Visions of Magic (20 page)

And the woman surrounded by darkness laughed.

Shea jolted back from the mirror, breaking the link and shivering as the sound of that evil laughter continued to spill out all around her.

 

“I know I hit her,” Landry said. He stood at attention in front of his superior's desk. There was always a followup interview after a hit. The MPs, like the feds, had to keep their paperwork straight. “I shot, she fell, the man dropped on top of her.”

His boss wasn't happy about the situation, seeing as the Do Not Kill order had gone out and Landry was claiming he hadn't heard it.

“You were told not to kill her.”

Landry shrugged. “Reception was bad. Missed that part of the call.”

“Sure you did.”

Orders or not, Landry told himself, no one cared about a dead witch, not really. Well, except maybe for whatever big shot had put out the order in the first place. But for those of them in the trenches, a dead witch was a safe witch.

“Never mind,” the other man said with a resigned sigh. “Did you see bodies?”

“No,” Landry admitted, remembering the thick mist that had swept into the area, hiding his targets from him, obliterating the scene. “A fog came up suddenly and hid them. Hell, it hid my car, too. Took me a half hour to find it.”

His superior sat forward in his desk chair, picked up a pen and tapped it against a neatly stacked sheaf of papers. “We sent a team out a few hours later. They found the car was on the side of the road, but the witch and the man were both gone. We found blood, yes, but no bodies.”

Landry gritted his teeth. She'd escaped. Gotten away once more. But he knew where his bullet had hit her. She couldn't have gone far. Not even magically. “Let me track them.”

His boss sighed. “By now, they've realized that she was bugged and they've gotten rid of it. You have no way of knowing where she went.”

Leaning both hands on the desktop, Landry stared into the other man's eyes. “I don't need GPS. I can find her. And when I do—”

“Forget it,” the man said with a shake of his head. “We've got plenty of witches around here to worry about. BOW's taking this over. We're out.”

“Out? I'm the one who caught her in the first place!”

“And according to the feds, we're the ones who let her escape.”

“It's the MPs' fault that the internment camp is loaded with incompetent morons?”

“Forget it, Harper. As far as our organization is concerned, it's over.” He gathered up the papers and began to flip through them. Pulling one free, he handed it over. “I've got a new assignment for you. This witch is hiding out in Sunset Beach. Got a tip. So forget about the one that got away and go retrieve this one.”

Landry stared at the legal notice giving him the right to apprehend and thought about not taking it. He knew he could find that witch and her man. BOW didn't have the right to tell him to back off. His insides jumped with adrenaline and restrained fury as he fought with himself over just how to handle this.

He wanted that damn witch.

But as the seconds ticked past, he had to admit that he also wanted to keep his job. It was important to him. To be on the front lines, protecting humanity from this plague of witchcraft. So, if he had to back off of one witch . . . he'd simply ramp up his efforts on the others. And maybe, one day, he'd get another shot at Shea Jameson.

Snatching the paperwork from his boss's hands, he glanced at the witch's name and address and nodded. “I'll have her to Terminal Island by this evening.”

“Good. Dismissed.”

As he left, Landry told himself he was a lucky man to be able to do the work he loved.

“D
id you recognize the woman in the vision?” Torin asked.

“No,” Shea told him. “I wouldn't know her if I saw her out on the street, either. She was pretty much just a shadow in the dark. But she was looking into a glass and seeing
us
.”

“Scrying,” Torin said. “It's a way witches have of seeing the future, the past—” He broke off and looked at her. “Somehow you managed to do some scrying of your own. Your magic's coming back fast. Still, you should have waited for me to return before trying a spell on your own.”

“Please. It wasn't a spell,” Shea said. “I was just trying to
see.
And I can't always wait for you, Torin. I have to find answers for myself.”

“We are together in this, Shea,” he reminded her.

“Yeah, we are.” She laid one hand on his arm and looked up into his gray eyes. “But the truth is, I'm the witch with the evil past and I have to do what I can, when I can, to get to the bottom of this. So while we eat, why don't you explain what it is we're supposed to be looking for?”

He frowned as if he didn't like what she'd said, but he had to admit she was right.

“Black silver,” Torin said, “is the element created by the coven centuries ago. Formed with breath and fire and blood a thousand years before the birth of the one called Christ.”

Shea had had no idea that the black silver was so ancient. “
Before
the birth of Christ?”

He smiled at the stunned expression on her face. “Long before, when the earth was young and magic was widely sought. The coven was powerful even then and they sought more knowledge and hoped that through the creation of the black silver they could add to the wonders of the world.”

“But . . .” Shea prompted. “There has to be a
but,
because the memories I've seen aren't of shiny, happy bunnies. They're of death and darkness and terror. So what the hell happened?”

Torin frowned at her as he considered her question. His pale eyes locked on hers. “Are you ready for the whole truth?”

“Doesn't seem to matter if I am or not,” she countered, frowning as her memories darted away again. “You said yourself we have one month. We really can't risk waiting.”

“True,” he agreed, handing her one of the sandwiches he'd slipped out to get a while ago. Setting his own meal down on the table, he leaned toward her, looking into her eyes.

Since leaving the safe house on the mountain outside Palm Springs, they'd talked about anything and everything. Torin had been giving her lessons in magic but even as she felt her powers growing, Shea knew she still had much to learn.

They had finally stopped for the night at a tiny motel in Flagstaff, Arizona. There was an American Indian feel to the place. Kitschy, she decided, rather than tacky. There were old paintings on the wall, tepee-shaped lampshades and an unusable kiva-shaped fireplace. The beds were lumpy, but the sheets were clean and they hadn't wanted to risk staying at a more well-known hotel. This one was tucked away in the trees, hopefully far enough off the beaten track that no one would notice an escaped witch and her Eternal.

She unwrapped her sandwich, took a bite and chewed, despite the fact that at the moment the sub tasted like sawdust.

“Tell me,” she prompted.

“Silver is an earth element,” he said quietly and even the room seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the rest. “The metal focuses, enhances, a witch's power—”

“Wait a minute.” Shea looked at him in confusion. “Gold's an element, too. So why does it drain us?”

“White gold drains. It's not a natural element, Shea. It's an alloy, made by man. They take gold and taint it with other metals. Nickel and palladium usually. Separately, the metals are harmless enough.” He frowned and shook his head. “Combined, there's something in the metallic makeup that acts in the direct opposite of silver.”

Nodding, she asked, “Okay, and black silver was created by
us
, so it's even stronger than natural silver.”

“Exactly. Back in the day, the coven decided that if silver focused their energies, channeling their power into it would increase its strength immeasurably.”

“It worked, didn't it?”

He laughed shortly, passed her a soda and nodded. “Hell, yes, it worked. The element itself was more powerful than any had imagined it could be. Over time, black silver was incorporated into objects of power that came to be known by many names.”

Shea took another bite of her sandwich, knowing she had to eat. But her gaze never left the Eternal sitting opposite her at the rickety table. “What do you mean?”

Opening his soda can, he took a long drink and set it down again. “It was impossible to contain,” he said, lost in his memories of an ancient time. “Power sang through the pieces of silver and called to those with the will to wield it. Depending on the nature of the one holding it, the black silver became the epitome of evil or a force for good.”

“Oh, God . . .” Shea's mind raced with possibilities. How many terrible things had been done under the flag of good intentions? she wondered. “Tell me,” she said. “Give me some examples. Ones I would know.”

Torin scraped one hand across his face and she watched as he silently argued with himself. He was a completely disciplined man. Some would probably think him cold, detached. But she had reason to know that the unapproachable mask he wore disguised a man—Eternal—of deep passions and unswerving loyalties.

She'd never felt more safe in her life than she did in his presence. Which, she thought, was fairly ironic considering that the first day he'd saved her, she had run from him, landing herself in prison, for God's sake. But since that night, she'd come to understand that she hadn't so much been running
from
him as she had been trying to escape the feelings she had
for
him.

“Tell me,” she insisted.

He nodded. “Very well, then. A few that you will recognize. In 1776, a pen crafted of black silver was used to sign this country's Declaration of Independence.”

Shea smiled. “Well, that's a good one.”

“And in 1862, the land mine, also crafted of black silver, claimed its first victim of many.”

“Oh, God.” Her stomach lurched unsteadily and she set her sandwich aside, no longer able to bear even the smell of it.

“Twenty-one years later, black silver seeped into the crust of a dormant volcano. The magma within instantly flashed and the sound of Krakatoa exploding could be heard three thousand miles away.”

“Volcanoes, land mines . . .”

“The Wright brothers' first flying machine. Then later,” Torin added solemnly, “the
Titanic
. Hitler wore an Iron Cross made of black silver, and Albert Einstein's desk lamp was created from the element.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“I have had many years to follow its trail.”

Shea shook her head, as if simply denying the truth of what he was saying would make it so.

“Neil Armstrong's lunar module in 1969 carried black silver in its casing, and in 1994 the black silver machetes carried by the Hutus were used to massacre eight hundred thousand Tutsis in a few short weeks.”

“Right and wrong,” she murmured, “good and evil.”

He reached across the table and folded his fingers over hers. Shea felt the heat of him slide through her system, chasing away the bone-deep chill enveloping her.

“The element itself was neither good nor bad,” he whispered. “It simply
was.
It was man who made the choices in how to use it.”

“And that makes it okay that the witches created it?” Shea asked, pulling her hand free and standing up. She walked to the front window, and with the tips of her fingers pulled back just enough of the drapes to look outside. The lights in the tiny parking lot were dim, since only two of the four were working.

Beyond the asphalt lot, trees stood tall and straight as soldiers on parade. And overhead, the moon continued its glide across the sky. Every night, the moon was a little closer to completing its monthly cycle. And every night, they were a little further from the success of a mission that Shea didn't even completely understand.

“Come away from the window, Shea.”

“What did the coven do with the black silver, Torin? You said they created it, but what did they
do
with it?”

He stood up, his chair scraping against the scarred wood floor. Crossing to her, he pulled her hand from the drapes and drew her away from the window. “It was decided that they would gather all of the black silver they could and create the Artifact.”

More memories stirred inside her mind, tantalizing her, tormenting her with snippets, twinges of recognition.

“Some of the magical element was gone, escaped into the world—as I told you, it showed up in many different times and places. But the coven was able to gather most of it and together, they used their powers to fashion the Artifact.”

She closed her eyes, trying to grab hold of a thread of memory. “Describe it.”

“A black silver crest, crafted from a series of interlinking Celtic knots, as many of those in the coven had come from Eire originally.”

She could almost see it, Shea thought, focusing her mind on the nebulous images drifting through her consciousness.

“When whole, the Artifact is a key to the dimensional portals of other worlds, other realities. The magic captured within was so powerful, so all-consuming, that simply touching it would drive a mere man mad,” he said, his voice deep, soft, mesmerizing. “When the coven saw what it had created, even they trembled. And so it was women of immense power who protected it—and the world.”

The image in her mind dissolved like sugar in water. She sighed, opened her eyes and looked up at Torin. “What went wrong? I saw that vision, remember? I saw me—not me, but me—and the others, calling on something dark. Terrifying.”