Daughter of the Spellcaster (23 page)

She shrugged. “I admit it sounds far-fetched, yes. Even to a witch. But look at her point of view, Ryan. She either chooses to believe it and do whatever she can to protect her baby, or she chooses not to believe it and risks the baby’s life. Not to mention her own. Which one is she supposed to choose? Which would
you
choose?”

He sighed. “I just wish she’d let me join her in that choice. It’s my baby, too. I want to protect her just as much as Lena does, but she’s shutting me out.”

“Well, on that I disagree with her. Now, I mean. Hell’s bells, I don’t know. But she must have a reason.”

“It’s that damn knife,” he said.

Selma lifted her brows. “Then you really were hiding it under the seat of your truck?”

He shot her a look. “Yes.”

“She asked me to take a look, tell her what I’d seen. I think she thought she might have imagined it or dreamed it or something. I looked, and there was nothing there.”

He sighed. “My father left it to me. Every time I touch it, it shoots sparks, sets things on fire. I’ve been trying to master it, but I thought it was too dangerous to keep in the house.”

She blinked at him. “And you didn’t tell her about this magical blade?”

“I intended to. But then she dreamed of me stabbing her in the heart with it as she gave birth. She described it to a T. I couldn’t very well tell her I had it after she told me that, could I?”

Selma looked at him as if he was stupid. “She found out anyway, Ryan. Wouldn’t it have been better coming from you?”

“I suppose.” He looked back at the closed door. “Hindsight’s twenty-twenty.”

“Well, at least the solution is simple.”

He shot her a stunned look. “It is?”

“Of course it is. Give her the knife. Let her get rid of it or lock it away or mail it to Tibet.”

Rolling his eyes, he muttered, “Why the hell didn’t I think of that?”

She shrugged. “Because you’re male. You really have no idea where it is now?”

“That’s just it. I don’t. Someone took it from the truck, and it clearly wasn’t her, and it wasn’t you, either, so that only leaves—”

“Bahru,” Selma said. She turned and looked toward the closed temple room door. “You know, I’m not altogether sure she’s wrong to stay where she is until morning. Tell you what, I’m going to put up wards of protection around this house tonight. And
you
need to figure out how to get that blade back from Bahru. And
then
you need to shift the focus of your research just a little. Because your father didn’t just leave you a blade with some kind of mystical power. He left Lena something, too. A chalice. And those two tools are very closely entwined in the mystic traditions of the world.
Very
closely. There’s more to this than the two of you are seeing.”

He nodded, again looking at the door to the temple room. “What about Lena?”

“She couldn’t be anywhere safer tonight. It doesn’t look very likely that we can get her out of here before morning without risking all our lives. But unless you can get that blade back from Bahru, she’s not truly safe anywhere, Ryan.”

“You believe her dream, then? You think I—”

“Not you. But perhaps the blade. You
must
get it back, Ryan. And even then, we need to get Lena and the baby far away from here at first light.” She pressed her lips together. “If we can.”

* * *

Dear Magdalena,

My name is Indira, and I am your sister. I would say I was once your sister, in a previous lifetime, but the thing is, that lifetime never really ended. Because we left things undone, you and Lilia and I.

“Lilia,” Lena whispered. “Oh, my Goddess, is this for real?”

Long ago, we were harem slaves in Babylon. The king found out that we were also witches—and also that Lilia was in love with his most trusted soldier, Demetrius. We were arrested, tortured and executed...

“Yes, pushed from a cliff. As the prince raced toward us...but he couldn’t save us in time.”

Her eyes returned to the page, racing over the lines.

But for Demetrius, a far worse fate awaited. The high priest, an evil bastard named Sindar, stripped him of his soul and sentenced what was left of him to eternity imprisoned in a dark Underworld realm.

But we had a plan, we three. We did not cross over when we died. Our spirits snatched Demetrius’s soul from Sindar’s evil grasp. We split it into pieces and bound it to us, hiding it in magical tools that we then secreted away. Only we could find them. Or they would find us. And we each vowed to help Demetrius and set in motion the wheels that would make all this right again.

I found my magical tool, an amulet, and when I used it, it restored one small part of Demetrius’s soul and released him from his prison.

Now you must find your tool. I do not know what it is. I only know that when you use it correctly, it will restore another part of his soul to him. And then it will be Lilia’s turn.

But you must be careful, because Demetrius has been imprisoned so long that he no longer remembers his humanity. He’s a dark and raging beast who cares for no one. He’s dangerous. But we made a vow, and we cannot be free until we fulfill it. In fulfilling my own small part in this, I found the love I had lost in that long-ago lifetime, and I hope the same will happen for you.

I don’t know where you are, or where you will be when your turn comes to pass, so I’ve hidden this letter along with the details of our history in a cave near the portal, knowing you will find it there somehow. But the writings will not tell you what to do with your magical tool. That’s something you have to figure out on your own. I can tell you this much, however: Love is the key. Love is the whole of it. Love is all there is, really. Look to love for the answers and all will be well.

I hope we meet soon. I feel it’s destined that we will. Take care, my sister, until we are reunited again. And blessed be.

Indira

Lena refolded the letter and returned it to the envelope. Then she unrolled the parchment pages, but they were written in a language she didn’t recognize. Still, it didn’t matter. This Demetrius...maybe he had been innocent, even heroic, once, and maybe he had been tormented beyond her wildest imaginings, wrongly, horribly.

But she knew what he wanted from her. And she didn’t care how many lifetimes ago she had vowed to help him. He was
not
getting her baby. Period.

* * *

Ryan hunched against the freezing rain and slashing wind as he made his way toward Bahru’s cottage, his flashlight virtually useless in the storm. He wasn’t convinced of any of the crazy theories Lena and her mother had come up with to explain the weirdness going on around this place—yes, there was definitely something supernatural going on, but a rogue spirit that wanted to take their baby’s body? He didn’t think so. Still, he didn’t have any better theories to offer. So he figured if he could get the knife away from Bahru, take it back to the house and make Lena watch him break it in two with a sledgehammer, maybe she would trust him again.

Lena afraid of him was a sight he disliked more than just about anything he’d ever seen. It ranked right up there with the sight of his mother in her casket at the wake. It was just that unnatural, just that surreal. Dead people who looked as if they were only sleeping and Lena Dunkirk looking terrified. Those things didn’t match up, didn’t make sense. Didn’t jibe in his brain.

As the image of her fear kept bubbling up in his mind, he flashed on something that brought him to a halt in the middle of the sleet storm.

Lena again, only...not. Or not exactly, anyway. Dark hair, not red. Tanned skin, not pale. Clothes from some other time, and not many of them. Hands bound behind her back. Two women by her side. Standing on the top of a cliff. Just a flash, there and then gone. But in that instant he felt a scorching sun pounding down on him, and the heat and pungent sweat of a horse beneath him. He felt the pounding motion of the stallion galloping over burning sand that blew into his eyes and nose, and coated his tongue. He heard the flapping and snapping of his own robes and wrappings in the wind. He felt the paralyzing, desperate, horrifying realization that he couldn’t get to her in time.

There and gone. Full-blown. A second long. No more.

He shook himself free of the lingering aftershock that image had left and felt a brief sense of dislocation as he came back to the here and now. He was standing in a sleet storm, with freezing wet wind buffeting his face, not sand and searing sun.

“What the hell was that?” he whispered.

But there was no one there to answer him. He tried to get hold of his senses, but it was harder than it should have been. He felt as if he’d checked out for a minute there. Stepped into another existence, another realm.

It hit him that if Lena’s visions were that real, and more than a second or two in duration, then it was no wonder she believed in them so strongly.

Okay, okay. He was overtired, stressed, and his brain had obviously had a bit more to deal with than it could handle lately. The death of his father, Lena’s pregnancy, a knife that shot fire. Who wouldn’t be on the verge of a breakdown?

Sighing, he pushed on to the cottage where Bahru had to be hiding that blade. The cottage was dark and even from outside, it felt empty. Where the hell could Bahru have gone in this weather? He opened the door, walked inside to make sure, checking the little bedroom, even the tiny bath. No sign of Bahru, and though he opened drawers, closets, even looked behind the firewood bin and under the furniture and mattress, he didn’t find his knife.

Frustrated and angry, he went back outside, debating his next move. The wind hit him in the face, and he turned away from it, then stopped himself and faced it full on, sniffing the air. Was that...was that
fire
he smelled?

Smoke, from the fireplace in the house. That’s all.

But no, the wind was blowing
toward
the house. This smoke had to be coming from somewhere else.

“That way,” he whispered, facing the woods on the other side of the dirt road. The same woods where Selma had photographed hooded figures around a central fire. “Maybe they’re at it again.”

Remembering what had happened to Selma, he took his time, moving slowly, silently, using the trees as cover. He walked through the woods, his senses overwhelmed by the scent of pine and earth, rotting wood, and that distant woodsmoke. Keeping his flashlight turned off, he moved only when the wind blew and stood still in between gusts. The sound of the sleet on the skeletal trees was like bacon sizzling in a pan, only dark, menacing.

He stepped softly, ice-coated leaves crunching under his boots, and he crouched low, using those bare crystalline trunks for cover. It was like tiptoeing through a forest of glass, where everything he touched shattered and tinkled noisily to the ground.

Finally he spotted the fire, a soft glow broken up by shadows as the participants in some arcane ritual passed in front of it. A little closer and their voices reached him, too, dull murmurs at first, blending in with the freezing rain, the ice, the wind, but then becoming clear enough for him to distinguish what they were saying.

He was close enough to count the hooded figures around the fire when one of them lifted a box.
His
box.

“I have the Master’s Blade! There is no longer any obstacle to our mission.”

“Praise be the Master,” the others intoned.

“Who will be the one to wield it?” someone said. It was a male voice, and one he kept thinking he should recognize.

“I will, of course,” said another vaguely familiar voice. “The mother must die
before
the child takes its first breath.”

“Is it truly necessary?” a woman asked.

Why was it so hard to identify them? It was almost as if there was a layer of insulation around that fire, something that muffled and altered their voices. And he couldn’t see their faces, which were deeply hidden within the cowl-like hoods of the robes they wore.

“Yes, I’m afraid it is. She’s a powerful witch, more powerful than even she knows. Her magic would prevent the Master from entering the body of the child. The blade must be driven into her heart, so that the Master enters with the newborn’s first breath.”

“And what of the child’s soul?” another man asked.

“The Master will banish it to the other realms, with no harm to it at all. It will simply await another opportunity to be born.”

The man with the box turned, and Ryan got a look at his hands. Long, gnarled fingers, caramel skin. Those hands were familiar to him. They were Bahru’s hands. His pendant was dangling on the outside of his monk’s robe, and now that he noticed that, Ryan realized they all wore them. Crystal prisms on longish chains.

Bahru lifted the lid of the box and gazed down into it. Then he grasped the knife and picked it up.

Immediately there was an electrical crackle, a flash of light, and the knife fell to the ground, while Bahru yelped in pain. He gripped his own wrist and examined his palm. “I do not understand.”

“Let me try,” said someone else.

Holy shit, was that Dr. Cartwright?

“No!
I
am the chosen one, I am the one called by the Master to gather you all. It must be me.” Bahru bent low and grabbed the knife again, but the same thing happened, and this time he jumped backward, falling on his ass on the ground. He pressed his palm to an ice-coated rock nearby.

“I will try,” said a woman—that nurse, Ryan realized. The one Lena had hated on sight. What the hell was her name? Sheldrake. Yes, that was it. Eloise Sheldrake. She reached for the knife. “Maybe it has to be a woman.”

But she couldn’t pick it up, either. In fact, none of them could. One by one they tried. And one by one they failed.

Ryan saw his opportunity and stepped out from behind the tree where he’d been hiding. “There’s only one person who can wield that knife,” he said. “And you’re looking at him.”

A couple of men he hadn’t seen emerged from the trees outside the circle and grabbed him by both arms. The rest were more careful than ever to keep their faces averted, their voices low, but he didn’t think he would recognize them even if they hadn’t. Wait, was one of them the guy from the hardware store?