Dragon Knight (The Collegium Book 3)

by Schwartz, Jenny

  Lewis lowered the binoculars as trees whipped forward and back, some splintering, and debris whirled high in the air in a freak tornado. It crashed into the barrier of Gina’s wards and the spell powering it disintegrated.

  Gina cried out. “They’re going to hurt my neighbors. And my family has to have noticed power like this. They’re being so reckless. I will not have my family in the middle of this fight. One of those mages is flinging plague spells.”

  With his magic burned out Lewis couldn’t read the spells. Possibly the Deeper Path would reveal a different way of doing so, but he was too new to it. What he could do—and what he did do, almost without thought, responding to the horror in Gina’s voice—was pull hard on the surging silver energy.

  It took a path Morag had shown him that morning, streaming into a spiral that flattened and descended, locking over the combatants on the edge of the garden. They froze.

  “No one’s moving,” Gina said. “And their magic is gone. There’s no golden glow.”

  “The magic isn’t gone.” Lewis concentrated on the tarnished silver energy. “I’ve collected it.”

  “This is you?”

  “I can hold the stasis while we see what we’ve got,” he said.

  She put her binoculars on a crate, too carefully. He’d rattled her. “You’re really containing eleven mages?”

  “Yes. But you’ll need to deal with your family if they turn up. I’d rather no one saw this.”

  “Wise man.” His touch of humor seemed to have reassured her if she could answer with matching irony. “I’ll phone them.” She started towards the deathtrap steep stairs. “Damn. The phone’s out. Internet down…” She halted. “Could it be a coordinated attack? At Morag’s I was dealing with an intense, multi-player assault on the false identity that I used to maintain the two chatrooms where my teenage identity fled to.”

  He nudged her gently forward. “The Group of 5 is adept at misdirection. Either the cyber-attack or this one, or something else altogether, was the real goal and the rest distraction. But if you were online actively fending of pursuit while they’d shut down the network here on Cape Cod, then they’ll have to rethink their belief that you’re the hacker pursuing them. This could work for us. It enables you to slip out of the situation. And for that reason.” He blocked Gina at the kitchen door. “Think twice about accompanying me out to where the guardians and the hired combat mages can identify you.”

  She pushed at his shoulder, her magic opening the kitchen door. “My home. My fight.”

  “Your decision.” He stepped aside.

  Chapter 9

  Gina struggled to control her shock. Her life had always been a quiet one. A hotel could get riotous at midnight on New Year’s Eve, but she’d never been in the thick of a fight before. She’d never been the focus of violence.

  And yet, the threat of the Group of 5 was not what had her rattled.

  Lewis was oh so casually containing the magic of eleven high-powered mages. He didn’t even seem to be concentrating hard to do it.

  Was this the true Deeper Path? Not travelling the galaxy as her aunt did and as Gina had dreamed of for so long, but altering the nature of reality on Earth? Gina had a faint glimpse of why Morag said her people were sworn not to interfere. The Deeper Path was a radical break with humanity’s current existence.

  It was a potential that Lewis had to bear responsibility for.

  He had enough burdens, but she and Morag had put this one on him: near limitless power.

  Gina shivered despite the warmth of the sun as they skirted her berry patch and crossed the protective wards at the edge of her land. Here they were on open woodland.

  The eleven mages frozen in stasis stood among the rough grass and low trees. Only the humans were stilled. A rabbit made a mad dash for her neighbor’s distant house. Gina recognized Bunny Babe. The poor thing was a committed escape artiste, but had probably been traumatized by all the magic being thrown around. At any rate, the white floppy-eared rabbit was galumphing for home.

  “Kora, explain to me what’s happening here.” Lewis released the four guardians from their stasis.

  The commander of the guardians didn’t answer him. She stumbled and caught at the frozen arm of the mage she’d been fighting. “He isn’t moving.” That seemed the extent of her contribution. The fluid strength that characterized a fighter was all locked up in her in shock, and possibly, fear.

  But others were more than willing to fill the silence. Too willing. “My magic is gone.” The guardian was probably Gina’s age, but terror made him look ten years older. He looked wildly at Lewis. “You said, everyone said, your magic burned out.”

  “It did.”

  “But you did this.” The man’s voice was too high. “There’s no one else. You’ve taken my magic.”

  The oldest of the guardians strode over to the hysterical one and shoved him down to sit on the dirt. “Head between your knees so you don’t faint.” The white-haired veteran looked at Lewis.

  Lewis nodded to him. “Thanks, Sven.”

  “Are you holding our magic?” Kora asked tensely. “Is it through our oath-ties to the Collegium? But that wouldn’t work on these.” She released the arm of the frozen mage. “How?”

  “Commander,” Lewis snapped. “I asked you a question. Why are you here?”

  She opened her mouth, closed it.

  Sven answered in her place. “After you sent back the graduate guardian with a fire mage prisoner and a bump on the head, Kora wanted to know what was happening here. She phoned you, got no answer, then the internet connection went down for the whole of Cape Cod. After that nothing would stop her but that she had to speak with you. At least she brought back-up.”

  “Did Aunt Emmaline let you through the portal?” Gina asked. She couldn’t imagine Emmaline responding well to Kora’s arrogant manner.

  “A kid named Riaz let us through.” Sven’s bright blue eyes assessed her. “He said as how your new boyfriend was making for some interesting visitors through the portal.” Sven’s rumbly voice went even drier as he looked at Lewis. “These seven apparently used the portal, telling the kid that they were Collegium guardians.”

  Gina winced. “Riaz is still learning.”

  “Not his fault,” Lewis said.

  “Nope,” Sven agreed. “But when Riaz mentioned the ‘other’ guardians, we hightailed it here to find them thwarted by the house wards. They’re some of the strongest I’ve ever seen.”

  Gina liked the respect in his voice.

  Kora didn’t. “Seven of those mages—some of the most infamous magical mercenaries in the world—wouldn’t have been kept out for long.”

  Sven shrugged. “Didn’t matter. They saw us and turned their frustrations loose on a target more than willing to fight back. We’ve been brawling an hour.” A pause. “I thought we’d attract your attention earlier.”

  “We were busy,” Lewis said absently, frowning at the seven frozen mages.

  No one could guess what he was thinking and no one interrupted his thoughts. In fact, the four guardians looked at him with the fascination of rabbits facing a snake. Well, no, Sven didn’t. He seemed just as curious about Gina before his attention shifted to the seven frozen mages. If Kora was right and these were infamous magical mercenaries, then Sven, at least, had functioning priorities. When Lewis released the combat mages from stasis, someone would need to contain them.

  Gina felt for the magic coiled in her center. Her house witchery was as jangled and uncertain as she herself. She tried to listen to the sounds of home: the ocean; the closer scratchy noise of crickets; distant human voices; and, the wind through the pine trees, a gentle soughing.

  The crows that roosted in the crooked pine tree returned to its shady branches and uttered inquiring caws and what sounded like rude, ruffled-feather comments.

  Finally, Lewis stretched, rolled his neck, and looked at Gina. “I’d like your report on everything you’ve found out about the Group of 5, including today�
�s cyber-attack on your false digital identity. We now have these seven hired mages and the fire mage from earlier as proof of the group’s existence and malicious purpose. The Collegium is going after the Group of 5.”

  “The group of who?” Kora asked.

  “The people who hired these combat mages, took down the phone network and internet, and last year, tempted me up to the North West Passage for that murderous storm.” He strode back to Gina’s house. “Secure the mages and bring them to the Collegium for questioning.”

  “Hey, my magic’s back!” the youngest of the guardians levitated a knife.

  Sven snatched the spinning blade out of the air. “So use it to some effect.” He threw the knife at the young man, who abandoned all magic and simply dropped to the ground. The knife hung above him, a gleaming reprimand. “Disarm the mages. Now!”

  Two of the mages hired to attack her house rushed at Gina, no longer contained by Lewis’s power. The youngest guardian scrambled up and tackled one. Sven redirected the knife and had it press against the other mercenary mage’s throat—an impressive display of translocation and control.

  Gina ran back inside the protection of her home’s wards. “Lewis!”

  He halted just outside the kitchen.

  She was panting more from adrenaline than the short sprint. “They’ll want to know where you got your magic from. Will you tell them about Morag?”

  “The dragon has the right to announce her own presence, or not. I intend to tell the Collegium the truth. On the far side of burned out magic is a different way of seeing the world’s possibilities.”

  “Will they believe something so vague?” She was doubtful. People resisted change and new discoveries. Worse, they suspected those who discovered them.

  He looked back towards where he’d contained the magic and movement of eleven mages. “They’ll find disbelief remarkably difficult to maintain.”

  “People can be stubborn,” she persisted. Did he realize that this display of power would isolate him even more?

  “I’m aware.” It was as if he read her mind and answered her worry. Bleakness darkened his brown eyes to the color of old coffee grounds, bitter and discarded. “I am president of the Collegium until the restructure is complete and the Group of 5 defeated. After that, I may need to do as Fay did.” He walked into the house.

  Gina stayed outside, staring after him. It took a full minute for her to process what he meant. When she did, she sat down abruptly on the kitchen step.

  Fay was Faith Olwen, the powerful former guardian who had broken her oath ties to the Collegium before saving it from demonic infiltration. But the point was, Fay had broken with the Collegium.

  Lewis’s whole life was his identification with the Collegium’s purpose, to serve. Would he really break his oath ties and walk away from it?

  She inhaled unsteadily.

  Did Lewis intend to pursue the Deeper Path as her aunt Deborah had, vanishing to distant planets?

  Lewis listened to the chief weather mage and chief geomage shout and hammer at the door of his outer office. Shawn Johnson, Lewis’s assigned PA and bodyguard stood out there, but they had evidently double-teamed him and gotten past him. Shawn would be furious. In fact, if Lewis concentrated he could hear Shawn’s muttered commentary. It dealt profanely with the character of the two senior mages and something about snow in an office being conduct unbecoming. Evidently, Samuel, the weather mage, had let loose his magic.

  Lewis could have ended the dispute, but he wanted a few more minutes. His report on the Group of 5 was complete, and had just incorporated Gina’s contribution.

  She’d borrowed Shawn’s desk to write up both her morning’s activities online and her earlier findings on the Group of 5, while Shawn had guarded the doors, respecting Lewis’s demand for an hour of quiet.

  Quiet! Huh. Not in the Collegium.

  But Lewis had taken the precaution to overwrite the wards on the presidential office with the silver energy he saw. It locked him and Gina away as securely as a nuclear bunker. The senior mages and all the others could rage and question, but he’d speak with them in his time.

  Everything had changed.

  Lewis kept his sight resolutely human and studied Gina.

  She’d finished her report and pulled an armchair around to sit by a window in his inner office and look out across New York. Before taking the portal with him to Collegium headquarters, she’d insisted on changing into office wear.

  He preferred her casual in t-shirt and jeans, or better yet, in that purple nightgown. Her body was perfect, strong and curvy. But in a severely cut black suit worn with a cream silk shirt and killer black heels, her red hair and green eyes shone in vivid contrast, and her whole presence was a challenge and an assertion of her strength.

  He’d bet the guardians, led by Kora, still underestimated Gina, dismissing her as a house witch. He’d learned that house witchery was more subtle than many other magics, but it drew from the heart. It was Gina’s love and nurturing for home, family and friends that centered her magic.

  “The Collegium board will object to my presence at the meeting.” She kept her attention on the view from the window.

  “You’re the expert I’ve brought in to confirm my suspicions as to the Group of 5’s existence and dark web activities. The board will listen. And if they’re rude to you personally, I’ll silence them.”

  She looked at him, then. “Don’t be too ruthless, Lewis.”

  He reached for his jacket and shrugged it on. He also ceased ignoring the real issue between them. “You must have seen Morag use more power than I did this morning? Or your aunt Deborah?”

  “Morag has probably used more power, but I never noticed it. And…she’s not human.”

  “Are you wondering if I still am?” Ironic that he was noticing her sexy figure and beauty, and she thought him inhuman. He was more aware of her than he had been of any woman in years. She could distract him from his work!

  She shook her head. “I’m wondering what Aunt Deborah sacrificed to travel to distant galaxies. Did she really want to travel to them or is she too scared to use her power here on Earth?”

  “I am not scared of power.” He walked to her and was glad she didn’t flinch. There was no need to pretend a romantic relationship with her now that he’d told the Collegium of the Group of 5 and he could translocate himself to Morag’s den, but he clasped her hand. He wanted to touch her.

  Her fingers closed around his. “Perhaps that’s why Morag insisted it had to be you whom she taught the Deeper Path?”

  A note of sadness and something else tugged at his attention. He frowned at her. “You can attain clarity of sight. Your control of magic is strong. If you center—”

  She pulled him towards the door. “Don’t worry about me. You have a heaving, seething, uncertain Collegium to appease.”

  “Not appease,” he said. “Command.”

  Gina’s breath caught at Lewis’s uncompromising correction. He was so quiet and disciplined that the sudden glimpse of near-hostility in his response shocked her. It was as if he no longer considered his fellow Collegium members as allies.

  He opened the door from his outer office to the corridor and two elderly men tumbled in as whatever wards had held it, broke.

  Shawn Johnson, Lewis’s PA, stood just outside and stared down in sardonic triumph as the two elderly men grumbled and tried to push themselves up and off the floor. Neither Lewis nor Shawn moved to assist them.

  Gina took a step towards them, and Lewis pulled her back against him. She glanced at him, startled.

  He watched expressionlessly as the two senior mages regained their feet. Then he guided Gina around them and down the corridor.

  There was her answer. Lewis was definitely feeling hostile towards his fellow Collegium members. And they’d be panicked, having no idea where Lewis’s new power came from. Kora would have reported that power to them, wouldn’t she? It would make for an interesting board meeting, in the definition wher
eby “interesting” meant disastrous.

  She was glad she wore her most serious suit and statement heels.

  Through her work, she’d gained a degree of exposure to the political realities of corporate culture. Big corporations often called in an outside IT security expert to convince recalcitrant board members of a need to act. She just hadn’t expected that the Collegium would ever require her services.

  But then, she wasn’t here for the Collegium. She was here for Lewis, who walked silently beside her. She didn’t know what it meant that he held her hand, but she wasn’t letting go.

  Entering the boardroom, her house witchery instincts were unimpressed. She’d seen plenty of boardrooms and this one was on the shabby side of standard, which was a reminder that Lewis’s predecessor as president hadn’t wanted to share power. Until a month ago, the board had been sidelined. How were they adapting to the new reality of active corporate responsibility?

  People had already assembled in the boardroom. Half the chairs around the table were filled and three more mages stood near the coffee maker, talking. All voices ceased at Lewis and Gina’s entrance.

  Suspicion, caution, uncertainty. Working in the hospitality industry, you learned to read facial expressions and body language. You wanted to know about trouble before it happened.

  This room was primed to explode.

  Three chairs for non-board member attendees were lined up near the door. Gina chose the one furthest from the door that gave her a line of sight between two already seated mages to Lewis’s chair at the head of the table.

  The two mages who’d fallen into Lewis’s office entered and took seats at the foot of the table. The trouble quotient increased.

  Lewis nodded to Haskell Mondo, his guardian bodyguard/PA, and the woman closed the boardroom door.

  Kora, commander of the guardians, was not present.