“Something’s certainly trying to get through to you,” Kevin observed. “What would you like to try first? Your cards?” It was a safe bet that Flynn had his cards somewhere on his person; they were rarely out of his reach.
Flynn nodded, brought them out of somewhere, shuffled them, and handed them to Bryan. “Pick one, then give them to Cynthi.”
When they finished, there were eight cards chosen. Flynn took them, kept them in order, and started laying them face up in a matching circle before him on the carpet.
A wolf in silhouette, howling at the full moon. A skull. A simple pentagram of five lines in a circle, black on white. A grinning gargoyle, its hide a muddy brown-green, crouched with wings spread and claws extended. A tangle of thorny vines and bright roses. An androgynous elf standing in the midst of a rainbow halo of light, hands raised. A pair of crossed swords. A serpent coiled in an infinity symbol.
“Oh, hell,” Flynn breathed. “We’ve got lack of hope, magic, a predator involved, protection from a threat, conflict… Generally, kids, someone is in deep trouble and needs help.” He gazed at the layout for a moment, his eyes only half focused. “And y’know, I suspect that it’s probably Jesse. We haven’t seen him in a couple of months, and he hasn’t even phoned in almost three weeks, but there’s still enough of a connection there that it would make sense for me to pick up on serious danger—say, a predator. And that unfinished business card I keep getting whenever I try readings on him is in there, and the Wolf with it.”
“Well, what do we do?” Bane asked impatiently. Kevin doubted Bane cared about Jesse’s wellbeing specifically, but protective behaviour came naturally to the wolves, and he suspected Bane had classified Jess as Kevin’s pet project. Besides, a predator stalking a wolf, even one unaware and possibly permanently unable to change, would feel too much like an intolerable insult to wolves in general.
“I think we need a bit more info on the current situation before we go charging off to the rescue.” Flynn gathered his cards together, but kept them cradled loosely in his hands as he closed his eyes, sat up straighter, and slowed his breathing. Kevin watched the sparkles accelerate into a dazzling display of rainbow fireworks as Flynn’s concentration deepened, swirling into the currents of power linking the circle and using that power to spread outside in a broad misty stream, towards the south.
The others waited patiently. Kevin and Lori were at a distinct disadvantage, with neither sunlight nor moonlight available, not even any reason earlier in the day to collect and store as much as possible. The witches, and especially Naomi, compensated for it, feeding power into the common pool, where the mages could monitor the currents and Deanna, simply by being Deanna, kept it steady and stable. The wolves stayed alert, ready for their chance to act when or if that came.
Flynn’s violet-grey eyes opened, but they were fixed on something far away.
“Oh no… that’s definitely a predator, and it’s definitely stalking Jesse…”
“What can we do?” Kevin demanded.
“Working on it,” Flynn said distantly. “Right now, put all the power you can behind wishing him luck.”
*
Jesse scanned the street and the people moving about in the glow of the streetlights, sighed, and leaned back against the wall. By the clock on the church tower, it was past eight-thirty, Shaine was supposed to meet him here ages ago. He could be late for any of a number of reasons; Jess just hoped it wasn’t trouble, and that he wouldn’t be much longer.
“Hey, there.” A low voice, a man’s. Jesse looked towards it—and froze. There was nothing visible to mark him, just a generally average brown-haired man of middle years in a sport jacket and blue jeans. Even past the city’s background of odours, the stranger was close enough for Jesse to pick up his scent, and something about it was just not right, though it was nothing he could put a name to. Every instinct screamed Danger! at him and his skin crawled at the thought of those hands touching him.
“Yeah?” he said curtly.
“Up for a good time?”
“Nah. Just hangin’ around waiting for a friend.”
“I could be a friend.”
“A particular friend, thanks.” He left the corner, and moved down half a block. That should take care of it.
He was followed.
“I don’t like being turned down,” the man said, menace in the softness of his voice.
“That’s your problem, not mine.” He moved again. Not too uncommon, this problem; his appearance was a mixed blessing, and a definite curse in a situation like this. No one seemed to believe that five-foot-five and one-twenty-five pounds of good-looking teenager could be any danger. Fighting was best avoided, since it led to trouble.
The little voice in the back of his mind urging him to stand and fight, he dismissed as some sort of death-wish, and a particularly stupid one at that.
The stranger followed again.
“Would you get off my fucking case?” Jesse snapped. “Not interested.” He evaded an overly familiar hand, decided to give up and clear out.
The man kept an even distance of about twenty feet between them, down the street.
Okay, other methods. Jesse’s first rule: never look like you were running, someone would usually assume you were guilty, just on principle. Second rule: to lose someone, find people.
He found a store, one of a half-dozen close together, ducked inside, and made his way to the back where he couldn’t be seen from the door. Height became an advantage: he effectively disappeared behind a tall magazine rack. Just for the sake of looking like he had a reason to be there, he picked up a magazine at random to glance through. Nothing he saw really registered; nervously, he replaced it on the rack, and wandered towards the front of the store. On a hunch, he glanced back, and his guts tied themselves into tight knots. The same man. Just reaching the magazine rack now.
Lucky. Jesse would’ve been right there waiting for him.
How in hell was he going to get out of this mess?
Fight him, whispered that little voice again, more urgently. It was no less moronic an idea now than it had been the last time he’d dismissed it.
He passed a driveway between two buildings, the taller of which he knew had apartments on the upper floors, and backtracked quickly, praying. A handy fire escape… yes! Agility was a bonus here; there was a large garbage bin close enough. All he had to do, tricky though it was in the poor light, was balance on the edge of the bin and reach over to grab the ladder. It came down with a groan, and he scrambled up and jerked it up after him. He was at the third story of five when his pursuer reached the bin. He looked up; Jesse looked down, frozen by sudden fear.
Watch him be an acrobat or something.
But he didn’t even try to get up the fire escape; he turned and left in the direction of the street.
Jesse breathed a silent prayer of thanks to whoever was watching out for him, and finished the climb to the roof. With any luck there’d be another way down, yes, a fire escape on the opposite side. He climbed down into a different space, a cramped narrow parking lot, and looked around in case he’d been anticipated. All was quiet. He took a deep breath to calm himself, relieved.
Someone reached out of deeper shadows and grabbed his arm; another hand traced a line down his spine.
Jesse wrenched away and bolted. Being assumed guilty had just become secondary to being caught. Anyone so persistent had to have some way of making Jesse come with him, and he’d heard horror stories from more experienced acquaintances about some of those ways. After a few blocks he stopped to catch his breath, and glanced back. No sign.
Good. Should he circle back to where Shaine would be waiting for him, or go to ground somewhere for a while, just in case?
“Have you ever heard the expression, the thrill of the chase?”
Leaning casually against a pole, almost directly in his path, the same man gave him a smile that showed too many very white teeth.
“How the fuck…” Jesse didn’t bother
to finish the thought; heart pounding, he spun and fled back the way he’d come. A glance over his shoulder without stopping, narrowly avoiding running into a woman coming the other way, showed that man following at a sedate pace.
He’s a Bad Thing, insisted the little voice inside. Dangerous to you, dangerous to everyone. Stop running and fight!
Against someone who does impossible shit? Oh, just shut UP and stop distracting me!
*
“Oh, damn,” Flynn said, sending a ripple through the intense concentration on willing fortune to work in Jesse’s favour. “That’s one of the higher ones. It’s playing mind-games with him right now.”
Bane growled softly, and Bryan tensed visibly. Kevin and Lori, who had too much experience with occasional predators deciding that they were tempting enough to be worth the risks, winced in unison.
“Try to lure it away from him and to here?” Naomi suggested. “That would be simpler than a gate there, and would need less of a focus and less power. Could Jesse’s nerves take that, do you think?”
“I doubt Jess could survive that, let alone avoid further nerve damage,” Cynthia said with a sigh. “Otherwise, that would be worth a try.”
“If Jess could handle that, he probably wouldn’t need help with a predator,” Deanna agreed ruefully.
“Can you get me a clear fix?” Kevin asked.
“I’m trying,” Flynn said. “There’s a lot of loss over this distance.”
Naomi nodded. “All right. Then let’s see how much power we can gather up for you to use, hm?” Kevin felt her dig deeper, felt a surge in the flow coming directly from the earth below them; Lori, more used to her coven-mate, caught and channelled it neatly into the shared currents with scarcely a perceptible wave. Kevin gathered together as much as he could from the collected pool, grateful that he wasn’t going to have to build a gate simply from his own reserves.
Silence, while seconds ticked into minutes, and the connection between Flynn and Jesse grew narrower and more dense.
*
Jesse zigzagged along the busiest routes available, figuring it would be harder for anyone to force anything with enough other people around. He needed to loop back around to where this started, and see if Shaine were there yet; with any luck, he not only would have arrived by now, but wouldn’t assume Jesse wasn’t coming and leave. While people tended not to find Jesse at all intimidating, the same couldn’t be said about Shaine, and Jesse knew of nothing that had ever thrown him off-stride.
If he could just get there. He saw that same man again, in front of him, this time leaning against a parking meter, watching him with that smile, and detoured without slowing to cut through an unfortunately quiet walkway between two old buildings. His pursuer was somehow, impossibly, on the other side as well, blocking his exit. Jesse doubled back, hit the main street, and made it nearly back to where this had started before seeing him again—this time, stepping apparently out of thin air directly in front of Jesse, so close that Jesse stumbled to avoid running into him. He darted across the street, ignoring the honking horns, but kept going the same direction.
How the fuck did he do that?
How the fuck do I get away from someone who can do that?
Adrenaline was only going to go so far; he was already out of breath, heart thumping painfully hard. This enemy was simply going to wear him down and pick him off at will when he could no longer run.
But how could he fight back? Could Shaine help against this threat, anyway?
That annoying little voice inside told him that no, Shaine was no better able to fight this battle than anyone else in the city was. Except Jesse himself.
Which should he do? Get into the middle of a crowd and hope that would protect him long enough to catch his breath and think of something? But if his enemy could get close to him, extra bodies around him would be no safety, and that annoying voice yammered that it would put more people at risk.
An ambush, then? Get behind the businesses into the shadows, find anything he could use as a weapon, even if it was just a glass bottle?
It was worth a try. Continuing to run wasn’t an option.
He spotted a driveway that he knew linked to the space behind a shoe store and a clothing store and a small drug store, and veered down it. Sawdust-scent, chemical-scent, metal-tang, someone had been doing work, maybe on one of the apartments above the businesses. That might be promising for finding something he could use. He slowed to a stumbling walk, headed for a more-or-less neat stack of what might be lumber or plumbing or both against one wall, near a back door.
This time, the hand groped his ass, and he had the eerie feeling that he was feeling skin-on-skin with no insulation by the denim that should be between.
He spun around with his full weight behind his right fist, a response too instinctive even to allow time to grab his keys to add to the impact.
His tormentor, with no apparent effort, no reaction at all to the force behind it, seized hold of Jesse’s right hand in his own and squeezed. Jesse was sure he felt a joint pop, thought he cried out, but the pain was so bad it all blurred together. He felt pressure, the pain increasing as the other twisted his hand backwards, and his legs buckled without conscious thought; he barely registered the sensation of his knees striking the pavement, with the whole world a white blur centred on his trapped hand.
*
“C’mon, c’mon,” Flynn muttered. “We’re running out of time, here… I’m so close but so’s the predator.”
“Anchor?” Kevin prompted, knowing very well that it was useless to ask and Flynn was already doing his best. “I’ll drag him back here through it if I have to.”
“Not necessary,” Bane said, standing up and stretching. As often as they could get away with it, wolves wore magesilks, which meant he didn’t even need to waste time taking off clothes. Bryan followed suit only a heartbeat later, always right behind his brother and pack leader.
Kevin stood up, too, and felt Lori reach out to rebalance the power currents to accommodate motion. Whether the circle would hold across long distance was distinctly uncertain; he took what he could, while he could, just in case he lost connection. At least the combination of coven-bonds and Lori’s presence provided a sort of insurance: she could create a gate to get him and the wolves back here if necessary, though using another mage’s gate always felt a bit uncomfortable.
“You’re safer here,” Bane objected. “We’ll have to protect you, too.”
“I’m coming,” Kevin said flatly.
“I think Kev needs to be there,” Flynn said. “He didn’t pull the mage card just to gate you two there and back.”
Bane sighed, shrugged, and his body began to blur around the edges, turning all over the dark brown of semi-sweet chocolate. In seconds, a huge shaggy wolf shook himself, and looked expectantly at Flynn and Kevin.
Bryan, in wolf-form, was a little smaller, more the colour of milk chocolate than Bane’s darker fur. Together, they were an intimidating sight.
“Hold on,” Flynn said distantly. “Almost got it… there! Here, take it.” Kevin knew without being told, as the sparkling stream snapped itself tightly together into a cord that stretched off towards the south. Kevin reached along it, and found the other end. Clear and precise, more than enough so for him to build a gate safely and with minimal effort. Well, as minimal as effort could be across that much distance.
“Be careful,” Naomi said softly.
“Always.” Kevin gestured with both hands; a bright gate swirled into being, woven of moonlight and will. The interior cleared, leaving only the frame and a flimsy curtain of coloured light.
“You’ve got it,” Flynn said.
Bane darted through, Bryan on his heels; Kevin was right behind both, and as he stepped through, the gate vanished.
*
Patrick Lucian raised his head, all senses alert, straining to discover what it was that had just caught his attention. He spotted the brilliant glow of an elvenmage’s power, and a strong
one at that, fading in bright ripples. And now he could sense, faintly, the presence of another mage where a moment before there had been none.
Now that’s interesting.
He abandoned the remains of his luxurious supper, cloaked himself in illusion that changed his sun-tawny hair dark and his fair skin to a deep brown, and simply walked out of the restaurant without stopping to pay. Outside, he released the illusion, paused briefly to orient himself, and started to walk in the direction of the shimmer of magic, toying with speculations.
*
Oh my god, I’m going to pass out, don’t do that, DON’T!
As though that would make Jesse significantly more helpless than he was right now, with the pressure on his hand making his back arch as his body struggled to find some kind of relief.
His tormentor spat something that sounded like a curse, though it was unfamiliar, and suddenly Jesse’s trapped hand was free. He scrambled backwards fast, not caring what he hit, his vision still full of red and black starbursts.
“Damn those wolves,” the stranger snarled. He brushed past Jesse as though he were of no further importance at all. Not in the direction of the street, but deeper into the back spaces, where there was another small access area and a driveway out the other side.
Sobbing for breath, his damaged hand cradled close to his body, Jesse staggered to his feet.
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