Tira nodded for what had to be the hundredth time. She knew all of this. For years her mom had been preparing her for this moment.
The Gift of praenuntio was different from all other Goddess Gifts in the fact that it was cumulative. When Tira accepted the mantle of praenuntio, she agreed to accept the collective memories of the boschetta back to ancient times. Though she may never have need to use them, Tira would have access to almost three thousand years of thoughts, emotions and memories of the streghe who had come before.
Those memories would be stored in her brain, as they were in her mom’s, until she had need of them or she passed them on to the next generation.
She’d also accept a huge portion of her mom’s ability with the transfer of memory because it could be done no other way.
Tira knew all the pros and the cons. She’d been debating them for years and her fear had always won out over her sense of duty.
But these past few hours with Nic and Duke had made her realize she’d let that fear dictate her life for too long. She’d been weak. If she’d been stronger, she could have spent the last several years living her life with the men she loved instead of living only half a life without them while waiting for Nic’s death.
Weak and stupid.
She could have saved her mother some of the anguish of the past year, slowly losing her mind to the visions.
No more.
“I know everything, Lady. And I’m ready. Now.”
Nortia didn’t hesitate. “Kotev, Margie,” she called to the streghe waiting in the front room. “Let’s do this.”
“Kaine, gods damn it, shift!”
Duke had his hand over the wound on Kaine’s stomach as it pumped blood through his fingers.
“No.” Kaine shook her head as she lay on the porch where she’d fallen after John’s gun had gone off. “Can’t.”
“Yes, you fucking can! I’m ordering you to do it now. Right now!”
Behind him, Duke heard the labored breathing of the eteri who Nic held with one arm around his neck restricting his breathing and using his other hand to crush the guy’s wrists together.
Duke didn’t care if Nic killed the fucker.
If Kaine died, he’d tear the guy limb from limb.
Her pain-filled brown eyes slid to where Nic stood with the eteri.
A minute ago, Nic had jumped the guy from behind but Kaine had tipped off John to the imminent attack.
Duke had reached for the gun, the gun had gone off…and Kaine had cried out in pain.
“Kaine, you’re going to die if you don’t shift.”
Once more she looked at the eteri and Duke automatically followed her gaze. The guy continued to struggle against Nic’s hold, his eyes glued to Kaine. To the wound in her stomach.
“Medic,” he finally breathed the word, “I’m a medic. Let me—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Nic growled in the guy’s ear. “She doesn’t need any more of your help.”
No, Kaine needed to shift. The change would knit her body back together. But she was holding back and Duke finally realized why. Greek fucking tragedy.
“Shit, Kaine, I promise. I promise he won’t remember. We’ll wipe his memories clean.”
The eteri wouldn’t remember what she was. Duke instinctively knew that was the reason she was holding back. She didn’t want the guy to see her shift.
And she was willing to die for it.
Well, Duke wasn’t willing to give her up. He’d promise her anything. He refused to lose the woman who’d become more than a partner. She was the sister he’d never had. Sarcastic and bitterly funny when she wasn’t quiet and thoughtful, Kaine had to listen. She had to obey.
“You swear?” she finally said, her eyes wide and filled with so much agony.
“On my pelt, I swear. He won’t remember. Just do it.”
After another glance at the eteri, still struggling against Nic’s hold, she rolled into a ball and let the magic take her.
As he moved away to give her room, Duke heard the eteri gasp, though probably not his last. If Kaine didn’t make it, Nic would make sure he didn’t breathe too many more.
Though most lucani considered it bad manners, Duke watched as Kaine called forth her pelt. He didn’t look away until she lay, panting, on the porch. No wound marred her fur and Duke finally released the breath he’d been holding.
Standing on her paws, she shook her entire body from snout to tail then sat back on her haunches, staring at Duke.
“No pain? Everything okay?” he asked.
He knew if she was in her skin, she’d give him a smart-ass salute and when he turned his back, she’d probably give him the finger. Now she settled for baring her teeth at him.
But he could tell even that was halfhearted. And the reason for that stood behind him struggling for breath in Nic’s hold.
Rising, Duke stepped forward, his hand shooting out to grab the eteri’s throat. Nic released him a split second before Duke made contact. With his hand on his neck, Duke walked him back against the wall of the house and held him there, pinned like a bug under a microscope.
The guy’s wide, dilated eyes were the only sign that he was freaked out.
Definitely Special Ops, Duke thought before getting down to business.
“We’re done screwing around. Tell us everything or I will kill you.”
Tira had expected the pain.
Agonizing, as if she’d plugged her fingers into a live electrical socket.
Her body jolted against Margie, who held her tight in her arms to keep her upright. Her hands tightened around Kotev’s. The eldest member of the boschetta and the most powerful, Kotev possessed magic that allowed for the absence of Tira’s mom, serving as a conduit for the information to be passed.
The pain seemed to last forever but just as abruptly as it started, it stopped, cut off as if by a switch.
Distantly she heard Nortia tell Margie to step away though Kotev continued to hold her hands. The connection grounded her in some way she couldn’t explain. As if the seventy-year-old with short, steel-gray hair and a body a forty-year-old would envy eased the throbbing pain remaining in her head.
It actually felt as if someone had taken a crowbar, pried open her head and dumped a million tiny little men with jackhammers in her skull.
And each of those jackhammers implanted a memory. Or twenty.
Bits and pieces of memories flashed through her head with each millisecond. People and places she’d never seen, languages she didn’t understand, smells, thoughts, sounds…
“Breathe, Tira. You need to breathe or you’re going to pass out.”
Nortia’s voice somehow made it through the cacophony in her head and she took a deep breath, gulping in much-needed air.
“Now open your eyes,” Nortia continued. “You need to focus on something that isn’t in your head. All that information needs to settle and you need to let it.”
The effort it took to open her eyes was tremendous, like prying off the lid to a box that’d been nailed and glued shut.
With a strength she never would have thought she had, she opened her eyes.
Everything was blurry for seconds but she fought through that, focusing on the large, dark blob directly in front of her.
She blinked and the visions tried to pull her back under. Crimson blood flowed, almost the same color as the licks of flame licking at the feet of the woman on the stake.
No. Blessed Goddess, let me focus.