“I need to get some candles, too, if we can find some,” she said.
He glanced at her. “For what?”
“Candle magic. I need my memories, right?”
His eyes shuttered as he turned his head forward again. “Yes.”
“There’s that look again,” she muttered, then spoke up louder. “Tell me more, Rune. About that night. The night everything went to hell.”
“You should remember on your own.”
“And in a perfect world, sure.” Teresa reached out to grab his arm and he stopped dead. When he was looking at her, she said, “You already prodded me once. I need the memories. You told me yourself. So help me.”
He scowled. “There’s not much more to tell.”
“Then it shouldn’t take long,” she argued.
He spoke then and as his voice wove a spell of words around her, images filled Teresa’s mind and the long-dead past came vibrantly to life.
Teresa felt the swell of power surrounding her and her sisters. The moonlight was bright, shining down from a star-studded black sky. A banefire, built on the bones of slaughtered animals, burned brightly in the center of their circle. The Eternals stood just beyond the ring of power, each of them formidable in his disapproval. Each of them trying to fight past the strength of the magic used to keep him out.
Teresa looked at her own Eternal. The immortal man who came to her bed every night and showed her bliss. His features were twisted as he shouted, trying to make himself heard above the cacophony of sound that seemed to shriek from the very air.
She loved him. A part of her always would. She had promised him that she wouldn’t join the coven tonight. That she would go away with him. But the lure of power was stronger even than her love. Besides, how could she turn away from the women who were like her own blood? She stood with her sisters and called on the gods to hear them. They focused their combined magics on the Artifact before them and in the wildly flickering light demanded the knowledge of the ages. Demanded that doors closed to mankind would open to them.
Doors to other dimensions. Other worlds open to new possibilities.
She saw it all. Lived it all. She tasted the excitement of magic in the air and swallowed the bitter dregs of regret as a door finally opened and the first of the demons rushed through.
Chaos reigned.
The Eternals fought valiantly. The coven strove to undo the harm they had done. But the screams of the dead and dying were all-consuming.
The coven’s wards failed under the onslaught of so much dark energy. Demons and Eternals alike entered the sacred circle and destroyed it. Her sisters were dying all around her. Teresa shuddered under the hideous onslaught of memory. She watched herself as she had once been, struggling to close the gate to hell. But despite her efforts, there were demons who escaped into this world before the gate swung shut. And she saw the fury on the face of the immortal who loved her.
“Oh, my God.” She looked up at him, struggling for air. Her lungs were constricted, as if she was still breathing in that awful fire.
“You saw.”
“I did,” she said, nodding as she looked up into his eyes. “We let demons loose into this world.”
“Most of them were hunted down that night,” he told her. “My brothers and I saw to that. But yes. A few remained.” He swept his gaze across the dark desert, as if expecting for one of the demons to materialize in front of him. “And the doorway you closed wasn’t sealed that night. Not completely. Dark energy still spills through the portal. That is why we have to find the Artifact. We have to undo what you and your sisters did.”
“And my memories will tell me where the Artifact is?”
“Your piece of it, yes,” he said. “After the battle, the coven shattered the Artifact—each of you taking away one piece and hiding it somewhere in the world.”
“That narrows it down.”
He frowned at her and Teresa said, “Sorry. Sorry. What else?”
“A spell of atonement was cast. The coven would give up their powers for eight hundred years. At the end of that time, the Awakening would come. And you would gather to put right what went so wrong.”
“So you’ve been waiting …”
“A very long time,” he said.
“And the Mating ritual will help open my memories?”
“Yes.”
“We weren’t mated then, were we?”
“No,” he said, starting to walk again. “None of the witches wanted to share power.