Possessed (Book One of the Hollow City Coven Series): A Witch and Warlock Romance Novel (8 page)

Do you want to know who the real enemy is? Do you want to rid the world of the real evil that stalks it?

Gillian could feel herself swallow. This was it. This was what she had always been waiting for.

Yeah, guess I do.

The rest of the images, more recent, were mercifully brief.

I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to see this. Please don’t let me remember this.

She saw the man she had touched go through training. She felt the hatred he had for Wiccans. She saw him taken along on his first raid. It was unsuccessful, but she saw a farmhouse in Idaho burned to the ground. The family escaped, but just barely. In her mind’s eye, she saw a doll lying in the wreckage. She thought of the child who must have owned the doll, and she felt nothing but hate.

Finally, the flow of memories stuttered to a stop. It was like a tape that had played to the end and now could be silent. She was lost in the gray hinterland that followed, colder than she had ever been. She was herself again, but she didn’t know what that meant. Perhaps she was herself. Perhaps there would be something of that hateful man that would be a part of her forever. She didn’t know––and the lack of knowing terrified her. She would almost rather stay in this gray nowhere forever rather than wake up and find that she had kept something of the monster with her. The thought of it made her want to scream. She had always known that something like this would happen, ever since she had realized the scope of her skill.

The panic was setting in again, but then she heard a voice.

“Shh, it’s all right.”

She glanced up, looking around in shock. All around her was a gray mist. The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

“It’s all right, there’s nothing here that’s going to hurt you. I swear, I’ll protect you. I’ll protect you, I will.”

Almost as if her fear had summoned him out of the darkness, Shayne appeared.

“Do you promise?” she asked. “Do you swear?

“Oh Gillian, I do. I do swear. Nothing will harm you. Nothing will touch a hair on your head.”

She could feel the connection between them, running as bright and vivid as a crimson thread. No matter what he said or what he thought of her hunt for Tenebris, she knew that he would always protect her.

“Go to sleep,” he urged her. “When you wake up, I’ll be here.”

She smiled at him. It felt as if she hadn’t smiled for years.

“All right. All right.”

She could feel the darkness closing in again. It awakened a memory of when she had been a tiny child. Someone safe and beloved was putting her to bed, bringing the heavy quilt up to her chin and tucking it along her body. This darkness was safe. There was nothing that was going to hurt her here. There was nothing that was going to harm her. Nothing would dare because Shayne stood guard.

She drifted off into a dreamless sleep, moving further and further away from the evil that she had brought into herself. Before the darkness claimed her, she heard an echo of words from a long, long distance.

She died, she died…

Then she was asleep.

WHEN GILLIAN AWOKE, she first became aware of the chill of the mountain air. Then she realized that her hip was sore from being pressed against the ground all night. When she blinked drearily, she could see dozens of sparks of light hovering above the ground. Gillian sat up, startled.

They formed a fence between the camp and the wilderness. When she sat up, they went out one by one. The last one danced in the air as if proud of its own dexterity. As she watched, it flew towards them to land on Shayne’s open palm, where he blew it out gently.

“You’re awake,” he said. The relief in his voice was evident. “I was worried that…you might not.”

“I…um, that’s happened before. It’s really not something to worry about.”

Shayne scowled at her. “Really? You looked like you were having some kind of seizure or stroke.”

“I don’t owe you an explanation,” she snapped. “I’m sorry that it was
inconvenient
for you.”

He reared back, the hurt obvious in his eyes before it was drowned out with frustration.

“Inconvenient nothing,” he snarled. “I was terrified out of my wits. I didn’t know what you were doing. I didn’t know what was happening. I couldn’t do anything for you–”

“Nothing!” she shouted. It echoed against the cliff face.“Nothing, I don’t need anything!”

She sprang to her feet, ready to stalk off into the forest. At least, that’s what she tried to do. But moving too fast made her dizzy. When she tried to take that first step, her legs buckled. She would have gone down in an ignominious pile if Shayne hadn’t caught her.

The moment he touched her, it was as if an evil spell had been broken. From the moment she’d opened her eyes, she had been enveloped in a cloud of wrath.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

She knew she should sit up and try to explain, but instead all she could do was sit there. If she opened her mouth, more of that poisonous anger might come out.

For once, Shayne didn’t seem inclined to argue. Instead, he settled her on the softest part of their small pallet, sitting down by her side.

“Here, have Max back.”

To her surprise, her rat crawled out of Shayne’s things to climb back into her pocket.

“He usually won’t leave my side,” she murmured.

“Then we’re even because Vlasti usually won’t go near anyone who’s not me.”

They sat together in silence for a long while, letting the morning grow warmer. Shayne broke apart a protein bar, handing her bits. He didn’t feed her, like with the eggs, though part of her wished he would. It might have been out of place, but it would have been better than the silence between them.

It was Shayne who spoke first.

“Gillian, I need to know what happened. For your safety and for my own, it’s important.”

“You’re calling me Gillian, you must be serious,” she said weakly, but then she shook her head. “No, you’re right. You’re entirely right. You have a right to know what you’ve brought along and what’s happening to me.”

He sat next to her, silent as the cliff. After a moment, she leaned against him. The warmth of his body made her feel more like herself.

“I’ve heard,” she began slowly, “that some witches and warlocks wait a long time between awakening and their skills becoming known. I knew right away. I was young. I was stupid. And I got into a situation with a man that I didn’t really care for. It wasn’t rape, but the reason I was sleeping with him was because I was too tired and afraid to be on the street anymore.”

She looked up at Shayne to gauge his reaction. A few people, after she’d made the same confession, had cringed away from her as if she was something dirty. Shayne only looked saddened. That gave her a little bit of courage, and she continued.

“I stumbled up from the bed, and I guess I tripped or something. I reached for the radiator nearby to steady myself. It wasn’t on, so I didn’t get a burn, but what happened next was terrifying. Suddenly, I got an image of a woman, falling hard. She might have been fine, but she hit the radiator on her way down. The corner of the radiator cracked against her temple, and she slumped to one side, broken like a doll. Beyond her was a man who was screaming, his fists balled up.”

Even now, Gillian had to shudder at that memory. She could still see it all, the splash of blood on the corner of the radiator, the enraged man.

“I don’t think it was the man I had slept with,” she said quietly. “I don’t know. It was too dark to see. All I know was that I needed to be sick. I made it to the bathroom, and somehow, I managed to calm myself down enough that I didn’t run out into the dark completely naked. I was shaky though. The man was still asleep, so I grabbed what I could and sneaked out. It took me two days to figure out that gloves could stop me from picking up those images, and those two days were hell. Los Angeles is a city with history, and a lot of it is nasty.”

Shayne winced, but he never moved. He was as solid as the world next to her.

“So your gift allows you to read the past?”

Gillian nodded.

“It does. Thank all the gods that ever were, it only affects my hands, especially my palms. Usually, it only ever works when something really powerful affected the object in question or when it’s really old. Things like pillows, sheets, soap, remote controls, new clothes, they usually don’t bother me much. There might be an echo of a sad worker in some foreign country, but they touch it so quickly that it’s drowned out.”

“Then last night…”

Against her will, Gillian shuddered.

“That’s what happens when I touch people with my hands,” she said. “I can pick up images of who they are, what they’ve done, things like that. It’s only happened a handful of times, and each time, it was a major invasion of privacy that made me feel ill. It was terrible.”

“You learned all about that Templar’s life?”

Gillian nodded, pressing even closer to Shayne.

“It was terrible. He was nothing but anger. If he hadn’t been a Templar, he would have been something equally as nasty, just directed at some other group. His entire life was nothing but anger from start to finish.”

She turned to face Shayne.

“Did you kill him?”

“I did.”

Gillian thought for a moment. There was the revulsion and pity she felt for the fact that a man had lost his life, but she had been in that man’s head, been next to his soul.

“Good,” she whispered.

They were silent together for a long period of time. The morning grew brighter. Vlasti appeared briefly to investigate, but apparently found them dull. Shayne’s familiar winged off into the woods after ascertaining they were safe.

“Do I want to know what you know about me?”

Shayne’s voice was thin and tense.

“What?” Gillian blinked in surprise.

Shayne wasn’t looking at her. There was a tension to his body that hadn’t been there before. He had the look of a man who was braced to hear the worst.

“What do you know about me?” he asked. “I…have done things that I am not proud of. I think everyone has. But some of them are dark. Maybe they are as dark as what you saw in that Templar’s soul.”

Gillian turned to face him fully.

“What on earth are you talking about?” she exclaimed. “I’ve never touched you…with…”

She trailed off as she realized that her hand was bare. She remembered the way the Templar had ripped the glove off. She jerked back from Shayne as if she had been burned.

“I…my glove, I need it…”

Shayne pointed, and she realized that the glove had been neatly placed on the ground next to where she had been sleeping. She pounced on it, sliding her hand back into it with a hiss of relief.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded shakily. “I am. I just haven’t gone bare handed around other people for years. I–” She stared intently at him. “Did you touch me?”

Shayne winced.

“You touched
me
,” he said. “When you were unconscious, you reached for my hand. You held it very hard for a while, and then, after you calmed down a little, you let it go. I’m so sorry, Gillian. If I had known what your power was or how it would affect you, I would never…”

She shook her head slowly. She realized she was still holding the hand that had been bared. She made herself let go of it.

“No, there was nothing like that at all. I don’t remember holding your hand. Even if it had happened without my notice, though, I would still have the memories. I would have them for you, just as I had them for that Templar. And…I just don’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

Something like relief stole across Shayne’s face. It made her smile a little.

“Do you have so many dark secrets that you need to keep from me?” she asked.

Shayne smiled at her with something like his old careless charm.

“Not so many secrets to hide from you, simply the person I am,” he said. “You can ask me anything you like, and I’ll tell you as much of the truth as I can. There are simply dark parts here and there.”

Gillian smiled at him, but then the grin faded.

“My skill is excellent for my work, for the research I do. Many times I can figure out if an artifact is a fake simply by touching it. What happened with that Templar…” She shrugged. “It’s never been so intense before.”

“Do you think it will be all right?”

“I don’t know. Whenever I think of his memories, they’re right there. I don’t know what to do if they don’t fade.”

Shayne tentatively put his arm around her. The gentleness of the motion surprised her, as did the care that he used.

“Well, we’ll figure it out. I have to get you to Tenebris after all. This first step is just proving a little challenging.”

“Do I even want to know what’s going to qualify as really tough?”

Shayne’s laugh washed over her like sunlight.

“It involved a forced march on no sleep, fleas in every piece of clothing I owned, and a very angry man who came at me with what looked like tiger-claw, brass knuckles. So while this isn’t fun, I’ve had worse. I’d be lying if I said that the company didn’t help too.”

He brushed a butterfly-soft touch across her cheekbone, making her smile in surprise.

“Was that all right?”

“From you, yes,” she said softly. “Anything but my hands, unless my gloves are on. But after that, yes.”

Shayne’s grin was a little darker now. There was a new energy to his body. He leaned in, and then just as quickly, he pulled back. She had to kill the tiny rush of disappointment.

“Later,” he said. “Right now, I want to start walking again. We have a lot of ground to cover.”

“But later?” she asked, only half joking.

When she had felt that wave of desire roll off him, a part of her had responded in a way that startled her.

He hesitated. Instead of standing up, he slid his hand down over her side and settled it on her hip. He brought her close. Now she could feel the hard length of his body. It reminded her of the dream she’d had, and sent a delicious fire straight to her belly.

His mouth touched the curve of her cheek, then the point of her chin. Then it landed on the pulse point at her throat. He lapped at her delicate skin. Then she felt the silver-sharpness of his teeth there. He nibbled and suckled at the skin, taking her right to the point of pain and hovering there. The sensation of his teeth and the feel of his body next to hers made her squirm. She needed more. She needed him. She felt as if she were overflowing with sensation and desire. She wanted to feel his body between her legs. She wanted to be as close to him as two people could get.