I concentrated on the location a few hundred feet downriver and then on a spot a dozen or so feet in front of us. I could feel Tess’s growing surprise as she realized where I was setting the portal.
With a soft snap, the spell completed and for a second I felt the enormous energy that was flowing through the portal. I dropped to one knee in a sudden burst of weakness. I had not expected this. Normal portals took almost no energy to open and move through, but this one was sucking the energy from my body at a prodigious rate. I tapped the nearest ley line and a moment later felt energy pouring back into me as Tess shared her stored energy with me. Together we were able to hold the portal open, but as soon as it was stable, I canceled the spell.
“Whew! That was freaky. I’ve never seen a spell affect you like that,” Tess said as she pulled me back to my feet.
I grinned. “I wasn’t expecting the drain. I think I’ll be able to handle it better now that I know what to expect.”
Beast growled something under his breath.
“What was that?” I asked. “If you have a comment, just speak up.”
“You’re messing with great power. Are you sure you want to attempt this?”
Maia screeched and shook her head. “Beast is right. I’ve never seen anything like this before. It looks dangerous.”
“Nonsense,” I said. “Just another application of what Beast just accomplished with the portal that got us here.”
“They aren’t wrong, Rafe,” Tess said. “The energy sucked out of you too fast. I could see age lines appearing on your face in seconds.”
I shrugged. “Cost of doing business. I’m fine now.”
I was good. My energy was returning to normal as Tess and my taps on the ley line replenished the life energy I’d used in forming the portal.
“But will you have time to use it in a fight? It took you at least five seconds to cast that spell. You keep telling me that a Wanderer’s greatest power in a fight comes from the ability to trigger our tattoos in an instance, not five seconds. Will you have enough time to accomplish it?”
I shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out.”
Chapter 21
Raphael
We were back at Joe’s for supper. Even in the dark, his cabin was easy to find. The Shrine of the Sun was well lit at night and was only a few hundred feet farther up the mountain above Joe’s cabin. Tess and I had picked up the makings for spaghetti, and I was watching the pasta boil while Tess finished mixing all of the ingredients for the sauce into the browned hamburger. Joe had put butter and garlic into a large loaf of Italian bread, and the aromas in the cabin were making my mouth water. We had changed out of our leathers as soon as we returned and we were now wearing flannel shirts and Wrangler jeans. Both of us were barefoot.
“Corkscrew?” I asked.
Joe pointed toward a drawer near the refrigerator.
I retrieved the corkscrew and removed the cork from one of the bottles of cabernet, which we’d bought to go with the meal. Joe took out three tumblers and set them on the counter next to me.
I poured equal shares in the glasses, which came so close to emptying the bottle that I finished it off.
By the time the bread was browned, the sauce was ready, and we sat down to eat. It was a good meal. We were nearly done before I popped the cork from the second bottle of wine. Together we cleaned up and then Tess and I took our wine to the porch to view the city lights.
In a couple of minutes, Joe joined us.
We watched the city lights twinkle and talked of exploits and daring do. I filled Joe in on what had happened since I’d last spent time with him and then had to add explanations for things that Tess didn’t understand. Hours passed until I was tired of talking and my wine was gone.
Joe took our glasses and went inside. Tess took the opportunity to slide down the rail to lean against me. For some reason, her action struck me as being filled with eroticism. I felt the warmth of her body as our shoulders moved slowly in unison. When I turned my face to her, she raised her eyes to mine and her lips quivered slightly. I kissed her. A slow, passionate kiss that stretched out time and the front of my jeans.
A throat cleared and we hastily separated. Joe had returned with the same glasses filled with a couple of fingers of what smelled like brandy.
“Thanks, Joe,” Tess said as she took her glass and slid back down the railing to give Joe room between us.
I thanked him too and noticed he’d added a jacket to his flannel shirt.
He caught me looking and shrugged. “You Wanderers may not be bothered by the cold, but my old Ute bones don’t like it as much as they used to.”
“You’re still in good shape, Joe,” Tess said.
“For my age, you mean. No, Tess, I know how old I am. I’m not delusional. I’ll be one hundred and thirty years old come the New Year. I think it’ll be my last one, but don’t let me spoil the night with talk of old age and death. There’s a battle coming. One that will have great opportunities for heroics against overwhelming odds. If you two manage to stop the apocalypse, then magic users across the world will sing your praises for centuries to come.”
I laughed. “Yeah, if anyone notices. We don’t have a history of being noticed except by villains and their ilk. The rest of the magical world would just as well they never heard of us.”
“Don’t exaggerate your legacy, Raphael,” Joe said. “I know that most magic users don’t know much about Wanderers, but the people with real power have heard about some of your exploits and appreciate your service to keeping things safe.”
“Safe? That’s never been my mission,” I said staring out over the city lights.
“That may not have been your mission, but it is the result of your service to Fate. If not for you and your fellow Wanderers the world at large would know much more about what’s really lurking on the other side of the portals.”
“Sometimes I think it might be better if they did know. Perhaps if they had to handle things for themselves, they’d be more appreciative of those who protect them.”
“You don’t mean that, Rafe,” Tess said.
I sipped at my drink and then set the glass on the railing in front of me. “Maybe I do. For millennia, Wanderers kept things that didn’t belong here locked outside of our world. Maybe if some of them slipped past us, then other magic users would spend more time trying to do what Fate charged us to do.”
“Have you ever asked Fate?” Tess asked.
“Ask Fate? You mean ask Verðandi why she has us do the things we do?”
“Yes, exactly, why don’t you just ask her?”
“I have asked something along those lines. She told me that it was not for me to concern myself with. My tasks were to do the job, not to question why I had the job.”
“Sounds a little petty,” Tess said.
“Hah, the Norn sisters petty? I’ll be sure to tell Verðandi you said so. They’re the Norns, Tess; they weave the fate of men and gods in their tapestries and answer to no one, not even Odin.”
“Still, Verðandi seemed nice enough when we last saw her. Perhaps if you asked nicely–” Tess stopped talking when a vibration emanated from her pants.
She slid her cell phone from a back pocket and stared at the display.
I waited to see who was calling. As far as I knew, she’d only given the number to Alex and her Aunt Emily.
Her face tightened, and she held the phone out to me. “It’s a text, and I believe it’s for you.”
Joe and I swapped glances. Joe raised an eyebrow, and I shrugged one shoulder.
“I don’t know anyone who texts,” I said holding out my own hand and taking the phone from Tess.
“Everyone you know probably texts, but this isn’t from someone you know,” Tess added.
I held the phone up, and in a second, the screen pivoted until I was looking at a few lines of text beneath a phone number I didn’t recognize.
The text was straight to the point. “Wanderer, you have until sunrise to
leave town or you’ll be responsible for the deaths of Command Sergeant Major and LtCol Reese-Fallins.”
I met Tess’s gaze. Her eyes were moist, but her face was hard. “They’ve taken my aunts.”
Without another word, she went inside the cabin, leaving the door open for us to follow.
“Who has taken them?” Joe asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t know how they could have identified them as Tess’s aunts. It’s not like anyone even knows she’s a Wanderer.”
“Did they follow you to their house?”
“No chance. I’ve been watching for a tail ever since we were ambushed twice in the last week. I even cast a glamour after the last one that would have hidden us from any magical divination. I just don’t understand how they’re doing it.”
Joe nodded his head thoughtfully. I recognized the trait.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
“I’m thinking that if you were shielded from magical tracking, then maybe someone used something mundane to track you. Have your possessions been out of your control for any length of time?”
“Not recently, not since New Braunfels,” I said.
“But you said they’ve been tracking you since then.”
“Yeah, but a harpy had been following us. Beast took care of it. The next attack didn’t occur for days, and I don’t know how they found us that time either.”
“Perhaps you should check your possessions for a bug?” Joe suggested.
“A bug? Spy stuff? How…” I trailed off. Did they make bugs that would track us across the miles we’d traveled?
“All right, I think I have a spell that will identify things that don’t belong to me. I’ll try it right now,” I said and went inside.
Joe followed, and I heard the door close behind me. The door to the bedroom Tess and I shared was open, and I could see her pulling on her leathers.
“In a hurry?” I called.
“You aren’t?” Tess snapped. “These are my aunts, damn it.”
“They gave us until sunrise. We have time to prepare.”
“Yeah, yeah, plenty of time. Look, we’ll go to their house and find Aunt Ashley’s hairbrush. Her hair was long enough to leave plenty of hair behind. You can cast that tracking spell, and we’ll hunt them down and rescue them,” Tess snapped up the zipper on her jacket and reached for her boots.
“Good plan, Tess. I’ve got something to do first. It won’t take but a few minutes. Bring me our saddlebags.”
She frowned at me, but gathered up our saddlebags in one hand and her boots in her other and joined me in front of Joe’s fireplace.
“What’s so important that you have to do it before we get my Aunts back?”
“Joe offered a suggestion that these people are tracking us through some kind of mundane bug planted on our stuff.”
Tess glanced at Joe and then back at me. She nodded. “Makes sense, you do have blinders on when it comes to modern technology.”
I frowned at her, but she was right. If mundanes were going to keep attacking us, then I was going to have to get up to speed.
Taking my larger grimoire from my saddlebags, I summoned the appropriate spell, and when the pages stopped flipping past, it lay open before me. I read the spell once, noted the pattern and the runes to use and started to speak.
“Hey! Aren’t we doing it together?” Tess interrupted.
“Yes, sorry, my bad. Give me your hand.”
We clasped hands and meshed. I released her hand and held out the grimoire. She took it and at my nod, began to read the spell. Simultaneously, I traced the pattern in the air above our saddlebags. There was a snap of power being released as the spell completed. Our bags glowed for a few seconds and then the glow faded until only one spot on one of my bags still glowed.
“Ah,” Joe commented.
“Looks like you were right, Joe.” I opened the saddlebag, and the glow intensified. A small metal object the size of a quarter was glowing in the bottom of my bag. Without the spell, I wouldn’t have found it without dumping the entire contents of my bags onto the floor.
I pinched it between thumb and index finger and lifted it out.
“So that’s how they’ve been following us,” Tess said.
“I guess so. Now what should I do with it?”
“Can you follow its signal back to whoever put it there?” Tess asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t see how. Besides, I imagine that the Shade who possessed Laura did it. Not many people have had access to my bags.”
“So it was working with this group of mercenaries?”
“One way or another. It could have been working with Rowle, and he could have hired them after she failed to stop us. The tracker may have just been insurance for Rowle. He could have guessed that I wouldn’t suspect him of using a mundane tracker.”
“So then why haven’t they attacked us here?” Tess asked.
“I imagine the signal is blocked by the wards on Joe’s cabin. It’s pretty potent.”
“So, then when we stopped at Emily’s, it showed us inside their ward?”
I shrugged. “They did have that helicopter after us shortly after we arrived. I guess they were tracking us all afternoon and when we stopped, they investigated who lived there.”
“So I put my Aunts in danger,” Tess snarled.
“It’s not your fault. I should have thought of checking for a mundane tracker.” I canceled the spell and dropped the mesh with Tess. “Give me a minute to put my leathers on, and we’ll go. I’ve had about all I’m going to tolerate from these mundanes.”
I tossed the tracker into the fireplace and went to dress.
Chapter 22
Therese
Rafe dressed quietly while I inwardly fumed with myself over getting my Aunts kidnapped. I should have thought of a tracker being in our stuff. We hadn’t used them in the ’Stan, but it had been part of our in-country briefing. Apparently, the bad guys liked to use them.
I checked my crossbow and quarrels while Rafe dressed. I had a baker’s dozen of the deadly little shafts with their strange metal broadheads. Seeing as how the mundanes who’d taken my Aunts hadn’t had much in the way of magic, I’d probably have more use for Rafe’s Colt than the crossbow, but the beautifully sculptured weapon gave me a feeling of power when I held it. I got a similar feeling from the Colt and from the A4 I’d carried in Afghanistan, but the crossbow had power against magic while lead projectiles had very little.
Rafe came out of our room, still zipping up his jacket. He had our saddlebags over his shoulders.
“We let Beast and Maia go for the night. What are we going to do for transportation?” I slung the crossbow over my shoulder in time to catch my saddlebags when he tossed them to me.
“I’ll try my whistle. Beast has good hearing and should be close enough to hear it.”
“And if he isn’t?” Joe asked. “You can borrow my truck.”
“Not necessary, old friend. I have a backup way of communicating an urgent need,” Rafe said.
“You’ve got some kind of psychic link?” I wondered.
Rafe shook his head. “I wish. No, this is more like sending up a flare.”
“Oh, okay.”
Rafe walked to Joe and put his hands on the older man’s shoulders. “Joe, we’ll try to come back before things get ugly. If we don’t, well it was good to see you again old friend.”
“Likewise, you are always welcome, especially when you have a beautiful young lady with you.” Joe glanced my way and winked.
I would have smiled, but my thoughts were on my Aunts.
“Don’t wait up, Joe,” Rafe said. He crossed to the front door and opened it.
Joe and I followed closely. Rafe hesitated on the porch, looked around in the sky, probably for our familiars. He must have had his senses tat active and could have spotted them if they were in line of sight.
After a moment of looking, he pulled the lanyard from beneath his shirt, put
the whistle in his mouth, and blew hard. I didn’t hear a thing, but Joe winced.
“Never did like that dog whistle of yours, Wanderer. Maybe you should get Beast a cellphone.”
“Yeah, because that would be more dependable,” Rafe responded sarcastically.
We waited a full minute while Rafe continued to scan the heavens for our mounts. Finally, he must have decided they were out of range.
“Oh, well, plan B it is,” Rafe said.
He started unraveling the hemp cord from around his left wrist as he walked down the steps. In the center of the short driveway, behind Joe’s old pickup, Rafe loaded the sling with a metal ball and set the sling to spinning vertically at his right side. It began to whistle, as he held onto it longer than usual. He released it, and it soared straight up into the night sky.
Rafe raised his left hand and formed a Cub Scout salute. Even without having my senses augmented by his enhancement spell, I could feel the energy flowing toward the ball from all around us. Rafe raised his right hand, and I felt the breeze, which had been slightly from the east, begin to pick up speed.
I watched his metal ball as it soared higher and higher. It had already begun to glow from the energies he was directing toward it. It appeared to be a small meteor that flew upwards in reverse of logic. Then even its glow was lost against the background of stars.
The tattoo on Rafe’s upraised left hand went dark. He made a fist, and another tattoo began to glow on his left hand. I recognized this one, too, and cast my gaze upwards again in time to see an enormous bolt of lightning flashing across the sky toward where he had flung his little metal ball.
Suddenly, the sky lit up with an incredible blast of light. My unaugmented eyes were blind for several seconds, and when I could see again, I turned to Rafe.
“Wow! I haven’t seen you do that before,” I said.
“It’s not much use except for attracting attention. There is an explosion, but it's mostly a shockwave, full of light and sound and not much else.”
“Sound?” I asked.
The night was sundered by a thunderclap of biblical proportions, and I involuntarily flinched at the deafening boom. When I looked back up at Rafe, he was grinning that stupid grin he always got when he was showing off.
Wanderers 3: Garden of The Gods (The Wanderers) Page 24
