Wind Magic

by Nicolette Jinks

  While I blinked the fuzzies away, she hit me again. I reared back, taking her off the ground, and shook her left and right. Her body slapped me first on one side of the face, then on the other. I glimpsed her reaching for a pocket and knew I didn't want to find out what she was going to grab.

  Mordon seized her in his teeth, threw her hard.

  She slammed into the ground well beyond the reach of the truck. I roared in triumph. It wasn't a low, rumbling roar the way that Mordon's voice was. No, this was a higher, piercing noise which would have made human-me grit my teeth and cover my ears.

  Remembering that there had been two of them, I slapped my wings twice and hopped to the place I'd last seen the man. A ditch of rocks and sagebrush greeted me. No sign of where he'd gone. I sniffed the air, caught a trace of his scent leading away from the van. Indecision froze me.

  If I went after him, the vampire might return to drive off with my quarry. If I didn't tend to the man, he might come up on me unawares.

  There was nothing to help it. I was here for the prisoner, not for a massacre. I returned to the van, shifting back to human instinctively. The shift happened in seconds, hide softened to skin, wings gone. Mere feet from the van.

  A wolf slammed into my torso. I fell to the ground, pinned by his man-sized body. Teeth were only part of his weapons. Those hard claws hurt. He dug at me, scraping up my skin and leaving behind raised red welts.

  I defended my head against his teeth using my arm, and he bit.

  Remembering previous encounters with guard dogs, I grabbed the back of the wolf's head and shoved my arm hard into his mouth. As soon as he realized that I was holding him, his eyes widened and he tried to free himself.

  I watched in breathless horror as his fangs indented into my flesh, but I'd gone into a demi-form with thick skin and distorted dragon vision. Strength flooded my body

  I wrapped my legs around his chest and twisted his head so he was forced to the ground. Despite his flailing, scratching legs, I worked myself on top and rammed my knees into his ribs. It'd be ideal to get a knee on his throat, but his writhing made that impossible. Instead, I'd have to put all my weight on his lungs and hope to make him black out.

  A hand snared my hair and I was yanked off the wolf. The vampire. I rolled to absorb the impact and got a rock against my spine.

  Stars shimmered in my vision. Her arm looked terrible, a mangled mess with exposed bone. Her eyes radiated intent to tear me limb from limb.

  The wolf lay stunned. The woman hissed as she reached for me. On her belt she wore one of those roll-up lanyards with keys attached to the end. I plunged deeper into my demi-form and met her attack with one of my own. She knocked me wide, sending me straight for the wolf.

  He scrambled out of the way. The vampire seized my shoulder, the one I'd injured in the past. I felt nails pierce my almost-scales.

  A banshee-wail screamed through the night, so ominous that even the vampire turned her head to find the source of the noise. Railey charged them both. She didn't appear as herself, I only knew who she was by a sense of familiarity.

  She was the stuff of nightmares, all jagged points and rotting flesh and crawling insects and anything else that might have kept me paralyzed in the center of bed at night. She was the last thing anyone wanted to be faced with. To fend off the new terror, the vampire shoved me and joined the wolf.

  Noise came from all three of them as I hurried into the vehicle.

  I felt the hair rise up and down my arms. A hot tickle traced down my spine, and my breathing stilled as I wondered what was going on out there and if I should interfere. There was a chance I would make it worse.

  The door slammed shut beside me, rocking the van from side to side as someone scurried inside.

  “I'm here, let's go,” Mordon said.

  He was human and visible, breathing heavily. Blood smeared his jaw but I didn’t see any skin breaks so it had to have been from his opponent. With a stroke of luck, I got the keys in the ignition the first time I tried. The survivors didn't know that I'd taken the keys until I turned on the headlights and drove down the dirt road as fast as the van could take the bumping ride.

  “Where were you?” I demanded, the aftershocks of adrenaline still stirring through my body.

  “I got your runner.”

  I nodded grimly. “Good.”

  The van jolted over bumps so fast that Mordon braced himself against the dashboard. I gripped the steering wheel to keep my feet from flying off the pedals. Curse these unpaved roads. The van hit three washouts in a row, each one sending it a little higher into the air.

  Once I was assured that we’d put enough distance between us and whoever was outside, I eased up on the gas pedal. The van still rode roughly, but not nearly as bad as before. Whoever had been driving this thing prior to me had been taking the roads too slow. Odd as it seemed, there was a sweet spot for how fast to drive for the smoothest ride possible. A lifetime of driving the back roads with my parents had taught me that.

  Mordon cleaned his face with a handkerchief, then tapped gingerly on my own face. It stung.

  “How are you, love?” he asked.

  “I think I’m fine. How does it look?”

  “It’s healing. Just a scrape.”

  “It didn’t feel like just a scrape when I got shot in the face.”

  “They didn’t penetrate your scales.” Mordon turned the handkerchief so a fresh, damp side touched my skin. “In a few hours, the worst you will have is a bruise.”

  I slowed down just a little bit more. My white-knuckled hands released their death grip on the leather-wrapped steering wheel, making a sticking noise as I worked my fingers free. At long last, I felt the pounding of my heart ease and my breathing return to normal.

  My whole body still vibrated with the aftershock of this heist.

  That had not been what I’d expected tonight. Granted, I hadn’t known what to expect, but it certainly had not been that I’d end up kidnapping a person Cole had kidnapped first. Assuming that was what had happened. The landscape rolled by the window as the sky dipped into a moment of pre-dawn darkness. I swallowed hard. Time for answers.

  “Railey, Railey, Railey, what did you get me into?” I asked, summoning her presence by naming her three times. Then I realized she was no longer bound to me, so she might not come.

  “Aww, did you have to? The wolf was crying and everything,” Railey said, not appearing visibly although she was evidently sitting in the middle between us.

  “Why couldn't you have snared someone else for this?”

  A glance at the middle seat showed that she was taking a weak, wobbling form. I almost felt bad. She had saved me back there, but I couldn't help it. I hit the steering wheel.

  “I have a life now! It's fine for me to help Death out and all, but couldn't he get someone else to do this? One of those other mythical, magical agents I've heard about?”

  “You're the only one he trusts,” Railey said and wrapped her arms around me. Icy chill sunk down through my neck and collar bone, freezing my breath in my throat. I'd have tipped over from the piercing pain if not for my grip on the wheel. The road separated into two roads I couldn't focus on. I stopped the van short and tried to get hold of myself.

  When I blinked life back into my eyes again, Railey was gone. Fear gripped me.

  “Railey? Railey!”

  Soft words hummed through the air. “I have to go, Fera.”

  And then she was gone. I sat there, thinking on what she'd said, and wondered, what now?

  Chapter Three

  Fifteen minutes of bumpy road later, we discovered that the door had closed on the back of the van. But of course it had, I thought bitterly, what with all that jarring and jumping the van had done down the road. It would serve us right if our cargo had jounced out before the door had a chance to close.

  I sighed, and hoped that was not the case. The blackness of night was already softening in the west, spurring a tingle of panic down my back. What was t
he time?

  My legs were stiff from the too-long distance between seat and pedals, but they felt better after I walked to the far end of the van. Being enchanted, the door wouldn't pop open with the twist of a handle. I frowned, glaring at the crisp silver marks scratched into the vehicle’s matte midnight-blue paint.

  “We've got a problem.”

  “What?”

  “The back door is sealed. I'm pretty sure Griff made those runes.”

  Mordon inhaled through his nose and released the breath as a sigh. “You can't seem to get away from your ex, can you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Let us view the bright side. It is better that you know him. We'll stand a solid chance of getting in.”

  “Let's hope you're right.”

  Because it would be a matter of time before the werewolf and vampire caught up. And even less time before the Constables discovered that the home I was supposed to never leave was empty.

  Seeking the simplest solution first, I thought I could use my dragon-form to coerce it. I dug my claws into the place the door met the van body. A circular rune shimmered and a jolt of red electricity bolted across the top of the van.

  My talons would not sink into the van itself. Not even when I tried to punch one through the top like a demented can opener. I leaned back, staring at it with a mixture of appreciation and irritation.

  After several minutes of tracing over the scraped symbols with a fingertip, catching skin on burrs in paint and metal alike, I took a step away from the monstrosity. The night—or morning—had gone eerily silent with only the faint buzz in my ears to tell the time.

  “Try an unlocking,” Mordon said.

  I cocked my head to the side and tried unfocusing my eyes.

  “Onloocan,” I whispered.

  A warm tingle spread through my skin, focusing on the finger with my ring on it. The air thickened, and I felt the hair on my neck rise. A faint blue light swirled around the lock. It sought entry. The lock flared red and repelled my unlocking spell.

  Mordon sucked in a breath. If I’d accidentally set off an anti-tampering spell, then whatever happened next would not be good. This was one of those cases where I could accidentally compound the problem. I gritted my teeth and waited.

  The sweat on the back of my neck cooled. A rustle of wind up the desert made a tumbleweed spin along the road. Nothing more happened.

  None of the other symbols were agitated. It seemed like I hadn’t bothered an anti-tampering spell, but I wasn’t familiar enough with the scratchings on the van to be able to tell if there even was on cast or not.

  Letting out a relieved breath, I thought again. What else could we try? What sort of thing would Griff do?

  “Think it is protected by a ward?” I asked. It wasn’t very like Griff to think defensively. He was a tricks, riddles, and puzzles man. He liked a challenge, not a certainty.

  “It may be,” Mordon said, a furrow forming between his brows. “Are you thinking ward-piercer?”

  “Yes.”

  I started to lay the spell out on the ground compacted from wheels and too-dry wind. The ward-piercer had been something that I’d rigged up out of sheer desperation as a dungeon riot had gone wildly out of all control. There was a simple area-attack spell which took raw power and used it as a hard shove outward. This by itself was ideal for gaining someone a little bit of space from a group attack, but since it was so general it wasn’t very potent. By adding in a specific directionality to the spell, it would unleash all its efforts in one place. Soon the area attack was pointed at the van door’s handle.

  “Let’s try it.”

  The wind stirred over the sagebrush and cheat grass, blowing up dust. It swirled in a circle about me, forming a towering funnel with bits of tumbleweed and a plastic potato chip bag spiraling high above. I triggered the end of the spell.

  The wind plunged down, filling me with raw power. The van’s symbols burned copper red, then dimmed. The wind faltered. It pushed again. The symbols flared.

  Everything fell quiet.

  My hands shook, my heart pounded.

  I felt as if I’d sprinted across the road instead of driven here. When I regained my breath, I climbed to my feet and forced my legs to work. A trembling hand touched the door.

  Still locked.

  Gasping, I could hardly believe it. So far that spell had never failed me. But Griff was clever, and his handiwork superb.

  “Nothing.”

  Exhausted, I leaned against the van. At least the symbols weren’t easy to anger. This could have gone very wrong.

  Hard, crusty ground crunched under my heels. What other ways can I try? I thought of my family, what they would do should a suspect disappear or a demon vanish into thin air. Suspects had hideyholes right in plain sight, demons knew how to blend in with their surroundings. Hideyholes could be found by dusting for drafts with lots of patience. Demons may be able to trick the eyes, but not the nose. They smelled distinctly different from anyone else in the crowd, unless they had some eau de human on hand. The trick to succeeding in these situation was to understand what was convenient for the other person, getting in their head, thinking like them.

  My quarry was a gryphon who could shapeshift but preferred his winged, taloned body. Worshiped it, actually.

  As he didn’t have hands, he’d do something not requiring fancy finger work. His claws would be his tools. Perhaps his beak, too.

  Mordon shook his head. “There must be a way in. A pass-code?”

  “Oh, I’m sure there is a way, and it has to be quick and easy to remember.” I froze. There was something. A really dumb something.

  I knocked, using the classic 'shave and a haircut' routine. I laid my hand flat onto the door.

  There was a hiss, the symbols flared once, then died.

  And the door glided open with the motion of my hand.

  “Yes! I did it! I did it, I did it.” I fell into a little song and bouncing foot-to-foot dance. “Hey, Mordon, I...”

  He did not look pleased. Actually, he was rather pale. He was also staring right through me.

  The inside of the van was set up as an ambulance. It was painted an unforgiving, stark white which set off the array of medical equipment, boxes, and stainless steel implements. Blood smeared most surfaces, an arterial spurt marked the roof and down the side. It smelled strongly of iodine and I had a hard time telling what was blood and what had iodine’s orange tint.

  A patient was strapped to the table in the center, and from all the fluids staining the blanket wrapped around him, he wasn't doing too well.

  “Uh, Mordon? What do we do?”

  “We leave him as he is and go home.”

  “Bah, he's not that badly off. I'm sure a good healer can set him to rights.” I was sure of absolutely nothing, but I had not expected Mordon's reaction. He was cold, his expression an emotionless void. Very unlike him.

  “This is who you were supposed to save?”

  “Yes. I don't see anyone else around, do you?”

  Mordon pursed his lips, refusing to budge.

  I couldn’t take my eyes away from the patient. I said, “Look, you've never shied away from helping someone in need before. He needs help. And no matter why Cole wanted him, I'm sure that Cole planned on using him.”

  Mordon shook his head without offering another word.

  I resisted the temptation to fight him. The patient was looking very pale, particularly in contrast to the dark silk straps on his body.

  Mordon took a step back from the van, reaching into his pocket to retrieve a piece of chalk. I wasn't sure where he planned on using them out here, considering that there wasn't a good place to draw—unless it was to make marks in the hard ground.

  I watched him closely, not sure if Mordon was going to leave the man or not.

  “We will take him to your home. Lilly will mend him.”

  “Lilly? Shouldn't we get someone a bit...well, a bit more?”

  Mordon glanced up from finding
a level spot on the dirt, a wry half-smile on his lips. “You haven't had the chance to see her work. It was a pity she decided to take the judiciary job. She's got skill, a lot of it.”

  We climbed into the van. A silver chain wrapped the leg of the stretcher to the floor. Before I could ask, Mordon grasped the chain in one fist and yanked. The metal loop the chain went through popped away, it hadn’t been welded well.

  I couldn’t get the stench of iodine and rubbing alcohol out of my nose as we hauled the man out of the van. Wheels clattered over rough ground as we moved him into the center of the circle Mordon had made.

  The air tasted of dust, and in the distance I heard the rumble of a motor.

  “Why didn't she become a full-fledged healer?”

  “From what I've heard? She didn't want to ever kill a patient.”

  I held the stretcher steady as Mordon worked on his portal in silence. He was faster with coordinates and adjusting the algorithms for the addition of the rolly cart and patient. Not to mention he was far more accurate than I was with my tendency to transpose, add, or remove numbers at random. A true joy, that was.

  I considered the patient. I’d have to see about sterile bandages, and the healer. Once he was awake I’d be in my potions domain, but for now I didn’t know what to do with him

  Was I to keep him in my home? Correction—Mordon’s home. The building belonged to him, even if it had been unoccupied prior to my arrival.

  At one time I had heavily relied on Mordon and the rest of my coven to maintain my independence and restore my identity. Regaining magic had turned my world inside out, but they’d been willing to help. Since then I doubted I had been of too much benefit. At least I kept their lives interesting.

  This stunt tonight was a great way to provide lighthearted entertainment.

  I needed to start thinking seriously about that vast unknown called The Future. My days of living solo with Railey were behind me. It was what I’d wanted, what I’d hoped would one day happen: to connect with the magical world. To find a spouse. The whole nine yards, with family and a home. What a way for my curiousity to hijack the dream.