of metal and a fierce fury rose up inside him. If he hadn’t been there to prevent it, those bullets would have cut Teresa down. The human world would have succeeded in ending its only hope for survival. Fools, he thought as he braced himself for another try at ridding his body of the damaging bullets.
Without the Awakened witches to undo what they had begun so long ago, this earth the mortals fought so viciously to defend against witchcraft would end as no more than a burned cinder floating in space.
Fools. All of them.
Suddenly Rune felt a rush of protective instincts jangle through him and he lifted his head, listening. The sibilant sound of the rain muffled the barely discernible footsteps slogging relentlessly through the downpour. Gritting his teeth, he staggered to his feet and crossed to the nearest window.
Outside, two MPs, their black uniforms sodden, walked slowly down the middle of the street. It was clear they were searching for someone. Teresa.
Though the dark zone muted the trace of magic, it didn’t make him or his witch invisible. If the feds were to begin a house-to-house search, he and Teresa would be discovered. Unless Rune regained his strength in time to prevent it.
Dropping to his knees again, he shook his head and fought past the pain whispering through him. He wouldn’t be stopped. Not by white gold. Not by humans with guns. Not by anything. Gathering his waning strength, using what little of his dampened magic was available to him, he focused on another of the bullets lodged in his body.
With one last mighty surge of effort, he pushed one more bullet free of his skin before collapsing onto the floor of the empty house.
And in the silence, his huge body lay still as death.
Chapter 4
The rain had kept most people inside and for that Teresa was grateful. As it was, she kept her head down as she half ran through the neighborhood toward Elena’s clinic. Now that she knew for certain the feds were after her, she realized that any number of others could be hunting her, too.
The Magic Police seldom worked alone. If they were here, then agents from BOW, the Bureau of Witchcraft, couldn’t be far behind. For all she knew, members of both agencies were already scattered throughout Sedona, looking for her. Even weakened by the white gold attacking his system, her Eternal had realized that the men in the desert probably weren’t the only ones here searching for her.
He was right.
She could feel it. There were others. Here in town. Looking for her.
Since the moment the world had been alerted to the existence of witchcraft, ten years before, no witch had been safe. Throughout history, but for a few instances, women of power had kept themselves hidden, letting the world believe that magic was no more than a legend. Until the day that one woman accidentally set loose a power she wasn’t even aware of and burned her former husband to death in front of hundreds of witnesses. That woman, Mairi Jameson, had in turn been burned at the stake a few months later.
Fear and panic had erupted all across the planet. In the last ten years, no woman suspected of witchcraft lasted very long. There were internment camps scattered across this country and every other nation. Women were jailed, without trial, without being able to face their accusers. And most of them were never heard from again.
Ironic, Teresa thought with a grim smile, that fear of a common enemy had united the planet in a way it never had been before. Religious wars had gone the way of the dinosaur as nations that had once considered themselves enemies joined forces to track down women of power. The only war today was the war against witches.
Teresa shivered again, dismissing her dark thoughts as she bolted through the cold, driving rain that drenched her. She sprinted across the street and hurried down an empty sidewalk. Stores on either side of the street were open, their interior lights splashing puddles of gold into the encroaching night.
Too many shadows, she told herself, sending uneasy glances left and right as she quickened her steps, her bootheels splashing in the wet.
She slammed into someone and jolted back, fear rising up, then sliding back down as she looked at the woman who had stepped out of a dress shop.
“Excuse me,” she muttered.
The woman looked at her as if she was crazy, then scurried away. These days, it didn’t pay for