Visions of Skyfire (2 page)

Now, though, she drew on the spirituality of this place to open the heart of her magic. She waved one hand, directing the lightning toward a tower of red sandstone rocks. The jagged bolt of pure power slammed into the ground twenty feet away from the target and she knew that wasn’t nearly good enough. If she were attacked, “close” wouldn’t save her life.

Teresa fought to hone her magic. To perfect the power that had begun to quicken inside her only days ago. She had known what was coming all her life. What she was destined for. But the mystery had been
when
her magic would appear. The world wasn’t a good place for witches these days, but magic ran in her blood, stretching back through her family’s maternal line for generations. She should have been able to draw on that legacy, but in the face of this new and overwhelming power, she was lost.

She stood tall, her cowboy boots planted far apart to give her a sense of stability that she was sorely lacking. Gritting her teeth, she concentrated, and swung her hand out again to direct another whip of lightning across the desert. Instantly a jagged bolt flew—in the wrong direction.

“No!”

Teresa shrieked as her black truck exploded into a fireball. Flames leaped into the air, plumes of smoke twisted in the wind and flaming tires shot off the body of the truck like Frisbees from hell. As thunder still rattled the sky and wind howled, Teresa stared at the smoking hulk of her truck.

“Son of a bitch.” She kicked the sand and thought not only about the incredibly long walk back home she had to look forward to but also about her now-burned-to-a-crisp cell phone. She couldn’t even call someone to help her. She was stuck—no water, no food, no way home.

She’d grown up here, so she wasn’t a stranger to the desert. But the thought of a long walk back to town through the rain with the storm chasing her sent her stomach to her knees. Added to that was the fact that she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she was being watched …

Steeling her spine, she pushed thoughts of unseen watchers to the back of her mind. If they were out there, somewhere, there was nothing she could do about it. The important thing now, she told herself as she stared at the fire and the billowing black smoke, was control. Just how in the hell was she supposed to protect herself from the coming dangers if she couldn’t manage her own powers?

What good is it to be a witch,
she demanded silently,
to be able to pull down the lightning from the sky, if you can’t freaking control the magic?
Disgusted, she muttered, “Could this day get any worse?”

As if the gods were answering, Teresa heard a distant, pulsing beat, like the heartbeat of a giant. The thrumming sound seemed to jolt up from the desert floor to her feet and into her chest, where it pounded along with her own suddenly galloping heart. Stunned, she just stood there, trying to assimilate it, and then she realized something else.

The sound was getting closer.

She whirled around, gaze searching, straining to see past her surroundings to whatever was coming. Her own heartbeat was pounding in time to that otherworldly sound. She scanned the dark skies in all directions. The shadows of the craggy mountains jutted up from the desert, scratching at a sky still churning with ragged bolts of lightning.

Thunder boomed, but just beneath that awesome noise and power there was something else. Something low-pitched and dangerous, like the deep-throated growl of a predator. Fear tightened into a hard knot in her belly. She trembled, swallowed hard and felt her breath catch in her lungs as she found the source of that growl. Against the lowering gray clouds, there was a darker spot.

A blot of black that was headed right for her. An instant later, Teresa identified the heavy beating sound—the
whup-whup-whup
of helicopter blades churning through the air. Mouth dry, fear racing through her, she looked at the emptiness surrounding her and knew she was in deep shit.

She’d come into the desert to be alone with her burgeoning magic. But being alone also meant that there was no one to help her. Though if that helicopter was what she thought it was, no one could have helped her anyway.

As the chopper closed in on her, she saw the bright yellow slash across its belly. Black and yellow. The MPs’ colors. The Magic Police. They’d found her. Somehow they’d found her and she knew that if they got their hands on her, she might as well be dead.

A captured witch had little hope of escape and every expectation of execution. Though not until after torture and imprisonment, of course. Fear nearly choked her. She wasn’t ready for this confrontation. She’d had no time to prepare. To conquer her magic and make it work for her.

The power she had been relishing only moments ago now felt like an anvil tied around her neck. She was about to be captured and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. She couldn’t even hop into her truck and make a run for it.

She had no weapon and the helicopter was even closer now.

“God!”

She didn’t
need
a weapon—she
was
a weapon.

“Now’s the time, Teresa,” she muttered, instantly lifting both hands high over her head. All around her, lightning danced, pulsed, the air scorched from thousands of volts. Her hair lifted in the wind; her eyes narrowed on the helicopter. She stabbed one hand toward it and a lightning bolt sizzled past the black beast, barely missing it. The chopper dodged, dropping several feet in an instant and turning slightly to allow someone to stand in the open doorway.

Someone with a gun.

“Damn it!” Teresa dove for the ground as the first crack of bullets chattering from the automatic weapon enveloped her.
Still too far away
, she thought wildly,
but not for long.
She ran toward an outcropping of rocks.
Yes, there might be snakes in there
, she thought,
but out here there are bigger dangers.
She crouched behind a sand-encrusted boulder and jabbed her hand at the chopper again. Once more, lightning split the sky, racing to do her bidding but still missing the damn target.

“Teresa Santiago!” a voice shouted over a bullhorn. “Surrender now or we will kill you.”

The thunder crashed and the helicopter blades sounded like the heartbeat of a hungry beast. Closer now, those same blades were churning up the sand, throwing it at her, stinging her skin and her eyes. She couldn’t even risk turning her back to the flying sand, since that would mean turning her back on her enemies. Each second that passed brought them ever nearer and Teresa knew she was out of time. There was no escape. She glanced around at the wild emptiness surrounding her and saw no options.

“Die here,” she murmured frantically, “or die in prison. Not much of a choice.”

So she did the only thing she could do. She stood her ground and threw yet more lightning at the men who had somehow followed her into the desert. Bolt after bolt shot toward the helicopter heading directly toward her, yet none of them hit. Desperation fueled her movements and she knew that her aim was only getting more erratic, but she couldn’t do anything about that now.

How had they found her? How did they even
know
about her?

Fury laced her fear and somehow tangled in the threads of her power. She felt something new … something
old
pulse within her, strengthen. As if her power was centering itself. Staring hard at the incoming helicopter, she sent one more bolt of lightning at her enemies and this time she scored a hit. A small, jagged bolt slapped the tail rotor of the chopper, sending the machine into an uncontrolled spin. Torn between elation and fear, Teresa watched as the pilot struggled for control. She didn’t
want
to kill anyone, but damned if she’d stand still and be shot, either.

The pilot recovered, the chopper continued on and the gunman took up position again. Teresa braced herself for the inevitable.

She looked up into the face of death—the incoming chopper—and lived.

A wall of fire appeared in front of her and the bullets flying at her embedded themselves in the flames instead. Teresa staggered back in surprise, looked up and met the pale gray eyes of a warrior. Fire surrounded his body, enveloping him in a living wall of flame. His features were drawn tight in concentration and his muscled body swayed with the impact of more bullets, but still he stood between her and danger.

“Hold on to me,” the stranger ordered.

Teresa didn’t even think about it. She jumped into the fire that covered the man, hooked her arms around his neck and shouted, “Go, go, go!”

And in another bright flash of flames they were gone.

Chapter 2

R
une felt an immediate drain on his strength reserves, but fought past it. The fools in the helicopter had known enough to use white-gold bullets in their guns and the man-made metal alloy was affecting his magic.

Pain was nothing new to him. Centuries of existence had inured him to it. And despite the agony of white-gold bullets tearing up his back, as an immortal he would survive. If those bullets had hit Teresa instead, his witch would be dead.

And the world would not have survived his fury.

Flashing his woman to a small house on the edge of Sedona, Rune held her a moment longer than necessary. He’d waited years for this. Had hungered for the feel of her pressed along his body. Through the pain dragging at him, Rune braced himself for his witch’s panic. Her questions. Her fear.

“What took you so long?” she demanded. Pushing out of his arms, she glanced at her surroundings, then glared up at him. “Those guys nearly
killed
me.”

Despite the pain of his bullet wounds, astonishment rose up. He hadn’t counted on this. Hadn’t expected it. He was prepared to deal with her panic. Her confusion over what was happening to her. Grimly, he acknowledged that he hadn’t been looking forward to a hysterical female. He remembered all too well how only last month his fellow Eternal Torin had been driven to distraction by his mate, Shea. Torin had had his hands full trying to protect her from both her enemies and her own refusal to accept her new reality.

His own mate, it seemed, was not only aware of the situation but felt free to condemn him for a perceived slight. Annoyance chewed at him even as he scowled at her accusation.

“You know who I am?”

“Yeah.” She took a breath and blew it out in an indignant rush. Then she pushed her tangled black hair out of her eyes and brushed at the sand nearly covering all of her. “You’re my Eternal, right? Supposed to be my bodyguard for the big ‘quest’?”

More than annoyance ran through Rune now as he tried to make sense of her reaction. The pain in his back was a distraction, but it was not enough to stop the hundreds of questions racing through his mind.

“I am Rune and yes, I am your Eternal,” he said, his frown deepening. “How can you know about this? Your powers have only just awakened.”

“And were nearly snuffed out,” she added, taking the time to have a thorough look around her. “If you had taken any longer to show up—”

“I had to wait until your true power erupted.”

“That was three days ago,” she snapped.

“No.” Rune reached out, cupped her chin. The tingle of her skin on his almost deadened the pain ratcheting up from the white-gold bullets that were slowly draining his magic. He fought past the pain, the slow drag on his power, and said, “Your magic quickened three days ago. Your awakened power happened only today—when you gathered your strength and managed to hit the helicopter. Now, tell me, how do you know of Eternals?”

“My
abuela
,” she said, then shrugged and translated. “My grandmother.”

“I know the word,” he assured her. Suddenly he understood a lot more about his witch. Of course Teresa’s grandmother would have known. Witches throughout the centuries had handed down the knowledge of the last great coven. Teresa’s ancestors would have passed along the legends of atonement and of the Awakening—when the reincarnated witches would reclaim their magic and try to set right what had once gone so wrong.

He knew that Teresa’s grandmother was a powerful witch herself. Of course she would have prepared her granddaughter for her destiny.

This meeting wasn’t going at all as he’d expected it to. For years, he’d kept watch over her. He had done so for centuries, through every one of her incarnations. In this life, she was—as always—obstinate and independent.

He looked at her now, his gaze moving up her lush body until it finally locked onto her steady gaze. He saw pride there, and self-confidence. But beneath those traits he recognized in her, there was also a touch of vulnerability that called to him. Brought out every protective instinct he possessed.

With the time of the Awakening upon them, Rune had felt the pull of her soul to his more strongly than he ever had before. In all the past centuries, he had been torn between his undeniable need for her and the longsimmering rage at her coven for what they had brought upon them all.

If she and her sisters had not hungered for power … none of this would have happened. They had thirsted for knowledge that came at too high a price. He and Teresa would have mated centuries ago and this time of Awakening would never have been necessary.

What, he wondered, would the world have been like if only his witch and her sisters had chosen wisely? And how could he get beyond his old anger to accomplish what they now must?

“My grandmother told me you’d be coming,” Teresa said, and Rune’s wandering thoughts arrowed in on her again. “She didn’t mention the fire, though. For a minute when I saw you, I thought I’d stumbled into a vortex.”

Teresa pulled away from his touch and Rune let her go. For now. Though his fingertips itched for the feel of her. Despite her bravado, Teresa’s fear was so thick he could sense it, graying her aura, fraying the edges of her control and patience. But her strength was more than a match for that fear, he told himself, pleased at the set of her squared shoulders and the defiant tilt of her chin.