Visions of Skyfire

Chapter 20

Teresa’s heart and mind were shattered. She clung to Rune, the last stable point in her universe. She watched through slitted eyes as he called on the flames and swept them out of Sedona and into unfamiliar territory. Again and again, in a series of long jumps. But to Teresa, one stop was much like the other.

For two days they traveled, stopping only long enough to eat and sleep. They rested in the desert for a few hours the first night and then were on the move again early the next morning. When they were hungry, Rune would leave her somewhere safe, flash into a grocery store and help himself to the food they needed.

Teresa had never been much of a camper and this frenzied trip across Arizona and the border area wasn’t changing her mind on the subject. But Rune didn’t want to head directly to Chiapas. He felt that if they were being followed, it was worth the extra time it would take to throw the hunters off their trail first.

And so it went. On and on. Teresa was exhausted, but she couldn’t complain, since he was going to so much trouble to keep her safe. But it was more than being tired. Her heart hurt. She had been prepared for this madness—at least as much as she could have prepared. But her destiny had cost her friend her life.

Regret would be with her for the rest of her own life—whether that was a week or eternity.

Clinging to Rune’s broad shoulders, Teresa became numb to what was happening around her. A sudden stop, the fires that covered Rune would snap off and then come to life again before his blurring speed sent them back on the run. Again and again, he continued on, long into the night until blackness and fire were all she could see.

That made sense to her. Her soul was dark now, too, with the flames of rage burning at its center. Always she had prepared for this day, for her witchcraft to materialize and for her Eternal to show himself. But she had never expected to gain and lose so much all at the same time.

Rune stopped again and the fire surrounding them died away. This time, though, he didn’t flash them forward; he stayed perfectly still, holding her in the circle of his arms. They must be stopping for the night again and she was grateful for the reprieve.

She took comfort from his touch, so she forced herself to step back and away from him. He released her, as if he knew that she needed some space. For an immortal warrior, he was proving to be surprisingly understanding. If only he didn’t look at her with eyes that accused her of crimes she couldn’t even remember committing.

The moment he let her go, Teresa missed his warmth, his strength, but she had to stand on her own two feet. Regain her inner power. Soon the Mating ritual would begin and to face Rune as an equal, she had to find balance. She must become the witch she was destined to be. So she had to be strong in her own right.

Looking around, she couldn’t see anything beyond the star-filled sky overhead and the inky darkness of the desert. “Where are we?”

“Just across the border. We’re in Mexico.”

Chico lifted off her shoulder and flew in circles above their heads, as if the tiny bird had needed a break, too. She watched him for a second, then nodded to Rune and pulled in a deep breath. Grateful to be away from Sedona, she said, “Good. That’s good. How far from Chiapas?”

“Far enough,” he told her. “For now, anyway. There’s a village ahead.” He pointed and Teresa shifted her gaze in that direction. All she saw was a smudge of pale light in the utter darkness ahead of them.

“We’re staying there?” Surprise colored her voice because for the last two days he’d deliberately kept her away from people.

“No,” he told her. “We’ll get some supplies, then head back into the desert. We’ll continue on after we’ve rested.”

Sleeping in the desert wasn’t something she could look forward to, Teresa thought, her mind filling with images of snakes and tarantulas and God knew what else. At least last night she hadn’t actually had to sleep on the sun-baked sand. Instead, Rune had found an abandoned shack for them to rest in.

She looked around again and realized there were no shacks out here. Then she turned her head and looked toward the distant village. There would be people there—so it would be dangerous. She could hope that word of what had happened in Sedona hadn’t traveled this far south already. But the reality was that the MPs were probably on their trail and who knew how far their reach extended.

Rune started walking, his long, easy strides forcing her to run to keep up with him. Her boots kicked at dirt and sand, and she had to fight past the fatigue clawing at her. She hadn’t slept well last night. Her dreams were haunted not only by her own past but also by images of what her enemies had done to Elena. All she really wanted, Teresa thought, was to find some safe, quiet corner where she could curl up and whimper.

Which sounded so damn cowardly, it made her shudder. In response to that stray wienerlike thought, she straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin.

She looked toward the few lights shining in the desert blackness. “Should be safe enough there, right? I mean, the feds are looking for us in Sedona.”

“True. We should have some time before the hunt goes international.”

“I need to get some candles, too, if we can find some,” she said.

He glanced at her. “For what?”

“Candle magic. I need my memories, right?”

His eyes shuttered as he turned his head forward again. “Yes.”

“There’s that look again,” she muttered, then spoke up louder. “Tell me more, Rune. About that night. The night everything went to hell.”

“You should remember on your own.”

“And in a perfect world, sure.” Teresa reached out to grab his arm and he stopped dead. When he was looking at her, she said, “You already prodded me once. I need the memories. You told me yourself. So help me.”

He scowled. “There’s not much more to tell.”

“Then it shouldn’t take long,” she argued.

He spoke then and as his voice wove a spell of words around her, images filled Teresa’s mind and the long-dead past came vibrantly to life.





Teresa felt the swell of power surrounding her and her sisters. The moonlight was bright, shining down from a star-studded black sky. A banefire, built on the bones of slaughtered animals, burned brightly in the center of their circle. The Eternals stood just beyond the ring of power, each of them formidable in his disapproval. Each of them trying to fight past the strength of the magic used to keep him out.

Teresa looked at her own Eternal. The immortal man who came to her bed every night and showed her bliss. His features were twisted as he shouted, trying to make himself heard above the cacophony of sound that seemed to shriek from the very air.

She loved him. A part of her always would. She had promised him that she wouldn’t join the coven tonight. That she would go away with him. But the lure of power was stronger even than her love. Besides, how could she turn away from the women who were like her own blood? She stood with her sisters and called on the gods to hear them. They focused their combined magics on the Artifact before them and in the wildly flickering light demanded the knowledge of the ages. Demanded that doors closed to mankind would open to them.

Doors to other dimensions. Other worlds open to new possibilities.

She saw it all. Lived it all. She tasted the excitement of magic in the air and swallowed the bitter dregs of regret as a door finally opened and the first of the demons rushed through.

Chaos reigned.

The Eternals fought valiantly. The coven strove to undo the harm they had done. But the screams of the dead and dying were all-consuming.

The coven’s wards failed under the onslaught of so much dark energy. Demons and Eternals alike entered the sacred circle and destroyed it. Her sisters were dying all around her. Teresa shuddered under the hideous onslaught of memory. She watched herself as she had once been, struggling to close the gate to hell. But despite her efforts, there were demons who escaped into this world before the gate swung shut. And she saw the fury on the face of the immortal who loved her.





“Oh, my God.” She looked up at him, struggling for air. Her lungs were constricted, as if she was still breathing in that awful fire.

“You saw.”

“I did,” she said, nodding as she looked up into his eyes. “We let demons loose into this world.”

“Most of them were hunted down that night,” he told her. “My brothers and I saw to that. But yes. A few remained.” He swept his gaze across the dark desert, as if expecting for one of the demons to materialize in front of him. “And the doorway you closed wasn’t sealed that night. Not completely. Dark energy still spills through the portal. That is why we have to find the Artifact. We have to undo what you and your sisters did.”

“And my memories will tell me where the Artifact is?”

“Your piece of it, yes,” he said. “After the battle, the coven shattered the Artifact—each of you taking away one piece and hiding it somewhere in the world.”

“That narrows it down.”

He frowned at her and Teresa said, “Sorry. Sorry. What else?”

“A spell of atonement was cast. The coven would give up their powers for eight hundred years. At the end of that time, the Awakening would come. And you would gather to put right what went so wrong.”

“So you’ve been waiting …”

“A very long time,” he said.

“And the Mating ritual will help open my memories?”

“Yes.”

“We weren’t mated then, were we?”

“No,” he said, starting to walk again. “None of the witches wanted to share power. You all kept us at a distance.”

His tone told her that he still hadn’t forgiven her that betrayal.

“Well, no more distance, Rune. We have to start the Mating ritual soon. For everybody’s sake.”

He shot her a look as she hurried to keep up with him and when his gaze landed on her, nerves fluttered in the pit of her stomach.

An inner voice laughed at her. Trying to convince herself that she was ready for sex with Rune only for the greater good wasn’t working. No, the truth was, when she was around him, her entire body hungered. She remembered the feel of his body sliding into hers. She wanted to touch him again. To feel the heat of him surrounding her.

On this crazed race across the countryside, the one stable point in her universe had been his solid, muscular presence. He held her and she felt safe. He touched her and the cold inside her drained away, replaced by a relentless need that only he could ease.

She quivered for a release that seemed to be hovering just out of reach. She looked at him and felt heat pool at her center. She touched him and her nerve endings sizzled. Her magic, her body—there was no distinction here. She wouldn’t care for him. Wouldn’t love him. But if they were fated to mate, would it really be so bad if she enjoyed herself in the process?

She pushed those thoughts aside for the moment, though, and told him, “There’s no point in waiting for the memories to show up. We don’t have time to waste, right? Well, I can try an unblocking spell and maybe hurry them up a little.”

He nodded. “Good idea. We should be able to find what we need here.”

As they drew nearer to the village, Teresa wondered if he was right. The place was hardly more than a spot in the road, really. A dozen or so buildings clustered together in the middle of nowhere.

“Then what?” she asked. “Where do we go from here?”

“There are caves near here,” he said, swatting at her bird as the small creature made a dive at his head. “I’ve stayed there before.”

“Caves. Great.” Mother Nature’s version of a shack. Teresa whistled for Chico and he flew to her shoulder, where he bobbed up and down in time with her steps. She lifted one hand to gently stroke his sleek feathers and immediately felt comforted. Her home, her life, her friend were all gone. Chico and this stranger who would be her mate were all she had left.

Except for the grandmother who probably, thanks to her gift of visions, already knew they were headed her way. Teresa suddenly needed to see her abuela. She felt a desperate urge to hear the older woman’s steady, nononsense advice. And she needed to feel that connection to the past that she knew before she walked into a future that was looking more and more terrifying.

He stopped suddenly and asked, “Will you trust me, Teresa?”

“What?”

“Trust. Can you trust me?”

“I have so far, haven’t I?” She wanted to trust him, but there was still so much she didn’t know. Prepared or not, she had gaping holes in her knowledge and handing her fate over to an immortal wasn’t something easily done.

He grabbed her arms and pulled her in close to him. The color of his gray eyes shifted from pewter to steel to the soft gray of storm clouds, all while he looked into her eyes, as if searching for something that he couldn’t find.

“Fine,” she admitted. “It’s hard. I don’t know you, Rune. You say you’ve always been with me, but I’ve never seen you, so why should I—”

“You were ten,” he said, his gaze boring into hers. “At your abuela’s. You wandered into the desert and stirred a rattlesnake nest to life.”

She remembered. That frozen sense of terror came back to her and it was as if all the years between then and now had fallen away. “There were dozens of them.” She shook her head and swallowed. “The rattling, the hissing, it was so loud and—”

“And a coyote saved you,” he said. “It jumped into the nest so you could run.”

“Yeah,” she said, smiling now. “I don’t know where it came from—”

“The coyote was me, Teresa,” he said. “I used magic, drawing on yours and my own to create the illusion of a coyote.”

“You were there?” She looked into his eyes and saw the truth staring back at her. “You saved me.”

“I will always be there when you need me. You are my mate.”

The simple honesty of his words tore down a bit of the wall she had built around her heart and soul. And that worried her. She didn’t want to be vulnerable to him. But how could she hold back from a being who had already saved her life more than once?

“Trust goes both ways, Teresa,” he reminded her.

She tipped her head to one side and stared up at him. Saw shadows crouched in his eyes. She felt his power rippling out around her, drawing her in even as he held a part of himself back.

Something told her that the memories she hoped to draw out of the locked closet in her mind wouldn’t all be puppies and rainbows. There was more between them than he was saying. She knew it.

He might pretend to be keeping the past where it belonged, but at his heart, at his soul, he was holding on to feelings that threatened to destroy the very link they were supposed to forge. He expected her to blindly trust him when it was clear he couldn’t do the same with her.

“Look,” she said, covering a sudden burst of nerves with a stiff, calm voice, “we’re stuck with each other, right? We have the Mating ritual to complete. This quest to finish. So it doesn’t really matter if we like each other, does it?”

“I suppose not,” he agreed.

Oddly, she was almost disappointed to hear him say that. Despite knowing that it was better all the way around this way. After all, she was prepared to go through with the Mating. What she wasn’t willing to do was allow herself to love him. Love wasn’t part of this package and she had no interest in changing that. Love gave people too much power over you.

Gave them the weapons to hurt you.

So, no thanks. She wasn’t interested in eternal love. She was prepared to do her duty. To complete the task her grandmother had prepared her for most of her life. But nowhere was it written that she must love the mate the fates had chosen for her.

When Rune held one hand out to her in a gesture of solidarity, of alliance, Teresa took it, sliding her hand into his. The instant their skin met, a sizzle of something ancient and hot and delicious skittered through her system. Her whole body shook with desire, with quickening passion. She looked into those incredible eyes and saw that he had felt it too and she knew, like it or not, this Eternal was hers.

The question was, what was she supposed to do with him once the quest was over?