Wanderers 4: A Tough Act to Follow (The Wanderers)

by Richard Bamberg

  Beast and Maia stood near each other, already in their natural forms, in a few inches of snow that had fallen overnight. February is the coldest month in the Springs, but not the time of the most snow. That came in March.

  “We’re flying?” Tess asked.

  “Yep, we’re taking a portal. Roads aren’t well developed where we’re bound,” I said closing the front door without locking it. I refreshed the wards on the cabin and then walked down the steps after Tess.

  “Good morning, Maia. Did your night go well?” Tess asked as she reached her hippogriff.

  “As well as most. Hunting was good and I ate well,” Maia answered.

  I nodded to Beast as I approached and he gave me a slight nod of his head in return.

  Maia knelt for Tess, while I levitated onto Beast. We were both mounted in a few seconds and I said, “Beast, we’re traveling to the Bank. Get us airborne and I’ll open the portal.”

  “The bank?” Tess echoed.

  “That’s what I’ve been calling it. I don’t know if it has a local name. Walt took me there early in my career and never really referred to it by name.”

  Beast leapt into the air and angled toward Cheyenne Canyon. I didn’t have to check to know that Maia and Tess would be right behind us. When we were over the spot that Walt had originally shown me, I could feel the closed portal and triggered my tat.

  A shimmering portal some thirty feet in diameter opened a few hundred feet above the canyon and Beast flew toward it. A warm, steady breeze blew toward us from the portal.

  We popped through and were in another world. The air here was much warmer than the Colorado Rockies in February. Snow-capped mountains rose to our west and north and in the distance I could see the blue ice of a massive glacial wall. Over the years, the wall had been moving closer to the verdant valley that stretched out for what looked like a hundred miles to our east. Directly below us a granite cliff marked this end of the valley. A river flowed out of the glacier and dropped from the cliff face less than a mile to our west.

  “What is it with you and waterfalls?” Tess called.

  “What?”

  “It seems like half the places you’ve taken me have had waterfalls. Granted, this one looks higher than most, but what’s up with that?”

  “Just a coincidence of topography,” I said, but she had a point. Why would so many of the places I took her have waterfalls?

  “I thought you didn’t believe in coincidences,” Tess returned.

  I rolled my eyes and pointed down. “We’re headed for the base of the falls.”

  We descended in a tight spiral; both Beast and Maia locked their wings and glided rapidly toward the misty forest that concealed the base of the cliff. The mist seemed to rise to meet us before we reached the forest canopy. I hadn’t been here in a few years, but the area looked as I remembered. The waterfall formed a wide lake, nearly a half mile across. It narrowed as it flowed out to the east. Granite boulders, fallen over the centuries, lined the border of the lake and formed an abrupt boundary between the crystal waters and the marshy ground which surrounded the lake. The forest proper started a few hundred yards from the lake’s edge except where the lake’s outflow formed a twenty yards wide river that snaked across the marsh and cut a path through the dense forest.

  We landed on the shore of the lake near the cliff face and well inside the spray from the waterfall. The mist was cold and I considered putting a shield over us, but that wouldn’t help for what we were going to do. I slid off Beast, onto the boulder where he’d landed. There wasn’t room there for Maia to land so she set down on a similarly large boulder a few yards farther from the cliff. As soon as I was down, Beast took to the air and flew out over the marsh until he was out of the waterfall’s spray.

  When Tess slipped off her familiar, I saw the glimmer of her shield form in the air above her. I grinned to myself and levitated my apprentice to my boulder. When she reached me, I caught her in my arms. She embraced me for a moment and I found myself unable to resist kissing her.

  When we separated, I pointed to a stair step formation of smaller rocks that led into the lake from our boulder. “You might as well drop your shield. We’re going to get wet.”

  Tess eyed the steps and the roiling waters of the lake. When she met my gaze, she said, “Really, we’re going swimming here? What’s so special about this place?”

  I grinned. “That’s the surprise.”

  She frowned and looked at the pristine water that lapped against the stones. “So, we’re skinny dipping?”

  I shrugged. “That’s up to you. The water won’t hurt our leathers, but you know that much water is going to dampen our magic. It’s not truly flowing, but it’s turbulent enough to have a similar effect.”

  “Okay then,” Tess said as she unzipped her jacket.

  We undressed quickly and put our underwear and socks inside the protection of our leathers. It would keep the material from getting any wetter while we swam.

  I finished first and stepped down to the first stone leading into the water. Turning, I found Tess close, her breasts at my eye level. Her nipples were rigid and I resisted the temptation to kiss one. I met her gaze. “Cold?”

  She grinned. “Not even, we just haven’t been skinny dipping before. I thought maybe you had plans.”

  I smiled broadly, grabbed her by her hips, and pulled her down next to me. “You have a one track mind.”

  She rubbed her flesh against mine. “Like you don’t.”

  I felt my smile narrow and I focused energy into my muscles and lifted her again.

  Tess returned my smile and tilted her face toward me for a kiss.

  I tossed her toward the lake’s surface.

  She squealed in surprise, but then she activated her shield tat and it snapped into a sphere around her before she hit the surface of the water. For a few moments, she spun around inside her shield, but then she got her feet under her and faced me.

  Tess cocked her head and eyed me quizzically. I leapt from my perch and hit the water a few feet from her. As I passed, I gave her shield a shove of power and it rolled across the surface of the lake away from me. I sank into the cold water until my toes touched bottom, then bobbed back to the surface. Shaking my head and running a palm across my eyes to clear the water, I looked for Tess. She was a few feet away, still studying me.

  “Aren’t you coming in? The water’s fine,” I said while treading water.

  Tess knelt inside her sphere of energy and then leapt upwards toward me. Her shield popped out of existence and she came down hands first on my head. Her weight pushed me back down and I floundered for a moment before my feet touched the bottom again. I pushed off while she wrapped her legs around my torso and her arms about my neck.

  We broke the surface and I gasped for air. I had trouble keeping both of us afloat and triggered my levitation tat. It glowed feebly beneath the surface, but I was able to put enough power into it to keep both our heads above water.

  Tess was shaking the water from her face and laughing.

  “Dunking your mentor will get you a spanking,” I said, trying to sound serious.

  She stopped laughing and eyed me with a coquettish smile. “You would spank me?”

  “Of course. I have to maintain discipline,” I said gruffly.

  Her lips reached mine, parted, and our tongues danced.

  For the next few minutes, I had trouble remembering why I’d brought her there. I maneuvered us to slightly shallower water and our little kiss became foreplay and then so much more. As I rose to the occasion, she settled down onto me, embracing me in her warmth.

  Later, both of us spent, I stood in the chest deep water with Tess still clinging to me. Her legs were wrapped tightly around me and her lips were buried against the side of my neck. We were both panting and shivering, but not from the cold water.

  “Well,” she gasped. “That was something. If I’d known that was what you were planning, I’d have been more in a hurry to get moving this
morning.”

  I chuckled. “I hadn’t planned that at all. We’re here for other things entirely.”

  Tess leaned back so she could stare into my eyes. An eyebrow dipped and she said, “Really? This was just spontaneous?”

  “It seems like it’s always spontaneous with you, Tess.”

  She grinned. “And there I thought you brought me here just to ravish me.”

  She kissed me again and I participated full heartedly for a minute.

  When she broke it off, I lifted her off me and set her on her feet in front of me. The undulating surface of the lake couldn’t make her breasts actually bob up and down, but it did make her nipples appear and disappear beneath its surface. It was quite distracting.

  I snapped out of my appreciation of her hypnotic beauty and said, “Hold still a moment.”

  I surface dove into the water, swimming deeper looking for a tell-tell glint on the lake’s floor. Spotting what I sought, I grasped one nugget the size of my fist and bobbed back to the surface. I came up about twenty feet from Tess. She was eyeing me curiously, as I swam back to her.

  When I was standing in front of her again, I said, “Hold out your hand.”

  Her head cocked slightly, but then she raised her right hand out of the water. I set my shiny bauble in her palm and waited.

  Tess’s eyes widened as she brought my gift toward her face to study it. “Is this real?”

  “As real as it gets.”

  “Holy cow! This must weigh five pounds,” Tess said hefting the gold nugget in her hand.

  “About that,” I said.

  “And it was just lying there?”

  “Yep, it’s a little larger than average.”

  “There are more?” Tess asked.

  “Yep.”

  In sudden understanding, she nodded. “So this is why you don’t worry about money?”

  “That’s part of the reason. Wait here,” I said and dove back into the deeper water.

  My next search took a little longer, but before I ran out of air, I found one of the little stones I was looking for. I retrieved it and swam back to Tess.

  I handed the robin’s egg size rock to her and waited. She eyed it for a moment before asking, “Quartz?”

  I grinned. “Not hardly.”

  She stared at it for a little longer and looked at me quizzically. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Of course I can be.”

  “Wow, this would make a hell of a ring,” she said as she rotated her left hand over and held the raw diamond against the back of her ring finger.

  “What?” I said.

  She grinned at me and then shoved against my chest. “Not for me, you duffus.”

  “I knew that.”

  “Yeah, right. Boy, for a super powerful Wanderer, you can certainly be gullible.”

  “I am not gullible,” I disagreed.

  She grinned. “Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that. So, you’ve got a secret hoard of a butt-load of loot. You just come hit the bank whenever you need a little cash?”

  “Pretty much. Walt showed me this place. It’s been the source of our finances for hundreds of years. I don’t know what the other Wanderers used, but those of us in North America have had this bank to rely on.”

  “And there aren’t any locals to steal your loot?”

  “There are locals, but gold is more common in this world and it has far less value than on Earth. I’m not sure about the diamonds, but I don’t think the locals have the technique needed to cut diamonds.”

  “Cool, so you just take these to a local jeweler and sell them?”

  “Now days, back when I started out the U.S. government wouldn’t allow private ownership of gold bullion. It had to be in the form of jewelry, but it was easy enough to take it to Canada or Mexico for conversion.”

  “Wait, you couldn’t own gold?”

  “Pretty much. I think it was 1975 when U.S. citizens were allow to own gold again. It was a holdover from the days of the great depression. I never understood the reasons, but Walt explained it to me after the first time he brought me here.”

  “I never heard of that,” Tess said.

  “You’re a little young for it to matter to you.”

  She frowned momentarily. “You know, I understand that you’re so much older than me, but until you bring up things like this, I kind of forget it.”

  “Because of my boyish good looks?”

  She laughed. “Yeah, that’s it all right. So this was why you brought me here?”

  “Unless you want to think it was because I wanted to ravish you while we were skinny dipping,” I said with a lecherous grin.

  Tess stepped close and rubbed her flesh against mine. We kissed for a brief moment and then she pulled away. “I’m sure you’re always ready to ravish me.”

  I grinned. Hell, for someone who started out trying to have a platonic relationship with his apprentice, I had certainly turned into some kind of hound dog. At first, we’d only had sex after a bout of training in which our emotions had been amped by our meshing. Now it seemed like we had sex at the drop of a hat. We did train daily, so we were always meshing, but something seemed different now. I wasn’t waiting for her to instigate sex because she needed the release. We were both instigators now and we were both acting like randy teenagers who had just discovered sex.

  I shook off the thoughts. It was just healthy sex, not anything to concern myself about.

  “Well, we should get going. I wouldn’t want you to stay in the water until your skin prunes,” I said.

  Tess grinned. “Or until you’re able to perform again?”

  I shook my head. “We’ve still got training to do and there are still a few creatures we haven’t located yet. We should get that job finished up before Verðandi sends us something new.”

  “You’re the boss,” Tess said. “Lead on.”

  I grinned and then swept her into my arms. She draped one arm behind my neck as I carried her back to where we left our clothes.

  Chapter 6

  Alexander

  Pain, great agonizing bolts of pain, radiated across my chest as I struggled for air. I coughed again and warm liquid splattered across my face.

  What? Wasn’t I supposed to be dead? I couldn’t be dead and be in this much pain.

  I wiped at my face with my left hand and opened my eyes. It took a moment for the shapes to come into focus, but when they did, there was a drop dead (ugh, bad description) gorgeous woman bending over me.

  “You cannot stay dead this day for Fate has need of you,” she said as she offered me a hand.

  “What?” I reflexively took her wrist as she gripped mine. She pulled me to my feet, and I swayed dizzily. “Wait…what?”

  I looked around for the men who had ambushed me, but beside the beautiful woman and her Pegasus, the roof was deserted. Wait? Did I say Pegasus?

  I stared at the winged horse for a long minute and felt the urge to hurl shake me.

  Bending away from the woman, I tossed my afternoon snack and a couple of beers to the rooftop.

  The woman was kind enough to hold onto me and make sure I didn’t fall on my face, which, I’ll tell you was a definite possibility.

  I straightened and wiped at my mouth with the back of my bare arm.

  Shit! That hurt too. Looking down, I could see the wide gash one of the knives had left in my forearm muscles. White bone gleamed at the bottom of the cut and blood pulsed weakly from the wound.

  Damn, I nearly hurled again.

  I swallowed back my bile and shook my head.

  My chest still hurt, along with my arm, and the back of my head. Assorted other pains covered my body. What had they done, kick me to death after…I looked down at my chest. My shirt had a horizontal tear in it over my heart. Blood soaked my clothes and not just my shirt. My brand new shorts were solid red.

  “Oh, hell. That should have killed me,” I said as I raised my eyes to the woman. She looked just like what I expected a Valkyrie t
o look like. “Damn, I mean, sorry for the language and all, but are you a Valkyrie?”

  Her head cocked to one side and she stared at me. “Yes, I serve Fate and she has–”

  “Let me stop you right there. You work for Verðandi, right?”

  “Yes, certainly,” the goddess said, her face puzzled.

  “And you reap the dead from battlefields to provide Wanderers for Verðandi’s service?”

  “You seem very well informed for one so young,” she said as a quizzical smile spread across her face.

  “Ah, well, I’ve met Raphael Semmes.”

  Her eyes widened, and she nodded slowly. “That would explain much.”

  She turned toward her mount and before I could object, she was mounted, and the beast was getting ready to leap into the air.

  “Wait!” I yelled. “Can’t I get an explanation from you? I thought you only reaped warriors who fell on the battlefield.”

  She smiled warmly at me and then waved a hand across the rooftop. “This was a battlefield this day, and you fought bravely. That is the only requirement.”

  “But–”

  But nothing, her mount leapt into the air, and they disappeared through a portal before I could get my next question out.

  That left me alone in the gathering twilight on a roof in Cancun, Mexico. I was covered in blood, my own blood, and I was still bleeding. I felt weak, almost too weak to keep standing. I hurt, mostly in the chest, but in enough other places to want to scream. Why hadn’t the Valkyrie healed more of my wounds? I guessed she had healed whatever wound had killed me but couldn’t she have stuck around to take care of the rest?

  No, matter. I started toward the roof entrance I’d earlier come through.

  It took me several minutes to get back to my room. I only fell twice, once on the roof, and then again in the hallway when I was trying to get my keycard out for the door. Letting the heavy door fall shut behind me, I managed to make it to the nightstand beside the bed. I opened the drawer and removed the small leather-bound grimoire that contained the few spells Raphael had been willing to let me copy.

  Sitting down on the bed, I turned on the bedside lamp and then opened the little book to the second spell. It was the healing spell Rafe had taught Tess and then she’d taught me.