Summary – Hunter arrives in Widows Vale with his mentor Ciaran MacEwan. There he meets his half brother Cal and his girlfriend Morgan, whom he feels strangely drawn to, and is sucked into a cat and mouse game that has played between Ciaran and Selene Belltower for years and on top of it all he is reunited with his cousin Sky who is a Seeker for the International Council of Witches and has been hunting him down for years.
Disclaimer: These are all Cate Tiernans toys. They're just in my playground.
A/N: So update for you guys, I promise this story will be complete this year. My life was hectic enough and then my son came along and now its just crazy! Lol He's sleeping soundly at the minute which is rare so I'll see if I can produce another awesome chapter for you. Enjoy.
That bastard half brother of mine is going to pay! If he thinks I'm going to let him get away with breaking up me and Morgan like that he is sorely mistaken! He will pay with his life!
Calhoun
Sky was on the phone to the council all night, it didn't sound like they were being supportive but I left her to it and went up to Morgan and joined her on the bed.
I lay beside her watching her sleep. I watched her chest rise and fall with her deep even breathing and wondered if I would ever get to be this close and see her this peaceful again once I told her the truth.
I struggled to find sleep myself. I couldn't tear my eyes away from her and I didn't want to. I just laid there breathing her in, enjoying her presence beside mine, feeling more at peace than I ever have in my entire life the darkness within was at its most quiet, these were the times I was winning, and it was her. It was all her.
As I noticed the morning sunlight peaking through between the gap of the closed curtains, with my uncanny sense of time I knew it was around 7am. I went downstairs to retrieve a glass of water for Morgan, Sky was still buzzing around making phone calls. She looked pissed so I didn't get in her way.
When I got back to the bedroom, Morgan hadn't even stirred. I placed the glass on the bedside table and brushed the hair off her face, "Morgan," I urged her awake softly.
She responded with a grunt and batted my hand away, in all the horror that was my life she brought a smile to my face.
"Morgan," I tried again a bit louder this time and tapped her shoulder gently
Her eyes fluttered, trying to open and she groaned, "Good Morning Sunshine," I sang playfully. She sat herself up, her eyes finally open, I handed her the glass of water, "How are you feeling?" I asked, she groaned an inaudible response and downed the water, I chuckled.
I placed my forefinger on her forehead and murmured a little spell to ease the hangover, the paleness instantly left her face and her cheeks flushed once again with color, she looked at me thankfully.
"What time is it?" she asked finally
"Ten past Seven," I replied
Her eyes widened with horror, "Oh shoot!" she cried, "I fell asleep before calling my parents they're going to freak out,"
"Morgan calm down. Just borrow Sky's phone, call your parents, let them know your safe and we'll go pick up some breakfast from somewhere and we'll talk,"
She shot me an incredulous look, "Hunter, you don't understand, my parents will kill me, my ass will be grounded after this. I'm already on thin ice." she jumped up off the bed, "Could you take me home?" she asked,
"Morgan, there are things that you need to know," I insisted, "It's important that I tell you what's going on,"
"Hunter, I have the spelled Morganite for now, you'll know if I'm in danger won't you," I nodded, "Knowing my parents they are probably missing church this morning going out of their minds with worry waiting for me, so they'll end up going to tonight's mass instead, you could swing by then and we'll talk?"
"Ok," I acquiesced, "deal"
As we headed downstairs Sky had crashed out on the sofa, "Will you thank her for me?" Morgan asked
"Of course," I grabbed my jacket and car keys and lead Morgan to the car.
"I am so dead," She muttered. I cast a glance over at her and noticed she was chewing on her nails, and I could sense how worried she was.
She was from a whole different world than the one I was from, the things that she worried about compared to the things that I worried about were light years apart. But just being who she is and what she is would soon open her up to the bigger fears I knew only too well, fears that would make her angry Catholic parents seem like fluffy kittens. This was just a part of the innocence that I didn't want to take from her, but it was necessary to keep her safe.
She gave me directions to her house and thanked me again when we pulled up, she put her arms around me and kissed my cheek and for that moment it felt like the Taibhs had completely disappeared and I was just me again. I felt relief and I wanted that feeling permenantly.
"Hunter, about these... feelings we have for each other..." she began
"I know," she didn't need to explain, "It's too soon right now, I'll be here waiting, that is if you still want me to after our talk,"
She frowned for a moment, trying to work out what that meant, then looked up at her house with dread.
"Would you like me to go with you?" I asked
She let out a nervous chuckle, "Out all night and come home in the morning with a boy, yeah I don't think that's going to help,"
"What are you going to tell them?" I asked
"The truth... mostly, I'll just leave out the part about the drinking, just that I broke up with Cal, couldn't face home, was too upset, stayed with a friend." she then looked at me, "Hopefully the sympathy of my broken heart might make them go easy on me," she tried to make light of her pain but I could sense how much it hurts her and in response I felt a pang of guilt and my heart ached for her. I didn't like her being in pain.
"Wish me luck," she said and sucked in a breath before opening the car door
"Good luck," I called after her. I sat and watched her go into her house hoping she didn't get into too much trouble, especially the kind that would make it harder for me to see her.
On the way back to Sky's I picked up some breakfast and coffee, the both of us definitely needed the pick me up. I wondered if she got anywhere with the council.
Inside the house Sky was awake already, the living room was suddenly home to several large boxes full of books and she was going through some old books of shadows, it appeared as if she was looking for something specific.
"How'd you get on with the council?" I asked, putting the breakfast down on the coffee table.
"They're a bunch of prattling nitwits!" She exclaimed, "they won't send a team out until I have something more concrete" She grabbed for a bagel and chugged back some coffee and muttered a thank you.
"What's more concrete than my testimony? What did you tell them?" I asked
"They said they need more evidence before they can use up their resources. But they should be sending out all their man power on this even if it was just a rumour, I know I would. You can't risk something as huge as this! I told them everything you told me and that it came from a source who is close to Ciaran and wishes to stay anonymous for their own safety" she explained
"Why didn't you tell them it was me?"
"Because they don't know about you Hunter, they know you disappeared years ago but they don't know I've seen you again and I'd like to keep it that way,"
"Why?" I asked,
Sky stopped her pacing, "Because you've been completely off their radar, Hunter, if they knew that you've been with Ciaran all these years you'll be tried and punished along with the rest of Amyranth and I've always known that you haven't been in control of yourself, that the Taibhs was."
She was trying to protect me? She sensed my surprise and looked at me, "You forget, dear cousin, that I knew you better than anyone and I know that even though you called upon that dark spirit, it was out of grief. The very core of who you are Giomanach, is not dark. The council won't care about that detail, but I do. I will get that thing out of you and I will get my cousin back." She promised, and continued searching through the boxes of books, pulling out big volumes, reading the spines, mentally debating which ones would help.
"I will not allow them to strip you of your magick because of something you had no control of, when this is over all they need to know is that you were Selene's captive all these years as a revenge ploy on Daniel Niall," she said finally
"You know about Da and Selene?" I asked
"In my line of work romantic involvements between witches is pretty much the most common kind of information my contacts and leads are more privy to and seeing as its not typically the most dangerous knowledge to give up, it's usually the information they are most likely to share with me,"
"Thank you, Sky," I was truly grateful for her help, "Do you need any help?" I gestured to the books she was ransacking through.
"I'm trying to find a way to remove that bloody darkness from you, do you recall what type of Taibhs you called on?" She asked, "There are references here to multiple variations,"
We discussed what I remembered about doing the spell that called on the Taibhs, together we pawed through books and Sky called some of her contacts to find a way to unpossess me for lack of a better term.
"You said last night that you can now feel the Taibhs as separate entity?" Sky asked
"Yes, that's right, I think when I was going along with what it wanted I couldn't sense it because it had no reason to fight me, I was doing it's will unaware. But ever since I've been helping Morgan, resisting the urges and then finally seeing the truth I've begun to feel it as a separate entity I feel it's hunger and its anger," I elaborated for her
"How interesting, almost as if it's become self aware?"
"Yes, I can feel that the Taibhs wants to be as free of me as I of it,"
"You've been feeding it so much power over the years that it's grown and become something more," Sky mused
"We can't allow it to be free, Sky, who knows what it could be capable of if we released it. All this time I've been the only thing stopping it from ripping through the world draining the life and power from anything it meets,"
"I think you're right, we need to find a way to safely extract it," she agreed, "Can it be destroyed?"
"I don't know, I know it doesn't want any harm to come to me so I think if it's host were to die, it would die along with it," I felt the spirit roar within me, angry that we were talking about it and it gave me hope that we were heading along the right lines.
"Well that's not an option" Sky said, "What if we transferred it to an object and destroyed that?"
The Taibhs seemed to like that idea, so I knew it wasn't the right answer, "Destroying the object would just free the spirit, but we wouldn't need to destroy and inanimate object we could just hide it away,"
"We could have the council lock it away in one of their vaults" Sky suggested. I agreed and felt the spirits anger again.
"Are you listening to it now?" Sky seemed to pick up on my inner demon
I nodded, "It's not happy," I warned her
"Then let's get started,"