Free Possessed (Book One of the Hollow City Coven Series): A Witch and Warlock Romance Novel by Hazel Hunter

it was to be a full foot taller than herself. She knew what it was to be handcuffed and thrown into the back of a police car.
    She also found salvation.
    On a bench outside the courtroom, right before the reading of her sentence, a man came to her. He was dressed all in black, and in his tie there was a silver pin, shaped like a sword. It held her attention hypnotically as the man spoke.
    Do you want to know who the real enemy is? Do you want to rid the world of the real evil that stalks it?
    Gillian could feel herself swallow. This was it. This was what she had always been waiting for.
    Yeah, guess I do.
    The rest of the images, more recent, were mercifully brief.
    I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to see this. Please don’t let me remember this.
    She saw the man she had touched go through training. She felt the hatred he had for Wiccans. She saw him taken along on his first raid. It was unsuccessful, but she saw a farmhouse in Idaho burned to the ground. The family escaped, but just barely. In her mind’s eye, she saw a doll lying in the wreckage. She thought of the child who must have owned the doll, and she felt nothing but hate.
    Finally, the flow of memories stuttered to a stop. It was like a tape that had played to the end and now could be silent. She was lost in the gray hinterland that followed, colder than she had ever been. She was herself again, but she didn’t know what that meant. Perhaps she was herself. Perhaps there would be something of that hateful man that would be a part of her forever. She didn’t know––and the lack of knowing terrified her. She would almost rather stay in this gray nowhere forever rather than wake up and find that she had kept something of the monster with her. The thought of it made her want to scream. She had always known that something like this would happen, ever since she had realized the scope of her skill.
    The panic was setting in again, but then she heard a voice.
    “Shh, it’s all right.”
    She glanced up, looking around in shock. All around her was a gray mist. The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
    “It’s all right, there’s nothing here that’s going to hurt you. I swear, I’ll protect you. I’ll protect you, I will.”
    Almost as if her fear had summoned him out of the darkness, Shayne appeared.
    “Do you promise?” she asked. “Do you swear?
    “Oh Gillian, I do. I do swear. Nothing will harm you. Nothing will touch a hair on your head.”
    She could feel the connection between them, running as bright and vivid as a crimson thread. No matter what he said or what he thought of her hunt for Tenebris, she knew that he would always protect her.
    “Go to sleep,” he urged her. “When you wake up, I’ll be here.”
    She smiled at him. It felt as if she hadn’t smiled for years.
    “All right. All right.”
    She could feel the darkness closing in again. It awakened a memory of when she had been a tiny child. Someone safe and beloved was putting her to bed, bringing the heavy quilt up to her chin and tucking it along her body. This darkness was safe. There was nothing that was going to hurt her here. There was nothing that was going to harm her. Nothing would dare because Shayne stood guard.
    She drifted off into a dreamless sleep, moving further and further away from the evil that she had brought into herself. Before the darkness claimed her, she heard an echo of words from a long, long distance.
    She died, she died…
    Then she was asleep.

CHAPTER SIX

    WHEN GILLIAN AWOKE, she first became aware of the chill of the mountain air. Then she realized that her hip was sore from being pressed against the ground all night. When she blinked drearily, she could see dozens of sparks of light hovering above the ground. Gillian sat up, startled.
    They formed a fence between the camp and the wilderness. When she sat up, they went out one by one. The last one danced in the air as if proud of its own dexterity. As she watched, it flew