Witch Unbound by Debbie Cassidy

 

Chapter One

The gunshot echoed around me. I froze, reeling with shock.

This couldn’t be real.

It couldn’t.

But Rune was on the ground with a bullet wound in his head.

This was real.

Rune was dead.

Tor had killed him.

My scream tore at the night as if it were a mortal enemy and the power that had deserted me a little while ago came back online, infusing my limbs with enough strength to break free from Leif’s grip.

I rushed Tor, slamming into him and shoving him back, fists pounding at his chest as hot tears spilled down my cheeks.

“No, no, no! How could you? How could you?”

He didn’t fight back. He didn’t try to stop me. Instead, he fell to his knees, dropped the gun, and wrapped his arms around my waist, pressing his cheek to my abdomen. His powerful body shook with silent sobs that matched mine.

“No…no…”

“I’m sorry, so sorry…” Tor gripped me harder, fingers digging into me, eliciting welcome pain that kept me from slipping into numbness.

I closed my eyes and tipped my head back, fighting the ache in my throat that carried fresh sobs.

This wasn’t Tor’s fault. It wasn’t… He’d done what Rune wanted, what Rune had made him promise to do, because he’d rather be dead than be varga.

I sank my fingers into Tor’s hair, holding him to me as his tears seeped through the material of my top.

“It’s okay. It’ll be okay.” Don’t look at Rune. Don’t… Oh, God.

Leif wrapped his arms around me from behind and buried his head in the crook of my shoulder. His body shook and his tears kissed my skin. Wren stroked my cheek with his furry paw to soothe me. I turned my face away, biting back a fresh wave of sobs, because if I let loose, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop. If I let loose, I’d shatter.

“Rune gone,” Wren whined softly. “Rune dead.”

A pang sliced through my chest, a knife rending my heart in two.

Dead was such a final word, but…Did death have to be the end? My breath quickened as realization dawned, bringing the heat of hope with it.

I gently pushed Tor away and extricated myself from Leif. “I can get him back.” I fell to my knees beside Rune’s dead form and touched his cheek. Still warm. “I’m going to get him back.”

“Cora.” Leif’s hand fell on my shoulder. “He’s dead. There is no coming back from that.”

“Not true.” I could feel him. The connections between the four of us were weak, but they were still there. Still active, which meant there was time. “There’s time to bring him back. I can feel him.”

Tor rubbed his solar plexus. “Shit. I feel him too.” He looked at me, eyes bright with expectation.

I licked my lips, confidence growing. “He’s on his way to Tarrifel. I know the gatekeeper, and I know that whoever runs that place wants me for something, so I’m going in, and I’m going to bring him back whatever it takes.”

I could do this. I had to.

The entity had changed me, fucked with my connection to the guys and my power. It was her fault Rune had been forced to shift, her fault Tor had been forced to kill him, and she was going to make it right.

* * *

Back at the cabin,Tor laid Rune on the sofa in the lounge. The fire crackled merrily in the hearth and the aroma of lasagna filled the air. This was meant to be our getaway. Our second home. A place where we could unwind and connect, but it had become a place of death and blood.

I had to change that. I needed to fix this atrocity.

Leif stood by the fire with a sleepy-looking Wren in his arms and Tor knelt on the floor by Rune’s legs, his eyes glassy and dazed. He’d been forced to look his best friend in the eye and shoot him, and I’d attacked him with fists and curses.

A vise closed around my heart and squeezed. “Tor…” I reached up and stroked his stubbled jaw. “I’m sorry.”

He blinked and then focused on my face. “Bring him back, Cora. Bring him back to us.”

I nodded, blinking back fresh tears. “I will. I promise.”

“Wait, will you be safe?” Leif asked.

“I’ll be fine.”

I smiled at them and dropped Wren a wink before placing a hand on Rune’s chest. He was still warm, still connected to me, and I was going to bring him home.

I closed my eyes and made the jump into Tarrifel.

The world shifted and shattered before spitting me out in darkness. A spot of light sat ahead of me. A beacon to new arrivals. I knew that spot of light. It was the bus stop where the newly deceased hung out before getting a ticket and a ride to…wherever they went from here. Rune had to be there.

I broke into a jog toward it. “Rune! Rune!”

Light kissed my skin and the deserted bus stop taunted me.

He wasn’t here. Oh, God. Was I too late? Panic gripped my throat and squeezed. No. Fuck that. I wouldn’t accept that.

“Loke! Loke, get your ass over here.”

A dark wooden door appeared in front of me, hovering in mid-air. I took it as an invitation and pushed through into a dimly lit room that smelled of incense and sex. The moans of pleasure that drifted to my ears confirmed sex was exactly what the occupants of this room were up to.

Shit. Maybe the door hadn’t been an invitation.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust and settle on the huge bed in the center of the chamber where a woman rode cock, head thrown back, hands kneading her breasts. Something thrashed behind her. A fucking tail.

Oh, shit, she had horns too.

My gaze dropped to the guy.

Loke.

His hands were on her hips, urging her on as she rode him, hips snapping upward to thrust deep. His eyes were closed, dark lashes fanned against his cheeks, head tipped back, jaw tight.

He didn’t make a sound, but the tension in the ripped muscles of his naked body warned of a coming eruption.

Heat rushed up my body and stained my cheeks, but I fought the instinct to look away.

He’d brought me here to rattle me, and I wasn’t about to let him see he’d succeeded.

I crossed my arms and arched a brow. “When you’ve quite finished…”

“Oh, I have. A little while ago, actually.”

I jumped and spun to face Loke as he padded toward me, bare-chested, barefoot, dressed only in loose black pants and carrying a mug. The lamplight played across his torso like a lover’s caress, highlighting the planes and dips that led to the waistband of his pants.

I stared at him and looked back at the bed, where he was now on top of the woman, taut ass pumping as he fucked her into a frenzy.

“Simone is a demon in bed,” Loke said.

“What the fuck?”

He sipped from his mug and smirked. “Time works differently here, Cora. I was wondering when you’d show up.” He tilted his head to the side. “He’s a nice guy, your Rune.”

My pulse leapt. “I want him back, Loke. I need him back.”

He winced. “Yeah, and I might have been able to help you if you’d gotten here sooner.” He tipped his head toward the bed. “But you took your time and I got distracted.”

Behind me Simone let out a long, drawn-out, strangled cry as she climaxed.

“There has to be something you can do, Loke. Something the entity can do. She did this. She fucked with me and changed me and now my power is on the fritz and…And Rune paid the price.”

His dark eyes hardened. “The entity saved your life. Or have you forgotten that part?”

“So this is some kind of payback? A life for a life?”

“You’re not thinking straight, Cora. I just told you I’d have been happy to help if you’d gotten here sooner. There are certain concessions surrounding you, certain restrictions and certain liberties, but once the bus has driven off, even I can’t intervene.”

My heart sank even as my mind rebelled, refusing to give up. “Please… Loke, there has to be something you can do. Some loophole…anything.”

He sighed. “Look, Cora, once a soul gets on that bus, they begin a new journey. It’s a rebirth. A new life. Memories of the past are locked away. Tarrifel is the next stage in a supernatural’s existence, just like your time on the earthly plane is one stage in many. Rune has moved on.”

Moved on? No. There was time. I could feel him. “He might have gotten on that bus, but he’s still connected to me. There’s time, isn’t there?” His eyes flinched. “What aren’t you telling me, Loke?”

“Smart women are my kryptonite.” He approached, stopping a foot away. “There is one option, but it’s risky.” Once again he tilted his head to the side, but this time it seemed as if he was listening to something. “Tsk. I can’t tell you.”

“What? Why not?”

He leaned in slightly and winced. “She doesn’t want you to know.”

Anger flared in my chest, a mini supernova eager to be deployed. “Yeah? Well, you tell her to fucking say that to my face.”

He looked upward with a smirk. “Done.”

The world shattered again and this time I found myself in a circle of amber light. I remembered this. This was where the entity had drawn me when saving me from the varga infection.

Loke was gone and I was alone…No, that was a lie. There was someone… something here with me.

I scanned the brightness, searching for a shadow. “Hello?”

“Hello, Cora.”

That voice. I recognized that voice. Beautiful, melodious, and comforting, except now it was standing between me and the man I loved and I’d happily rip that voice to shreds.

I stood taller. “Why won’t you let Loke tell me how to get Rune back.”

“You can’t always turn back time, Cora. Some things are meant to be as they are.”

Fuck that. “He wasn’t meant to die. If I’d had my power, he wouldn’t have had to shift. But you messed with my DNA, and now I’m changing. I’m losing control and Rune… Rune is dead because of it.”

“That sounds a little ungrateful, Cora.” She said it evenly and without emotion. “I saved your life. I saved the seal.”

“Did you? How do I know these changes won’t affect the seal?”

She was silent for a long beat. “You’ll know soon enough. The changes are almost complete.”

A prickle of unease skated over my skin. “What’s happening to me? What am I becoming?”

“I’ve given you what you need to fulfill your part of our bargain.”

Thing was, I didn’t know what she wanted from me, and right now I didn’t care. All I wanted was Rune back.

“I’ve given you what you’ll need to complete the task,” she continued. “The task I made you for.”

Wait. What did she mean? “You didn’t make me. Fee did.”

A soft sigh drifted around me. “Fee imagined you into being, but I knitted you together. I gave you the face to charm an original from another world, although I underestimated how badly he’d want to go home. Still, there’s time. You’ve been changed, but those changes will prove useful in more ways than one.”

She was speaking in riddles and I didn’t have time for them. “I want Rune back. You made a deal with me to save my life, so make another to save Rune.”

“I can’t give him back to you.”

“Liar. Loke said there was a way.”

“Yes. Loke seems to have a soft spot for you.”

We were wasting time here, and agitation was a worm in my belly. “Tell me. Please. I’ll do whatever you want, just tell me how to get him back. Please.”

Silence pressed in on me, and for a moment I thought she’d left and our discussion was over, but then she sighed once more.

“I suppose sometimes risks can yield rewards. It will still come to pass…” She said it softly, as if speaking to herself. I held my breath, waiting. “Loke will take you where you need to go. But bringing Rune back will be up to you. You will return here whether you fail or succeed, and I will reveal my price.”

The knot in my chest loosened even as my gut twisted in foreboding, because I had no idea what I’d agreed to the last time we’d bargained, and no idea what more I was agreeing to now. Back then, when the infection had me in its grasp, I’d wanted to live, and right now, I needed Rune to live. The price, no matter what, would be worth it.

“Are we agreed?” she asked.

“Yes.”

The light flared so bright I had to close my eyes and throw up an arm to shield myself.

“Cora?”

I was back at the bus stop with Loke.

He was dressed in jeans and a cream shirt open at the neck, sleeves rolled up to expose more tattoos.

“Looks like you convinced her.” He sounded impressed.

I walked up to him. “What now?”

He cupped my shoulders. “The fact that you still have a connection means a part of his soul is still connected to yours and to your world. You only get one shot at this, Cora. Tarrifel will sense you don’t belong, and it will work to eject you. You’ll need to act fast to remind Rune that his life there isn’t real. Tap into the part of him that remembers you.”

“I can do it.”

Loke drew me closer, and my body tingled at his proximity.

I resisted the instinct to pull away but shot him a back-off glare. “What are you doing?”

His mouth tipped up in a crooked smile. “Oh, did I not mention? I’m the gateway to Tarrifel. You want in, then you’re going to have to kiss me.”

I called bullshit, but fuck it, I’d kiss a thousand fucking frogs to get to my mate. What was one gatekeeper?

I gripped his biceps, pushed up on tiptoes, and pressed my lips to his. I was going for a chaste peck, but before I could pull back, I was hauled up against his chest in a full-frontal assault. My head tipped back as he deepened the kiss, slanting his mouth expertly across mine and claiming me with his tongue. My mind rebelled but my body reacted with instant heat, returning the kiss and molding to him eagerly.

Hell no.

I turned my face away sharply, breaking the kiss, and speared him with a lethal glare.

He stepped back with a smug smirk, and I realized we were no longer at the bus stop. We were in a moonlit parking lot under a starlit sky. Music drifted to my ears, coming from a building behind Loke.

A bar.

New Arrivals.

I arched a brow. “Ironic much?”

Loke shrugged. “New souls seem to find it comforting, and they tend to hang about until their old memories are completely buried and the new ones assimilated.”

The implications of what Loke had been trying to explain to me hit home. “This is a world.”

He smiled. “Yes, Cora.”

“A world like earth, and…do the souls here think they were born here?”

“Yes. There are many layers to a supernatural existence. Our souls are different from human souls and we have many lives.”

And Rune was here, living a new life. For a moment I was thrown. What right did I have to pull him from this new world? He could be happy. He might have someone… The thought was needles digging into my heart.

Maybe it was selfish to steal him from this new phase in his existence, but I didn’t fucking care. He belonged with me.

Loke’s expression was somber. “Be quick, Cora, and good luck.”

I crossed the street to the bar, and with a final look over my shoulder, pushed open the door and stepped inside.