Power Mage 5

by Hondo Jinx

  All of the girls did.

  With her athletic physique wrapped in red silk, blond-haired Ursula had gone from looking like a Valkyrie to looking like a full-blown goddess.

  Beside her, pink-clad Tessa rocked in her seat, bouncing one leg and chewing gum as she whispered with Luna.

  The cute little Beastie was all smiles. In her tight, green gown she looked ready for prom.

  In the back row, dressed in purple silk that rose and fell over her lovely curves, sat Yolanda the beautiful but incredibly weird Cosmic. Her glossy black hair shined brightly, catching the sunlight and framing her bronze-skinned face, which was strikingly beautiful despite the fact that her cherry-red lips were stretched in a straight line across her impassive features, and her dark eyes were staring straight through Brawley across the range and seemingly into an entirely different dimension altogether.

  Alone in the penultimate row between Yolanda and the other refugees, Arabella looked gorgeous, hobble collar or no hobble collar, barely contained within the silky blue gown she’d been wearing the last time Brawley had seen her.

  Arabella sat in silence, trying to smile, her eyes puffy with recent tears.

  Brawley regretted his recent exchange with the willful Bender. He’d let his lust-rage get the best of him.

  He never should have pushed Arabella to the edge of climax. And of course, Arabella had no idea that when he’d taken her over his knee and spanked her bare ass, he’d only meant to put her in her place.

  But Arabella had erupted beneath the crisp slap of his hand, moaning and convulsing in total surrender, rocked to her core by an explosive orgasm that must have been incredibly humiliating to the haughty beauty.

  Now, the humbled Bender couldn’t stop glancing at Brawley but also couldn’t meet his eyes. And he understood that his rough handling had broken something in her, gentling her like a wild mare roped off the far range. Even at his softest command, Arabella would eat gently from his hand now.

  But that possibility had crumbled away and scattered with the winds. Brawley had made his choice, and he would no sooner cheat on his wives than he would burn down his own house. He just hoped that Arabella would adjust without too much trouble or drama.

  Hazel greeted everyone and explained that they were all gathered there today to witness the marriage of Brawley and Tammy.

  “And,” the old Seeker added, smiling toward the front row, “Nina, Sage, Remi, Callie, and Frankie.”

  Guests murmured, exchanging confused glances.

  Smiling, Hazel said, “Don’t worry, folks. Most of you will forget a lot of this, including what I’m saying now, before you even leave the ranch.” She cackled madly.

  Guests laughed uncertainly, again exchanging confused glances.

  “Bottom line,” Hazel continued, “thank you for joining us today, especially on such short notice. We are glad you’re here, and I personally guarantee that you are going to have a fantastic time today. Send in the boy.”

  The ranch house door swung open, and Ty walked out holding a little box on one of Mama’s throw pillows. The boy was dressed in jeans, boots, a white straw cowboy hat, and a white dress shirt that looked a lot like Brawley’s, starch and all. The boy clocked up the stones, sneaking glances at Brawley and almost managing to hide his excitement.

  Ty handed Sean the little box and took a seat in the front row.

  Next, Hannah popped out the door holding a wicker basket.

  Brawley smiled.

  Hannah skipped down the walkway, her little blond ringlets bouncing as she tossed tiny handfuls of rose petals into the air, singing for some reason that likely made a hell of a lot of sense in toddler logic, “Old McDonald Had a Farm” at the top of her lungs.

  The guests laughed.

  Brawley took a second to look from Ty to Hannah, back and forth, his heart full to bursting with a sudden and fierce love for these two children who were about to become his family. He couldn’t be happier than to call them son and daughter, and he would do his best to protect and provide for these kids and to help Tammy raise them up right.

  “Now, Frankie,” Hazel said, “if you would, please…”

  Frankie gave a little nod, and Pachelbel’s Canon began playing from unseen speakers.

  “Please rise,” Hazel said unnecessarily, because everyone in attendance was already coming to their feet, conditioned to do so whenever the familiar wedding song started playing.

  A second later, the ranch house door swung open, and Pa emerged with Tammy on his arm.

  Brawley’s heart sputtered at the sight of his bride-to-be. Tammy was a beautiful woman, even in the middle of the night, tired as hell, smoking a cigarette as she hugged herself in a baggy white t-shirt that hid her subtle curves.

  But now!

  Now, Tammy glowed, the shining personification of pure joy. She wore an understated white gown without enough lace to throw together a single doily. But the simple dress fit her trim figure like a glove, and its clean lines underscored her natural beauty.

  As was her custom, Tammy wore no makeup, but the girls had teased her strawberry blond hair into a fetchingly epic arrangement complete with curly ringlets that corkscrewed down to either side of her exquisite face.

  Brawley and Tammy locked eyes as she came down the aisle, Brawley surprised to feel the flutter of butterflies in his gut.

  Pa led Tammy onstage, and Brawley took her hands in his and listened as Hazel talked, playing it straight and moving rapidly to the part that mattered.

  “Brawley,” Hazel said, “do you take this woman to be your wife, in sickness and in health, to love her and cherish her through good times and bad, and to bond with her for eternity?”

  Smiling down at his gorgeous bride, Brawley said, “I do.”

  Hazel repeated the vow for the bride.

  Tammy nodded, laughing and sniffing. “I do.”

  “Well then,” Hazel announced, “I pronounce you two husband and wife. Brawley, you know what to do.”

  Brawley hauled Tammy close and kissed her deeply as the congregation erupted with happy cheers.

  19

  After another traumatic interview, Alex left the filming van and, leaning heavily on her muscular escort, stumbled across the hot, stinking squalor of the Chaotics’ camp, a slapped together tent city within a swampy tangle of roadside trees.

  Despite the painkillers and Lars’s assistance, every step hurt like hell.

  The camp looked like the set of a post-apocalyptic movie. To either side of the dirt path, filthy people of all ages moved busily among the crude shacks and lean-tos.

  Alex didn’t know where, exactly, she was. North Jersey, maybe. Honestly, she didn’t care.

  “I just want to go home,” she said again.

  “No,” Lars said. Her minder had a European accent. Maybe German, maybe Dutch. Scandinavian?

  With his gymnast physique, intense caramel-colored eyes, and wolfishly handsome face, Lars looked like an underwear model who’d run afoul of the law.

  He moved with the fluid ease of a panther and bristled with weapons: a pistol on both hips, holstered between a huge knife and a green, baseball-sized sphere she believed to be a hand grenade.

  He wore combat boots, camouflage pants with bulging pockets, a sleeveless black shirt, and sweat-stained khaki body armor to which he had clipped bits of gear that clacked as they walked: a Kevlar helmet; a short, double-barreled shotgun; and a belt of shotgun shells that hung over his shoulders like the stole of a battle priest.

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “No,” Lars said again, panning the path ahead, ignoring those who nodded or called out to him.

  Between the shanties, Chaotics cooked over campfires, whispered in huddles, and inspected weapons with the air of grizzled soldiers preparing for battle.

  There were guns everywhere. Guns and children and an air of long suffering.

  Animals, too. Cats and dogs, mostly. But she also saw animals that had no business mingling with humans. />
  A huge whitetail buck.

  A crow that waddled between two women, squawking along with their conversation.

  And an honest to goodness hyena, squatting alongside two filthy children playing cards on the muddy ground.

  But of course, she’d seen much stranger things than a hyena over the last twenty-four hours.

  Magic was real.

  Call it psionics if you want. But it was magic.

  These people were outlaws of the wizarding world. And Alex couldn’t get away from them fast enough.

  “For a group that calls itself the Voice of Freedom, you people sure have a strange sense of liberty,” she snarled.

  “If you left now,” Lars said, slowing as a child zipped laughing across the path, “you would be dead in ten minutes.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “No,” he said, and his surprised expression almost humanized him. “Of course not. We would never harm you. But others would.”

  “Others,” she said. “The Tiger Mage?”

  “Yes. If you were lucky.”

  “Lucky? You have a strange notion of luck,” she snorted. It hurt her nose, which had been broken in the studio fracas.

  She had been sitting there in the green room, sipping coffee and waiting for the Advil to kick in, when men in black jumpsuits kicked the door off its hinges and dragged her into a corpse-littered hallway toward a portal of crackling light.

  Alex tried to fight them but couldn’t. They were too strong. If she didn’t settle down, one man explained, they’d kill her right there.

  Then Lars and his team had attacked from an adjacent corridor, killing her captors and hurrying her into yet another portal, which instantly brought her here.

  The attacks she’d witnessed in Times Square and the news studio were completely insane. But it was even harder to believe what was happening on television now.

  They had stopped playing her interview and her cell phone footage. No one was mentioning the Tiger Mage or the fire-breathing redhead.

  Suddenly, they were blaming the massacre on disgruntled domestic terrorists.

  Stranger still, none of the networks—not even Fox, where she’d been attacked—were mentioning the Order, the Chaotics, or the bodies she’d seen in the hallway.

  Smoke and mirrors. All smoke and mirrors.

  Nothing in this world was what it had seemed. She no longer knew what to believe about anything. She just wanted to go home.

  Lars shook his head. “I speak the truth. The Tiger Mage would kill you swiftly just to be rid of you. Much better than being taken by the FPI or the Order. Then you would pray for death. Trust me. But they would keep you alive. First to grill you for information. Then for the ugly fun of torturing you.”

  As Lars spoke, his gaze seemed to slide out of focus, and his hand tightened unconsciously on her arm.

  “You’re hurting me,” Alex said.

  Lars jolted out of his dark trance and loosened his grip with an embarrassed apology.

  “Can I at least go home and get my things?” Alex said. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  Lars shook his head. “It is gone. All gone.”

  “My apartment is gone?” Alex cried, her voice cracking with fresh emotion. She loved her apartment.

  “It still stands,” Lars said, “but it is no longer your apartment. It has become something else.”

  “What?”

  “A trap. People always go back. The Order knows this. Fugitives always go back to their homes and things and people they know. What good is hiding if you check your Facebook page?”

  “I won’t,” Alex said, meaning it, “and I won’t go home. Cross my heart and hope to…”

  “Not possible.”

  “What do you people want from me?”

  “The truth.”

  “Oh good,” she said, feigning a chipper tone, “because I already told the truth. On camera, in fact. So, I guess this is goodbye, then.”

  She gave her arm a halfhearted tug, but of course Lars’s grip was unbreakable.

  “Yes, you told us the truth, and now we can share it with the psionic world,” he said. “But only one person can set you free.”

  Alex waited, her silence a question.

  “Our leader,” Lars said. “Clarissa Lemay.”

  “Great,” Alex said. “Is she nice?”

  “She is wise.”

  “Wise. Okay. I can deal with wise. Where is she?”

  Lars smiled as if Alex had said something funny. “One never knows with Clarissa Lemay. She is very busy. Sometimes here, sometimes elsewhere, sometimes not even in this dimension.”

  Alex growled with frustration. More wizard shit. “Where can I wait for her?”

  “I’m taking you back to your accommodations.”

  “My cell, you mean.”

  “A matter of perspective,” he said with a shrug. “Maybe we will give you a fresh start. It is not for me to say.”

  Alex felt a surge of hope. “A fresh start?”

  “The Seekers might wipe your memory, cloak you, and give you a new life. Would you prefer Mexico or Canada?”

  “What?” She could feel her eyes bulging. She paused, a part of her waiting for him to laugh. But he didn’t. “Canada, I guess. Wait… no. Mexico. I wouldn’t remember any of this?”

  Lars shook his head. “Or anything else.”

  She shuddered with a sudden chill despite the sweltering heat. “I’d just be… blank?”

  “Not blank,” he said. “The Seekers would reconfigure your mind. They would give you a new identity, false memories, and enough money to take care of yourself.”

  Alex felt lightheaded. She forced herself to breathe. “And then?”

  Lars shrugged. “You would live your life.”

  “Not my life,” she corrected him. “Some other life.”

  “What does it matter? The life you have known is gone. Why not enjoy something else?”

  “I wouldn’t even be me anymore.”

  “Does that idea bother you?”

  “Hell yes, it bothers me.”

  He shrugged again. “Then stay here among us.”

  “And do what? I’m no wizard.”

  “We always need help. You could cook.”

  “I can’t cook.”

  “You could clean.”

  She shook her head. “I’m a slob.”

  Lars raised one eyebrow.

  Looking at him, smelling him, Alex felt something stir inside her.

  And that made zero damn sense.

  Focusing on her career, she had shelved men indefinitely. And truth be told she hadn’t missed dating.

  But even here, terrified and battered, her body was reacting to Lars. That’s how attractive he was.

  “What did you do in your job?” he asked her.

  “I was a manager.”

  He frowned. “We could teach you to clean.”

  “Before that, I sold things.”

  He waited for more.

  “And I was an engineer.”

  “Ah,” he said, a smile lifting his stubbled cheeks. “An engineer we could use. Have you told anyone this?”

  Had she? Everything was such a blur, she couldn’t honestly remember what she had and hadn’t told people. Suddenly, she was very thirsty. “Could I have some of your water?”

  “Sure.” Lars stopped and uncapped a canteen and handed it to her.

  Alex drank deeply. The water was warm and flat and tasted somehow… green. Mossy, perhaps. She hoped to hell it wasn’t swamp water.

  “Thank you,” she said, handing the empty canteen back to him.

  Lars shook it, frowned, and screwed the cap in place.

  “If I stayed,” she asked, “could I keep my memories?”

  “Probably,” he said. “It is not for me to say. But yes, I think it likely.”

  She relaxed a little. It was a strange thing to fear, the notion of living on as a different woman completely unaware of the person you’d always been.
r />   “Unless something happened,” Lars said.

  “What?”

  “Life among the Chaotics is… chaotic,” he explained, and at that instant, as if cued by his words, a baboon strutted across the path with a young girl, perhaps six or seven years old, riding on its back. The girl held a pistol in her lap. It did not look like a toy.

  As the baboon and gun-toting child disappeared between two shacks of scrap wood and corrugated metal, Lars said, “The Order always hated us but mostly left us alone. Now, however, all bets are off.”

  “Because of me?”

  He shook his head. “We have been waiting for certain events. Now, those things are happening, and we are spreading our message.”

  “Resist the Order?”

  Lars nodded. “They have also been waiting for these events. But they have no interest in spreading truth, no interest in anything except seizing control.”

  “Control of what?”

  His caramel-colored eyes bore into hers. “Everything.”

  She started to ask another question, but a loud, cracking sound split the air. Thirty feet away, a wormhole portal opened inches above the path, whiskering orange light.

  The makeshift village erupted in screams.

  People in black jumpsuits and black helmets rushed from the wormhole, carrying riot shields and compact machine guns.

  Everything erupted in gunfire.

  “Run!” Lars shouted.

  Alex, frozen in terror, realized Lars had been screaming at her since the opening portal had split the air with its sharp, electrical crack.

  In a blur of speed, Lars unslung his stubby shotgun and fired both barrels. Then his hands were full of booming pistols blossoming flame and spitting out brass casings.

  But Lars’s shots, along with Chaotic bullets flying from all directions, bounced off the invaders’ shields, filling the air with sparks and the whine of countless ricochets.

  Then shit went totally crazy.

  Invisible snowplows raced back and forth, chased by bolts of lightning and cones of ice that shot away from people’s fingertips to freeze enemies solid.

  “Go!” Lars shouted, shoving her away. Even as the command left his lips, his body jerked, coming apart in a hail of bullets.