Sentinel: A Light Mage Wars Novella (The Light Mage Wars)

by Northcott, Nancy

  DeAnne passed by and patted Caro on the back. "Lookin' good, honeybun."

  "Thanks," Caro said. Her lips moved, counting off the rhythm for herself.

  "Now we'll try covering a little more ground."

  "Yeah, but count it off? At least at first."

  "Sure. And here we go...quick, quick, slow, slow...Doin' great, Sunshine."

  "Thanks."

  The smile on her face wrapped itself around his heart. He'd given her that joy, and it mattered more than any editor's praise, even Stan's.

  But not more than getting the truth and clearing his father's name. That wasn't only for him, and he was running out of time.

  "Rick? Anything wrong?" Caro stumbled. She must've lost count. "Sorry."

  "Muscle memory takes a while to develop. You're doing great." Had she picked up on his impatience? "Nothing's wrong. I was thinking about work."

  "Anything you want to talk about?"

  Should he make a pitch for his story?

  Probably not. The deadline was looming, but he might undo the progress he'd made if he rushed her.

  They'd almost completed a circuit of the floor when the band shifted to a slow song. Rick drew Caro close, looping his right arm around her waist and cradling their joined hands against his chest.

  She rested her head on his shoulder, her thick, soft hair brushing his jaw. Her rose scent teased his nose. His heart kicked, and his blood fired.

  Might as well face the truth. He wanted her, badly. But having her would mean giving up on vindicating his dad. On lifting the shame from Mom and Jenny. He couldn't let them down.

  #

  Awareness of Caro in the shotgun seat hummed along Rick's nerves and kept him semi hard. Did she feel this current of desire, too, or was it all his?

  Whichever, it challenged his ability to think about where to go from here.

  He needed that story. It would offer justice to a lot of mages other than his dad, and time was running out.

  His gut said she wasn't ready to open up about her brother, though. Suggesting a story might make her pull back completely, ruining his only shot. But would waiting make a difference?

  A streak of muddy yellow flashed toward the car from his left. Ghoul attack. Fuck.

  Rick shielded the vehicle, but too late. The left front tire blew. The car skidded left, into the other lane, as he fought the steering and applied brakes to keep it under control.

  At least his shield deflected the follow-up bolts. The ghouls were advancing, three he could sense. Even if he tried to drive clear on the rim, he couldn't sustain a shield for very long against that many.

  Caro gasped and clutched the door handle. "Rick was that–?"

  "Ghouls, yeah. Three that I can see."

  The car screeched to a stop angled across the centerline. He should be able to translocate about a quarter mile with her along, but they risked arriving in a clump of ghouls.

  "Call the shire reeves, Caro." He reached down behind the front seats. His fingers closed on the hilt of his sword, and he poured power into the weapon.

  "Shield yourself and get down," he ordered as he spun protective magic around his body to make his own shield.

  Opening his door fast, he slammed it into an approaching ghoul, a big male with a twisted face and a black mohawk. Rick hit the locks and shoved the door closed, shielding the car, too, as he followed up with a stab.

  The ghoul blasted him. Its shot skated off his shield, but they had him surrounded.

  His slashing cut pushed them back. He was burning power fast, though, fighting while shielding himself and the car, where he hoped Caro was staying put.

  A bolt of green energy from his left fist drove one back. Staggered it.

  The blast left Rick half drained. Piercing their shields required a lot of power. He ducked a swiping strike aimed at his head, drew energy from the trees and animals in the surrounding woods, and stabbed upward.

  His blade shot into the ghoul's chest. "Morere," he snapped, using the lethal command to amplify his power. The ghoul staggered and fell. But its buddy was coming in again. The third was circling the car.

  If he translocated to block it, the shift would demolish his shielding. They could kill him in the instant he materialized without it.

  He'd be no help to Caro then.

  Retreating, watching the ghoul on his side, he circled toward her door. But he wasn't going to get there in time.

  Chapter Nine

  The ghouls' thick, sludgy life energy struck Caro's senses like a wave of icy sewage. Bile surged into her throat. Fighting it back, she slid her phone under the seat so the reeves would have an open line.

  Rick was outnumbered. She'd sensed the movement as he put one ghoul down, but he was battling another, with one–ohgod!–heading for her door. She could feel its approach and sense its outline.

  With Rick's energy diverted by the fight, ghoul magic could pierce his shield around the car and unlock or blast the door. If she stayed in the car, she'd have no maneuvering room. The thing would have an easier time grabbing her. She had to act, and fast, despite the chill of dread in her bones and the coppery taste of fear on her tongue.

  She and Griffin had practiced for ghoul attacks. She could do this. Had to do this.

  Even though that meant letting enough of their sickening magic into her awareness to sense their shapes.

  Rick was still fighting, but there was another ghoul stalking across the road. Rick couldn't take them all alone.

  Caro snapped out her cane. Sliding her shaking hand down it, she firmed the first joint and the third, then broke the central one.

  Her cane had just become kali sticks, twin rods popular in Filipino martial arts. She poured power into them.

  A ghoul, male by its energy, magically popped her door's lock and yanked open the door. Caro leaned inward, away from its raking talons. Pouring power into the right-hand stick, she jabbed it backhanded into the ghoul's gut.

  The powered strike pushed it back several feet, giving her room to scramble out of the car. Roaring, the male lunged for her. She blocked its arm with a left upward strike and teed off with the right stick, slashing upward between the thing's legs.

  It gave a choked cry, doubling. The shielding aura around it caved. Caro swept the left stick around and up, jabbing through the soft underside of its jaw. "Morere," she cried, pushing all the power she could draw into the strike.

  The ghoul made a sick, gurgling noise. Its life energy blanked out, and it collapsed.

  Caro swallowed against nausea. No time to be sick now.

  "Caro!" Rick grabbed her as she realized the only energy signature near was his, churning now from the fight.

  With a gasp, she dropped the gory left stick and clung to him. Now that the fight was over, she was shaking, cold again. The air reeked of ammonia from ghoul corpses.

  His arms locked around her. Under her palm, his heart thundered. Despite his ragged breathing, his voice was tender. "You okay, Sunshine?"

  "Y–ye-yeah." He's alive, he's alive, he's alive ran through her brain, and she tightened her hold on him. He must've killed the other ghoul.

  His lips brushed her hairline. "You sure? You're shaking."

  "C–cold." But she could feel his extended senses. He was keeping watch even as he comforted her. The realization jolted her. "There could be more ghouls."

  "I'm not picking up any, but we should stay alert."

  Rick abruptly raised his head. "You scared me shitless."

  Gripping her shoulders, he tugged her away from him, probably to glare into her face. "I told you to stay in the car."

  "I had no maneuvering room in there."

  Rick drew her close again. "I know. I'm sorry. I couldn't get to you."

  "They double-teamed you. I could follow the battle with the vague images I sense magically." She pressed her forehead into his wide, solid shoulder. His spicy scent and the warmth of his body drove back the chill of fear.

  A flash of energy from her le
ft–ghoul? "Rick, behind you, on your right."

  Mage power rippled from his body, flashing along his blade. In a blur of movement, he stepped back, pivoting, and slashed his sword backhanded. "Morere," he snapped.

  Ghoul energy erupted in a spew of foul magic that made her stomach roll as the ghoul screamed. Rick's shape in her magical senses set its feet, bracing.

  The stench of ammonia burned Caro's nose. She jerked her shirt up to breathe through it.

  "It's dead," Rick said. "Sunshine, it was screened, a big male. I picked it up because my senses were extended. Yours weren't. How the hell did you know it was there?"

  Fighting nausea, Caro swallowed hard. "I felt its energy. I probably should've sooner, but I was worried about–"

  "Wait. Hold it. You can sense screened ghouls?"

  "Can't everyone?" Caro strained to remember what Griff had said. It had been so long ago.

  "Only when we feel the magic of their screens brush ours or touch our extended our senses."

  "Oh. Uh, well, I can pick up on some things, like Mundane moods, more acutely than other mages, and my perceptions are heightened when I spar. Maybe from adrenaline. Maybe that explains it."

  "However you do it, it was damned handy tonight." He caught her shoulders to pull her close again. "Any more of them lurking?"

  Opening her senses, extending her perceptions, she found only the deer and other forest animals, the owls and bats and bugs. "No more."

  "Good." Rick dropped a kiss into her hair. "By the way, you were fucking awesome. Wonder Woman has nothing on you."

  "Thanks." His words filled her with a warm glow. She kissed him swiftly. He lowered his head, catching her mouth in a long, deep kiss that ignited the depths of her body. Hands at his waist, she tugged him closer.

  Rick groaned and raised his head. "We shouldn't. Not here."

  "You're right." Caro nodded. "Oh, I left my phone on, under the seat, so the shire reeves could hear."

  "We'd better fill them in. Let's keep our senses open, though."

  As they walked around the car together, awareness of him mixed with adrenaline, sparking and sizzling in the depths of her body. She ached with wanting him.

  But she couldn't go there. Wouldn't. She didn't yet trust him in the right ways to cross that line. Maybe she never would.

  But damn, his hand caressing her waist, his hip bumping against hers, raised the wanting to fever pitch.

  Bad enough if she were the only one, but the same mixture of relief and need and just plain lust that she felt also emanated from him.

  The car door gaped open. When Caro leaned in to retrieve her phone, Rick stepped back, probably keeping a lookout. Smart, but she missed having his hands on her.

  She found the phone and tugged it out. "Here we go."

  That chirpy voice didn't seem to have fooled him about her feelings. He slid his arm around her, and the urge to cling to him gnawed at her.

  "Hello," Caro said into the phone. "Are you there?"

  "Yes," a woman said, "and we're glad you are. We have the Macon unit en route, ETA ten minutes. What's your status?"

  "We're okay." Offering Rick the phone, Caro said, "You're the reporter. Report."

  It was too bad they were farther out than the responding mages could travel by translocation. But ten minutes wasn't bad.

  Rick accepted the phone. Hearing him describe the fight brought it all back. She leaned into him, encircling his waist with her arm. He felt solid and strong. Reliable.

  Dangerous.

  She'd known him for only a few days. This intense craving for him must be from what Griff had called post-fight adrenaline, nothing more. But oh, she was so glad Rick wasn't hurt.

  "Okay, Sunshine," he said, ending the call. He passed her the phone. "They want us to wait, screen the bodies from passers-by. When the deputy reeves get here, they'll check for leads as to where they came from, then incinerate them."

  "Good times," Caro said dryly. The request made sense, though. Mages' first duty was the protection of Mundanes. At least the thought of burning corpses had killed her sexual itch. More or less.

  "Where did you learn to fight?" Rick asked.

  Caro shrugged against a pang of loss. "I had a good teacher."

  Rick didn't move, but her sense of him in the magic dimmed, as though he were raising his walls. The silence stretched. Grew tense.

  At last, he said, "You know, you can say your brother's name to me." His arm dropped from around her waist, and his flat, expressionless voice added more emotional distance. "I'm not going off on a rant if you do."

  "Good to know." Caro cooled her own tones and sidestepped away from him. "Maybe we should try to fix the car while we wait for the reeves."

  Rick let out an explosive breath. "For fuck's sake, Caroline, would it kill you to admit the obvious?"

  Startled, she took another step away from him. Her pulse sped up, this time from alarm. "We should stay alert in case–"

  "I just watched you very efficiently dispatch a ghoul that had at least forty pounds on you. To do it, you used a couple of sticks. And everyone who pays any attention at all knows your badass brother, unlike anyone else in the southeastern shire, fights with a quarterstaff." He paused. "You know, a really, really big stick."

  "Don't push me," Caro snapped, trying to keep her voice steady. "You don't know what it's like. I miss him every day, and all the while, everyone has an opinion, everyone feels free to share it, and most of them are talking out their asses."

  "My opinion might surprise you."

  If only...but someday, push would come to shove with Griff's situation. If she let Rick in, shared her deepest worries, would he support her? Or condemn her brother, even back away from her? Caro shook her head.

  "Griffin Dare," Rick said deliberately, "was not only smart but savvy. He was an ace student, an artist, an athlete, a powerful mage, even a chess player. Then he became a cop and then a deputy reeve and then a hero, so why–"

  "Stop it," Caro cried. "How do you know so much about him? Have you been spying on us? Are you researching a story? Is that what this is all about?"

  Her throat went tight. Breathing hurt. If he'd been using her, how could she bear it?

  "For God's sake," he ground out. "It was a huge news story. Everything I just told you was covered on MageWire, on MageNews and probably over every water cooler in the mage world."

  He paused. After a long moment, he quietly said, "Talk to me, Caroline."

  Oh, God, she wanted to. Her lips trembled, and she pressed them together, taking harsh breaths through her nose. She longed to trust him. In so many ways, she already did.

  Words hovered on the tip of her tongue, a torrent that would help him understand her loyalty to the brother she adored. But she'd been wrong before. If she was wrong about Rick and opened up to him...

  No. It was too risky.

  Caro swallowed hard. "I don't talk about my brother. Deal with that or don't."

  "Fuck," Rick muttered. His outline in her magical senses turned his back to her, scanning the night with his power brushing hers.

  "I thought you were done with avoiding tough crap," he said, his voice hard. "Guess not."

  "So now we're down to cheap shots? You don't know enough to have an opinion, Rick."

  "Only because you won't tell me. So where does that leave us?"

  "I guess that's up to you." Caro swallowed against a new fear expanding like an icy balloon in her chest. Would Rick dump her over this?

  When had she started to care whether he did?

  #

  Two hours later, Caro's I guess that's up to you burned in Rick's brain as he drove her home. The deputy reeves had arrived and helped fix his car. Now he and Caro rode in tense silence while pines and oaks and sweet gums flashed by in his headlight beams. Even when they reached the city, neither of them spoke.

  For a minute there, he'd thought she was going to dump him. The possibility had scared him way more than it should've. Worse, it had hur
t, deep down inside.

  He'd started this thing between them over a story, but she'd become more than that. How much more?

  Maybe too much.

  I miss him every day, she'd said. The anguish under her words had torn at his soul. A man would have to be colder than he was not to see how that sucked for her.

  But that didn't mean he should let sympathy stop him from pursuing the truth. Her repeated refusal to talk about Griffin definitely implied she was hiding something.

  The deputy reeve's clandestine tip about Dare's ill-fated last raid jumped into his head. That anonymous deputy believed in Dare. And Jim Todd had dropped his story for some reason. Rick had arranged a meeting with Jim for tomorrow morning. Maybe that would shed some light.

  He shifted uneasily in the seat. Even if that woman was right, even if Caro didn't know anything–hell, even if Dare had been right about Althor, the guy had handled things badly.

  "I don't like arguing with you," Caro said quietly, "but you don't understand what these three years have been like. I handle the situation in the only way that works for me."

  "I have no right to argue with that," he admitted. "But I care about you. I want to understand you. To help you if I can, and this situation obviously affects you."

  All that was true, even though it had nothing to do with his quest to clear his dad and everything to do with Caroline herself.

  Shit. He was in far deeper than he'd realized.

  "It is what it is." She sounded tired.

  She was probably sick of always being on guard. His heart ached for her dilemma. He covered her hand with his, and his pulse skipped when she locked their fingers together. He hadn't been this confused in a long time.

  After he'd cleaned the cane for her, she'd restored its normal joints. It was only a cane again. But for a few minutes, she'd looked like she belonged on a field of Amazons.

  If she truly wanted to protect her brother, didn't she realize what he'd taught her would be a massive point in his favor, PR-wise?

  Unless maybe her brother was guilty as hell. And maybe she knew it.

  Rick groaned inwardly and clenched his free hand on the steering wheel. He could make himself crazy wondering what she knew and how she felt about it.