Eternity: Immortal Witches Book 1 (The Immortal Witches) (8 page)

“‘Tis a typical male who would find a way to blame his lust on the object of it. I’ve put no spell on you, Duncan Wallace. And if I did, ‘twould be a spell designed to sharpen your dull brain, not to make you desire me.”

“Nay,” he whispered, feeling cold and empty as he listened to the sounds of her getting to her feet, righting her dress. “You’d have no need of a spell to make me desire you, my beauty, for I already do.”

“You’re out of your head with the ale and the fever.” He sensed she’d turned her back to him. “You know not what you say.”

“Just tell me ‘tis true. That you’re alive. That ‘tis not all a dream. ‘Twill be enough to sustain me if only I know—”

“I am sorry, Duncan. But I cannot tell you what you wish to hear. If things were different, perhaps—”

“Dammit, woman, there is somethin’ between us, an’ well you know it. Somethin’ alive an’ real passed between you an’ me on those gallows, an’ you felt its power as much as I did. I saw it in your eyes. You stole my heart, lass...an’ I dinna even know your name.”

“You...are mistaken.”

A knock at the door interrupted her, but Duncan thought he’d heard tears in her voice. He feared she was leaving when she answered that knock, but she didn’t. She only took what was delivered and came back to him. He could sense the fever soaring high again. He was shivering cold, and damp with sweat, and his mind was wandering, drifting away before he forced it back with an effort. She brought him another blanket, and a cup of something hot and fragrant. She laid cool cloths, across his forehead. And then she told him to sleep. Gently she said the word, again and again. Until he did.

But not soundly. Not so soundly he didn’t know when she spoke again a long while later, after he’d drifted in and out of sleep, perhaps for hours. Her words fell in a songlike cadence, or a chant, perhaps. He opened his eyes and saw her standing above his bed. How long she’d been there, he didn’t know. But moonlight spilled through the porthole now. A full moon, or nearly so. And she stood, bathed in that ethereal glow, and he could see her. He could see her with perfect clarity. Her eyes were closed, head tipped back, and she stood with her feet wide apart. Her left arm stretched upward toward the moon, her palm turned up as if to catch the pale moonlight that spilled into it. Her right arm was extended downward, toward him. She turned her palm down and pressed it gently to his forehead. And as she chanted, he felt energy flooding him. Filling him. Warm, potent, zinging energy.

Moon Goddess, Diana, send your healing hands. Move through me, renew me, and heal this good man.

She repeated the chant three times as he lay there. And then she went rigid, eyes flying wide. And Duncan felt a surge of something white hot and tingling jolt right through his entire body. It was sudden, and brief, and then it was gone.

He blinked his vision into focus and scanned the room, trying to understand what had just happened. Then he spotted her. She leaned on the back of the chair, head hanging down between her arms, her face curtained by her glorious hair. Breathlessly, she murmured, “Sweet lady, never has it been like that.”

Duncan was breathless himself. But as he took stock, he realized his chest was clear, his pain gone, his throat, no longer sore, his head, no longer spinning. And he turned again to look at her, to see her and drink in the sight by the light of the moon—only to see her eyes widen in alarm.

“You’re dreaming,’’ she told him. “This has all been no more than a sweet dream.”

“No, lass, ‘tis no dream. An’ what you just did—”

She held her palm toward him. “Sleep now, Duncan. Sleep.”

A wave of drowsiness suddenly swept over him, and his eyelids felt so heavy he could barely hold them open. “Dinna go,” he whispered. “I beg of you, dinna go. I dinna care what that was, nor what you are. I only need you to stay. Please, my dark angel...stay with me.”

“Sleep,” she whispered. “Sleep and regain your strength. You’re exhausted. Rest, Duncan. Sleep.”

His eyes fell closed, though he fought to keep them open. And he felt her lips, warm and soft upon his, all too briefly.

“If I could stay with you, Duncan, I would. Believe me I would. ‘Tis better this way. I wish ‘twere not true, but ‘tis, Duncan.”

He heard her leaving, heard the door creak open. Battling to stay awake, he forced words through his lips before losing himself to the veil of sleep that he could not resist. “I'll find you again. I swear I will. I'll find you, lass.”

* * *

I had never felt the power surge through me as it did that night. No, nor had I ever before felt the other forces that came to life in my blood then. The ones that burned in me when Duncan pulled me into his arms, when his mouth mated with mine, when he whispered that he hadn’t stopped thinking about me.

I’d never felt such things for a man. Not for any man. But I did now. For Duncan. From the moment our eyes had met I’d sensed there was something between us. Something new and powerful. I’d had no idea how powerful.

And yet, I could not trust him, could not tell him the truth. Secrecy was vital, especially from any man associated with the Church and her witch-hunters. He’d told me he’d given it up. But would he not tell me that even if he hadn’t? Would that not be the perfect way to fool me? To entrap me? Lure me into his trust, into his arms, into his bed, gain my confession and then haul me away? And what if I foolishly told him the only way I could be killed, what then?

No. I was weak where Duncan Wallace was concerned. My mother had trusted my own aunt Matilda, and now she was dead because of it. She had written the words, emphasized them: Trust no one. No one.

I had become hard that day they killed my precious mother. Harder than I had ever been before. But my hardness melted when Duncan’s lips touched mine. My wisdom faded away like mist in the morning sunlight. He’d tried to protect me once, yes. But had  he not just now accused me of bewitching him? Of making him want me by using some spell?

I’d heard it myself. Though he’d taken back the words, the sentiment that spawned them likely still lived in his heart. So ‘twas best I not see him again. Not ever.

I remained in my cabin for the rest of that journey. The captain brought me my meals, spoke with me for a few minutes each day, and seemed concerned for my well being. He told me how Duncan had been quite crazed since his recovery, insisting a woman had come to him and made him well that night, demanding to know my name and where my cabin was. Most of the crewmen and passengers thought his bout of fever had warped his mind. Even his friends, the couple with whom he was traveling, seemed to fear for his sanity.

It disturbed me to let him go on unsure just what had happened that night in his cabin. To let him go on wondering how much of it had been real and how much a dream. But I had no choice. ‘Twould do me no good to be with Duncan Wallace. Nor him, either. For what could come of it, after all? What could come of my falling in love with him? And I would—I knew I would. But I was immoral. I would have to watch him grow old. I would suffer through losing him. He would be forced to see me remain young and healthy, while he aged and withered. No. There was no point in following my feelings for him, none at all, for they would only lead to heartache for us both.

But often as I sat alone in my cabin...and more often when I sneaked up onto the decks in the wee hours before daylight, I wished it could be different. And when I thought of Duncan, of his kiss, a great heaviness seemed to settle atop my heart. It added its weight to the sadness already there, that which I’d carried with me from the night I’d lost my mother, and so I became quite melancholy. Silent and pale. I was told my eyes seemed haunted more often than not.

I had mourned my mother for the whole of my journey, had gone over the events that cost her life again and again, each time wondering if I could have done something to save her. But I knew this terrible grief, this near despair, was not what she would have wanted for me. She would have wanted me to find my own life, to go on, somehow. She would hate knowing that I cried each time I thought of her. Her memory, she would say, should bring me warmth and joy, not sorrow. So eventually I vowed to try to make it so. I could not spend my life grieving. Not for her, and not for what might have been between Duncan and me, had our situations been different.

Often, in those long days of my solitary journey, I found myself thinking of the way Duncan had tried so valiantly to help us that day at the gallows. If he had succeeded, and died in the attempt, what would have been the result? I wondered if he would have returned to his next lifetime immortal, as I was, for this was what my mother had written in that secret book. Such a thing seemed beyond belief to me. Surely not a priest, nor a man studying to become one! And yet the undeniable proof was in me. I had become immortal in just such a way.

I was changing daily—almost hourly—and these changes also occupied my thoughts. How far would they go? I wondered. Each day I grew stronger. My senses continued to sharpen themselves by gradual degrees. And I found that if I focused on my new nature, ‘twas easier to escape my crippling grief. So many new and strange things were happening to my body.

I could hear conversations from a goodly distance, and hear them more clearly than before. I could see as sharply in the darkness now as I could by daylight, and had been able to do so since that night in Duncan’s cabin, even after I’d extinguished the candle.

By the time we sailed into the harbor at Boston Town, I could hear the fish swimming beneath the waves. I could detect—even distinguish between—the scents of each person aboard. Duncan’s above all others, and why that was, I did not know. I saw the purple hue of the New World’s shores fully an hour before the lookout shouted “Land ho!”

Sanctuary was but forty miles from where the ship docked at Boston Harbor, and I was told ‘twas a town on its own tiny peninsula that curved like a crooked finger into the sea. I was eager to see it. I waited, of course, until everyone had left the ship. Long, long after that I crept out of my cabin, half afraid Duncan would be waiting for me, even then. I even looked for him, searching the few faces I saw as I walked softly down the gangplank and along the dock and into the town. But he wasn’t there. I saw him not at all.

And perhaps a very small part of me was disappointed. I told myself how foolish that was, but the truth was a lot of the feelings I’d been having lately were foolish. It did not stop me from having them, all the same. It did not stop me from craving the touch and the kiss of a man I could never have.

Chapter 5

At Boston Town I purchased a horse with most of the coins still remaining in my purse, a fine black mare with fire in her eyes and spirit in her step. The livery man pleaded with me to take a more gentle beast instead, but I was insistent. From the moment my eyes met the animal’s, and she gave a sassy shake of her dark, flowing mane, I knew she was the one for me. I called her Ebony, for that was her color.

I’d taken to carrying my dagger strapped ‘round my thigh, held there by the red garter my mother had made for me long ago. All the witches of her family had worn one, she’d said. ‘Twas laughable that I still wore the garter, when my stockings were long since too tattered to wear.

Beyond the dagger, I had only the drawstring sack my mother had given me, all my worldly possessions tucked away inside. Armed with a crudely drawn map, and pitifully few coins, I set out at dawn on the day after the Sea Witch had docked, bound for Sanctuary. My new home.

I rode on narrow paths, amid forests of such grandeur I’d never seen their like. The trees towered to the heavens, their trunks incredibly large. I marveled at the natural beauty around me, the forces of nature I could feel thriving in this place. There was great power here. I sensed it the way an animal can sense the approach of a storm.

After riding for an entire day, I estimated my journey to be nearly half complete, and stroked Ebony’s neck, praising her in soft words.

The dampness that coated my palm and her gentle nicker told me ‘twas time to stop for the night. “All right, girl. Time you had some rest. And me, as well. Though one would not think I should feel so tired when you’ve been doing all the work.”

The mare snorted as if in agreement, and I glanced at the area around me. Truly, there was little here. Woods that might be the home of giants towered on either side of me. Ahead, there was only the dim outline of a well-worn dirt track, and even that vanished a short distance away as the sky turned dusky with twilight.

Sliding from the mare’s back, I gathered the reins in my hands and went very still, closing my eyes, listening to my instincts to tell me which way to go. ‘Twould be far from wise to camp beside the road, lest some ne’er-do-well come upon us in the night. Besides that, Ebony needed water. She’d last drunk at midday.

Softly I scented the breeze, waiting, listening. And my senses did not let me down. I could hear the trickle and splash of a stream off to the left. Moreover, I could smell the water.

I glanced at Ebony and realized I needn’t have bothered. She smelled it, too, and looked eagerly off toward the woods in that direction. “Come on, then,” I told her, and led her off the trail and into the darkness of the forest.

It took a long while to find that stream. It seemed we walked a mile, though it could not have been that far. But surrounded by the lowering darkness and towering trees, I felt the full extent of my solitude here more than I had since leaving the ship at Boston Harbor. I was alone, in a strange, new land.

And yet, not quite as alone as I might have been. Somewhere in this New World was Duncan Wallace. And I wondered if he might be staring in awe at the virgin forests, or gazing up at the same purple sky. I wondered if he thought of me.

Ebony tugged at her reins, and I glanced ahead to see the stream, wide and bubbling like an excited child. I released her, and she trotted to its bank and bent to drink from its crystalline waters.

Hands on my hips, I inspected the lush grasses here. “‘Tis a good spot,” I told the mare. “Tonight, we’ll sleep right here.” Using the length of worn and fraying rope the liveryman had given me, I picketed Ebony in a spot where she could reach both the sweet grasses and the water. Then I tossed my bag on the ground to use as a pillow. My cloak would be my blanket, the grassy ground, my bed. 'Twould do quite nicely.