It was another clear, cold day, sunny with a wintry brightness and almost no wind. Sitting on the old tombstone we had once used as our altar, I felt almost shaky with nervousness and adrenaline and lack of food. Would Cal come? Would he try to hurt me again? There was no way to know except by calling him. Closing my eyes, trying to ignore the rumbling of my stomach, I sent a witch message to him. Cal. Come to me, Cal. Then I sat back and waited.
Before, when I had called Cal, he had usually come within minutes. This time the wait seemed endless. My butt had turned numb on the cold stone before he appeared, gliding silently between the overgrown juniper trees. My eyes registered his appearance, and I was glad it was broad daylight and that I wasn't alone on a dark road.
"Morgan." His voice was soft as a breeze, and I felt it rather than heard it. He walked toward me with no sound, as if the dried leaves underfoot were silenced. I was drawn to his beautiful face, which was both guarded and hopeful.
"Thanks for coming," I said, and I suddenly knew without a doubt that he'd been waiting, scanning the area, making sure I was alone. The last time we were in this place, he had overpowered me and kidnapped me in my car. This time, despite some lingering fear, I felt stronger, more prepared. This time, too, I was ready to call Hunter at a moment's notice.
"I was so glad to hear from you," he said, coming to stand in front of me. He reached out and put his hands on my knees, and I drew back from the familiarity. "There's so much I need to talk to you about. So much I need to tell you, to share with you. But I didn't know how much Giomanach had influenced you." He spat Hunter's coven name, and I frowned.
"Cal, I need to know," I said, getting to the point. "Have you really broken away from Selene? Do you really want to stop her?"
He again put his hands on my knees. They felt warm through my jeans, against my cold flesh. "Yes," he said, leaning close. "I'm finished with Selene. She's my mother, and I always had a son's loyalty to her. That's not hard to believe, is it? But now I see that what she does is wrong, that it's wrong for her to call on the dark side. I don't want any part of it. I choose you, Morgan. I love you."
I pushed his hands off my knees. His brow darkened.
"I remember when you didn't push me away," he said. "I remember when you couldn't get enough of me."
"Cal," I began, and then my anger pushed ahead of my compassion. "That was before you tried to kill me," I said, my voice strong.
"I was trying to save you!" he insisted.
"You were trying to control me!" I countered. "You put binding spells on me! If you had been honest about what Selene wanted, I could have made my own decision about what to do and how to protect myself. But you didn't give me that chance. You wanted all the power; you wanted to decide what was best." As soon as I said that, I realized it was true, and I realized that I had never absolutely trusted Cal, never.
"Morgan," he began, sounding infuriatingly reasonable, "you had just discovered Wicca. Of course I was trying to guide you, to teach you. It's one of the responsibilities of being an initiated witch. I know so much more than you— you saw what happened with Robbie's spell. You were a danger to yourself and others."
My mouth opened in fury, and he went on, "Which doesn't mean I don't love you more than you can imagine. I do, Morgan, I do. I love you so much. You complete me. You're my muirn beatha dan, my soul's other half. We're supposed to be together. We're supposed to make magick together. Our powers could be more awesome than anything anyone's ever seen. But we have to do it together."
I swallowed. This was so hard. Why did it still hurt so much, after all Cal had done to me? "No, Cal. We're not going to be together. We're not muirn beatha dans."
"That's what you think now," he said. "But you're wrong."
I looked deeply into his golden eyes and saw a spark of what looked like madness. Goddess! My blood turned to ice, and I felt incredibly stupid, meeting him here alone.
"Morgan, I love you," Cal said cajolingly. He stepped closer to me, his eyes hooded in the look that had never before failed to make me melt inside. "Please be mine."
My breath became more shallow as I wondered how to extricate myself from this. This Cal wasn't the Cal I had known. Had that person ever existed? I couldn't tell. All I knew was that now, here, I had to get away from him. He frightened me. He repulsed me.
Just like that, like extinguishing a candle with my fingertips, my leftover love for him died. I felt it in my heart, as if a dark shard of glass had been pulled out, leaving a bleeding wound. My throat closed and I wanted to cry, to mourn for the death of the naive Morgan who had once been so incredibly happy with this falsehood.
"No, Cal," I said. "I can't."
His face darkened, and he looked at me. "Morgan, you're not thinking clearly," he said, a tone of warning in his voice. "This is me. I love you. We're lovers."
"We were never lovers," I said. "And I don't love you."
"Morgan, listen to me," Cal said.
"You're too late, Sgath," said Hunter's voice, cold and hard, and Cal and I both jumped. How had he come up without our feeling it?
"There's nothing for you to hunt here, Giomanach," Cal spat. "No lives for you to destroy, no magick you can strip away."
I felt a wave of power welling up from Cal, and I scrambled off the tombstone. I had once been caught between Cal and Hunter during a battle. I didn't want to go through it again.
"Hunter, why are you here?" I asked.
"I felt something dark here. I came to investigate," he said tightly, not taking his eyes off Cal. "It's my job. It was you who cut the brakes in my car, wasn't it, Sgath? You who sawed through the stair supports."
"That's right." Cal grinned at Hunter, a feral baring of teeth. "Don't you wonder what else is waiting for you?"
"Why didn't you use magick?" Hunter pressed. "Is it because without Selene, you have nothing of your own? No power? No will?"
Cal's eyes narrowed, and his hands clenched. "I didn't use magick because I didn't want to waste it on you. I am much stronger than you will ever be."
"Only when you're with Morgan," Hunter said coldly. "Not on your own. You're nothing on your own. Morgan knows that. That's why she's here."
I started to say it was not, but Cal turned on me. "You! You lured me here, to turn me in to him."
"I wanted to talk to you!" I cried. "I had no idea Hunter would be here."
Hunter turned his implacable gaze on me. "How could you go behind my back after all we've talked about?" he asked in a cold, measured voice. "How could you still love him?" He flung out his hand at Cal.
"I don't love him!" I screamed, and in the same instant Cal threw up his hands and began to chant a spell. The language he used was unfamiliar, ugly, full of guttural sounds.
Hunter let out a low growl. I sucked in my breath as I saw that his athame was in his hand, the single sapphire in its hilt flashing as it caught the late winter sun. Stepping back, I saw how he and Cal were facing each other, saw the violence ready to erupt. Damn them! I couldn't go through this again, not Cal and Hunter trying to kill each other, myself frozen, an athame leaving my hand and sailing through the intense cold. ..
No. That was another time, another place. Another Morgan. I felt power rise inside me like a storm. I had to put an end to this. I had to.
"Clathna berrin, ne ith rah." The ancient Celtic words poured from my lips, and I spat them into the daylight. Hunter and Cal both spun to look at me, their eyes wide. "Clathna ten ne fearth ullna stath," I said, my voice growing stronger. "Morach bis, mea cern, cern mea." I knew exactly what I was doing but couldn't tell where it was coming from or how I knew it. I snapped my arms open wide, to encompass both of them, and watched with a strange, fierce joy as their knees buckled and they sank, one at a time, to the ground. "Clathna berrin, ne ith rah!" I shouted, and then they were on their hands and knees, helpless against the force of my will.