by Cherry Adair
This was what pure magic must smell like. Magic wasn’t for her. But here she could feel the resonance of magic pass through her body like the vibration of a tuning fork. Being here felt like being thrown in the ocean when you’d never been in water, and told to swim.
“Go on with you, then,” Lark murmured, giving Sara a little shove between the shoulder blades to get her moving.
The gloomy, hundred-foot-long room could easily have been the plush offices of a prosperous law firm, with its expensive carpeting, wood paneling, groupings of burgundy leather furniture, and, at the far end, an enormous William and Mary walnut desk with high-relief carvings across the front and sides. The only lighting appeared to be a spotlight over the desk that was bright enough to require sunglasses. Even without anyone seated there, it was the perfect focal point.
The designer in her was impressed. The Council Chamber was designed to intimidate. And God, it worked. She felt small and insignificant as she and Jack walked forward, their footsteps muffled by the thick carpet. She had an overwhelming urge to slip her hand into his, which she ruthlessly squashed.
She just wanted to get the questions over with and get back home. Was someone here taking care of Alberto’s injuries? Was he still alive?
She knew Grant’s staff would all be too terrified to go back into the house, let alone the kitchen. If for any reason Grant came home early—Lord, he’d completely freak out. He was one of the few people in her life who even knew wizards existed, and he accepted in a vague way what she was, but he’d be less tolerant when he saw his home torn apart by a wizard run amok.
Another twenty feet or so. Somebody better show up pretty darn soon, her nerves were starting to unravel. The heavy, burgundy velvet drapes covering the twenty-five-foot-tall windows blocked all natural light, making her aware that she hadn’t a clue where in the world they might be. Nerves flipped over and over like little goldfish in her stomach. What did she know about the Council anyway? Zip.
They were walking the longest mile. Shimmer us closer and get this over with. The desperate thought surfaced on its own. No. She did not want to shimmer.
“Keep your cool,” Jack whispered as if he could read her mind. Mind-reading, she knew, was not one of his powers.
“Hot, cold, or tepid,” she shot back under her breath, her attention caught by arcing balls of fire against a deep black background behind the desk. What the hell was that? “I’m none of your business.”
“Hallelujah,” Jack muttered.
“Couldn’t have said it better my”—Sara sucked in a startled breath—“self.” Seven shadowy figures had suddenly materialized on a raised dais behind the desk. The brilliant light just a few feet away cast no illumination on the figures shrouded in darkness. Even though their unexpected arrival had almost given her a freaking heart attack, Sara appreciated the theatrics of it all. She didn’t sense any malevolence from the Council, but the power pulsing in the room made the hair on her arms and the nape of her neck rise. Her heart pounded in a fight-or-flight adrenaline rush.
“Take a seat.” A tall man dressed in a black-and-silver ceremonial robe materialized behind the desk. Like the others’, his face was deeply shadowed. Sara presumed this was Duncan Edge. Two tapestry-covered wingback chairs appeared a dozen feet in front of the antique desk. She and Jack sat down.
Edge might be head of the Wizard Council, but he was just a man, she told herself. A powerful, terrifying man, but a man nevertheless. Right. You just keep telling yourself that, Sara thought nervously. Which annoyed her, because it was rare that anyone intimidated her.
Senses sharpened, she noticed a loose silver thread on Edge’s sleeve, heard the soft, sibilant breathing of the motionless majority, felt the utter stillness in the room before the head of council spoke.
“Slater,” he said by way of greeting, then glanced at her. “Miss Temple, my name is Duncan Edge. We have a serious situation on our hands. The ramifications of what’s happening in South America could very well be cataclysmic.”
Cataclysmic? More theatrics? Sara wondered. But the goose bumps on her arms and the way her heart thudded in fear as the Edge spoke made her think that he wasn’t exaggerating.
“With all due respect,” Sara said, “how exactly do Alberto’s actions translate into something ‘cataclysmic’?”
“In a moment, Miss Temple,” Edge murmured without looking at her. “Start with what happened when you arrived, Slater. Then Miss Temple can take us back to the beginning.”
She didn’t appreciate being dismissed. Yes, she got that this—whatever it was—was serious. But Alberto was her priority. “First, can you tell me if Alberto’s gunshot wounds are being treated?” Sara stressed the words for Jack’s benefit.
A muscle jerked in Jack’s strong jaw. “Maybe I should have let him finish you and his wife off and called it a day.”
“Maybe you should—”
“Santos is recovering from his injuries,” Edge interrupted, his voice tinged with annoyance and a trace of amusement. “He’s in restraints and being monitored.” He looked at Jack. “Slater?”
It took Jack only a few minutes to fill them in on what he knew. He was scientific and succinct. He didn’t explain how he’d come to be there.
The Head of Council indicated it was Sara’s turn. “I appreciate your concern for your friend, Miss Temple. But let me impress upon both of you that this situation has dire and far-reaching consequences. Consequences that far outweigh the life or death of a single wizard, or even six of them. Please proceed.”
Sara’s cheeks flamed at Edge’s reprimand, and her mouth went bone-dry. She’d been smacked on the hand very firmly, but it was fear more than embarrassment that made her heart pound painfully against her rib cage. She had to swallow before she could make herself speak again.
“Alberto started getting sick about a week ago. He said his body ached from the inside out. After a few days, his temperature spiked and he had a very high fever. A cold or the flu, we thought. He got progressively weaker, and the fever didn’t let up.” She paused, trying to tell Edge anything that might be relevant, that could help Alberto now that he was in the Council’s care.
“Carmelita and I are extremely worried about him. Dr. Muller de Canizales, a wizard and a physician, has been coming every day—several times a day, in fact. But he couldn’t find anything specifically wrong. The best he was able to do was treat the symptoms. Alberto refused to see him today because he suddenly felt better. But clearly that didn’t last. We’re all puzzled by his atypical behavior.” Try terrified out of our minds.
“What about his powers?”
Sara frowned at the non sequitur. “His powers? He rarely used them.”
“When last did you, or anyone else, observe Santos using his powers, Miss Temple?”
She bit her lip, trying to remember. “The sicker he became, the less he seemed capable of using them.”
Edge pushed his robe’s cowl off his dark head, exposing his strong, angular face to the merciless light. The silver threads in his robe caught the light like tiny zings of lightning as he moved. “All of them?”
Sara nodded. “Apparently. He collapsed in his kitchen and couldn’t teleport to his casa. Nor could he do simple telekinesis when he was too weak to reach the glass of water at his bedside. We didn’t think much of it. He rarely used magic.”
“His power to call is the ability to walk on nonsolid surfaces, correct?”
She let out a tight breath. “Yes. I saw him do so a couple of years ago.” He’d walked across a swimming pool to retrieve his favorite colander when Carmelita had tossed it there during an argument. He rarely teleported, claimed invisibility nauseated him, and, like herself, preferred living without magic.
It worked for both of them.
“You live together?” Duncan Edge asked her.
Sara glanced at Jack. For a moment she’d thought she felt his hot gaze on her, but he was focused on Edge.
“It’s a large compound. We a
ll live there. Alberto and Carmelita have a small house on the grounds, as do other members of the household staff. We all work for Grant Baltzer, who’s building a string of luxury hotels and spas down the west coast. Grant’s primary staff remain with him when he’s in a place for any length of time.”
“There are a hundred and twenty people living on Mr. Baltzer’s estate in Venezuela,” a man announced from behind Edge. His voice was thin and reedy. He sounded a hundred years old.
“Four wizards and one Half, Silas,” added a woman with a light, silvery voice. “At least, there were.”
“Thank you, Deborah,” the Head of Council murmured dryly. “Anyone else in the compound have the same symptoms as Santos, Miss Temple?”
“Not that I’m aware of. I’m sure I would have been told had this happened to anyone else.” Sara tried to ease the tension in her shoulders without actually fidgeting.
Another Council member spoke, his face shadowed by the black cowl covering his head. “Do you know where he might have gone or who he met on his last days off?”
“Alberto gets dizzy teleporting, and he takes the company helicopter when he absolutely must go into town. But he rarely leaves the estate. His two passions are his wife, Carmelita, and cooking. He prefers staying at the hacienda even on his days off. …” She trailed off, her palms damp. “Is this some sort of wizard pandemic? Do you think it’s something he caught from someone else?”
“He’s the ninth wizard this has happened to in the last three weeks.” Edge paused. “That we know of.”
Her gaze slid up Jack’s long legs past his broad chest to his face. A longing so fierce it hurt rippled through her entire body as she let herself look her fill for just a moment.
What happened to us, Jack? How did we go from so right to so horribly, hideously wrong?
The bright lights showed the lines fanning out around Jack’s eyes. He looked … older. Harder than when she’d last seen him. Sara felt older and a hell of a lot harder since they’d parted too.
“Does this—whatever it is—only affect wizards?” Jack asked intently, rubbing a strong, elegant hand across his stubbled jaw.
In contrast, Duncan Edge’s handsome face was clean-shaven, his hands covered by the long sleeves of his robe. “It appears so, yes,” he told Jack, his demeanor somber. The glinting silver threads in his robe were the only indication that he wasn’t completely motionless.
Jack dropped his hand from his face. “What happened to the other patients?”
“All dead.”
Chapter Four
Oh, my God.” Sara went cold and prickly all over. Alberto’s illness was as deadly as she’d feared. She bit her lip hard to quell the tears stinging beneath her lids.
“What else can you tell us?” Edge glanced from Sara to Jack.
“After several tries, I managed to disarm him. But it was tough,” Jack admitted. “My magic seemed … slow. Hell, it was pretty much useless.”
“Are you saying that you were incapable of using your powers to subdue him?” Edge asked, his eyes dark and intense.
“Not incapable exactly. It was as though, I don’t know—as though my powers were … muted. Leeched.”
“Leeched is exactly how the lack of power felt.” Sara agreed. “I was having just that problem before Jack showed up.”
The Head of Council’s gaze sharpened. “Then how did you get Mr. Santos here?”
“What is this, a trick question?” Jack gave him a puzzled glance. “You teleported us.”
“No, we didn’t. I ask again: How did you get here if your magic didn’t work?”
Sara looked at Jack, then back at Edge. “I know this sounds insane, but I think it happened when I grabbed Jack’s arm to stop him from shooting Alberto. I felt magic pulsing up and down my arm.”
“Yeah,” Jack admitted with reluctance. “So did I.”
“So your magic worked—for both of you—when you touched. When you worked together.”
Jackson glanced at Sara. “I suppose so.”
Edge gave them a steady look, his eyes unreadable. “Excellent. There is a symbiotic connection between you.”
Sara gritted her teeth. “There is no connection.” Not anymore.
“You were in Australia.” Edge didn’t phrase it as a question, but Jack answered anyway.
“Right.”
Sara had never seen Jack disconcerted, and she too waited for the explanation.
“Miss Temple was in San Cristóbal. How did you know she was in peril?”
“I sensed the urgency,” Jack said tightly, again with obvious reluctance.
“The two of you have a telepathic bond, then?”
“No. But I sensed her this time, nevertheless.”
“You’re Lifemates.”
Sara’s jaw ached from gritting her teeth. “Absolutely not.”
“Proven not true,” Jack pointed out tersely.
“You knew when she was in danger. You’re stronger together than apart. You are Lifemates,” Duncan Edge said unequivocally. “And you were both positioned on leylines at the time. Your connection is both unique and uniquely suited to the Council’s needs.”
Sara and Jack stared at the head of the Wizard Council disbelievingly and, against their will, turned to look at each other. Sara didn’t have to be telepathic to know that Jack was thinking exactly what she was: the hell with the Council’s needs; what about their need never to set eyes on each other again?
“How is any of this relevant?” Jack asked too politely. Which meant that he was getting annoyed.
“We believe the Omnivatics are back.”
“The Omnivatics? You’ve got to be kidding.” Sara shot a quick glance at Jack and saw that he was unfazed by the ludicrous suggestion. “The Omnivatics are a myth,” she said in the tone of someone pointing out the obvious. “My mother used to tell me stories about them. Bogeyman scary stories. But that sect of wizards was never real.”
“Historical records suggest they were wiped out thousands of years ago.” Duncan Edge’s tone remained grim. A shiver of foreboding zinged down Sara’s spine. Edge insisting she and Jack were Lifemates was ludicrous, but this line of conversation was scary.
“However,” he continued, “we now believe that the Omnivatics were biding their time. Gathering strength.”
Sara looked from Edge to Jack and back. Every hair on her body stood to attention. The bogeyman was real?
“If this is true”—Jack’s voice was grim, his expression suddenly intent—“then this is a matter for Drakon Stark, your equivalent in the Aequitas Archon, to deal with, not the Wizard Council.” He got to his feet.
“Stark and all eleven other members of the Archon were killed three weeks ago.” Edge raised a hand as someone in the dark behind him started to speak. “Thank you, Lark. And also an undisclosed number of wizards who had formed a task force to look into the situation.”
“The task force consisted of fifty or so Aequitas,” a man interjected out of the darkness. “Ten of them Archon counting Daniel Thai, who served on our council.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Edge?” Jack demanded, his lips a grim line. “You of all people know damn well that’s fucking impossible.”
“One would think.” Edge’s tone was as grim as Jack’s.
Sara’s mouth was dry, her rapid pulse spurred more by their seriousness than by her own knowledge about the governing body of Aequitas.
“However,” Edge told Jack flatly, “it did happen. So far, we’ve managed to keep it under wraps. The Aequitas chambers were breached while in session. They’re all dead, Slater. And I don’t need to remind you that the only faction capable of discovering their exact location, and killing such powerful wizards, is the Omnivatics.”
Jack dropped back into his chair, clearly stunned. “Fifty of the top Aequitas and the entire Archon, dead? Jesus. How? That location was just as impenetrable and concealed as this.”
“It’s being looked into. Nothing we, in this chamb
er, can do about that situation right now. We have to put all our focus on the reappearance of the Omnivatics.”
“They’ve been extinct for thousands of years—” He sucked in a breath. “Apparently not. Why now?” Jack leaned forward, his expression intent. “Why suddenly make an appearance after centuries—shit. Ophidian’s comet.”
“Correct. Because of the impending advent of Ophidian’s comet,” Edge confirmed. He glanced at Sara, who’d been looking from one man to the other as if she were at a tennis match. “The comet passes near the Earth every three hundred thirty-three years.”
Jack cursed under his breath. “I wasn’t paying attention. Didn’t realize it was this soon.”
“And coming fast,” the Head of Council reminded him. “We have just weeks to find the Omnivatics before that comet passes dangerously close to the Earth.”
He swept his hand to one side, and a large screen hovered beside him. “This is Ophidian’s comet.” A bright ball of fire moved through the blackness of the sky on the monitor, seemingly in slow motion. “Its approaching speed is already thirty miles per second.”
“The name Ophidian rings a vague bell,” Sara murmured, eyes glued to the comet. Earth wasn’t shown on the monitor. It seemed pretty far away. “But I don’t remember who or what Ophidian was.”
“A very powerful god, some say supreme. He mated with a goddess named Aenari,” Edge told her. “Their children were born with wizard powers. They’re the ancestors of all wizards, but the fight was between the Aequitas and the Omnivatic factions. Legend has it that for the Omnivatics to rule the earth, three things must happen: each must amass untold power by transferring of the magic of powerful wizards to themselves; they must return to their nest as the comet passes overhead; and they must mate with a female Omnivatic in the crystal cave.”
“Drop a bomb on this crystal cave,” Jack suggested pragmatically.
“Other than that it’s somewhere in the Pyrenees, we have no idea where it is. We can’t destroy three hundred miles of mountains in the hope that we strike the correct cave in the process.”
