Visions of Skyfire (27 page)

But these memories would no longer be ignored. Visions rose up and faded away in a timeless yet hurried slide show. She saw herself across the ages, changing from one lifetime to the next. She watched as the witch she had been took part in that last spell. Watched as demons poured through the opened gate to hell.

Teresa screamed and the images changed. She was a woman in London, a servant in Venice, a wife in Holland. More lives remembered and then cast away. More times with Rune. Always Rune. He was there, in the captured photographs in her memory. Her warrior.

Her mate.

She was so many women in the march through time and yet she was always
herself.
The heart of her, the soul of her remained the same. Then one clear thought screamed into her consciousness and Teresa finally understood why he couldn’t trust her. Why he held himself back from her even as they moved forward on the most important quest either of them would ever undertake.

She’d betrayed him in the past. More than once. She had hurt him and cost herself the respect of the man she now loved more than she would ever have thought it possible to love. God, she loved him. Hadn’t wanted to. Hadn’t planned to. But maybe, she thought, she’d never really had a choice in that at all. They had been destined. And destiny, she was beginning to understand, was not easily fought or ignored.

The moon scrambled her thoughts, its energy creating a tumult inside her that she simply couldn’t withstand much longer. She gasped and fell to her knees, bracing her hands on the dirt and grass in front of her. Her back bowed, her head down, she struggled to find the peace she had enjoyed when she first opened herself to the moon. But she had gone past that now and crossed a threshold. There was no peace to be found anymore—there was simply too much chaos churning inside her.

And still the moonlight entered her, like a persistent lover. Pushing into her body again and again even after orgasm had been reached, until pleasure became pain and the two became so entwined that they couldn’t be separated. She was heated, gasping, shuddering, pushed into a yearning, desperate need that left her curled on the ground whimpering with the aches rattling her body.

“Rune …” She tried to call for him, but her voice was lost in the surging pounding of her own heart. Her blood. Her core burned with an aching need that couldn’t be assuaged. Teresa reached to press one hand against her center, hoping to ease the pulsing need that throbbed incessantly within her. It didn’t help. Nothing could help, she knew, but his body, driving into hers. She literally burned for it. “Oh, God, Rune. Come back …”

“What do we have here?” A man stepped out of the thicket of darkness and was quickly followed by four more men.

Even through the blinding need, Teresa felt a jolt of fear and shock slap at her. Her eyes wheeled to the hard faces of the men leering down at her like slavering dogs over an unexpected feast. She swallowed hard, tried to scream, but she couldn’t find her voice.

The pillar of moonlight still held her in its grasp, saturating her body with the energies of the ages, but she could only moan in response. Twisting and turning on the ground, she reacted to the hunger inside her. She couldn’t stop herself. Couldn’t ease the longing or her response to it, even knowing that these cold-eyed interlopers were getting off on watching her.

She fought for clarity, struggled to get a handle on the new powers crushing her. Her frenzied gaze flicked from one man to the next and found no comfort in any of their faces. They were dirty, their clothes sweatstained from life in the jungle. They were smiling, but there was no humor in their eyes. Each of them was carrying knives and guns and two of them wore bandoliers stuffed with more ammunition crisscrossed over their chests.

Bandits
.

Teresa gasped in pain, clenched her thighs together against the burning need and shot the first man a wild look as his friends formed a circle around her.

Her body was vibrating, the moonlight filling her beyond her ability to control it. Her powers might erupt at any second. She felt as if she were about to explode and if she did that while these men were close, they’d all die. The way she was feeling at the moment, she wouldn’t have a problem with that. But she wasn’t a killer, so she gave them a chance.

“Stay away,” she said tightly through gritted teeth. She swallowed back another roar of pain and desperation. “I’m warning you, stay away from me.”

“If you did not want company, little witch,” the man said, his English heavily accented, “you should not have worked your magic. The moon led us to you.”

Of course it had, she thought wildly, her body thrashing as it searched futilely for release from the pulse of need crashing inside her. Magic ruled her body now, filling her up so completely that she was helpless when she most needed to be strong. She had had no idea the moon magic would be so powerful. She’d never heard of anything like this before and couldn’t explain it even to herself. She had opened her body and mind to a power that was all-encompassing, staggering in its strength.

“Hold her.” One sharp command and four men sprang into action. They pulled at her arms and legs, holding her down spread-eagled against the dirt. Firelight danced in the dark. Moonlight continued to stream from the sky. Teresa twisted and turned, trying to break their grip, trying to call down the lightning before they could go through with their plan.

But her power was too knotted inside her to be called so easily. There were too many sensations, too many thoughts, too much fear and no time to sort through it all. She jolted as the leader of the little band knelt in front of her and pulled out a machete stained with old blood.

“Don’t!” She groaned the word, unable even to scream for the tight hold the moonlight had on her. “Don’t do this. I warn you.”

“
You
warn me?” He laughed and slid the razor-sharp tip of the machete beneath the hem of her jeans. With a flick of his wrist, the blade sliced through the denim with a whisper. The man grinned and continued to slice until the blade had reached her hip and her bare leg was open to the kiss of the warm, thick air.

“You are not in charge here, little witch,” he promised, his eyes fixed on the expanse of skin he’d displayed.

Rune!
She sent out the mental scream, hoping that somehow he would hear it. But she knew in her heart that they were not connected mentally. Not yet. He couldn’t hear her thoughts. If he could, he would already be here, tearing into these men like an avenging angel.

Their grasp on her wrists and feet tightened and Teresa’s stomach fisted into an icy ball of dread and fear.

The leader ripped off her ruined jeans and warmth snaked across her skin even as the pebbled dirt beneath her scraped at her flesh. Still she fought, battling the moonlight magic for control of her body as she struggled to free herself from the relentless grip of the men holding her down.

The men laughed and Teresa struggled even harder. “Don’t do this,” she muttered. “You’ll be sorry if you do this.”

Now the leader laughed, delighted at her threats. “Will you do a spell on me,
bruja
? I don’t think so …” He reached for the elastic band of her panties, twisting his grubby fingers in the fabric.

In the next instant, the moonlight vanished. The pillar of light was gone as if it had never been and darkness enveloped all of them. She heard one of the men mutter a choked-off prayer, but the leader was not to be denied.

He gave a harsh order in Spanish. Just to the right of them, the river roared. Bugs clattered and a monkey high in the trees screamed. In the blackness, hands fisted tighter around her limbs and Teresa felt as if she had been swallowed by evil. There was no way out. She couldn’t fight them. Rune wasn’t here. And wouldn’t come back in time.

Would they kill her when they were finished with her? Was she going to die in this jungle, leaving her life, her quest, unfulfilled?

No, damn it.

She wasn’t going to die. She was going to find a way to survive, no matter what.

Rune would come.

Holding on to the mental image of him, she called on the last shred of her inner strength, focused her power and screamed,
“Rune!”

Chapter 46

H
e felt rather than heard her cry. It was a knife to his chest. He sensed her pain. Her fear. And the danger closing in around her. Looking back toward their camp, Rune saw a towering pillar of moonlight and knew his witch was there at the heart of it. When that light suddenly winked out, he howled in rage, called on the fire and flashed back to his woman.

At the campsite, he found Teresa on the ground, screaming as four men held her arms and legs apart while yet another hovered over her.

He crashed into that man with a body blow that sent the tormenter flying into the jungle. Rune was after him a second later and in a rage beyond anything he had ever known before, he brought his own knife down in a swinging arc, slicing across the bastard’s throat. Not pausing to admire his handiwork, he raced back to the camp to find Finn snapping one man’s neck only to drop him alongside another of his dead friends.

Teresa had come up on her knees and, trembling with shock and terror, was holding her hands to the sky, waving them frantically. Lightning flashed down and stabbed the jungle floor in an incredible sweep of power and majesty. The night shone with the brilliance of a million candles as lightning bolts pounded the trees, the river, the rocks. Animals screeched and Rune felt the very air burn along with Teresa’s frenzied movements. She jumped to her feet and kicked one man’s nuts into his throat and he dropped like a stone.

Another of the bandits grabbed at her and Rune threw fire in a river of living flame that raced across the man, wrapping the bastard in what looked like a brilliant, fiery suit. He screamed and fled into the darkness, toward the river, no doubt planning on quenching the flames in the water. Rune smiled grimly. Water wouldn’t affect an Eternal’s flame. The bastard would continue to burn—he had dealt himself a cruel fate the moment he had touched Teresa.

Rune’s fury wasn’t abated. He picked up the emasculated prick whimpering in the dirt and gave his head a hard twist, then dropped him like the trash he was. In the next instant, Rune was holding Teresa, pulling her close, running his hands up and down her body as if to assure himself that she was really alive. And safe.

Quickly, he stripped out of his coat and wrapped it around her, giving her back her pride and dignity. He felt her tremble, her entire body quaking, and he hated himself for leaving her alone. If he had been with her, none of this would have happened.

“You came,” she whispered, holding on to him and shuddering as if her bones were trying to vibrate out of her skin.

He held her close, cupping her head to his chest with one hand. If his heart was capable of beating, he knew it would have been crashing against his rib cage. Rune had known danger and had always faced it with cool deliberation. But never had he tasted panic like he had just experienced.

“Always, Teresa,” he whispered, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. “I will always come. Did they hurt you?”

“No.” She shuddered again and lifted her head to look at him. “They didn’t have time. But they were going to.”

“Well, they won’t be trying that again,” Finn said, giving one of the bodies a good kick just for the hell of it.

She shook back her hair and stared at him. “Who are you?”

“That’s Finn,” Rune told her, looking across the fire at his brother. Grateful he’d been here. “An old friend. He’s an Eternal. Like me.”

One corner of Finn’s mouth curved briefly and flattened out again in an instant. “Don’t listen to him, Teresa. I’m way better than him.”

She actually smiled and Rune felt relief slide through him like a cooling breeze drifting through hell.

“Thanks for the help,” he said.

“Not a problem.” Finn gathered up their supplies and stuffed them into the duffel bag before tossing it to Rune. “You and your witch ought to be on your way, though. Someone might come looking for this bunch.”

“Right.” Rune tossed the strap of the bag over his shoulder and said, “You’ll take care of the bodies?”

Finn grinned at him, lifted both hands and called on the fire. As the flames burned on his hands and arms, he said, “Cremation special, man. Don’t worry about it. Oh, and I’ll look into the other thing we talked about earlier.”

At the moment, Rune didn’t give a flying fuck about the possibility of a rogue Eternal. All he cared about now was Teresa. Seeing that she was safe. Her body pressed tighter to his and he felt her rub her pelvis against his thigh. His cock jerked into action even as he told himself to get a grip. She’d come too close to disaster to be interested in any man—even her mate. So he swallowed back the need crowding him and muttered, “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me,” Finn told him. “Just find that fucking Artifact, will you?”

“We will.” The flames swarmed over the two of them and in an instant Rune and Teresa were gone.

Chapter 47

T
eresa was still shaking an hour later when Rune escorted her into a small but clean motel room in a quiet town not far from Tierra Blanca, Veracruz.

“Are you sure?” she asked, still dwarfed by Rune’s far-too-big black leather coat. “Is it safe to stay here?”

“Safe?” he muttered thickly, tossing their duffel bag onto one of the two chairs in the room. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand and said, “I thought the jungle would be safer for you and look what happened.”

She spun around to look at him. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I shouldn’t have left you alone.”

“And I shouldn’t have done that spell without you close. So we both screwed up.”

“But you were the one to pay the price.”

“They didn’t hurt me,” she reminded him, feeling the swell and rush of the mystical moonlight energy swarming inside her still. “You stopped them.”