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

by Veronica Singer

  There was a gap between the boulders, and I pushed my flippers against the stones to steer us toward it.

  I pulled the flippers off and tossed them into the raft. Mike jumped out and helped me pull the line to drag our raft onto the sandy beach.

  “Luna’s Limo Service thanks you for your patronage. Please give us five stars,” I said.

  “I’d give you six stars if that were possible.” Then he shifted to mission mode. “I don’t see any thermal signatures that indicate people around here. Do you smell anyone?”

  I took a deep breath and sorted scents. “None within several miles. We picked a good spot to land.”

  31

  Dawn found us several miles inland, huddled under a camouflage netting stretched between three boulders for shade and concealment.

  A tiny whisper of magic kept the shaded area cool while we rested in turns. Mike had learned not to argue with me about guard shifts and slipped quickly into sleep when I said it was my turn to take first watch.

  I didn’t even have to sing to him to get him to sleep.

  Four hours later he woke, and I slept. There were some dreams of mermaids and the sailors who loved them, quickly washed away by dreams of my cubs.

  I woke and we repeated the cycle. It was sunset when I woke again, and Mike had prepared our MREs for a meal.

  Mike finished his meal and started repacking our supplies.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Don’t we have to get moving? It’s a long way to your oasis.”

  “No, Mike. We can do what I need to do from here.”

  “I thought we needed to go back to the oasis and free the genie to heal Alisha.”

  I shook my head. Mike had taken bits and pieces of my statements and built up a totally incorrect idea of our mission.

  And that was my fault. “Mike, I’m sorry I didn’t brief you. Freeing the genie and using a wish would be the absolute last resort. I have another plan in mind—one that doesn’t require we move from here.”

  Mike breathed a sigh of relief. “You do have a plan? What can we do from here?”

  “I don’t think I can help Alisha beyond the healing we already performed. Her scars will remain until we can find a better healer than me or Dad.”

  “But the genie could do it with no effort.”

  “And pull us into her multi-dimensional chess game against the demons? No. The genie is too powerful to use, too powerful to free. If Alisha can be healed, it’ll have to be through human healers.”

  “Okay, no genie. Then why are we here?”

  “Remember when Prince Abdul said we stood no chance against his oil-rich country? That they have billions of dollars and the resources of a government? That he would use all those resources to ruin me, my pack, and my family?”

  “Yeah, but he was just bullshitting.”

  “No. He wasn’t lying. As long as he has a penny to spend or a minute to live, he will use those against us.”

  “What can we do against a country with more oil than any other country in on the planet?”

  “We’re going to take the oil away.”

  The tang of the silver blade burned my palm as I used the knife to scribe a circle in the bare rock that made up the floor of our hiding spot. Backed by my werewolf strength, the enchanted silver blade cut deeply into the granite.

  “Wow, in your hands, that thing is like a light saber,” said Mike.

  “Like a what saber? Is that a military term?”

  “You know, from the movies…” He shook his head and changed the subject. “Can’t you teach me how to use it that way?”

  “Sorry, Padawan, you are yet untrained in the Force,” I said, then giggled.

  “You have seen the movies. I thought you might have missed those, growing up in that wolf pack.”

  I finished the circle with a grunt. The last foot was always the hardest. The engraved line flashed once, as if it had been packed with flash powder, and the circle hummed with energy.

  I shifted hands and started carving glyphs into the rock around the periphery of the circle.

  Mike saw the burns on the palm of my free hand. “Can’t you wear those gloves for this part? Your hands are going to be useless until you heal.”

  “No, I have to touch the metal to direct magical energy. Anyway, I’ll heal in a few minutes.”

  “Maybe that’s why there are no werewolf magicians,” said Mike. “You’re the only werewolf I’ve ever seen who can touch silver.”

  Mike was careful not to look directly at the symbols. I had once warned him that studying these and trying to reproduce them could have catastrophic effects. He was a good soldier and obeyed orders—even crazy orders from a werewolf princess.

  “I’m going to set a circle and enter a trance,” I said. “I hope to be able to see through the earth deeply enough to map out the oil deposits. That should take a few hours. Over the next few weeks, I hope to divert some oil away from Saudi Arabia’s most productive wells.”

  “I’m not a magician, but that seems like more magic than you’ve ever used before. Are you sure it’s safe?”

  “It is a greater magic than I’ve ever attempted. I’ll be careful and try not to set off any earthquakes.”

  Mike laughed loudly, then stopped. “Wait! You’re serious? I thought Mason was the only magician in the world who could set off earthquakes?”

  “I learned the principles from him, but until now, I never needed to try to duplicate his spells.”

  Doubt crossed Mike’s face, but he kept his mouth shut. Warriors don’t like mentioning defeat before a battle.

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “During the trance, I’ll be deep under. Usually, my wolf side is enough to keep my body safe while my mind wanders. This time, I need you to stand watch as a backup to my wolf side.”

  “Okay. Where should I set up? Inside the circle or outside?”

  “Inside. I need you close. Under no circumstances are you to step outside of the circle. The consequences would be dire.”

  Instead of asking about the consequences or reconsidering, Mike asked, “Can I shoot through the circle?”

  “You can shoot out, but remember, bullets can cross the circle both ways.”

  I stood close to Mike and held my arms out. “Time for a good luck hug before I start.”

  Mike hesitated. “You think your wolf side will attack me?”

  “No, Mike. I just want a hug before I risk this conjuration.” Was I asking too much? “I might not come back from this. I want a hug in case I don’t.”

  Mike moved into my arms and hugged me tightly. He buried his nose in my hair and breathed. “You will come back. You always come back. And I’ll always be waiting for you.”

  32

  Enclosed in a circle wrought of magic and anointed with werewolf blood, with the mightiest human warrior ever to walk the Earth at my back and my werewolf self in attendance, I descended into a trance.

  At first, I used the senses I had honed at our oasis—the ones I had used to find water deep below the surface and bring it to up.

  But that was too short-range for my needs. I needed something more powerful, more universal than my direct perceptions.

  Tracing ley lines wouldn’t go deep enough. Echolocation using magical pulses faded away after a few hundred feet through the earth.

  Earth magnetism might work, but channeling that much magnetism would fry Mike and me like hamsters in a microwave.

  I needed to use a different force. Something pervasive, that didn’t interact much with matter, allowing it to penetrate deep into the earth.

  Gravity would be perfect. Could I sense gravity? Even powerful magicians couldn’t affect this universal constant. At least, no magicians I had ever met. There was always the possibility that someone out there was more talented than Mason or me.

  Hell, most magicians couldn’t even feel the infinitesimal tugs of gravity.

  But Luna the werewolf had a resource most magicians
could never use: an intimate connection with the moon.

  I opened my senses to the moon on the magical plane, which gave me a way to interact with the moon on the physical plane.

  Casting with this newfound sense was like using my hands to feel my way through a lightless cavern. I stumbled forward, careful to maintain a thread of life back to my body on the surface.

  There you are. The feeling was strange, like putting a hand into a stream of water to feel the direction and force of the flow. I followed my hand, trying to dive into the Earth.

  But the Earth rejected me. It was like trying to dive into wet cement, impossible to push through.

  I flashed back to my recent experience of diving with a supercavitating shield around my body.

  Oh, that was a good idea. I wrapped a shield of spirit around my astral form the same way I had wrapped air around my body on the physical plane.

  Much better. Now my spirit-sheathed astral form could swim through the depths of the Earth with the same ease I had felt in the Persian Gulf.

  But my spirit form was tiny. My physical form had been tiny compared to waters of the Gulf; my spirit form was minuscule compared to the size of the Earth. There was no way I could flounder around here and find what I needed to find. My spirit was insignificant in this scale.

  My heart clutched in despair at the impossibility of this mad plan to affect the vast pools of oil in this country.

  My wolf side snapped at my ass. A series of images flashed through my head: me, normal-sized and standing on the ground. The image pulling away, farther and farther, until the Luna image was tiny.

  Yeah, I know I’m too small to do much…

  Then the tiny Luna silhouette grew enormous as the viewpoint continued to recede. Luna grew, taller than the tallest tree, larger than the largest building, larger than the largest mountain.

  It hit me suddenly. In the astral plane, size was a matter of opinion and could be changed by force of will.

  Five miles tall and bursting with energy, I dove into the Earth.

  Swimming through sandstone, granite, and stone was like flying through the clouds in the sky, only each ‘cloud’ had a different flavor, letting me know what it was made of.

  New sensations—some human, some wolf, some magician, some inexpressible—flowed through me. So that was what granite tasted like!

  I sniffed and followed the scent of oil to find large pools gathered under the country. I pushed immaterial hands against these pools to move them. My fingers swept through them as if they were clouds in the sky.

  Big imagination, little power on this level. Even though I had found a way to sense various elements under the earth, I still only had a human-sized magician’s ability to affect the elements.

  I backpedaled and looked at the oil deposits again. There was something strange. The oil was pooled in a pattern that didn’t make sense. Impermeable layers of sediment kept the pools of oil in place. But there was something wrong about the sediment. Natural forces shouldn’t have caused the layers to gather in those places.

  It was like staring at a stage magician’s levitation trick. Some were so clever that they seemed impossible, like true magic. But a trained magician can usually see through the subterfuge and figure the trick out.

  There it was! A pattern of forces that held the layers in place, concentrating it here instead of where it should be—forces much too large for me to affect. I could push against them, like an ant against a fifty-ton boulder, but they wouldn’t budge. One plane of force rested on another, which rested on another, until…

  Down and down and down I went, tracing the forces. They were stacked like a Jenga puzzle, one supporting another until, deep beneath the earth, sat a tiny sliver of force. My ant-sized strength couldn’t move the fifty-ton boulder at the top of the pile, but this element was as small as a grain of sand. And I could move a grain of sand.

  It looked like disrupting this piece of the puzzle would cause the entire structure to collapse, allowing the pooled oil reserves to flow back to their original locations. Locations far away from where Saudi Arabia had drilled their wells.

  I held out a hand, one finger ready to flick away this support and cause untold damage to the country.

  Wait. This wasn’t natural.

  Someone or something had set up these bulwarks to hold these immense pools of oil in their current positions. Someone or something with tremendous magical resources.

  That damn genie had granted a wish for Saudi Arabia to have access to most of the oil in the Middle East. Then she had set it up so that a single human magician could reverse the spell.

  Why? Setting up this set of LEGO bricks had taken vastly more energy than simply moving the oil.

  More chess strategy from the chess master genie? A way to back out of an untenable position? Or merely a fickle whim?

  I shook my head. This was just more evidence that the genie couldn’t be trusted. All of her wishes came with strings attached.

  With a thought, I swam my ethereal form to her location. There she was, still safely trapped in my bottle.

  I held her sphere between thumb and forefinger, like a pea—an echo of how she had held the globe at our first meeting.

  “Hello, Paladin,” she said. “Did you come back to make your wish?”

  “No!” I said quickly. “Just making sure you’re still in your prison.”

  “Still here, still watching the game play out. You know, that scarred girl is going to cause you a lot of trouble in the future. I can fix her—restore her mind, body, and soul. All it would take is a simple wish.”

  “No. We’ll find a way to heal her without your help.”

  Despite the great difference in our sizes, her mischievous grin was visible through the glass. So simple, so charming. I almost wanted to trust her.

  Almost.

  She shook her tiny head, making her honey-blond locks bounce. “And I see you’ve mastered the spell I showed you.”

  “That wasn’t my wish,” I said quickly. “And you didn’t show me the entire spell.”

  “Yes, my paladin,” she said. “You figured it out yourself after I gave you the barest hint.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. Was I really breathing in this astral plane? “So I didn’t use a wish,” I said.

  “No. What you did was within the rules.” She looked up and away. “Like a quarterback who can see the blitz coming before the ball is moved. You don’t need to have everything explained. Not like my former master.”

  “When you call him ‘master,’ I hear ‘pawn.’”

  “Clever paladin! Game pieces like you are rare. One day you may ascend to becoming a player yourself.”

  “No thanks, I prefer to stay human.” At her scoffing look, I added, “Or as human as I can be.”

  She looked at me with those piercing eyes, “But there’s something more. Something changed since last we met.”

  She tapped a tiny finger against her minuscule chin. Then her eyes brightened, “You’re stronger! Much stronger than before. What happened?”

  “I channeled too much energy and burned myself out. When I healed, I had a little more oomph.”

  “‘More oomph!’ What a lovely phrase.” She leaned closer. “Just between us girls, you got a lot more than extra oomph from that experience.”

  “More power?”

  Jeannie crossed her arms and smiled. “Do you think you could have done all this earth magic before?” She spread her arms out and waved. “Just look at what you’ve done here. Why, this is an indication…”

  I opened my mouth to ask her to continue, then snapped it shut. “I’m not asking any questions.”

  “Such willpower. So hard to tempt. Are you sure you don’t want any hints?”

  “No! I just want to be a normal wife and mother. I plan on finishing this and getting back to my old life.”

  “That path may be closed to you. I can see that—”

  “Whoa! No prophecies!”

  She smiled bri
ghtly. “Exactly! What fun is a game if the ending is already known?”

  “Well, I’ll be on my way. Just wanted to make sure you were still entombed.”

  “I’ll be free sooner than you think,” the genie said.

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “Paladin, you’ll be the one to free me.”

  Talking with the genie would be counterproductive. She was so smart, so prescient, that a simple conversation would inevitably lead to her getting what she wanted.

  “Well, your paladin has places to go and enemies to destroy, so I’ll be leaving now.”

  “See you soon.”

  Her grin stayed on my mind as I swam away through the miles of earth.

  Back at the grain of sand that held up a mountain that held up a sea of oil, I pondered what I should do.

  It would be so easy to flick that grain away and get revenge. Just like the genie wanted.

  That was the problem. This was just what the genie wanted. She had shown me the spell that had led to this mastery of Earth magic. Had she foreseen the explosion at the embassy and my newfound abilities?

  Then she had goaded me to follow through.

  What would flicking this grain unleash? Moving that much earth and oil would release immense amounts of stored energy. Like an avalanche.

  Where would that energy go? Flicking in that direction would send the avalanche toward Riyadh. I smiled at the thought of Prince Abdul’s compound getting crushed under tons of rock. Killing him would be sweet revenge.

  But it wouldn’t kill just him, would it, Luna? No, there were millions of people in Riyadh. I couldn’t do that.

  That tricky genie. Sending the earthquake to Riyadh would also throw her crystal prison up to the surface.

  Not going to happen, Jeannie.

  Like a pool player examining all the angles, I moved around the fault, tracing out where the energy would go.

  Tel Aviv? No, even if Ariel was a bitch, her country didn’t deserve an earthquake.

  I circled, again and again. Completing this mission would be like setting off an atomic bomb in the Mid-East. Wherever I chose would—