as she fought with her sisters.
Lucifer, the fallen angel himself, with his dark eyes and magnificent features, had met Shea’s gaze deliberately. And she had realized, even through the tumult happening around her, that he knew her most secret yearnings. He knew that even as she fought him, she wanted to join him. When he gave her a sly smile and encouragement that whispered in her mind, Shea had reached for what will she possessed and spurned his invitation.
Yet, even then, when she did all she could to undo the damage caused . . . there was a corner of her heart still yearning for the darkness.
Now, she had to wonder. What did that make her? Was she truly as evil as Martha and her Seekers believed? Would she turn on Torin and the world? Would she surrender to the shadows she’d railed against so long ago?
“Shea?”
“Yes, sorry,” she said softly. “My mind wandered.” Into places best left alone, she added silently. “Finish, Torin. Tell me what happened next.”
He sighed, and slipped one hand beneath her shirt, sliding his palm over her skin, soothing each of them with the intimate caress. “The coven fought back. Somehow, their linked abilities were strong enough to push Lucifer back through the gateway, most of his demons with him. The portal sealed shut moments later.”
“That wasn’t the end.”
“No,” he told her. “The portal was closed, but not permanently. The beast lurked behind a magical barrier, all too close to a defenseless world. And so the last great coven charmed a spell of atonement. Sentencing themselves to eight hundred and ten years of life without their powers. Without the memories of who and what they had once been.”
Everything in Shea went still as his voice brought to the surface the memories of that one moment that had sealed the fates of the witches for centuries to come.
“Incarnation after incarnation,” he said, “each of you lived a life that was devoid of magic. All in the hopes that when the time ran out, you would have evolved enough to turn your backs on the greed and arrogance that had governed you. That you would finally be able to destroy the Artifact, thus permanently closing the gateway to Hell.”
She remembered. And as she did, tears rained down her cheeks. For the mistakes made. For the atonement still incomplete.
“When the spell was spoken, the witches broke apart the Artifact that had stood in the center of their coven for thousands of years.”
The physical pain of that action sliced through Shea again as it had on the long-ago night. The powerful black silver Artifact was shattered by the very magic that had created it in the first place. They had betrayed all that they were. They had turned their backs not just on each other but on their ancestors, the founders of the very coven they had destroyed. At the moment the Artifact was shattered, each of the witches who had been entrusted with it felt that same splintering of her soul.
“A shard of the Artifact was entrusted to each of the witches. The coven disbanded and the women of power drifted apart, with each of them hiding their piece of the Artifact in secret.” Torin eased himself up on one elbow and looked down at her. “The waiting time began, with centuries crawling past, one after the other, until now. The Awakening is your time, Shea. The broken shards of the Artifact must be brought back together and finally destroyed. Or the world will never be safe.”
With his words, her mind and soul opened to the call of the Artifact.
She felt the ancient stirrings and trembled.
Chapter 41
Rune found Odell in Sussex.
Tall even for an Eternal, Odell stood nearly six feet seven. His broad shoulders and square jaw only added to the image of a man best left alone. His dark brown hair hung past his shoulders and was usually held in place by a leather thong at the nape of his neck. He wore black leather, always, and the suspicious gleam in his pale gray eyes was as ever present as his legendary temper.
Not the man you would have guessed would be at the head of an underground safety network for witches and accused human females. But he was probably the best man for the job, Rune told himself. Odell had little patience and no sympathy with the mortal world’s attempt at stamping out all practitioners of magic.
Sitting in Odell’s country estate just outside Brighton, Rune drank the