Phoenix Blood (Old School Book 1)

by Jenny Schwartz

  “I had other business in the area,” he said briefly. “I researched the region for magic users before I arrived. I knew the minor nexus would have attracted some people.”

  Lou jerked her chin to the south. “Commune of would-be shamans.”

  Marcus didn’t react.

  “Where would you want me to fly you?” she asked.

  “I have a pilot’s license.” He paused. “I can buy the helicopter, if you prefer.”

  “Heck, no.” Lou’s spine snapped straight. “Chatting’s killing time. You can borrow it.”

  “Thanks. We also need maps. Paper ones.”

  Sadie inhaled sharply.

  The dogs’ ears pricked.

  Lou looked from Marcus to her.

  “Sadie’s a finder talent. Where’s the helicopter? I’ll do the preflight check while Sadie locates Nelson and my parents.”

  She had her instructions.

  Marcus got directions and strode off. One of the dogs, the fractionally smaller brown one, loped beside him and out of sight behind the stable block and collection of buildings.

  “Do you need anything beyond the maps?” Lou asked as she and Sadie entered the house.

  “No. Thank you.”

  “Wait in the kitchen.” Lou pointed and vanished down a corridor. The black dog stayed and watched Sadie.

  She debated saying something foolish, like “good dog”, but stayed silent.

  The kitchen was basic. Pine cupboards, an artificial stone counter, a square table and a fridge that judging by its noise, was midway through making ice. None of that mattered. The beauty of the kitchen was its view through the sliding glass door out to the mountains. Sadie sat in the chair nearest the fridge where she could see the view.

  Lou returned with a stack of maps and dropped them on the table in front of Sadie.

  New Mexico, the south west region, national maps. Sadie sorted through them.

  The black dog lay near the back door on the hardwood floor.

  Paul and Winona first, Sadie decided. She opened the New Mexico map, but her talent refused to home in on any location on the map, including Albuquerque. She flexed her fingers. It was possible—probable—that Nelson had warded the site where Marcus’s parents were imprisoned. She concentrated on the magic at her center and was shocked to feel it as stronger, more vibrant.

  The nexus. Marcus had said it was minor, but minor or not, it continued to boost her magic.

  Controlling the extra magic, she directed it into her talent, pushing it to find Paul and Winona past any barriers. She trailed her fingers over the map. Her right hand slid off the paper onto the wood of the tabletop.

  Not in New Mexico.

  She grabbed the national map and unrolled it. Even as she went to smooth it out, her hands drew in, drifting over the map to converge, both index fingers pointing, on a section of the Texas Panhandle, just north of Amarillo. She scrabbled through the maps for one with more detail. Yes, there. By the Canadian River. She stabbed the map with one finger.

  “Got it?” Lou put a mug of coffee on the table near Sadie.

  Marcus slid open the glass door.

  Sadie hadn’t even noticed him standing there.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “Your parents are here, just north of Amarillo.”

  Lou had a laptop open on the counter. “Can you find them on an electronic map or should I print out a detailed view?”

  The nexus had definitely boosted Sadie’s talent. She stood, chair scraping on the wooden floor. She studied the computer screen. “Here.” It was a ranch building of some kind, remote from the main house. A barn. There was cleared space around it. Perhaps there’d been a house there once, but it had been torn down. The barn, being more useful, had been allowed to stand. “I’ve no idea how Nelson found it.”

  “He’s working with at least one other person,” Marcus said absently, leaning in to study the screen once she’d swiveled it to him. “They might know the area.”

  Sadie returned to the table and sipped her coffee. It was hot and strong, almost bitter. It was caffeine to wake you up and keep you working. “I need a photo of Nelson.”

  Marcus looked up from the laptop. “What?”

  “To find him.” She stared back at him, surprised at his evident shock. “I need more than his name.”

  Marcus swore under his breath. He glanced at Lou.

  She held up her free hand, the one not holding a coffee mug. “I don’t keep pictures of every bastard I’ve met. I’d be papering all the walls of the house.”

  “Damn.” He frowned at the laptop. “Nelson won’t have left a photo online. Is there anything else you could use to find him?”

  “Hair, nail clippings, DNA. I need some connection to him.”

  Marcus clenched his hands. Evidently, he had none of those things.

  “Hate,” Lou said. “That’s the connection Nelson has to you and me, Marcus. It’s why I’m helping you. There aren’t many people who can take him down, but you’ve shown you can. Hate.”

  “But how would that…?” Sadie was bewildered, but Lou wasn’t listening to her.

  The older woman whistled her dogs and put them outside. Then she turned and faced Marcus and Sadie’s frowns. “We need to evoke Nelson’s presence,” she said to him. “What he does, what he is, how we feel about him. Presence is as unique as a photo.”

  Marcus nodded.

  Whether he was convinced or desperate enough to try anything, Sadie couldn’t tell. She had her own troubles. “How do I use a presence?”

  “How would I know?” Lou snapped unhelpfully.

  “Just try.” Marcus put a hand on her shoulder and looked at Lou. “Nelson is a sociopath.”

  “He kills for the thrill of it.”

  Sadie took a deep breath and another. She concentrated on the national map, drifting her fingers over it, pulling on the nexus to boost her power. It was more than just not having his photo. A wizard who was also a Stag mercenary would have strong personal wards, ones maintained for years. Even if she’d had an image of him, breaking the repelling power of his ward to find him would have been tough.

  She had to do this. Marcus was counting on her to tell him where his enemy waited.

  “Nelson eats rare steak before he enters the Arena,” Lou said.

  “He has blue eyes that seem to glow red when he’s a werewolf, when the blood lust surges. He smells of wet dog and old blood.”

  “He is evil.” Lou’s voice went scratchy, hoarse. “Evil has its own stench. He is driven to destroy, to return mercy with violence, to revel in suffering. I have felt it. I’ve heard him laugh as a body is carried away.”

  “He will kill my parents. He wants to kill them in front of me.”

  Sadie’s hand flashed up and covered Marcus’s as he gripped her shoulder. “I’ve got him. His presence. Keep talking. It’s the pain he evokes, the disgust and horror.” She could feel the fine tension in the fingers of her right hand that meant her finder talent had locked onto its object.

  Marcus answered her. “I saw him lick a man’s blood off his werewolf claws. I’ve felt those claws in my body, cold and tearing, digging in to kill me.”

  “He killed Cyrus.” Lou’s voice was low and husky. “Killed a good man whose kids’ll grow up without their dad. He would have been there for them.” She cleared her throat. “Nelson would be happy to think of the damage his actions cause as they ripple outward.”

  “New Mexico,” Sadie muttered. “New Mexico.” The compulsion of her finder’s talent was jerky and hesitant. Nelson’s personal ward was fighting it. She wrenched at the power of the nexus, but no more came. She’d have to pull the magic from herself.

  She flattened the New Mexico map in front of her and closed her eyes. In her mind’s vision, a monstrous werewolf, with a human’s gloating, triumphant eyes, leered at her. On the map, her two hands drifted closer.

  Nelson Davies. The man who has hurt Marcus. The monster who wants to kill my lover. Where is
he?

  Her right index finger stabbed the map.

  “Santa Fe,” Marcus said.

  “An ambush for you between Taos and Albuquerque.” Lou put her coffee mug down and reached for the laptop.

  “Santa Fe is good enough for now,” Marcus said. “I needed to know Nelson wasn’t with my parents.” He bent and kissed Sadie, swiftly, too fleetingly. “Thank you.” He strode to the door. “Lou, if you can find an image of Nelson, I’d like to know where Nelson moves to. I’m going to rescue my parents.”

  The magic Sadie had used and pulled from her own veins exhausted her, now. She wanted to go to Marcus, but that would only delay him. “Be careful.” The words were inadequate, and yet, they said everything. Or almost everything. “Come back to me.”

  He stared at her for a searing second, and left.

  The dogs bounded back through the open door.

  Lou looked at Sadie. “I’ll make us fresh coffee.”

  Chapter 15

  The thwack-thwack-thwack of the helicopter faded into the distance, leaving Sadie alone with Lou Dubois. Worse, Marcus would be utterly alone facing who knew how many of Nelson’s allies.

  Sadie leaned back in the kitchen chair. “How much do you know about Stag mercenaries?” Her own knowledge was incomplete. She knew enough to avoid them, and before finding the amulet, had been lucky enough to do so.

  Lou sat down at the table. If she was bothered that her day had been so unexpectedly interrupted or that she was now stuck babysitting Sadie, it didn’t show. Perhaps she was lonely. At any rate, she showed less distance and suspicion than Sadie might have expected from a former commander of the Arena—or perhaps, that was a result of Marcus’s reputation?

  “Stag mercenaries don’t usually fight in the Arena,” Lou said. “Although a few men have done so before joining the Stag. If they win, it burnishes their credentials. They can ask, and get, a higher rank and better-paying jobs.”

  “How many would work with—for—Nelson?”

  Lou ruffled her short gray hair. “There’d be a few. Strength is admired.” But as Sadie sagged, Lou held up a finger. “In normal circumstances. Going against Marcus, kidnapping his parents…you know, I can’t think of any Stag mercenary who’d kidnap Paul Aurelius. With the Senator recently dead, there’ll be attention on the family. The circle of men the Senator worked with, those who ran the Arena, they don’t care about Paul, but they will care that a Stag mercenary went after one of their families.”

  Sadie straightened. The brown dog nudged her arm and she patted it, thinking. “Nelson could be working alone?”

  “I wouldn’t count on him being completely alone, but he doesn’t ordinarily work with a team, and pulling one together on short notice…how long has he been after whatever it is you have?”

  Sadie counted back. “I acquired the object four days ago.” It felt longer! It had been an eventful week. “Nelson came after us yesterday, and if I had to guess, he wasn’t involved before then. From what Marcus has said, I think Nelson simply took the job as an excuse to attack Marcus.”

  “Huh. Then Nelson will have had to put together a team in a hurry. I can see why Marcus wants to exploit that by acting fast. Get in, get his parents, get out.” Lou paused. “Go after Nelson. He has to if his family is to be safe.”

  Sadie pulled the dog’s ears, leaning a bit sideways as it slid comfortably down to lie on the floor beside her chair.

  “You know Marcus is a killer?” Lou watched Sadie’s face. Her expression wasn’t unkind. It was, if anything, faintly sympathetic, as well as curious.

  “I know he’s killed,” Sadie said.

  “Efficiently, but without joy.” Lou collected their empty coffee mugs. She carried them to the sink and rinsed them. When she spoke to Sadie, she stayed on the far side of the counter that divided the cooking area from the table. “Killing people changes a person. Life changes a person.”

  Sadie stopped patting the dog.

  Lou watched her dog get up and sniff noses with its fellow before stretching out in a patch of sunlight on the floor. “I was so young when I went to Vietnam. Young, patriotic. Innocent. War is chaotic. I got caught in a firefight. I didn’t know I had magic before then. Maybe it would never have manifested, but I was terrified and about to die. I’ve been in situations just as bad since then, but that was when I felt most helpless.”

  She gripped the edge of the counter. “I froze the enemy. My magic stretched out and held the enemy. It was only for a few seconds, but that was long enough for the soldiers with me to shoot and kill them. So many dead. Bodies everywhere. Blood…it exploded in arterial spray as my magic released the frozen enemy.” She swallowed, hard. “After that, I couldn’t be a nurse anymore.”

  Sadie tried and failed to imagine the horror, to have held men immobile while they were slaughtered. But if she hadn’t, Lou’s own friends, she herself, would have died.

  Lou had to know that, but the experience had scarred her.

  As similar experiences—the requirement to kill—had scarred Marcus.

  Lou had made her point to Sadie, but she seemed to forget Sadie was there; or else, this was a rarely told story and there was no stopping it, now. “I left the army and bummed around. It was a different era. I hitchhiked and talked with people. Hippies blissed out on enlightenment. Other people. I learned that magic was rare but real, and certain people learned what kind of magic I owned. I went from waiting tables to…other jobs.”

  She let go of the counter and walked around to the table. “Most of the people who enter the Arena have something to prove or they enjoy the fight, the chance to kill in front of an audience, to feel the audience’s approval and roar of blood lust. When Marcus walked into the Arena, I thought he’d be a victim. His grandfather was a bastard. Powerful, cultured, but a terrible human being. By the time Marcus walked out of the Arena that last time, after letting Nelson live, Marcus scared even his grandfather.”

  Sadie stood, facing Lou as an equal. “Marcus is a good man.”

  “He is. That’s why he’s terrifying.” Lou opened the door. “I need to finish grooming my horse. You going to help?”

  Marcus landed the helicopter a few miles from the barn where Sadie said his parents were being held. By now, Nelson would know that whatever ambush he’d laid for Marcus in Santa Fe had failed. He might think Marcus had taken another route to Albuquerque or he might suspect that Marcus didn’t intend to make the Albuquerque meet at all.

  Shifting to griffin form took Marcus a moment’s thought. He’d left his clothes in the helicopter and a ward drawn in the sand around the whole thing.

  Nelson thought the griffin was conjured by someone working with Marcus, and hence, that it was available as a weapon to be used against him. He’d have left instructions to defeat it.

  Even knowing that, the griffin was stealthier and more maneuverable than approaching by helicopter to reconnoiter. And if an opportunity to disable the guards holding his parents presented itself during that reconnaissance, Marcus would take it. His telekinesis worked regardless of the form he held.

  Spring laid a carpet of green over the harsh land of the Panhandle and brought the river near to flooding. Marcus flew along it, using the disruptive power of the running water to mask his approach. He circled high, his eagle vision allowing him to see clearly despite the altitude.

  A white van, showing signs of yesterday’s crash, was parked near the double doors at the front of the ramshackle barn. A single door provided a back exit and there were two high windows on either side. The whole structure was old and worn out. With a thought, Marcus’s telekinesis could lift the roof and fling it aside. Then he could dive in…and terrify his parents out of their minds, if he didn’t get shot first.

  He needed a stealthier option.

  There were no vehicles other than the van, although a second set of tire tracks suggested someone else had been there. Had it been Nelson, before he drove to Santa Fe to attempt an ambush?

  Sadie had onl
y mentioned one man in the van, yesterday.

  Marcus curled his lion paws, claws scratching the air. He needed thermal imaging goggles to count how many people were in the barn. Meantime, the instincts of the griffin form demanded that he dive down and tear to pieces the people who’d dared to threaten his family.

  Not yet.

  There might be another way to calculate how many guarded his parents. Neither Paul nor Winona possessed magic. However, Nelson was likely to have recruited his team from among magic talents. So Marcus concentrated on identifying the magical signatures present in the barn and around it.

  Nelson’s signature was on a ward that encircled the yard. Not a ward as Marcus set them, sunk into the earth. But a ward from a complicated, transportable spell. Good. If Marcus cut the silk thread the ward was linked to, the ward itself would break.

  There was one other signature.

  Marcus soared on an air current, thinking, even as he concentrated on the second and new-to-him signature. What quality did it have? What talent did the person exercising it possess?

  Surveillance. The magical signature had a slight similarity to Sadie’s finder talent, but it was more blurred. The person who owned it was scanning the environment, sending out a pulse of magic to sense for changes in the landscape, for intruders.

  The scan pulsed upward, too, but not as high as Marcus flew. The surveillance mage had a limited range for an unfocused survey, and by the absence of other magical signatures, he was alone.

  Possibly alone. Nelson could have instructed other wizards to hold their magic until or unless they were attacked.

  Marcus banked and dived for the helicopter. He shifted and dressed quickly. He checked that his gun was ready to hand on the passenger’s seat beside him and put the helicopter in the air. After griffin flight, the helicopter was clumsy, but he’d need it to transport his parents—and he wasn’t sure he wanted them or anyone to know that he transformed into a griffin. That was a secret between him and Sadie—and Karma.