were being hunted, jailed and executed. Now there were human monsters looking to exploit them for their own greed? They talked about shutting down the power when in reality, what they wanted was to steal magic any way they could.
And people thought witches were evil, he told himself wryly.
Torin and the other Eternals had to know about this. They would have to find Fender somehow and send him from this world before he could do more damage. Finding one human male on this overcrowded planet would be quite the task, though. Yet, even as he thought about it, Rune wondered if an Awakened witch couldn’t cast a locator spell. Why not use the very magic the man hungered for against him?
He reached for the satellite phone in the pocket of his black jeans. Torin needed to hear this. Not only about Fender, but about the second tracker the witches had found on Terri. If Shea was still bugged, their escape was going to be short-lived.
“No reception here, remember?” Karen asked, smiling at his phone. “We enchant a TV so we can keep up with the news, but as for everything else . . .”
“Right.” Ordinarily, his satellite phone would get reception pretty much anywhere on the planet. But in Sanctuary, their magical wards shut down any electronic device they didn’t specifically protect. So as long as he was on this mountain he was out of contact. He eyed the witch beside him. “Don’t suppose you’d consider cutting a hole through the ward so I could make a call?”
She shook her head. “Don’t suppose I would.”
He muttered something, but she cut him off quickly.
“We can’t risk it, Eternal. Not even for you. All it would take is one stray signal picked up by the wrong person and Sanctuary would be in danger.” She scrubbed her hands up and down her arms. “As it was, the tracker Terri was carrying came all too close to the entrance. We’ll have to be on high alert for the next few weeks, just in case.”
He hadn’t considered that. Realizing that he may have brought trouble to this spot bothered him more than he cared to admit. “Do you need me to stay? I can leave the mountain, make a call and come back to help guard the place for a few weeks.”
Her head tipped to one side as she studied him. “You would do that?”
He inclined his head. “We in the magical world have to help each other.”
“True,” she said, taking a deep breath. “But in this case, it’s unnecessary. The Guardians will be able to handle whatever comes our way. And if need be, we will all fight. Human and witch.”
He looked into her eyes and read the fierce determination written there. And still he had to ask, “What about the Wiccan Rede . . . An it harm none, do what ye will?”
The leader of the witches gave him a rueful smile. “Times change, Eternal. You know we risk great damage to ourselves in using our power against our enemies.”
“Yes,” he said solemnly, knowing that whatever harm a witch did would return on her threefold.
“And yet, what choice do we have?” She shook her head and looked out over the starlit lake. “We use human weapons when we can and resort to magics only when there is no other option. We, each of us, are prepared to accept the karma of what we do—to ensure that we are not wiped from the earth.”
“You believe you can hold this camp against all intruders?”
She smiled. “It wasn’t easy for you to get in, was it?”
“Hell, no.” He grinned suddenly, remembering the warrior women who had dropped from trees to challenge him. “Still not easy to know who to trust, though.”
“True enough.” She looked back at the camp, tidy log cabins with lamplight falling through the windows to lie on the ground like gold dust. “But the turned witches—traitors—are still few and far between. We’ll survive, as will the other Sanctuaries around the world.”
“It’s bad times,” Rune said softly.
“True again,” Karen agreed, then looked out over the mountainous view. “But we’ve lived through bad times before. We will this time, too. Now that the Awakening is here, everything will change.”
He slid a glance to her. “How much do you know?”
She smiled. “More than you think, less than I’d like.” Shrugging, she continued, “The story of the last great coven has been handed down from mother to daughter throughout the centuries. We all know about the chosen