he belonged in a zoo, he told himself. Wasn’t it enough that he was stuck here until his mission was complete? Irritation spiked. Then he stopped, spun around and flashed into flames.
Rather than being scared off, the girls screamed in delight. One of them waved a hand in the air, making rain spill from a solitary cloud directly over his head.
That should teach him to tease a witch, he thought as his magical flames spat and sizzled in the wet. A witch of any age. He swiped rainwater from his face as the tiny cloud dissipated.
“Girls! Go to your classes, please.” Karen Mackey clapped her hands together and the children scattered.
“I’m sorry about that,” she said, giving him a tense smile. “They haven’t seen a man in—well, a long time.”
“It’s all right. I’ll be gone soon enough. Once I know Terri and her family are going to be all right . . .”
“They’re being assigned housing now,” she said. “Thank you, for bringing them to us.”
Karen was about forty, with short, dark hair that curled around her heart-shaped face. She focused wise blue eyes on him. “It couldn’t have been easy.”
“Wasn’t.” He didn’t even want to think about the last eight hours, trapped in a car with three human females. His powers and strength were just now regenerating. But it was worth it, he knew. They’d managed to save more innocents from the world at large and that was worth any price.
Throughout the years, witches had lived in peace and practiced their magic in secret. Belief in magic died out. The supernatural was dismissed as legend. Until that day ten years before when power had exploded into the public consciousness. Since then, no woman was safe. Witch or human.
The Sanctuary network had been born and until the world came to its senses again—if ever—these women would have to remain hidden.
“They’ll be safe here,” he said and looked out at the still-snowy peaks in the distance. Spirit Lake spread out in front of them, shining dark blue in the starlight. The lake provided plenty of fresh water for the witches and the rough terrain discouraged most people from the area. Here at ten thousand feet, the camp was secluded and hidden by both heavy stands of trees and magical protection wards. Should any hikers stray too close to camp, a feeling of dark dread would overcome them, convincing them to run from the area.
So far, the only other beings the witches had had to worry about were the mountain goats that inhabited the region. It was as close to a perfect hiding place as they could get.
The moon slipped out from behind a stream of clouds and painted silver across the surface of the lake. Shadows crouched and a wind whispered through the trees.
“They’ll be fine,” Karen told him. “We have many human women and children here. You don’t have to be a witch these days to need a safe place. Sanctuary’s protected from both magical incursion and human.”
“Magic?” he asked, sliding a glance at her.
Frowning, she nodded. “We’ve had to upgrade, so to speak, our protection wards lately. We heard about a few witches, broken during torture, who’ve switched sides. Dr. Fender is still at work somewhere,” she added, with a shiver of unease.
Rune understood the sentiment. Dr. Henry Fender began experimenting on witches some years ago. He was the one who had told the world about the uses of white gold in blanketing a witch’s power. The word was that any witch who found herself on his table died screaming.
“Apparently, the good doctor is now convincing some of his ‘patients’ to work for him.”
Rune scowled. The doctor had become legendary in a very short space of time. He had spearheaded the early efforts to contain the witches, but soon his sadism had forced even the government to cut him loose. There were limits, apparently, to what BOW was willing to do. “But the feds stopped using Fender a few years back.”
“Yes, but he’s taken over a large action group,” Karen told him, barely restrained fury coloring every word. “The Seekers find witches and hold them so that Fender can perform more experiments.”
This was not good. No witch would be safe as long as Fender was allowed to continue his madness.
“To what end?” he demanded.
“He’s looking for a way to drain our powers and use them for himself.”
Rage filled Rune, cold and dark, forcing him to battle his own instincts in order to remain calm. It wasn’t enough that witches