Purged In Fire Read online

  Copyright © 2021 by Sarah Hegger

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Cover: Deranged Doctor Design

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  ISBN: 978-1-7771903-5-4

  ISBN: 978-1-7771903-6-1

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Sarah Hegger

  Dedication

  Vir Ronel

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  Baie dankie vir al die ondersteuning.

  Dit beteken soveel, en hierdie een is vir jou.

  Acknowledgments

  This book has taken a while to make it to publications Both personally and professionally, it’s been a hard year for me, and it would be remiss not to acknowledge the people who have gotten me through.

  To Chris Kennedy, for always being you and for knowing what’s bothering me before I do (and also for never saying I told you so.) Your friendship means more than I can express.

  To Tara Cromer, who has been a constant and unwavering source of professional knowledge and support. For the friendship that we’ve forged that has meant so much.

  To Penny Barber, for always working her editing magic, and giving me her time and wisdom.

  To my family, who are my everything. One day at a time, sometimes one breath at a time, we made it through.

  And to my readers, who so patiently—and yes, you really were patient—waited for this book and greeted its arrival with unmitigated delight. Many of you have walked this journey with me for a while now, and you’re the reason I got myself back in front of a keyboard.

  1

  Niamh’s fur ruffled in a freshening breeze, and beneath her paws, the earth pressed cool and damp. She raised her face to the cold full moon, distant and so achingly beautiful. The moon called to her, reaching silvery remote rays within Niamh and illuminating the dark barren center of her.

  Persistent danger pressed past the gnawing isolation, and she scented for the source. Air quickened across her nostrils and brought the night’s olfactory bouquet—brine, tree sap, humus, bark, a vole, older rabbit droppings, and the lingering scent markings of a deer. That last made her heart pump thick with the thrill of the hunt, but she wasn’t hungry.

  Life, abundant and busy, was happening all about her, yet she stood alone beneath the temptress moon. She had no litter; she had no pack; she had no mate. Surrounded by all creatures irrevocably drawn to her magic, she stood. Alone.

  From within her, solitude pressed out, stretching her skin as if it could no longer be contained. Niamh threw back her head and howled. She howled to the moon who had forsaken her. She howled the ache of her loneliness.

  From the west, the wind brought a faint answering howl.

  He comes.

  Niamh woke with a start and sat up. “Shit!”

  Her neck had stiffened from falling asleep on the desk. She’d drooled on the six-hundred-year-old journal she’d been reading, and she carefully dabbed at the spot with the sleeve of her wooly jumper.

  “He comes?” Her voice echoed in the cavernous library.

  A fox poked her head around the large leather sofa and blinked at her.

  “Yup.” Niamh stopped dabbing. “Not a clue either.”

  The fox sat and tucked her tail around her forepaws. Cocking her head, she fixed bright topaz eyes on Niamh.

  “You’ve got a point,” she said to the fox. “I could be desperate for that special someone.” She felt like a twit for even thinking as much.

  A skinny tortoiseshell cat leaped sure and soft pawed onto the manuscript and butted Niamh’s chin with her head. Her straggly tail tickled Niamh’s nose.

  Obediently, Niamh stroked the cat’s spine. “Yes, I always have you lot.”

  It helped. Her animals anchored her as life at Baile flash-changed what felt like daily. Sometimes Niamh wanted to flip the pages back, back to when life had seemed so much simpler, back to when they’d all been blissfully unaware of the peril gathering around them.

  The cat dropped to her side next to some long-dead cré-witch’s diary that Niamh had been plodding through. The blunt tip of the cat’s tail twitched as she tried to outstare the fox.

  Niamh had volunteered to do research, and the rest of the coven had snatched up her offer. Movement drew her gaze to the large vellum map on the wall above the hearth. A weasel scurried across the mantel, stopped in the center, and stared up at the map.

  More questions. Niamh sighed. “I know.”

  The weasel started and froze. The fox stood and scented the air. Even the cat bestirred herself to widen her eyes. That map meant something. She sensed it, as did her furry companions.

  “I feel it too,” Niamh said. “There’s something there.” But what? Reading through pages and pages of dead witches’ journals and notes had unearthed nothing.

  “Oops.” Her drool had smudged a few words of the long -dead Siobhan’s neatly penned recipe for bramble jam. It was now anyone’s guess how many cups of sugar would be needed. “Sorry about that, but it’s not like it’s the only one in here.”

  Siobhan’s innermost secrets, or rather lack of secrets, were the reason she’d dropped off in the first place. Nothing but recipes—with a puzzling obsession with bramble jam—household tips and useless bits of gossip that made no sense to Niamh out of context.

  Exhibit A: Mary is up to her nonsense again. Or even more confounding: P and S still not speaking to L. If only they knew what I know. What had L done to earn not being spoken to and what salacious secret had Siobhan been hiding about the three of them? Goddess, Niamh wished Siobhan had written down the good stuff. Bookshelves towered above her on three sides. All that knowledge and no answers.

  The coven was relying on her to find something, anything, that could help them locate the cardinal power point for the fire element. And all she’d found was how to make bramble jam, several ways.

  “Goddess, this could all be a waste of time.” She poked the manuscript away from her.

  The cat gave the manuscript a languid paw pat.

  Like in her dream, Niamh wanted to throw back her head, open her throat and howl to the moon outside the window. Tonight’s dream left her even more confused and on edge. Who was coming and why? Also, that howl still echoed in her mind. A wolf’s howl, which was impossible because wild wolves had been extinct in England since the sixteen-hundreds. Her power did not link her with mythical beings, only the living and breathing variety. She wished Baile had another guardian who she could ask. All she had was Roz, and although technically a guardian, Roz was…well...not all there.

  So many questions, not enough answers, and time continued whipping past.

  Only six witches left, where once there had been hundreds, and the task ahead of them pressed down like a poised stampede. For all those hundreds and hundreds of years the coven had been at full strength and functioning, every witch had been trained and worked her blessing with all four cardinal elemental points providing the power. Witches of old had reached for their power like she would flip a light switch. Also like electricity, they had taken that power for granted so much that nobody had considered where the power came from. Certainly, nobody had bothered to record the locations of the cardinal points.

  A couple months ago, Bronwyn had activated the water point, right here in the caverns beneath Baile. Right away she, Mags, Sinead, and Alannah, had all looked for their cardinal points, but nothing doing. Fire, air, and earth points were not within Baile’s wards. Which point they should find and activate next had been hotly contested. However, both Niamh and Maeve called fire, and that had been the clincher. Now the search was on for fire, and they needed to get there before Rhiannon found it, because she would destroy it and they’d lose fire magic forever.

  Beyond the tranquility of the moonlit night, Niamh sensed the ever-present animals around her. Like her, they were restless tonight, tapping at the outer edges of her consciousness and trying to get her attention.

  Propping her chin on her hand, Niamh took a deep breath and stared into the blaze nestled in the great hearth. A warm night made the fire superfluous, but having her element around comforted her.

  She’d definitely howled with a wolf in her dream. Believing the impossible had become habit the last few weeks at Baile. M
aybe, somehow, a wolf had survived here, protected by the wards. The idea lit her up inside with tiny fireflies of excitement. She let her awareness spread like creeping mist. Sights, sounds, and scents all assaulted her as the closest animals shared their perceptions with her. The cat was bored, the fox alert, and the weasel wanted to return to the forest. She expanded her search outside the walls of Baile and into the land beyond. A tsunami of senses rushed her and made her tummy lurch.

  She breathed to steady herself and pulled fire. Her magic reached for her with hungry, happy tendrils, dancing and gamboling and teasing her with the more she couldn’t access yet. Flames in the hearth flared higher, pushing out a blast of heat, as she drew deeper on her element. The sweet tangy earth tones of basil and strawberry surrounded her.

  Her magic, her precious.

  Thomas popped into sight in front of the table. “Guardian?” He raised an eyebrow in silent warning. “Too much.”

  Goddess! So bloody frustrating. She pulled a face at Thomas and reduced her magic to a thin ribbon.

  With a pop, the flames subsided to gently flickering.

  “Better.” Thomas perched a hip against her desk, looking so corporeal his thigh seemed to conform to the harder wood surface. His jeans even bunched and pleated as if he were flesh and blood. Thomas had updated his garb since Roderick had taken up modern clothing. He cocked his head. “They’re restless tonight.”

  Niamh sifted through the sensory overload still battering her mind. The diurnal animals were tucked into their dens and burrows, so she blocked their input and concentrated on the nocturnals venturing into the night on the business of survival. She quested to the outside of her perception. Fresh wind carried the scents of the village of Greater Littleton, exhaust fumes, dinners being cooked, humans and their offspring.

  Strong apex energy pressed at her mind and drifted away. She glanced at Thomas. “What was that?”

  “An old friend.” He winked, an enigmatic smirk lighting his handsome face. Bloody ghosts with their cryptic statements.

  Thomas grinned as if he’d read her mind, and said, “There have to be some advantages to my current state.”

  “How about the whole invisibility thing?” She shoved the edge of a large tome at his thigh. The book passed right through the illusion of his body.

  “What do they want, Guardian?” He waved a hand about them. “What’s got the animals all excited?”

  “Not sure yet.” Niamh turned her attention inward. Strawberries and basil scented the air as she used her magic. The animals were disturbed, no…excited, expectant.

  A face flashed into her mind. Hard, angular lines, pale blue eyes, cropped hair. The face vanished.

  Niamh gasped and sat back. She couldn’t have seen a face. Her blessing didn’t work like that. She could ride along in an animal’s awareness and see the world from their minds, but they didn’t send her visions. They bloody well never sent her images of strange men, at least not ones floating along in a vacuum, and they also never howled at the moon when they didn’t exist anymore.

  Thomas studied her face. “What?”

  She shook her head, not knowing how to make sense of it. “They showed me a person.”

  “What was this person doing?” Thomas leaned closer.

  “Nothing.” If Thomas laughed, she’d…well, she didn’t know what she’d do because he’d poof out of there if she tried anything. “It wasn’t someone they were watching; it was just a face.”

  Thomas raised one of his dark, sculpted brows. “They don’t do that.”

  “I know that.” Thanks to Thomas for stating the glaringly obvious. “But they did this time.”

  “Hmm.” Thomas stood and paced to the hearth. “A man?”

  “Yes.” She got the sense he was saying less than he knew. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

  Face inscrutable, he stared into the fire. “There’s another of us coming.”

  “Ghosts?” Niamh rather thought one of those was enough. Especially if they were all like Thomas.

  “No.” He chuckled. “Another brother.”

  Excitement fluttered through her chest. “You mean another coimhdeacht?”

  “Hmm.” Thomas shrugged. “I had this sense…” He took a breath. “I should speak to Roderick first. As leader of the coimhdeacht, he might be feeling the new one as well.”

  Another coimhdeacht. Another warrior guardian headed for Baile, which meant he would bond with a witch. He comes. Could that be what her dream wolf had been telling her? “Who’s he coming for?”

  Please say me, please say me. She almost couldn’t allow herself to hope. A person for her, and not one compelled by her guardian magic to like her.

  “Only he knows that.” Thomas grinned. “The warrior finds the witch, remember.”

  Niamh let what she thought of that show on her face. “I don’t see why it’s got to be that way around. It’s probably some sexist hangover from your time.”

  “If you don’t like it, take it up with Goddess.” Thomas’s grin widened. “I need to speak with Roderick.”

  Poof.

  “Nice chatting.” Niamh called to the empty spot by the hearth. “Bye now. Enjoy the rest of your night.”

  Roz stuck her head around the library door and blinked at Niamh. Whoo-ah-whoo.

  A familiar tightening clenched Niamh’s gut. Her aunt, but not her aunt. The animals’ disturbance would have affected Roz. Niamh reached for Roz’s mind and found the confusion of owl and human, both were hungry. Motioning her aunt closer, she rattled a container of cheese, nuts and fruit. “Come on then. Dinner time.”

  Roz cocked her head and locked eyes on the container.

  Click, vrrrt, click. She skittered closer and hopped onto the desk.

  Wood protested the weight of an adult woman perched on its edge. Built sturdy to accommodate men of Roderick’s size, the desk blessedly didn’t tip.

  The cat hissed, leaped off the desk and flounced away. The fox disappeared back behind the couch.

  “Here.” Niamh held up a grape, and Roz ate it from her hand.

  Roz swallowed and turned her head a sickening two hundred and seventy degrees before coming back and bobbing her head at Niamh.

  Niamh held up a walnut and cheddar combo. If she let Roz feed from the container, food would fly across the library. Despite her being stuck in the awareness of a barn owl, Roz’s human mouth didn’t peck and pick up food like a beak would.

  “What’s the plan for tonight?” Niamh couldn’t even remember what Roz’s human voice sounded like anymore. She’d been an owl for so many years now. Her aunt had always been strange, but Roz had helped Niamh explore her guardian gift when she was a child. Roz had held the pieces of her together after Niamh’s mother had died.

  Click, click, click. Roz bobbed her head for more food. Vrrt.

  “More mouse chasing?” She gave her another grape, followed by a block of cheese. “Just remember no eating them.”

  Whohooo-ah. Roz lifted and dropped her shoulders.

  Goddess, that had been disgusting when she’d found Roz slurping down a half-chewed rat carcass. Not an experience she’d care to have again in a hurry. Also, why she made sure to feed Roz.

  She never knew how much of Roz was left inside the owl. There were times when Roz veered close enough to human that she communicated. Those were the worst times, because it was too easy to hope Roz would come back to her. As it was, Roz was her living, breathing cautionary tale, the reason Thomas warned her against using too much magic. When she activated the fire cardinal point and could bond her magic to Goddess, she could use the full extent of her gift, safe in the knowledge it was grounded through Goddess and would never consume her as it had Roz.