by Bill Hiatt
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
What Has Gone Before
Chapter 1: Stabbed in the Back (Jimmie)
Chapter 2: Peter Pan Syndrome (Gordy)
Chapter 3: Deja Vu (Eva)
Chapter 4: Seance in the Sand (Jimmie)
Chapter 5: Heart Torn in Two (Eva)
Chapter 6: Home is Where the Hack Is (Stan)
Chapter 7: Lunatics (Gordy)
Chapter 8: Down and Out in Madisonville (Stan)
Chapter 9: Paper Moon (Eva)
Chapter 10: Loss (Stan)
Chapter 11: The Wolves Aren't the Worst of It (Eva)
Chapter 12: Island Dead-end (Stan)
Chapter 13: The Valley of Lost Things (Tal Sixteen)
Chapter 14: Double Double Cross: Stan
Chapter 15: Shifting Alliances (Tal)
Chapter 16: No Way Out (Lucas)
Chapter 17: The End of the Road? (Tal)
Chapter 18: Tartarus Tangle (Eva)
Chapter 19: Mishaps on the Mountain (Tal)
Chapter 20: Dealing with Your Inner Oricha (Lucas)
Chapter 21: Unexpected Sacrifice (Eva)
Chapter 22: Unexpected Company (Tal)
Chapter 23: End Boss Fight? (Michael)
Chapter 24: Surprising Discovery (Eva)
Chapter 25: Zeus Hunt (Tal)
Chapter 26: Annwn Under Siege (Jimmie)
Chapter 27: Searching for Atlantis (Tal)
Chapter 28: Capturing the Pretender (Stan)
Chapter 29: Desperate Gamble (Tal)
Chapter 30: A Narrow Escape...or Was It? (Stan)
Chapter 31: Family Reunion (Tal)
Chapter 32: Divide and Conquer (Stan)
Chapter 33: Change of Plans (Tal)
Chapter 34: Always a Bridesmaid, Never a Bride (Tal)
Chapter 35: The War at Home (Tal)
Chapter 36: Uninvited Guests (Tal)
Chater 37: Old Business (Eva)
Chapter 38: Keeping Tal on Track (Vanora)
Glossary of Names from Earlier Books in the Spell Weaver Series
The Adventure Isn't Over
About the Author
Separated from Yourselves
By Bill Hiatt
Copyright © 2016 by William A. Hiatt
All rights are reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without written permission from the author.
The cover illustration and design were created by Peter and Caroline O’Connor of Bespoke Book Covers. (http://bespokebookcovers.com/). All rights are reserved. This image may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without written permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Names of places and companies are either fictional or are used fictionally.
Dedication
This novel is dedicated to my friends, both past and present, without whom I would not be who I am today—and probably would not be writing!
What Has Gone Before
Separated from Yourselves is the sixth book in the Spell Weaver series. If you are interested in reading the previous books first, you can find links to them in “The Adventure Isn’t Over.” However, if you can’t wait to read this book, I have tried to include in the text enough information about earlier events in the Spell Weaver series to make it possible for someone new to the series to understand and enjoy the adventures in this book without having read the earlier ones. If you find yourself wanting more background, check “Glossary of Names from Earlier Books in the Spell Weaver series.”
Chapter 1: Stabbed in the Back (Jimmie)
Just that morning Dan had jokingly said, “Well, it looks as if I might just live long enough to graduate.” Then he flashed me one of those smiles that could always make me feel better, no matter what.
It was weird, but the first thing I thought of as I saw him get shot was that joke.
He hit the ground with a disturbing thud. I should have done something, but I froze. Damn it, I’d faced death. I’d even been dead for a while. Yet here I was, watching my brother get attacked and not doing anything.
One of the men rolled Dan over. Dan’s usually tan face looked pale, but I couldn’t see any blood. There was what looked as if it could have been a dart sticking out of his neck.
Tranquilizer dart, maybe?
“Where’s the brother?” asked the other man.
He must not have been very observant, since I was standing only a short distance away, and even in the unlikely event that the men didn’t already know what I looked like, here I was, tan like my brother, blond like my brother, though a little younger and a little taller—unmistakably related.
They were probably expecting me to be with Dan and may have been confused when I wasn’t. Dan and I usually carpooled, but I had to stay to meet with one of my teachers, so I caught a ride home with Roger Haskins. He had dropped me at the corner just a couple of minutes ago, and here I was, standing like an idiot, waiting patiently to get tranqed myself.
I dropped down behind my neighbor’s hedge, hoping the men wouldn’t try searching the block for me. I figured they didn’t want to attract too much attention.
On the other hand, they had just shot Dan in broad daylight. Looking for me wasn’t going to attract any more attention than that.
I heard noises that sounded like them putting Dan into the back of their van. After that, I couldn’t hear any movement. They had gotten quiet, which I wouldn’t have expected.
Then I realized the ugly truth: they were looking around for me, and I was so close it wouldn’t take them long to find me.
I should have been thinking faster. I had to put more distance between us.
I hesitated, though. With all my heart I wanted to rescue Dan. The sword that hung invisibly at my side was powerful, but it would have worked better against evil supernatural beings than these guys. Besides, I’d give myself away if I tried to attack them, and they could shoot me faster than I could reach them. Since they shot Dan in the neck, they might know about our dragon armor, in which case they’d know to aim for the neck or hands.
How could they know? I didn’t have time to figure that out.
Instead of running down the sidewalk, I ran through people’s front yards to keep that tall hedge between me and the guys who’d attacked Dan. I also knew that running on grass would make less noise than running on the sidewalk. I had to jump a couple of low fences in the process, but, scrambled as I was, I managed not to trip and fall.
Once I got around the corner with no sign of them pursuing, I took a chance and pulled out my cell phone. If I could get help fast enough, I could stop them from taking Dan.
I should have known who to call, but I hesitated over that, too.
The guys who had attacked Dan were dressed in the dark-blue suits characteristic of Vanora’s security men, and they were driving one of her vans.
However, I’d seen too much to take anything at face value. Vanora was hard to deal with sometimes, but she obviously hadn’t ordered her own men to kidnap Dan. They had gone rogue somehow, or maybe they weren’t part of her force at all. Life in Santa Brígida being what it was, they could just as easily be shapeshifters or illusionists in disguise. Our little town might as well have invented the expression “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
As a member of the group recently dubbed Taliesin’s Terrors by Lucas, our newest recruit, I had a private number that put me straight through to Vanora, so I dialed it.
When she answered, I realized for the first time how out of breath I was, but I managed to choke out, “Dan’s been kidnapped…by guys who
look like your men!”
“Jimmie, breathe!” Vanora commanded. “I don’t know who could have gotten into town without setting off at least a dozen magic alarms, but we’ll deal with whoever it is. You’re only two blocks or so from that little park off Palm. Get over there, and I’ll have some of my real security men meet you. They’ll be there in two or three minutes max. Meanwhile, I’ll try to get a fix on Dan’s abductors. Sound good?”
“Yes,” I said, already feeling a little better.
“Good. Stay safe, but get to the park quickly. I’ve got to go now.” Vanora didn’t even give me a chance to thank her, but I was relieved she was moving into action so smoothly.
That relief lasted for the twenty seconds it took me to realize I hadn’t told Vanora where I was.
Yeah, she could have scanned for me and found me, but in a town the size of Santa Brígida, she couldn’t have located me so fast—unless of course she had started the scan through her nearby security men.
As far as I could tell, none of her other guys were close. She must have scanned through the ones just down the block. That meant she was still connected to them. They were hers. Had they gone rogue, she surely would have known already and would have stopped them.
I couldn’t imagine that Vanora was behind the attack on Dan, but there was no other explanation. For no apparent reason, she had turned on us.
The situation, frightening enough to begin with, had just gotten a thousand times worse.
As a Lady of the Lake, Vanora had control of powerful magic. Worse, the magical “network” that Stan, our resident science brain, and Tal, our leader and strongest sorcerer, had helped her design enabled her to see through the eyes of her security men as well as to deploy her powers, including her ability to look for someone magically, through them. Since she maintained a large security force and had men all over town, that meant it wouldn’t take her long to find me.
What was I thinking? She already knew where I was!
I took off as fast as I could run, only in the opposite direction from the one she had told me to take. That would only buy me a couple of minutes, but that might be long enough to at least let someone else know what was happening.
Aside from the fact that Vanora already knew my approximate location, my sword gave off a distinctive magic I knew she could track. I thought about ditching the blade somewhere, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do that. Even though it wouldn’t be much use against gunmen firing from a distance, I felt kind of naked without it.
Awkward as it was, I had my phone in one hand and kept making calls as best I could. Anyone who scoffs at voice commands has never had to call anyone while running for his life.
My first call was to Tal. If anyone in town could beat Vanora in a magic showdown, it would be him.
Straight to voice mail.
Then I tried Shar Sassani. His sword made him immune to magic. It wouldn’t protect him from a mundane tranquilizer dart, but Vanora wouldn’t know where he was right away, so maybe her men wouldn’t find him as quickly.
Straight to voice mail.
Next I tried Nurse Florence. Being the school nurse was just her cover, though; really, she was a Lady of the Lake just like Vanora, so she’d know what to do.
Straight to voice mail.
I tried Carla Rinaldi next because, as the reincarnation of the sorceress Alcina, she, too, had magic.
Straight to voice mail.
I tried not to let despair get the best of me, but if the failure to get through to anyone meant what I thought it did, Vanora had managed to get the drop on the one person in town who was immune to her magic and the three people who had magic of their own. What hope did I have?
My next call was to Alex Stratos. He didn’t exactly have magic, but ever since his first trip to Olympus, when he’d been supercharged by ambrosia and the blood of Ares, he’d been incredibly strong, and the spare winged sandals Hermes gave him enabled him to fly. If anyone stood a chance of evading capture, surely it was him.
Straight to voicemail.
A security van turned the corner in front of me. I spun around and saw another one—probably the one that had picked up Dan—behind me. I was out of time and out of options.
Fighting wouldn’t work, and I couldn’t outrun their vans. There was no one on the street at that moment, but even if there had been, I wouldn’t have wanted to involve a civilian. I didn’t know for sure what Vanora was after—or how far she would go to get it. Someone trying to intervene could easily get hurt.
I thought about calling 911. Santa Brígida was a small community. If I said I was being abducted, there’d probably be a police car here before the security guys could get me loaded into a van. The problem with that idea, aside from the unknown risk to the police, was that Vanora’s public identity as Carrie Winn gave her enormous political influence, and perhaps more. Since she seemed to have corrupted her own security men, she might have used enough mind control on the police to keep them from interfering. I had no way to tell, and if they were actually on her side, calling them might just make the situation worse.
After looking around, the drivers of both vans moved their vehicles into position to block the street, after which all four men jumped out and pointed their guns at me. One might conceivably miss, but not all four.
Just as I was about to give up, an arrow whizzed down, striking one of the men in the gun hand and sending out four bright explosions that caused him to drop his weapon and fall to the ground.
Khalid, our resident half djinni, had come to save me! He was floating invisibly somewhere above us, but I could visualize his little face—he was only eleven—tight with concentration, his arm muscles straining as he pulled the bowstring to make his next shot.
Those arrows, blessed by an incongruous combination of some of our Greek friends (Eros, Hestia, and Helios) and the archangel Raphael, were more effective against evil supernatural forces. However, Khalid wouldn’t have wanted to kill the guy anyway, and the arrow’s bursts of blessing did seem to have disrupted Vanora’s connection with the security guard, at least judging by his glassy-eyed expression.
Another one of the security men was now aiming upward and looking around. If Vanora was watching through him, she might be able to spot Khalid despite his invisibility. I drew my sword and charged the guy. I knew one of the three left standing would tranq me, but if I could distract them long enough, maybe Khalid could take them down.
The one I was charging at hesitated, and that did indeed give Khalid time to get another shot off, knocking away the guard’s weapon and sending him thudding to the ground. I would have expected to get shot in the back while that was happening, but I heard some commotion from behind me, and when I turned around, I saw the rest of the cavalry: Gordy Hayes, Carlos Reyes, and our newest recruit, Lucas Santos, finishing off the other two with a combination of muscle, training, and magic. Gordy, just like Dan, had a football player’s build, but what really threatened the security men was his fear-inducing sword, and while Vanora’s men were resistant to that kind of effect, it did slow them down. Carlos, built like the swimmer he was, had a sword with an even more dramatic effect. All he had to do was scratch someone, and they became unable to breathe, just as if they were drowning. Vanora could counter that magic, but it took time and forced her to focus only on the victim of the effect. Lucas had no magic weapon, but his partly supernatural ancestry made him extremely fast—a brown blur in battle—and his capoeira training made knocking down the distracted security guards look easy. It had taken the three of them all of about thirty seconds to put both men out of commission.
“How—” I started as I ran toward them.
“Khalid was trying to find Shar and noticed his cell phone lying in the street,” replied Gordy. “Luckily, he knew Shar’s password, so he started checking his messages, hoping for a clue, and found the voice mail you left. As soon as he heard it, he knew Shar must have been taken by the same people chasing you, and he managed to call us just in
time for us to avoid capture.”
“Vanora was after everybody?” I asked, realizing even as I said it that it was a dumb question.
“Yeah, and as far as we can tell, she got all of us except who you see right now,” said Carlos. “Gordy’s car’s over there. Let’s get in quickly and find someplace safe. Then we’ll give you the details and figure out what to do next.”
“Where is going to be safe?” asked Lucas. I might have expected a newcomer to be more shaken up, but Lucas had become part of our group after shadows tried to kill him, so I guessed he wasn’t as easy to surprise as he probably had been before.
“That’s a good question,” asked Gordy. “I’d assume that Vanora’s goons won’t try to follow us out of town, but I can’t be sure. I can’t be sure we’d get out of town, anyway. Khalid, any news?” Gordy seemed to be directing the question at thin air, but then Khalid became visible.
“Vanora has security men on all the roads out of town,” he said. He looked shaky to me, but he had every reason to be. “There’s also police cars.”
“Damn!” I said. “I worried maybe she’d get the police involved.”
“Well, either they’ve been duped, or they’re being mind controlled,” said Gordy. “Whichever is the case, I’d rather not have to tangle with them if we can avoid it.”
Khalid, who had darted up into the air, returned with an even more worried expression on his face. “Five vans are moving in on us. We’ve got to go now.”
“Tal’s house,” said Gordy quickly.
“Why—” I started, knowing mine was much closer.
“In the recent beefing up of magical security, his is the one house Vanora didn’t help with,” explained Gordy. “I’m betting she gave herself a back door everywhere else. Now move, everybody!”
The four of us slid into Gordy’s Nissan, while Khalid, invisible again, presumably flew above us. It was a good thing, too, because he had to shoot out some van tires on the way. We never would have made it to Tal’s without him.