Wilder Mage (29 page)

Before Justus dropped his hands, he once again sent his senses out into the land to check for the magic signatures of adepts. Nothing.

The colors of the elements were a manifestation of their choosing, not his, and as always, he was awestruck by the vibrant colors. Spirit was the mystery, since he never risked working with the element in large amounts. Curious, he held the pendant in his left hand and slid the black chain over his head. Again, he sent his senses outward, feeling for adepts. Still nothing.

The waist-high manger stood broad at the edge where he set the stone and chain. He held his hand over it for a moment longer, then splayed his fingers and released it, withdrawing his hand as he did. It sat on the ancient wooden beam, looking like nothing more than a mud-colored stone with a hole in the middle for the fine, black chain, its mate the blue stone. Justus hesitated and then slowly lifted his arms again.

At first, nothing happened, and he wondered if the ward stone still exerted a shield around the Spirit element. He pulled and called to it, cajoled the element to do his bidding. It felt unlike the other elements: cold. He increased his focus, strengthened his will. Still nothing. But Justus felt his skin tighten, and like the charged atmosphere before a summer storm, anticipation sliced into his mental awareness and his senses tingled.

Then the air shimmered as crystalline specks appeared from every part of the barn’s alleyway like fireflies. White, as colorless as clear glass, as brilliant as the sun reflected from water, it gathered into a comet tail as the other elements had, spiraling around him. But where the other elements gave him the feeling of warmth and heat, Spirit was glacier-cold.

And it did not whisper like grains of sand.

It screamed in frozen crystals.

The stream curled in on itself and swirled in lazy circles around him. Justus felt none of the fascination with Spirit that he had with the manifestation of the other elements. This element was something more, something alive. Alarm mounted and his heart thudded.

The Spirit jumped to life, the languid whirling trails turned faster, and the cry of the crystals tore around his head. They formed and then coalesced into a shape, a sparkling white dragon. Justus stepped back. It moved as if alive, twitching into consciousness. It grew and soared, the trails feeding into it until its form took up nearly the width of the barn alleyway. It shuddered, seemed to inhale. The eyes of the dragon opened and revolved in sparkling bits of light. Blindly, its eyes wheeled, then settled on him. Intelligence and awareness were in them. The eyes widened as they fell on him, then contracted in malevolence. The glittering beast opened its mouth wide, and Justus saw its razor-crystal maw as it advanced.

Justus gasped, but stood firm, clenching his teeth. He raised his hand and poured his will and strength into it. With a clawing motion, he scooped the air before the dragon could reach him, and it eddied into swirls of small white trails. It dodged and shrank back, then narrowed its glistening eyes and came at him again, faster. This time, Justus stepped forward to meet it and again brought his hand through the crystals. His hoarse scream of defiance cut into the air with his hand.

The seething vortexes increased in volume and speed, and while the streams churned into confused trails, Justus took that moment to direct the element into the ward stone as he had the other energies. It hesitated, seemed to buck and ripple, then answered to his will and streamed into the stone. But the fires of Spirit did not go quietly. Bits of crystalline sparks spat at him and the stone trembled. A smell of char permeated the air around the wooden manger.

Justus drew his lips away from his teeth and snarled, forcing compliance from the element. For a few seconds longer, it resisted. Then, as an arrow from a bow, it hissed into the ward stone.

The brown-flecked stone rocked, and the black chain slithered into the cobwebby hay of the manger, pulling the stone with it. Justus leaped to catch it, but it disappeared into the dusty, ancient hay.

He scrabbled in the old hay, and a dusty cloud puffed out as he stirred it with his hands. Justus sneezed and the swallows came to life again, warning him to keep away from their young ones. For a fleeting moment, Justus saw the humor in the sight he made, one arm up to his shoulder, stuck in the dirty remains of ancient cattle fodder, and the dark blue birds swooping and diving at his head, hollering at him.

In the next moment, Justus lost any thought of laughter. He felt something different on his consciousness. His senses came alive and he could feel emotions. Astonishment, surprise, horror. And triumph.

None of the emotions were his.

Hazy faces gathered around him. Hundreds of wizards, strangers from all parts of the globe, wearing sneakers and jeans, pinstriped suits, robes, and dresses. As if peering through a hole in a wall, he caught a glimpse of each incorporeal figure, their actions caught at that moment, frozen in time and movement.

The misty forms jerked, became animated. As one, their attention snapped to him, their ghostly faces stunned. They stumbled. Some dropped what was in their hands. Others were startled into full wakefulness. Mouths agape, their eyes searched for the danger, as if it were close. But it wasn’t. The magic they felt was many miles away in a barn in Iowa.

They couldn’t see him, but they knew he was somewhere. That he existed. That he was among them.

In unison, the wizards lifted hands filled with questing magic and sent the elements to find that flare of enormous power.

One face filled his vision, a woman. Behind her was a large window showing office buildings and the bustling downtown of a large city. In that fleeting glance, he saw the waters of a lake reflecting a million sparkles from the sun.

Initially, her face showed astonishment, as had the others. But now, a triumphant gleam appeared as she fisted one hand and threw it at him, splaying her fingers wide as she did.

He felt a change inside him, a fierce rage as he clenched and bared his teeth at her. Her gauzy, expectant face changed, her laughter died. She seemed to draw back, and then her form wavered like early morning fog dissipating in the sun.

Then he remembered the ward stone lying hidden in the depths of the manger.

You fool.

With an oath at his idiocy, Justus knew he had only moments before the elements found him. He extended his hand, palm out, and called to the stone. The manger rattled, and he heard movement in the bottom of the hay. Wryly, he wondered if he might be calling a rat. But the stone slapped into his hand, and he felt the immediate effect as the strange elation ebbed and the touch of the Spirit element died away.

The loss shook him, and Justus dropped to his knees, holding the stone and chain against his chest as he bowed his head over it. For a few motes of eternity, he crouched there, but it was too much like supplication. He struggled to his feet.

He would never bow his head to anyone again.

Justus ran to his car.

It was coming.

He started the motor and did not expend magic to part the brush growing in the drive, but gunned the car. The hood hit the overgrowth and limbs scraping the paint screeched as nails pulled from a wooden board.

He felt it getting nearer.

The car exploded from the brush and weeds. Immediately, Justus settled into a sedate cruise down the gravel road. He glanced at the rearview mirror and caught sight of the rapidly diminishing aura of elements that still swirled around the old farmstead. But as he watched with jittering nerves, the phantasms vanished, dissipating or sinking into the air, earth, and surrounding energies.

Nothing remained.

Justus resisted the need to rocket down the road. The highway loomed, and he turned off and gradually climbed to just under the speed limit.

He felt it nearing and gripped the steering wheel. For that eternity, Justus held his breath.

It passed and continued away from him.

The gauges on the car spun wildly for a moment and then settled again. He forced his hands to relax on the wheel and released the pent-up air in his lungs.

After a few miles, he pulled into a small rest stop. Kids chased each other round the park-like lawn. The adults gathered in excited groups, talking and gesturing.

Justus sat in his car, listening but not expending any magic. One man stared at him and finally began to amble to his vehicle. Justus got out of his car and waited for the man, a vacationer in cutoffs and a brightly flowered shirt.

Justus nodded as the man walked up. “Hi. What’s going on?” he said. He marveled that his voice sounded so normal.

“Don’t know,” the genial man said. “There’s like a solar disturbance or something going on. Our vehicles went nuts a bit ago.”

“Anyone hurt?”

“No, no one went off the road,” the man said. He looked at Justus’s car. “Did you notice anything a little while ago? Like kind of a hiccup in your motor?”

Justus looked into the distance and saw nothing but blue sky and clouds. “Yes. But not enough to put me in a ditch.”

The man nodded and tried to look more intelligent. “Probably the government trying out a new weapon,” he said with a knowing look. He tapped one finger on his cheek.

“Probably,” Justus said. He got behind the wheel and started the engine.

“Hey, what happened to your arm?”

Justus looked down at the bloody furrows cut in his hand and forearm. Like thorns had slashed him. Or claws. Glacier-cold claws that made him shiver. Even now, he felt the chill.

“Cat,” he said.

“Mighty big one,” the man muttered. The man waved and yelled, “Be careful!” as Justus pulled onto the highway. Then the man was behind him.

Be careful
. Just like his mom always said. Strange, he thought she meant don’t trip, or drink alcohol, or pick up the wrong friends. Luck was a better companion, he thought.

In her haste to find him, Tiarra’s powerful elements slashed through the questing energies sent by her mages, disrupted their energies and confused all of them into swirling eddies of magic. They dissipated, just as his phantasms at the barn.

If she had allowed them to continue without sending hers into the mix, he would not have been able to hide. And the noose would have been tightening at this moment.

Being careful had nothing over Lady Luck.

Chapter Twenty-Two

T
ime dragged, but not without its emergencies, Sable thought. After all, while the McIntyres vacationed, who else could water their plants or clean out Zephyr’s litter box? To be sure, it took a measure of endurance to survive such an anticlimactic day. After living most of her life as a transient, she wasn’t familiar with tedium.

With the McIntyres gone and Wesley finding new digs across town, the house slept like a cat drowsy in the warm sun. Quiet. Relaxed.

Boring.

By midmorning, nothing sparked her interest. Not the pages from a new novel, roaming the trails in the woodland, or giving the horses a scratch. All had lost their charm.

Wesley’s announcement that he had found employment with a local marketing firm resulted in a thrilled Maggie and a suspicious Emmett. He’d readily helped his nephew pack and pitched the luggage into the car like a farmer throwing hay bales. And with about as much concern. As the taillights of Wesley’s car vanished around the corner, Emmett danced a jig and grabbed Maggie around the waist to whirl her around as she had protested.

The silent house ate at her nerves, and as the ordinary morning led to an ordinary afternoon, Sable felt a growing need for escape. She slid into the driver’s seat of the pickup and drove to the shop. An afternoon spent running a wet rag over dusty shelves was better than waiting for Justus to return.

A church bell toiled twelve noon as she parked in front of the shop. As Sable unlocked the shop door, a rumble came from beneath her feet under the sidewalk. Earth-deep, it vibrated the door as she opened it. She shut the door and leaned back against it, fisting her hands at her side.

China rattled, but didn’t fall, though she readied magic to catch them. The groan of tortured earth faded into low mutters, then was gone. Sable released the breath she didn’t know she held and passed through the connecting room and out the back door leading to Emmett’s grill. She needed privacy and contact with the surrounding elements, and no buildings adjoined the back alleyway. She stood in the open and allowed her senses to expand.

Carefully, carefully, using minute bits of magic, she let the phantasms search for other wizards, then sighed. She was alone. All their fears of discovery, afraid the Mathons would jump her and force her to turn. Or at the very least, haul her in to face Tiarra. All unfounded. Dayne and Macy seemed more inclined to observe than threaten.

Sable thought of her half-packed bag in her apartment, readied in case she needed to leave in a hurry. The anxiety Justus tried to hide from her, the rage that tightened his jaw when he thought she wasn’t watching. What he would say when she told him of her decision? Would he dissuade her? Smile with those fire-hot eyes. Groan? Or wrap his hard-muscled arms around her and breathe into her hair? The thought caused the elements to sizzle around her. She tamped her emotions down again.

She would stay and fight at his side. Eventually, she would learn to construct a shield stone herself. It was possible; she knew she could do it, given enough time. All the elements, Justus had said. A shield to block Tiarra’s bond would take an infusion of all five phantasms. Sable grinned without humor as she slid her silver charms down her arm to cover the scars. Her bracelet was the opening act in the creation of a shield. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have experience making one, just not one quite as powerful.

A tattered shopping bag tumbled across the half-moon back lot. Sable snagged it, wadded it into a ball, and took a step to the door. She smiled at the thought of Justus’s reaction to her choice.

She stopped as another vibration passed under her feet. This time, sound did not accompany the tremor. The soft breeze that lifted her hair a moment ago died, and the world seemed to hold its breath.