Lost Wanderer Awakened - Book One of the Airendell Chronicles (32 page)

“No Luca, I released it before I slammed the
door. That was all me.” She slowly eases herself down his body,
freeing his arms and snuggling into his perfect hard chest. They
are both lost in thought for several minutes then Luca asks, “What
do you suppose it means? You seem to be getting your magic back
spontaneously. I would almost swear you are no longer mortal. You
have never been this strong on your own, baby,” he murmurs in
amazement.

“I don’t know Luca. But I am truly glad we
are going to see Brigid and some of the others from Airendell. I
really want to see what they think might be going on. I am very
confident in my growing strength, but I wish we had another First
Order weaver nearby. I am nearly useless at sorting this puzzle out
until I get my memories back.”

“Breena is in New Orleans,” he admits
quietly.

“Breena? My sister is in New Orleans? Can you
take me to see her?” Morna is ecstatic at the news until she
notices the frown on Luca’s face. “What’s wrong Luca?” she asks
quietly.

Luca sits up in bed and looks very
uncomfortable. “I am not sure how to explain this. Oh hell! Morna,
I never wanted to share any of that time with you. I always prayed
it would never come up. I am so ashamed. After you left me the
first time…” he hesitates.

“You mean when I died?” she asks quietly.

“Yes, I still have a hard time saying it. I
am sorry, I didn’t mean to make it sound like you meant to leave
me. But I went out of my mind with grief and guilt. I was selfish
and self-absorbed. I just gave up for few years. I was consumed
with the fear that the witch’s curse wouldn’t work and you were
truly gone. And if the curse did work, I just couldn’t believe I
would ever be able to find you again. To me you were just lost. I
even briefly contemplated giving in to the darker side of my nature
to seek forgetfulness. But I did seriously consider finding someone
capable destroying me. I am ashamed to admit it,” he confesses.

“After three winters Breena came to see me.
In no uncertain terms she told me I was failing the faith you had
maintained in me after the change and that I was dishonoring your
memory and failing my obligations to… Anyway, we argued bitterly,
and I accused her of meddling. I really lashed out and accused her
of just seeking a wild romp with a vampire. I asked her who was
truly dishonoring your memory. I was a real bastard to her.” Luca
rakes his hands through his hair, looking chagrined over what he
had done. “I had not been hunting in months, I was bloodthirsty and
I was so filled with uncontrollable rage. I shoved her away from
me, with all my strength. She flew 50 feet or more and slammed into
our cottage and broke some bones and received a nasty
concussion.”

Luca rakes his face with his hands. “Morna, I
could have killed your sister. I was absolutely crazed, completely
out of mind. I had allowed myself to get so wrapped up in my grief
and my rage that I was out of control. When I realized I had
injured her, I came to my senses. I picked her up and carried her
into our cottage and tried to perform the healing spells and songs.
But I was too crazed with thirst to perform them correctly, so I
hunted and came back and successfully performed the spells.”

“But it was couple of days before she was
completely healed. After she healed she stayed a few more days to
talk to me, to be a friend to me. Breena really saved my life. She
was so confident that you and I would be reunited. She predicted
that you would come back stronger and stronger until we were able
to break the curse. She made me see that I had to focus on my
duties as…She helped me to leave the glen and start looking for
you. To stop wallowing in self-pity.”

“Anyway, she really brought me back to
myself. Breena tried to make Magdrid see that she had been wrong in
some assumptions she had made about me after the change. Anyway, it
didn’t go well. Breena was humiliated and disgusted with Magdrid
who hinted to her that she believed us guilty of improprieties.
Even the Elders were no support.”

“I’m not surprised. Magdrid controlled the
Elders pretty tightly.” Morna muses thoughtfully, trying to grasp
some niggling worry that she just can’t bring into focus. She
shakes herself mentally and focuses on what Luca is telling
her.

Luca looks at her questioningly, wondering
how she remembered that, and then he continues speaking, “Breena
was so angry she left Airendell and has never been back. She
wandered around Europe for a time, helping me search for you. t
first we had no idea how we might be able to find you.

We couldn’t weave a successful finding spell
because you look different in each incarnation. Do you remember
that one must be able to visualize the person that you are
searching for in order to use that spell?” Morna nods as she
absorbs this information. “But it was Breena who saw the first
signs of your return in Verona. She learned how to track your
psychic energy and taught me how to do it. She also began getting
visions of a tall, black haired woman with emerald green eyes. In
her gut, she just knew it was you. After a few years of visions,
she finally saw enough to realize that you were in Verona, Italy.
Breena had already reasoned that you might come back near a
gateway, so we had already been focusing our efforts near gateways.
She found you but wasn’t sure if it was you or not. But I could
tell it was you.”

“How could you tell, Luca?” Morna asks as she
strokes his face tenderly.

“Your smell, baby. In every incarnation you
smell and taste exactly the same way. Oddly enough, scent was one
of the best tracking tools I had to find you. I learned how to
expand my vampire abilities. Now they are ’magically enhanced’.
Your body and face may change, even your personality, to a degree…
but not your scent. Your sweet, alluring scent that calls out to me
like a siren‘s song and holds me in its thrall is always the
same.”

Morna blushes at the look on his face when he
speaks of her scent and its effect on him. He looks sexually
excited, love struck, and half-starved all at the same time. She
leans in and kisses him gently, feeling overwhelmed by his love for
her and strength of his convictions that have kept her safe for all
of these centuries even though he is mass of writing emotion, blood
thirst and sexual need because of her scent and his love for
her.

“Breena tried to help me restore your
memories of who you really are. But we made a real mess of it.
Trying to absorb that knowledge made your life a living hell,
physically and emotionally. Breena couldn’t stand seeing you suffer
so much. Her ability to experience what others are feeling almost
drove her insane. After a few arguments between her and I about
what was best for you, she eventually came to the New World and has
been living around New Orleans ever since. I have never gone down
there to visit her, I really don’t know if she would welcome me or
not. She essentially lost her homeland and her sister because of
me.”

Morna had sat quietly and listened to his
story. She thinks back over everything he had told her, and then
she suddenly starts shouting in utter rage and helplessness, “I am
so angry with you I could, I could… er… how could you consider
giving up on yourself like that? How could you possibly consider
dying! The world is always supposed to have you in it! Don’t you
know that?” She throws herself at him, hits him several more times
as her rage expends itself, and then collapses in his arms, sobbing
uncontrollably.

Luca holds her close stroking her hair and
murmuring assurances to her softly. When she has calmed down a
little, he sets her away from him, strokes her face gently and
says, “Did you not contemplate the very same thing? I saw you
Morna. I saw you standing there on the edge of that horrible pit,
those many times you drove out to that granite quarry in the middle
of the night. You don’t know how many times I nearly took you away
by force to try to make you remember who we are. To make you
remember why you had to live. Why you could not give in to your
grief and your pain.”

“I was in your house on those dark nights
when you poured all those pills in to your hands and begged God to
release you. I was there Morna! I saw you struggle with the lure of
ending it all and knowing it would be the wrong thing to do. I saw
stand in your kitchen staring at the kitchen knife you had
sharpened endlessly. It wasn’t hard to guess what you were
thinking. I saw it all Morna, and I had to stand back and let you
come back to yourself on your own. I didn’t have a choice because
every overture I made towards you, you rebuffed until I showed up
at the bar with Seth to play pool. Don’t you realize that was hell
for me, but if I had forced the memories on you, you might not have
been able to cope. You couldn’t cope with the memories in Verona.
You were crippled with pain during your waking hours. I ruined your
life that time by telling you more than you were ready to hear. So
I had to stand by, and watch,” he finishes in a voice of a man
tortured beyond his ability to endure. He looks into her shocked
eyes, “I had to just stand by… powerless.”

At first she listens to his words in shock
and then disbelief. “Did I really do those things?” When she reads
the utter pain in his eyes she knows that she truly was lost.
“Luca, I swear to you, I do not remember doing any of that. I must
truly have been possessed by grief over the children. I am so
sorry. Luca. Please believe me,” she’s weeping openly and brokenly
now. “Please…”

“Of course I believe you Morna. I understand,
you were not yourself. I was not myself. Loss can crush a soul. We
are living proof of that. But it can also bring forth a stronger
soul. I think of us as being forged by fire, fire that burns the
very soul of those without enough mettle to survive. But amazingly,
we both survived. We survived and we are again together. And look
at you! Breena was right. You are wiser, more mature, and stronger
than ever. And I am more committed than ever to be the man you
always believed me to be. We are made better by all the hell we
have endured! But mostly by our love for each other.”

Luca takes her in his arms to comfort her, to
comfort himself. He kisses her tears away. Strokes her face, and
holds her tightly. Eventually they find themselves entwined in each
other’s arm and legs. Making slow and gentle love, the kind that
heals wounds, and seals bonds. Eventually they fall silent and
still in each other’s arms. Morna drifts off to sleep a few hours
before the sun comes up. Luca holds her close to him as she sleeps,
and vows silently to find a way to keep her at his side forever
this time. When she gets chilled he is so reluctant to let go of
his hold on her that, he wraps her in the quilt she had made for
him over two hundred years ago and continues to hold her close as
she sleeps.

At 6:00 her cell phone rings. Luca mutters
under his breath, “Who hell would be calling her this early.” He
realizes it might be the halfway house with an emergency or
something could be wrong with Mike, so he goes and retrieves her
phone out of her purse and takes it to her.

“Morna your phone is ringing,” he whispers as
he shakes her awake. She reaches out to take the phone, snaps it
open and whispers, “Hello?”

CHAPTER 14 - SISTERS

Morna sits straight up in the bed instantly
awake because Breena is on the other end of the line. Morna has the
presence of mind to push the speaker button so Luca can easily hear
the voice on the other end.

“Morna, wake up! This is Breena!”

“Breena, my sister?” Well duh! Do you know
any other women named Breena?

“Yes silly, your sister. Is Luca
listening?”

“Yes, he is,” breathes Morna.

“I’m here Breena, what is wrong?” Luca
interjects.

“Nothing is wrong, everything might be right…
finally. Listen to me you two. I haven’t been snooping on you two.
I promise I wasn’t seeking a vision of you two, it just came to me.
I know you have been healing and Luca has been trying to resume his
relationship with you. And you have been on my mind, but I wasn’t
poking my nose in, I promise. But you came to me in a very long and
I must say exciting vision last night. You two do not do anything
halfway do you?” She laughs and then says, “Sorry. I can’t help
teasing my little sister. But seriously. I saw, rather I
experienced everything.”

Morna gasps. Everything?

“Listen, don’t waste time being embarrassed
or mad at me, I didn’t do it on purpose. But I came to a
realization that Morna and I can join our spirits, our powers,
something… I am not sure exactly, but we can connect in a way we
never have before…”

Morna and Luca look at each other in
surprise. Morna is more than a little embarrassed, but doesn’t say
anything as Breena continues talking. “And there’s my research over
the last 500 years on breaking curses, it has led me to a very,
very ancient passage about an assembly of the magical and the
supernatural that can accuse and find guilty anyone who enacts an
unfair, unreasonable, and unjust curse on an innocent, and reverse
the curse! Don’t you see? You may be nearing the end of this
nightmare?”

“We must gather as many of our friends as we
can in Chicago next week. Morna, you have to remember everything,
and soon. We are going to have to take you through all the
histories and lore until your memory kicks in or something to that
effect.“ Breena breathes excitedly.

“There is someone very, very special and very
important waiting for you to get your memory back. Don’t worry
Luca, I am not going to force Morna’s memory. I know how painful
that is for her. I wouldn’t ever make that mistake again. It would
only be counterproductive for me to try to force her to hear what
she can’t remember. But she needs to be surrounded by her family
and friends and soon!”