Lycan Legacy - 4 - 5 - 6: Princess - Progeny - Paladin: Book 4 - 5 - 6 in the Lycan Legacy Series

by Veronica Singer

  “But I’ve seen you do a lot of math. Even Ashton was impressed.”

  “For Ashton and Mason, the math is the ultimate goal. For me, the math is a way to reach my goal. I think of the math part as… I don’t know, the calculations you make to double or halve a recipe.”

  “A recipe?”

  “Here, let me show you.” I smoothed over a patch of sand and used a claw to write in the dirt.

  Thirty minutes later, I looked up and caught Mike’s dazed expression. “Did I lose you, Mike?”

  He blew out a puff of air. “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “The part right after you told me that everything you could tell me would be a lie.”

  “Maybe I didn’t explain it clearly enough. Sorry, let’s start over.”

  Mike held up a palm. “Luna, I want to know what time it is, not how to build a clock.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Obviously, and neither do I. I need to know a lot more just to be able to ask the most basic questions. What I need to know is, what can you do with magic?”

  I sat back and regretfully smoothed out my sand blackboard.

  “Okay,” I said. “Practical effects only.” I thought of all the things he had seen me do. “I can move energy: heat energy, lunar energy, kinetic energy, electrical energy, other kinds of energy. That’s how I made this air-conditioning spell.”

  “But you can’t carry the A/C with you?”

  I shook my head. “Magic depends on drawing energy from outside. Many things can affect the energy we draw on for our effects. Ley lines, magnetic lines, local entities—things like that.”

  “That’s why you say magic is fickle and you can’t depend on it?”

  “For most magicians, that’s true. Someone like Mason can ‘juggle’ his sources better, so his magic works almost everywhere.”

  Mike pointedly looked at his watch. I took the hint. “Practical. I can move gasses around, like for our oxygen mask spells. I can put gasses around another person’s head to make them pass out. But not over a long distance or too many at once.”

  “You made a portal to jump outside that big fishbowl. And we jumped from that military base to a spot a hundred kilometers away.”

  “The long jumps require a lot of energy, math and preparation. Short jumps are easier.”

  “Can we hopscotch across the desert and get to Riyadh a lot faster?”

  “No. Multiple jumps take a lot of energy. That many jumps would kill me.”

  “Okay, so portals are a last resort. What else?”

  “Transmutation,” I said quietly. This was a big secret, but Mike needed to know what I could do.

  “Can you turn my water into wine?”

  “Hell if I know. I’ve never tried that. I’m no prophet or saint from the Bible. Where did you get that idea?”

  Mike opened his mouth, then closed it with a snap. “Just throwing out ideas. It’s how we brainstorm our plans.”

  “Anyway, I can only work on an elemental level, one element at a time. Turning water into wine would be almost impossible.”

  “So what do you use it for?”

  “Given enough time and material, I can turn lead into gold.”

  “That’s why you and Mason don’t care about money!”

  “That’s not true. I care very much about money. I’m not spoiled. I use my gold to support the pack.”

  “So why didn’t you transmute a rock into water?” He nodded at the basin. The apple tree was now about a foot tall.

  “This way was easier. Transmutation is hard. The best use I’ve found for it is to disarm opponents. I can transmute the explosive in the primer in cartridges and keep them from firing.”

  “That’s very handy. What’s your range?”

  “Range?”

  “Could you disarm the entire Middle East?”

  “No! It’s very local. Maybe a hundred feet in the clear.”

  “Not much use against snipers.” He gave me a calculating look, then scanned the empty horizon.

  “Snipers aren’t a problem. I have a kind of premonition when someone aims a weapon at me.”

  “Magic lets you know when someone aims at you? That’s something I’d love to learn.”

  “It’s not just magic. I tried teaching Mason, but it didn’t work. It’s more a mixture of werewolf senses and magic. Mason calls it my ‘Spidey-sense.’ We don’t know any other magicians who can do what I do.”

  Again, with the calculating look. Was Mike working out how to take down the strongest magician in the world?

  “I almost feel sorry for the sniper who takes a shot at Mason,” I said. “He has a lot of magical surprises set up that trigger automatically if he’s attacked.”

  Mike frowned. “Too bad.”

  At my look, he added, “I’m not planning on shooting Mason. We call this ‘war-gaming.’ Thinking up different ways to take out enemies. There might come a time I have to take out a magician from a long distance.“

  I nodded shortly. He had a point.

  Then he brightened. “But as long as you’re around, we’ll know if there are snipers.”

  We spent an hour or two going over various scenarios—mostly Mike asking how I would use magic in different situations.

  “It must be nice to be able to walk through walls,” Mike said.

  “I can’t walk through walls,” I said. “Becoming intangible is way beyond what I can do. I wouldn’t even know how to set up a spell to do that.”

  “Sure you can. Just like when we stepped outside of that topsy-turvy globe of yours. A portal jump of ten feet got us outside.”

  “I never thought of it like that. I’ve always concentrated on long-distance jumps, either to Fae or between two places on Earth.”

  “Yeah, but with this you could step up to a bank vault, pop open a portal, and waltz inside.”

  “I have other ways to get into vaults,” I said. “Wait—you said ‘bank vault.’ Did you get that idea from Logan?”

  “It does sound like one of his ideas, right? No, I came up with that example on my own.”

  I took a long drink of water. The sun was getting low in the sky and we would be able to travel in a couple of hours.

  “I need to rest, Mike.”

  “Okay, I’ll stand watch.”

  I dithered a moment. I could rest sitting up, and my inner wolf was the best sentry in the world. There was really no need for Mike to stay awake. On the other hand, he probably wouldn’t be able to trust my instincts to safeguard us.

  “Let’s do an hour each,” I said. “That way, we’ll both get a bit of rest.”

  “Okay.”

  I wiggled my butt a bit to settle into the sand, assumed the lotus position, and started my meditation. My wolf side gladly accepted the responsibility of guarding us.

  I focused on breathing and tried to work on the technique Mason had shown me. “Sleeping between the ticks of the clock,” he called it. A way for a trained person to accelerate rest and recovery.

  The sigh of the wind, the tiny gurgle of the water fountain, the scents of the desert—it all faded away as I turned inward.

  Exactly one hour later, my eyes blinked open. I took a deep breath and stretched.

  Mike was kneeling on one knee, scanning the empty horizon. He jerked when I spoke. “Okay, Mike. It’s your turn to rest.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t really need to. I can stay up a lot longer. It didn’t look like you got any rest, sitting up like that.”

  “I’m sure. I had a great rest and meditation.” I jumped to my feet. “With the twins, all I get are short snatches of sleep. I’ve learned to make the most of them.”

  I shouldn’t have mentioned the twins. A sharp pang went through my heart at the thought of them.

  Mike noticed my expression and said, “You’ll be back there before they know it. They’re in suspended animation, right?”

  “No. It’s a Fae slow-time bubble. We put them down for a nap two weeks
ago, and they should wake up in about two weeks.”

  “Something every mother would love to have.”

  “And I would love to keep chatting, but you need at least an hour of sleep before we head out.”

  “Yes, mommy,” he said as he leaned back on the sand. He put a handkerchief over his face and said nothing more.

  I waited five minutes to be sure, then said, “Mike, I know you’re awake. I can tell from your breathing.”

  He jerked the handkerchief off and glared, angry at being caught out. Then his expression softened. “Luna, I can’t sleep or rest while I’m taking care of you.”

  “I can take care of myself,” I said. “At least for one hour. If you don’t get to sleep, I’ll knock you out with magic.”

  “That wasn’t on the list of things you can do.”

  “A girl has to keep some secrets.”

  I began to sing a lullaby in Fae, one my sister-in-law had taught me to calm the twins when they were fussy.

  “What is that?” asked Mike. Then he yawned and his eyes drooped closed. I continued to sing as I placed the handkerchief over his face.

  Under the lengthening shadows of a desert afternoon, with a gurgling fountain and the sigh of the wind as background music, I sang my warrior to sleep with words he couldn’t understand.

  9

  “Wake up, Mike,” I said from a safe distance. The sun was low on the western horizon. It would be dark soon.

  The silver dagger appeared in his fist as he sat up suddenly. The handkerchief fluttered to the ground as he rose and scanned the area.

  “It’s okay, Mike. We’re safe. Nap time’s over. We need to get moving.”

  Mike nodded, put the dagger away, and started disassembling the awning.

  We filled up our canteens at the fountain and drank our fill. Mike grabbed his pack and strapped it on.

  I grabbed my pack, hefted it, and gave Mike a glare. “Mike, you repacked our packs. Don’t insult me by giving me the lighter load. I can pull my weight.”

  “But I’m—”

  “Don’t you dare say you’re stronger than me. We both know that’s not true.”

  Instead of arguing, he dropped his pack and handed over items until our weights were evenly matched.

  Leaving the bubble of cool air was like stepping into an oven.

  Mike grunted and said, “I’m going to miss our air-conditioned oasis. That was the best nap I’ve ever had.”

  He stuck his hand back through the invisible border. “Hey, it’s still cool inside. Don’t you have to turn it off?”

  I started walking toward the distant horizon. “No, the spell should fade away on its own.”

  Mike caught up with me in a few steps. “Too bad.”

  “But the oasis might not,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “The changes we made—the water, the apple tree, and the extra humidity—will cause other plants to flower there. There’s a good chance the changes will become self-sustaining.”

  “That tiny trickle of water makes that much difference?”

  “It will make this side of the boulder just a bit cooler. That’ll change the pattern of the wind that swirls around the area, which will leave a high-pressure area here. This zone will stay cooler.”

  “If you say so,” said Mike.

  “It’s not guaranteed, but it should work out that way.”

  We reached the first of the steep-sided dunes. Trying to cross the dune by climbing straight up would have been nearly impossible. Instead, we went up in a zig-zag path that gave us better footing.

  At the top of the first dune, Mike started his descent, sliding down the sand. I joined him at the bottom. “One down, nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine to go,” he said with a laugh.

  A few dunes later, the sun finally disappeared under the horizon, covering the dunes in darkness.

  “On the teams, we would be using our night-vision goggles at this point,” said Mike. “Good thing neither of us needs them.”

  My inner wolf showed an image of Ariel pulling the batteries out of a set of goggles.

  “They probably would’ve been sabotaged too,” I said.

  “I don’t think our equipment was sabotaged.”

  “Seriously? Nothing worked, from our parachutes to our weapons. Somebody screwed them up.”

  “The equipment passed our pre-flight inspection,” insisted Mike. “It doesn’t make sense to sabotage our equipment. If they wanted to get rid of us, they could have just shot us and shoved our bodies out of the rear of the aircraft.”

  “So you think Ariel was innocent?”

  “Hell, no. She was gunning for you from the start. But I don’t think she would have risked the mission to get rid of you.”

  I admitted his logic was sound. “Yeah, they were salivating over the prospect of getting one of our latest fighter jets in exchange for help on this mission.”

  We slogged on for a bit, then Mike asked, “Could it have been a curse from the genie?”

  I automatically dismissed the notion. “Curses just roll off werewolves.”

  “But we had a lot of demolition in the aircraft. Would a curse just ‘roll off’ of C-4?”

  “No. Magic and high explosives don’t mix well. A curse might have set it off prematurely.”

  Mike nodded. “That makes more sense.”

  “But it doesn’t explain why only our equipment was affected. Ariel’s chute and rifle worked fine.”

  “Didn’t all the Israeli team’s personal equipment have some sort of protection?”

  I had dismissed the tiny Hebrew glyphs engraved on the Israeli team’s equipment. With a werewolf’s arrogance toward magic, I had assumed these were useless.

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “As a magician, I should have known they had a purpose.”

  Another hour of slogging through sand got us ten kilometers of progress.

  Mike was breathing heavily, so we took a five-minute break.

  “You sure you don’t have a magic spell to make this easier?” he asked.

  “I could probably whip something up, but throwing magic around might attract the wrong kind of attention. There might be other genies out there.”

  “Wasn’t the oasis a big display?”

  “Not really. The water wanted to come out there.” I shrugged my shoulders. “Maybe Mother Nature used me to make it happen.”

  “You know Mother Nature?”

  “No, Mike. It’s just an expression.”

  “I never know when you’re joking. Hell, since meeting you I’ve met fairies, werewolves, magicians, kitsune, demons, and now a genie.” He laughed in glee. “How would I know if Mother Nature was real or not?”

  We saved our breath for walking. The next two hours got us fifteen kilometers closer to our meeting point, and we found a convenient rock outcropping to rest on for another MRE and water break.

  With the night, the desert temperature had dropped to about sixty degrees—chilly for this country. This far from any cities, the sky was studded with stars, providing plenty of light for Mike and me to navigate.

  I took a deep breath and cataloged the foreign scents, vastly different from the forests of Wyoming or the Nevada desert. The sounds I had grown used to, the clamor of cities or insect chirps, were absent here. I slipped into a meditative doze for a few minutes.

  Mike read my mood and stayed silent.

  After ten minutes of meditation, I felt refreshed and jumped to my feet. I pulled up and buckled my pack, then gave Mike a hand up.

  After we had crossed the next dune, I asked, “What time is our contact supposed to meet us?”

  “I told him midnight, plus or minus an hour.” Mike looked at the GPS strapped to his wrist, then added, “We’re more than halfway now and should make it in about two hours, if we keep up this pace.”

  “No problem.” I kept my silence about relying on a GPS. My instincts and senses were much more accurate, but Mike was a stickler for extra safety measures. I only
would have spoken up if we had gone off track.

  “So, this sleeping spell of yours. Why didn’t you use it before?”

  “Sleeping spell?”

  “The one you used to knock me out. If you can do that, you could use it on anyone. Hell, with a megaphone, you could have put the demon horde and that coven that attacked us to sleep.”

  “It only works on someone who trusts me, like you, Mason, or the cubs. As for witches, I’ve never tested it on them.”

  “Too bad. And anyway, you don’t have a loudspeaker.”

  “Of course, I have a loudspeaker spell. I can shout louder than thunder.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  So many things we had never had time to discuss. “I used it during the demon attack on our compound. I used focused sonics to break the Plexiglas eye shields on the Army troops’ facemasks. That’s what knocked them out.”

  “You can scream loud enough to break Plexiglas?”

  “With that spell, yeah, but I don’t like to use it. It tears up my vocal cords and makes it impossible to speak spells until they heal. It’s a last resort.”

  Mike mulled over our discussions. “This magic is hard to get my head around. Sometimes it seems you can do anything; other times, you can’t do anything.”

  “Magic is fickle here on Earth.”

  “Let’s set up some hand signals,” Mike said.

  “Why?”

  “So you can let me know if there’s a way you can use magic to solve a problem.” At my puzzled expression, he continued. “For example, in a hostage situation, I’ll need to know if you’re going to zap the assailant.”

  “Zap? I wouldn’t use lightning in a hostage situation. The assailant might convulse and hurt the hostage, or the current could leak and injure someone.”

  “You can shoot lightning?” He shook his head again, reminding me of all the times I had done the same during Mason’s lessons.

  “How would you handle a hostage situation?” he asked.

  “It depends,” I puffed out. “I would try to talk them out of it first. Like a hostage negotiator.”