by Cherry Adair
“Does he look familiar to you?” Serena asked. “Perhaps like someone you knew? Someone else you were fond of?”
“No. He—” Joanna glanced from Serena to Duncan and then back again. She took in a harsh shuddering breath as reality seeped into her consciousness. “Yes. He looks exactly like Casey’s father. My God. No wonder I was instantly attracted to him, he looked so familiar. Why didn’t I see that?”
“He’s morphed into someone you’d instantly be comfortable with,” Duncan said grimly. “He’s our killer.”
Joanna went bone white, clutching Serena’s fingers tightly enough to cut off her circulation. “Killer?”
“We have a serial killer. Four full wizards so far.”
Joanna’s mouth moved as she tried to speak. Finally she managed, “He’s going to kill Casey. Oh, my God. He’s going to kill my baby! What have I done?”
She covered her face and started crying again.
“We’ll try to undo it,” Serena told her. And prayed that would be possible.
“How?”
Serena told Joanna about her impending position on the Council. “In accordance with tradition, I get the Medallion and a power boost sometime in the next forty-eight hours. I’ll help you, I promise.”
“Casey might not have forty-eight hours!” Joanna cried, rising from her chair to start compulsively neatening her already tidy desk.
Two men shimmered into the room, making the already small office even smaller.
“What are you doing?” Serena demanded of Duncan as she stepped protectively in front of Joanna.
“My job. Serena, Brown, and Chapman.” Curt introductions out of the way, Duncan quickly ran down the situation with his men. “Question Dr. Rossiter,” he finished. “Get what info you can from her, then meet me in Montana. I’ll copy the e-mail videos and send them to Juanita to enhance and analyze. We’ll find your son, Joanna. I promise.” He lifted the phone he was still holding to his ear. “Still there?” Duncan asked Juanita. “Assemble the team. ASAP.”
“Consider it done. What’s your ETA?”
“On my way,” he answered as he gripped Serena’s arm through the thick layers of her parka.
The instant she lifted her beautiful face to his, she must have sensed something was wrong. Very wrong. “What? Another wizard murder?”
He shook his head. “You’re coming with me.”
“To whe—?”
In a flash, Duncan teleported them both to Montana, and then dispatched their tundra-appropriate clothing. Once they were both more suitably dressed for T-FLAC’s underground facility, he took her by the hand and led her through the maze of desks and hi-tech equipment. Ushering her inside the conference room, he shut the door.
Con Jordan rose as he was introduced to Serena, as did Noah Hart. Duncan kept moving, tugging Serena along behind him to the other end of the table. The men returned to their seats.
“Serena Campbell.” He pulled out a chair for her, and nodded to Juanita. “Juanita Salazar. Okay,” he sat down at the head of the koa table. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”
Liquid crystal screens hummed as they lowered from the ceiling, surrounding the group with images collected over the past few days.
“We know all this,” Con pointed out as he slouched back in his chair. “The satellites have shifted to convergent orbits.”
Again Duncan spoke to Juanita. “Did you finish the projections?”
A keyboard appeared on the table in front of her. “Before you finished asking.” Her fingers flew across the keyboard, morphing the images into an animated film short.
They all watched in silence as the satellites moved into a circular position around the dedicated communications satellite owned by a private Russian communications conglomerate.
Then, like some high level on a video game, signals passed from the soldier satellites to the center one. In a matter of seconds, a single lightning-like beam shot down to earth.
“We were right,” Noah Hart said. “They are aiming at a specific target. So, someone has managed to get all the orbit codes and is about to blow up a target?” There wasn’t any sense of urgency in his tone. “So we have our friends at Lillenfield Aeronautics launch a counter drone to knock it out.”
“Not enough time,” Duncan countered. “It would take a drone almost seventeen hours to launch, intercept, and destroy.”
Landis suggested Duncan simply send up some fireballs of his own to destroy them all.
“Can’t.” Duncan glanced at Serena. “Four of the feeder satellites control electronic banking. Destroy them all at once and the economies of most developing companies will collapse. Hell, we’d knock out every ATM in the world.”
“Well, shit.” Stan Brown tapped his pen on the table. “Though I’ve got to say, it’s a brilliant plan. Control the money, control the world. So which one of the terrorist groups thought this up? Because the target isn’t disrupting international banking. That would only buy the terrorists a few weeks of success before the world’s economists and aerospace engineers fixed the problem. It’s too short-term.”
“But they would have enough time to amass a decent chunk of change. That’d cover their expenses for six months at least.”
Juanita sighed heavily. “Think bigger. Why settle for a few months of bonus cash when you can corner the market on commodities and untold amounts of natural resources?”
“Oh my God,” Serena said with dawning horror. “The thermal blanket.”
“Yeah. The thermal blanket.” Duncan acknowledged, placing his hand on her shoulder and giving a little squeeze. Quickly, he filled his team in on the Foundation’s latest project, including the secret testing location.
“Has to be Red Mantis,” Hart offered. “Someone in that group has been eating their Wheaties. All our intel indicates they’re violent as shit, but did we know they had someone with this kind of hi-tech expertise?”
“Wait!” Serena half rose. “Someone is going to steal my blanket and use it to do—” She fell back into her chair and frowned. “What exactly?”
“Red Mantis will use their satellite to superheat your thermal blanket. Once they warm the frozen tundra, they’ll have access to huge, untapped oil reserves. They’ll make what OPEC has to sell look like a fruit stand. Juanita, pull up the aerial images.” The screen changed to a series of still photographs. “Those drilling rigs are a hundred miles south of Serena’s test site.”
“How did they move that shit into place without us knowing?” Con Jordan demanded, sitting up to glare at the screen. “We haven’t figured that out yet and they aren’t on the latest images.”
“Protective spell?” Noah asked.
Duncan nodded. “Serena’s not the only one with a mole. We’ve got a traitor, too. That hiccup in the protective spell happened at the same time Blaine was being murdered. My theory is that when the wizard was assimilating the powers of his latest kill, he couldn’t maintain the protective shield hiding the drilling equipment.”
“Then there’s the gold.” Juanita switched screens again. This time a 3-D geological map just north of Schpotistan hovered in the room.
“Gold?” Serena asked, eyes wide.
“Enough to fund Red Mantis into the next millennium,” Duncan added. “With unlimited access to crude oil and gold, they’ll be virtually impossible to stop.”
Serena looked blank. “But there are half a dozen satellites orbiting. The thermal blanket only needs one as a power source.”
“I suspect Culver has got a bidding war going on as we speak.” Duncan spun his chair to look at the monitor behind him. “Someone else is going to be sharing some of the wealth. And doing most of the labor-intensive work, I imagine, knowing Culver.”
“I don’t get it.” Serena tried to decipher the markings up on the screen, but gave up. “How did Trey get involved in this?”
“We now suspect Culver’s been pulling the strings of Sergei Konanykhine.” Duncan turned back to the group. “Konanykhine i
s the head of a terrorist group called Red Mantis. Red Mantis is comprised mainly of Halves.
“Culver has most likely been controlling them by giving the terrorists additional powers. Like he gave Dr. Rossiter. Not enough to threaten him, but just enough to keep them happy and motivated.”
Noah Hart looked as skeptical as Serena felt.
“Trey Culver is our wizard killer.”
“That dickhead playboy Trey Culver?” Con Jordan demanded. “He couldn’t mastermind something like this, for God’s sake. He’s dumber than a stump.”
“He’s been using Charm.”
“Fuck!” Hart said flatly. “Are you serious? Culver is head of Red Mantis?”
Duncan nodded. “Yeah.” He glanced at Juanita. “How much time do we have to get those satellites out of orbit?”
“Not enough,” Juanita said, frustration knitting her brow as her fingers continued tapping. “By my calculations, the satellites will be in position in less than four and a half hours.”
“Get me everything you can. Serena and I are going back there.”
Duncan took Serena’s hand and teleported them back to Siberia. After materializing their heavy outerwear, Serena took Duncan’s hand as they walked briskly down the corridor at the Foundation building.
“Mind if I ask why we came back here and where the hell we’re going at warp speed?”
“We have to get the thermal blanket broken down ASAP, before one of those satellites activates it.”
“Can’t be done,” Serena panted, running to catch up with his long strides. He cast her an incredulous glance. “Not even with magic.” She flushed. “Henry and I used a powerful binding spell to ensure all the components stayed together. No matter what. Without him, I can’t undo it. We can’t even re-roll the sections. That was part of the spell. Once that puppy is down and fully assembled, it’s down.”
“Christ, Serena, why the hell did you and Henry put such a powerful spell on it?”
“Because in the places that we will be using the thermal blanket—Slow down, would you please? I have a stitch in my side. In the places we’ll be using the blanket, people steal their own mother’s…teeth. We had to ensure that once it was set up, no one could come in and swipe bits of it to mend their roof, or feed it to their livestock or, hell—make a hat!”
“Then we’ll go with my other plan.” He shoved open the outside door, feeling the razor-sharp cold bite into his lungs.
Their boots crunched across the frozen earth. “It better be a brilliant plan.”
Duncan stopped. They were in the middle of nowhere. The completely assembled blanket was on the other side of the building. And the only witnesses to what they were about to do were the sullen clouds overhead and a spindly tree without leaves.
He turned to Serena. “Together, we are going to make the biggest mother of a storm, and blow those satellites the fuck out of the sky.”
Between her ability to call water, and Duncan’s ability to call fire, they produced a storm of biblical proportions.
Aiming their power miles above the earth, they made sure the storm was barely noticeable on the ground. But heavy winds, fierce lightning, and torrential rain propelled all the hovering satellites thousands of miles away from their intended target of Schpotistan.
Duncan turned to her with a grin. He gave her a high five. “We make a hell of a team.”
“That might be how you congratulate one of your guys for a job well done, but I require a little more personalized appreciation,” she told him, wrapping her arms around his neck despite the bulk of their heavy coats. Her chest ached as they silently turned to walk back to the building. Fighting the urge to clasp his hand, she glanced up at Duncan, matching her strides to his. Most of his face was covered by the fur-lined hood of his thick black coat. He looked like a giant teddy bear. No, maybe a grizzly. Duncan’s power, his confidence, his masculinity—it used to scare her, but now she just wanted as much as she could handle.
Because she knew that their story didn’t have a happy ending. She tried to keep her voice light, but it wasn’t easy. It felt as though a tiny metronome in her head was ticking away their last minutes together. “That was fun, but only solves half the problem. Right?”
“If Trey is the killer, then he’s assimilated the powers of all the wizards he’s murdered. He’s incredibly powerful now.”
Duncan held the door open for her, and as she brushed by him, her body tensed as if she and Duncan were naked and on her bed rather than bundled under pounds of clothes. In a cracking voice she managed, “Yeah, I know.”
Serena wanted to grab hold of him, and never let go. She wanted to bury her face against the warmth of his chest, and hear him murmur in her ear as they made love. Her throat tightened.
By nonverbal agreement they teleported up to the third floor, and her room. Neither removed their coats, although the room was toasty warm. It was over; they both knew it had to be.
“Will you be able to capture or defeat him when he has that much power?” She could give him more, not that he would ask her for it. When she had the Medallion she’d be able to gift it to him. The problem was, she wasn’t sure what would happen if she did so.
Either his powers would be amplified, or, God forbid, he’d lose them altogether.
Did she dare?
Did she dare not?
Her eyes drank him in. Chances were, this was the last time they’d see one another. Once Duncan knew that she’d kept a secret for most of their lives, a secret that was about to be revealed and profoundly change his life, he’d never want to lay eyes on her again. She knew that. And was willing to risk never seeing him again to keep him alive.
How had she mistaken his confidence for arrogance? She’d been a scared fool, loving him always and knowing that he was the one she couldn’t have. Maybe she’d made excuses, but she couldn’t lie to herself anymore. She loved the maddening man. Loved him more than she’d ever imagined possible. It was going to rip out her heart to let him go. But first things first.
“Can you defeat Trey?” Serena repeated, knowing the answer, but praying for another.
“Certainly not on my own,” he admitted tightly. “My people are top notch,” he said in his typical noncommittal way. “Frankly, I’d like my chances a whole lot better if I had my brothers at my back as well, but that isn’t an option.”
“Because of the Curse?”
“We can’t break the Curse unless all three of us work as one, but we can’t work together without negating each other’s powers. It’s times like this that I’d like to send Caleb back in time to glue Nairne’s lips shut before she could curse Magnus.”
Her lips twitched, but inside, her heart was being squeezed like a vise. “Ever try that?”
Duncan gave a humorless laugh. “Yeah. Caleb was about twelve. He traveled back and suffered a concussion when he hit Nairne’s protective spell.”
“Trey could kill you,” she said, her voice catching.
He ran his finger along her jaw. “Not if I kill him first.”
“But there’s no chance of that, is there? He’s too strong now.” Trey had assimilated the power of four level one and two wizards.
“Don’t worry. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve.”
Mind made up, Serena took his hand in hers and brought it to her lips. “So do I.”
The freaking bright lights of the Council chambers almost burned out Duncan’s retinas. He materialized sunglasses for both himself and Serena. Probably a big no-no, but he didn’t give a flying fuck. “I don’t have time for this, Serena,” he whispered quietly, as the Elders’ robes rustled in the midnight gloom behind the massive Head of Council’s desk. “I’m very proud of you, but can we try and keep this short?”
“You were not summoned,” Allen told them, his voice stern. “The Medallion ceremony won’t be held until tomorrow at noon.”
Serena’s damp fingers tightened around Duncan’s; she was so tense her entire body was vibrating. “I’d like
to exercise my right to forfeit.” Her voice was strong and clear.
What the fuck?
“I forfeit the Medallion to Duncan Edge.”
For several seconds, silence throbbed in the vast room, then someone’s voice boomed from out of the darkness. “This is unprecedented.”
“But possible.” She lifted her chin. Stubborn little witch.
Unprecedented? That was a serious understatement. Duncan had never heard of anyone forfeiting the position. Why would they? It was the most coveted, hard to attain position in the wizard community. And it was Serena’s. She’d won it fairly. “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.
“Are you positive this is what you want to do?” Lark asked quietly. “Are you aware that once the position has been forfeited you can never again run for any position on this Council?”
“I am.”
“We will convene a Council meeting, and inform you of our decision on this matter at noon tomorrow.”
“No!” Serena quickly modified her tone. “No. I’m sorry. But I need this done immediately.”
This time the silence was longer, and more speaking. “Very well.” Lark didn’t sound pleased. Fuck, Duncan thought, he wasn’t pleased. “Read this. Take your time. Once done, this cannot be undone.”
A glowing blue square materialized without fanfare directly in front of Serena. It cast an eerie glow on her pale face and set features. “I understand completely.”
Duncan knew what she was doing. She was giving him the Head of Council position so that he would be more powerful than Culver. Clever. But he couldn’t allow her to do it. “I object.”
“You are merely here as a silent observer. Please refrain from interfering in Council business.” Lark’s tone was flat, and left no room for argument.
“I’m not going to allow Serena to give this up just to help me,” Duncan informed the Council tightly, before turning to look at her. “Stop this, Serena, before it’s too late.”
Serena ignored him. “Do I need to sign anything?”
“You fully understand the ramifications of this act?”