by Ben Reeder
“I’m really bendy,” she said with a grin while she reached into her waistband. “Drove Giselle wild.”
“Flag on the play,” I said. “Personal foul, TMI with an unnecessary visual. Five-yard penalty, still first down.” Something clattered on the floor, then my right hand was free. Seconds later my left hand was free as well, and I came to my knees.
“How did you…oh, that’s how.” Wanda held up a handcuff key.
“Ever since the whole thing at Inferno, I’ve had this tucked into my waistband,” she said, holding up a small leather pouch. I could see the end of a single edged razor blade sticking up from the opening as well. I nodded and tried not to wince. She’d been kidnapped in order to make me back off from Etienne’s operations, and they didn’t treat her well, to say the least.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Good question. We need to get the girl out of here, and I want my stuff back. Plus, any intel we can find would help.” I looked to the door, then at the wards on the wall. They were pretty good, but they were nowhere near strong enough to stop me from drawing on a nearby ley line. They also weren’t nearly good enough to keep a full-fledged wizard from finding me. Not to mention, there were other, non-magickal ways of tracking me.
“That’s all part of us getting out of here, right?” Wanda’s voice was starting to crack a little, and she kept looking to the window. I gave it a quick scan as well. Aluminum foil covered the outside of the glass, and I would bet any amount of money I didn’t have that there were also bars on the other side. The door was thick wood, but more importantly, it was guarded. Even if I could have kicked it off its hinges, there were still people who would be more than happy to kick my ass and toss me back in this room buck naked.
“Yeah, but we have to wait for our ride to show up, first.”
“Our ride?” Wanda asked, her voice starting to get a little louder.
“Yeah,” I grinned. “I have an app on my phone that activates its GPS. Kind of like the ones parents use to track their kids’ location, only I can turn this one on myself. ”
“Please tell me you turned yours on.”
“As soon as I hung up the phone with you. As soon as we got cell reception, Lucas and Shade knew where our phones were, even if they were turned off.”
“Why not Dr. Corwin or your mom?”
I turned and gave her a raised eyebrow. “I’m still a teenager. Besides, Dr. C needs plausible deniability, and Mom doesn’t have a smartphone.”
“Good reasons. Do your Mom and Dr. Corwin buy them?”
“What they don’t know…” I left the sentence trailing. “Speaking of adults, I thought you were on a Ride Along today. Where was the officer you were with?”
“I don’t know,” Wanda said. “Officer Blaylock told me to stay with the car when we got there. After she talked to the lady who called it in, she went down one of the trails. Half an hour later, the dog came wandering back down the same trail. I just got the feeling that…something felt wrong, Chance. So I followed the dog back down the trail. That was when I heard them looking for the girl. I tried calling the cops, I tried calling Dr. Corwin, I even tried my mom’s number. You were the first person I could get ahold of.”
I looked around the bare room. The walls were smudged and marked with gods knew what, the carpet was stained and there were blankets piled in the corner. Some rescue I’d pulled off.
“Well, right now, I’m sure you wish anyone else had answered,” I said.
“The Goddess sent you, Chance,” Wanda said. She laid her hand on my arm and smiled. “She knows what She’s doing.”
“I’m glad someone does, because I sure as Hell don’t.”
“Have a little faith,” Wanda said. As if the Universe was waiting for its cue, we heard a soft tapping at the window, and a broad strip of foil was stripped away to reveal a pair of gold eyes. Outside, it was dark, making Shade’s black fur a patch of deeper gloom in the night. Then white teeth appeared as she grinned.
“Looks like our ride is here,” Wanda said.
“You’re never going to let me live this down, are you?”
“I won’t let you forget it,” she corrected. Outside, I saw Shade reach for the bars, but I held up my hand to stop her. She tilted her head to one side, and I held up a finger.
“I need you to wait a couple of minutes,” I whispered, certain she could hear me through the glass. She nodded, and I turned back to the wall to my left, opening my Third Eye. Cult Dad was back at his desk, probably checking my story out. Turning to my right, I could see the two people guarding the doors to the bedrooms. At the moment, they were almost lined up, and the girl was almost out of line with the door. It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do.
First, I accessed the set of matrices that I’d built over the past few months, and saw them unfolding into a crystalline shape next to me, ready to be filled with raw magick. Then, I took my time and reached upward, sending my senses through the weakest of the wards, looking for energy to fill them with. Overhead, air ley lines crisscrossed like so many fragmented shards of lightning, redirected by powerlines and transformers into a chaotic lattice. A gentle pull on the lines got a trickle of energy from each one, combining to make a more powerful flow. I channeled the energy toward the first matrix, and it absorbed it like a sponge. In moments, it was full, a humming presence against my senses. I repeated the process with the second one, then shut the flow of power down.
“What is that?” Wanda asked. “My skin is tingling.”
“A battery,” I said, rolling my shoulders and shaking my hands to loosen them up. “We’re going to make an impression when we leave. And…” I brought my hands up and let them glow with power as I accessed the telekinesis spell in my head, “we’re going to rescue the girl.”
Usually, when I cast a spell with a focus like my TK rod or my hawthorn wand, I let them act as a magnifier for the spell, taking a handful of energy and focusing it more coherently so it hits like a hammer instead of a giant rubber ball. Having learned the spell to the point where I could cast it without a focus allowed me to do pretty much the same thing with a few hand gestures to create the same kind of lens effect. But the beauty of taking it to the next level was that, given a few moments to get ready, I could do things on my own that I never could with a focus. Like what I was about to try to pull off now. With my mystic sight still up, I brought my hands up and pointed them toward my targets, then dialed the power up a few notches.
“Get ready,” I said. “When I give the signal, you go grab the girl.”
“Okay,” Wanda said, flexing her knees a little. “What’s the signal?”
“This. Ictus!” Two bolts of pure telekinetic force erupted from my hands and flew in different directions. The bolt from my left hand went through the wall and hit Cult Dad square in the chest. As he went flying across the room, the other bolt hit the door, plowed through it and slammed the closer sentry into the further one before sending both of them through the door on the other side of the hall. They stopped when they hit the far wall. Wanda moved without needing to be told, and I shut my mystic senses down.
The first bolt had made a hole in the wall big enough for me to lean through, so I took a step forward, leaned into the room and grabbed my phones and wallet. My TK rod and my wand were on the floor next to unconscious Cult Dad, but I had those covered. I held my palm up and focused on the TK rod.
“Vocare!” I called out, and the rod flew to my hand. I repeated the process with the wand, then looked down at the desk. A heavy book had been knocked to the edge of the wooden surface, and I leaned in a little further to grab it, tucking my wand between the pages to mark the place it had been open to. When I pulled myself back into the room I’d started out in, Wanda was helping our fellow captive through the door.
“What now?” she asked.
“Marines, we are leaving!” I yelled. There was a screech of bending metal, then the window disappeared into the darkness, leaving a gaping exit for us. W
anda pretty much pushed the blonde through the hole before jumping out behind her. I backed toward it, expecting someone to come through the splintered door, but no one seemed eager to brave the opening. Once my feet hit the wall, I turned and jumped through, looking toward the porch the second my feet hit the ground. The guy on watch there was slumped forward, and I caught a glimpse of Lucas at the front fence, aiming his paintball gun toward the house. Shade and Wanda were herding the blonde we’d just rescued across the lawn. I turned and backed toward them again. The chain link fence clattered as they climbed over it, then Shade was calling to me. I turned and ran the rest of the way, putting one hand on the fence and vaulting over it.
Lucas’s Barracuda was rumbling by the curb across the street, and I had just enough time to see Wanda shove our charge into the back seat and dive in on top of her. Lucas was on my heels as I sprinted across the street. I ran past the back of the car and cornered the best I could. Shade just leaped over the car entirely and landed next to her bike.
“Oh, crap,” Lucas said as he slid in the open door. “They’re pissed!” I opened my door and jumped in as he hit the gas. The door closed without any help from me as I slid into the seat and put my hands on the dashboard. We were halfway down the block when I looked up over the back seat to see people pouring out into the street. Shade passed us on the right and pulled in front of us, then skidded through a right turn. Lucas mirrored her, and in less than a minute, we were out of the subdivision and back on 101st Street.
“What do we do now?” Wanda asked from the back seat.
“We have to head back to Shawnee Trails,” I said. “My car is there, and that’s the last place anyone knows you were.”
“I’m going to be in so much trouble for leaving the car,” Wanda moaned. “And Jan, um, Officer Blaylock is probably going to get suspended or something.”
“What about those people?” the girl we’d rescued asked. “We have to tell them where they are.”
I twisted in my seat and looked over my shoulder at her. “What’s your name?”
“Rebecca,” the girl said.
“Rebecca, you can’t tell anyone what just happened.”
“But…but they kidnapped me!” she blurted out.
“And what else happened?”
“Well, something knocked those two guys into my room, and she came in and untied me, then there was that hole in the wall you made, and…there was another hole, and they talked about sacrificing me to someone…” she trailed off, tears running down her cheeks. “It all sounds so crazy.”
“Exactly,” Lucas said. “So you have to tell them something less crazy.”
“But what?” Rebecca asked, her voice starting to get high enough that it was bordering on a whine.
“Give me a few minutes to think of something.” As we headed North I tried calling Dr. C on my normal phone, and got a ring the first time.
“Chance, where are you?” Dr. C answered before the second ring finished. “Are you okay?” I could hear the sound of radios and other voices in the background, so it was a good bet he wasn’t at home.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Where are you?”
“I’m out at Shawnee Trails. Wanda is missing. Have you heard from her?”
“The last time I heard from her, she was on a Ride Along. What happened?”
“It’s a long story.”
“What happened to the officer she was with?”
“Do you know something about this, Chance?”
“You don’t want to know the answer to that, and I don’t want to give it, sir.”
He paused for several seconds, and I could almost hear his thoughts in my head. He’d be debating how badly he needed to know what I did, weighing it against the damage that knowledge might do. “She ended up at the bottom of a ravine. The fall knocked her out, she came to and called it in an hour ago. Wanda was supposed to stay at the car, but no one knows where she is.”
“I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this,” I said. It was a code phrase that we’d used a couple of times to help us convey that things were okay when we couldn’t say it directly. Half the time, it seemed like being a mage meant knowing things I shouldn’t know, and having to keep my mouth shut. Most of the other half was trying not to lie about what I did or didn’t know, since lying tended to dilute a mage’s power. This was one of those times where I had to be careful what I said or let Dr. Corwin know, so he didn’t have to lie, either.
“I’m sure there is,” he said before he closed the call. I relayed the info to everyone else, and waited. Lucas was quiet for a moment, then he smiled.
“Okay, so, we keep it simple, and pretty much the truth,” he said. “Wanda saw people approaching her from the same path Officer Blaylock went down. She ran and they pursued her.”
“And then you and I found each other in the woods, Rebecca,” Wanda added. “We stayed hidden and kept moving to stay away from whoever those people were. All we need to do is find a phone and call someone for help.”
“What about your cell, Wanda?” Lucas asked.
“I lost it in the woods,” she answered. “During the fight I think. At least that part is the honest truth.”
“That should keep everyone out of trouble,” I said. “Drop me off at my car, Lucas, and take them to Mindenmines. There should be a phone they can use there.” The Barracuda’s headlights showed Shade’s bike parked behind my Mustang, and Shade leaning up against the rear fender, looking sexy as all Hell. Lucas pulled up and stopped just long enough for me to jump out, then pulled away. His lights were fading into the distance as I stepped up close to Shade and put one arm around her waist. Her eyes went wide for a moment, flashing from gray to green, then she took my other hand and kissed me, aiming for the uninjured side of my mouth. She licked her lips when she pulled back.
“Seems like my car has gotten to spend more time with you today than I have,” I murmured in her ear.
“It’s a sexy beast,” she said. I bent my head down to her neck, but she tilted her head into mine, keeping my teeth from her neck.
“What?” I asked. “Did I do something I wasn’t there for?”
“You know what’s up,” she countered, pointing toward the fence.
“I haven’t told you a single lie,” I said. “And you know I’m not up to anything bad.”
“You’re too good at not being honest without lying,” she said. “You may not be lying, but you’re not being honest, Chance. I can smell it when you do magick. You’re cinnamon and sandalwood, Dr. C is more mesquite and sage. The spell you cast earlier smells different, like a river or a pond. It smells like someone else.” She pushed me away from her and stood. “I love you, but I hate…” her hand fluttered between us, “this.”
“Look, what I’m doing…what I’m not telling you, it’s kind of a big deal. And I promise you, I’ll tell you everything soon.”
“You better,” she said. “And it better be good.” She kissed me and turned away. Her bike was half a mile down the road by the time the Mustang rumbled to life, and I followed her tail lights until she turned the corner.
Chapter 10
~ Colonials thrive on chaos ~ Pierre LeRenne, French adviser 1779
The drive to Dr. Corwin’s place was long and lonely, and the wait even worse. He finally pulled in around eleven, and stomped into the library looking less than pleased.
“This had better be good,” he said, dropping into his leather chair. “Really damn good. The entire intern program is in jeopardy, Officer Blaylock is looking at a suspension and the school board is an inch away from firing me.”
“I’ve been hearing that a lot lately,” I said. “And it is.” I slid the book I’d taken from Cult Dad across the desk toward him. He looked at it, picked it up, then tilted it to examine it from different angles before putting it down.
“It’s a grimoire,” he said, looking at me with a deadpan expression. “Oddly enough, I’ve seen one of these before.”
&nbs
p; “Open it,” I said. “I marked the page. Know what it is?” He flipped it open, then looked up at me.
“This is a spell. A ritual used to create an effect outside the normal laws of physics.”
“Yeah, everybody’s a comedian. So, it’s a divination spell, and they had a girl who fit the description of the Half-Caste Chylde.”
“They’re getting a little smarter,” he said. He frowned, then flipped further back in the book. When he got to the second bookmark, he ran his fingertip down the page, then looked up at me. “This isn’t the first time they’ve tried to divine her location. According to their notes, she’s proven to be protected from basic locator spells.”
“That’s as far as I got,” I said. “What’s different here?”
“Up until now, everyone’s been finding a girl and doing the divination on her to see if she’s the one they’re looking for or not. This is a combination of blood magick and sympathetic magick,” he said, his voice growing soft. “They were trying to use this girl’s life force to give their spell enough power to break the protections on the Half-Caste Chylde, and the similarities between them to help zero in on her. They’re trying to rein themselves back because they know we’ve figured out the Half-Caste Chylde is a factor. Okay, this is good…or bad. Either way, it’s worth the trouble.”
“So, what do we do now?” I asked.
“I need to notify the Council,” Dr. Corwin said, getting to his feet. “You need to go home.”
“Sir, I was in the middle of this,” I said as I came up out of my chair. “Wanda and I got captured, and got away from them. We know where they are, or where they were. Hell, I was the one who got you what you’re going to be reporting to the Council! I should be there!”
Dr. C stopped and held his hand up, his face stern. “Stop, Chance. The less I know the better, right now. Remember, we don’t know if the Council is compromised or not, and if so, how deeply. If they are, and someone finds out it was you who found this info…” His voice cracked his hand clenched into a fist. “I’m not going to put you in any more danger than I have to, and I can’t accidentally expose what I don’t know.”