“No.” Barbara pushed back violently from the table. “No, I won’t be connected to that bastard. Not again. No. I lost myself.”
“You never lost yourself,” Fay said steadily. “You did really well. You stayed together, stayed a coherent personality.”
Gordon’s scowl worsened, as he evidently understood that this could have been far uglier.
“I can’t,” Barbara said. “I know you helped me and I owe you. But not this. I can’t.”
“They won’t make you,” Gordon promised. He exuded menace, a man and an alpha protecting his own, even if he didn’t move from the table.
Under the table, Steve’s foot nudged hers. She didn’t take it as a warning or a sign that he was preparing to meet an attack. She’d sensed the difference in him, felt it in her bones, since they’d freed Barbara.
They’d begun this pursuit of the rogue mage out of duty and to meet the djinn’s insistence on “testing” Steve. But meeting Barbara, seeing her emptiness and then the return of her personality, that changed everything.
Now, it was personal.
Fay knew she wasn’t the most empathetic person. That was a healer’s way. She walked a warrior’s path. However, the violation of Barbara’s spirit demanded respect and gentleness, as well as vengeance.
“Maybe we can come at this a different way,” Fay said. “Barbara, your home seems to have sustained you during your ensorcelment.” Enslavement sounded too harsh. “It fed your sense of self. Maybe I can use it to rebuild the path your dream essence took.”
“How?” Gordon demanded. “Land isn’t the same as spirit.”
“But this is Barbara’s territory.” She laid a light stress on the word and glanced at Steve. “It’s a part of her.”
Steve nodded. “Is there a place within it that’s particularly important to you, Barbara? A place where you feel most secure?”
“The rose garden.” Which explained why she’d been hiding in it. “My grandparents’ ashes are buried there.” Her voice thinned and wavered.
“Their souls are gone.” Steve picked up her spike of fear and dampened it. “The rogue mage didn’t touch them. Nor will Fay’s magic.”
“May I enter your rose garden?” Fay asked.
Barbara swallowed, cleared her throat, and tried again. “All right.”
Evening was creeping into the garden. Fay zipped up her jacket against the cold, but shed her boots and socks. She wanted contact with the earth. She’d never tried to follow a spell from a territory to a mage. While the others stood on the porch, watching, she stood among the rose bushes and framed a discreet, low-key spell.
The experience thrummed weirdly through her veins. Instead of shaping her magic into a demand as the Collegium taught, she asked Barbara’s homestead to show her the path its energy had trickled along, ensnared within and sustaining Barbara’s dream essence.
Territory was a difficult concept for Fay’s non-were mind. It helped to remember Steve’s insistence on sharing his house in Cyprus with her. She hadn’t had the experience to realize it was far more fundamental and powerful than walking her through his home. He’d been opening his territory to her, sharing it with her.
She pulled on the memories of how that had felt, the sense of belonging, and pushed that feeling into the spell.
The magic latched onto the dirt under her feet. Like a bolt of lightning, visible only to her mage sight, it lit and claimed the whole homestead, circled around Barbara and returned to Fay. “Show me,” she murmured.
Mage sight struck. A line of light, the path Barbara’s dream essence had travelled, split in two. One went towards a man. He had to be the were. Fay knew better than to fight the spell to see him more clearly. He was hidden. She needed to find the rogue mage, and that meant following the thinner of the two threads, but the one that seemed, somehow, more durable.
The first thread, the one leading to the were, pulsed and bloated with energy, but it shuddered and fought, as if under strain.
The second thread was narrow, reluctant almost, but vivid. Fay’s mage sight hurtled along that thread. For an instant, she looked out of the other mage’s eyes and knew where the woman was—or rather, intended to be.
The rogue mage had another victim lined up, a Siberian tiger-were.
Fay slammed back into her physical body. Around her, the rose bushes surged and shed their petals, forming the outline of a large heart on the ground. Fay shuddered. To the uninformed, the heart possibly looked comforting, a promise of love and shelter. Fay knew better. It was a warning. This was the rogue mage’s motivation. She was enslaving weres’ dream essences for some perverted notion of love.
The territory’s energy retreated. It wasn’t Fay’s. She released it with a gentle request that it protect Barbara. The energy flowed back to its accustomed rhythms. Fay stepped out of the rose garden.
“What was that thing, a wolf?” Gordon demanded, one arm around Barbara as she leaned against the porch railing.
Fay had no idea what he meant. She looked to Steve, who jumped down from the porch and held out his phone. He’d snapped a photo. She squinted at the screen, putting out a hand to adjust the angle of it, so she could see more clearly.
It was her, onscreen, but around her the rose bushes had writhed not just to shed their petals, but before that to form a green four-legged creature. “Not a wolf.” She looked up at Gordon and Barbara, then at Steve. “A jackal. A jackal-were. The second strand of hair. He’s working with the mage.” Fay was tired, but a little beat of magic wasn’t hard. She slipped a bubble of silence around her and Steve, a tiny blurring of privacy. “The rogue mage thinks she loves this man. She’s sending as much of the dream essences as she can to him.”
“Where is he?” Steve growled.
“I don’t know. I think I’ve found her, but all I know of him is that he’s a jackal-were and linked to, controlling, the mage.” She lifted the privacy spell and looked at Barbara. “I’ll ward your home, now?”
The wolf-were nodded her permission.
Having channeled the homestead’s energy, Fay didn’t need to walk the boundary. She set the ward at the edges of Barbara’s territory, sinking the protections into the energy of the site.
The predator showed in Gordon’s eyes as he left Barbara on the porch and walked down the steps. “Are you saying a were is working with a rogue mage by choice?”
“We didn’t know that till now,” Steve said.
Despite her magic, Gordon ignored Fay. He confronted Steve. “Will you send the marshals after this jackal?”
“No.” Steve put his phone in a pocket. The tone of his voice was deadly, way beyond arguing with. “This one is mine.”
Chapter 8
Gordon threw his car keys to Steve. “Leave it at the airfield. I’ll stay with Barbara until a couple of the pack can get here.”
“Thank you.” Barbara didn’t move from the porch, but as she gripped the railing and stared at Fay, her intensity and honesty were obvious. “You saved me. Anything you need from me, ever, is yours.”
Fay opened her right hand a fraction, her fingers subtly flicking away the wolf-were’s vow. “Free gift.” Barbara needed all her energy for herself.
“Nonetheless, we won’t forget,” Gordon said. He looked from Fay to Steve. “The wolves will support your choice of mate.” He walked back up to the porch.
“Does he have the power to decide that?” Fay asked when they were in the car and naturally, without magic, out of earshot.
“No.” A grim smile curved Steve’s mouth. “He doesn’t speak for the wolf-weres. Perhaps in America. It doesn’t matter. You and I are the only ones who decide our relationship.”
“True.” She settled more comfortably in the passenger seat. It wasn’t as if the Collegium, her former home, accepted him as her partner. “Who are the marshals Gordon mentioned?”
Steve flicked on the car’s headlights. Evening had claimed the mountains. He could see clearly, but other drivers weren’t weres and
mightn’t see them. “As Suzerain, Granddad administers justice for the weres, using the power Uncle gave him. But gathering the evidence for his decisions and bringing the suspected weres in for judgement is a job for the marshals.”
“Not you?” she queried. “It’s the sort of thing you could do, easily, but you sound as if it’s not your job.”
“It’s not. I was specifically told I couldn’t be a marshal because I’m to be the next Suzerain. The decision was Granddad’s, influenced by a number of were leaders. They didn’t want to blur the line between those who apprehend and prove a case, and the one who judges it.” Echoes of old anger laced his voice. He’d hated the decision.
“Did Uncle agree with them?”
He turned his head momentarily to stare at her. “No one ever asked.” A pause. “Uncle never interfered with the decision.” Until now. Until this test which, in effect, sent Steve out on a marshal’s job.
“So you did the next best thing. You trained and went to work as a mercenary, the on-the-ground equivalent of a marshal.” Fay understood her lover.
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I had to know what the marshals experienced, what I would be asking of them as Suzerain.”
She nodded. It was what her father had lacked, and what the Collegium’s new president, Lewis Bennett, would never forget: the soul anguish of encountering evil; of tracking it, capturing it, and resisting the natural urge to rid the world of it. The weres had been wise. It was too great a burden for one person to be marshal, judge and executioner. But the temptation was always there. Steve understood it. He’d lived it.
“They’ll respect you,” she said to him. “In a different way to your granddad. He’s a diplomat.” She smiled wryly at Steve’s fractional head tilt of surprise. “I mightn’t have met Tomy for long, but it was obvious. He builds and sustains alliances, bring peace.”
“I won’t,” Steve said.
“In your own way, you will. There can’t be peace, not true peace, without justice. If Uncle has maintained the Suzerainty for millennia then he must know that you’re the right person for the job, now. Otherwise he could choose your sister or someone from a different family.”
“I wouldn’t want Liz to have to deal with the Suzerainty’s problems.” He was instantly protective of his sister. Then a long drawn out sigh. “But I’m bringing you into the heart of them.”
“I’m bringing myself,” Fay said confidently. “I was raised to fight. I wouldn’t know how to be a diplomat or to walk away from injustice.”
He slowed the car, leant across, and leopard-swift, kissed her.
She blinked at him as the car accelerated again.
“All right,” he said. “Tell me the full story of what you saw in the rose garden and what we need to do.”
So she did, and he wasn’t happy.
“I don’t want us to split up,” he said as he drove through the gates to the airfield.
“Nor do I. But it’s logical.”
“I could simply phone Granddad and have him search out likely jackal suspects. He can ask the marshals and Uncle—”
“Will Uncle accept that or will he think that you’re evading the test? You’d be outsourcing part of the hunt.”
“Do not use managerial jargon,” he growled.
She put a hand on his knee as he parked the car at the airfield. “It’s hard for me, too, Steve. This rogue mage has managed to siphon off dream essences to feed the jackal-were. I don’t know what sort of monster that has turned him into. He might even be able to use the power of the dream essences in a manner akin to magic. I’m trying really hard here not to ask for your promise to wait for me before pursuing him.”
“I don’t need a babysitter.” He leaned back against the seat. “Which is exactly your point in reverse?” He swore. “Damn Uncle for making everything complicated.”
“If we fly back to New York, we can use Cynthia’s portal. You to return to Alexandria and identify the jackal, and me to travel to Vladivostok. I’ll catch a plane, and then, hire a car from there.”
He picked up her hand as it rested on his knee and interlaced his fingers. “If it wasn’t for what we saw at Barbara’s, I’d wear the delay and go with you. However, since your magic can’t find the jackal, we divide and conquer. I find him, while you go after the rogue mage. But I still don’t like you facing her alone.”
“She’s less powerful than me and less well trained.”
“And more unpredictable as a result,” Steve said, proving that he understood the risks Fay faced. “However, I’m aware that if I went with you, you’d divide your attention to try and protect me from a dream essence enslaver. Are you sure you don’t want someone from the Collegium with you?” His voice revealed his reluctance.
She squeezed his hand, loving that his concern for her over-rode older suspicions. “I’m sure. I’m used to working alone.”
They got out of the car. As they walked towards the airfield’s office, he put an arm around her waist.
She smiled up at him. “We have a couple of hours on the plane…”
His frustrated bad temper faded. He ignored the man coming out to meet them. “Is that an invitation?”
A faint smile on the approaching stranger’s face told Fay he could hear their quiet talk. She didn’t bother with a privacy spell. “Absolutely.”
Steve’s hand slid from her waist to her hip.
“Gordon phoned,” the stranger said. “I’m Arturo, his second. The plane’s waiting for you.”
“Thanks.” Steve tossed him the car keys. “And thank Gordon, please.”
“From what he said—just to me, his second in the pack—the thanks are ours.” Arturo’s dark eyes dwelt on Fay. “Barbara’s a friend.”
“She’ll be fine,” Fay said quietly.
His gaze shifted to Steve. “Catch the bastard.”
Vladivostok was cold. There were glimpses of spring, but winter hadn’t accepted that its days were over. Fay bought a few essentials, packing them into a new bag before flying on to Magadan. From there, a hire car and driver would take her deeper into Siberia. Steve had already texted her the name of a bear-were who could be trusted.
She discovered that though the bear might be trustworthy, he wasn’t chatty. It didn’t bother her. She accepted his gruff offer that she sleep in the backseat of the heavy vehicle, and dozed with her head on her bag and a woolen blanket over her. She thought of Steve.
In this state between sleep and waking, she was close to her own dream essence. Now that she’d touched the spirit of Barbara’s territory, Fay had a new sense of how the weres interacted with the world. They were more connected to it, so much so that she suspected their dream essences were stronger than non-weres.
Uncle had said that the dream essence was what you encountered that became part of you. It was what contributed to who you were becoming.
As she dozed, her mage sight shifted slightly, as if awakened to new possibilities, and she “saw” Steve’s mark on her. It held similarities to the spirit of Barbara’s territory. The mark was a link to Steve, something of him that connected them together. It was love and something else, something just as primal and linked to it. They were part of each other, their future selves building in love for the other.
Words were clumsy for the rightness of what she felt.
She sent a surge of love through the link and “saw” it shimmer. Then warmth, love and the memory and promise of pleasure enveloped her. She smiled as she slid into proper sleep. Steve had returned her mate-kiss.
The bear-were woke Fay ten minutes from the small village where Victor Gustev, the Siberian tiger-were, lived. Or rather, the village nearest Victor’s remote house. From the village, they’d have to ask directions. Fay stretched and yawned. She’d have to convince the bear to let her drive his vehicle alone. If she was reluctant to risk Steve encountering the rogue mage, she was totally committed to keeping all other weres away from the woman.
Time enough to argue whe
n the bear for control of his car after he’d translated her questions to the villagers.
They shuffled into a small house where there was hot tea without milk and fresh bread rolls topped with a soft white cheese and honey. The chill air of early morning nipped at Fay’s face and made her fingers tingle.
A question as to the tiger-were’s house elicited the information that they weren’t the first to ask after him. Fay caught their host’s leer in her direction and the sketching of a female figure, an hourglass shape, in the air. Another woman had been asking after Victor Gustev.
“Victor is a hunter and a guide,” the bear-were said as he translated between mouthfuls of roll that dripped honey. “Our host asks if you are a photographer, like the first woman?”
“You can tell him that it is the woman I’m actually trying to catch up with.”
Their host nodded at the translated message and pantomimed extravagant impatience.
“What?” Fay asked.
The bear rolled his eyes. “He is blaming the poor phone coverage. It makes messaging difficult, and Victor is bad at leaving his radio on to be contacted.” A pause as the host continued. “He says that your friend is only half an hour ahead of you. She left not long before we arrived.”
Fay swallowed bitter tea, dark with tannin, to hide her reaction, which wasn’t the expected disappointment. It was better that she encounter the rogue mage away from the village, where mundanes might be injured. The rogue mage was unlikely to consider their safety. Also, away from mundane eyes, Fay wouldn’t have to hide her magic.
However, Fay didn’t want to be too far behind, not if she had a chance to prevent the rogue mage enslaving the tiger-were. Fay was unsure what interrupting a spellcasting that involved dream essences might do. She feared Victor’s dream essence could be trapped or irrevocably entangled in a badly cast, disrupted spell. It could disintegrate.
The rogue mage’s control was fraying. The Ancient Egyptian spell that Uncle had shown Fay and Steve had warned of the mage swelling like a toad as she swallowed others’ dream essences. But possibly because the mage had syphoned off much of the essences to the jackal-were, she was fragmenting rather than bloating. Fay had seen it in her own spell-casting at Barbara’s house. Something still held the rogue mage together, but for how long? The magic she used, so inexpertly, was not intended to serve such perverted purposes. It would destroy the one who wielded it.
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