to himself.
Life was too damn fragile, she told herself. And too short, despite the fact that she had led many lives. Each one of them had been too short; she knew it instinctively.
There was a nebulous connection between her and Rune, yes, but despite what he was thinking, he didn’t know her. He knew the woman she had been through the centuries, but this woman—Teresa of the here and now—was new. And he had no idea who she was.
That would come, she supposed. They had thirty days to complete the Mating and find the shard of the Artifact she had hidden so long ago. One cycle of the moon. As they worked together toward a common goal. As they became physically closer, their bodies bonding, their souls intertwining.
Her heart wasn’t involved and she wouldn’t allow it to be. But her body burned and she was witch enough, woman enough, to accept the sexual pull between them for what it was.
He caught her left hand in his right and folded his fingers over hers. She did the same and then held her breath as her gaze locked with his. This was a moment filled with more tension than she had ever known.
She was about to pledge her life to this Eternal. The step she had been waiting for all her life was here and the reality of it was a little more intimidating than she had expected. Eternity. Not just the human version of until death do we part, this was literally forever. When that thought settled in, a flurry of images raced through her mind, leaving her clinging to Rune’s hand as her world was rocked. The present fell away and the past rose up to claim her.
Chapter 27
Teresa felt the bite of the cold wind, the stinging needles of the rain and the sizzling punch of the lightning. And she smiled. It was all so much more than they had hoped. More than they had thought possible. She and her sisters faced the storm and welcomed it. They chanted as power surged through the air, jockeying from their pale bodies to the sky and back again. As if the witches and the universe itself were charging each other with enough power to change the world.
Lightning lanced from the sky, jagged bolts hammering into the earth on the borders of a circle carved into the dirt. Witches filled the circle, as they stood in the center of the tempest, skyclad, their naked bodies arched skyward, as if awaiting a lover.
“Don’t do it!”
The woman Teresa had once been turned her head slowly to find the source of that voice. Rune. Standing beyond the circle, forced to be on the outside with his fellow Eternals, locked away from the witches and what they had come here to do.
“Come to me!” he shouted over the roar of the sea and the crash of the lightning. She heard his voice despite the chants rising from her sisters’ throats. She heard it and responded because he was hers. In a way no other man had ever been, Rune was hers.
But she was more than simply his.
She was a witch. A member of the great coven. She owed her sister witches her loyalty even before him. And she had no wish to stop the events of this night. She knew they were making a necessary choice and that one day Rune would see that, too. Later, she would soothe him with her body and ease him with her touch. And he would see that the coven was right.
“Stay back,” she warned. “You cannot enter the circle!”
“Nor should you,” he cried. “Come to me now before it’s too late.”
She gave him a sad smile, knowing he would never understand her and why she did what she did. “You’ll see, Rune. This is the way. For all of us.”
She turned back to her sisters, lifted her hands toward Heaven … and watched, helplessly, as hell came down on them instead.
Shaken, Teresa staggered and found that Rune’s grip on her hand was the only stable point in her universe. She clung to him as the last of the memory slid away, hopefully never to return. He had shown her pieces before. Now, though, she had felt it all. Lived through it. And the knowledge and fear and pain were so real they were choking her. “How could I have done that?”
“What did you remember?”
She looked up at him, tears swimming in her eyes. He appeared blurred, but steady. Beside