I dismounted from Beast and strode to the front of the building. “You stay back from the parapet unless you glamour up. I don’t want you spooking any bystanders.”
“Agent Biers promised to clear the street,” Beast growled from behind me.
“Yeah, but I’ve heard that promises were made to be broken. Just stay out of sight.”
There was a small pop, softer than the cap guns I played with as a kid, and the hawk flapped onto the brick parapet at my left.
“I don’t see anyone,” Beast said.
“Hell, that doesn’t mean they can’t see you. You’re silhouetted against the sky.”
“Humph, I think you’re disappointed that Biers kept her promise. You’ve never rid yourself of that human need to grandstand.”
“I do not grandstand.”
“Tell it to someone gullible,” Beast added.
“Asshole.”
“Ham.”
“Snob.”
“Actor.”
“What?” I asked.
“Actor, you like to perform, you might as well be on a stage.”
“That’s enough out of you. In case you haven’t forgotten we’re here to fight night magic, not each other,” I said.
“About that,” Beast said. “You realize there are still two of them besides the Wiccans.”
“I’m not senile.”
“And you know one of those two has the power to breach your shield.”
“What did I just say?”
“You said it, but you don’t seem to be overly concerned either,” Beast said.
“Hell, Beast, what would be the point? Either I kick some witch ass tonight or Fate will have to call up a new Wanderer.”
Even through the glamour, it was easy to see the look of disdain he gave me. “So that’s it.”
“What?” I asked.
“You think just because Fate hasn’t summoned an apprentice for you to train you can’t be defeated.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, but you were thinking it,” he said.
Damn him. “Okay, maybe I was. Walt said that until we have an apprentice trained we’re pretty much assured by Fate of surviving any battle.”
“Perhaps, but then Walt didn’t survive to finish your training. It looks like Fate is slipping. Maybe the old guarantees no longer apply,” Beast said.
“That’s not possible, besides Walt was a special case.”
“I remember. It was the rogue Wanderer who killed him.”
“Exactly. Someone already touched by Fate. Therefore, Fate’s rules don’t necessarily apply. And if this second person is not a witch?”
“You mean him.” Why couldn’t I say his name?
“Exactly.”
“Then tonight is going to be interesting,” I said searching the sidewalk for some sign of life.
“I’ll find it more interesting if I’m here to see the sunrise,” Beast said.
That was another thing about familiars. The supernatural ones cannot remain in our world after the death of their Wanderer.
“Your worry for my well-being is flattering,” I said, without taking my gaze off the street.
“Of course, it would thrill me without measure if you were to survive,” Beast responded with no hint of sarcasm.
The lighting changed, grew brighter and shifted spectrum toward red.
The voice of thousands stopped in mid cheer and for an instant the great party that was Big Springs Jam seemed frozen in time.
Then the voices came back, not in cheerful appreciation of the music, but in shock and terror.
“Showtime,” Beast said.
“Hell, it’s a diversion. They’re trying to get us away from the grimoire.”
The screams mounted and I could feel low-frequency vibrations thrumming through the building.
“If it’s a diversion, it’s a good one,” Beast said.
I triggered my senses tat and expanded my sight and hearing into other frequencies, other wavelengths. The buildings around us glowed in the infrared where their insulation was thin. I heard the vibrations I’d only felt before and knew it was coming from the park.
“Damn,” I said.
Beast dropped the glamour and I leapt onto his back as he pounced over the parapet. He spread his wings as I gripped his mane in my right hand. Beast broke out of his dive car height above the pavement. His wings beat the air in a heavy rhythm. We rose high enough to clear the street lights as Beast sped us toward the park.
We passed yellow police barricades and suddenly the sidewalks and street were filled with people, screaming people, running pell-mell in every direction away from the park. The few police staffing the barricades tried to hold them back, but in a second, they gave up and climbed onto their patrol cars to escape the stampede.
We flew upwards, climbing to rise above the trees. The panic in what had been a crowd of concert attendees only a minute before was now so great that they ignored the manticore flying above them.
At the park, the trees thinned to provide room for picnicking people, lovers strolling on sidewalks, and the enormous stage for the three-day concert.
That had all changed in an instant. Everywhere I looked people fled. The stage was empty, the current band somewhere among the mob that ran, trampling those who couldn’t get out of the way in time.
Near the lake a column of fire rose. It wasn’t a neat, orderly column like a fireworks show. Instead, ragged bursts of lava accompanied the fire as a volcano rose out of the grass near the lake. The cone was only a dozen feet high, but it shot molten rocks hundreds of feet in every direction and the cone was still growing.
This was going to be bad.
Already a score of fires had broken out around the park. Trees blazed, two cars were engulfed in flames, and the stage burned around a hole in the middle of the floor.
I saw at least two bodies blazing, but couldn’t count the number of people crawling away, too injured to run.
“Are you going to do anything?” Beast asked.
“About the mob? I can’t. They aren’t my concern.”
“But…”
“I know, but the energy to slow tens of thousands of people would drain me. Then they’d just start up again as soon as they took another look at the volcano. I have to stop it before it sets the city ablaze. If it stops, then the mob will stop.
“Set me down and then get back out of the way. Circle back to the store. Watch for an attempt on the grimoire. If someone swipes, it follow them and then come back for me.”
“Are you sure you won’t need assistance here?”
“Hell, no I’m not sure, but it’s not your place to fight my battles. I’m sure this is a diversion and that the real threat is coming for the grimoire, but I can’t let them burn the city down.”
“As you wish.” Beast set down at the edge of the park. I slid from his back. He leapt into the air and flew back the way we’d come.
I turned toward the lake. Great globs of lava had fallen into it and it steamed or boiled in a dozen places. Nearby trees were smoldering, even the ones that hadn’t been hit by direct spurts of lava.
Before I could decide on a course of action, another spurt of lava flew out of the bubbling mouth and flew in my direction.
What the hell do you do to stop a volcano?
I poured more energy into my watch, generating a shield between myself and the globule of molten rock. Rather than simply blocking its flight, I angled the shield downward and braced for the impact.
A couple hundred pounds of jellied rock struck my shield and slid down it. The grass instantly flamed.
I had to find out what was generating the volcano’s energy. It couldn’t be real; at least I hoped it wasn’t. The power to blast a hole from here into the magma would be enormous, far more than anything I’d ever encountered. It could be a fire demon, but it’d have to be one much more powerful than the one I fought a few nights ago.
To find out I had to expose it, and then I
could decide how to handle it.
I spread my legs for balance against the constant vibrations of the eruption and brought my forearms together. I triggered the tat and for a moment, the red glow exceeded even the intensity of the lava being ejected from the volcano.
The ground shook as my force spell walked forward, gaining speed as it moved, splitting the earth open, bowling trees to either side. The very air shimmered as molecules lost their bonds, released energy and became elemental atoms.
The spell reached the volcano and tore into the still-forming cone of hardening lava. The rock split back away from the axis of my spell. Fresh lava poured into the vertical wound, but I kept pouring energy into the spell, peeling back the shell and forcing the lava to flow to either side as I tore away the creature’s cover.
The night rent with a scream as my spell burst through the last of the shell and exposed the volcano’s core.
I let the spell dissipate and took a step back as a long sinuous shape rose out of the cone. The lava stopped spurting into the air as the creature revealed itself.
The twenty-foot long salamander crawled out of its destroyed nest and screamed again.
A fire elemental, in the form of a great salamander. Shit, this was not good at all.
The salamander took a few seconds to spot me standing at the source of the spell that had destroyed its nest. Its tongue snaked out, seized a glob of semi-congealed lava, and then snapped it at me. I danced to the side. The glob hit my shield and slid to the ground, starting yet another fire.
I needed water, lots of water. The lake was the nearest source, but difficult to manage. I looked about for a fire hydrant, but couldn’t see one through the dark billowing smoke the fires had generated. All right, the lake it was.
I brought the wind, much as I had done two nights previous, but this time I kept it away from the lake, holding a few hundred feet above the water until it reached tornadic velocities.
Unfortunately, the salamander wasn’t willing to give my spell time to develop. It crawled out of its nest and scurried toward me. Fire erupted everywhere its feet touched the grass. I backed away from its approach. I had a choice between shoving more energy into my shield to hold it back or push more into the wind to hurry the tornado that was dipping a vaporous tendril toward the lake.
Then again, brute force is overrated. I changed the focus of my shield making it flat and horizontal. I dropped it to the grass a few yards in front of me and concentrated on the wind.
My tornado reached the lake and became a waterspout at the same time the salamander stepped onto my shield. While powerful as hell on earth, salamanders are not the brightest of the supes.
The heat from his body made my face feel like my head was in a pre-warmed oven. I wanted to back up, but if I stumbled or lost my concentration, the salamander would cross my shield and make me tonight’s next barbecue. I waited until his mass was totally on my shield and then popped it back into its regular cylindrical shape.
The sudden expansion lifted the salamander and tossed his half-ton bulk more than fifty feet over my head.
Shit! That wasn’t what I was going for. I whirled to see the salamander smack into the asphalt pavement. He climbed to his feet, groggy from the impact, and the gas tank of a large SUV near him exploded. The fire couldn’t hurt him, but the shock wave knocked him back off his feet.
I focused my shield back around me and turned toward the lake.
The two hundred foot high waterspout was coming.
I urged it on and looked for the salamander.
It was facing me again and seemed more upset than before. It hissed and flames and the stink of sulfur belched out. The flames struck my shield and flowed around it, but the stench of sulfur came right on through. I turned toward the lake and started to run.
I didn’t have to see it to know it was coming after me.
I felt his heat on my back, even through my shield, but I could also feel the wind in my face, and it was a wet wind. As the waterspout reached land, I reached the lake’s edge and dove forward.
As it left the ground, my shield turned from a cylinder to a globe. I was no longer anchored to the earth; like everything encountering a tornado, I was flung away from the vortex at a tangent. I sailed out across the lake, spinning head over heels. On my third rotation, I saw the salamander try to run from my tornado, but it couldn’t outrun the wind.
Water and fire do what they always do. The salamander disappeared in a burst of steam that vaporized an enormous portion of the tornado. I cancelled the wind and let the rest of the water spin away from the impact point. I saw a few million gallons of water douse many of the fires before I impacted the lake with a splash like the mother of all cannon balls.
I cancelled my shield; it hadn’t been set up to resist water anyway and swam to the surface. Wiping my eyes clear, I looked about for the nearest shore. I was turning toward it when a familiar face broke the surface an arm’s length in front of me.
“Well, Raphael, you certainly know how to make an entrance,” Ophelia said.
I smiled. “Yeah, ah, yes, I guess I do. Can’t talk, gotta run, villains to fight and damsels to protect.”
“There’s no rush,” Ophelia said and then I heard the soft musical sounds coming from her.
I suddenly remember bragging to Beast that she couldn’t affect me with her charms as long as I stayed out of her lake. I felt desire boil away my thoughts as she took both my hands in hers and pulled me beneath the water.
CHAPTER 30
Ophelia drew me to her as we sank. We drifted toward the lake bottom and I realized with surprise, that I could breathe. Even though her siren call was unbroken, I tried to resist it. Even as I clutched her to me, I resisted. For all my effort, I was like a teenage boy in the process of losing his virginity. As long as her siren call reached me, I was lost in passion. We floated among water plants that danced around to the music of her call.
I put my remaining concentration into one tat. It glowed to life and lightning answered my summons.
The water around us roiled as megawatts of energy poured from the sky. Ophelia gasped and spasmed. My mind cleared of her compulsion even while I twitched from my own reaction to the current. I grabbed a handful of her hair and broke for the surface.
Ophelia was still twitching when I dragged her into the shallows. I pulled her all the way to the shore, but not out of the lake. A water naiad’s strength is in her body of water. Her best chance of recovering uninjured by the lightning was to remain there.
Less than a minute after I stopped by the shore, her eyes opened and she stared up at me.
“I’m not accustomed to rejection,” she said.
“What did you think you were doing? You know I’m in the middle of a fight. Are you helping those who want the war?”
She smiled. “We naiads don’t really care about the war. You came to my lake; what else was I to do but seduce you. It is my nature.”
“You told me you knew Wanderers. Then you should have known I would kill you if I had to.”
“I knew.”
“Damn it, Ophelia. I should boil your lake to nothing.”
“I can’t help what I am, Raphael,” she said still staring into my eyes.
“Even after I killed the salamander that was destroying your lake, you still tried to delay me.”
Sometimes insight comes in small doses until you’re fully aware of an answer that has been escaping your grasp. Other times it creeps up on you and pops a flash in your face.
This was the latter.
“The salamander wasn’t the distraction. You were. Someone arranged it for me to be close enough to your lake for circumstances to drop me into your lair. They knew I’d defeat the salamander quickly enough and they wanted me out of the way for the night.”
Ophelia smiled and reached for me. “More like two nights, Raphael. I never let a conquest go after just one night.”
“Hell and damnation.”
I leapt from the wat
er and started to run.
As I ran, I tugged at the leather cord around my neck. I drew out the whistle, put it to my lips, and blew one long, shrill blast.
I crammed the whistle back into my shirt and concentrated on running.
Bodies lay about me on the grass, the sidewalk, and in the street. Some moved, groaning in the agony of broken bones, torn muscles, various contusions, and the shock of witnessing that which they did not have the experience to deal with. Some reached toward me as I ran past, but most lay impassive, bleeding or still in shock. I ran past each and all without stopping.
Ahead of me, I saw Beast descending to the pavement. He realized my haste and turned, presenting his back. I leapt on him, pressing my knees into his shoulders and then gripped his mane while he was already beating the air with his great wings.
“You know?” he asked as we rose to treetop level.
“That it was a diversion? Yes. Have they made their try for the grimoire?”
“One is there. She’s set up a circle outside on the street and is completing a summoning.”
“Ah, hell, what now? All right, drop me on the roof again.”
“I believe the Wiccan witch has also assembled her coven. Another circle has been closed in the basement store.”
We reached the courthouse square. As Beast glided toward the roof of the attached buildings that made up the south side, I could see the glimmer of a powerful circle formed in the center of the street. Remnants of the concertgoers streamed past it. At least two people had made the mistake of running directly into the circle’s wall and lay unconscious outside its border.
Marian was past caring whether she was recognized or not. She stood in the center of her circle wearing the same robe I’d last seen her in, but this time her head and face were uncovered. She held an open book in one hand and chanted a spell.
We lit on the roof near the front edge and I leapt from Beast’s back.
“This is going to be violent. You might want to move back a ways,” I said.
“Whistle if you need me,” Beast said. His wings buffeted me with their wash as he leapt into the air.
Wanderers: Ragnarök Page 28