He rubbed my belly and I could feel his smile against my back. "And we won't be getting much sleep in the future. We’ll have to train you on the sleep substitution technique."
I sat up and pulled away. "I'm glad you're thinking about the future. I've given it some thought as well. Logan and I have a plan."
"You and Logan with a plan. Why does that thought terrify me?"
Then he laughed and pulled himself up to sit beside me, the touch of his thigh on mine sweet.
"So, tell me this plan of yours. Is there anything I can do to help?"
"I told Logan I want to rob the witch's vault in the casino. To make them pay for that attack on you, on us."
"But all they'll have in there will be money and gold. You can make gold."
"I will make gold. I'm not going to really rob the vault. The witches will have protections I can't hack, steel and silver wards."
"So why did you tell Logan you want to rob the witches?"
"To explain why I’m going to hand him several hundred pounds of gold and have him convert it to cash. Well, most of it. It's for the pack and our cubs’ future."
Mason rubbed his face and groaned. "This plan is too complicated. I can just give you all the gold you need."
"No! The pack won't respect me if they know my magician mate is bankrolling us. I have to do this through my own efforts."
"So just make the gold and…" His voice trailed off. "Crap. If they knew you could make gold, use magic, they would tear you limb from limb."
He stood and stretched; the muscles of his trim figure made me reach out to stroke his back.
"Do you want to order breakfast? Or get back into bed?"
Two competing desires warred in my head. Seven thirteen and still a lot to do today. I pulled my hand away regretfully.
"Let's order breakfast and discuss this plan. I might need advice on the best way to turn my gold bullion into coins."
He stroked my cheek tenderly. "When will we have time for us?" He had the same concerns as me.
"We'll take time, grab it by the throat, and force it to do what we want." I was thinking of doing things like hiring help, setting up mandatory vacations, things like that.
"Don't talk about changing time. The only man I know who messed with time that way screwed up his life." He ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. "And the lives of his family."
"I want to pursue this, but we don't have time." I laughed at the saying. Talking about time-warping gave me a migraine.
Over room-service breakfast, we discussed our plans. Mason would go back to Hoover Dam for another recharge session, while I worked on converting lead to gold.
"So how are you going to do this?"
"Well, you start with lead, bump it down the periodic table three steps, use the energy from that to bump another element up the table."
"What other element?"
I thought about the table and the energies involved. "It won't be three steps, something more. The energies won't balance unless I raise the copper to a combination of zinc and silv—" I shuddered at the thought of converting anything to silver. Who knew what that would do to my werewolf side? "Okay, no silver allowed. How about up converting iron? I could make it a mix of nickel and copper to absorb the energy." I scribbled on a sheet of paper in that combination of scientific symbols, numbers, and magical glyphs we used to represent spells. "The energies balance out well enough that the excess won't fry my brain."
Mason gave me the ‘you're missing something’ look, and I re-examined my equations. "That's assuming all of my ingredients are isotopically pure. I’ll have to purify them before starting."
Mason looked at my diagrams and calculations and smiled. "I thought you said you hated math. This looks pretty math-intensive to me."
"This isn't math, at least not like the stuff you do. I think of it like working on a recipe. You know, making sure the ingredients are right, adjusting proportions, and cooking for the right length of time. It's easy."
"A remarkably intuitive grasp of magic and transmutation. So, you've got your recipe, your kitchen, and your stove. Where are you going to get your ingredients?"
That stumped me for a minute. "I’ll need several hundred pounds of lead, an equal amount of iron, a smidgen of nickel, and maybe a pound of copper. Where can I get all that?"
Mason was already on his iPad, scrolling through several websites. "Ordering is out; we don't have time to wait for delivery."
He handed the iPad to me. "How about checking this battery recycling center? They should have the lead you need. You can get copper from a Lowe’s outlet, and maybe the iron from a junkyard."
"Okay, this is getting to be a big project." I took a deep breath, "But I want to do it. I’ll have to get a rental truck and get Logan to help."
"How will you explain to Logan what you’re doing with hundreds of pounds of lead and all this other stuff? You don't plan on telling him about transmutation, do you?"
"Oh no. That would be disastrous. Transmutation is our secret." I rubbed my temples as I thought. "My cover story is that you'll be stealing the gold from the vault here." I blew a lock of hair away from my face. "This is getting to be as complicated as one of those heist movies."
"Heist movies?"
"They're really popular. Groups of thieves working out ridiculous plans to steal from casinos. Mom used to love those movies."
I waved the discussion of heist movies aside. "Anyway, I'll tell Logan you need the lead to replace the weight of the gold in the vault, like that scene from the Indiana Jones movie, to keep some kind of scale from sending an alarm. No, you'll tell him. I have a hard time lying to another werewolf. Hell, I have a hard time lying at all."
Mason smiled and stroked my hair, pushing the errant strands behind my ears. "I like the fact that you're not a good liar."
It was late afternoon when Logan dropped me off at the hotel entrance. Our day had included renting a four-wheel-drive SUV, collecting materials from all around the city, buying a set of cheap luggage from a Burlington Coat Factory outlet, and hauling everything back to the hotel.
I popped the rear hatch and pulled the last two suitcases from the SUV, careful not to jerk the handles. I didn’t want them to snap under the weight.
"Alpha, I can haul those up for you," said Logan.
"You got all the other stuff hauled up. This is the last load and they're only about two hundred pounds each. I can handle them. Besides, it's late, and you said you need to scope out a location for our loot."
"Damn magician should haul his own crap around."
"He's getting charged up at Hoover Dam. We can't help him with that, so we get the scutwork. Now go find that spot." I pulled two hundred dollars out of my purse and handed it to him. "On your way back, pick us up a werewolf-sized order of grilled meats from Famous Dave's."
As Logan drove away, I picked up the suitcases and walked through the entrance. No concierge rushed over to help me with the bags. Apparently, the witches who ran the casino and hotel had let the staff know that we were trouble. That was all right—it fit in with my plans.
When the elevator doors opened on the tenth floor, I couldn't help but smile. The two frat boys who had whispered insults at Mason and me two days earlier were standing in front of me.
"Hi!" I said brightly with my widest smile. "Could I ask you big guys a favor? I would really appreciate it if you could help me carry my luggage to my room."
I got the ‘of course, little lady’ smile that I hated, and watched as they each grabbed a suitcase and tried to pull it from the elevator. I stepped between them and looked over my shoulder in concern as I heard them grunt.
"They're kind of heavy. If it's too much, I can ask the girl at the front desk to come up and help."
"No problem, miss, we got this."
"Please, call me Luna. After all, we're floor-mates. You guys here on vacation?" I wiggled my butt as I walked toward my room.
"Uh, yeah. We're here on a school break." I
heard thumping as the heavy suitcases banged against their shins. Two hundred pounds isn't impossible for a healthy man to carry; it's just incredibly awkward.
I was expecting some attempts to chat me up, but all I heard were grunts and thumps. At my door, I waited patiently for the red-faced duo to catch up. Both suitcases thumped to the floor beside me as I swiped my keycard to open the door.
They were trying not to gasp from the effort and had no breath to talk. Then I slipped three fingers under the handle of one bag and lifted it over the threshold as if it weighed nothing. I used it to prop the door open.
"I'm thinking of buying new bags. You know, the ones with wheels to make them easier to move."
I grabbed the second bag and held it one-armed as I gestured. "But these are so light, I really can't see how having wheels would help."
They exchanged a horrified look and backed up slowly.
"I really appreciate your help. It's so nice having big, strong men around. If we see you in the casino later, we'll buy you drinks."
"Glad we could help," muttered the taller man as he backed down the hallway toward the elevator, dragging his friend with him.
An hour of intense preparation completed the setup for my transmutation.
I tilted the bed on its side and propped it up against the wall. I had pushed aside all other furniture to leave room for the salt circle I’d made.
I had over-shopped a bit, doubling the quantities of metals I might need. Better to have too much than too little. Two hundred pounds of lead should be enough to make the number of coins I had promised Logan.
I had carefully placed the metals at the pentagram points marked by candles.
I stripped and put my hair in a ponytail before entering the circle.
In the exact center of the pentagram was a one-ounce gold coin, a Canadian Maple Leaf. It would be my guide to shape my freshly created gold into something Logan's fence would accept.
Facing true north, I slid down into the zen pose Mason had taught me. With a thought, I sealed the circle and quiet descended.
The first step would be to purify the elements. There was a lot of dross in my ingredients, dross that would interrupt the process. No transmutation required, just pure magical work.
Using my preferred visualization method, I looked deeply into the lead. Each atom buzzed and jittered in a dance that represented its composition. Like a choreographer, I directed the heaviest stable isotopes to gather at one end of the ingot. That was slightly more than half the lead. Then I directed the next heaviest isotopes to gather directly behind the first. The third-heaviest moved up to the third position. I left trace isotopes and dross behind, forming cubes that would have driven physicists crazy.
I lost about twenty percent of the lead, between the trace elements and the contaminates in the ingot. Still a good trade-off for getting untraceable ingredients for my experiment.
I did the same for the copper, which only had two stable isotopes, which were easily separated.
The iron was the worst. Iron has a nature that makes it resistant to magic. That's why magical creatures fear it. Still, I could work around that—I encouraged everything but the most stable form of iron to dance to the end of the line.
When all ingredients were cleaned up and prepped, it was time to start the cooking.
I mentally rehearsed the steps required and the energies involved. It would take a lot of energy to force the transmutation.
Wait a minute, can’t the energy used for the first ounce of gold/lead/iron be recovered and used again for the next ounce?
I thought back to when I’d baked bread with my mom—she used the warm kitchen to make the next loaves rise. I could do something similar. Instead of yeast, flour, and heat, I would use isotopically pure lead, iron, and copper mixed with nuclear energy and magic. Maybe go easy on the nuclear energy; a little goes a long way.
I took a deep breath and stopped for a minute. Could this be the origin of the Midas legend? Mason hadn't discussed the details of that runaway spell, but this could do the same.
King Midas hadn't been a werewolf blessed with immunity to magic. I had ways to keep the spell from chain-reacting and converting everything inside the circle to gold.
I plucked a single hair from my head and placed it precisely on the sample coin. Any runaway magic would hit the werewolf hair and dissipate.
Was that enough? It should be, but I decided that extra precautions were in order. I released the circle, stepped outside and grabbed the bag of salt. In just a few minutes I had two more protective circles outside my original circle. Now there were three circles, two cast widdershins and one cast anti-widdershins. With all three circles activated, I started the process.
The first ounce of gold was the hardest magical work I had ever done.
It was like trying to juggle five bowling balls at once. The end of the lead ingot slowly changed color under the spell, lightening from dull gray to pewter to light yellow and finally to the deep amber of pure gold. Then a gold maple leaf coin emerged from the ingot like it was rising from deep inside the metal.
Released from its lead prison, the completed coin dropped an inch, landed on its edge, and rolled over to sit beside the model coin. The quiet thunk as it hit the original coin was the sweetest sound I had heard in months.
And now there was extra energy to push into making the next coin. In a few minutes, gold coins were rolling out of the freshly transmuted lead ingot like they were eager to escape.
Lead, iron, and copper switched places on the periodic table, urged on by my magic and nuclear energy. As I transformed each ingot, the coins were expelled and obediently rolled over to my side. I was very careful not to let any coins roll over the salt circle.
I counted the coins one by one until the count reached the hundreds. Then I just estimated the weight from how high the coins piled up.
I ran out of magical energy before I ran out of lead to transmute, which left one bar of lead. Fearing the effects of running out of energy mid-spell, I slowed the process down incrementally, then stopped.
When all energies were safely dissipated, I dropped the circles and took a deep breath. The position of the moon showed that I had worked for over three hours. And I still needed to clean up.
A tiny tornado of air formed, sweeping the salt circles into its vortex and dropping the salt into the toilet, which I flushed. The dross and unusable metals I dumped into two suitcases and hid in the closet. I returned the bed to its spot against the wall.
Logan texted me. He was on his way back and would be here in about thirty minutes with our dinner.
Thirty minutes to kill. I piled all the coins on the bed, stepped back to the wall, took a jump, and somersaulted to land on my back on the pile of coins. It wasn't a Scrooge McDuck hoard of gold, but it felt so good. Even my inner wolf luxuriated in the feel of pure gold against our skin.
For just a moment, I let greed overtake me. Life would have been very different if I’d had this talent at a younger age. Had we not been poor?
But would it have been better? Would I have met Mason? Would Raymond, my ex-alpha, ever have let me leave the compound?
I scooped all the gold into an empty suitcase and slid it under the bed. After a quick shower, I went down to meet Logan in the lobby.
Logan wasn't alone. To my surprise, Mike was with him. I couldn't resist giving him a hug, which he returned clumsily. It's difficult dealing with regular humans—the spells that keep us hidden make it hard to know how much they can remember.
He looked at me with the befuddled gaze that normal humans used when trying to remember supernatural events. Even though he had helped me escape both Raymond and an Arctic prison designed to contain werewolves, he now looked at me like I was a poorly-remembered high school classmate.
"It's good to see you again, Mike. How have you been?"
"It's good to see you too," he said, hesitating as if searching his memory, finally adding, "Luna. How have you been? Here to do some g
ambling?"
"Oh, no. I never waste money like that. We're here on business. How about you?"
"My last assignment blew up, so they assigned me to work here at Nellis Air Force Base."
"Still in the military. You must like it." The scent of aviation fuel and cordite clung to him.
A disgruntled expression passed over his face. "I'm thinking of getting out. The mission has changed over the years. I'm not sure I fit in with the new system."
Although he couldn't remember the details, Mike had helped save me several times. I took one of my freshly made business cards from my purse.
"Here, Mike, take this card. If you get out and need a job, we could use your talents."
"Moonrise, LLC? What do you do?"
"Import and export. We need people who can travel on short notice."
"I figured I would work security after getting out."
Logan and I shared a glance. Mike was probably very tough for a human, but putting him up against our crowd would quickly end his life.
Logan answered, "Our security team is a tight-knit bunch. There might be openings later, but you would have to start as a courier."
Mike looked disappointed, but he tucked the card away and smiled. "I'll keep you in mind. Logan, thanks for the ride. I'll see you around."
We ate in Logan's room, at his insistence. He said the lingering smell of Mason's magic ruined his appetite.
"So when is the big event?"
"Tonight, if all goes well."
My phone buzzed. Mason was back.
"Okay, Logan, we have a big night planned. Thanks for getting dinner."
"You sure you don't need my help?"
"Certain. We'll see you for breakfast."
Mason was waiting for me in our room. After a hug and a cuddle, we got down to business.
"So let me see all this gold you produced."
I pulled the suitcase from under the bed and popped it open. The gleam of gold tickled my greed. Mason was indifferent. He examined the coins as if reviewing a student's science experiment. I was disappointed until he finished his examination and turned to me with a smile.
Lycan Legacy - 4 - 5 - 6: Princess - Progeny - Paladin: Book 4 - 5 - 6 in the Lycan Legacy Series Page 10
