Spell Bound (Darkly Enchanted) (2 page)

“I begged you to cure him,” Paganelli raged. “Instead your magic killed him.”

“I am so very sorry, Fabrizio.” Daphne reached for him but Paganelli drew back, as if she might contaminate him somehow, his mouth twisted with a sneer of disgust and anguish.

“Sorry does not bring back my son!”

And neither could Paganelli’s great wealth, though he had tried to buy Christo’s health. Celeste knew he’d spent a fortune on modern physicians for cures that failed. By the time Fabrizio had begged the
streghe
to save Christo with their magic, the young man had been too ill.

She had been shocked when Dafne had gathered the women to attempt to heal him anyway. Though the
streghe
ministered to the villagers on a daily basis, the Paganellis, the largest and wealthiest landowners in the valley, had never approached them for anything.

Celeste had argued against it. She did not think it wise to reveal the
boschetta
’s true power to Paganelli. They were not like other
streghe
, women of Etruscan descent who used their Goddess Gifts to heal and make small spells and potions.

Their
boschetta
alone had a secret and sacred duty to Menrva, the Etruscan Goddess of Wisdom, handed down to them from their mothers and their mothers before them. As Menrva’s priestesses, they protected her most sacred gift to the Etruscan people, the Nails of the Ages, and waited for the day she once again demanded their duty to her.

For more than a thousand years, her priestesses had waited.

Celeste’s hand crept to the leather thong around her neck and the iron key hanging from it. They should have said no to Paganelli, but Celeste’s younger sister, soft-hearted Andrea, had begged them to help Christo and no one could deny her anything. Even though Celeste, a healer, had sensed the black tumor in his stomach was too advanced to heal.

“No, Fabrizio,” Dafne continued to try to calm the distraught father. “We tried—”

“Charlatans! Whores!” Paganelli’s voice bounced off the walls of the lushly furnished bedroom in the Paganelli’s huge manor. “I’ll make you pay. You will all pay.”

Celeste’s bile rose at Fabrizio’s fast-building fury. That angry emotion felt like black smoke in her lungs, nauseating her.

“Please, Fabrizio,” Dafne pleaded. “I understand—”

“What do you understand?” he raged, one hand slashing out in front of him. “You understand nothing. Your children live. How can you understand my pain?”

Celeste felt a sliver of pain strike at the center of her heart. She and her mate had not yet been blessed with children. She sometimes wondered if they ever would be.

Great Goddess, please, grant us a child—

“Fabrizio, try to remain calm,” Dafne said. “You’ll cause yourself injury. I know your pain is intense but you must think of your remaining sons. They need you now.”

The old man’s mouth pulled back in a snarl, thick white hair shaking around his face in his fury. “Christo was the most precious, the most powerful of my sons. You have robbed me of him.”

Rising from the bedside, Paganelli jerked a knife from the sheath on his belt and cut his dead son across the arm.

The thirteen women of the
boschetta
gasped as if with one body, several members stepping back, breaking the circle.

No, Celeste thought, he wouldn’t dare…

As the knife dripped red, Paganelli slashed across his chest, mingling his blood with his son’s.

“I, Fabrizio Paganelli, curse you to outlive your loved ones so that you, too, can feel this agony.” He snarled the words, biting them off like a dog tears into meat. “So that you may know the pain of watching your children die while you stand helpless. And I demand Veive, God of Revenge, forbid you to bear another female child. You will produce no more
streghe
. No other father should fall prey to a
strega
’s lies. You’ll pay. You’ll all pay…”

Chapter One

Present Day

Blood. Everywhere. The floor, the walls.

Her dad.

Blessed Goddess, no…

Thick, dark. On her hands, her clothes. The metallic odor in her nose. Overpowering.

Her mother…oh, gods, what did they do to her mom?

Can’t breathe. No air…

Too late. She’d been too late.

Wait…Someone here? No, someone in her head, whispering. Her mother…

In the basement.

Sneakers sliding in—No, don’t think. Move. Basement. Dad’s workroom.

Beneath the workbench.

Her mother’s voice. Her dead mother…Oh, Mom—

The spell.

Runes beneath the table. A spell of concealment. The ancient Etruscan language rolled off her tongue in fierce bites. Knife across her palm, her blood on the runes.

The workbench slid away from the wall.

And she screamed and screamed as blood poured out
…

* * *

Shooting straight up in bed, Shea Tedaldi gasped for air in the semi-dark bedroom, tears in her eyes.

The bed creaked as her hand shot to her left. Warm, soft skin, rising and falling in the rhythm of sleep. Leo’s small body huddled on his side under the covers.

She breathed a sigh of relief.

Just a dream. Another dream about that awful night that left her terrified and shaking.

Whoever was on their tail was getting closer. The voices in her head—those maddening, unintelligible, buzzing voices in the back of her mind—were frantic.

It was time. She and Leo needed help or they needed to leave this dingy apartment in Reading, Pennsylvania, and run like hell. Just like they’d done four months ago in Atlantic City.

The voices had put up a clamor then, too, so much so she’d decided to move here and finally look up the man her mother had believed she could entrust with Leo’s life.

So why are you thinking about running again? Without even talking to the guy?

Well, that was easy. Because five years on her own had taught her that people screwed you all the time. Since running away from home at seventeen, she’d learned to rely only on herself.

Yeah, and how’s that working for you so far?

“Oh, just shut up,” she whispered as she slid her legs off the side of the bed and sat on the edge, willing the shakes and the tears to stop. No need for them. Leo was fine. At least, as fine as a six-year-old with monsters on his ass could be.

Turning, she watched her brother sleep, his too-long hair inky black against the stark white sheets.

Everything about him was growing fast. He needed a haircut. And, since shopping wasn’t exactly on her to-do list, he needed new clothes. His ankles had started to show beneath his jeans. He’d need new shoes, too, and socks, because his were full of holes.

But mostly, Leo needed not to worry about boogeymen who wanted to cut out her heart and turn him into a monster. He needed his parents…

She took a deep breath and straightened her spine, twisting her neck back and forth until it cracked.

Time to get off your ass.

Because the men who’d killed their parents were getting close again. And the man who’d ordered their murders, Dario Paganelli…he wanted Leo.

Her stomach rolled and she rubbed it with her hand, trying to ease the ache. But nothing helped.

Dario Paganelli was the boogeyman her parents had whispered about behind closed doors, the monster who had forced them to live like hermits. He was the cause of Shea’s every fear and heartache.

He’d made her life hell without ever meeting him. And now that monster wanted Leo, a little boy who looked like an angel but controlled enough power to burn a house to the ground.

Goose bumps danced on her skin. Paganelli was a cold-blooded monster who would break Leo, remake him in his own evil image. Then turn him loose on his own people.

Great Goddess, he’s only six.

Sighing, her gaze shifted to the small round table in the corner.

The altar at their home in Wisconsin had been made from the base of a lightning-struck walnut tree from the dense woods enclosing their property. Nearly five feet in diameter, that altar had dominated the small clearing where her parents had held their rituals for the Great Goddess Uni. Passed down through the millennia, those rituals connected them to the Etruscan Mother Goddess, renewed their faith in Her and Her protection over them.

Shea prayed every day, just as her mother had. But so far, she’d gotten no guidance from the supposedly all-mighty Uni. No inspiration. No help.

Which was why she’d moved them here. To get help. And to hide.

The largest population of the once mighty Etruscan race, maybe five thousand or so, lived here in Reading and Berks County, conveniently located over a ley line of earth power and smack up against the Schuylkill River. A ley line and running water to power their magic must have seemed like a hole-in-one to the first Etruscans who’d moved here from the old country in the early 1800s.

They’d blended into the melting pot of nineteenth-century Reading but maintained their ancient culture. They lived outwardly normal lives but instead of adding to the collection of churches that stood on every other corner, they built hidden temples for their goddesses and gods.

The
eteri
who shoveled lasagna and rigatoni at Marelli’s Trattoria on south Seventh Street would choke on their food if they discovered Uni’s Temple was built into the back of the building.

Here, she and Leo were just another two faces in the Etruscan community. Two more bodies at temple where they sat in the back and kept their heads down. Until everyone lifted their faces toward the ceiling to ask for Uni’s protection for the Etruscan race. Then she begged for Leo’s safekeeping.