Visions of Skyfire

Chapter 40

“I was…when?”

“Does it matter?” Rune didn’t want to talk about that incarnation. The memory pained him. At the moment, he would have liked nothing better than to kick the ghostly ass of Elena’s spirit for bringing it up.

“Of course it matters. Elena said it mattered and now, looking at your face, I can see that your memories of Serena aren’t exactly cheerful ones, so, yeah. I’d like to know what everyone else knows.”

He released her and stalked across the cave, needing to put some distance between them. “You should let your own memories surface. Remember this on your own.”

“Do we have time for that?” she countered. “I’m working at dredging up the memories, but so far I’m not getting much. If Elena thinks Serena’s spells can help, then wouldn’t knowing the truth help, too?”

Irritated and unsettled by the past suddenly encroaching on his present, Rune spun to look at her. The sight of her mating tattoo circling her breast and beginning to spread to her back eased him, though. The past was dead and now they were approaching a future that had been too long in coming. “You want the truth? Fine. Serena was a treacherous bitch. Happy?”

“Thrilled,” she said tightly. “Now tell me the rest.”

“It was 1530,” he told her. “In London. You worked at a tavern there and were drawn to witchcraft even though you had no power. You think the witch hunters now are fierce?” He gave a short, hard laugh. “Back then, they were on a mission from God and were damn relentless about it.”

“I’ve read about it.”

He gave her a cold smile. “You lived it, too. You just don’t remember it yet.”

“So tell me.”

“You were separated from your magic because of the atonement, but your soul was still drawn to the craft,” he said, bringing it all back in his mind in a churning mass of images. “We were together, until you ran afoul of the tribunal. Someone saw you with a woman of power, trying to learn to do spellwork, and turned you in. To save your own ass, you handed me to them. Set me up to be trapped. You had your witch friend cast a spell to hold me so the ‘good people’ of London could beat me down.”

“Oh, God …”

With time and distance, the immediacy of her betrayal had lost the emotional punch it once had. But the bitterness remained. He looked down into her profoundly familiar eyes and saw Serena as she had been that last night. As she had stood with his captors, decrying him as an unnatural “thing.”

“Rune …”

He shook his head. “Her spell couldn’t hold me for long. I flashed out and later I discovered that once I was gone, the crowd turned on you. I returned the following day to confront you, but—” He hesitated.

“Finish,” she whispered brokenly.

“—you were dead. They burned you and the witch at the stake for consorting with demons.”

She closed her eyes, took another deep breath and blew it out in a heavy sigh. “Well, that explains a lot.”

“Really?” he asked wryly.

“You look at me and see her,” Teresa said, turning her eyes up to him. “I can’t really blame you. But, Rune, I’m not that woman. I made a promise to you. I’m your mate and I’m not going to turn on you like she did.”

“Serena didn’t plan to turn on me, either,” he told her flatly.

She walked to him and laid both hands on his bare chest. Rune felt a rush of heat spill from her body into his. It wiped away the chill of his memories and pushed thoughts of betrayal back into the past.

“I can’t change what I—she—did.” She shook her head and frowned. “Every time I find out one more hideous piece of a past I don’t remember, it makes me want to scream. But I can’t do anything to change it. All I can do is be who I am now. And I’m not that woman.”

“I know you’re not.”

“Do you? Really?” She tipped her head to one side and her long hair swung over her shoulder to cover one bare breast. “I think we’re both coming into this with a lot of our own problems strapped to our backs. You don’t trust me and I don’t—”

“Don’t what?” He frowned as her gaze shifted from his. “Teresa.” Cupping her chin in his hand, he turned her face back to him until their eyes met once more. “You don’t what—”

Steeling herself, she said, “I don’t want to love you, okay?”

“Why? Because of that bastard of a boyfriend you had?”

Her eyes went wide in surprise. “You know about Miguel?”

“I know everything about you,” he said. “You think it was easy to watch that bastard with you? I saw how he treated you and I wanted to kill him for it. If he had ever struck you or harmed you in any way, I would have.”

She smiled at the hostile tone of his voice. “Even though you don’t really like me?”

“I do like you,” he said and silently admitted that liking her didn’t even begin to cover what he felt for her. “I just don’t know that I can trust you. And, yes, I would have killed him for daring to harm you. As I would anyone else.”

“I know I shouldn’t like hearing that, but I do,” she said, “so thank you.”

“You don’t have to love me,” Rune said softly.

“But you do have to trust me,” Teresa told him. “If this is going to work, if we’re to have a chance of succeeding, you’re going to have to trust me at some point, Rune.”

He nodded because he knew she was right. But knowing and doing were two different things. Still, he was working on it. “I’m trying.”

“That’s all I can ask for,” she said after a long moment. Then she smiled sadly. “You don’t trust me and I won’t love you. So there are a few strikes against us right off the top.”

“Hasn’t stopped us so far,” he said.

“True,” Teresa admitted. “So … back to Elena and what she said. Do you know which library she was talking about?”

“Yeah, I do. It’s an interdimensional library.”

“What?”

He looked down at her, his gaze moving over her features while he slid one hand up to cover her left breast. As if he needed to touch the mating brand, to link them somehow. To get past the powerful emotions flooding the room. Old pain had no place in his present and he would have to make a stronger effort to let it go.

“Torin and Shea,” he said slowly, “the first Eternal and witch to bond during the Awakening, discovered the library last month.”

His hand cupped her breast and the heat wound through him in a sensual ribbon.

“Tell me,” she said, urging him to continue.

“You know that you’re the reincarnation of one of the chosen witches. A member of the last great coven.”

She nodded, impatient for him to get to the important part. “Yes, that much I know.”

“Well, there are other witches, thousands of them.”

“Yeah, and they’re being hunted and rounded up by the feds, and by civilian hunters. But what does this have to do with—”

He blew out a breath. “For centuries, witches have been handing down knowledge through the generations. From one to the other in a long, unbroken link, they’ve passed down spells and secrets and legends.”

She’d had no idea that women of power had managed to retain all that they were throughout the ages. If the feds knew about this, she told herself grimly, they would increase their already rabid efforts to wipe out the witch population.

A shiver wracked her body and as if he understood, Rune dropped a quick, hard kiss on her mouth. She appreciated the kiss for its own sake, and for the reassurance that the awkwardness caused by their conversation was over.

“The witches crafted a ‘library’ to hold the ancient texts and vital information gleaned through the years. Any witch can access it if she’s close to a Sanctuary.”

“How close?”

“That wasn’t clear,” he admitted ruefully. “But I’d guess within a few miles.”

“And we’re nowhere near one now, right?”

“We are,” he said. “We just can’t get to it. The closest one is just outside Sedona—but before you say anything, we’re not going back there.”

“You’re right. Going back would be really stupid.” She nodded, then asked, “Do you know of any others?”

“There is one outside Veracruz.”

On the plus side, she thought, the state of Veracruz was a lot closer to Chiapas, where they were headed anyway. “We should go there, then, don’t you think? Let me find a way into the library before we go to my grandmother? Get as much information as we can.”

“It’s a good plan,” he agreed solemnly. “I don’t like this ‘beware the immortal’ warning your friend gave you, though.”

“Me neither,” she said with a wry smile. Then she reached up to touch his face, drawing her fingertips along the line of his jaw. “But I want you to know, Rune, I do trust you.”

He kissed her then and before her brain fuzzed over in an onslaught of sensation, she realized he might never trust her in return. She felt a twinge of regret as she acknowledged that a part of Rune was still holding her past against her. He was still keeping himself at an emotional distance from her.

Teresa only hoped that their shared misery of a past wasn’t going to doom the future.