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

by Richard Bamberg

  “Are you just changing the subject to avoid having to summon Verðandi?” Tess asked.

  “What? No, I just…okay, maybe I’m a little hesitant to call my boss and tell her I’m broken.”

  “Rafe…”

  “All right, all ready. Verðandi, Verðandi, Verðandi. There, I’ve said it.”

  When I finished, I looked around to see if the Norn would appear. In fact, all four of us looked around expecting the goddess to appear again.

  After a few minutes, I shrugged. “I guess she isn’t listening or is too busy to come.”

  “If one of my descendants called me for the first time in nearly fifty years, I think I would show up,” Tess said.

  “Yeah? Well, that’s you, not Verðandi.”

  “Maybe she can’t hear you,” Tess suggested.

  “Why wouldn’t she be able to hear me?”

  “Maybe the same stuff that’s blocking your power is preventing your summonings from working.”

  “Okay then, Tess. You try,” I said.

  Tess nodded and then took a deep breath. She spoke rapidly as if she was afraid of losing her nerve if she didn’t hurry. “Verðandi! Verðandi! Verðandi!”

  “Yes, child?”

  I nearly jumped out of my skin. I hadn’t expected it to work.

  We turned to find the goddess standing not five feet away from our little circle.

  “Verðandi! You heard me and came,” Tess said excitedly.

  “Of course, child. I always try to respond to my Wanderers’ requests.”

  “Hell, you mean I could have called you at any time?” I asked.

  “Certainly, Raphael. You are the only Wanderer who has never called on me for advice.”

  “Ah, crap. It’s that easy? Just say your name three times and poof, you come?”

  “Yes, well…” she stared at me with a deepening frown. “Maybe not in your current condition. What have you gotten yourself into, Raphael?”

  “It’s a short story. I tripped some kind of trap. Black goo burned off almost all of my tattoos and now I can’t burn replacements or even focus energy.”

  “That should not be possible. Hold still.”

  She came to me, stopping close, and raised her hands to either side of my head. Her hands glowed for a few seconds and then she frowned again.

  “This should not be. Something has infused itself into your nerves, preventing your connection to your power.”

  “Can you fix it?” Tess asked.

  “I don’t think so, at least not at the moment. I will have to consult my sisters and see if we can come up with something.”

  “Can you tell me why I’m able to still mesh with Tess, but not focus any magic myself?” I asked.

  “No, but the meshing between Wanderers and other magic users is more basic and subtle than the magic that gives you your powers. I would think that if you could mesh, then you could still perform basic magic, but after studying you, I don’t see you being able to do any magic until we get this sorted out.”

  “Damn it,” I snarled letting my frustrations be obvious. I was in no mood to humor Verðandi, regardless of our relative positions. “I thought you gods were supposed to be able to do about anything.”

  Verðandi studied me for a moment, and then she shook her head sadly. “If that were only true, Raphael. We may be gods, but each of us has powers, none of us, even Odin himself has not the power to control everything. I will find a way to reverse what has been done to you, but it may take time.”

  “And what am I supposed to do in the meantime. Some enemy has stripped me of my powers, my own son has become a Wanderer, and I’m supposed to just stand around until you come up with a fix for what ails me?”

  Verðandi turned away from me and took a few steps through the grass. I thought she was going to vanish without another word, but then she stopped.

  “Raphael, you should forget about Alexander. He won’t be your next apprentice after all,” Verðandi said without turning.

  “What? Why the hell not? Is he dead?” I demanded.

  The goddess’s shoulders began to shake. Astonishingly, it appeared she was crying.

  I walked to her, gripped her by the shoulders, and turned her to face me. Her eyes were heavy with moisture and as I watched, glistening silver tears began to stream down her face.

  “What is wrong with Alex?” I asked.

  “He’s been claimed by another.”

  “What? What other? You told me there were no other Wanderers beside Tess and me.”

  “There is one other with your powers; he just no longer answers my summonings,” Verðandi said.

  My hands dropped from Verðandi’s shoulders.

  “That’s not possible. He’s dead,” I said, but something in my chest tightened up. I didn’t really believe that Verðandi could make that kind of mistake.

  “Wait,” Tess said. “You can’t mean Rowle. I shot him at close range. My bolt took him in the chest. He has to be dead.”

  “Would that it were true. Your bolt did strike him as you say, but something kept it from penetrating his heart. He lives still.”

  “Fuck! Couldn’t you have told us this sooner, like anytime in the last five months?”

  Verðandi shrugged. “It’s not as easy to see him as other men. When he refused my summonings, he separated himself from the normal fate of men. Until he presented himself to Alexander and claimed him, I had not known he still lived.”

  “Oh, damn it. How did he get to Alex before we could?” Tess asked.

  Verðandi turned toward Tess. “I can’t be certain, but he reached Alexander just hours after my Valkyrie reaped him. Either he was somewhere nearby–”

  “Or he was the cause of Alex’s death,” I spat.

  Verðandi nodded and I could see she had already thought of that.

  I felt Tess’s fingers against my left hand and we interlaced fingers while I tried to control my feelings. Six months ago, I didn’t know I had a son and now within twenty-four hours I’d learned that he’d been killed, been recruited to be a Wanderer, and now taken by what could only be considered my archenemy. And growing up I never would have believed I’d someday have an archenemy.

  “Any idea where we can find them?”

  “Not at this time. I’m looking for them, but it will take time. Anyone with Rowle is under the same cloak as he. I have to use other means to find them.”

  “Okay, Verðandi, we appreciate the news and any help you can provide will also be appreciated. It’s not as if I’m in any condition to try and take him away from Rowle until I get my tats back. So please concentrate your efforts on finding a way to fix me and then we’ll look for Alex.”

  “Agreed, in the meantime, I might suggest you be exceptionally careful about yourselves. If Rowle is the one who sprung this little trap on you, he may already be looking for a confrontation.”

  “Damn it, you’re right,” I snarled. “Rowle was the only person I thought capable of pulling off a trap that would remove my tats, but I thought he was dead.”

  I turned toward Tess. “We’d better clear out of this area. There’s no reason to make it easy for him.”

  Tess’s lips quivered as though she was going to say something, but then she nodded and let go of my hand.

  “Well, Verðandi–” I began, but the goddess was already gone. I growled to myself and turned toward Beast.

  “We’ll fly. We can’t take the time to drive,” I said as I took a handful of Beast’s mane in my fist.

  “Do you want to open a portal back to the cabin?” Tess asked. She was already sitting astride Maia.

  I swung onto Beast’s shoulders. “I know you could open a portal for us to get back there, but we’re at that cabin too much as it is. With Rowle still alive we can’t risk being in a location where he might find us. We’ll head east, let’s go.”

  Beast immediately leapt into the air with Maia and Tess less than a second behind us. Beast gained altitude until we were a couple of hundr
ed feet in the air and Maia had come along side of us on our right. The sun was just cresting the horizon, but with the thick moist air of south Texas, it was an indistinct bright spot rather than a circle of fire.

  “Are we glamoured?” I asked. It was a pain in the ass to have to ask. I’d always been able to see past glamours with my enhanced senses tat, just one more thing to be pissed at Rowle about.

  “Certainly, standard hawk glamour for both of us,” Beast said.

  “Okay, level off and maintain a good pace, but there’s no reason to tire yourselves out. We have a long flight to go.”

  “Where are we going?” Tess called.

  “I thought we might visit Cris, outside of Atlanta.”

  “Oh? Any particular reason you want to visit an old snuggle bunny?”

  I did a double take toward Tess. Was she seriously acting jealous? “Not for snuggling, if that’s your worry. The Wiccans are capable of some damn powerful magic when it comes to healing. I was thinking that she might have a way of getting this residue out of me.”

  “Then why don’t we go to Huntsville? You said Abigail’s coven was as powerful as any you’d come across.”

  “True, but Abigail wouldn’t be my first choice. There’s that trust issue.”

  Tess nodded thoughtfully and then brightened visibly. “Eglin Air Force Base is a lot closer to Atlanta.”

  “Yes, of course, but what–”

  “I memorized the location with Joe’s remembrance spell. I could open a portal to there and cut hours off our trip.”

  Of course, I’d noticed she was lagging behind when we left the climatic hangar. She’d been casting that spell of Joe’s that would let her remember everything about the location so she could open a portal back there.

  “All right, it would get us there a lot sooner. Do you want to land and mesh or do you think you can cast that spell without assistance?”

  Tess bit her lip and appeared to give my question some thought. “I think we should mesh. I’ve never cast that spell and if I don’t get it right it’d be a waste of time.”

  My thought exactly, but with my limited abilities, I wasn’t sure I would be much help.

  “Okay. Beast take us back down, anywhere away from people,” I said.

  The portal spell went off without a hitch and we popped out above Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida panhandle. We emerged about forty feet above the climatic hangar. If I were being honest, I’d admit that I was a little concerned about Tess performing that spell without my being able to help. Hell, I was still getting used to the idea of being able to portal to any location I could recall.

  “Okay, Tess, close the portal,” I called to my apprentice as I oriented on the bay, getting my bearings for the flight to Atlanta.

  I heard a loud boom immediately below us and an instant later felt something strike my back. A shock went through me. I spasmed and I had a moment of “oh shit, I’m falling,” before I blacked out.

  Chapter 21

  Raphael

  My damn head hurt. As did my back, my left shoulder, left hip, both buttocks…hell, what didn’t hurt? I opened my eyes and immediately shut them back. The room was too damn bright. I tried activating my healing tat, but then remembered that I’d lost it along with most all of them. Even if I had the healing tat, I couldn’t activate it. Not having my tats was really beginning to piss me off. When I found out who set that damn trap, there was going to be retribution.

  Why didn’t I automatically think it was Rowle? Oh, yeah, he was dead. Tess’s bolt had taken him in the chest and with that weird blessing gift of Joe’s; she wouldn’t have been able to miss.

  Then who was screwing with me? Was it the same being that had set the black goo trap?

  Oh, wait. Verðandi had told us that Rowle was still alive. What was wrong with my memory?

  I forced my eyes back open and looked around. I was in a non-descript room with concrete walls, no window, and a steel door. Recessed pots provided light that were a little blue for my liking. I was in a chair. It appeared to be metal. My hands were fastened with cuffs that had a foot long chain which ran through a metal loop on the steel table I sat beside. I had a bad Déjà vu-ee feeling pass over me. Was I dreaming the last five months and still strapped to that chair at the Colorado Springs airport?

  No, then I’d had all of my tats and I could feel their magic. Now I couldn’t even feel the two I still had.

  What had happened? I remembered us coming through the portal above Eglin and then a loud boom. That had sounded a lot like a shotgun, but then I’d felt like lightning hit me. What kind of spell had taken me down? And why hadn’t my leathers blocked it? Oh, crap. Tess said the spells on my leathers had been removed by the black goo while it was destroying my tattoos.

  While I was going over my current predicament, where was my apprentice and our familiars? They should have been able to fetch me even if I was unconscious.

  There was another table in the corner of the room. On it was my watch, my grimoire, wallet, knife, and hell, everything I normally carried in my leathers.

  I heard footsteps. They stopped outside the door to my guest quarters.

  I took a deep breath and waited to see what new foe was screwing with me.

  The door opened. It was held open by a man in Air Force battle dress while four civilian-attired people came in. The flyboy closed the door after they were in.

  The four, two men and two women, formed a two by two formation in front of me. I surveyed their faces, looking for an indication of who was in charge. The closest person to me was one of the women. She looked vaguely familiar and then I remembered. She was the witch who had been at the hangar when we had recovered Tess’s bolts. Surely, she hadn’t been the one to knock me off Beast. I caught the glint of recognition in her eyes and then she looked down, avoiding my gaze.

  The man next to the witch was short, probably not more than five six and his head was level with the witch’s. She was wearing flats while he looked like he might have lifts in his shoes. He was frowning at me as though I had interrupted his lunch or maybe his naptime. The woman behind him was tall, at least six feet, and had no trouble meeting my gaze. She didn’t appear hostile at all, rather if anything I got the feeling that she was bored with the whole business. She wore a suit that looked too nice for a civil servant and had diamond studs more appropriate to over-paid football jocks than to a businessperson.

  What kind of business was she in? I wondered.

  The last of the quartet was the oldest of the four. He looked ex-military and stood with an erect posture that would have been more at home in a Marine Corps ad. He was frowning at me too.

  Why did everyone seem pissed at me when I didn’t know any of them?

  “I’m glad you were available for this meeting,” I began. “I know it was short notice, but I just couldn’t stop by Florida without having a sit-down with you.”

  I made a point of glancing around the bare floor of the room. Hmm, no circle. Did that mean that they knew I had no magic or that it hadn’t occurred to them? “Ah, well a stand-around rather than a sit-down.”

  I thought I saw a trace of a smile on the witch, but she quickly hid it.

  The perfunctory little man directly in front of me turned to the witch. “Are you certain this is the person who broke into the hangar in December?”

  The witch turned slightly to face him and nodded. “Definitely, it’s him.”

  “I thought he was supposed to be something special.”

  “If I’m not special, why are you talking to me?” I asked.

  The bureaucrat, by this time I was certain he was of the family of paper-pushing morons who know little about anything that isn’t in their narrow worldview.

  “He’s changed. I checked his aura and it’s odd,” the witch said.

  “Odd, how? Explain.”

  “When I saw him in the hangar he had a strong gray aura. I’ve never seen anyone else with a gray aura except for the woman who was with him. Now, he
still has a gray aura, but it’s pale, so pale that it’s hardly visible.”

  “And that means?”

  The dark haired woman in the back spoke up for the first time. “For Pete’s sake, Wendell, it means he has lost his magic.”

  Wendell, the bureaucrat, turned to face the new speaker. “Is that possible, Aesa?”

  Aesa? That name sounded familiar, but I was certain I didn’t know her or these other three.

  “Obviously,” Aesa replied. “Otherwise, as Ms. Lowden stated earlier, your little gun wouldn’t have taken him down.”

  “About that,” I interjected. “Just what did you shoot me with?”

  The ex-military type pulled something from his pocket and slid it across the table toward me. When it stopped sliding, I saw that it was about the size of a roll of quarters, but was clear. There were letters on the side. Taser XREP.

  The older man’s voice was raspy, as if he’d spent too much time as a drill sergeant and it had affected his voice. Frankly, it sounded better on Bonnie Tyler than him. “It’s a Taser shotgun round. After the break-in, we deployed several auto-firing shotgun variants of the CROWS III system. It’s not ideal for protecting facilities, unless your objective is to capture rather than kill.”

  “So-o-o-o,” I drew out the word. “Now we shoot civilians without warning?”

  “Hostiles,” he corrected. “We shoot hostiles without warning.”

  “Enough,” ordered the bureaucrat. “We aren’t here to chit-chat.”

  “What are we here for then, pray tell?” I asked meeting the man’s hostile gaze.

  “The OTF is interested in anyone who displays magical abilities. We thought you were our intruder, but that hardly seems likely if you have no magic.”

  “I told you, he’s lost it. He is definitely the one I saw,” the witch, Ms. Lowden, interjected.

  “The one you told us we should avoid? You witches are too afraid of anyone you don’t understand. So he’s lost his magic. Will he get it back or is it gone for good?”

  “I have no idea. I’ve never heard of anyone losing their magic. Magic is learned, not hereditary. You might forget spells, but to lose everything. I don’t see how it’s possible.”