by SA Magnusson
And from here, I wanted to connect us to the Northwoods, to Arial, and bypass the two-hour or more drive.
Pulling with even more energy, the pathway between places narrowed as it had when I had gone with Aron.
Everything about me felt as if it were drawn out, stretched as if I were pulled into a thin line. Through it all, I made a point of holding onto my focus of the Northwoods, of Ariel’s den, and of the Sentries. If nothing else, that was what I would use to bring me to it.
“Kate?”
Jen’s voice seemed to come from a great distance. Everything was hollow. Through it came the ongoing barrage of assault from the rune mages as they battered at us with their wands.
Just a little longer.
It was a force of will, a force of effort, and it took every bit of magic that I had remaining.
My barrier spell collapsed.
Power exploded behind us and we were thrown forward. Damn, but I hoped the rune mages didn’t damage Jen’s car. She didn’t deserve that for dealing with me.
The pressure around us continued to build, stretching us, and then it faded.
With a pop, we emerged from the spell.
Towering trees stretched all around us. Fading sunlight drifted through them and the earthy scent of moist dirt and the fragrance of pines came to my nostrils.
I looked back, half afraid that one of the rune mages would have followed us through the transportation spell, but they hadn’t.
Leaning back in the seat, I breathed out heavily.
We made it.
Now all we had to do was find Ariel, which seemed easy compared to everything else that we had done so far.
“Uh, Kate?”
I opened my eyes, leaning forward and resting my forehead on the back of Jen’s seat. “What is it?”
“Tell me this is where you wanted us to be?”
I looked out of the car. There were the trees, but there was something else.
Wolves circled us.
There had to be seven or eight, and all of them were enormous. They sniffed at the car, and one of them leaned back, snarling.
“This is it.”
“What happens if they attack when we get out? Do you have magic that will protect us?”
I tried reaching for my connection to magic, but it failed me.
“Nope.”
“So we’re just at the mercy of these wolves?”
“Unfortunately, we are.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing Prince Eric, but I really hope your mermaid friend is here.”
I breathed out, scanning the outside of the car, and thought the same thing.
10
I reached for the handle of the car door, intending to get out when Jen spun around, eyes wide as she looked at me.
“You can’t be serious. You’re going to get out?”
“That’s why we’re here, Jen. We can get answers.”
But it was more than about answers for me. It was about seeing whether Ariel still had my sword. If anyone had recovered it, I could use it while facing these rune mages. I didn’t like the idea of going unarmed against someone as powerful as they had already proven to be.
“Can you, you know, take care of shifters if it comes to it?”
“I don’t know.” I wasn’t about to tell her that it would be highly unlikely for me to be able to handle more than a single shifter if it came down to it. While I might be able to deal with one or two, anything more than that would be beyond my ability.
There was a way to prevent shifters from changing forms, but that was also a spell I didn’t know. It would be better not to end up needing to use that sort of spell.
“Maybe I’d rather not have any of your connections,” Jen said, throwing herself back in the seat and staring out the window.
“What, you don’t want to have a rune now? I thought you were all excited about the possibilities of being superpowered.”
“Not if it means dealing with these sort of things.”
“The shifters are our allies,” I said.
“Are they?”
They were supposed to be, and I had helped them, so hopefully Ariel would view me in a positive light, but there was the possibility that she had no interest in working with me. It could be difficult to know what she intended, and I have no idea how long she had been in power. It had to have been years, long enough that Aron would have come into contact with her when she first took over.
Taking a deep breath, steadying my nerves, I pulled the door open and stepped outside. In the fading light, it was difficult to tell exactly how many wolves there were. Had more come? Regardless, there were far more than I could manage if it came down to a fight. And that was considering I had enough strength to do so. In my current condition, there would be nothing I could do.
I raised my hands overhead. “I’m here to meet with Ariel.”
One of the wolves sniffed, and they prowled forward. With a flash, they shifted and a twenty-something-year-old man with dark black hair stood before me, completely naked. Jen was probably ogling him, unmindful of the fact that doing so meant she was ogling a shifter.
“How do you know how to reach our den?”
“I’ve been here before. I’ve come with the archer, and I helped Ariel during the attack by the Great One.”
There was the possibility that revealing my role in that was a mistake. I didn’t want to weaken Ariel’s position, but I also needed to prove to the shifter that I could—and should—be here.
He leaned toward me, breathing in deeply. “Your scent is familiar, but hers is not.”
“She’s not a mage, if that’s what you’re concerned about. She is here as a friend, nothing more than that.”
The shifter made a circuit of the car, continuing to breathe in deeply. Every so often, his nose elongated, and when it did, it twitched slightly. Shifters had incredible sight and sense of smell, and I wondered why he even needed to have the slight shifting of his nose in order to smell us, though maybe it had something to do with attempting to detect my connection to magic.
Whereas I was able to feel magic being used around me, shifters had a very different sense, as different as mages had when it came to picking up on the presence of magic. It was part of the reason Aron had brought me here in the first place, hoping that Ariel might have some way of determining what magical connection I had. She hadn’t known any better than anyone else had.
“You really did bring someone with no power into the den.” He prowled around until he stood once more in front of me. I’d been around naked shifters enough times now that I no longer had to force my gaze up, though it was still a little disconcerting having someone flopping around in front of me. “And you aren’t holding any sort of protection, are you?”
The way he asked, and the change in his tone, made me uncomfortable.
What had I done?
I knew there was some bad blood between the shifters, but Ariel had survived the attack by the Great One, so wasn’t she back in charge of her pack?
Unless the dynamics were off.
That was possible. She had been challenged—and lost.
It was possible the shifters viewed that as a weakness. Aron had warned me that the mage council couldn’t get involved in shifter business, and he had been very deliberate about staying out of it, but had also said that he previously had been drawn into it.
If this shifter business was not completely resolved, it might be a mistake in having come here. I needed to address the shifters the way they would respond.
Strength.
“Why don’t you take another step toward me and see what sort of protection I need?” Would I be able to summon anything? If I couldn’t, it was an empty threat, but I didn’t need much, not to power through a punch. My magic often augmented my attacks, so that regardless of whether I was trying to push it into the attack, it seeped out anyway.
The shifter stood casually in front of me. He breathed in heavily. “You have no magic, either.”
He snarled and leaned toward me.
As he did, I punched, swinging up with a hard uppercut, hoping I could put even a little bit of magic into the blow.
It struck his jaw and his head rocked back, power having welled up within me however briefly.
He snarled and shifted, recovering from the blow.
“Where is Ariel?” I asked.
“You don’t get to come to the den and question.”
“I get to do whatever I want. Do you want to test me? You don’t believe that I have magic, but it’s because you can’t detect my magic. Haven’t you made that connection yet? I’m not a mage.”
He snarled and sniffed again. “You’re no fae, either.”
“I’m a demon,” I said, glaring at him and practically daring him to disagree.
He snarled again, but he backed up a step.
It was only then that I realized the hackles on his back were starting to stand on end.
Maybe that last comment had been a mistake.
I didn’t need to anger him, though my punch might have done that as well as anything else. All I needed to do was get information out of him.
The other shifters began to circle the car.
Circles had power for mages, but they also have power for shifters. I’d seen the way the shifters had used circles to create a connection to the other side of the Veil, and in doing so, they opened up a void, a crossing, and created danger.
I had to disrupt the circle. If I didn’t, whatever they were doing would have enough time to complete, and I didn’t like my odds of being able to withstand this sort of spell.
I lunged forward, kicking at the shifter nearest me. It wasn’t the same one who had shifted before, and I would feel bad if it was one who I had met, though I knew only Ariel and John. Other shifters had fought alongside us, but I didn’t know them by name.
When my foot connected with his flank, a brief tap of power flowed out of me and slammed into him. It wasn’t nearly as potent as it could be, but it was enough to send him tumbling away, disrupting the circle.
I darted forward, putting myself in the path of the next shifter. The creature snarled, jumping toward me, and I grabbed them, throwing them off to the side.
I had more magic available than I realized.
I might not be able to create a barrier, but apparently it didn’t take much magic to fight.
Another shifter jumped and I dropped, swinging my leg around to clear the space around me before standing and driving my fist into the belly of the shifter as it leapt toward me. Power exploded from my fist in a burst of purplish light and the shifter went flying off.
The shifters circling me slowed and turned their attention to me all at one time.
Now I was in trouble.
When I was facing them one on one, I had a chance. Facing them all at one time like this was far more difficult.
Without any way of creating a barrier, I had no choice but to continue fighting.
Two shifters jumped and I dropped, avoiding one of them, but another managed to rake me with their claws.
Pain burned where the claws struck and I reacted instinctively, lashing out with a quick series of punches. Both of them caught the shifter on the underside of his jaw and belly, and the wolf went flying away from me.
There were still too many wolves for me to handle. Even though I could punch and drop them one by one, the moment they started to work together, I would be in trouble. And if they decided to attack Jen…
I backed up. If we managed to deal with this threat, we’d have to leave, and I still wouldn’t have succeeded in my goal.
Aron deserved better than that. I needed to know about these rune mages so that I could remove them as a threat. If I did nothing else, I would ensure that I got vengeance for that.
Shifters continued to come at us, and the more they did, the more helpless I began to feel. I had used too much magic just getting us here, and that was after having barely survived the attack in the parking garage. I wasn’t sure that I could handle much more.
Other snarls began to fill the night.
Crap. Now I would have to deal with even more shifters.
Maybe I had approached this situation the wrong way. I had thought the shifters needed to be handled with strength, but that was a mistake.
Another one lunged at me and I kicked, catching it on the side, but the shifter managed to roll with the kick.
Each attack only stunned them. All they needed to do was shift again to restore themselves, so regardless of how many times I knocked them back, they were able to recover.
If I had more magic, maybe they wouldn’t be able to recover.
Or if I could use Aron’s ability to prevent the shifters from changing forms, I could cause enough damage that they wouldn’t be able to shift.
Attack after attack came at me. I was forced back, continually pushed toward the car. Jen screamed inside the car, yelling at me to fight back, as if I needed that sort of prompting.
A wolf lunged and I dropped, barely managing to miss another set of claws scratching through me.
I used the car as a barrier, but the wolves jumped on top of it, likely scratching the paint. It was even more reason for Jen to be upset.
The next wolf that jumped took a fist, though it wasn’t enough to harm it.
It seemed that even this residual magic was starting to fade.
The wolves seemed to detect my hesitance and continued to lunge at me, but the car made it difficult. One of them crawled on the roof and I kept my head down, prepared for the possibility of an attack from behind me.
A loud snarl ripped through the forest.
The wolf in front of me hesitated.
What was this?
A massive wolf appeared out of the darkness. I took a deep breath, readying for whatever possible attack I could muster, when another wolf appeared, and then another.
The last one that arrived had a familiar characteristic to her.
I stood carefully and looked around me. The other wolves had backed away, retreating from the car.
Ariel shifted, appearing nude in front of me. “Thank God, Ariel, I—”
“Why have you come?”
“There’s something that I need,” I said.
“You came alone? Without the archer? Didn’t he warn you that the pack does not take kindly to outsiders?”
“But you work with the mage council,” I said.
“We work with the council, but only when it comes to the Veil. With anything else, we remain separate. And there are a great many things the shifter community would prefer to keep separate.” She peered over my shoulder, looking toward the retreating wolves. “Return to your home, Dr. Michaels. And don’t come to my den without the archer. It’s simply not safe for you.”
She turned away and started to shift.
“I need the sword that I lost here.”
Ariel paused as she was shifting, and she turned her attention back to me. “Why should we help you find your weapon?”
“I lost it when I was rescuing you from the Great One.”
Two of the wolves on either side of Ariel growled, and one of them curled his lip back from his fangs. I tried not to think about what he intended to do, and tried to ignore the way those fangs would be able to rip through me.
“If you lost it, then it is not my responsibility to help you regain it.”
“Even if I was helping you?”
“You were helping more than just me. You were preventing danger from escaping into our world,” Ariel said.
I couldn’t even argue with that.
“You wouldn’t help me even for Aron?”
“Considering he’s not here with you, how am I to know this is something he would even ask my help with?”
She started away again.
I sighed. “Aron is gone, Ariel.”
Her back stiffened. “Gone?”
“There was an attack, he was shot, and—”
Ariel spun
toward me, leaping. She cleared twenty feet in a single jump and landed directly in front of me. She was shorter than me by several inches, but the power radiating off her made it seem as if she were the larger of us. “The archer would not have been destroyed by a gunshot wound.”
“He would if he took a bullet to his chest.”
Ariel growled again. “Even that would not have been enough,” Ariel said. “The archer wears armor.”
“What kind of armor?”
“His jacket. It is heavily protected and creates an armor around him, such that no conventional weapon would’ve been able to hurt him.”
I hadn’t known that about his jacket, and the fact that Ariel did but I didn’t made me resent her just a little.
Only, he was gone, and there was no point in feeling that way. I wouldn’t dishonor his memory by arguing with Ariel over something like that.
“I don’t know anything about his armor,” I admitted. “But I do know that he was shot. He took a bullet to the chest. He bled out.”
“Are you not a doctor? How could you have let him die?”
She glared at me, standing perfectly still in front of me. I didn’t need the sense of magic working along my spine to tell me how much power she was pulling on. It raced along my spine, crackling in the air. Aron had once told me that Ariel was incredibly powerful magically, and I hadn’t known what that meant before, but I could tell it now. She was powerful, and she used that to intimidate me, but I suspected it had more to do with shock and grief than it did about threatening me.
“I… I tried to save him, but even if we were in the emergency room, there might not have been anything that I could’ve done, not with the wound like he’d taken. And I didn’t have enough magic. I tried, and I thought that I might be able to save him, and even brought him to the river, but it wasn’t enough.”
Ariel watched me and I waited for an attack. If she went on the offensive, if she made a move to hurt me, not only did I not have enough strength remaining to resist, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to fight with her.
“The archer should not be gone,” Ariel whispered.
“I know. I feel the same way. And I tried. I used everything that I know how to do in an attempt to save him, but… but I failed.”