Heat Stroke (Hedge Mage and Medicine Book 3)

by SA Magnusson

  Another scream came, and this one from one of the nearby exam rooms.

  I raced toward it, hoping I wasn’t making too much noise, but ignoring the possibility I might be. I didn’t see anyone else here. Either they had run and hid and gotten away, or they had been attacked and knocked down, but either way, they were gone.

  A door closed slowly. Someone had been through here recently, and I raced toward it, trying to figure out where it was, and whether there was anything I could uncover about it. I held onto power and paused for a moment to search for whether there was any sense of magic around me.

  Every so often, a surge of power came through the bracelet, and I wished there was a way for me to track it, but it didn’t seem as if I could. The fact that I could still feel magic being used was enough.

  What if the patient I had worked on wasn’t the only attacker?

  What the paramilitary would do would be to send more than one person. They’d want to ensure the mission was a success, and in order to do that, they would need to attack it successfully. I suspected they would push through, and if they did, then I had to be careful.

  Another scream. But were they even screams? The sounds seemed to be tied to a surge of power. What if they weren’t screams at all, but spells intended to replicate the sound of a scream?

  Tracing a pattern on the floor, turning in a circle, I sent a surge of protective power through it. As soon as I did, something struck the barrier not a moment later.

  I turned in place, holding onto the barrier. Standing across from me was the shirtless attacker.

  “I wasn’t sure if you would return.”

  “You aren’t attacking anyone, are you?”

  “Not anymore. I don’t need to attack anyone else. I’ve taken care of everyone… Other than you.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “You will know soon enough.”

  “This isn’t revenge, is it?”

  “Do you think he cares about revenge?”

  I had believed so, at least at first, but that was part of the reason I struggled with this. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense for it to be only about revenge. If it was just revenge, then he wasn’t the person I had thought him to be. John Adams struck me as calculating, and for him to return to Minneapolis, there had to be a good reason to do so.

  “You aren’t going to take me,” I said, not feeling as defiant as I sounded.

  “You surprised me. I think that’s why he’s intrigued by you. You surprised him, too.”

  “There are more surprises where that came from.”

  “Even if there are, how many of us do you think you can defeat?” He looked around, his gaze drifting around the empty emergency room. “How much more do you want your place of work to suffer because of you?”

  “You wouldn’t keep attacking.”

  “Wouldn’t we? You obviously don’t have enough experience of the kind of things we’d do. I can assure you that in order to accomplish our goals, we would most definitely attack in a place like this.”

  I considered continuing to debate with him, to try to figure out what else I might be able to determine from him, but I wanted to have this over with. I would try the Sleeper, and if it worked, then great, but if it didn’t, then I would have to be prepared for something else. Holding onto the coin, I sent power into it, and I thrust out from me, prepared for the possibility I might be able to overpower the paramilitary operative.

  I drew upon not only my power, but that which I could draw from Barden as well, and forced it through the spell, ready for the operative to be knocked out by the force of it.

  When it struck him, I could feel how it washed over him. It was a strange sensation, and even stranger for me to be as aware of it as I was. It rolled through him, and resisted my attempt to overpower him.

  It was almost as if he was waiting, straining against me, and I continued to push, drawing more and more power out, summoning what I was able, and I could feel the way Barden’s power was required in order to do so.

  The spell triggered with a surge of energy, power which exploded outward from me, and as I drew more and more energy, as I called upon everything I could, I shivered with it, growing increasingly weak the longer I summoned that magic. The longer I pulled on this power, the more I wondered whether I would be able to do so. What would happen if I reached a point where I didn’t have enough strength to draw its power? How much longer would he be able to withstand?

  I didn’t think I’d be able to hold out for a whole lot longer, but I didn’t know if I needed to be able to. All that was required was for me to withstand this attack a while longer, and if I could, then I should be able to knock him back. And yet, the Sleeper looked like a spell he was able to withstand. Would the same be true if I tried a different approach? It didn’t have to be the Sleeper. I could use the Stinger, and despite any hesitation I might have about it, it would be a useful spell against someone like him. But why should I even have hesitation?

  Pushing power out, I used the other spell. It triggered with a powerful blast, and strangely, combined with the Sleeper, the joint effort of the two spells erupted in a way that neither did by themselves.

  I let that power flow out from me, and directed it toward the paramilitary operative, holding an image of him in my mind and using it the same way Matt had suggested. The spell exploded, striking the operative, and within moments, he began to scream. It was almost enough to make me withdraw my attack, but I refused, and continue to push forth with the attack, letting the spell trigger completely. As I did, I realized that it wasn’t necessary. Holding onto a connection through the spell didn’t change anything. There was only so much within the spell that could be released. There was the trigger, and nothing more.

  As I stood there waiting to see if he was going to attack again, I watched him drop to the ground, writhing in pain. Gradually, the writhing abated, and he stopped moving altogether.

  I’d seen him do this before, and didn’t know if it was part of an act or whether this was real. If it was, then there might not be anything I could do to completely remove him as a threat. If he was able to pretend he was suffering the effects of this spell, then he might be more than I could handle on my own.

  There wasn’t any way for me to withdraw the power I had used on him. If he wasn’t actually suffering from the spell, and if he was faking it, I not only wouldn’t know, but it wouldn’t even matter if I did. There wasn’t anything I could do to him. I simply had to wait. Waiting was difficult, and as I did, as I watched him, I struggled to detect anything from him, but I couldn’t.

  He stopped moving. I needed to decide what I was going to do. If I did nothing, and I waited, it was possible others who were here in the ER would start to return, and if they saw me standing here, using a spell, even if it looked like nothing, I’d be drawing attention. I didn’t like the idea of that, so decided to release the spell.

  As I did, I stepped forward, checking the operative. He was up to something and waiting here for him to reveal what his plan was would be more than I was willing to do.

  Cold burst along my wrist, but as he wasn’t moving, I knew it wasn’t coming from this operative, but it had to be from somewhere nearby. I hurriedly made a circle, prepared for the possibility that there was another attacker here, and as I did, I looked around, frantically checking into the pouch and reaching for another spell to trigger. The combination of the two had been effective against this operative, so I had to hope a similar combination would work if triggered again. And yet, I didn’t think I could grab it in time.

  He started to moan. Was the effect of the Stinger wearing off? Or could it be the Sleeper beginning to fade? Either way, I didn’t think I wanted to be here.

  I started backing up as the cold surged again, and I looked up in time to see the door at the end of the hall burst open. I held my hand out, ready to send a surge of power through the spell, when I hesitated.

  It was Matt Gillespie. Relief swept through me.
>
  “Matt, I need your help getting him out of here.”

  Matt quickly glanced at the man, taking him in quickly, and he nodded. “This is pretty impressive, Dr. Stone.”

  “Would you stop with the Dr. Stone business? After everything we’ve been through, you need to be calling me Jen.”

  Matt ignored me, which was probably for the best. At this point, we just needed to act rather than me trying to convince him to do anything.

  He scooped up the fallen operative, swinging him over his shoulder, and glanced over at me. “Are you ready to go?”

  I looked around the ER. “I can’t.”

  “After an attack like this?”

  “That’s exactly why I can’t. If he comes after me again, I can’t leave these people undefended.”

  “Then don’t. Call in your favors. It’s not like you don’t know people.”

  “Just because I know people doesn’t mean I can call in specific favors.”

  “These people care about you, Jen. Use that.”

  I didn’t like the idea of using people who cared about me, let alone the way that Matt was implying I should act, which left me with little choice. I had to stay. “Just get him out of here. Make sure he doesn’t escape. When I’m done working, I will come find you.”

  Voices nearby caught my attention, and I knew I wouldn’t have a great deal of time before security finally arrived. After all of this, we were finally going to get a response? It seemed ridiculous it would take this long.

  “Jen—"

  I shook my head, ignoring him.

  Matt hurried along the hall, holding onto the man. Power built from him, and I suspected he slammed another spell into the operative. I didn’t care which spell it was, and it didn’t matter. As long as it kept him contained and restrained, nothing mattered.

  I took a deep breath, letting it out, and looked around the ER. There was enough chaos here that I needed to settle back in and figure out the next step. First, I needed to be gone from here. It would look suspicious if I was the only person who hadn’t gone and run away.

  I scurried back down the hall, reaching the locker room, and once inside, I found it empty. Thankfully, Roberts hadn’t tried to return, though if he had, what would he have seen? Would he have seen me fighting the operative? Even if he had, what would he think of it? He likely wouldn’t have been able to understand what was taking place, partly because I still wasn’t sure what was happening either.

  I took a seat, resting there, breathing slowly, steadily, trying to gather my thoughts. As I did, I checked in the pouch, looking for a few other spells that might be useful. I needed to discard the ones which had been spent.

  Stacking the two spent spells in my locker, I checked in the pouch, thumbing through them. I needed to thank Matt for having given me the spells in the first place. Without them, I would have been helpless. I should not have given him such a hard time about what he had wanted to do to train me, either. Here, I had thought I wasn’t in any danger, and yet, it looked like I was in far more than I had realized.

  My phone vibrated. Pulling open my pocket, I saw that it was Barden. There was a single message. Meet out front.

  As I needed to keep up appearances that I was running, heading outside fit with that, and I stepped through the locker room, out into the main entrance. I found it empty, other than a few security guards sweeping through. I raced toward the main entrance, trying to get there before anyone saw me, and stepped out into the heat.

  I had expected there to be dozens and dozens of people waiting outside, but then again, why should there be? If they had evacuated, if they had followed the instructions, they would have run to safety. They wouldn’t have waited outside the entrance to the emergency room.

  A car pulled up, the silver Lexus I had come to associate with Barden, and I hurriedly hopped in. He started to speed away when I shook my head.

  “I can’t go,” I said.

  “What?”

  “This was an attack on me.”

  “Which is why you need to go.”

  “Barden.”

  He pulled over to the side of the road, far enough from the entrance of the hospital that it wouldn’t draw the wrong attention. Police cars were pulling up to the hospital as well, and they were racing out, working their way through the building. Most were dressed in heavy combat gear. Even with all of that, I doubted they would pose any real danger to someone like Matt or any of the other paramilitary men.

  What would it be like if the paramilitary openly battled with others? I couldn’t imagine how dangerous it would be, and it was just what we needed to avoid. It was something the various mage councils and shifter alphas—and even the vampires— had managed to avoid over the years. Would that all come crashing down because of something I had done?

  God, but I wished Kate were here.

  “What happened?” Barden asked, his voice soft.

  “Matt warned me that John Adams was back in the city.”

  “And you didn’t alert me?”

  “It wasn’t high on my list of things to worry about last night.”

  “You’ve known about it for a day and you haven’t told me until now.” The disappointment in his voice was enough to make me shrink in on myself. It was the kind of thing that reminded me how I would often disappoint my own father, and yet with him, I had never felt as bad as I did in disappointing Barden. If it were up to me, I would do anything and everything in my power to avoid disappointing Barden.

  “Matt told me last night, but I had a date.”

  “That doctor friend of yours?”

  I stared at Barden for a moment. “Not you, too.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Other than Matt Gillespie trying to convince me I shouldn’t have anything to do with Brad.”

  “I suspect it’s because he would like to court you himself.”

  “Court? One of these days, we’re going to have to talk about your terminology.”

  “Does that date me?”

  “A little bit,” I said, holding my index finger and my thumb out and apart just a tiny amount. “Anyway, I got the sense from Matt that he is interested, but after everything we’ve been through, I don’t think I feel that way about him.”

  “You don’t think?”

  I wasn’t sure if that would make Barden happy or not. It was difficult for me to know how he felt about Matt. I knew how irritated he’d been that Matt had broken into his warehouse, necessitating a change not only of location, but also of the security he had around it, but at the same time, Matt had offered Barden an insight into the organization in a way he didn’t have otherwise. I suspected Barden valued that contact and connection, and much as I knew about Barden, I recognized his interest in using everything he could uncover about the organization.

  “I don’t right now. Besides, I don’t know what’s happening with Brad…” Why was I even talking about this with Barden? Maybe because I didn’t have anyone else to talk about it with. Even if Kate had been there—my best friend—I still wasn’t sure I’d have had anyone to talk about it with. She didn’t see Brad in the same way I did. But then, she’d been gone long enough that she’d missed the change in him. It was subtle at first, but over the last few months, it had been stark. Nearly dying had changed him more than anything else.

  “He cares about you.”

  “Who? Matt? I don’t care if he does. All I care about is whether or not he can teach me anything.” That sounded harsh, and harsher than I had actually intended, but at the same time, it wasn’t untrue. I didn’t care if Matt had feelings for me. All I cared about was whether or not I could use the knowledge he might be able to teach me.

  Barden smiled at me. “Not him,” he said, doing nothing to mask the annoyance in his voice. “The doctor.”

  “I didn’t realize you knew him.”

  “I don’t, not really. I’ve had my people keeping an eye on him.”

  “Of course, you have. Listen, Barden, w
e’re going to have to have a conversation about the way you use your people to keep an eye on me.”

  “What can I say, Dr. Stone? I care about you and want to ensure your safety.”

  “Why?”

  Barden stared out of the car, and at this point, I counted a dozen different police cars. There was no effort to move us away, but then again, we were far enough from the action that there wouldn’t be. Eventually, I would need to head back into the hospital, and be there for the return of work. I wasn’t about to let John Adams push me out of my place. He had tried already, and thankfully, he had failed.

  “Have I ever told you about my daughter?” he asked softly.

  “Barden, you haven’t ever talked about your family.”

  “I try not to bring them into my line of work. By necessity, the things I do can be dangerous. Dr. Michaels was involved with my son, but that wasn’t intentional.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “I appreciated that she was discreet about it. I adopted him when he was barely more than an infant, a child born to dark mage parents who were captured and taken away by the Mage Council, and I raised him as my own. He began experimenting with things he shouldn’t have, which got him in trouble, and thankfully, Dr. Michaels was able to intervene.”

  “What about your daughter?”

  Barden’s eyes closed. “That was a long time ago. When she was taken from me, there wasn’t anything I could do. I vowed then to do everything in my power to ensure I didn’t lose anyone else in such a way. Every action I take, every bit of power I claim, is done so I don’t lose someone else.”

  “You can’t hold everyone so tightly that you crush them.”

  “No. And I would never want to do that, but at the same time, I want to use everything in my power to ensure those who don’t have any powers are as safe as can be.”

  “I’m starting to develop some power of my own, Barden.”

  “You definitely are. And I am thankful for that. The more you develop, the less likely it is for someone to be able to abuse you. Then again, the more you develop, the bigger the threat you become. The more likely it is you become the target.”