Lost Wanderer Awakened - Book One of the Airendell Chronicles (50 page)

“Breena, those children were the only right
thing I ever did in forty-nine years of this life time, and that
evil witch, and possibly our own mother took them away from me.
They tried to kill those precious, sweet, loving children. I can
barely contain my rage sometimes, Breena. I am not kidding. I am
afraid I might explode someday and do something truly horrible to
pay them back.”

“Luca know any of this?” Breena asks her
sister quietly.

“He knows about the divorce, but nothing
about the sex only relationships. How can I tell him I did that? It
doesn’t matter that I was trying fill up an empty spot I didn’t
even understand existed, I was just really stupid about trying to
fill it. Maybe it wasn’t stupid maybe it was just indecent. Maybe I
am just a selfish slut or something. I don’t know.” Morna rakes her
fingers roughly through her hair. “But I hope to God Luca never
finds out, because I would have to find a way to die and never come
back if he ever stopped loving me.”

Breena watches her sister mutely. Morna is
crying silently now, tears streaming down her face. She gets mad
and wipes them off and them pours about 3 fingers of scotch. Downs
it and lights another cigarette, and pours more scotch.

Breena moves to sit beside her sister, and
wraps her arms around her. “I know I am wasting my time telling you
this, but there’s no way you are indecent, selfish or a slut. You
are a passionate woman that has had her lives and her one true love
ripped away from her a total 13 times, how messed up is that. I
think you are astonishing just the way you are. So does Luca, this
nonsense wouldn’t change how he feels about you one iota. So what
if you fucked around a little when you were younger. Luca did
before he met you.”

“Oh God Bree, don’t you dare ever tell him
about any of this. I have not told him about the boyfriend in
college. It’s just too sordid. Please I am begging you. It is the
only secret that I know of that I have ever kept from him, but I
can’t let him find this out. Do you understand?” Morna implores
desperately.

Breena hugs her baby sister tight, “Yeah
sweetie, I understand. I wouldn’t ever tell anyone. But I can
promise you that Luca would understand and would not judge
you.”

Morna and Breena sit quietly, sipping scotch
and smoking when suddenly Morna’s head snaps up, “Did you say a
total of 13 times? You mean I have had 14 lives counting this one?
Wow, come think of it, I heard Luca say the same thing earlier. I
only remember nine. Ten counting Airendell. Oh my God. I must be
really screwed up! Maybe the crash really did damage my brain.”

Morna lights another cigarette. She finishes
off the scotch in her cup, and then pours three more fingers. Then
she decides to change the subject. And starts telling her sister
funny stories from her barmaid days, teaching days, and even silly
things the girls at the Bridge had done. The sisters have been
drinking the scotch liberally and the bottle is nearly empty. They
were both practically rolling off their couches when Breena says,
“I need sleep!” And props her head on the pillow shuts her eyes and
is snoring 30 seconds later.

CHAPTER 20 - UNSEEN ENEMY ATTACKS

Morna’s thoughts wander to Luca. She’s very
worried about him for some reason. Quickly becoming frantic about
him. “What if he decides he doesn’t want to come back? What if he
can’t come back?” her mind screams at her.

Morna looks at her sleeping sister and says,
“Oh God, I wish I could do that.” Morna snuffs out her fourth
cigarette. Drains her seventh scotch of the night. “What if he
can’t come back? What if the evil that seems to be tracking me has
his scent?” Morna shakes her head to try to clear her irrational
fears, and decides she better go brush her teeth. When she finishes
brushing her teeth, she decides to wash her face.

She dries her face looks at herself in the
mirror and thinks “I wonder what hell Luca thinks is so special
about me in this life time, or any lifetime for that matter.” Morna
stares at her reflection for several minutes and then says, “Hello!
I need to go to bed. I am the only guest at this pity party.”

She wobbles into the sitting area, grabs the
smokes, planning to stash them back in her purse but leaves them on
her suitcase instead. She doesn’t want Breena waking up and
lighting another and causing a fire. She puts a light throw over
Breena, leaves a lamp on, sets the nachos out the door for pick up,
because they are starting to stink up the room.

Then she picks up the pillow that smelled the
most like Luca and heads for the last bed she had shared with him.
She desperately wants to be surrounded by his scent if she can’t be
surrounded by his arms. She lies there in the dark playing re-runs
of her fears for Luca. “What if he decides he doesn’t want to come
back? What if he can’t come back? What if the evil that seems to be
tracking me has his scent?” Her fear for him has become a tangible
thing. She sits straight up in the bed and urgently whispers,
“LUCA!”

“I am here Morna!” Luca whispers back at her
from the door to their bedroom. Her relief at hearing his voice
spurs her forward. She flies out of that bed nearly as fast as Luca
can move and barrels into him. He struggles to remain standing when
she crashes into him. She wraps her arms and legs around him,
clutching at him for dear life.

He’s shushing her, kissing her, trying to
calm her down. But it’s a very slow process. She really had worked
herself up into a terror over the thought of something happening to
him, making him unable to come back, or that tiny voice says from
the darkest corner of her brain that says, “If he got smart and
didn’t want to come back.”

Luca had been on his way back into the city.
It had been a pretty smooth evening out on all counts, except for
strange random thoughts and images involving Morna. Some of them
were disturbing. Her with that man she was married to. Images of
her heavy with child, then her holding a baby in her arms. Then the
deepest sense of loss over not having that baby with her anymore.
Then images of another man with a much younger Deidra. Morna‘s
tortured voice saying, “I can’t let him find this out.”

Luca is overwhelmed by feelings of
self-loathing and despair. He knows those feelings are coming from
Morna. Then all of the sudden he hears Morna say, “It is the only
secret that I know of that I have ever kept from him, but I can’t
let him find this out. Do you understand?” He can see Breena
reassuring her. Then it gets all foggy again. Then it’s all these
silly images of bikers partying, school kids pulling stunts, and
foibles of wayward teenage girls. He can taste cigarettes and
scotch.

“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?” he wonders at a
loss. Then it all clicks. “She has mind linked with me.” He goes
back and looks at what he thought and heard again. “How the hell
does she know it’s been 14 lives?” Then he feels like he’s tucking
Breena into bed, putting some foul smelling food out for room
service to cart away.

Now he sees Morna’s lovely face, but she
looks so miserable. It’s like she is looking at something she
really can’t stand. “Is she looking in a mirror?” he wonders. “And
what was that about a secret. She doesn’t keep secrets, she can’t,
and they eat away at her.”

Then a horrible thought hits him like a ton
of bricks, he knows it came from Morna‘s mind; “I wonder what hell
Luca thinks is so special about me in this life time, or any
lifetime for that matter.”

“Oh man, what is going on? Why is SHE
thinking these things?” He remembers the taste of the scotch, but
she isn’t intoxicated enough to cause this. Something else is doing
this to her. It is something outside of her, something that feels
and smells really bad, like spoiled meat smells. Then he remembers
something she said today about when Aideen was born. “Someone was
holding her in some sort of spell, her heart was failing. She could
almost taste the bitter evil of the person wielding the spell.”

Suddenly Luca knows that is exactly what is
happening now. “Morna is being attacked by some outside, unseen,
magical force!”

He turns off the headlights on the rental car
and floors it. Thanking God or whatever is responsible for his
heightened vision acuity, reflexes and the late hour, with so
little traffic to dodge. He has to get to her. “Someone is trying
to kill her, or make her kill herself!!”

He’s back at the hotel, trying to get to her.
He can feel her terror building by the second. He’s in the room, he
flies past Breena, who is asleep on the couch, and He feels the
darkness she feels: Suddenly he is experiencing events from his own
perspective and from her perspective:

“What if he decides he doesn’t want to come
back? What if he can’t come back? What if the evil that seems to be
tracking me has his scent?” Her fear for him has become a tangible
thing. She sits straight up in the bed and urgently whispers,
“LUCA!”

“I am here, Morna!” She hears his voice
whispering back at her from the door. Her relief at hearing his
voice spurs her forward.

“Morna! Morna!” He barks. He hears his own
voice echoing in his head. It is rather disconcerting to experience
the same event from different perspectives at the same time. It’s
no wonder Aideen was so agitated being in Morna‘s presence while
they were linked. “MORNA! Calm down baby, someone is attacking you
from the outside! Calm down so we can stop him… Easy baby! I am
with you and will never leave you. Morna, Morna, darling I am
here.”

Suddenly, they both hear a clear voice of a
woman saying; “Hang on, Sister! Morna, you are strong enough to
overcome this!” And then the voice fades away.

Luca is confused by the voice, but his main
concern is helping his mate calm down. She’s still terrified.
“Baby, you are safe. Listen to me, I can feel the poison leaving,
it’s backing away. That putrid smell and taste of rotting flesh is
fading, it is fading. It is gone!”

He holds her in his arms in the dark,
experiencing the feeling of her heart beating frantically, and then
gradually start to slow. At the same time he experiences it from
his perspective, hearing it race and then gradually slow. He feels
his cold arms around her. Joy is singing in her heart at his touch,
because he’s come back. “He doesn’t hate me! Luca, I love you
forever! Thank you for coming back. Thank you for being safe!” It
is like these words are being shouted at him inside his head. But
he knows they are Morna’s thoughts.

“Shush Morna; try to let your mind go blank.
Calm down, love. I am here, always,” he assures her as he strokes
her face lovingly.

Breena hears all the commotion and comes in
to check on Morna. Luca quietly explains that she was being
attacked from some outside force. Morna had reached out for Luca to
protect her, even though she didn’t fully understand what was
happening.

Then he tells Breena, “She linked with me,
like she did with you. There are some really jumbled thoughts going
on in Morna’s head about Magdrid working with a Shade. That doesn’t
seem possible but it would explain a lot of things… hmmm”

“I need to contact Ari and Almeda, and soon!”
He says thoughtfully. “Morna is on to something here. Outside
attacks on her mind make sense. That would explain so much.”

Luca can tell that Morna is nearly herself
again. “What was all that terror over him being lost or harmed or
hating her? What is that about?”

All of that is leaving her mind. She’s just
in this exact moment. Then Luca feels really confused because he
can feel the passion his presence is building in her body. Just
holding her innocently like this is building an inferno inside
her.

She banks the inferno in her heart and it
keeps the darkness stalking her away. She pushes all the pain back
down so that she can manage it. All the intense physical pain in
her head is pushed down and smothered. All the losses, all the
times she has been taken away from him and the children that have
been ripped from her; all of these painful things are overshadowed
by her love for him. She uses that bright, shining, beautiful
passion that she feels for him, and pushes all the horrible,
painful stuff away so that she can stand up tall and proud and
beautiful. So that she can be the woman she is really meant to
be.

Then he can hear the saddest thing he has
ever heard, bouncing around inside her heart, her head and her
soul. “Luca’s love is the only thing in me that constitutes any
value to anyone. If he ever stopped loving me, I would cease to
exist!” The throbbing, searing pain in her heart matches the pain
in her head.

“Does she really believe that?” he asks
himself. This thought rips through him like a hot knife through
butter, but it leaves a trail of burning pain in its wake, her pain
becomes his pain.

Then he recognizes the mate to that thought
in his own heart, head and soul: “Morna’s love is the only thing in
me that is good in me. If she ever stopped loving me, I would cease
to exist!” He suddenly realizes, “We believe the same thing about
ourselves!”

He can‘t sort his thoughts from her thoughts.
“Morna, can you break the link between us, darling?” he asks again.
But she still doesn’t seem to hear or comprehend. She has locked
herself away in that dark painful place deep inside of herself
where she is ravaged by self-doubt and dark, vile magic from some
outside source. Despite her doubts and the attack, she manages to
warm her soul on the heat from her passion for her mate, rebuilding
her strength. “How is this even possible?” Luca asks himself.

Then way in the background he can smell the
putrid rotten meat smell. He can feel the evil. He can hear the
creature laugh, trying to find a way back in. But Morna is a true
warrior. She is steadily using the inferno of her passion for him
to block the enemy as he tries to find another way in. Then she
starts pushing the love she has for him outward. She uses it as a
shield to keep the evil out.