by Mary Hughes
Okay, that was bad. She battled not to inhale, but even so, some of the bits found her nostrils and went up her nose.
Dozens of tiny barbed hooks sank into her brain.
Blood entered the ivory wizard’s smile. He flicked the wand again.
A swarm of flecks released, headed for her. The first were only seeker hooks, meant to tether the supply line.
He was going to eat all her magic. To suck the power from the very core of her being.
Heart pumping in panic, she blew the air from her nose. “Out.” Not even a spell, she threw up a hasty mental image of the exploratory hooks blowing out with the air. Red flecks floated out before her face.
With a slash of will she sealed off all her power, walling it off behind a mundane facade that was half hope, half desperation.
Pinching her nostrils with a thumb and forefinger, she stopped breathing.
A cloud of hook magic pummeled her in the face like a swarm of buzzing, angry hornets.
She stood oh-so-still, steeling herself against the ping-ping-ping.
The cloud hesitated. Shuddering, it gathered and returned to its maker.
Her chest exploded in a desperate inhale. She trembled with horror at what had nearly happened. Sucking power, life. She’d read about it, studying Burgot. But she’d never dreamed a mage could actually be that evil. With that vortex he could take her power and not only leave her unable to defend herself and Noah, he could use it against Noah.
How could she fight that?
To buy herself time, she flashed the tip of her wand down, kindled a flame with a word, and burned a quick protective circle around Noah and herself.
The ivory wizard’s smile quirked into an “Oh well”. He motioned Rodolphe to Sophia’s left. He flicked a finger at Rodolphe’s buzzard and pointed behind her.
She didn’t like his complacency at all. He was too confident, too relaxed. He’d done this before, many, many times… She was hit by a horrid suspicion. Maybe he’d come across Burgot’s siphons and dressed up like him. But maybe, just maybe, this was the evil wizard himself.
The bane of the Witches’ Council. It had taken the great Jean-Dion d’Avignon to defeat him before, and legend said that even the famous founder of the Council had only done it by tapping wild magic. Burgot was assumed to have died in exile.
Sophia began to wonder if rumors of his death were overly optimistic.
Rodolphe gave the ivory wizard a black glare. He never liked being ordered around. But he moved into position, and she and Noah were surrounded.
Four trained antagonists circled her, an untried wizard, and a familiar who’d just grown his big boy legs and stood gazing at his hands like they were the eighth wonder of the universe. Hell, even she wasn’t much better; the mock-duels in college had been regulated non-fatal.
Okay. Start small and hope for the best.
And if that didn’t work, cheat.
“Hey, ivory robe. Who the hell are you?” She pushed power into her protective circle. A shield rose from the ground, a cylinder of earth magic twinkling gold in the hot sun. Not much, but the best she could do on such short notice.
The wizard smirked. “You’d like to know, wouldn’t you?”
She grinned back, all teeth. The great thing about evil was, the pool of henchmen was shallow. And peed in. Rodolphe was smarting from being ordered around, and she could use that. “Hey Rodolphe. Is that your boss?”
“No.” Rodolphe’s sneer said, Me, have a boss? Please.
“Stop,” the ivory-robed wizard said.
“He is my colleague.”
“Say nothing!”
Rodolphe’s operatic baritone rolled right over the ivory mage’s thin voice. “Of course you’re too stupid to recognize him. My colleague is—”
“—shut—”
“—Phere Burgot the Great.”
“—up.”
Damn it. Why did she have to be right? Burgot was still alive after all these centuries, probably from stealing wizard and shifter magic, siphoning it, eating it…it jolted her like a cut power line.
The real Hungry Ghost. She wasn’t swimming in the evil pool, she was splashing in a shark-infested, satanic septic tank.
She trembled.
“Steady,” Noah murmured. He aligned himself to her spine, to fight back to back.
His heat, his strength, ate through her shock. She managed, “You need a wand.”
“I’ll shift.”
“Magic is a distance technique.” She knew he’d understand the implication. As his wolf’s jaws took out one foe, the other three would be killing him with magic. “Powerful as your wolf is, you can only be in one place at a time. Unless you have a gun or throwing knives—and even those have to be bespelled to get through a magic shield—you won’t reach them all before they mow you down.”
“Magic shield, hmm? The familiars?”
That reassured her like nothing else could have. He understood to the point of working through the implications.
She said, “They have amulets.”
“Ah.”
Rodolphe started blasting with his wand at the earth outside her shield. He was a water mage so she didn’t like that at all.
“Bram!” She shouted to get the familiar’s attention. “Your master needs a wand—hell.”
Rodolphe whipped out a spray of water. It hit the churned ground and rebounded, carrying a load of dirt. Somehow he’d learned to mix elements since she’d seen him last. Burgot’s doing, no doubt. And maybe that power sucker.
Mud magic splashed her shield. The shield glittered angrily as it burned the mud off. “Bram! A wand.”
“What?” The familiar looked up from his hands. His eyes glowed emerald green. Intelligence sharpened in them. “Where?”
“My aunt’s store. Mason!”
“Here!” Mason’s deep voice boomed from the garage, barely heard over Rodolphe’s next explosion of mud. Her protective column hissed violently.
“Show Bram to the Uncommon—”
“Done.” Mason morphed into his wolf and took off.
Bram leaped, melded into the raven, and flew after Noah’s big lieutenant. Burgot shot a bolt after Bram, but the raven dodged easily, as if he’d anticipated it.
“Noah.” She tossed her words over her shoulder. “I know you haven’t done magic, but you have to try now.”
“But magic killed my mother. Orphaned me. I can’t…I won’t…ah, fuck.”
“Explode!” Burgot snapped his wand at them, unleashing a thunderball of power so big it hit her protective cylinder like a battering ram. The ground-deep shudder threw her to the earth.
She landed with her butt outside the circle.
Noah leaped over her, landing in front. He stood between her and Burgot, outside the circle, quivering with rage. “You want me, Burgot. Leave her alone.”
Burgot only laughed. “What I want is your dual magic. I want you alive but docile, easy to drain—completely broken. Her death would do that nicely.” He shrugged. “Besides, Rodolphe wants her dead for some reason.”
He cocked his blood-red wand over his shoulder, preparatory to annihilating them both. “So dead she’ll be.”
* * *
Noah recognized the deadly glint of intent in Burgot’s pale eyes. The ivory wizard was primed for what even Noah recognized as a killing stroke.
He was shocked by how strongly he needed to do one thing—protect Sophia. His wolf came forward with a snarl.
But even as his body automatically started to change, he held it off. His wolf was supernaturally fast, but Sophia was right—fast didn’t equal instantaneous. Burgot and Rodolphe were on opposite sides of the field. No matter how quickly he dealt with one, the other would be free to kill her. Not to mention the two familiars, potentially as dangerous.
Hell. The only way to come out of this alive was with magic.
For years he’d hated and blamed his wizard father for the death of his mother. She’d made Noah promise never to us
e his magic. How could he ignore all that? How could he become a wizard, the very thing he’d railed against, vowed never to be? It felt like the last step to damnation.
How had it come to this? He was his mother’s son. When had he slid so wholly over to the dark side? When he’d first seen Sophia, and was attracted to a witch? When he’d mated her?
Or when he’d realized his father had actually fought to save his mother and himself? When Noah had finally, after decades of pain, forgiven him for leaving them?
Didn’t matter. Protecting Sophia meant acknowledging…using…embracing his wizard’s nature.
That decided him. He’d do whatever it took, for her.
He sought the sparkles, the magic, that he’d suppressed for most of his life, tapped only briefly to deal with the treachery of the old alpha.
He couldn’t find them.
His body iced. Had his magic somehow unraveled with the hide spell?
Count the steps, son. Down, down… Noah relaxed and went to the cool, unemotional place where the hard man—his father—had taught him to go.
And there it was. The tail of power twitched, just barely, in the center of his being, his navel. Relief welled in him. He touched his navel, reaching for his magic to fight.
What came forth was not a child’s prickle of magic but a wizard prince’s mature power. The torrent gushed like a river. He filled his hands with it, pure magic, overflowing his palms, streaming like a blast of windswept golden ribbons.
His deliberations in the cool place had taken fractions of a second. Burgot was just now snapping the blood-red wand forward.
Noah stood there, magic overflowing, and realized he had no idea what to do.
The shaft of killing magic, powerful as a cannon shot, barreled straight toward them, jarring Noah into a spontaneous response. His arm was already coming up when he figured out what was happening.
No magical training, but he knew how to fight. Block hard with soft. He threw his arm out, releasing his ribbons in a soft, fanning arc.
Burgot’s hard shot hit the ribboned power like a cannonball caught by a streamer of woven silk. Noah’s magic redirected Burgot’s like a sling. It flew harmlessly to one side.
Squawk! Not quite harmlessly. It cannoned straight into Rodolphe’s buzzard. The bird blasted into a puff of feathers.
A grim smile flashed in Noah’s mind. Now it was two against three.
The golden-robed Rodolphe was bombarding Sophia with mud magic, but her blocks were precise and economical as she scrambled to her feet. He wondered why she didn’t just return Rodolphe’s blasts in kind, when she threw a fist of magic from her own wand, tossing Rodolphe onto his ass. She flung over her shoulder, “Noah! Don’t use your magic directly against Burgot. He can suck power from spells and worse, use them to hook directly into your power—yow!”
Her high-pitched shriek was filled with pain and anger. He spun. She stood there, wand down, hand clutching her shoulder. Blood dripped from under her fingers. She slowly uncovered her shoulder. A burn charred the cloth and had ripped ugly and raw across her velvety skin.
Rodolphe was smirking. Smirking. Noah’s rage rose from deep inside his heart.
He called up his magic…as Rodolphe pointed the pink rod at Noah. “Bye-bye, wolf.”
Burgot shouted, “Wait!”
The beam lanced out. Noah felt the thing hit him, try to latch onto his very cells.
But he’d already called up his father’s heritage, and his mage power grabbed the beam instead. Inch by inch, the cord of magic connecting him to Rodolphe turned from red to blue. Noah thought the wizard magic was pushing the sucker’s magic back.
Until the blue reached Rodolphe. The siphon itself changed colors, from pink to blue—and power washed the other way.
Rodolphe’s power flooded Noah. It hit him so hard it shoved him back. Squinting, he fought against it, planting his feet and leaning into it like fighting a hurricane.
Suddenly, it stopped. Noah opened his eyes.
Rodolphe’s deflated husk dropped with a whisper to the grass.
Noah was horrified, but his training was already spinning him toward Sophia. He pressed his palm to her wound. His power rose again, more than even before. He didn’t know how to use the magic but let his heart guide him, intuitively healing her as he’d heal himself.
Burgot sped toward Rodolphe’s remains, gesturing at his familiar as he ran.
Out of the corner of his eye, Noah saw the ivory ferret boil up into a slender human male with a white brush of hair and a camouflage weapons vest shingled with knives. He slid two out and threw them in a single motion—straight at Sophia.
Noah whipped up a shield but Sophia was already blasting the ferret man with her free hand. Her magic actually lifted the small man off his feet and plowed him into the grass ten feet behind him.
Noah felt a rush of pride. She was stellar. A witch, yes, but his witch.
Burgot rummaged around in Rodolphe’s remains and came up with the siphon, now pink again. He gave a satisfied, “Ah.”
Noah didn’t know what the wizard could do with the siphon, but he didn’t like the supremely confident smirk sitting on the other man’s lips.
At that moment he spotted a black dot in the air, heading his way. Raven. Burgot was rising to his feet. Noah focused on the other man. It would be a race to see who’d be ready first.
Grinning, Burgot pointed both wand and siphon at Noah just as Raven flapped over the field. Without looking, Noah held his hand up.
Caw! Raven dropped a short stick. Noah swept it out of the air, continuing the arc to curve up another soft shield as Burgot threw a blast at them. The shield caught Burgot’s blast and threw it into the tree line. Noah shouted through the explosion of magic and branches, “Fight with us, Bram.”
The raven plummeted, not so much landing next to them as turning inside out at the last moment. His human form was equally tall with Noah’s.
As he landed Burgot threw another blast at them. The ferret familiar was just getting to his feet so Noah angled his shield block with a smile toward the ferret man. The familiar saw the blast rocketing toward him, eyes widening, and scrambled to dive out of its way.
Without words, Noah and Bram formed up back to back at the rim of the burned circle, Sophia sandwiched between.
She wasn’t having any of that. She squirmed out from between their taller bodies and stood with her shoulders abutting their biceps, the three of them back to back to back.
Noah’s heart smiled. His mate could take care of herself.
But the protective male inside him shouldered their triangle around until he, not Sophia, was the one facing Burgot. The ivory wizard bared yellowed teeth at him in a blood-curdling grin.
Gripping his new wand, Noah grinned back, letting his Canidae nature show a little fang. Burgot’s smile faltered.
Noah was already raising his free hand to take advantage of the enemy’s lapse. He whipped up a bolt of hard magic.
“No,” Sophia gasped. “He’ll steal your magic. Close off your power, stop breathing—”
“Trust me.” He threw the bolt of magic at Burgot.
Burgot only saw the poor dumb shifter playing into his hands. He touched the siphon to a pocket in his robe then swirled up a spell with it like a cyclone on its side. Its maw gaped where Noah’s spell would have hit, if it had gone straight.
But Noah hadn’t forgotten what Burgot could do. He’d thrown the ivory wizard a curve ball. Noah’s spell careened harmlessly past, just out of reach.
Noah smiled. He’d faked Burgot into revealing his spell-sucking magic. This was why Mason never played poker with him. Noah was honest and trustworthy to his friends, but he could bluff the hell out of anyone, especially his enemies.
He slashed the wand, tagging his mother’s black wolf pendent in the long grass.
This is for you, Mother.
With a flick of the wrist, he flung the pendent straight into Burgot’s power vortex.
Sophia grabbed his forearm. “Not the medallion…damn.”
The vortex vacuumed the solid pendent straight into Burgot’s solar plexus. It skewered him through.
Burgot bent over, gasping.
The ferret man froze. Suddenly he collapsed into his animal form and ran away, tall grass waving. Bram changed to raven and took to the air, his caws sounding suspiciously like taunts.
“Stop! Pax.” Gasping, Burgot raised both hands, uncurling slowly. Blood stained the front of his ivory robe. “Good fight.” He attempted to smile. “Let’s talk.”
Noah’s eyes narrowed. “Let’s not.”
“You were awesome.” Sophia put a hand on Noah’s biceps. “Come on. Let’s get your mother’s medallion.”
“It was actually my father’s. Given out of love.” Noah glanced down at her as they started toward Burgot. With her hair mussed and her cheeks pink from the fight, she was even more beautiful to him. He had to bite down on his tongue to keep himself from sweeping her into his arms right then and there.
Her rosy color drained. “Oh hell.”
Noah’s head snapped up. Burgot was running away, Noah’s medallion hanging by its thong from his clenched fingers. Sophia threw a bolt of power at Burgot’s feet, but he blocked it with a hurried spell—just as a roar came from the street.
Burgot’s ferret, now a man wearing ivory leather, spun a motorcycle to a stop at the edge of the repair shop’s cobbled parking lot.
“Stop him!” Sophia ran after Burgot.
The wizard saw her and blasted earth up behind him, a tsunami shield of dirt and grass. Leaping after her, Noah grabbed her arm then yanked her back just before the heavy clods would have smashed into her.
Through the dirt veil Noah could see Burgot mount behind the familiar. They took off in a tight-throated roar.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sophia’s heart pounded in her ears, fear and adrenaline pushing her to a diamond-hard focus. “We have to catch them.” She reached for her white wolf.
Noah’s hand on her wrist stopped her. “Even as wolves, we can’t run as fast as a motorcycle. We need wheels. Mason!”