Eternity: Immortal Witches Book 1 (The Immortal Witches) (36 page)

My God, they were insane.

But graceful. So skilled in their movements that it started to resemble a dance the way they circled and lunged and dodged. Then Arianna let loose with a spinning kick that looked like some kind of martial arts move, and Raven’s dagger sailed from her hand to land point down, in the dirt, its jeweled hilt quivering.

Arianna leaped forward, her blade to Raven’s throat. “I have you now!” she shouted, a beautiful smile on her face.

“No, don’t!”

The shout was wrenched out of him, a knee-jerk reaction he hadn’t planned. The two women stilled, turning toward him. Raven looked surprised, but not the least bit afraid. Arianna, on the other hand, straightened, sheathed her blade, and rolled her eyes.

“Isn’t this familiar?” she said, her tone sarcastic.

And it was. He had a dizzying sense of deja vu all of a sudden. It was as if he’d done this all before. He had to close his eyes to regain his balance.

But then Raven was coming to him, stroking his hair with those loving fingers. “Are you all right?”

“More to the point,” Arianna said, “are you alone?

He drew a steadying breath. “Nathanial is back at the courthouse. I wouldna–wouldn’t–bring him here.” Then he gazed at Raven to see if she’d noticed his slip. God, for an instant it felt as if that stranger inside had leaped to the surface and taken over.

Raven’s hair was tousled, and his fingers ached to smooth it. Her cheeks gleamed pink with exertion and her eyes sparkled.

“It’s all right,” she said. “We were only practicing. We do it all the time.” She didn’t mention his slip, but she’d noticed. He knew she had.

“I don’t even want to ask why,” he said.

To stay sharp, you’ll pardon the pun.” Arianna smiled at her own joke. “So when people like Nathanial come for us–and they do, Duncan–we’re ready.”

“So you believe this nonsense, too? About immortal High Witches and beating hearts in little boxes?” He shook his head, not wanting to think about it anymore.

“I see Raven did get around to telling you a few things,” Arianna said. “Well, Duncan, old friend, you might as well come inside. If you won’t believe your lover, then perhaps you’ll believe me. I’m far older than she is anyway. Just over five hundred, actually.”

“You’ll have to give me the name of your plastic surgeon.”

She lifted her golden brows. “You can still joke about it. I think that’s a good sign. Do you drink coffee, Duncan, or is it still strong English tea you prefer?”

Strong English tea was exactly what he preferred. But how did she know that? “To be honest, I think I could use a beer about now,” he told her.

“Used to go straight to your head,” she replied with a smile. “I think you need all your wits right now. So tea it is.” She turned and led the way inside.

Raven gripped his hand and followed. “I was so afraid to leave you with Nathanial last night. Was there any trouble after I left?”

“He’s my father, Raven.”

“As if that means anything.”

They walked into a pretty room, with a fireplace flickering from one wall, and claw-footed furniture of deep cherry wood all around.

“You two sit. Talk. I’ll get that tea.” Arianna left them there.

Raven took a spot on the love seat, and Duncan sat beside her. He took her hands in his, stared into her eyes. “I want you to end this feud with my father,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether all of this other stuff is true or not. Nothing matters right now except that it has to end.”

She closed her eyes. “Do you think I want to fight him? Duncan, believe me, I don’t. I’d end this if I could.”

“You can. I can help. I don’t think he wants this any more than you do, Raven.”

“He has no choice, Duncan.”

Duncan closed his eyes. What now? Would she tell him more far-fetched tales?

“Didn’t you understand what I told you last night, Duncan? The Dark Ones take hearts, and keep them, and eventually, they use up the power. The hearts weaken, perhaps even die if they’re tapped long enough in this vile way. I don’t know. But I do know they weaken, and as they do, so does the Dark Witch who holds them. They need to take more, to kill again and again, in order to continue living.”

He swallowed hard. “You can’t truly believe this,” he said, but in a hoarse whisper, because somewhere inside him, he knew it was true. It couldn’t be. But it had to be.

“It’s why he wants me,” she went on. “He could have taken your heart, Duncan, but you’re young, and you’ve never even wielded the power of nature. Your heart might sustain him for a few decades at most. Mine would give him centuries.”

He only stared at her, wrestling with what she’d said.  Arianna came in with the tea. She set the tray down and stood there looking from one of them to the other. “He’s never going to believe you until you show him, Raven.”

“I know.”

“So?”

Sighing heavily, Raven got to her feet. She bent to a drawer in an end table and pulled it open. And then she pulled out a small-caliber weapon. It looked like a derringer. Duncan’s blood rushed to his feet.

“What the hell are you–”

Raven handed the weapon to Arianna, then stood facing her friend. “Go on, do it. Let’s get this out of the way.”

Arianna pointed the gun squarely at Raven’s chest, from a distance of no more than two feet.

“My God, no!” Duncan lunged between them just as Arianna pulled the trigger.

Fire tore through his chest even as the explosion rang in his ears. Warmth oozed and he drew a hand upward, pressed his palm hard against his sternum, and felt the blood pulsing from beneath it. “Holy God” he said, but the words were slurred, and he sank to the floor. “Dammit, you shot me. You freaking shot me.”

Raven snatched a towel from somewhere and pressed it to the wound. But she seemed more interested in keeping his blood from staining her carpet than in halting its flow. “I’m sorry, Duncan,” she whispered. Sitting down, she cradled his head in her lap. “You’ll be all right in a moment.”

Her words were fading. Why wasn’t someone calling 911? My God, were they just going to sit there and watch him die? “I’m dying, he rasped.

“Only for a moment,” Arianna said. “You’ll be a believer very soon, Duncan. I swear, I don’t know why Raven didn’t just shoot you in the first place. Would have saved so much time.” Then she grimaced at his chest. “It is messy, though.”

“The phone....  Someone call...an amb–”

“Oh, you’re well beyond that, Duncan. No ambulance would do you any good now.” Arianna tipped her head back and laughed, and Duncan tried to call her a bitch, but he wasn’t sure the word was audible.

Raven bent closer, pressed her lips to his. And everything went black.

It felt as if he’d grabbed a bare wire with about 220 volts going through it. The jolt split him, surging up his breastbone, and for an instant he figured he must be in some operating room somewhere, with a surgeon opening his chest.

He arched up, tipped his head back, and dragged in a ragged gasp, starved, it seemed, for oxygen. And then his body relaxed and the power surge faded. He opened his eyes.

He was still in Raven’s house. On the sofa now, stretched out, shirtless. His head felt achy, light, still buzzing with the remnants of whatever current had zapped through him.

“For the love of God,” he muttered. “You still haven’t called an ambulance?”

“No need, Duncan.” Raven sat beside him, brushed his hair off his face. “Come on, sit up.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Sit up, Duncan.” Her hands slid under his shoulders, and she eased him into an upright position. Arianna sat nearby. A basin of blood-tinted water at her side, with a pink-stained washcloth floating in it looking like a donor organ. His heartbeat quickened at the sight, and he instinctively pressed a hand to his wounded chest to keep himself from bleeding to death.

And then he frowned, because there was no pulsing warmth oozing now. No sticky residue on his skin. His fingers probed, and then he bowed his head, staring at his bared chest. His clean bared chest.

No blood. No wound. He blinked, pressing both hands to his chest now, moving them, pressing again, searching for the bullet hole. It had seemed gaping before. Maybe it was just smaller than it seemed.

“There’s nothing there, Duncan,” Arianna said. “You died. Right there on the floor. We cleaned you up, and put you on the couch. In less than an hour the wound healed and you revivified. You’re alive now, and there’s no hole in your chest because you’re immortal.”

He gaped at her, then stared up at Raven.

“I know it’s shocking the first time,” she whispered. “I know how difficult this is for you to believe. But, Duncan, we didn’t mean to. Arianna was aiming at me–”

“Oh, but this is so much better. Really drives the point home.”

“Arianna, please!”

Arianna shrugged, making a lip-zipping motion with one hand. Raven turned to him again. “From now on, you won’t age. You’re going to start noticing other changes, as well. You’ll get stronger. Your other senses will sharpen. And your ability to manipulate nature, to do what we call magic, will be far stronger than it was before. Although, since you’ve never been a practicing witch, I don’t suppose you’ll notice that.”

Again, he looked at his chest. “I can’t believe this.”

“Get him a mirror, for heaven’s sake,” Arianna said in exasperation.

“You have to believe it, Duncan. It’s true.”

“It’s true,” he whispered. “It can’t be...but it’s true.”

“Yes.” He searched her eyes, and she repeated the word. “Yes, Duncan.”

His head was whirling. Unreal. It was all so unreal.

“I want you to read this,” Raven said. And she pressed a very old book into his hands. So old its pages were curled and yellow, and the leather cover cracked in places. “This is three hundred years old. It was what my mother left for me.”

“Your mother?”

She nodded. “You see, I didn’t know, either. Not until Nathanial Dearborne hanged my mother and me in a snowy square as you looked on, fighting to prevent it, but unable to. That was the first time we met, Duncan, on the gallows just before I was to die. And something happened between us there, some connection was made. But it was over before it even began, or so I thought. We were hanged. Our bodies were pitched into a heap of the dead, where criminals and victims of the plague were dumped. That’s where I awoke. But my mother didn’t. Nathanial came for me there, intent on taking my heart before I could revive. And he must have been desperate then, because as young as I was, it wouldn’t have sustained him long. I was a powerful witch, though, even then. And perhaps it was my magical skill he sought. Or perhaps it was because you’d turned against him that day. You’d taken my side over his, and when he killed me, you hated him for it. You went to the place of the dead, too, looking for my body. You intended to give me a decent burial. But I awakened before either of you arrived, and I carried my mother into the woods and buried her there. And then I went home to find this book. Our cottage was ruined, had been plundered. My mother’s sacred cauldron, with the rose painted on the front, was gone. But the book she’d left for me, hidden behind a loose stone in the hearth, remained.”

Duncan opened the book reverently, scanned the first page–and knew, though it seemed impossible, that these really were her mother’s words, and really had been written some three centuries ago. So sad, his eyes grew damp as he read diem, and then he met Raven’s again. “But I found you again after that, didn’t I, Raven?”

She nodded. “I booked passage on a ship to the New World. You boarded the same ship. And later came to this very town, as its new minister, and met me again. But even then I didn’t tell you the truth. I didn’t trust you enough, Duncan. So when they pitched me from the cliffs for the crime of witchery, you lunged after me, trying to save me.”

Yes. Because it had seemed better to die trying to save her than to go on living without her.

How did he know that?

“If you’d known that I couldn’t die, you wouldn’t have fallen from those cliffs. You died because I didn’t trust you with the truth. And that’s why I’ve been so determined to tell you everything this time.”

He stilled as the one memory that had remained intact came rushing back to him. The dream he’d had as a child, the one he’d thought had to be of his birth mother came back to him now. Clearer than before.

“You found my body on the rocks,” he said. “You were crying. God, it hurt me to see you crying. I wanted to touch you, to tell you it was all right, but I couldn’t. I was hovering above, somehow. You held me. You wouldn’t let me go.”

“Yes,” she breathed, tears springing into her eyes. “Yes, Duncan, that’s exactly the way it happened.”

“And you were there,” he said, turning to Arianna. “You protected her, told her they were coming for her, made her let me go, and took her away from the danger.”

Arianna nodded.

“The last thing I remember is watching the waves sweep my body away, swallow it up.” He closed his eyes as a chill rushed through him. It was a terrifying memory. But real. And there. He recalled the clothes she wore, and those he’d been wearing. He remembered the differences in her speech as she held him and spoke to him. Old, arcane.

“My God, it’s true, isn’t it?”

Raven nodded. “Yes, Duncan. It’s true.”

“And my father?’’

“Is one of the Dark Ones. He wants my heart, and likely yours, too.”

Duncan shook his head slowly. He knew it was all true, all of it. And still....

He blinked his burning eyes dry. “People can change,” he whispered, and he knew he was grabbing at straws. “If it’s been as many years as you say it has, Raven, then how do you know he hasn’t changed?”

She closed her eyes. “Oh, Duncan, I know you want that to be true, but he can’t change. If he stops taking hearts, he’ll weaken and die.”

“But save his own soul.”

“He sold his soul long ago.”

“But there’s a chance, Raven. There’s a chance you’re wrong about him. I’ve seen the changes in him since he came here. He’s been kinder, more real than before.”

Arianna got to her feet. “Why would the old man change after all this time? What motive could he possibly have to suddenly value his soul at all?”