I pushed, wiggled and head-butted my way free. The first person to spot me was a lady whose car must have been battered by the landslide, because she was leaning against the hood of a banged up BMW and looking frazzled.
“B-b-bear!” she screamed, backing away from me as fast as her feet would carry her.
I shifted and I swear the sight of a large naked man seemed to terrify the woman even more. “Sorry,” I said, waving. “Everything’s okay.”
Wyatt blinked next to me. “Did you seriously just ride an avalanche down a hill?”
“I was looking for you.”
“Why would I be in an avalanche?”
“You went in looking for Lucy.”
“Yeah, but when I didn’t find her, I left.”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
“You do remember I can, like, teleport, right?”
“Yes, I remember you can teleport—oh crap, the girls.”
“Right over there,” Wyatt pointed.
Elyse and Maddie were picking their way towards us. Elyse had grabbed an LAPD windbreaker from somewhere, so she wasn’t drawing too many stares for being naked in public—granted everyone was staring at the trashed house in the middle of the street anyway. I made a quick 360 degree survey, looking for anything I could use as a cover up. There was no need to draw extra attention to myself. I kicked at a piece of wall, bingo—couch cushion. I ripped the fabric free and wrapped the red cloth around my waist like a lava-lava.
“Are you okay?” asked Elyse.
“I’m fine. How about you guys, you took on two of those things?”
“Nope, they disappeared on us,” said Elyse.
“Poof,” Maddie added.
“Which means?”
“Lucy has left the building,” Wyatt said. “But not to worry, I know where she went.”
“How?” I asked.
“Well, while you were messing around with the house.”
Wham!
A wave of magic pummeled my aura and I watched in horror as Elyse, Maddie and Wyatt dropped like rag dolls. I dropped into a defensive stance. I could hear the others breathing and their heartbeats were strong and regular. They were only knocked out. I started to scan the area for our attacker.
Wham!
Another spell sizzled over me. I spun, claws out ready to kill.
Cynthia was standing several yards away with a look of pure, pissed-off indignation on her face.
And she had a perm.
I realized I was looking at the ’80’s version of Cynthia, conjured up by Lucy’s sub-conscious. With the new hairdo she was kind of hot in a naughty, librarian kind of way.
I raised my hands and smiled. “I can explain.”
Wham!
Cynthia hit me with another spell.
Crap.
CHAPTER 16
I shrugged off the spell and placed myself in between my prone friends and Cynthia’s shoot first, ask questions later attack. I spotted a second mage, a guy I recognized from the Council, trying to make his way around the pile of smashed house.
I pointed at him. “If you keep moving, I’m going to relieve you of your arms.”
“How dare you speak to a member of the Society that way,” snapped Cynthia.
I could tell she was trying to figure out why I seemed impervious to her magic. She probably thought I was being shielded by another mage.
I needed Wyatt to wake up and blink us the hell out of here. I nudged his shoulder with my big toe. “Come on, dude.”
“You and your compatriots are in violation of dozens of Society laws.” Cynthia said, gazing at the level of destruction.
I figured the truth was the best route. If I could get this Cynthia on our side, maybe we could wrap this up. “Cynthia,” I said, and grinned when she twitched at my use of her name. “My friends and I are members of the Society.”
“That’s the most ludicrous lie I’ve ever heard,” she said. “I don’t recognize any of you and I make it my business to know all the Society members in Los Angeles.”
We were drawing a crowd. Even with a destroyed house laying in pieces in the street, the threat of a bear, and a half-naked man wrapped in the remnants of a couch, the people of Hollywood wanted to see what the argument was about. I could also hear more sirens. It sounded like every cop in LA was on their way. I toed Wyatt again and his nose twitched, he was starting to wake up.
It was time to put it all out there and see how Cynthia reacted.
“We are here on your orders to try and save a girl named Lucy. All of this, everything around us, is a memory construct.”
“A memory construct?” Cynthia said. “That is original, I will give you that, but don’t you think that we would know if we were in a construct?”
“Um, no, because, you’re part of the construct and the year is actually 2018.”
Cynthia laughed, but the other mage frowned. He didn’t find the idea of being a figment of somebody’s imagination funny at all.
Cynthia said, “Oh dearie, you are a bold one, aren’t you?”
Wyatt was starting to stir behind me. The other mage noticed and began to maneuver so that he would have a better vantage point to sling a spell.
I growled.
The mage froze in place.
I waved my finger at him. “No, no, no.”
“You say you’re here for a girl named Lucy?” Cynthia asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s why we’re here too,” explained Cynthia. “The girl is a burgeoning blood-mage. You do know what a blood-mage is, correct?”
I nodded.
Cynthia was here for Lucy? That meant the Society had been hunting Lucy before the bloodbath at Horn’s house. The real Cynthia had been telling more lies than I’d imagined.
Cynthia said, “If you know what a blood-mage is, and if you’re truly a member of the Society, then you know why we want her and you should be helping us.”
“Lucy’s not who you want,” I said. “It’s Marcus Horn you should be looking into.”
“How do you know that name?” Cynthia said, shocked.
“I told you, this is a memory construct and all of this has already happened.”
I couldn’t believe I was having an argument with one of Lucy’s memories.
“If you know his name, then you must work for him,” said Cynthia calmly. “Thank you for clearing up this confusing situation.” Cynthia nodded at the other mage.
Uh-oh.
I switched on my sight. Yep, Cynthia and her buddy were charging up.
I rolled my shoulders, preparing to shift. This was going to be bad.
Wyatt’s hand wrapped around my ankle. I glanced down and the kid had a weak grin on his face. “Hold on to your butt,” he said.
Blink.
Wyatt took us up the street and to the opposite side of the rubble, which put us out of sight of Cynthia and her lackey. I could hear the blasts of kinetic spells hitting the remains of the house. In 1988 teleportation wasn’t a thing because there was no Wyatt, so this throwback version of Cynthia was being thorough, because in her experience people didn’t just disappear.
I crouched down to check on my friends. “How’s everybody doing?”
The three of them still looked a little loopy.
“Man, what hit us?” Wyatt asked, rolling onto his back and taking a few deep breaths.
“I don’t know, some kind of knock-out spell,” I said, helping Elyse sit up. “But as soon as you’re feeling up to it, Wyatt, we should probably put a little more distance between us and Cynthia.”
“Cynthia?” said Elyse.
“Yeah, that’s who whammied you guys, an eighties version of her, and she was not happy with my memory construct explanation.”
Maddie leaned back against a parked car and closed her eyes. A soothing wave washed over me and I watched as all the tiny nicks and abrasions I’d received rolling down the hill healed instantly.
““Oh wow, that feels awesome,” said
Elyse, jumping to her feet.
Wyatt also bounced to his feet, grinning. “That’s much better, thanks Maddie.”
Maddie stood up, brushing dust from her pants. “No problemo.”
I had to admit having a healer in our group was a huge plus.
“You said you know where Lucy went?” I asked Wyatt.
“It’s got to be close, right?” Maddie asked. “You guys said the memory bubble in Vegas was finite and centered on Lucy.”
“Yeah, but Lucy didn’t know Vegas, she was a tourist,” said Wyatt. “LA is her city and I think that means the rules of memory bubbles are a little more elastic.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Well, our friend Lucy jumped into a fancy red car and high-tailed it that way,” Wyatt pointed south, toward the coast. “I blinked along behind her and figured something out. The memory construct helps her.”
“Yeah, the demon-dogs kind of proved that,” said Maddie.
“Demon-dog-sharktopus,” Wyatt corrected, and Maddie stuck her tongue out at him. “But, those delightful creatures aside, I watched every stoplight turn green for Lucy and there was never any traffic to slow her down. I mean, this is Sunset Boulevard, I know it’s the eighties and all, but no traffic is just not right.”
“So where’d she go?” Elyse asked.
“To the one person she thinks can protect her from big, bad Orson.”
“Horn,” I said.
Wyatt nodded. “Yep.”
“Take us,” I said.
The four of us grabbed hands.
“It’s going to take several blinks to get there,” Wyatt said. “Please keep all hands and feet inside the ride at all times.”
After a quick succession of blinks we ended up in a wooded neighborhood. All of the houses were huge and secured behind high walls.
“Where are we?” Maddie asked.
“It looks like Bel Air,” I said. “Think Beverly Hills, only with way more money.”
Wyatt pointed to a large wrought-iron gate across the street. The only thing visible on the other side was trees and a steep, winding driveway.
“Is there supposed to be a house somewhere back there?” Elyse asked.
Wyatt pointed up above the tree line and there, poking out above the foliage, was the line of a roof. I switched my sight on and was shocked by what I didn’t see. Except for some very basic-looking magic wards, the house looked unprotected.
“Huh,” I said.
“What’s up?” Elyse asked.
“You’d think a powerful blood-mage would have his house strapped with protective magic, but I’m not seeing anything like that.”
“It’s camouflaged,” said Maddie.
Elyse, Wyatt and I looked over at her and, unlike the house, she had so much energy swirling around her I was surprised she wasn’t glowing.
“Um, why are you glowing?” Wyatt asked her.
I switched off my sight and sure enough the magic around Maddie was visible with normal vision. “Hey, Maddie? Are you cool?” I asked, worried at the power level on display.
The glow faded out and Maddie blew out a breath. “That kind of tingled,” she said. “Sorry, I didn’t know I’d get all glowy. As a healer I have the ability to detect spells, especially the damaging kind. I can’t see them, at least not the way Lucy and Orson describe it, but I can sort of feel them. And that house is saturated with very dangerous, very destructive spells, and they’re all hidden behind a sort of camouflage. It’s not a glamour, it’s something different, something darker.”
“That is so cool,” said Wyatt.
“We need to come up with a plan, and even though this is Bel Air and cars are few and far between, we should get off the road,” I suggested.
That’s when my body betrayed me. My stomach let out the loudest grumbling, growl of hunger I’d ever heard. My hands instinctively went to my belly. Elyse’s eyebrows shot up and Maddie giggled.
“Dude, hungry much?” Wyatt asked, trying not to laugh.
“Logically I understand we’re in a construct, and I know it makes zero sense, but I could eat—a lot.”
“I thought it was just me,” said Elyse. “I’m starving.”
Maddie nodded. “Yep, me too. Fighting imaginary monsters works up an appetite.”
“Hold that thought,” said Wyatt, blinking away.
The kid popped back a minute later and held out his hand. “Everyone grab on, it’s buffet time.”
Wyatt blinked us into the kitchen of a house down the street. Nobody was home and the fridge and pantry were stocked for what looked like a party. There were platters of tiny sandwiches, shrimp cocktail and tons of sliced veggies.
“Why would Lucy’s memory include a kitchen full of food at the neighbor’s house?” Elyse asked, stuffing her mouth with three sandwiches.
“I don’t know,” I said. “While she’s unconscious, her magic is unpredictable. Maybe in the real-life version of events she saw a food delivery truck drive by, or maybe she just really likes shrimp and tiny sandwiches. It could be anything.”
Maddie let out tiny belch and received a high-five from Wyatt. “I think part of her mind is trying to help us to help her,” Maddie said. “Does that make sense? Yes, she’s conjuring up monsters to defend herself from a perceived attack, but some small part of her has to know we’re here to help, and maybe feeding us is a manifestation of that?”
Wyatt was half-heartedly chewing on a carrot. “Well, if that’s the case,” he said, as he dropped the carrot and looked toward the ceiling. “Hey Lucy, how about a tray of fat, juicy cheeseburgers?” He held his hands out as if anticipating a tray would drop out of thin air.
When no tray appeared, Wyatt shrugged. “It was worth a shot.”
The food tasted as good as any food in the real world and amazingly it did the trick. I felt full and energized. When we’d all had our fill, we pushed the leftovers to the side and started putting a plan together.
“So, do we go in Butch and Sundance style, guns blazing?” said Wyatt.
“Butch and Sundance died, dude,” I reminded him.
“Oh, yeah.”
“Besides, with all the protections Maddie sensed around the house, the only one of us that could bulldoze their way in is Orson,” said Elyse. “And with Lucy in there, it will only be a matter of minutes until her memory monsters show up. Then we’ll be fighting on two fronts.”
“We need more intel,” I said. “Wyatt, can you stealth us up to one of the walls close to the gate, but out of sight, just in case it’s being watched?”
“You got it.”
Once we were in position, Elyse and I opened up our shifter senses as much as possible. We strained to hear anything that would give us a clue about what was going on behind the walls, but it was quiet.
“I have an idea,” I said. “We need to get a visual of the front of the house, but if we climb the walls we’ll set of the wards and all hell breaks loose. The trees are what, maybe one hundred, one hundred fifty feet high? I can toss you straight up in the air and you see what you can see.”
“You want to throw me two hundred feet in the air?” Elyse said, doubtfully.
“Don’t worry, I’ll catch you,” I assured her.
“Please say yes,” Wyatt said, excitedly. “This, I have to see.”
“Wait,” Elyse said, with a sly smile. “Wyatt can teleport, why not toss him up and then he can just teleport down?”
“Wait? Huh?” Wyatt said, all his excitement vanishing.
“She’s makes a great point,” I said.
“What? No . . . no, no,” Wyatt stammered. “You need someone with super-shifter vision that can see like infrared and junk. She’s definitely your man.”
Maddie cleared her throat.
“Woman, she’s definitely your woman,” Wyatt said, hastily.
“Or we can just wait?” Maddie suggested. “Lucy has to come out of there sometime.”
“I thought about that,” I said. “The problem is we don
’t know how long Lucy’s got. She didn’t look so good when we saw her this afternoon. And tonight could be the night everything goes down in there. If we could spare her from having to go through that again, I think we have to try.”
A deep, menacing growl from the shadows across the street had us all instantly alert. My claws snapped into place, Elyse fell into a defensive battle stance and Wyatt grabbed Maddie, who in turn reached out and placed a hand on my and Elyse’s shoulders, just in case we needed to blink.
Two large panthers stalked out of the darkness, one circling to the right the other to the left. They were going to attack. Between the four of us we could probably take them.
My train of thought was derailed, smashed apart by what my eyes were telling my brain they were seeing. I was thunderstruck.
Even in animal form all shifters are unique—the color and pattern of our fur, the way we move, the way we smell, all of these things mark us as individuals. And even if someone were able to mimic all of the telltale physical markers, a shifter’s aura can’t be faked, revealing their identity as sure as fingerprints or a retinal scan.
I shifted my claws away and looked at Elyse. Tears were rolling down her face and my heart ached for her.
“Mom,” Elyse whimpered.
CHAPTER 17
Lucy downed her second shot of whiskey and grimaced. Ugh. How does a rich guy like Marcus not have a bottle of tequila or at least vodka somewhere in the house? He lived in this huge mansion, had what he called a well-stocked bar, but that bar only had things like whiskey and gin—or as Penny called them, old people booze. Marcus did offer to open a bottle of wine but Lucy needed hard booze, not fancy sipping booze.
“Are you feeling better, my dear?” Marcus asked.
Lucy nodded. “Yes, thank you.”
When Lucy, dressed in Levis and a t-shirt, showed up at his door Marcus had been quite unhappy.
“I did mention it was a party didn’t I?” He had asked, looking her up and down with a sour look on his face.
Lucy was still flying high on adrenaline and wasn’t in the mood to play the demure, wide-eyed teen role which she had perfected over years of practice.
Lucy: A Paragon Society Novel (Book 3) Page 16