Visions of Skyfire

Chapter 60

Teresa entered the chapel, despite the twinge of trepidation curdling inside her. She knew what she had to do, but damned if she was enjoying it. This mystical scavenger hunt had taken too much from her already and she couldn’t help fearing that she had yet more to lose.

The stillness was oppressive.

Her own footsteps on the stone floor sounded disrespectfully loud and almost eerie in the quiet. Like a ragged heartbeat. Like there was someone or something else in here besides her and Rune.

She felt his presence, of course. As linked as they were, emotionally and physically, Teresa knew that she would always be aware of him whenever he was close. And she was desperately grateful to have him close at the moment.

Her gaze swept the chapel as she walked down the nave. The center aisle of the church was slender, as if it had been designed for the fragile, wealthy ladies of a court long gone to dust. Arched stained glass windows ringed the interior of the chapel, but the moonlight outside muted the brilliant colors that would have filled this place in sunlight like the spun wheel of a kaleidoscope. Directly in front of her towered an amazing altarpiece, with different sections, each telling the tale of the Epiphany.

“Teresa?”

She glanced back at Rune, just a step or two behind her, and nodded. “I’m okay. We go through that doorway on the left.”

He followed as she led, and with every step she took, she walked deeper into the past. Memories rose up in her mind, nearly choking her with their intensity. She had been here so long ago. Scared. Desperate. Ashamed.

She still carried the echoes of her sisters’ screams in her heart and mind. She could still smell the sulfur that had wafted through hell’s gate with the swarm of demons. She could feel Rune’s fury, his disappointment, and she wanted nothing more than to hide away until her death when she could begin the reincarnations that would lead to her atonement.

So she had come here. To Barcelona. To the wall built by the Romans, because she had recalled Rune telling her of his days here. She’d remembered his reluctant admiration of the strength of the Romans and she had thought to borrow some of that legendary strength to protect what she herself hadn’t been able to.

Teresa stepped through an arched stone doorway into the blackness of what had once been a storage area. Now it was simply a small unused stone room, its walls echoing with the voices of the past.

“Teresa?”

“God, I remember this,” she whispered, her soft voice rippling in the tiny room like the tide rushing to shore.

She took a breath, let it out and whispered, “It’s here. In the wall.”

“In it?”

She turned her head to look up at him and gave him a small smile. “Yeah. I thought that the Roman wall would somehow be strong enough to conceal it, to shield it.”

Turning back, she walked to the far wall, dropped to her knees and touched a dark stone, skimming her fingers across its surface. Instantly, the stone rippled, its surface trembling with a barely leashed power.

Rune went down on one knee beside her. He felt her hesitation, her doubt, as he would have his own—and how could he blame her for it? Eight hundred years had come and gone and she was once again having to face who she had been. What she had done. As if the black silver sensed his presence, it began to hum and vibrate with the magic rising inside it. Teresa swallowed hard, glanced at Rune and then reached for the stone.

It fell into her hand, instantly morphing into the black-silver Celtic knot it had been centuries before. Power emanated from the thing in thick, inky waves that seemed to reach for them with greedy fingers.

Hissing in a breath to steel himself against the draw of the dark magic, Rune looked to Teresa and saw her gaze fixed on the now-gleaming black metal. She stroked it with a single fingertip and seemed to enjoy the current of power that washed through the black silver at her touch. “Teresa?”

She stroked it again, but looked up at him. “I was right, Rune. It’s almost alive. I can feel it. It’s calling to me.”

“It has been waiting.” A deep, unfamiliar voice spoke from the right.

Teresa and Rune turned as one to face the tall blond man with swirling gray eyes who entered the anteroom.

“The Artifact has been waiting for your return and its chance to reenter the world,” he said with a courtly bow. “Just as I have.”