The Horned Mage: Books 1-5

by Hayden Harper

  Prof. Hardin and Deirdre She rounded a corner down the hall and came toward us. Jadeite glanced at them and then shoved a finger in my face.

  “After class. Happy Burger. You are going to tell me everything.” She narrowed her eyes. “Everything, you understand?”

  Prof. Hardin ignored us and went straight into the classroom but Deirdre paused to give me a contemplative look. I resisted the urge to shiver.

  “You got it,” I promised Jadeite. We started to go into class but Deirdre grabbed my arm.

  “Let me give you a head start,” she said, and jerked her head toward the exit. “It’s going to be more hands on practice today. You’re going to get partnered with me. Come on.”

  I glanced back into the classroom, where all the other students were seated, already receiving instruction from Prof. Hardin. Safe in their flock. A wave of resentment washed over me. A flock, or a school of fish, or a herd, it didn’t matter. They were all just…just what? I wasn’t sure I wanted to complete that thought.

  I returned my attention to Deirdre. I’d known the Chinese girl was tall and beautiful, but she had at least two inches on me and was possessed of a subtle, hypnotic beauty. Just like a snake, I thought. Fuck this, I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life cowering in her shadow.

  “Has anyone ever told you that you could be a runway model?” I asked, following her outside.

  She laughed. “I may have heard some variation on that but usually it’s a cheesy pickup line.” She raised an eyebrow at me. “You trying to pick me up?”

  “Hell no,” I said. “No way I could handle you.”

  Wasn’t that the truth.

  Fortunately she laughed again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  It was my turn to raise my eyebrows at her. “I think you know.”

  Students came out of the building, spilling onto the lawn in pairs. We began our exercises.

  I shouldn’t have got my hopes up. I really shouldn’t have. But I did. After all the magic I had worked this weekend, the fire, the sex, the other thing I didn’t have a name for…it had all been alive and active and flowing. There’d been no stopping it. And now, when I was trying to use regular magic, I was getting nothing. No familiar stirring, no heat or sizzle, nothing.

  “Sounds like you had a rough weekend,” Deirdre said after fifteen minutes of failure. “Stress can mess with one’s ability to work magic. You have to have a clear mind and a strong center.”

  Right. Those were definitely not things I’d had when I’d been working my spells.

  “Magic isn’t supposed to be easy,” Deirdre went on. “If it was, everyone would do it.”

  I wanted to roll my eyes. I didn’t. And not because I was still afraid of her, though there was that too. Just because I’d decided not to cower didn’t mean I wasn’t still terrified of this woman. No, I didn’t roll my eyes because I didn’t want to be disrespectful. That seemed like it would be an insult she might not forgive.

  I blew out a breath. “I was working magic just fine this weekend. I don’t know why it is that when I come in here and start trying to do these exercises that it becomes so hard.”

  Deirdre cocked her head, a decidedly reptilian gesture, and contemplated me. Her eyes drifted up to my antlers. “What kind of magic?”

  “Fire,” I answered. “Something I don’t have a name for.”

  She gave me a questioning look at that. And then kept looking at me when I didn’t go on.

  “Is that all?”

  I blushed. Dammit, I blushed like a little girl being asked to her first high school dance.

  “You’ve got another affinity,” Deirdre prompted. “Come on.”

  I don’t know why I told her. I really didn’t owe her any sort of answer. But I gave her one, letting it out in a whisper. “Sex.”

  She tapped her ear. “I’m a little hard of hearing, could you repeat that?”

  I glanced around, and drew closer to her, then repeated myself.

  She grinned from ear to ear. “Really? Now that sounds like a fun affinity, you little perv.”

  “It’s not like…” I sighed. “Okay, maybe a little like that.”

  She laughed and Prof. Hardin shot us a sharp look, then called out. “Okay, that’s all for today. Don’t forget about next week’s assignment.”

  I started toward Jadeite when Deirdre grabbed my arm again. She was awfully grabby today. “You know, I think I may have some suspicion why your magic works the way it does.”

  I froze. “You do?”

  “Just a suspicion,” she said. “You have a few minutes to talk about it?”

  I looked around for Jadeite, but she was already across the lawn, getting ready to head down the street to Happy Burger. “Actually, I, uh…”

  She smirked. “Aren’t you involved with her sister?”

  “Stepsister,” I muttered. “It’s complicated.”

  “Clearly.”

  “Look, I got to catch up with her. A lot went down this weekend.”

  “Another time then,” she said.

  I nodded. I wasn’t sure I wanted to commit to spending any time alone with her but maybe she really could help me. Or maybe she’d make me a snack like those drug dealers. Yeah, maybe I was better off minimizing my contact with her.

  I hurried after Jadeite. She was a good ways down the street, checking something on her smartphone. I almost took off after her when the motorcycles pulled up, the brawny alpha of the Road Wolves and his sidekick in the lead with three other men in leathers on angry sounding bikes. None of them looked happy.

  I didn’t look at Jadeite’s shrinking form. I gave no indication that that was the direction I’d been heading. I crossed my arms and met the alpha’s gaze. I just had to hold his attention long enough for her to get into the restaurant and get out of sight.

  The alpha and the younger man who’d been with him at the bar got off their bikes and began walking toward me. Their eyes glowed with angry golden light. Whatever was going on, they weren’t happy about it.

  Chapter Ten

  They came up short about ten feet away from me, those golden eyes fixed on something over my shoulder. I turned my head so that I could glance back and found Deirdre She strolling toward us, a flowery book bag tossed casually over one shoulder.

  She smiled and offered a little wave as she drew even with us.

  The werewolves’ nostrils flared and they tilted their heads back. Then took a step back, baring their teeth.

  “Hey, Caleb,” she said, as if we hadn’t just spent an entire class together. “Who are your friends?”

  I cleared my throat. “You know, I’m not entirely sure.”

  The younger one in the lead, the werewolf girl’s brother if I remembered right, took a step forward, lowering himself as if he meant to pounce. It looked a little ridiculous to be honest. Except that knowing he was a werewolf put his posturing in a whole different light. He was this close to attacking us. Somehow the wolves knew that Deirdre was a major threat to them, and it was putting them all on edge.

  “Where’s my sister?” he said, and his voice came out in a raspy snarl.

  Deirdre looked between me and him. “Who?”

  “The girl that was with you at the bar?” I asked. “When you were trying to shake down my friend?”

  I glared at him, meeting his eyes and he flinched but didn’t back down. His lips pulled back to expose his teeth. “Her. You smell of her.”

  Shit. I had showered before coming to class. Apparently it wasn’t enough to fool a werewolf nose. “Haven’t seen her. Why’d she come after me?”

  The werewolf hadn’t broken my gaze and he seemed more focused on our staring contest than the words I’d spoken.

  He lunged, leaping at me like he meant to tear my throat out with his still human teeth. Green fire leapt to my hand but before I had a chance to bring it to bear a geyser of water struck him in the chest with the force of a firehose. T
he blast knocked him out of the air and sent him tumbling along the ground until he collided into his bike.

  The werewolves collectively stepped back. Two rushed forward to help him to his feet while the alpha positioned himself between us and his pack. I glanced over at Deirdre. She hadn’t moved. Her narrow arms were crossed over her chest and a single finger had been lifted, as if she meant to say “Oh, hold on.”

  That had been…I had never seen a spell cast with that much force that quickly before. The stuff I threw around was fast and powerful, but I needed to do more than lift a finger to generate a blast that strong. Something clicked into place in my mind.

  I couldn’t be completely certain, but Deirdre’s magic seemed to behave a lot like mine, reacting quickly, almost of its own accord as much as to her will. Nobody else had ever done spellwork like that around me. But everyone else I’d seen do spellwork had been human, and Deirdre She definitely wasn’t that. And if my magic worked similarly to hers, maybe the reason I was struggling with Hardin’s exercises was because I was trying to force my magic to follow human formulas…and my magic might not be any more human than Deirdre’s.

  The bikers climbed onto their bikes, the alpha staying between us and them like a goalie in front of a net. Deirdre really had them scared.

  The bikes roared off down the road a moment later.

  “What the hell was that?” I asked Deirdre.

  “I was about to ask you the same thing?” she said. “Since when do you hang around a crowd like that?”

  “I really don’t,” I said.

  She jerked her head in the direction the Road Wolves had ridden off in. “Do they know that?”

  Good question. And here was another one, where had the werewolf girl gone? Why wouldn’t she have gone back to the Road Wolves after doing whatever the hell she’d been doing with me and Lexus? And why, of my Dear and Fluffy Lord, why, did they think that I had something to do with her disappearance?

  I pulled out my phone and sent Jadeite a text, telling her I’d have to cancel our lunch plans. I’d watched a documentary on wolves back in high school. They weren’t the greatest hunters in the world, far from it. Actually, they were pretty inefficient, only actually getting their prey like, one fourth of the time or something. But they were relentless. In the documentary, this one pack had failed time and time again to take down a caribou. Each time they’d rally, like football players in a huddle, and then go out and try again. I had the very distinct impression that I wasn’t so different from the caribou in this case. They were gone for now, but they weren’t going to stay that way. And Deirdre sure as hell wasn’t about to step in and be my bodyguard.

  And if they were going to try again, then I wasn’t going to lead them right to the best person I knew in the world. I promised her that I’d explain everything as soon as I could, but that for the moment, it might be a good idea if I kept my distance.

  Dammit, this was so much worse than when Deirdre’s pet meth heads were gunning for me. I gave her a guilty glance at the thought.

  “What?” she asked.

  A stupid idea struck me. I knew it was stupid before I opened my mouth, but I asked anyways. “I don’t suppose you do any sort of tutoring on the side, do you?”

  She grinned. “You know, I almost got the impression you were trying to avoid me. But you nearly get jumped by bikers and that’s the first thing you ask? You sure you don’t have a crush on me?”

  She was hot enough but there was absolutely no fucking way in hell I was opening that can of worms. Did female snakes eat the males when they were done or was that just spiders? Clearly I hadn’t watched enough nature documentaries if the wolf one was the only one I could remember.

  “It’s not like that, it’s just…I think you can help me.”

  She seemed to consider that for a moment. “I’ll think about it. Ask me again after next class, if those assholes haven’t killed you by then.”

  “Thanks for that,” I said.

  A few minutes later I was walking up the sidewalk to my house.

  And found that the Road Wolves weren’t the only ones waiting for me. Danny, Tim, and Domingo were all in the empty living room, sitting in a circle made of folding chairs.

  “Hey guys,” I said walking in. They all stood up. Domingo held an official looking piece of paper in his hands. Nobody said hi back or met my eyes.

  “What’s going on?”

  Domingo handed me the paper. It was an eviction notice.

  “What the hell?” I looked up at him and then at the other two. “You’re kicking me out?”

  “No,” said Tim in a rush.

  “The owner’s kicking you out,” Danny said.

  Domingo held up a hand. “We had nothing to do with it, man. I mean, yeah, I’m pissed at you for wrecking the place again, but none of us called the owner about it.”

  “The neighbors did,” Tim said. “You guys made a ton of noise last night.”

  Danny nodded. “Most fucked up thing I ever saw, you all laying there naked with everything all broken and shit…Caleb, it was fucking scary, okay? There were fires and we couldn’t wake you up.”

  I gave a shaky nod. I got that.

  “And then the owner called while you were in class and actually had one of the neighbors bring this over.” He gestured to the eviction notice. “And she asked us all a bunch of questions on the phone, but she already knew, sort of, what had happened. And after what happened before….”

  The owner wanted me gone. I wasn’t good for their house. In the space of a month I’d basically had the place wrecked not once, but twice. And that was assuming you counted the teenaged invasion and the subsequent robbery as the same event and not two separate wreckings. If you did, then this was the third time that the house had been trashed. Not my fault? Maybe not technically, but I was definitely in the center of it all.

  “Shit,” I said.

  “They want you out today,” Domingo said.

  I jerked completely upright. “Today? Dammit, man, where am I supposed to go?”

  “I don’t know,” Domingo said. “She just said you weren’t allowed here anymore. You’re supposed to grab your stuff and get out.”

  Dammit. Where could I go? Lexus and Jadeite were awesome but I didn’t really know their mom-slash-stepmom and had no idea how she’d feel about me crashing on their couch. And I didn’t know anyone else well enough to ask for a favor like that. I sure as hell couldn’t afford to stay in a hotel.

  Naturally it was as I was in the midst of trying to sort through all of this that I heard the sound of motorcycles on the street outside.

  Chapter Eleven

  I took off out the back, hopping the fence between our yard and the neighbor’s and leaving my roommates—my former roommates—very confused behind me. I barely had time to ask them to hold on to my stuff for a bit before I was out the door and running through backyards.

  The roar of motorcycles rose and fell as the Road Wolves drove up and down the street, no doubt trying to find me. Once again I was the prey and I didn’t care for it. I wondered if they were trying to track me by scent. Supposedly werewolves’ sense of smell was almost as good in human form as a regular wolf’s. If that was the case, then my path back and forth between the school and what used to be my house was a trail they’d have to pick up soon.

  As I hopped another fence, one of the bikers drove by slowly, sniffing the air as he made his way down the block. It was nowhere near the house. Where was he going? And then I knew. He was following one of my running trails.

  Over the last several weeks I’d been running up and down this neighborhood, circling every block and finding new routes. The trail from the school might lead back to the house, but from there I had dozens of scent trails going everywhere in the neighborhood. I grinned to myself. Thank you spontaneous desire to exercise.

  I snuck around several more houses, trying to figure out where the hell I should go. I mean, I definitely
couldn’t go to Jadeite and Lexus’ place now, not with the Road Wolves after me. I’d done enough wrong to both of them without letting their home be invaded by angry werewolves.

  Dammit, what did they even want?

  Thomas Morrow would know. He was why they were here in the first place, something about an online business that fell through and they were blaming it on him. I didn’t think that the failed business had a lot to do with why they were after me, but he at least had to know more about werewolves than me. And that neighborhood was so damn nice that a bunch of hoodlums on bikes would definitely get some concerned homeowner to call the cops. It was the best shot at sanctuary and answers that I was going to get.

  I waited until the sound of the motorcycles was faint, and hopped another fence, then started running toward the Morrow’s place. I tried to stick to back yards, hopping fences, and keeping away from the roads as much as possible. Every time I heard the sound of motorcycles I hid, usually behind shrubbery or privacy fence. Unfortunately I had to eventually cross the street.

  That’s when they spotted me.

  One biker turned onto the street a good hundred yards down the road but spotted me. His engine roared and he pulled a phone out of his pocket. Texting while driving a motorcycle? I guess if you healed like a werewolf why not?

  I took off. I leapt another privacy fence and tried to stick to the backyards, abandoning stealth entirely as the sound of roaring bikes drew closer. I leapt one last fence and found myself on the spiraling road into the Morrow’s upscale neighborhood. I sprinted for all my life was worth, the sound of bikes drawing nearer, keenly aware that no matter how fast I ran, there was no way I was going to outrun a motorcycle.

  The Morrow’s house drew closer and closer. So did the sound of my pursuers.

  One bike rushed past me, its rider swinging it around to a stop directly in my path. He bared his teeth, eyes gold and glowing. I let fly a blast of emerald fire that caught him full in the chest and knocked him clear off his bike.