Katie snickered. “Your fighting days are over, hotshot. Moira can try again in a few weeks.”
He snickered but didn’t contradict her.
I tried to change the subject. “How long have you two lived in Napa?”
“We don’t really live there,” Katie said. “Were staying with friends who’ve known Gill for decades. The woman is a legendary healer who loves delivering babies. She’ll bring ours into the world soon.”
“A few days afterward,” Gill said, “we’ll move to a house we bought recently on the Sonoma Coast. Actually, if you don’t have anything better to do, you could help us to finalize the move. I don’t expect you’ll try to hit Suarez again for several weeks. He’ll be on guard, right?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “Ian suggested I spent a few weeks recharging my batteries. After the way you two dropped everything to come after me, I’d be happy to fight dragons for you. Sure, I’ll move whatever you need.”
“Just a few odds and ends,” Katie said. “We’ve already shipped most of our things there. Most of all, we’d love to focus on enjoying our new baby instead of worrying about housekeeping.”
The happy way she spoke about her coming ordeal surprised me. Popping a baby out had to be nasty business, but I wasn’t going to kill their joy. “This is going to be an amazing experience for you both. I’m thrilled to help in any way I can.”
We spent the rest of the drive to Napa talking about new beginnings. I could throw myself into that effort, and maybe it would dull some of the pain I felt at failing Dana.
-o-o-o-
Robert de Gaulle Winery, Napa, California
GILL AND KATIE were staying at a sprawling winery a few miles from Napa. The house looked like a French château, complete with turrets and flags flying in the breeze. Katie drove into an underground garage that could handle fifty cars. We took an elevator up to the main level, and it opened out onto a large room covered with glass that was filled with blooming orange and lemon trees.
Gill and Katie had apparently arranged a room for me because when I met Robert de Gaulle, he said, “Brigitte and I are so pleased you can stay with us for a few weeks to help Katie in her lying in.”
“I’m thrilled to be here. You have such a lovely estate. Are you sure you have enough room?”
He chuckled. “We have seventeen bed chambers in the main house alone. You’ll be staying right next to the parents-to-be.”
He showed me a bedroom fit for royalty that included a four-poster bed and a Jacuzzi in the bathroom. One wall was painted with the mural of workers harvesting grapes by hand and crushing them under their bare feet.
I barely had time to unload my luggage before a maid with a French accent told me cocktails were being served in the awards room. She led me to a living room where one wall was covered with trophies and plaques recognizing the vineyard’s wines.
Gill served me a glass of sauvignon blanc. As a slave, I’d known there were two kinds of wines, red and white, and they usually came in jugs or boxes instead of bottles with corks.
Gill introduced me to Robert’s wife, Brigitte. Her black hair was liberally sprinkled with gray, and she wore a simple peasant dress like Katie’s. Brigitte did have a powerful aura, and I felt relief in knowing Katie would get good medical care when she needed it.
One of the windows in the room provided a view of the vineyards with their endless rows of bare grape vines reaching up out of the ground. In the background, the hills were deeply green and covered with evergreens.
January seemed to be a slow time at a vineyard. Robert and Brigitte lounged around like they had all the time in the world to chat with Gill, Katie, and me. I mostly listened, getting a peek into an exotic world I’d known existed but had never seen.
During a break in the conversation, I whispered to Katie, “I’m happy to help you anyway possible. Is there anything I can do now to make you more comfortable?”
She squeezed my hand. “Just relax. We’ve done enough scurrying around for one day. Tomorrow we have a few things you could move to our cliff house.”
For the rest of the afternoon and evening, I tried to enjoy sitting in the lap of luxury for a change. The main thing that kept bothering me was that Dana had to be suffering while I lived so grand. The next time, I needed to be damn sure of success before I exposed her, or anybody else, to the consequences of failure.
-o-o-o-
Monday, January 18th
WHEN DAWN BROKE, I couldn’t relax any longer. The sense that I should be doing something useful had become overwhelming. Although I couldn’t make another attempt to help Dana for weeks, I could start preparing for the next raid.
I washed my face, slipped out of the house, and run at full speed for forty-five minutes. When I returned to the room, I went through a series of calisthenics for another half-hour, then I took a shower so I could be presentable for everyone else.
When I arrived at the dining room for breakfast, I found it already filled with people sitting around and chatting. Servers in white uniforms provided coffee, tea, and fresh juice. Thankfully, Katie had saved me a seat next to her. I didn’t have to try to make conversation with a stranger.
She looked haggard as she ordered an omelet and a side of bacon. After the server left, I whispered, “Is everything okay?”
“Fine, I just had trouble sleeping last night. Brigitte thinks the baby may come sooner than we expected, it’s beginning to drop.”
“You’re going to give birth today?” I asked, not knowing much about the process. My sisters had been born so long ago I hadn’t been involved.
She shook her head. “It could still be a week or two. There’s no way to be sure. With my first daughter, though, my contractions started soon after she dropped.”
The servers brought our meals, and I tried to eat fast. “Sounds like we’d better get the rest of your things moved to your new house. I can be ready to start in five minutes.”
She patted my hand. “Don’t rush; you’ll only give yourself indigestion. Even if the baby comes today, Gill and I will stay here for a few days to make sure everything’s fine.”
That made sense, but I still felt a powerful need to do something useful. “Whatever’s convenient for you.”
She smiled. “Robert’s son, Chas, told me he plans to load his truck in an hour or so. Until then, tell me about your family.”
Again, she’d acted so much like my mom. For a moment, I couldn’t speak. Then I told her about growing up with my sisters in Bakersfield and all the ways my mom had tried to make the best of our horrible situation.
Tears filled Katie’s eyes, but each time I tried to change the subject to something happier, like her family, she led me back to Mom, Dana, and Cara.
-o-o-o-
AFTER KATIE HAD made such an effort to hear my sad tale, I couldn’t wait to show my appreciation by moving their stuff. But nobody else was in the slightest hurry.
Finally, Gill dropped into an empty chair next to me and teased me about how much better I looked, as compared to the morning before.
Right away, I asked, “What stuff do you want Chas and me to move?”
“It’s just a few things we held back when the movers swooped in,” he said. “A couple of months ago, we cleaned out a house I used to own in Brittany. Katie and I want the baby to grow up in the good ol’ USA. We stored everything here at the vineyard in an empty warehouse while we looked for a nice place along the coast. When we found the right house, we shipped most of our stuff there.”
“How much is left here?” I asked.
“A few dozen boxes. I’ve made a list so you’ll know where to put everything, if that’s okay?”
It sounded simple enough for two people. “Of course, it’s okay. We want everything to be perfect for you and your family when you get there. With a new baby, you won’t have time to look though boxes, searching for something you need.”
He patted my arm. “Don’t worry,
nothing really needs to be done today. While you’re there, take some time. Enjoy the view. I have an assistant coming soon, and he’ll be happy to help, too. Just do whatever seems useful, and don’t stress out. Worried people give me the hives.”
He’d figured out I have a Type A personality. Relaxing didn’t come easy. Maybe I was annoying them by worrying. They obviously had their situation under control.
I took a deep breath and asked him about Brittany. Gill had lived there, off and on, since World War II, and he told me several interesting stories about the people there.
Then Chas finally got off his butt at the end of the table. He was a muscular, gray-haired man a few inches shorter than me. Gill introduced me to him.
The guy was a friendly, slow-talking vintner who’d been working this land for his whole life. Time seemed to operate on a different scale here, and I just had to get used to it while they were gracious enough to provide me a place to stay.
-o-o-o-
CHAS AND I headed to the warehouse, and it didn’t take us long to load three dozen boxes onto one of the vineyards flatbed trucks.
Fortunately, he knew exactly where we were going.
Unfortunately, he drove like a maniac as he drove us through rolling hills to the coast. The house was sixty miles from the vineyard, and suddenly, he seemed to be in a huge rush. We tore along narrow and winding back roads, and in many spots the truck took up more than half of the road.
We didn’t encounter much traffic, but when we did, Chas didn’t seem to care about whether the oncoming drivers could pass him. For the first time in my life, I felt carsick. I tried to hint that he should slow down, but he seemed oblivious to my growing nervousness.
All the while, he told me how they harvested and processed grapes. It was an interesting subject, but I couldn’t concentrate on what he said. For the last few miles of the trip, we traveled up State Highway 1. It was a wider road, thank the gods, but the traffic was much heavier. Even worse, the oncoming drivers drove at insane speeds around the many curves. I barely managed to look away from the road long enough to enjoy the spectacular views of beaches and rocky cliffs. I’d never seen such a beautiful coast. Instead, I focused on my efforts on deciding which oncoming vehicles would miss a curve up ahead and plow into us.
I’d grown up far from the ocean. We’d rarely visited it, and our few trips had occurred hundreds of miles south of us. There, the seashore wasn’t nearly as dramatic. In Sonoma County, though, most of shore consisted of rocky headlands towering over the sea. Each time a wave came in to a cliff, it crashed and sent up clouds of foam and mist.
I couldn’t wait to get out of that damned truck and walk along one of the headlands or beaches.
Eventually, Chas turned off the highway onto a private road that led to a seaside ranch. We crossed a green, grassy meadow and headed toward the ocean a mile west of the highway. Gill and Katie would have plenty of privacy instead of living along the busy highway.
Chas used a key fob to open a tall, wrought iron gate, and I noticed with appreciation that this one was much sturdier than the metal gate I’d busted through two days ago. But I didn’t sense any wards.
“Has Gill protected this property?”
Chas shook his head. “Since they’re not living here, it didn’t seem to be worth the effort. None of their belongings here are particularly valuable. The antiques will come when they do.”
I could understand Gill deciding to wait. It would take a lot of magical power to maintain wards around this sprawling ranch, and that power would be mostly wasted until the Carmichael family moved in. And the ranch was surrounded by a six-foot tall fence with sharp spikes at the top of each metal picket. Any burglar would have to be crazy to break in when nothing here was worth stealing.
As we drove onto the property, the ocean appeared again in the distance, although most of it was hidden by a towering fog bank. Between it and the shore, a couple of sailboats bobbed on the swells. That looked like a lot of fun.
We followed the driveway for the better part of a mile before I noticed the house beyond a group of redwood trees. The old, two-story clapboard building was perched near the edge of a headland, off by itself like a lighthouse. That struck me as a little scary, particularly when they were going to have a baby crawling around soon.
Closer in, clumps of old cedars and pines twisted by past winds and storms surrounded the house. Several large garden beds contained shrubs and perennials, mostly dormant in mid-January. Only the evergreens and the lawn were green.
“This place must’ve cost millions,” I said.
“Tens of millions,” Chas said. “He bought five hundred acres.”
“They have their own seaside resort?”
“Complete with a beach only they can access that’s protected by a group of small islands and rocky outcrops a few hundred yards offshore. They keep most of the heavy surf from reaching the beach.”
I could imagine seals and otters out on the islands, and that reminded me of Christina. I needed to call the girl when I got back to the vineyard, just to catch up.
Chas backed his truck up to a four-car garage. As we got out, though, I felt a dark echo from a recent spell.
Before Chas opened the tail gate, I said, “Wait. Something’s wrong.”
“What? You smell smoke?”
“No, someone used an unlocking spell recently to open one of these bays. The sorcerer may still be inside.”
Chas blanched. “Uh, listen, I don’t know anything about magical fighting.”
That didn’t shock me. The guy was basically a farmer. I was much more experienced with the rough side of magic. “How about you let me handle this one?”
“Fine,” he said with a quivering voice. “W-what should I do?”
I took a moment to focus my concentration. That was the big problem with spontaneous fights—no chance to settle my mind. After I’d calmed my magical core, I said, “Stay outside. Call Gill and let him know.”
“There’s no cell signal here.”
Great. “Just stay out here. If I lose, jump in the truck, and haul ass. Then call as soon as you can.”
He looked at me with a pale face and nodded.
“Now, open the garage door.”
He fumbled in his pocket for a remote and clicked it. One of the bay doors opened. I half expected a sorcerer to jump out, but nothing. Slowly, I crept forward. The garage was empty.
Chapter 12
WERE WE ALONE? If someone was still inside the house, they must’ve heard us drive up. That truck made a heck of a racket. Where would he be hiding?
I reminded Chas to stay back and slowly approached the door leading into the house. Right before I opened it, I created a ward around me.
When I pushed the door open, a tall, thin, pale man with shaggy dark-brown hair stood in the kitchen ten feet away. In one hand, he held a staff and said, “I challenge you for magical power.”
That was straightforward enough. When he froze, I closed the door behind me. Chas couldn’t help, and he might get in the way. I had ten seconds to formulate my first spell, so I didn’t rush as I pointed my right index finger at him.
As soon as the buzzing started that signaled the beginning of the fight, I yelled, “Shock, Dunarsh!”
The sorcerer tried to dodge out of the way, but my bolt of red lightning boomed as it blasted from my finger. The bolt crackled around him. He’d created a ward of his own, but it vaporized.
The familiar smell of ozone filled the air.
The guy was taller than me, but weighed about the same. Before he could react to my spell, I charged, and jumped, hitting him the face with a flying front kick. My foot caught him square on the chin, but his head didn’t snap back like I’d expected.
Shit! That was a hard shot. He’s a lot stronger than I thought.
But I wasn’t bailing out, not when Katie and Gill were depending on me. Instead, I used a lunging kick on his stomach. Firm, not fla
bby.
Dammit!
He hit me in the face with his staff, and that made my nose burn like hell. I’d stopped paying attention to my ward. That was stupid.
My eyesight blurred, but he was close enough to hit him without seeing. I put my whole weight into three hard punches but just hit his forearms.
He stepped backwards until he hit the kitchen island. Then he punched me in the face. I partially blocked the blow, but he hammered part of my cheek. This son of a bitch was tough.
I tried to bend him backward over the island and slam his head onto the granite countertop, but he squirmed away.
Then he jammed his left foot into my rib cage, right on the spot where my ribs had been broken two days before. I felt another stabbing pain. The same ribs snapped again.
I couldn’t take a deep breath. Even worse, he was much more powerful than I’d expected. Time to go back and focus on spells.
I tried to reform my ward, to keep him away, but not fast enough. He jammed the end of his staff at my nose right before the barrier formed.
Oh, the gods! My mind dimmed, and I dropped to my knees.
Stay awake at all costs! Keep the ward up, or you’re done.
I shook my head to clear it and concentrated on my mental wall. It was the only thing keeping the bastard from smashing my head.
He roared and raged as he smacked my barrier, but it held.
Safe for the moment—my thoughts cleared. This was no way to fight a battle. I had to give him some payback.
I conjured a fireball while still on my knees and shot it from my right hand. Despite not taking much time to aim, it hit him in the face.
For the first time, he screamed with pain. Even better, his shaggy hair caught on fire, and he dropped his staff.
That’s more like it. Don’t let up now!
Freedom (The Sorcerers' Scourge Book 4) Page 11
