Lost Wanderer Awakened - Book One of the Airendell Chronicles (43 page)

Morna showers quickly, but takes a few
minutes to let the hot water run over her throbbing head. She
quickly shaves her legs and underarms. She has to laugh because she
normally let’s that little job go as long as possible, but now it
seems of paramount importance. Finally, she gets out and dries her
hair and throws on some jeans and tee shirt. She gets her
prescriptions out of her bag, and toys with the idea of smoking a
cigarette. But she resists. She decides instead to try to forget
about the embarrassing way she and her daughter were reunited and
just rejoice that they were, indeed, reunited.

She’s eager to spend time with her daughter,
but suddenly she feels very shy, and still very embarrassed over
the mind link. She tries to recall exactly what she had thought
about last night. And decides it was pretty tame, no explicit
details, just some fleeting images and sensations. So maybe Aideen
wasn’t thoroughly disgusted with her mother. She stands with her
hand on the door knob for a few more minutes trying to calm her
heart before stepping out into the other room.

Finally, Luca knocks and enters. He quickly
assesses her mood and decides she needs a little nudge. “Morna,
stop standing here with your hand on the door knob, just come on
already.” He kisses her soundly and takes her hand and leads the
way.

Aideen jumps up and runs to Morna when she
finally comes out of the bathroom. The women hold each other in a
close embrace for several moments. Aideen steps back and says,
“Wow! Morna Glynn Michaels! My mom in the flesh!”

Morna reaches out and strokes Aideen’s cheek
lovingly. “My darling girl, you are so beautiful! And you have the
aura of a Spell Weaver of the First Order, am I correct?” Aideen
nods. Morna hugs her again. “At what age did you ascend?”

“In my nineteenth year, just like you Mama,”
she says proudly.

“Wonderful! Wonderful!” enthuses Morna, and
hugs her again. “Come sit, tell me everything!” Morna reaches out
and grabs Luca’s hand as they walk by him on the way to the table
in the sitting area of their hotel suite.

Morna reaches across the table to hold
Aideen’s hand, and Luca sits next to her with his arm around her.
Morna says, “So are you married? Where do you live? Am I a
grandmother? Tell me everything!”

Just then room service delivers their meals.
They make a little small talk while the waiter is there. When he
leaves Morna is really feeling uncomfortable, but Luca squeezes her
hand under the table and repeats Morna’s earlier questions for
Aideen.

Aideen clears her throat and says, “Well no,
I am not married, and you are not a grandmother yet. Currently I
live here in Chicago, but Daddy says there is a house down the
street from you two that is for sale, so I am thinking about
looking at it, unless you guys decide to relocate. Let’s see… I am
a general surgeon. I guess you could say I am married to my
job.

“You don’t live in Airendell?” Morna
asks.

“No Mama, I haven’t been to Airendell since
the day I was born,” Aideen says softly.

“Then who acted as your lore mother?” Morna
asks.

“Breena,” comes Aideen’s quiet reply. Morna
senses a little resentment and wonders if it’s because she was
unable to act as her daughter’s lore mother as is tradition.

Morna chuckles, “I bet that was interesting.
Breena is such a goof, but she really knows her magic and the lore.
She must have been an excellent lore mother. I know you had an
excellent teacher.”

Aideen smiles fondly and says, “Oh yes Breena
is a goof, but she made sure that I felt like I truly knew who you
were as I was growing up. She adores you Mama.”

“I adore her too, she is one of the most
beautiful souls I have ever known, but you know that already,” says
Morna with a sad smile. Morna is suddenly overcome with an urge to
see her sister again. It has been so very long since the sisters
were together.

“Why did you leave Airendell the day you were
born?” Morna asks with a hard look on her face. She suspects that
she knows the reason, but can’t be sure.

Luca rubbed her back and spoke up quietly,
“Morna, what do you remember of the time after I was changed?”

Morna closes her eyes, pushes the pain in her
head back into a dark corner, and tries to summon all of her
memories of that time. “Well, I remember you and I spent three
weeks in the glen after the change was complete and the witch put
that curse on me. You told me to put in a binding spell, so that
you couldn’t hurt me or anyone else. Eventually I figured out how
to expand it so that you could move around in it, but not get out
of it. It worked a lot like a buffer spell turned inwards.” Luca
smiles at her encouragingly.

“I didn’t think that it would be a good idea
if Magdrid and the Elders knew what had happened to you before you
had yourself completely under control, so I snuck into the village
and told Breena. And she in turn told Brigid and Rinda. They would
slip out to the glen now and then to bring me food and keep you
company while I hunted for you. I hunted for you every other day
because I didn’t know how often you would need to consume
blood.”

“After you finally felt it might be safe for
me to drop the spell, I told you about the baby. Oh Aideen, your
daddy was very, very happy to learn we were having a child. He
would pester me endlessly, just wanting to rub my belly. He would
sing to you and rest his head against my swollen stomach. He went
right to work building a cottage there, in the glen for the three
of us. It was a beautiful time in our lives.” Morna’s face glows
with love at the memories of that time.

“The pregnancy went pretty smoothly until
about five days before you were born. Magdrid and her little flunky
Shamus came out to snoop around. Magdrid flew into a rage when she
saw me heavy with child. When Luca came back from hunting and they
realized what he had become, although now I suspect they knew all
along, they started calling our child devil spawn and all sorts of
ridiculous things like that.”

“I was so angry I was literally seeing red, I
slipped into the warrior persona and drove them out the glen. When
they got back to the village they started telling everyone that
Luca had been changed into a vampire and raped me, and that I was
carrying devil spawn.” Morna takes a deep breath and rubs her
temples, the pain is savagely pushing its way out the corner of her
consciousness. “When Breena, Brigid, and Rinda heard about the lies
they were spreading they gathered up some our generation Spell
Weavers and came to the glen to protect me. Let’s see who came to
help, Fionn was there, Brian and Carrick. Also Bronwyn and Enya.
Does that sound right Luca?”

“Yes love, your memories are very accurate,”
he agrees with a proud smile.

“But my strength started to fail for some
reason, we thought maybe it was a complication of the pregnancy,
but I knew for certain later on that someone had placed a sickening
spell on me. By the time I went into labor three days later I could
actually taste and smell the essence of the person who sent the
spell. Whoever it was, they were very bitter, putrid in their
entire soul and being, wholly evil.” Morna shudders and rubs the
goose bumps that appear on her arms at the memories. A wave of
nausea hits, and she swallows back the bile. “I shudder even now
just to think about the evil of that spell, and the person who sent
it at me. It was weakening my heart.”

Morna smiles brightly and say, “I remember
Aideen being born. Oh Aideen, I thought that were the most
beautiful baby ever born!”

Morna‘s look of pure joy is replaced by one
confusion. “Then I remember Magdrid and her bunch coming and
demanding we hand over the child. I summoned my warrior persona,
but I didn’t have enough strength to maintain it… Rinda said that
you weren‘t breathing…” Morna touches Aideen’s cheek, smiles and
then let’s her hand fall. She is silent for a couple of minutes,
then says, “I don’t remember any more. I assume that is when I…
when I died.” She looks at Luca, reaching out to stroke his cheek
with great sadness in her heart knowing what that must of have done
to him. “I am so sorry, my love. For all of the times I left
you.”

“You never left me, beloved. Dying because of
a curse isn’t your fault.” He kisses her tenderly and pulls her
into his arms to hold her, vowing silently to never bury his mate
again. He finally remembers their daughter and releases Morna to
smile at their child.

Aideen comes over to her mother and takes her
in her arms. “Mama, I think you are trying to protect me, but I
know all the grisly details of my birth. I insisted that Brigid
mind share her memories with me. You were amazing! Your belly was
laid open where Brigid delivered me by C-section. You had overheard
her telling Daddy that the birthing was taking too long and that
she feared for my life. You demanded that she take the baby right
then, even though Brigid warned you that she didn’t think you were
strong enough to survive the operation. When she got inside she
found that your uterus had ruptured and neither one of us would
have survived if she hadn’t conceded to your demands.”

“Mama, Brigid’s memories of you that day are
amazing. You rose up off the birthing bed, with your belly laid
open and chased them out of the house. Don’t you remember striking
younger Shamus down?” Morna gasps at this and covers her mouth with
her hand. “You didn’t kill him, but your magic stripped him of all
his magic and his immortality for trying to take me out of your
arms. He died ten years later, a very bitter man, so we have
heard.”

“Brigid cleared the blockage in my throat and
I resumed breathing, but you were already gone. After there was no
hope of saving you, Daddy wove a buffer spell around me, Brigid and
Breena. They escaped with me to Scotland first, and then Iceland,
eventually we came to America. Daddy fought Magdrid and her
cronies, with your other six supporters, Fionn, Brian, and Rinda,
Carrick, Bronwyn and Enya all helping to hold them off so that we
could escape.”

“The rest of this I got from Enya. Daddy
could see they were going to be overwhelmed by the warriors Magdrid
commanded, so he urged all six to flee while he held them off. We
later learned that Magdrid and her cronies overwhelmed Daddy and
put him under an exile spell, they held him at the cottage in the
glen.” Morna gasps again, and clasps Luca’s hands to her heart. “He
was trapped there until Breena came back and helped him escape when
I was three years old. They came to me in Scotland, and eventually
went to Verona, and found you there.”

Morna let go of one of Luca’s hands and
grasps Aideen’s hand, “You didn’t have a mother or a father for the
first three years of your life? I am so sorry honey.”

Aideen scoffed, “Mom, Daddy said you have an
annoying habit for apologizing for things that are not your fault.
Good grief!” Aideen tosses her hair negligently and says, “Look, I
had tons of people of who loved me. Everyone who helped you and
Daddy in the glen that day, they all took upon themselves to raise
me as a Spell Weaver. To help me become a woman that you could be
proud to call your daughter. They all set the bar pretty high for
me when I was coming up.”

Morna thinks Aideen almost sounds bitter when
she says this. She looks intently at her daughter trying to fathom
her deepest emotions, trying to get inside of her head… But the
pain is too intense. She lets go of Aideen’s hand and reaches up
and rubs her forehead. The headache has been getting steadily
worse, now every movement is sending stabbing pains from her
temples into what seems like the very center of her brain. Suddenly
a wave of nausea over takes her and jumps up and makes a dash for
the bathroom.

Aideen looks at Luca questioning. “Her
headache must be getting worse,” Luca supplies, looking very
worried. “Absorbing new information about her past lives does this
to her. I was hoping that since she remembered so much of it on her
own that it wouldn’t be so bad this time, but her consciousness is
still firmly rooted in this life time. I guess finding you have a
daughter you never knew about would strain anyone’s ability to
cope.”

“Sorry Daddy, I probably shouldn’t have told
her about Magdrid putting you in the exile spell,” says Aideen. “I
just have a hard time thinking of her anything but an invincible
warrior goddess. I know it’s childish, but Brigid, Breena and Rinda
speak of her as though she could carry the world on her shoulders
like Atlas himself. I guess I just expect her to actually be able
to handle anything.” Aideen shrugs at that, looking slightly smug
as she does it.

Aideen walks over the table by the door and
picks up her leather bag. It looks a lot like a small gym bag, but
it’s made of very soft black leather. She picks it up and heads to
the bathroom. “Well, I will feel better once I have examined her
myself. Does sleep help with these headaches?” she asks Luca.

“Yes,” He replies. “I have a theory that her
brain has to shut down and turn back on, much like rebooting a
computer after new programs have been installed. Once she sleeps,
usually four to eight hours, she seems to have a firm handle on any
new information, and the headache eases considerably. I am sure she
just needs to sleep.”

Aideen nods thoughtfully, “Well, let me go
make sure she’s not having a stroke or something. Then I will give
her an injection to make her sleep. How does that sound?”

Luca walks over to his daughter and gives her
a hug. “It sounds very much like you are a good daughter. But I
feel like I must say this in defense of your mother. She is one of
the strongest, most impressive beings alive, ever. You and Brigid
both saw her in the hospital after the crash. It takes a strong
person just survive that, and come out of it sane, much less
everything else she is having to deal with.”