“So stop calling names.”
“Go home, ‘Sela. Let us worry about our own coven.”
“But…”
“Stay out of it.” He turned away from her, too, and she let him go.
She tried Flynn, and got a similar reaction; despondently, she gave up, and detoured to the pet store to get hamster litter so she could clean their cages.
Sam’s eyes were red from crying; mutely, she rang in the litter, and accepted the money Gisela gave her. The healer fled, unable to stand yet another bout with intense grief just now. She went home, found Deanna there asking their parents if she could have her old room back for a while.
This was too much. She closed her bedroom door, and lost herself in playing with her hamsters on the bed while the cat slept on her pillow and completely ignored them.
*
Usually on Thursdays, she went out to Sundark’s house, had supper with them and Jess, and afterwards Jess walked her home on his way to the Brewery.
This Thursday, she stayed in her room, and the only ones who were happy were the cat and the hamsters who were getting more spoiled than usual.
She jumped when someone knocked on her door.
“Yeah?”
Samantha opened the door, closed it behind her, and came to sit on the edge of the bed. One of the hamsters ventured over to investigate.
For a change, Sam looked more determined than depressed.
“This nonsense has gone on long enough. The only way we’re going to find him is to use everything we’ve got. Which means you and I are going to have to go beat Sundark over the head until they behave themselves. Up for it?”
“They won’t listen. I’ve tried.”
“This’ll be both of us. We can’t give up. We’ll make them see.” She stroked a hamster with one finger as it climbed onto her denim-covered leg. “Are you going to make me do this alone?”
Gisela sighed. “No, I’ll come, but I don’t think it’ll do any good.” She got up, and started catching hamsters to return them to the complex of cages and tunnels that covered one corner of her room. Sam helped, and they left the house together, Gisela calling to the first person she saw—her little brother—where she was going.
Sam, interestingly enough, had Coven Winter’s dark-plum van; a good thing, though, once she thought about it, since otherwise Sundark might finish circle before they ever got there.
The front door was unlocked, as it generally was since the wards had been reactivated in the outer walls. They went in, found Sundark in the usual room, all sitting on the carpeted floor; they paused in the doorway, and no one noticed. Under normal circumstances, interrupting a coven circle was unthinkably rude, but these weren’t normal circumstances—and this was, very obviously, not a normal circle.
Kevin and Deanna sat in sullen silence; Bane and Cynthia were quarrelling, interrupting each other so much it was impossible to make out what the problem was. Flynn surveyed them all with a weary expression.
“Do something,” Cynthia demanded of Flynn. “You’re supposed to be leading right now.”
“Why? Face it, no one wants to be here. Kev, I’m sure, would rather be off challenging Rebecca. And Bane would rather be killing something out in the forest. Personally, I think I could be getting farther at home with my cards and my runes and a bowl of water. What about you, Cynthia? Dia? Where would you prefer to be?”
“Anywhere alone,” Deanna said tightly.
“I don’t give a damn about Rebecca,” Kevin said angrily.
“Then where would you like to be?”
“Back in time about two weeks.”
“To hurt Jess all over again?” Cynthia asked.
“Like you would’ve done anything else!”
Gisela flinched. What a mess. Why did they have to act like this, trying to hurt each other?
“All of you be still,” Sam commanded.
They all froze, turning as necessary to track the intrusion.
Samantha strode out of the hall; Gisela followed her. “This is truly pathetic,” Sam scolded. “Dia, I know you went home to Helix. Bryan tells me, Bane, you’re back with your parents, and that according to Lori, Kevin, you’ve been at your grandmother’s for the last week. What exactly is that supposed to accomplish? What is all this fighting supposed to accomplish?”
Gisela wondered why Sam wanted her there, since she seemed to have Sundark’s full attention on her own. Moral support, maybe?
Only silence answered Sam’s demand.
“Do you really want to find Jesse and leave all this behind?”
More silence.
“Yes,” Flynn said. “What did you have in mind?”
“I want full agreement. That it’s irrelevant who did what and whose fault it is and that what matters now is finding Jesse and convincing him to come home.”
“I definitely agree.”
“Me too,” Deanna said unwillingly.
One at a time, grudgingly, so did the others.
Sam nodded curtly. “Remember that. Then right now, we are going to get to work looking for that wolf-cub. Kev, ‘Sela, you two are the best chance we have of getting a fix on him. So help me, we will try every night until we find him.”
The circle shifted, left space for Sam and Gisela.
Ah, so this was why Sam had wanted her along.
It was intensely frustrating, though. Her abilities useful only at immediate range, Gisela could only sit still and be patient while they used the bond between her and Kevin and Jess as a starting point.
They searched for an hour, took a short break, spent another hour hunting. After the third hour, Kevin objected.
“That’s enough for tonight.”
“He’s right,” Cynthia admitted reluctantly. “We’d better call it quits for now.”
Samantha nodded. “Tomorrow night I’ll meet you here at six. And every night until we find him.”
*
Gisela bolted awake in the middle of the night. Heart pounding, she tried to calm herself and sort out where the rush of fear came from.
She heard Deanna’s bed groan, heard her scrambling around. The healer slithered out of bed, and darted down the hall.
“Dia? What is it?”
“I think we’ve got a fix on Jess. Nightmare that caught the whole coven, and Flynn’s cards say it was real. Hang on, Kev’s going to…”
She didn’t even have time to finish the sentence before Kevin’s gate exploded into the room. Deanna sent Gisela across, and followed her. A second gate swirled into sight, and Lori sent Sam and Flynn and Naomi with Gwyn across ahead of her before following—Flynn must have gone to Sam’s to give Kevin an anchor, and found Lori and Naomi there. There was no sign of either Bane or Bryan, though.
“Wolves?” Gisela asked.
“Out for a run,” Naomi said.
“They’re on their way back,” Kevin added, “but they can’t do much anyway and we can’t wait or waste the power right now for another gate. They’ll be here.”
The house had a definite chill at this hour; most grabbed for magesilk blankets to throw over various combinations of day and night clothes, and they settled in a ring close to the woodstove.
All things combined, nightmare and triangular connection and all the power they could muster, gave them just enough that they could gain a focus of sorts after days of coming up empty. And once Flynn had that much to work with, it was a matter of time, and not much of it at that.
“Oh, hells,” Flynn said. “Kev, you need to get there, now, with as much power as you can grab from us fast.”
“Without Bane?” Lori protested. “Kev a hundred miles from Bane…”
“… will still be close to a wolf, if Flynn hits the right spot,” Kevin interrupted, already getting up. “Worst comes to worst, you gate so I can get back here. If Jess is in danger now, then I’m not waiting.”
31
A curious red squirrel nosed around in the underbrush, rattling in the soggy leaves kept snowless by th
e dense evergreens above. Something caught its attention, something out of place, which of course meant that investigation was in order. It sniffed at the pile of soft stuff, and smelled something that wasn’t quite like the scent left in a campground nearby, but wasn’t quite part of the forest either; it smelled something tasty, too, so it began to gnaw at the soft barrier, which yielded delightfully easily.
A large black rock, mostly invisible in the shadows cast by the light of the setting sun, stirred, and divided into two smaller mud-splattered black shapes. One raised its head, snarled, and lunged to its feet, directly after the squirrel.
Indignantly, the squirrel bolted up a tree and sat on a branch to scold the wolf, tail flicking.
Aindry yawned, got up and stretched languorously, while Jaisan padded over to examine the damage. He shifted to human, growling in annoyance.
“You’re breakfast,” he called to the squirrel above them. “You set one paw out of that tree and you are food.”
The squirrel, unimpressed, chattered at him a little longer, then went bounding away through the tree branches.
Aindry changed to human, and came over to untangle her clothes from the pile. “That’s what you get for leaving a bag of trail mix where they can smell it,” she commented.
“How many animals are stupid enough to come that close to two wolves? And it chewed a hole in my backpack!”
“So fix it, just like you fixed the other holes in it. Come on, get dressed and let’s move.” She tossed him his faded, many-times-patched blue jeans, his ragged navy sweatshirt. Still grumbling to himself, he caught them neatly. Her own camo pants were under that, and an equally tattered sweatshirt she thought had once been red but was now a sort of dull pink. Winter coats and boots lay beneath.
Looking more or less human again, they scooped up the two packs that held everything they owned, and made their way back to the highway.
Occasionally, a car drove by, a brief blinding glare of headlights, then the distant glow of tail-lights. Otherwise, the highway was silent, bathed in silvery light by a moon just past full. They didn’t bother trying to hitch a ride; at night, on a mostly deserted stretch of road, who was going to stop and pick up a wild-looking pair like them? They just walked quietly, not talking much. The next town would still be there, whenever they reached it.
She saw Jaisan toying with something in one hand, but didn’t have to ask what. He’d bought the cherry-sized amethyst in a lapidary shop for a dollar a few weeks ago. It wasn’t the first, and she doubted it would be the last; amethysts were simply irresistible to him. He said they gave his luck an extra boost, but that wasn’t what she figured the attraction was. She had to get his mind back on the present; left too long to brood, he’d slip back into that frightening depression.
“Jais? How are we doing for money?”
“Hm? Oh. We’ve got the twenty that guy gave you a few nights ago for fixing his car, and some spare change.”
“Maybe we can find a bar between here and Falias that won’t ask for ID,” she suggested. “Complete with the usual fool who, in all his macho confidence, just knows I can’t possibly drink him under the table.”
That got her a quick smile. “Maybe so,” he agreed. “Or maybe something else will come up. Even if nothing does, at least we won’t be wandering into Irminsul as broke as usual. I don’t care how good an actual meal tastes, I hate begging for it.” His expression turned distant, wistful. “Maybe, one of these days, we’ll find him…”
No need to ask who he meant by “him”; she heard the prayer at least once a day.
“We’ll find him,” Aindry assured him, as she always did. “Demon-luck is weird stuff, it might take us a while, but we’ll find him. And you know Jess. One of these days, we’ll come around a corner and he’ll be there. Probably asking what took us so long.”
“Maybe.” He shook himself out of that mood, back into the here-and-now. “Wonder how everything’s going in Irminsul. Should be interesting to find out what we’ve missed since we were through Endor.”
Aindry hugged her brother with one arm. “Just think, another day or two, and we can have a warm bed, and hot showers, and real food, something other than fresh-killed and junk food. Hey, I think I see lights up ahead. Look.”
Jaisan looked. “I think you’re right.”
Quiet again. Aindry relaxed. Jaisan would be too busy thinking of ways to part fools and money, he’d be all right now. For another night, at least. It was growing harder all the time to keep him out of the melancholy, though. What was going to happen when she could no longer help?
I wish I still believed in something I could pray to, that Jaisan’s right and Jess is still alive, and that we’ll find him before Jais goes too deep for me to reach him. I don’t even want to think what being apart is doing to Jess, too…
The lights proved to belong to a village of reasonable size. They scouted around it, and found it generally average. There were, in fact, three restaurants, and one advertised a bar on the sign.
“Still too early,” Aindry said; the clock on the bank said it was only a little past nine. They’d be more likely to find the kind of sucker they wanted more towards midnight.
Jaisan nodded, counting through a handful of coins. “What’ve you got?”
She turned up two tens, a toonie, a loonie, three quarters, two dimes, and a few nickels and pennies.
“If we use the change, we can get fries and a drink to share at one of the other restaurants, and we’ll have twenty dollars to bet,” Jaisan suggested.
“Sounds good.”
*
Morning found them some distance farther along the highway, with forty dollars between them, thanks to a farmer who couldn’t believe that a slender girl would be able to out-drink him, and his friends who had been more than confident about making bets with Jaisan.
They left the road, wandered into the woods, and found a comfortable-looking place to strip and shift to wolf. Together they hunted a porcupine, enough meat to give them both a heavy meal, then they returned to where they’d left their belongings and curled up into a single heap of black fur to sleep the day away.
32
Shaine prowled the streets, all senses alert while his mind mulled over possible sources of money for rent. His luck was no longer as good as it had once been. He knew why: his lack of purpose in life without Jesse to watch over was eroding the carefully-erected self-control that made it possible for him to function in what was, to him, an alien environment. If Jess only knew what it had cost him, to provoke that fight to drive Jess away to Haven to stay…
Any cost was worth it. Jesse was there and had the life he deserved, finally. However lonely that left Shaine. There seemed little point now, no more reason to try.
Yet he continued to fight for survival.
A well-dressed man of about forty caught his eye. Shaine contemplated walking up to him and asking for money, backing it with just enough charm to make it sound like a perfectly reasonable request… he’d gotten anywhere from ten dollars to fifty by doing that on other occasions. He took a few steps in that direction, planning out not only words but inflections and tone as he moved.
A familiar sensation tingled up Shaine’s spine.
Suddenly losing interest in money, he left the area swiftly, let himself disappear into the darkness of a back alley. What was going on? Jesse was supposed to be in Haven!
It took time, too much time. He couldn’t track Jesse properly, there was something interfering, making him lose his focus repeatedly. His frustration increased, held in check only by firm self-discipline; it was taking so long…
The feeling of the interference was familiar, nagging at him. Something beyond the fact that Jesse was full-healed and aware of himself now.
He found a name for it, abruptly, and that name was elvenmage.
He all but stumbled across Jesse with no warning. Jesse, in a back alley, huddled in a corner, eyes closed, breathing alarmingly fast and shallow.
Jesse
, with an elf coming unhurriedly closer.
With no hesitation, Shaine stepped between.
“Get out of my way,” the elf commanded.
Shaine folded his arms across his chest, feet spread for balance. “No.”
The elf blinked in surprise. “What? I told you…”
With a powerful magical suggestion behind it, at that. “I heard you. I’m not moving. Leave him alone.”
“I promise you, I’m not someone you want to mess with.” Light shimmered around the elf, blurring details, making it hard to look at him directly; Shaine focused a little to one side. Who needed to actually see, anyway?
“I’m supposed to be impressed? Go ahead, take your best shot, elf.”
The light gathered around the mage’s hand, and he threw it.
Shaine held quite still, forcing himself to stay calm, but only with difficulty. Gazing at the ball of fire intently, he called the moisture of the air around it tightly, suffocating it and dampening it. Before it touched him, it vanished.
“That was your best shot?”
The elvenmage backed off a pace, warily, the halo of light fading away to only a faint outline. Shaine grinned to himself. Yes, the elf would be uneasy: to all appearances, it was an entirely ungifted human facing him so coolly. No mage survived long if he were foolhardy enough to challenge something he had no way to judge.
Cautiously, the elf gestured, and coloured light swirled around Shaine, coalescing into a dome-shaped cage.
Shaine shrugged, offhandedly. “Yeah, so? What next?”
To judge by the elvenmage’s growing annoyance, he was used to his theatrics provoking more of a reaction. Another gesture, and the cage began to constrict.
Shaine sighed, and closed his eyes briefly, reaching inside. Using anything but the most basic of his gifts was hard, after so long and after having locked everything down as ruthlessly and absolutely as possible. He could do it, though, he just had to find the place inside where the magic came from, and…
The elvenmage jumped backwards, alarmed, as the light-cage exploded outwards like shattering glass. Shaine dropped to a crouch, one arm up to protect himself from the shower. The elvenmage threw up a shield of fire around himself, just long enough for the deadly rain to pass.
Black Wolf Page 26
