all those people—”

“What better way to get lost than in a crowd?” Rune interrupted. “We’re halfway to Sanctuary. I’ll have them there by tomorrow. But I spent most of my reserve energies flashing them all here. Didn’t want to risk getting in a car down in the L.A. area. Too many people looking for us to be safe on a damn freeway.”

Torin remembered the sound of a gunshot and Shea’s body crumpling at his feet.

“Good point.” Since he knew Rune couldn’t have transported more than one of the females at a time, he realized that the Eternal had made dozens of trips. Ferrying first one, then the next of the women and their belongings along a long, dangerous trek. “Can you get a car easily enough?”

With word of the prison break hitting every news channel and paper, they both knew the authorities would be watching everyone more closely.

“I keep a car here in a garage. It’s safe enough. I’ll have the females to Sanctuary by tomorrow night.”

“You got rid of the tracker on Terri?”

“Yeah,” Rune said. “Trust me when I say she didn’t like it much. That woman’s got a hard right jab. But it’s out and we should be clear. Meanwhile, I’ll call Cort. Get him moving on the Egan situation.”

“Good.” Torin listened as the shower massage changed gears, the pulses coming faster. He took a breath and let it out slowly. “I’ll stay in touch. Don’t know where we’ll be by tomorrow.”

“As long as you get the job done. The clock’s ticking, Torin, and we can’t lose.”

That statement didn’t deserve an answer, so Torin didn’t give him one. He flipped the phone closed and tossed it onto a nearby table.

Then he turned and headed to the bathroom as if he were being pulled by an invisible cord.





The shower was incredible. A walk-in, with no door or curtain separating it from the room, it was constructed of sandy-colored tiles that were smooth as glass on the walls and the wide, built in bench, yet felt rough beneath her feet. Four faucets jutted from the walls at different angles and the air was filled with steam.

Shea stood under the pulsing streams of hot water, turning her back to the jets, letting the rhythmic blasts of heat pound against her shoulders, her neck. She’d been running for years. From the feds. From herself. Her destiny.

Now, there was no more running. There was only this moment and the next and the next. She wasn’t alone anymore, either. There was Torin. And though a part of her still held back from him, unwilling to trust, to share completely . . . another part of her welcomed him.

And that side of Shea wanted him desperately.

She burned for him. Her body turned to liquid heat with just the thought of him. Knowing he was in the next room made her yearn to call out to him, to draw him to her. Yet she resisted. Once she’d opened that door, there would be no going back. Ever. She would be fundamentally changed and that scared her. She felt the power inside her, bubbling, churning, frantic to be free.

But what happened when it was released?

Would she become what she’d seen in her vision? Would she once again be the woman who could call on the dark and damn everything and everyone else around her?

The door opened and her head snapped up. Her gaze met Torin’s as he stepped into the bathroom. His long, dark hair was swept back from his face and his pale gray eyes swirled with banked emotions. His jaw was tight as he approached her.

Naked, Shea stood tall and straight, facing him. She trembled as his gaze moved over her in a quick, thorough sweep.

“I’ve waited for this,” he said. “For you.”

“I know.”

“No more waiting.”

“I know,” she repeated and lifted her arms in welcome.