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

by Richard Bamberg

  Tess raised her gloved hand in front of her face as the little beast blasted a stream of fire at her. The flames struck her spelled glove without effect. She waited until its fire died and then shook a finger in its face. “I told you to stop that. Bad wyvern!”

  The wyvern sank its teeth into her extended finger.

  “Ow! Damn, let go,” Tess ordered.

  The wyvern kept its jaws clamped shut on her finger. It made a chuckling sound that I would have sworn was laughter.

  “I told you, wild animal,” I said, almost avoiding a smile.

  Tess glared at me again. “I just have to show it who the boss is.”

  “About that,” I said. “I thought I was the boss.”

  Tess’s features changed from anger to coy seductiveness. She lowered her head slightly and batted her eyes at me in an overtly sexual manner. “I know you’re my Boss, Rafe. Haven’t I pleased you? Haven’t I done everything you’ve asked of me?”

  “Yeah, right. Don’t be trying to sway me with your feminine wiles. You stink of wyvern piss.” I said it coldly, but after nearly six months together, she knew me far better than anyone else in my entire life.

  “If you’ll hold Bruno for a minute, I’ll fix that.”

  “Bruno? You’ve already come up with a name for it?” I asked in surprise.

  “Doesn’t he seem like a Bruno to you?”

  The wyvern growled and shook its small head.

  “Ow! Would you stop that before I make you?” Tess asked it.

  It stopped shaking its head, but it didn’t release her finger.

  “I thought your spell would stop anything from damaging these leathers,” Tess said.

  I looked closer and saw blood seeping along the edges of the beast’s mouth.

  I shrugged. “Some creature’s natural magic can defeat some spells. Remember what the dragon did to my pants?”

  “He’s hardly a dragon,” Tess said as the wyvern growled again. Tess winced. “You know, I think he understands us.”

  “Why would he understand English?” I asked.

  “How should I know? You’re the mentor; I’m just the lowly, female, apprentice, still trying to learn my way in your masculine world.” She batted her eyes again.

  “Oh, brother.”

  “Are you going to hold him or not? I’d really like to get this urine off me.”

  “What makes you think I won’t open a portal and toss him through it?” I asked.

  “Because you don’t like to piss me off,” Tess said.

  She had me there. Having a female apprentice rather than the usual male had its ups and downs. I did find myself increasingly willing to accommodate her requests, be they for a particular instruction in the ways of Wanderers or for something a little more carnal. Walt seriously didn’t know how nice he had had it.

  “Okay, hand it over,” I said.

  She held it toward me. The damn thing rolled its eyes in my direction and growled. I got a couple of fingers behind its neck and tried not to squeeze too tight. Tess released her hold on its neck, but it still had its teeth sunk into her finger.

  Taking her free hand, she stroked the top of its head. Its gaze switched back to her. “Come on now, Bruno, let go of my finger. Rafe won’t hurt you.”

  The damn little thing looked at me again and growled.

  “Tell him you won’t hurt him, Rafe.”

  “I’m not making any promises. If it bites me like that I’ll snap its neck,” I threatened while meeting the wyvern’s stare.

  It growled again.

  Tess poked me in the stomach. “Rafe, be nice.”

  Reluctantly, I said, “All right. I won’t hurt it.”

  “See, Rafe was just playing with you, Bruno. He’s a nice man,” Tess said stroking the beast’s head again.

  The damn thing opened its mouth and licked Tess’s blood from its lips.

  “Thank you. I knew you understood me,” Tess said.

  She triggered her healing tat and the blood stopped flowing.

  The wyvern licked her finger again, removing the rest of her blood from the leather.

  While Tess used a technique I’d taught her a couple months back to remove chemicals and scents from her body, I turned the wyvern and held it at arm’s length so it couldn’t repeat its misbehavior on me.

  It took Tess a minute to freeze the urine and whatever else had attached itself to her. A breeze arose as she summoned the wind to remove the particles.

  The breeze moved her hair around her face, making her, if possible, even more attractive. I felt a stupid smile creeping across my face.

  She killed the breeze and fished a protein bar from a jacket pocket. Tearing the paper back, she broke off a piece and held it out toward the wyvern.

  The little beast grasped at the food with the claws on the first joint of its wings. Because of my grip on its neck, it couldn’t quite reach the morsel with its teeth. I shifted my grip to behind its wings and the wyvern snapped the bite into its mouth, chewed rapidly, and swallowed.

  “So, you had to have a pet.” The voice surprised us.

  All four of us turned to the newcomer.

  “Hello, Verðandi. This is a pleasant surprise,” Tess said.

  “Yes, Verðandi, this is a surprise. What brings you to us? More trouble?” I asked.

  “Rafe,” Tess said in a manner that told me she was surprised by the tone in my own voice.

  “I’m afraid that I’ve given Rafe every reason to believe I don’t see him unless there’s trouble.” Verðandi said. “I sometimes wished that things could be different, but my actions are not always my own. I have obligations just like you two.”

  “We understand, Verðandi. What can we do to help?” Tess asked.

  I started to say something, but bit my tongue and kept quiet. Verðandi didn’t have to explain herself to me. Not that she ever did, but I served her and was willing to let her have her mysteries.

  “Another Wanderer has been chosen. You need to get to him,” Verðandi said.

  “What?” I exclaimed.

  “Another? I thought Wanderers only had one apprentice at a time,” Tess said.

  She wasn’t wrong, but I could understand Verðandi wanting to get replacements for all of those whom Rowle had killed.

  “That’s normally true; Therese, but these are difficult times. We don’t have the luxury of doing things the usual way.”

  Tess looked from Verðandi to me. I could see the confusion in every line of her face. She’d thought she’d be my only apprentice for the next twenty years or so. Now, after not even six months, she would have to adapt to having another one to share in the training. It was bound to change things in ways I couldn’t begin to fathom. Her rapid success at training was directly caused by the close bond we forged each time we fully meshed thoughts, auras, and emotions. We meshed on a level that was much greater than Walt and I had ever achieved. The result was Tess learning in less than half the time it’d taken me, but I’d been unable to keep our libidos in check under the strain of the intimate connection of our souls. We had rapidly become lovers. Even though neither of us wanted to be in love with the other because we knew that when her training was done, we would separate and cover different areas of the world.

  What would adding another apprentice do to our dynamic?

  “Where’s this new Wanderer located?” I asked as I finally realized how long I’d been lost in thought.

  “He’s in Cancun, Mexico at the moment, but you can probably catch up with him at New Braunfels, Texas,” Verðandi said.

  “New Braunfels?” Tess said softly.

  “Yes.”

  I felt a chill go through me. Premonition is not a trait of Wanderers, but for once, I thought it might be. “Who is this new person?”

  “Alexander Dockerty, your son.”

  Chapter 9

  Therese

  I felt like saying, “Shut the front door!” Or something equally inane, but the truth was that I was too shocked to say
a word. I just stared at Verðandi and waited for the punch line. She had to be wrong. We’d left Alex safe and well at his motel in New Braunfels back in November. He wasn’t a soldier, hell; he managed a restaurant and motel. How could he be chosen a Wanderer?

  I was still staring at Verðandi when Rafe voiced my thoughts.

  “What are you talking about, Verðandi? My son isn’t a soldier. He couldn’t have died on a battlefield in the short time since we left him.”

  “Yeah,” I said, sticking my two cents worth in. “I talked to him a couple days ago; he was relaxing on a beach in Mexico.”

  Rafe turned to look at me his eyes wide. I thought he was going to say something, but then he shrugged.

  Rafe held out the wyvern and I took the small creature gently in both my hands. It was still munching on the bite of protein bar, but was studying my other hand, the one that held the rest of the bar. I held it out to Bruno and it grasped the bar with its wing claws and shoved an inch of it into its mouth.

  “Feeding a young wyvern will bond it to you, especially when you’ve given it some of your blood,” Verðandi said.

  “What? Oh, I didn’t realize that,” I said.

  “That much was obvious,” Rafe said to me. “Just like you haven’t mentioned your talking with Alex lately. Verðandi, Alex couldn’t be in the military. Someone has given you bad information.”

  Okay, maybe I didn’t tell Rafe how often Alex and I talked, but in my defense, Rafe never gave any indication that he wanted to know. He’d promised to tell Alex that he was his father the next time we met, but he’d always given me the impression that he expected it to be years in the future. I think Rafe was just trying to avoid Alex learning that he’d killed Laura, Alex’s mother.

  Verðandi frowned and looked disappointed. “Raphael, I do not make mistakes about such things. Alex died earlier today in a fight while trying to save a young woman. He fought bravely and distinguished himself well enough to be selected as an apprentice Wanderer.”

  “But this is screwy. I’ve never heard of the offspring of a Wanderer becoming one,” Rafe said, obviously as reluctant as I was to believe Alex had died today.

  “Just because you haven’t heard of it before, doesn’t mean that it hasn’t happened more than once in the past. I have been watching over the Wanderers since before recorded history. You think you know more than I about the selection of Wanderers?” Verðandi asked with scorn in her voice.

  Rafe stared at her and I managed to keep my mouth shut. It wasn’t easy. Alex, dead, and now an apprentice like me? Unbelievable.

  When Rafe spoke, his voice had the same tone as Verðandi’s. “Perhaps, Verðandi, if you were to explain how these things occur, I wouldn’t be so willing to doubt you. In the decades that I’ve served you, you’ve only appeared to me on rare occasions. Even when you have appeared, you’ve never revealed anything more about yourself and the Wanderers than you absolutely had to.”

  Verðandi stared at her last remaining Wanderer (if you don’t count the apprentice as being a Wanderer, yet). Then she looked at me and I saw her eyes softening. “Raphael, I’ve done what I thought best.”

  “Yeah, and see what that got us.” Rafe snapped. “You let Rowle kill all the other Wanderers before warning me. If we’d had a chance to stand together, we could have stopped him without so much bloodshed.”

  Verðandi shrank back a little under Rafe’s outburst, but then she drew herself up to her full height. “You do not question my actions, Wanderer. Your power and your second chance at life is through my power, not your own. You think just because you have so much power you can question Fate herself? I see things that are unfathomable to you. I am the one who knows what will happen when a butterfly’s wings stir the air. Not you, none of you see what I see.”

  Rafe wasn’t backing down. In fact, he stepped closer to her, until they were almost nose-to-nose.

  “You told me that there is no geas holding me to your service. You are the one who implied that I could do as Rowle did and turn my back on you and yours. My obligation to you is of my own making. You may have granted us great power, but we are still free to leave your service if we feel that you aren’t doing right by us. You want us to remain Wanderers? Then tell us what the hell is going on.”

  Verðandi stared at Rafe for a long moment. Then she wiped a hand across her face as though removing spittle. She glanced at her palm and then back up to Rafe. “Very well, Raphael, I will grant your demands, this time.”

  Verðandi turned her back to both of us. She took a couple of steps into the wider space between the trees. The snow was at least a foot deep there, but she walked on the surface without sinking in. She waved a hand out and the snow in a twenty-foot wide circle vanished. A ring of rocks appeared in the center and a small wood fire appeared out of thin air. She walked to the edge of the fire and started to sit down. A large flat rock appeared beneath her just as her butt reached it.

  I was impressed. I’ve seen Rafe do a lot of magic, but I’ve never seen him create things out of nothing.

  “Come, my Wanderers, sit with me and I’ll educate you.”

  As soon as she spoke, two more rocks appeared, spaced evenly around the fire from her position.

  Rafe trudged through the snow to the clearing and went to the farther rock. I followed him and sat on the nearer one.

  Verðandi seemed to be gathering her thoughts, but Rafe was impatient. “Well, Verðandi, let’s hear what you have to say.”

  “Rafe, give her a chance. You owe her the curtesy,” I admonished.

  My mentor ignored me. Well, he was the mentor, but gees, Verðandi was the big boss, the one who had created the Wanderers.

  “Do you remember me telling you that I think of all the Wanderers as my children?” Verðandi asked slowly while staring into the fire.

  “Yes, you mentioned that after telling me that all of the other Wanderers were dead,” Rafe replied.

  “There’s an explanation for that.”

  She hesitated and after a couple seconds passed, Rafe said, “Then let’s hear it.”

  Verðandi sighed. “A long time ago, before the gods left Earth and mankind behind, I made a mistake.”

  A god admitting to a mistake, this had to be interesting, I thought.

  “What mistake?” Rafe asked.

  “I met a mortal and fell in love.”

  What? I glanced at Rafe, but he was concentrating his full attention on our boss.

  “And?” Rafe said.

  “And we were lovers for many years. I gave him the same gift you Wanderers have of long life and we were happy for generations of your kind.”

  Unable to contain myself any longer, I blurted out, “Then what happened?”

  Verðandi gazed sorrowfully toward me. Her eyes were misty.

  “Before he died, I bore him a child.”

  Oh, my goddess.

  “And this has something to do with the Wanderers?” Rafe asked.

  “Of course it does, Raphael. Our child was the first Wanderer. That is why I look on all of you as my children. All of the Wanderers are the fruit of my loins. All of you are descendant from my union with a mortal. That’s what has always made you special, not just to me, but special in the capability to control the magics, just like my son did.”

  Holy crap!

  “Wait a minute,” Rafe said. “You mean, Walt, Rowle, Tess, me, all of us are your descendants?”

  “Didn’t I just say that?” Verðandi snapped.

  “And yet, there’s only a few Wanderers at any one time. How many descendants do you have by now?”

  “What difference does it make?” Verðandi asked.

  “Because if you have a lot of descendants, then why can’t you just gather up as many Wanderers as you need rather than limiting us to so few?”

  “You all have the capability to become Wanderers, but you still have to prove yourself in combat before your powers blossom in you. I can’t just snap my fingers and turn you into Wanderers; yo
u have to develop on your own.”

  “So Rafe and I are related?” I asked. Gees, we’d been sexual partners since right after I became his apprentice. Was there an ick factor there?

  “Yes,” Verðandi said, “but your common ancestor goes back centuries. You won’t ever have to worry if you have children of your own.”

  “Whoa there,” I objected. “I wasn’t thinking about children. Oh, gees, we don’t have time to worry about children.”

  “Then why did you ask?” Verðandi said.

  I looked at Rafe and found that he was studying me.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Raphael,” I snapped. “I’m not planning to raise any children, so just get that gleam out of your eye.”

  Rafe held out a hand and automatically, I took it. Immediately his emotions blended with mine and I understood that he wasn’t thinking along the lines I had assumed at all. He was just amused at my swift denial to Verðandi.

  Hell, I had leapt to the idea, not him. I’d just been worried about the ick factor in sleeping with a relative until Verðandi brought up children. Her statement had caused me to overreact. Rafe understood as well as I that Wanderers couldn’t raise children. I mean, gees, would we get sidecars for the motorcycles so we could carry our offspring on quests with us. Oh, hell no.

  I dropped his hand, relieved and turned back to Verðandi.

  “Then you know who our common ancestor was?”

  “Of course, I knew him well,” Verðandi said.

  “Was he a Wanderer, too?” I asked.

  She hesitated and a tear appeared in the corner of her left eye.

  “Yes, my child, he was a Wanderer too.”

  “What haven’t you told us, Verðandi?” Rafe asked.

  She sighed deeply. “You’ve met him also.”

  “What? How could we have met him? Rafe’s met a lot of Wanderers, but I haven’t ever–”

  Rafe’s voice came out cold. “She’s talking about Rowle. He was our common ancestor.”

  Chapter 10

  RAPHAEL

  Verðandi didn’t have to confirm my announcement. I could see the truth in her face. Jesus, no wonder Rowle had tried so hard to get me to join him rather than killing me as he had the other Wanderers. He must have known. Why didn’t he say anything to me? Would it have made a difference in whether I stuck by Verðandi’s side instead of joining him? I didn’t think so, but then I’d never been given the opportunity to decide.