“Okay, then. I guess it’s on,” I remarked as I passed the note to Gabrielle.
“There’s something else,” Vicki said as her perky demeanor faded.
I frowned at the sudden change in my sister. “What’s wrong? Are you okay? Is it Grandpa or Grams?”
“No, Wyatt, they’re fine,” she answered, shaking her head. “Look, it’s a long story, but I can’t—I just can’t—keep this a secret. The Attorney General’s son is dying.”
I loved kids, and those words hit me like a body blow. “Do you know how old he is?”
“I’m sure I could find out,” Vicki answered.
I turned to my ladies, saying, “Talk to me about turning children.”
Gabrielle and Lyssa shared a look. I had no idea what it meant, but I could tell they knew something.
Lyssa said, “It can be tricky. It doesn’t always work out well.”
“What are we talking, here? Sixty-forty odds that it’ll work?”
“More like twenty-eighty.” Gabrielle’s voice was soft and somber. “Children aren’t exactly robust, Wyatt.”
I nodded as I turned the matter over in my mind. No… I didn’t want shifters to become known in the world any more than any other shifter did. But a dying child?
“Thank you for telling me, Vicki, and I’ll decide what to do as soon as we’ve located Hauser and Burke. Vicki, do you mind handling the transport again?”
Vicki smiled, though it wasn’t up to her usual brightness. “Not at all, brother mine. They’re my friends, too.”
I looked to each of my ladies in turn and saw nothing but calm and steadfast support. I took a deep breath and released it in a gradual exhalation. “All right, then. Let’s assemble the war party.”
28
I stepped through Vicki’s assault rift to a hilly, forested area that didn’t look too different from the terrain I was used to seeing. The group gathered just out of sight from a local road but not so far that I couldn’t hear the occasional vehicle pass us.
“That’s Mount Berry,” Gabrielle said, pointing to a distant peak. “I ended a rogue hunt about ten miles west of it a few years ago.” She fell silent as she scanned the area. “If I had to guess, we’re on the north side, pretty much where the foothills give way to the actual run up to the peak. That graveled road is probably the road mentioned in the case-file notes Nathanson sent.”
I closed my eyes and concentrated on a slight draw on the Smilodon, focusing on my senses and specifically my sense of smell. Then, I inhaled through both my nostrils and my mouth. Trees. Lots of trees. Pine, spruce, and other conifers. But my sense of smell wasn’t so acute that I could pick out specific scents like… say… two human federal agents.
Earl approached and stopped a respectful distance from my side. “So, is this the place?”
“I think so. I guess you won’t stick out so much, this time.”
Earl snorted. “Yeah… but we could be in trouble, too. There’s a momma grizzly and a couple cubs around here somewhere. They’re not close, or maybe the scent is old… but it’s something we need to keep in mind.”
I nodded my thanks. “Any scent of Hauser or Burke?”
“Not so much, but that perfume Burke loves passed this way. It follows that gravel road, there.”
Damn. How did I not smell that, too? Burke bathes in the stuff.
Earl must’ve read something in my expression, because he snorted a laugh and made a dismissive wave. “Don’t feel too bad, Alpha Wyatt. Number one, you’re a cat. Cats are not known for their senses of smell. Number two, they’ve had some weather around here the past couple days. High winds and…” His voice trailed off as he took a deep, slow sniff of the air. “…and I think a thunderstorm or two.”
“Okay,” I asked. “So, how do you know they’ve had high winds? That almost sounds like you’re making this up.”
“All the normal scents are jumbled and mixed together. I’m smelling deciduous trees and mints from those conifers over there, and I smelled the conifers when we first came through the portal or whatever Vicki calls it, which was nowhere close to the deciduous trees. The only time you get ambient scents that messed up and chaotic is in the wake of high winds, and the winds were probably not too long ago, either.”
That made sense. At least to me. No idea if a forester or naturalist would say the same. I still pondered the idea when Vicki, Karleen, and Lyssa arrived.
“We’re all accounted for,” Lyssa said. “Ready to proceed when you are.”
“Let’s move out,” I replied, turning toward the gravel road and putting actions to the words.
* * *
The gravel road steadily climbed the burgeoning slopes that would lead to Mount Berry, and Earl stayed at my side, serving as a kind of co-leader for the hike. After about ninety minutes, we came to a fork. Earl held up his hand in the signal to hold position as he walked a few dozen feet down each path. After visiting both, he pointed to the right-hand path from my perspective and signaled for us to continue.
Another thirty minutes of walking delivered us to a chain-link fence with razor-wire at the top. Large signs proclaimed the land beyond the fence to be U.S. Government property with unauthorized access punishable by several years in prison, a rather hefty fine, or both. A large gate extended a couple feet beyond each edge of the gravel road. There was no keypad, intercom, or even a lock on the fence’s gate. No one reported a camera anywhere within range sight.
“Burke’s perfume leads that way,” Earl said, pointing beyond the fence.
“That’s all well and good, but how did they get through the fence?” I asked.
Earl shrugged. “I’m a grizzly bear, not a clairvoyant.”
That said, he ambled to the gate and touched the back of his hand to the metal. No zap, spark, or otherwise noticeable electrical discharge, and he nodded then turned back to the group.
“Let’s get some hands on this gate,” he called out, and I—along with several others—joined him.
Earl looked to me, saying, “Okay, there’s a trick to this. Concentrate on your animal’s strength flooding your body. Don’t shift, but will the greater strength you have as your cat to saturate your human form.”
I nodded as I closed my eyes to concentrate on the part of my mind that was no longer human. I pictured the strength of my cat surging into my human body, making myself as strong as my form would allow.
My human form is too weak for my full strength, and I think I’ve integrated enough to achieve synthesis, the growly voice informed me. Should I try?
I mentally shrugged and replied, Sure… let’s do this.
I felt myself grow. Taller. Broader. My muscle mass almost tripled. And I felt my incisors lengthen and curve. I suddenly became aware of my clothes being very tight. I opened my eyes and found Earl and everyone around me looking up at me, their mouths agape. More than one scented slightly of fear.
“What?” I asked, and my voice wasn’t mine… not completely. More guttural. Rougher. Almost a perfect blend of my normal voice and the growly voice I’d heard in my mind since becoming a shifter.
Jaws worked, but no one spoke.
We did not have time for this. I shook my head and returned my focus to the gate. I did not like the thought of shredding my fingers on those tiny chain-links, so I trudged over to the pipe that served as a frame for the gate. The group who responded to Earl’s call parted around me like a sea. I clamped my hands around the pipe, then considered my position. Pushing against the gate’s mechanism sounded better than pulling, the more I thought about it. So, I reversed my stance, rolled my shoulders, and put my entire body into a pushing the gate open.
My shoulders tightened and bunched. I squatted slightly and leaned into the effort. As I clenched my grip on the pipe I felt familiar muscles flex in my fingers, and claws extended from each finger and thumb.
As the seconds transitioned to minutes, a faint groaning grew louder and louder. I kept pushing with everything I had, and soon enjo
yed the reward of watching the pipe within my grip give a little and bow out in the direction I pushed. After what felt like hours of straining against the gate—but was probably no more than five minutes or so—a shriek of tortured metal pierced the air, and a massive SNAP! followed on its heels as something broke inside the gate’s mechanism. All resistance to the gate’s motion vanished in an instant, and I almost fell.
The gate was now a horizontal yo-yo, and a five-year-old human could open or close it at will.
I turned to my people and found everyone staring at me still. It was like no one noticed the gate was now open. I sighed and fought the urge to shake my head. It was a good thing, too. With my saber-teeth out, I would probably have shredded the top of my straining shirt. And that was another good point.
I need to be human again, I sent to the home of the growly voice.
No, the growly voice shot back. I need to return to human form. I haven’t been human in a long time and never will be again.
I felt myself shrink as a lot of strength left my limbs. My incisors returned to their ‘normal’ size, and the whiskers and fur seemed to withdraw back into me as it vanished. I rolled my hands back and forth as I flexed my fingers; everything seemed back to normal. Except that my clothes now felt a little looser than they had. Even my shoes. I knelt and tried tightening the laces and re-tying them, and that helped. But it wasn’t perfect.
Ah, well… I resolved myself to a long conversation with the growly voice about this new synthesis I achieved. And I wanted to look at myself in the mirror. I suspected it was a kind of Smilodon-human hybrid, a cat-man, and that had to look damn cool.
“Okay, people,” I said, and I fought to control my surprise. My voice was just like it had always been for the most part, but it seemed to carry a gravelly undertone that hadn’t been there before. I sounded about twenty years older… if I’d spent those twenty years shouting across a parade ground or battlefield. Something else to consider, but not now. “Show’s over. Let’s get a move on.”
* * *
After passing through the gate, we dispatched the war party for maximum coverage and camouflage. A mass of bears, wolves, cats, birds, and more following a graveled road would stand out only slightly less than an honest person in politics. Soon enough, only Earl and Vicki walked with me, and I had to devote my full focus and strain my senses to get even a hint of the war party moving through the forest around us.
We walked for another thirty minutes or so, but only traveled about a mile. We weren’t trying to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time, and frankly, we were checking the road for traps. Land mines, trip wires, laser trip wires… any of these and more would not have surprised me at all.
But we found nothing.
Vicki concentrated as much on the ambient magic as she did the path. If there were any magical traps laid along the road, they’d resonate against the ambient power regardless of whether they had any visible component. Part of her still wanted to freak out a little bit at seeing her brother shift into some kind of sabertooth, furry man… not to mention how he broke the gate mechanism all by himself. But she couldn’t afford the distraction. Not at the moment. It was, however, something to discuss with Grandpa and Grams. They would have the best chance of knowing what that was.
The road ended in a small man-made clearing formed around the entrance to a massive cave. The highest point of the opening’s edge looked half-again the height of a tractor-trailer. About thirty yards or so back into the cave, concrete bunker doors blocked further access.
There. Ripples in the magic. A ward existed somewhere nearby, but it wasn’t active at the moment. Vicki closed her eyes to concentrate on the ripples. Trace them. They were… elusive. Maybe masked somehow? Protected from detection? All at once, understanding snapped into perfect clarity. The wards protected the entrance. Not a fortification like a fortress’s walls. No. Once active, it would turn the clearing into a prison, keeping everything on one side of the ward separate from the other side.
Vicki opened her eyes and took in the scene before her. Wyatt walked ahead some thirty feet in front of her. Earl lagged behind, probably staying close to protect the boss’s sister. Snort. As if she needed that. But Wyatt? Wyatt was too damn close to the ward where it waited silent and primed, a stalking predator in an overgrown forest.
She opened her mouth to shout a warning… just as Wyatt set foot on the concrete that lined the floor of the cave entrance. The ward flared brighter than the sun as it activated and became solid to Vicki’s arcane senses. No wall was perfect, though, and Vicki closed her eyes once more and devoted her full focus to her perception of the ambient magic.
There. A figurative crack.
Vicki opened her eyes and allowed her sense of the ward to guide her focus as she squared her shoulders and went over the Greater Dispelling that was the first Master-level spell Grams taught her. Concentrating on the weakness, Vicki called her staff, then recited the spell.
Requiem’s crystal grew in brightness the deeper into the spell Vicki went—and the more power she drew into herself. As she spoke the final syllables that completed the casting and unleashed the power on the object of her focus, the crystal atop her staff shone bright enough to light a small gymnasium.
Vicki closed her eyes as soon as she completed her casting and watched the spell hit the ward with what should have been the force of an exploding Howitzer shell against a crumbling castle wall.
But that didn’t happen.
She watched as the ward absorbed the Greater Dispelling and split that power between strengthening the ward even more and generating a massive shock effect. Vicki rattled off a quick elemental protection spell and felt it take hold, just as the ward spawned a lightning bolt… that struck Wyatt square in the center of his chest.
An anguished scream of helpless rage tore from Vicki’s throat as she watched her brother collapse into a twitching heap. Her perspective shifted downward as a tidal wave of impotent tears washed her cheeks, and it wasn’t until Earl began pounding on solid nothingness that she realized she had fallen to her knees.
Earl had no hope of physically breaking through the ward. She knew that. But that didn’t stop a part of her from hungering to race to his side and add her effort to the endeavor. No. Rash, emotional reactions were not the way to defeat this challenge. Analytical calm utilizing the finest arcane education in the world would carry the day.
Vicki wiped her face as she pushed herself to stand once more. Her mind racing in its consideration of the problem. The ward was protected from dispelling, but what about teleportation?
Her eyes went to Wyatt’s chest. After a few moments of concentration, she saw he still breathed, and a rush of joy and relief surged through her.
Yes. Teleportation was a risk, but if she didn’t target the ward itself, that should bypass its protections, right?
Vicki took a deep, steadying breath. Then a second. She closed her eyes and focused on that sense of Wyatt she’d always had, even when he was just her brother with no Magi talents. She cleared her mind, took another deep, calming breath. Then, she recited the teleportation spell, still focused on Wyatt.
She jerked her eyes open as she neared the final syllable of the spell to watch him disappear from within the ward and appear at her feet. She couldn’t wait to razz him about charging forward.
The power surged within her as she completed the spell, and she felt the effect take hold, recognizing the feeling of a near-perfect casting. Yes! This was going to work. It was going to…
Vicki’s silent cheering stopped as icy claws of fear surrounded her heart when she watched Wyatt vanish from where he lay and not re-appear at her feet. What happened? How?
She wanted to rage again, but the fear that her brother was well and truly gone was too strong. She clamped her eyes closed once more and sought the connection—the bond—between them. Heaved a sigh of relief when she still felt it. Except it felt like Wyatt was deeper into the mountain bunker now.
29
Despair and self-loathing were Vicki’s reality as she knelt on the grassy center strip of the graveled road they’d followed to reach the bunker. Her brother was gone. Delivered to people who would make whatever time he had left a cruel agony... and delivered by her hand. The ward that blocked access to the bunker’s entrance was impenetrable and freakishly protected; she had no way of breaking it to have even a hope of saving Wyatt.
Her life was over. There was no coming back from this. Ever. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to.
She was supposed to protect him. That’s what her grandparents always told her when they were little. She’d have to protect Wyatt as they grew older, because she was Magi and he wasn’t. It wasn’t until a week or so before the cougar attack that made him a shifter that she realized fate cursed her to watch Wyatt age and die while she looked no older than thirty or maybe a very-well-preserved forty. Yes, Magi aged and eventually died, but they aged at a rate glaciers envied. Her grandparents lived through the Renaissance.
Noise reached her ears, but she didn’t care. Why did anything else matter now? The noise became more insistent, and something grabbed her shoulders and shook her… forcefully.
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