Leashing the Tempest (3 page)

“Crap. I don't know. He can't literally be brainless . . . can he?”

“You'd better sure as shit hope not. What did I tell you about using your knack?” Jupe gritted his teeth in embarrassment as Lon plowed on, not waiting for an answer. “I told you to ask permission and never use it on strangers.”

“He's not a stranger. And I'm sorry, but he was being—”

“This is
not a joke,
” Lon barked. “You can't go around using it without thinking.”

“Okay, okay,” Jupe said, scratching the side of his neck. “I'll fix it. Give me a second.”

“Yes, you damn well will.”

“Hold on. Let's think about this carefully,” I said, stepping between the two of them. “You didn't ‘make' him brainless, Jupe. You must've just tricked his mind into believing that he's, well—”

“Dumb,” Kar Yee said. “You turned him into an imbecile. But let's be honest—it wasn't a very far trip.”

I shot Kar Yee a
not-helping
look. “What's done is done. Let's just get him back to normal.”

After a few minutes of heated debate, we settled on the best way to counter the captain's condition, and Jupe geared up for another try. “Captain Christie, you will forget my last command and return to your normal state.”

Nothing.

He tried again. “Captain Christie, you are not a brainless idiot. You can speak and function as you did when you walked down here.”

Nope.

“Captain Christie, you want to talk and stand up and you aren't a brainless idiot.”

He tried three more times, variations on the same message, but nothing registered. The captain just stared blankly across the room, unmoving.

“Oh, God,” Jupe moaned.

“Maybe you need to cool down and try again in a few minutes,” I said, squeezing his shoulder for encouragement. “Let's all just stay calm and wait it out. Everything's going to be fine.”

But as we waited, staring at the mute captain like he was a pot of water heating to boil, the light inside the salon began to dim. After a couple of minutes, a steady rain stippled the cabin windows and pattered against the hull.

Not good.

And if anyone had any doubts about what was transpiring outside, Kar Yee vocalized our fears. “Guess the captain's cloudbusting knack is offline, too.”

With nothing metaphysical pushing back the storms, the clear skies circling the boat began worsening, and fast. Wind roared against the windows as the water roughened. My stomach lurched as the full brunt of the storm hit the boat.

“Try it again, Jupe,” Lon encouraged after several minutes.

Still nothing. I glanced at Lon and wondered if he was thinking the same thing that I was, that this was perhaps the limitation on Jupe's persuasive knack: maybe there were no takesies-backsies. And if that was true, then we'd have to wait it out and hope like hell its duration wasn't permanent.

More time passed. I glanced out darkened windows. Nothing but dusky gray and a torrent of rain pummeling the glass, until a flash of lightning zigzagged across the sky. A clap of thunder quickly followed.

“That was close,” Jupe said nervously. “How far away is the storm, Dad?”

“Five seconds equals a mile. Start counting from the next bolt.”

When lightning struck again, Jupe began counting out loud, “One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi, four—”

Thunder startled all of us.

“Jesus!” Jupe said. “It's less than a mile away. Maybe I should try my knack again on the captain.”

But before Lon could answer, the boat tilted back and forth like a rocking horse, then pitched to the right. I tumbled off the sofa. Lon snagged me around the hips, saving me before I fell on the floor. The boat pitched wildly in the opposite direction. We shouted in unison as our cooler slid off a table and crashed into the cabin wall. Jumping up to rescue the spilled contents, Jupe momentarily lost his balance and sloppily righted himself.

But someone else wasn't able to do the same. The captain lurched like an emotionless rag doll as his body swayed violently toward the corner of a side table near his temple. And when the boat settled, his eyes remained closed, and he didn't get back up.

Blood bloomed from a wound on his head.

L
on crouched over the captain's body, checking the wound.

“Oh, God,” Jupe whispered. “Is he alive?”

He had to be: I could still see the man's halo, though it had shrunk considerably.

“Unconscious, but he's got a pulse,” Lon confirmed. After the boat rocked again, he said, “No other injuries I can see.”

I hastily stripped the orange bandana off the man's head—nearly bald up there, just as I suspected—and pressed it against the wound to stanch the blood. It was bleeding like crazy. “Hey, Captain Christie, wake up,” I shouted into the man's face, hoping that the bump on his head might've cancelled out the effects of Jupe's knack. No such luck. “Should we slap him? Shake him?”

“If he's got a concussion . . .”

I shook him a little anyway. He didn't respond.

“Oh, God,” Jupe moaned. “This is all my fault. What if he doesn't wake up—what if he dies? Is it getting worse?”

I followed his troubled gaze down to the blood staining the bandana. “He'll be okay, Jupe. Promise. It looks worse than it is.” Surely.

Thunder rumbled through my bones. Too close. Way too close. The boat swayed, taking my stomach with it. The captain's body almost rolled away. Lon and I fell over him. I grabbed his legs, and Lon, his shoulders.

“I hate to point out the obvious, but we're on a boat with no captain in the middle of a storm.”

“Two storms,” Lon pointed out.

“What should we do?” Kar Yee asked, looking at Lon, then me. “Magick?”

It wasn't night, so my Moonchild ability was out. “I don't know any spells that will”—I waved my free hand above the captain's coma-like face—“bring him back to consciousness.”

“Are you sure?”

“I'm not a demon. I don't have a healing knack. And even if I did, he might still be under the influence of Jupe's suggestion.”

“Oh, God,” Jupe murmured, his face tight with worry. “What have I done? I'm so sorry, Dad.”

“I know you are, I know,” Lon said softly. “But we can't turn back time, so let's just concentrate on what we
can
do, okay?”

“Okay.”

My eyes met Lon's across the portly captain's prone body. “Can you pilot a boat?”

“If you count a rusty bass boat with an outboard motor. Kar Yee?”

“Me?” Her tone was somewhere between indignation and disbelief.

My ears translated this as one big
hell no
. In the years I'd known her, she mostly viewed transportation as something done by other people at her request: call taxi, ride in taxi, pay taxi. She'd only bought her first car a year ago—if she could get away with riding around in a gilded litter carried by four underpaid shirtless men, she would.

“One of us better figure out how,” I said.

“Steering in a straight line on a sunny day is one thing,” Lon said. “Piloting through squalls and rough water takes skill. I think we're going to have to call for help.”

Jupe whipped out his cell. “No signal. Hotlegs is offline, remember?”

“We can use the VHF radio to call the Coast Guard,” Lon said.

I handed Kar Yee the bloodied bandana. “You and Jupe stay here with the captain. Make sure he doesn't roll around or anything.”

Lon and I trekked upstairs to the salon. I opened the door to the deck and was punched in the face with rain. We were in the middle of a raging storm, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. The sky was the color of a newly paved parking lot. A fierce wind blew across the deck, sending a wall of briny spray over the railings as it battered the grizzly bear design on the red-and-white California state flag hanging above the parlor. The boat seesawed, caught in an army of angry waves attacking the stern. I gripped the doorframe to stop myself from sliding.

“I'll go alone,” Lon shouted over the wind and rain, trying to pull me back into the salon.

I pictured him falling overboard and shook my head. “Come on, before it gets worse.”

We clung to the outside of the cabin and clattered up metal stairs. Lightning streaked across the bow of the boat as we cleared the top step, illuminating the surface of the ocean, a million peaks of rippling waves. The thunder that followed—not more than a second or two behind—was so loud, I hunched over, as if shielding myself from dynamite. But what scared me more than the brewing typhoon was Lon's face. This was clearly the last place he thought we should be with all this lightning.

But neither one of us was willing to sit around belowdecks, waiting for the captain to die while the yacht crashed into the rocky shoreline.

A canvas Bimini canopy on metal poles, which looked about as strong as an awning over a restaurant patio, covered the bridge where Captain Christie had been steering the boat. It kept the storm off our heads, but not off our clothes: fierce winds blew torrents of rain beneath it.

An outdoor lounge area sat at the back of the bridge, complete with built-in chaise longues, a dining table, and a
really
nice gas grill set into a granite countertop. “Jesus, he's living large up here,” I muttered to myself.

“Don't touch anything metal,” Lon shouted.

“College-educated adult,” I reminded him. “Not your teenage son.”

He feigned deafness, gesturing to his ear while surveying the bridge. But my attention shifted to my feet, which were now standing on a circular design in the center of the bridge. About the size of a car tire and painted in tinted shellac, the wheel-like pattern resembled a stylized compass. And to the undiscerning eye, that's all it was—because the sheen of the shellac did a great job hiding the glow of Heka.

I tugged Lon's sleeve and pointed down. “Center of the ward.”

Lon nodded and started to look away, then halted, staring. He saw it now, too: this was no ordinary protective ward, but a very specific one. “Æthryic demon seal? He's protecting the boat against demonic attack?”

“Apparently so.”

Lon steadied himself on the rocking deck and bent to inspect it. “Christ, this looks familiar. What class of demon is this?”

I shook my head. But this was not something I saw every day—or at all, actually. No one on this plane, human or Earthbound, should need ongoing, permanent protection from anything Æthyric. Especially not a specific class of Æthyric demon. Even my magical order's temples didn't have specialized protection like this.

So why the hell did Captain Christie need it?

“Later,” Lon said, pulling me away from the magick-charged seal. As he did, the boat lurched and nearly knocked us both on my ass, so I did my best to put the seal out of my mind and focus on the more pressing task at hand.

A steering wheel sat in front of a panel of instruments that couldn't have possibly been more foreign to me. I blinked rain out of my eyes and spotted something that looked like a CB radio. Lon was already ducking down to peer at the screen, where a digital light shone.

“Channel number,” Lon shouted, squinting at the screen as he swooped dripping locks of hair back from his forehead. He fiddled with a knob and the volume increased so I heard a voice being transmitted as if through sandpaper static. Sounded like weather bulletins.

“What channel is the Coast Guard?”

“Damned if I know,” he said. “Supposed to be some emergency button . . .”

I pointed at a red button. “Like that one?”

If we weren't about to die, he might've laughed. All I saw were his merrily narrowed eyes, the slight uptick of the corners of his mouth . . . a barely there smile some people might not even notice. Not me. I lived for that smile—
my
smile—and when I saw it, I relaxed. Just a little. Everything would be fine. This was just a crazy story Jupe could tell his Earthbound friends at school.

Raindrops crested over Lon's high cheekbones and dipped into the deep hollows of his cheeks. I pressed my hand against his face—

Then the bridge exploded.

I
t sounded like war. Like a pipe bomb. A building being demolished.

Blinding white light obliterated my sight for an extended moment. I was floating. Lifted out of my body, passing up through the veil and crossing over to the Æthyr.

Or heaven. Hell. God only knew.

Seconds—minutes?—later, when I realized I was still on earth, I couldn't move. The white light was gone. I felt rain driving down on my face. Could see part of the bridge, the canvas canopy . . . and the enormous smoldering hole in the middle of it.

The scent of burnt plastic and smoke revived me. I gasped for breath, willing my lungs back to life, then coughed up rainwater.

My feet felt like they were on fire. Smoke unfurled in wisps from my lowtop sneakers. I sat up and tugged one off by the heel: the rubber sole was a black, melted, stringy mess. Yelping, I tossed it away, then immediately jerked off the other shoe and both socks. Was someone yelling? Hard to tell under the storm's cacophony. Where was—?

Lon. Thank God.

He lay on the bridge next to me, groaning like he'd been socked in the stomach. His jacket and jeans were smoking. I shouted his name and pushed myself up. My hands patted him down, making sure nothing was hurt or on fire.

His eyes flew open when I touched his face. “Oww! Fuck! Your fingers are hot.”

I snatched them away. My skin looked a little pinker than its usual dead-white bartender pallor. I sniffed. Burnt hair. “Boat got hit by lightning,” I explained.

“We're not dead?”

Anyone else probably would be. As a magician, I had a preternatural capacity for holding more electrical current than the average human. Or demon. I frequently siphoned electricity into my body and used it to “kindle” my natural magical energy—Heka—for charging spells: electricity flowing inside walls, car batteries, generators, power plants . . .

And lightning.

Not that I was indestructible. I'm quite certain electricity could kill me, though it would likely fry my brain long before I kicked the bucket. And it sure as hell could harm Lon, and as he sat up on the bridge, I wondered just how in the world he'd survived.

“I was touching you,” I said. “I must've taken the force of the strike. I—”

A furious gale of wind rushed over the bridge, tilting the boat. I grabbed the railing to keep from sliding across the deck. When the rocking lessened, we both climbed to our feet. My lungs ached. Skin tingled. Hands were shaking. Like I sometimes felt after kindling a big spell. At least I wasn't in the grips of post-magick nausea. The unsteady boat was already churning my stomach hard enough to make me dizzy.

“Fire.”

I looked up. “What?”

“Fire!”

My gaze shot to the polished teak dash behind the steering wheel, where flames danced wildly, playing tug-of-war with the rain dripping from the singed Bimini canopy. Lon ripped his jacket off and swatted it against the fire. The wet fabric smothered the flames, but the damage was already done.

Blackened, the whole dash. Glass cracked. Wood splintered.

VHF emergency radio melted.

Lon tried to grab the handset, but it was too hot to touch. He rubbed his fingers, breathing heavy as he surveyed the damage on the console, the hole in the Bimini canopy, a massive black spot on the deck where we'd been standing during the strike . . . my discarded shoes. “What the hell?”

“Don't know where the lightning entered me, but it exited through my feet. My skin still hot?”

“Warm,” he said upon touching my hand. “But you were hot enough to burn me before. Jesusfuckingchrist, Cady. You've never felt that way after kindling Heka. You sure you're all right?”

I nodded vigorously to convince myself as much as him. He crushed me against his rain-soaked chest and kissed me firmly on my temple. I could tell how scared he was by how hard he was holding me. That only increased my worry, so I pushed away and turned my attention to the bigger problem—the
what the hell were we going to do now
issue. If the controls were fried, and we couldn't contact the Coast Guard, then . . .

Holy whore of Babylon, it was dark. Like night. And despite the raging storm, the seesawing boat was quiet. No humming below my feet. As in
no engine.

Lights on the bridge were dark. So were the ones embedded in the stairs.

All lights were out . . . including the glowing Heka that had lit up the Æthyric seal in the center of the bridge.

The protective ward was down.

I gripped the rail as my eyes met Lon's.

Jupe
.

I glanced down at my hand. The bond Jupe and I shared through magick had, in the past, created a glowing thread of Heka that appeared when the kid was in danger. It wasn't there at the moment. Hopefully that particular magick was still reliable enough for me to assume he was safe. But it didn't matter, because Lon was already in protective-father mode.

“Go!” he shouted, herding me off the bridge.

As waves tossed the boat, we rushed down the stairs in the deluge, hardly able to stay on our feet or see the next step. My bare feet were numb with cold by the time we made it to the bottom and raced to the cabin. Jupe's voice called out from inside. Lon wrenched open the door and we tumbled inside the darkened salon. Dim, gray light filtered in from the windows, sifting over the strewn contents of the cooler, sofa pillows, Kar Yee's gold coat, and Lon's camera bag.

“Jupe?” Lon shouted hoarsely.

Dark spiral curls popped up from behind the bar. “Dad!”

“Everyone okay?”

Kar Yee appeared behind him, holding up her cell phone for light. “Everyone except the captain and the boat. We moved him back here to keep him from rolling around. What happened out there?”

“Did we get hit by lightning?” Jupe asked before his gaze fell on my hair. “Cady—”

“I'm fine, and yes, we got hit.”

“
Ohmygod,
” he murmured, then glanced down. “Where are your shoes?”

“Melted,” I said, trying not to shiver. The boat rocked. I grabbed for Jupe to steady him.

“What about the Coast Guard?” Kar Yee asked.

Lon shook his head. “The radio upstairs is shot. We didn't get a chance to use it.”

“Everyone check your phones and see if anyone can get a signal,” I suggested.

Nothing.

Jupe's long arm extended and rotated as he moved his phone around, trying to get anything but a
no service
message onscreen. “Should we try outside?”

“Do
not
go outside,” Lon warned. “It's too dangerous.”

“Okay, okay. So what do we do, then?”

“I suppose there's not a second VHF radio around,” I said hopefully.

Lon wiped water from his face. “Should be another helm inside.”

“I don't remember seeing it on the tour,” Jupe said.

“We're at the back of the boat. Stands to reason that it's past the kitchen.”

Lon was already heading for a closed door in that direction.

“Stay here,” I told Jupe and Kar Yee. “Watch the captain.”

The door Lon had spotted led into a hallway with a bathroom and crew quarters. One of the doors was different than the others: familiar sigils were carved into the wooden doorframe.

“Standard cloaking magick,” I said to Lon, who nodded, recognizing it as well. Unlike the exotic seal on the bridge above us, this was standard fare for medieval magicians, who used it to hide secret entrances, hoarded treasure, rooms filled with various and sundry debaucheries—whatever needed hiding.

The sigils were dead. Lightning must've overloaded all the magical work onboard. I slid open the door and found a small room with a built-in bed, stuffed chair, and narrow desk, over which several photos hung, including one of Captain Christie surrounded by busty bikini-clad women on the bridge of the
Baba Yaga.

“Captain's quarters.”

“The ward around the boat wasn't enough?” Lon said, fingering the grooved sigils on the doorframe.

“He went to a lot of trouble to make himself a little bunker here.”

“Better than a state-of-the-art panic room.”

“Cheaper, too, if you know a good magician.”

He gave me a quick smile, then sniffled and rubbed his nose. “Wish Jupe could've asked him about all this instead of turning him into a vegetable.”

“Yeah, me too . . .”

Another door across the hall a few yards down opened to descending stairs. The scent of singed oil wafted up from below.

“Engine room,” Lon said, running his hand along the wall. “Look.”

Dark splotches with branching lines covered the paneling around a recessed light in the hallway. “Lightning went all the way down here? That's not good.”

And it only got worse. The door at the end of the hall opened to the inner helm and a stronger, acrid burning smell. Curved windows provided gray light and a front row view of the storm raging outside on the bow of the yacht. Beneath those windows was a bigger console of equipment and two pilot seats. And the burn marks we'd seen in the hallway were here, too—just bigger.

“Fuses blown,” Lon said, looking at a panel on the wall. “Lightning must've overloaded the electrical system and caused a massive surge. Unbelievable.”

“Another VHF radio.” I picked up the handset and pressed the red emergency button several times in rapid succession—as if one lucky push would restart the system. “It's dead, too.” Everything was dead. No lights on the gauges.

“We're standing below the bridge,” Lon said, looking up. “You can see where the strike went through the ceiling, rode down the walls, and went through the floor. Christ. We're lucky it didn't set the whole boat on fire.”

I glanced out the window as Lon inspected the damage. The lightning and thunder had abated, but the storm was roaring. Waves crashed over the bow as the yacht pitched from side to side. But one of those waves, when it receded, it left behind a dark shape on the deck.

I leaned toward the window, straining to see through the sheet of rain obscuring my view, and just for a split second I could've sworn the dark shape was . . . crawling.

Not sliding. Not shifting. Not floating.

Crawling
. With legs or arms or . . .

My thoughts shot back to the downed ward on the bridge. Panic ousted the adrenaline high I'd been riding.

“Something's on the boat!”

Lon rushed to my side. “Where?”

Another wave arced over the bow, blanketing the dark shape. When it receded, there was nothing there.

“Where?” Lon said again.

Heart racing, I pointed to the spot and blurted out a crazed description of the dark figure. But as we intently scanned the bow for a sign of anything at all, anything that would give rational meaning to what I'd seen, we saw nothing at all. No deck chair, loose garbage bag, blanket. Nothing.

“Oh, God,” I moaned. “Do you think I'm just panicking about the ward?”

“Maybe,” Lon said. “Could've been a big fish. Shark. Killer whales are black, and they're out here. Crazier things have happened than them landing on a boat for a moment.”

“That's probably it,” I said.

“We should . . .”

“Yeah, of course.” God, I hated feeling paranoid. Hated that Lon was hearing my panicky embarrassment, but at least he wasn't giving me any grief about it. He was too busy rummaging through cabinets on the back wall, dumping out the contents as he went. Power cords, computer cables, and boat manuals piled up at his feet.

“What are you looking for?”

He unlatched the last cabinet and made a happy noise as he withdrew a small case. Inside, snuggled in molded foam, lay a toy-like plastic gun, the color of a brand-new basketball.

“Emergency flares,” he said, shutting the case and tucking it under his arm.

Hope blossomed inside my chest as I trailed Lon to the salon and rejoined the group.

“Will they work in the rain?” Jupe asked when his dad unveiled his find.

“Rain, snow, sandstorm.” He loaded a fat orange shell into the chamber with sinewy fingers and a palpable confidence. I hoped he was right, and that this wasn't just his avid love of guns talking.

I stood between Jupe and Kar Yee, watching as Lon opened the door to the salon, raised the gun toward the gray sky, and fired off four flares in different directions. Firework-bright red light and smoke streaked through the rain and lit up black clouds from within.

When he was done, Lon struggled to close the door against intense winds that howled from the stern and carried the sharp scent of sulfuric chemicals from the fired flares. “Don't want to use them all up,” he said, securing the gun back inside the case. “Might need to launch more of them when the storm passes.”

Were they bright enough to attract attention in the middle of a nasty storm? Was there anyone around to see them?