Wanderers 3: Garden of The Gods (The Wanderers)

by Richard Bamberg

  I took a small jar of salt from my jacket and uncorked it. Tossing the salt into the air, I spoke a brief spell that caused the salt crystals to form into an unbroken circle around us. When the salt reached the ground, I cast another spell and a dome of nearly unbreakable power formed over us.

  Inside the circle, I could work without being bothered if there were any other attackers in the area. I bent next to Tess and lifted her by the shoulders. When I had her on her feet, I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her to me. At the same time, I pushed to reestablish our meshing. If I could get into her mind, I might be able to pull her out of her shell.

  Our meshing had become almost automatic in the brief time I’d been training CPL T.E. Sylvan, recently of the U.S. Army, and Therese (Tess to her friends) had learned much faster than I had with my own mentor. Getting her meshed with me this time, was more difficult than our very first time. Minutes passed before I could even sense a reaction to my attempt at meshing. Finally, after nearly ten minutes, I felt her mind loosening, accepting my probing, and then relaxing somewhat as I tried to sooth her troubled psyche.

  Another dozen minutes passed before her arms rose to encircle me and she returned my hug.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She nodded against my cheek and then replied, “I don’t know what happened. One minute we’re fighting those…things and the next I couldn’t control my own body. Was it some kind of spell?”

  I pulled my head back far enough to see her eyes. They were clear blue and quite lovely. I kissed her lightly on the lips. “No, I think it was a reaction to the explosions. You don’t remember?”

  Her head shook once. “No, I do remember my jaw muscles tightening up, but I thought that was just nerves from the impending fight.”

  “I think it was more serious than nerves. We’ll see if the healing spell will help.”

  “Your healing spell can fix PTSD?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. The spell will fix just about anything wrong with you but sometimes has to be directed toward what you want to be healed. So far, I’ve been concentrating on restoring your limbs, but perhaps tonight we’ll see if it will work on mental health.”

  Tess pulled back from me and looked around. “How long was I…out of it?”

  “Not too long,” I said.

  “Did I miss much of the fight?”

  “No, it was over before you…ah, reacted,” I said.

  I took out my bottle, canceled the circle spell, and then summoned the salt back to the bottle. Corking it, I stowed in back in my pocket and studied the area. My enhanced senses detected no sign of life. Body parts and intact bodies littered the riverbed, but the water was too shallow to actual carry off any of the creatures.

  “What now?” Tess asked.

  “Well, normally I try to clean up my messes so someone doesn’t call the National Enquirer with a scoop on big foot’s remains being found.”

  “Say what?”

  I laughed. “Sorry, I missed some body parts once, back in the late seventies I think, and someone found this enormous hairy foot and tried to claim they’d found proof of big foot.”

  “You actually try to keep anyone from finding out about things like this?” Tess asked as she indicated the bodies below us.

  “Most of the time, yes. I don’t think people really want to know what’s out there so I try to clean up after myself.”

  “I can’t see you as a neat freak,” Tess said.

  “Are you implying I’m a slob?”

  She grinned in reply.

  “Humph,” I said.

  “So, how are you going to clean up this mess?” Tess asked, facing the riverbed.

  I waved a hand toward the carnage below. “I’ll open a portal into whatever world they came from and use wind to blow them through it.”

  “Is it that easy?” Tess asked.

  “It depends on whether I can find the portal they opened. If I can’t, then Beast probably can. Speaking of whom.” I pointed toward the north. “There’s the lay-about now.”

  Tess followed my gaze and nodded. “Okay, how about giving me a chance to retrieve the two quarrels I used in the fight.”

  “Certainly, those things are too valuable to lose.”

  “Could you give me a little light?”

  I nodded and created a fairy light above her head. “Keep your wits about you while you’re retrieving them. I think I got them all, but stay alert.”

  Tess held up her left wrist, the one with my shield-spelled watch. Then she picked the crossbow up, slung it over her shoulder, and pulled my Colt from a pocket. “I’ll be careful.”

  I grinned. Despite the PTSD issue, my apprentice was brave and competent. Still, I’d keep my own eyes on her while she looked for those bolts. I couldn’t afford to lose her, after all, it’s not as if good apprentices grow on trees.

  She climbed down the riverbank and made her way toward the line of dead apes and their mounts.

  A breeze ruffled my short hair as Beast landed beside me.

  “What did I miss?” the winged manticore growled–everything a manticore says sounds like they’re growling.

  His sort of human face was slightly higher than mine as he stood next to me. I frowned up at him. “You didn’t hear the fight?”

  He studied me for a moment and then said, “I heard explosions and figured you were practicing with Tess.”

  “Really? Don’t you think we would have done any practicing before we went to sleep?” I asked.

  He shrugged–manticores' shrug by lifting their wings to the horizontal and giving them a little vertical wiggle. It’s also a derisive expression in their culture, and I can never be certain how he means it. “I thought you might have risen early to get some extra practice in before we hit the road.”

  I glanced toward the east and saw the sky had begun to lighten. Astronomical dawn had passed, but it wasn’t light enough for nautical twilight. Sunrise was about an hour away.

  “Okay, I need to clean this mess up. Fly over to the south side of the river and locate the portal these guys used. Open it up and then come back for me.”

  Beast growled out an affirmative and leapt into the air.

  I turned back toward my apprentice and saw that she was struggling to lift the neck of one of the apes’ mounts. I was down a little in energy, but my reserves were slowly coming back up. I expended a little power to levitate down the slope and landed beside her.

  “Having problems?” I asked.

  Tess stood, her gloves green with the blood of the mantis creature. “Yeah, the first one was easy to retrieve, but the shaft broke off when this thing fell. Can I borrow your knife?”

  I pulled out my tantō and passed it hilt first to her. Tess took it and knelt beside the mantis again. The blade cut through the creature’s exoskeleton like it was butter and in a minute Tess pulled the knife out of the wound she’d made and jammed her hand into the beast’s neck. She fished around inside the wound for a few seconds and then pulled the broken shaft of the quarrel and the broadhead free of the wound.

  Tess shook some of the clinging flesh and blood off her gloves. “I guess I’ll have to wash this off in the river. I’ll clean your knife too.”

  I walked with her the few yards to the edge of the water. This time of year the Canadian River was shallow, nothing like the flow it had during spring rains or when the Sangre de Cristo Mountains were shedding their snowpack. Still, there was enough water for Tess to rinse off the broken quarrel broadhead, my knife, and her gloves. Her gloves, like the rest of her leathers, had been spelled to protect them–and by extension, her–from damage. This included spells, fire, impact, and by side effect, even water.

  She stood and passed me the knife. I held it aloft and triggered my fire tat for a moment. Flame washed across the blade, drying it instantly.

  I sheathed it as Beast returned and lit beside us.

  “Did you find the portal?” I asked as he folded his great leathery wings a
gainst his body.

  “Yes,” he growled. “It’s a hundred feet past the top of the riverbank.”

  “Okay, let’s get airborne. I want to be able to see what I’m doing,” I said.

  Beast knelt, and I motioned for Tess to climb aboard. She climbed onto his shoulders, just in front of his bat wings, and I climbed on in front of her. Her hands slid around my waist, and her fingers interlaced just over my belt. As I gripped a handful of Beast’s mane, Tess pulled tight against me, and Beast leapt into the sky.

  Unlike the times when I rode him alone, Beast’s takeoff was almost gentle. He always treated ladies differently than me and enjoyed seeing if he could jar me loose with abrupt launches. It hadn’t worked in years, but he never stopped trying.

  “Mesh with me,” I said. A few seconds later, I felt Tess’s mind joining with mine. When we were fully meshed, I was ready to use my cleanup as another training session.

  Powered by Beast’s wings and his inherent magic, we quickly flew up until we were a couple of hundred feet above the river. From there, I could see the portal Beast had found. It should have closed by now, but for some reason this portal was remaining open. I raised my right arm and triggered my wind tattoo. The branches of the trees we’d camped beneath and the brush along the river began to lean as a funnel formed. When it was strong enough, I directed it down toward the bloody bodies of our enemies. With a little more concentration, I moved the top of the funnel to the portal and held it there. Sweat was beginning to bead up on my forehead as I concentrated on moving the funnel across the riverbed, making sure I didn’t miss a single body. Within a few minutes, the riverbed had been scoured clean of apes, mantises, and vegetation. When the last body disappeared through the portal, I canceled the wind and directed Beast downward.

  He landed beside the portal, but we stayed mounted. I activated a tattoo on my left thigh. This spell not only closed the portal the apes had used but locked it so that it couldn’t be opened again without either myself or someone powerful enough to break my lock. Few beings on Earth could unlock a portal once I had closed and locked it. Unfortunately, Rowle, the renegade Wanderer who had become my archenemy–When did I start referring to him as an archenemy? Geez, I sounded like a comic book hero–was one of them.

  “Okay, Beast, let’s get back to camp,” I said.

  “That was pretty cool,” Tess said as we dropped the meshing and were once more alone in our heads. Her hands had left my waist and were gripping my thighs, close enough to my crotch for me to realize that I probably should have been paying more attention.

  “You’ll be doing similar stuff before long.” I wasn’t kidding her. She had come so far in her training in our week together that I was continually amazed. What had taken me a month or more with my own mentor, Walt, she had accomplished in days. I was guessing it had more to do with how completely we were meshing. Our meshing allowed her to sense more of how a Wanderer’s magic worked, but at the same time, it gave rise to feelings that had led to at least one marvelous bout of passion. The closer the meshing, the more our emotions fed upon the connection. Regardless of my initial wishes to keep everything between us platonic, the intensity of our training and subsequent actions had left me unprepared for how intense our passion would be. Luckily, Alex had come along and relieved me of the trouble of satisfying Tess’s needs.

  Tess' fingers stroked upwards along my thighs, and I found myself once more wanting to forget the platonic part of our relationship.

  Chapter 3

  Therese

  Beast landed back at our campsite between our discarded blankets and my brand new Harley. I gave Rafe’s thighs another squeeze and was tempted to see if he was affected by my touch. But Beast had complained the last time we’d gotten a little frisky while riding on him and out of respect for Rafe’s familiar, I kept my hands to myself.

  Rafe tossed a leg over Beast’s head and slipped to the ground. I copied his action and wasn’t surprised when I felt Rafe’s hands on either side of my ribcage, just below my breasts. I slid down, with his assistance, and landed lightly, close enough that when I inhaled our chests touched. I slipped my arms around him and pulled him tight against me. I tilted my head back and raised my lips, waiting impatiently for his.

  His lips touched mine for the briefest of moments and then he pulled out of my arms.

  I stared at him. Since we’d dropped the meshing, I couldn’t see well in the early morning twilight, but I thought he was frowning.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “We need to get on the road. Someone knows where we are and I don’t want to wait to see what else they might send after us.”

  Damn it, the man could be infuriating. I knew that the meshing and the fight had made him as horny as me, but he hadn’t even tried to quell our emotions as he had when we trained. I had thought that meant he was ready to take a little break and get busy satisfying our basic needs. But here he was acting like my mentor again. It’s not as if he didn’t always act like my mentor, but he didn’t always act like a prude about it.

  Still, he was the boss and I the apprentice. I shook my head to clear it of the memory of his naked body against mine and nodded. “Okay, Boss, what now?”

  He turned away from me and gathered up the two blankets. We had slept between them but had hardly needed the one over us. The temperature must have dropped into the upper thirties, but as Rafe had explained, Wanderers aren’t bothered by temperature swings very much. It’d taken a few days for me to really notice it, but by last night, I was sure I could have slept in the snow without becoming too cold.

  “We’ll continue toward Colorado.”

  “Colorado?” I repeated.

  “Yes, did you forget?” Rafe asked.

  “No, I didn’t forget. At least not that part. I just remembered that my Aunt Emily is stationed in Colorado.”

  “Stationed? As in military?”

  “Yeah, she’s Army. She used to be in the Army Reserve like Mom, but they were both called to active duty. After Mom was killed, Emily decided to stay in uniform. She had been my only visitor at Wilford Hall until you showed up.”

  “Your Dad never came to see you?”

  I shook my head. “Dad and I haven’t talked much since I enlisted. He said that if I wanted to get myself killed like Mom then I was a grown woman, and it was my choice, but he was never happy with the decision.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  My stomach growled in a most unladylike manner, and I realized how hungry I was.

  Rafe laughed. “Okay, always listen to your stomach. There should be restaurants open in Dumas. I could use some breakfast too.”

  He was right there. The healing spell that was still growing me a new foot was sacrificing tissue from my body to construct that foot. I’d woken up hungry as a bear every morning since Rafe had acquired me. Not that I would think to complain, but I’d lost a couple of inches around my waist even though I had been eating everything in sight. The thought of food caused my stomach to growl again.

  Rafe grinned. “Yeah, I thought so. You might want to eat a couple of energy bars before we hit the road.”

  I thought that sounded like a good idea and retrieved a couple of them from my saddlebags before strapping the bags to the back of my Harley Davidson Softail Deluxe. Rafe had bought the Harley for me before we left New Braunfels, Texas. We had ridden all day passing through Abilene, Lubbock, and Amarillo before making camp in this small copse on the north side of the Canadian River between Amarillo and Dumas. I’d never been in this part of the country before, and the beautiful desolation of northwest Texas was impressive. The pain in my ass-cheeks from my first eight-hour bike ride was also impressive. I had only been half joking when I had asked Rafe for a massage, but he’d laughed and said that the healing spell would take care of that better than a massage. He’d been right, because this morning I felt fine, nothing like the rawness that had made my cheeks feel like I’d ridden with sandpaper panties instead of the
nice silk I was wearing.

  I scarfed the energy bars down while Rafe stowed his own saddlebags and the blankets on Beast. He checked the embers of our fire and then did his thing of absorbing energy, quenching the last of the coals.

  I put the empty wrappers into a jacket pocket and slung a leg over my bike. A moment later, Beast transformed from a grizzly-sized manticore into Rafe’s own Harley. His was a 1965 Harley-Davidson Electra-Glide Panhead that he’d been riding since the bike was only a couple of years old. I slipped on my helmet, Rafe insisted I wear one until I could burn my own shield tattoo. I thought he was a little too protective, but he was the boss.

  I raised my head to fasten the chinstraps, and I froze.

  “Holy shit!” I exclaimed without realizing I was even talking.

  High above us, but descending rapidly, was a monstrous winged beast that could only be one thing.

  “Damn,” I heard Rafe say. “I hadn’t expected to see him before we reached Colorado.”

  I heard Beast growling something I didn’t understand.

  The dragon circled us once at a few hundred feet of altitude, and I could see that a man rode on its black shoulders.

  “W-what should I do?” I asked.

  “Stay calm and for God’s sake don’t go for your crossbow or gun. Let me do the talking,” Rafe said.

  A few seconds later, the dragon landed between the highway and us. Dragon, that’s right a fraking dragon. Rafe had told me that Rowle’s familiar was a black dragon. Hearing that was impressive, but seeing the creature was world altering.

  The dragon was massive, maybe fifty feet from tip to tail. Its tail made up at least a third of its length and ended in spines similar to those on Beast’s tail, but much nastier looking. The body was thick, at least ten feet thick at the mid-section and supported by four legs that were as big around as an elephant’s. Except that elephant’s legs were cumbersome, where these legs looked like those of a predator and ended in great claws that could have lifted an elephant. Its neck was nearly as long as its tail, but the neck wasn’t skinny like those Chinese dragons in the comics. This neck was much thicker than my body and looked like the dragon could easily swallow a man whole. Its head was T-Rex like, overly large mouth with teeth the length of my forearm.