Wilder Mage (37 page)

He ran faster, back to the pickup, back to his home on wheels. He wanted his father more than he ever had since the accident.

He ran.

His mother sat at their tiny dining table in their tiny kitchen, reading a magazine. She took another drink from the cup she held in her hand and then looked up. Her eyes focused on him. The cup dropped from her fingers as she stood.

“What has happened? Your respiration, your heart rate.”

Justus didn’t take the time to wonder at his mother’s strange words. He couldn’t speak; he only wanted to breathe, sucking in great draughts of air. At that moment, his stomach rolled, and he leaped into their tiny bathroom and heaved.

Violent winds buffeted the trailer, and it swayed. The shimmer of starry trails swirled around him, growing brighter, thicker.

I must be losing my eyesight
, he thought without emotion.

Justus wiped his mouth, washed his hands, face, and then returned to the front room where his mother stood. She hadn’t reacted to his sudden illness, but watched him oddly. Not sympathy or concern; she asked no questions. She simply observed him.

“Here,” his mother said. She held out her hand.

Confused, he wiped his hand on his jeans, then slipped it into hers.

Her hand was cool, almost cold, and she clutched hard, then placed her other hand over her clasped fingers.

Calm washed over him, and he took a deep, slow breath. His wildly thumping heart eased just as the trailer shuddered. It creaked and something thumped against the outside wall as a dull roar settled over them.

But he ignored the noises of breaking branches and the earth opening up. All he was aware of was his mother’s hand in his and the flood of information that exploded into his brain.

Justus closed his eyes.

The harsh beeping sound woke him, and for a moment, Justus felt disoriented, still in the past. His feet hit the floor as he stood and picked up the alarm clock he had set to give him an hour’s rest.

He stared at it and then threw it hard against the wall of his office. The little timer smashed and went silent as he stood panting, staring at the pieces.

What a colossal fool he was.

He thought to send a locating element to find Sable. But she wasn’t a full wizard yet, and that made her difficult to find.

What he needed was a person close to her, someone who was a full wizard, in command of all the elements.

Justus pulled his ward stone from his shirt and thought of a mental request, to find and locate a wizard without them being aware of the search. Immediately, his stone moved under his hand, shivered slightly, and the magic slithered from it and arrowed away from him, like a hound on a scent trail.

Within a minute, the search was complete and he knew where Sable was.

At the side of the head of the Imperium.

And everything fell into place—the reasons, the locations; Tiarra was moving back to familiar territory.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

T
he man stood with his hands clasped behind his back, looking out the window of the house where the woman lived. A muscle in his cheek twitched regularly, jumping in time to the silent beat of his emotions. He combed through his gray hair with his fingers.

Maybe the stress is finally getting to me.

He could feel it coming, like joints complaining before a storm. He knew the juxtaposition of the players was converging. The game was about to begin. Events were moving too rapidly, and his staff was scrambling to keep up.

There was no sound from behind him, but he knew she was there, still at the kitchen table, looking at nothing.

“You remind me of her, you know,” he said softly without turning from the window. “Your appearance especially, that is spot on. But the mannerisms…” He shook his head but didn’t continue.

She did not respond and, since he heard no sound, probably hadn’t even stirred or reacted to his words.

The street was empty of traffic. At this hour just before sundown, at the end of a beautiful summer day, people usually went out for supper or went looking for entertainment. But there were few cars on this stretch of road on a normal day. And this was not a normal day. His eyes shifted to movement on the sidewalk, but whoever—or whatever—had vanished.

His cell vibrated.

“Yes,” he answered. “Report.”

“The principal is still at the original site. The operatives are withdrawing from the theater.”

“They are?”

The gray-haired man’s brow gathered in surprise. They were leaving. But why?

“One thing,” the voice on his cell said. “They are pulling back, but they are still in the area, arranged on an outside perimeter, a circle around the principal.” The voice paused. “A very large circle.”

“And what about the VIP?”

“She is still in play.”

The man nodded absently. It made sense. The chase was over. Now the waiting and maneuvering would begin. The chess game was well along, with strategies and plans beginning to form.

She was standing at his side, appearing out of nowhere, startling him. The matronly figure was as still as a statue, hair curled neatly, her wrinkled features the face of a woman in her seventies. As she stared out the window, her eyes narrowed as she focused on something he didn’t see.

“We might have a situation here,” he said slowly into the cell phone. He stared, as she seemed to track movement outside the house with her eyes. “Are there any patterns, any operatives around this area?”

“Wait a sec.”

The voice went silent. Then: “Uh, you might have a problem.”

“Figured.”

He heard an electrical hiss of static on the line. “Several of the group broke off and—” Indecipherable noise made the man pull his ear away from the phone. “...you should take cover. Immediately.”

The phone went dead.

The man dropped the cell, and it thumped softly on the carpet. He fumbled for a black chain around his neck and reached for her hand.

She ignored him as he pressed her index finger to the mottled stone pendant. The fixed magic’s effect was almost immediate, and he felt the cloaking and disguise settle over his body and face. It was like a chilling wind passed over him and then was gone.

The woman at his side stirred, and she spoke for the first time that day.

“Someone is coming, another wizard,” she said.

A knock on the door made him jerk, even though he was expecting it. The woman followed him to the entrance and stood behind him. The man known as Paul sucked in a quick breath and opened the door.

He thought he was ready for whoever knocked. But whatever he expected to see, it wasn’t a gawky teenage boy. The kid took a step back, his eyebrows rounded in surprise.

“Mrs. Aubre?” The boy’s eyes went past the man’s shoulder.

“Bert. Why are you here?” the woman asked, her voice now a pleasant mask.

“I told Justus I’d look in on you off and on. I just…” His voice trailed off and then his eyes sharpened. “What is wrong? And who are you?”

“A cousin, of sorts,” the man said.

Complications. Always complications,
he thought.

“Someone is coming,” the woman said again.

Paul turned to her and started to speak.

The voice startled Bert and Paul. “Well, looky here. Got us three of ’em.”

A well-muscled man stepped from the tree line and strode arrogantly to the house entrance.

Bert started and turned.

“Hold on, punk. You stay put.” The muscled man spat and cursed under his breath, “Damn humans.”

He pulled a cell from his shirt pocket and thumbed one number into the pad. “Got ’em,” he said. “Plus another.”

Three other figures stepped onto the lawn and angled toward the house. The man known as Paul didn’t have to see them use their talents to know what they were.

The sun was touching the horizon as Justus drove to the McIntyres’ house where Dayne and Macy waited. He had called them, asking them to remain at the house and wait for him.

Now, as he pulled into the drive, he wondered if they should have escaped instead.

He didn’t feel any adepts other than Dayne and Macy, but the air felt charged, like just before a rainstorm. The earth was waiting, expectant. The sun shot one last finger into the sky, a searchlight of liquid gold, and then it disappeared behind the distant horizon. The light would remain for many minutes. This time of year, the land would be in twilight for an hour or more.

Macy met him at the porch. “He is hurting,” she said abruptly. “It’s like before, when Sable was taken.” Her face crumpled. “Can you do something?”

But Justus was shaking his head before she finished speaking. “If I try to help him now, it wouldn’t turn out well for either of us. You remember what happened the first time, when it was so bad. I can’t. Not now. Tiarra is on her way here. Or maybe even already here. If Dayne is in that much pain, it might be that she is very close.”

He heard the groan from behind the closed door leading to the house. If it was that bad already, he needed to hurry.

Justus shook his head at Macy’s silent plea. “It would drop me like a stone,” he said softly. “And I have to be ready. She is bringing Sable, probably going to try to turn her using me or you. Be careful and stay away. I—”

Whatever he was going to say was lost in a blast of ice-cold wind. It curled around him, probing with glacier fingers, looking for magic. Macy’s face paled as Dayne cried out.

“Go now. I don’t think he will hold out if he sees you,” Macy said.

He nodded, leaped from the top of the porch to the ground, and loped around the corner of the house to the trail leading to the clearing.

Zephyr was behind the house, propped up on one of the lounge chairs like a tawny sphinx. She was alert, her eyes fixed without blinking in the direction of the clearing. One ear flicked to him and then back to point toward the trail. A vicious growl slid through her white teeth.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. We got problems.” He started to trot down the path, stopped, and turned back to look at the cat. “Take care of her, okay? You know. If.”

The cat’s eyes turned to him, and she seemed to sigh and then trilled softly.

I will do what I can, but my power is limited.

“I know,” Justus said softly. “At least stay with her. She really needs you.”

He turned and walked into the tree line.

I will. Good luck, Wizard.

Before he could give his automatic denial, the reply trailed off. He gave a wry laugh. Cats and moonstones with their familiars, they had such a sense of humor.

The smell of newly mown grass—reminiscent of watermelon, summer days, and cool, green earth—came to him. The cold wind was gone and everything was still. The evening birds were quiet. The crickets made no noise. Life and the earth froze into a still tableau, spectators only, in hiding. Or running away.

The evening star was shining in the west, a fitful sparkle at best.
Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight,
he began automatically. But even as he watched, the night grew darker and the dim glimmer of light was gone, covered by increasing pall from the east. No wishes for him. There weren’t enough wishes in the world for him anyway, not tonight.

A rumble of distant thunder rolled over the land.

Justus augmented his vision with the fixed magic of his ward stone, giving him all the light he needed to see. The ropey dull clouds looked more like muddy water than the cirrus clouds they were supposed to imitate. Some adept will have to work on their technique, he thought absently. But then again, maybe that was the point, give the clouds an unsettling dirty-towel appearance, and the humans would stay away from the area. The undersurface boiled and flashes of light from something that was not lightning highlighted the still leaves on the trees.

He felt the approach of adepts. Dayne and Macy were closest. She could do nothing more than hold her husband’s hand and try to talk to him, probably, but Macy would keep trying until the end.

Other adepts were closing their huge concentric circle, narrowing any escape. It was a moot point anyway. To run, to escape was not in his mind.