I turned to look at the driver’s side. My head throbbed with the motion, the muscles in my neck stiff and unyielding, but as my gaze traveled to the door, I froze at the sight of the small hole. It was clean through.
My stomach dropped as I envisioned where it would have aligned—directly with Gage’s middle. I panicked. Had he been shot? Was he hurt? I searched the driver’s seat, but I couldn’t find any holes in the leather material. Not satisfied, I cut my gaze back to Gage. He was nowhere to be found. The SUV remained silent and motionless.
It didn’t appear that there were any overt threats around, and all I could think was that I needed to see Gage. Had the bullet hit him? Was he hurt? Without letting logic overrule my actions, I reached for the door handle and opened the door. The movement brought a lancing pain to my forehead, and I felt a trickle of something sticky and sluggish run down the side of my face. I pushed my hand to the spot. It came away coated with blood. I’d hit the passenger door harder than I’d thought.
There was a sharp, stabbing tingle in the middle of my back. It was annoying enough to be noticeable, annoying enough to hurt, but I wasn’t to be perturbed. Gage needed me. Gritting my teeth, I gripped the door handle and used it as a lever to pull myself out of the car. As I rose to my full height, that tingle in the middle of my back stabbed again, and this time, it was as though scalding liquid had been poured directly onto my skin.
My breath whooshed out in an agonized rush, but before I could cry out, just as suddenly as it appeared, the pain was gone. A dark foreboding shiver raced down my spine, and I paused.
That was when a huge blast detonated behind me.
23
Gage
I wasn’t surprised to find the security guard from the airport in the black SUV.
She stared unblinking through the front windscreen. The shot I’d fired was true, dead center in her forehead. I flicked a glance at her name badge and gritted my teeth as I gave the victim her name.
Sandra Morgan.
Another life that had been taken too soon. And one man was accountable—Talorgan.
“No more,” I hissed, my fingers clenching at the burgeoning tide of anger that clung to me like a second skin.
It was well and truly time to finish this. I refused to pass this legacy—this curse—onto my son. We all deserved it; every ancestor who’d inherited the burden of fulfilling Cailleach’s desire. Because our families had paid the price for what had happened centuries before and many generations over. When would this war end?
Nora thought she’d be the one to end it. And I’d believed her, especially when the tattoos began appearing on Ian and McKenzie’s bodies. We’d understood that the descendants were finally aligning, that what was prophesied was finally coming to be. But that hope had been short-lived, for not soon after, Reuben had died, and then, more recently, Nora.
I couldn’t forgive her for keeping Brydie a secret these last three years. Probably never would. Reuben’s memory was also tarnished by his actions; he had chosen love over loyalty. And look where that had gotten him. Dead.
To make matters worse, Brydie was a Daughter of Winter who had no idea about the family legacy. No idea about how to tap into her magic. And no idea about how to wield that magic. She’d never trained for battle, never imagined that she’d have to fight an immortal Druid for everyone’s salvation.
It sounded like a fool’s errand. A recipe for death. The odds weren’t in our favor. But there was a reason why I persevered with this whole stinking mission. Something was there that hadn’t been there before. It wasn’t just prophecy either—it was Brydie.
I could feel something in Brydie that I’d never felt from Nora. My sixth sense—my otherworld senses—were at peace. That tiny thread of tension that I had always carried within had gone the moment I’d met her. As if whatever smoldered inside me had finally banked, rather than demanding to be released. My blood no longer boiled with an intensity that threatened to spill at any time; instead, it settled with icy calm.
I knew the reality of the task I had before me. Training the descendant would not be easy. It was my job to ensure her powers were awakened, nurtured, and strengthened, and I needed to approach the task carefully, for if misguided, her abilities would turn or become Dormant.
I’d never trained anyone her age before. She was well past the age of the initiates I’d trained at the Institute. Between ten and thirteen, their minds were open to embracing magic, to believing in something ‘other’. And to these initiates, magic wasn’t foreign. It was a belief system they’d been born into, the legacy of their family line.
My thoughts turned to the task before me. Reaching up, I closed Sandra Morgan’s eyelids, grimacing as the movement pulled at the wound in my side. Stepping back, I opened the left side of my leather jacket, frowning at the damp patch spreading on my black tee shirt. I could feel the effects of the bullet draining my energy and knew I would need to heal the wound as soon as I’d dealt with the evidence.
I placed my hand on the security guard’s forehead, just above the skin, and concentrated on removing the bullet. Just as it popped out of her forehead, the back of my neck burned with an acidic intensity. My senses screamed with urgency, and I turned swiftly, seeking the source of the threat.
The sports car was on the other side of the road, and my gaze latched onto the small figure who was about to exit the car. I opened my mouth to roar a warning, but I was too late, because at that moment, an explosion detonated from the boot of the car.
The blast was deafening.
There was a moment of silence before it was closely followed by a high-pitched whine of noise. A shockwave of wind and heat barreled into me with a force that knocked me to my knees. There was excruciating pain in my ears, and I could feel a wet trickle leach down the side of my neck.
I ignored it, for I had only one thought, one desire. Brydie!
Blinking the grit out of my eyes and fighting the pain that leached from every surface of my body, I pushed to my knees, searching for her form. There! She was lying face down on the grass verge, under the cover of the forest that loomed behind.
Gritting my teeth, I clutched one hand to the bullet wound in my side and hauled myself to my feet. Half running, half stumbling, I raced to her still form. My first sight of her caused my breath to squeeze painfully in my chest. Her back was a mangled mess of burns, the clothes charred and melted down to her skin. Ignoring the panic that threatened to take over, I didn’t pause, grabbing her shoulders and rolling her onto her back.
As soon as my hands touched her skin, I felt her heartbeat. It was dangerously sluggish. Tuning into my senses, I held my hands above her chest, searching her body for any other signs of trauma. My jaw clenched as I sensed the extent of her injuries. Aside from her grisly surface wounds, a rib had punctured her right lung, and a hunk of shrapnel had embedded itself into her spine.
I shifted my hands, hovering them above her face. Her skin was deathly pale in stark contrast to the dirt smudging her forehead and cheekbones. My senses confirmed what I’d expected: her eardrums were perforated. But it wasn’t that discovery which made my heart skip a beat—it was the fact that her brain had hemorrhaged at the left frontal lobe. The fissure was the size of an orange, and I knew the damage would be permanent if I didn’t move quickly.