by Ann Gimpel
“Rowana! Karin!” she called, but they didn’t answer.
Her discomfort turned to fear, and she ran through the building, hunting through the gift shop and a couple of storage rooms and meeting areas. Juan remained by her side. When there was nowhere left to look, she spun to face him. “Where else could they be?” she demanded.
The skin around his eyes pinched with apprehension. “I don’t know. Can you deploy magic to hunt for them?”
She slapped her forehead with the palm of one hand. “Of course. I’m still rattled from those Vampires.” Aura raced outside, hoping against hope Karin and Rowana would be lounging against the side of the building swathed in spells, but they weren’t.
Her throat thickened with foreboding. She shut her earth eyes, surveying the landscape with her third eye as she paid out power, hunting for her friends. Ley lines formed, showing her the charged grid connecting sacred sites all over the world.
Juan’s energy pulsed next to her, but he held silence.
Aura battled fury and disbelief. As well delineated as the ley lines were, she couldn’t find Karin or Rowana. Aura kept searching, determined not to miss any clues. When she finally dropped her casting and opened her eyes, Juan demanded, “What did you find?”
She inhaled raggedly, feeling jittery from a walloping dose of adrenaline. “Nothing. I found nothing. It’s like the earth swallowed them up.”
He grabbed her shoulders and stared hard at her, looking worried. “People don’t just disappear. Something must be masking them from you.”
Her head snapped up. “No other explanation, now, is there? The masking element has to be magical. I’ve been barking up the wrong tree. Seeking their emanations when I should have launched a far more global search.”
Chapter Four: Weirdness Squared
Juan pulled out his radio and keyed in a pattern.
“What are you doing?” Aura demanded, her voice shrill.
“Alerting Viktor to show up as fast as he can with Ketha, Recco, and Daide. We should be together to deal with whatever this is.”
“Why not use telepathy?”
“Because I’m not very good at it yet.” He pocketed the radio, and it rattled when it landed atop the nest of rifle shells. Breath hissed through his teeth, and he shook the rifle. “Damn thing isn’t worth the metal it was cast from. Not against something magical.”
Aura ground her teeth. “Let me try this once more.”
“Try what? What exactly are you doing?” Juan didn’t want to bother her, but he needed to understand how her magic worked. Even though he shared the same supernatural ability, he’d barely scratched the surface of what it meant to be a Shifter.
“Deploying power again, but differently. Last time, I opted for a psychic view where I visualized ley lines. They should have identified Rowana and Karin’s location, but they didn’t help. Now, I’m hunting, plain and simple, for anything fueled by magic.”
He wanted to ask what she meant by ley lines. As he understood them, they were hypothetical alignments between sacred places in ancient landscapes. Things like cairns and beacon hills and the like. Making a mental note to ask her later, he remained silent.
She turned in a full circle, arms extended as if she were willing clues to drop into her outstretched fingers. Multihued light swirled around her until she looked like an Old-World deity, her fair hair streaked golden and her green eyes on fire.
He slung the rifle across his chest, so his hands would be free, and mirrored her actions. His fingers prickled when he faced the jagged mountains rearing above the townsite, but it was subtle.
She repeated her circle, and he did the same. This time, the prickling was more noticeable, but maybe because he was expecting it.
Aura nodded sharply. “This way.” She hurried uphill in the direction he’d picked up the unusual sensation.
The rifle banged against his chest as he bolted after her. When she angled right, he knew they had to be heading for the church. It was the only structure up this way that hadn’t been crushed by avalanches.
“Wait.” He grabbed her arm.
“Let go.” She shook him off and kept moving. “All living things have a particular energy flow. It’s like music with pitch and cadence. What I feel is twisted. Like someone—or something—altered the natural world. It’s the same way the Cataclysm felt to me. Not something you ever adapt to. It’s like listening to fingernails scratching down a chalkboard over and over until you want to put your hands over your ears. Or puncture your eardrums so it stops permanently.”
“Aura. Stop. We need a plan. You can’t go barreling into something neither of us understands.” A fierce need to protect her raged through him, and it was all he could do not to drag her back to the Zodiac.
Christ! I’m thinking like a Neanderthal.
Or not thinking at all.
She ignored him, but she did stop about ten feet in front of the old church. It had ended up a library when none of the seamen showed the slightest interest in baring their souls to God.
“It’s here. What I detected is here.” Aura narrowed her eyes to slits. “I’d bet anything Karin and Rowana are inside.”
The only reason it made sense was because they hadn’t found the women anywhere else. Juan marshaled his primitive and largely untested magic, focusing it on the church. The air around the building developed a black tinge, and a perimeter came into view, pulsing with foul enchantment. It was how Raphael had always appeared to him.
Profane.
Broken.
Wicked.
He sucked in an uneven breath. “Why the church? Wouldn’t it have been safe?”
She spun to face him. “Why? Who would have protected it from evil? There’s no such thing as God. Not the one this church was dedicated to, anyway. The living gods and goddesses didn’t require buildings to round up their followers.”
His Catholic roots rebelled. “Fine. You can skip the lecture on theology.”
The planes in her face hardened still further. “No time for this. Open your magic to me. I’ll leverage power from us both and blast through the wall separating us from whatever’s inside.”
“What happens if we try to walk through it?”
“You don’t want to know.” Her nostrils flared. “Crap. I hope Ro and Karin are inside because if they’re not, I’m fresh out of ideas.”
She extended both arms and instructed, “Take my hands, and then hang on no matter what happens.”
Questions must have danced behind his eyes because she added, “It’s the easiest way for me to link with you.”
He slipped the rifle over his head and laid it on the ground, flipping off the safety. If he needed it in a hurry, he didn’t want to be tangled in the shoulder strap or grappling to find the safety switch. Turning until he faced Aura, he gripped her fingers. Heat sluiced through him; desire riddled with power seared his nerve endings.
Deep within him, his cat purred and made little, satisfied mewling sounds, as if Aura’s magic were like mother’s milk. Who knew? Maybe it was. Power raced through him in a blistering tide, dangerous and exhilarating. The black shielding around the church shuddered and moaned, as if it were alive and they’d injured it.
“What’s doing that?”
She angled a pointed look right at him. “I don’t know, but Vampires aren’t the only wickedness in this world. Far from it.”
Juan thought about the Cataclysm and the Archangel who’d helped them break its chokehold on Ushuaia.
There’s a whole hell of a lot I know nothing about.
No time like now to begin addressing my shortcomings.
He stretched his boundaries, reaching through layers he hadn’t explored since his transformation from Vampire to Shifter. When he’d been a Vamp, he’d never wanted to study his ability. The less he did that screamed Vampire, the better he liked it. While he’d enjoyed hunting in mountain cat form, it was as far as his foray into Shifter-hood had gone.
Aura tightened her grip
on him, nails cutting into the backs of his hands. “Give me more,” she gritted. “All you’ve got. It’s weakening.”
He opened his mouth to ask how she knew and how much more output they’d need to defeat the thing. Part of him shied away from such a sloppy undertaking. He was a navigator. Charts and maps and trajectories were where he lived. They offered precision.
Not always.
His thoughts provided a grim reminder of storms scouring the Southern Ocean. And oft as not the Arctic seas as well.
“Your mind is wandering.” Aura’s voice cut like a whip. “Help me.”
He locked gazes with her and visualized his magical well expanding and flowing into her.
A fey smile split her full lips. “Yes. Perfect. Keep it coming.”
The blackness grew denser, more visible. It shimmied like a bellows beating in and out. The air thickened with the stench of sulfur, almost as if the weathered church had turned into a portal to Hell.
“Hold fast. We have this.” Aura shouted words in Gaelic.
Two more pulses and a piercing roar pounded against him. He would have slapped his hands over his ears, but he couldn’t extricate them from Aura’s death grip. Besides, she needed him. They were doing this together. He bellowed in pain as the growling, tearing noise escalated.
It sounded like the earth was folding in on itself, and he expected to see a crater ripped out of the rocky ground, one deep enough to suck them into the underworld.
The shadow around the church blew outward, showering them with sharp particles. He pulled Aura against him, shielding her face and head with his hands. Blood trickled from where shards cut him, but they were superficial. His ears ached, but they’d settle out.
She writhed in his arms. “Let go of me. The worst of this part is done. We have to go inside.”
“Are the women in there? Can you sense them now?” He smoothed bits of shrapnel out of her hair and released her. She’d felt amazing locked in his arms, like she’d been born to be part of him. Did she feel the attraction as keenly as he did? Or at all?
“Yes. Something’s still holding them prisoner, but they’re inside.” She eyed him. “You okay?”
“I’ll live.”
“Karin’s a gifted healer. She can patch you up once she’s free.” Aura trotted the few feet to the door and splayed her fingers across it. She made a sour face. “What the fuck is inside? It feels like I ran my power through a vat of demon shit.”
“Probably the same entity that built the thing we just crushed. Damn! No wonder Richard said the church felt odd. Talk about British understatement.”
Aura lowered her hands until they hovered around a brass latch. It turned without a hint of protest as soon as her magic ignited, almost as if its mechanism had been well-oiled in anticipation of today. A shiver rattled down his spine. Mariners were a superstitious lot, and he had a bad feeling about what lay on the other side of the door.
Juan snatched up the rifle and pushed between her and the weathered wooden door. “I’m going first.” Without waiting for her to tell him he could piss up a rope, he tripped the latch and kicked the door open.
Two big strides brought him inside. He was familiar with this building. He’d led many, many groups of tourists through it. Not much familiar was left. The pews were turned on their sides and the crucifix ripped from the wall. What had always been a quiet, peaceful spot bore the ravages of destruction and revenge.
Who the hell would have done such a thing?
Aura strode to his side. “Show yourself,” she commanded in a voice ringing with authority.
Juan stared at her. “Who are you talking to? And where are Rowana and Karin?”
She skinned her lips back from her teeth. “We’re not alone. I don’t understand how, but there’s a guardian here.”
“What’s—?”
“I’ll explain later. Show yourself,” she repeated. “I command you in the name of Gaia, mother goddess of the world.”
A snarling roar tore at Juan’s damaged ears. From the far end of the sacristy, a man rose from nowhere. He hadn’t been there a moment before. Juan was certain of it. The church had been empty except for them.
The man wore stained vestments. Dark hair hung in matted snarls to his waist, tangling with a straggly beard. Screeching in a language Juan had never heard before, the man shambled toward them on bare feet that held stigmata as if he’d been nailed to a cross. Blackened holes, a mockery of Christ’s markings, defiled his palms as well. Madness rained from the priest as he hurtled toward them, dark eyes brimming with an otherworldly light.
“What is he?” Juan ground out and raised the rifle to his shoulder.
“Once upon a time, he was human. Not anymore. Don’t shoot him.”
“Why not?” He relaxed the finger curled reflexively around the trigger.
“He might hold the key to releasing Ro and Karin.”
Juan wanted to shake her, demand how she knew.
“Steady,” his cat spoke up. “You’re new to this. She’s not. Trust her.”
Aura raised her arms. Power crackled from her fingers in an arc. It stopped the mad priest in his tracks. Words still spewed from him, and he raised one hand. Black light pulsed around the dark, jagged hole in his palm.
“None of that!” Aura shouted and switched to Gaelic.
Juan had no idea what was going on beyond some fundamental battle between darkness and light. Strain carved deep into Aura’s features. Now wasn’t the time to engage her in a primer on how Shifter magic worked.
“What can I do to help?” he asked his cat.
“Find the women, and do what I tell you to free them.”
“I thought we needed the priest.”
“Are you going to argue or help the woman you love? The one I hope we end up mated to someday.”
It went against the grain, but Juan turned his form over to his bondmate. He’d merged with its body but never ceded control of his own. At first, he fought the sensation, but it took too much energy, and the cat snarled its displeasure.
Juan reeled in his need to be master of his body, backing off until he sat in a metaphorical theater, watching action unfold on the screen. They moved across the rear of the church and down the far aisle toward the small space converted into a library. The door was closed. Locked. The cat raised one of his arms and shot power through his fingertips. It burned and stung, but the door sprang open.
“You’re still fighting me,” the cat said. “It’s why your fingers hurt.”
Excuses sprang into his mind; Juan smothered them. “Sorry.”
The cat pushed their body through the doorway. Sure enough, Karin and Rowana were there. They stood stock-still, eyes unfocused, as if in a kind of suspended animation. “What’s wrong with them?” he asked the cat.
“They’ve been ensorcelled. I already told you as much. You don’t listen very carefully.”
Juan winced. He deserved the rebuke, but it still didn’t sit well. “Who did this to them?”
“Not sure. Something evil took over the church and turned the priest into a demon.”
“How do you know?”
“He’s talking in demonspeak. No more questions. No misplaced bursts of independent thought, either. Let me do this.”
Something snapped inside Juan, and he didn’t bother with telepathy. The cat could hear either way. “No. I’m going to do this. You tell me what to do. No one has run my life since I wore short pants.”
A chuckling purr filled his chest. “Very good. I wondered if you had any gumption. Wrap the women in power and imagine their prison breaking from the inside out.”
Aura’s Gaelic rose in intensity from the other room.
Juan clacked his jaws together. He wanted to strangle his bondmate for testing him, but it could wait. He raised his hands and visualized white light flowing from his fingers. It wrapped around the two Shifters, cradling them in its glow. Juan pushed harder, but nothing changed. Aura’s shrieks battered against the faux
priest’s bellowing.
“Help me,” Juan urged his cat, beyond caring about his misplaced pride.
“Envision water. Lots of water. Big waves. Pull them into your spell, and then splat it against the glowing light from the inside perimeter.”
Water was easy. Juan knew it intimately in all its iterations, and he visualized a restless sea driven by gusts of wind. He instructed a wall of seawater to spend itself against the light, pushing from the inside out.
Nothing happened.
He tried again, shepherding an even bigger wave. It crashed against the light and bubbled away to nothing.
“What am I doing wrong?”
“Nothing. Try harder. Dark magic fights back hard.”
He stared at Rowana and Karin. Were they slumping from their unnatural upright stance? It might be his imagination, but their eyes didn’t appear quite so bleary. Maybe his efforts were working after all.
Juan shut his eyes. To his surprise, a new vista spread before him complete with shining lines stretching through the church and its walls. Ley lines. He was seeing interconnections within the magical world. They had to be what Aura had mentioned. An idea bloomed; he concentrated on the line closest to him. The next time he called water, he drove it along the ley line.
It followed it like a hound intent on prey and smashed against the white light.
Karin and Rowana fell to the floor and rolled upright immediately. At least they weren’t in that hideous, unnatural trance anymore, but they were still trapped. Rowana nodded his way, but Juan didn’t waste time. The ley lines potentiated his magic. He sent one more tsunami of a wave along the same trajectory.
When it crashed against the glowing light, everything exploded. His already-damaged ears throbbed in protest, but the women were free. They ran to him, talking. Their mouths were moving, but he couldn’t hear them.
He couldn’t hear anything. Not yet.
“Thank you,” he told his cat. Regular speech might be beyond him, but telepathy would work as a replacement.