Mike looked at me and I shook my head. She seemed to be speaking to Mike as if he was the magician—but why? To keep my secret from Ariel, or for some unfathomable reason related to her ‘rules’?
Jeannie smiled at Mike and made her final offer. Her voice dropped into a seductive whisper. “You could have the woman of your dreams all to yourself. Start your family. Lead a mighty army against the forces of darkness.”
“As if you aren’t part of the forces of darkness,” scoffed Mike. “Soulless shrew. Get thee behind me, Satan!”
Jeannie pulled back as if slapped. “Soulless? Don’t you know it’s not nice to point out a lady’s shortcomings?”
“She has no soul?” I asked.
Mike shook his head. “No, just like that demon Marcus.”
“I’m not a demon! Demons don’t follow the rules.”
“Not a demon, no,” agreed Mike. “But without a soul, no one can trust you.”
“Souls aren’t important,” said Jeannie with a wave of her hand. “Some people have more than they need. Like you werewolves, greedily keeping two souls in one body. Some of us got shortchanged. Eternal life isn’t fair.” Jeannie glanced at Ariel. “Anyway, having a soul—or two—doesn’t ensure trustworthiness.”
Jeannie then smiled at Ariel. “How about you? Just think, one little wish. Your country could be free from all enemies. We could get rid of that nuclear facility that’s just over the border in Iran, the one you don’t know about.”
She leaned close and licked her lips seductively. “I could bring your pack of lovers back to life. Gosh, I could even give you the ability to transform whomever you wish into a werewolf, without that ninety-nine percent fatality rate.”
“I wish—” Ariel began, only to be cut off by my backhand blow. It sent her flying and her head smashed against the crystal wall. She slumped to the floor, unconscious.
I glared at Mike and Jeannie. “We will not be making any deals with the evil genie.” I shuddered at the thought of how a supremely powerful entity could twist even the most well-meaning wish.
“If you’re so powerful,” I said, waving around at the sere desert outside, “why isn’t this entire country a garden? Why is Ariel’s country still in existence? Surely one of your former master’s first wishes would be to eliminate his country’s enemies?”
“Rules,” spat out Jeannie. “My former master likes the desert. As for Ariel’s little country, that would be like, like—like a queen jumping from one chessboard to another to block a checkmate.”
“You’re the queen?” asked Mike.
“No, I’m the chess master!”
“Does that make me your pawn?” I asked.
Jeannie peered at me with eyes that could pierce time. “No,” she mused, “You’re not a pawn. You have much more freedom of motion. Something higher.”
“Queen?” suggested Mike.
“No. Lower than a queen, higher than a pawn. What’s the word in English?” She snapped her fingers. “You’re a paladin!”
I furrowed my brows. “Like that old TV show?”
“Have claws, will travel,” quipped Mike.
“Not the TV show.” Jeannie waved away the idea. “Paladin is the old word. I think the modern equivalent is ‘knight.’”
I snorted in contempt. “This paladin doesn’t have a horse, armor, or a magic sword.”
“But you have your faithful squire to bear your shield,” said Jeannie, nodding at Mike. “The horse and magic sword come later.”
She said it with such conviction that I blurted, “A magic sword? How the hell would I get my hands on a magic sword?”
“Do you wish to know where and when?”
I held up both palms to reject the idea. “No way! I have no wish to know the future.”
Jeannie scrunched up her nose in disappointment. “Then there will be no spoilers for you.” Then she smiled brightly, as if she had reconsidered my response and now approved of it. “That’s good—this way the game can continue without interference.”
“But you’re stuck in here, chess master,” I said with an equally bright smile. “Looks like this game is almost over.”
“No. I can see a hundred moves ahead. I make the moves.”
And who is moving you? I wondered but didn’t ask.
“So we’re at an impasse?” asked Jeannie.
When had she shifted back into her harem outfit?
“Looks that way,” said Mike.
“As long as you’re my guests for the foreseeable future, I must treat you with hospitality. I could whip up a dinner for us all.”
“To ‘sate our appetites’?” I quoted. “No thanks.”
Jeannie frowned in disappointment. “Well, at least let me fix your gear. You won’t be comfortable in those old rags.”
With a gesture, all my clothes were cleaned, the damned sand was gone from my underwear, and even my sandblasted boots were restored to new condition. The same occurred with both Mike and Ariel.
Behind us, Ariel groaned. She would wake soon.
“You’re very kind,” I said. “But we have to be off. People I care for are in danger.”
Jeannie smiled warmly, as if I had shared a juicy bit of gossip with her. “So you do have a way out! No wonder you could resist my temptation.”
I stepped backward, putting distance between me and the inhuman genie.
“Mike, pick Ariel up,” I ordered. “We have to get going.”
“You don’t have to rush off. You could stay, keep me company, then I could warp time to bring you back to this second.”
“And all it would take would be one wish?” I snorted in contempt.
“Well, yes.” Jeannie raised a finger and widened her eyes, “I could teach you how to warp time. How to use that timestone you left at home. That would make you almost as powerful as a genie.”
There were no secrets from this creature. “No, thanks. My father-in-law is boomeranging through time and living backward. I have no interest in screwing with time.” I had to get out of here before she found a trigger I couldn’t resist.
“Oh, well. Can’t blame a girl for trying,” she said. “Have a safe trip.” Then she giggled like a child.
I resisted the temptation to ask her what she meant. Thank God for old Twilight Zone episodes.
“Mike, face the glass with Ariel in front of you.”
I stepped back, still facing Jeannie, until I was on Mike’s right. My inner wolf did not want to turn our backs on her.
I reached over with my right hand and reached inside Mike’s shirt to touch the portal coin I had gifted him.
Activating a portal normally requires calculations that increase in complexity with distance. This was just a jump from inside this globe to about four meters outside, so the calculation took only a second.
The dry heat of desert air and windblown sand at my back indicated the portal was open. In lockstep, Mike and I exited the globe.
The instant we passed the portal’s event horizon, I shut it down.
“Cute,” said Jeannie. Her voice was clear, even though a three-meter-thick wall of sapphire stood between us. “But all it will take is someone stumbling upon this gleaming jewel of a prison to free me.”
“In the middle of uncharted desert?” I scoffed to hide my fear.
“My new home will be visible to satellites. Either my former master or a new aspirant will race to free me.” The gentle smile disappeared. “I’m looking forward to meeting you outside, where neither guest obligations nor your trickery can protect you from my wrath.”
6
She was right. The next idiot to come along would only have to make one wish to undo all my work.
“We should bulldoze this globe of yours and make sure nobody can ever get to it again,” said Mike.
“Yeah, no bulldozer here,” I said. “And even if I whip up a sandstorm to cover it, there’s no guarantee the next sandstorm won’t uncover it.”
What was that other word for bulldozer?
Earth mover? Jeannie had shown me a part of a spell, one that complemented Mason’s earth magic. Could I use it to bury this globe deep in the ground?
I hurried through the spell. The earth beneath our feet rumbled and shifted. We raced back, away from the globe.
From twenty meters away we watched as the sand spun around the globe like water in a whirlpool. Strangely, the interior of the globe remained stable. Instead of spinning with the sand, Jeannie stayed in the same spot.
She gritted her pretty teeth and screamed, “That’s not fair!”
“Turnabout’s fair play,” I said. “You threatened to bury us in the center of the earth. I’m just returning the favor.”
Slowly but inexorably, the globe sank into the sand. Even after it was fully submerged, I kept the spell going, forcing the globe deeper and deeper into the earth.
I finally stopped, exhausted from channeling so much magic.
“How deep is she?” asked Mike.
“She’s down below the level of the local oil deposits,” I said.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” Mike said in admiration.
“Hell, she taught me that spell herself.”
“When?” Mike bent to set Ariel down—a bit too gently, if you asked me.
“On that chalkboard. She wrote out a spell for controlling the movement of elements under the earth.”
“All I saw was a bunch of squiggles that wormed around the board and gave me a headache.”
“It was Fae writing,” I said. “Well, Fae writing and metaphysical math.”
Mike squinted his eyes in thought. “Now we know why this country had all those oil deposits. It always seemed strange that there was oil everywhere here except Israel.”
Ariel finally stirred and stared at us with a dazed look on her face. “What happened? I remember the plane exploding—how did we end up here?”
Mike looked at me hopefully. “Maybe the fall knocked that shitty attitude out of her.”
Ariel sprang up and took a swing at Mike. He sidestepped and she spun around like a top, then fell to the ground.
“I’ll show you a shitty attitude!” she screamed.
“Memory loss doesn’t change someone’s basic personality,” I said. “Anyway, she’s a werewolf. Once she heals, the memories should come back.”
I bent over her and touched her head. “Ariel, I’m going to give you enough lunar energy to heal yourself.”
She scrambled frantically through the sand. “I don’t need you. I need my pack…” Her voice trailed off as she remembered the fate of her pack.
“You sure you want to help her?” asked Mike.
“She’ll die if I don’t.” I stepped over quickly, slapped a palm down on Ariel’s head, and transferred a tiny amount of energy to her.
The glazed look in Ariel’s eyes faded as her concussion healed and she remembered everything.
“I wish you were dead!” she spat out. Then she looked surprised that her wish hadn’t come true. I stepped back out of range of her teeth and nails.
“Sorry, the genie is a long way from here. You’ll be getting no wishes today.”
“Did she just try to kill you? Even though she knows she’ll die right after you?” Anger tinged Mike’s voice.
I crossed my arms and stared at Ariel. She responded by pulling her useless rifle and aiming it at me.
A burning spot bloomed on my forehead, telling me I was under target. I didn’t move, confident that the primer in the cartridges was inert.
Mike pushed me aside quickly as a shot rang out.
Before Ariel could fire the next round, Mike had ripped the weapon from her grasp.
“Looks like the genie cleaned the sand from our weapons too,” he said.
Had the genie planned this? She’d said she could look a hundred moves ahead, like a superhuman chess master. While cleaning our clothes, she had evidently reactivated the rounds my spell had made inert.
Had she wanted Ariel to kill me because I had trapped her?
“Thanks, Mike. How did you know the gun would fire?”
“I didn’t. But only an idiot assumes a weapon is empty.”
Rough truth from a SEAL. I had been an idiot: trusting a spell; trusting Ariel, an ally who hated me. Pack link or not, she would be trouble.
I studied her. “I bet you have another weapon hidden away.”
She responded with a glare.
I had to decide. “Heel!” I commanded.
Try as she might, Ariel couldn’t resist the compulsion of an alpha. Arms and legs trembling as she fought my will, she moved to a hands-and-knees position with her head turned down to the ground.
Tears dripped, instantly disappearing when they touched the burning sand.
“Stand.”
The sphere’s descent had dislodged a lot of sand, so we were standing on a tall hill.
“I claim this land, from edge to edge, for Luna pack. You are exiled, enjoined to leave my domain. If sight, sound, or scent of you is found, both your lives will be forfeit.”
Ariel gave me a murderous glare and opened her mouth to curse me. I held up one finger and she choked on her words.
I waved to the west. “Tel Aviv is that way. If I feel you stop or turn back through our pack link, I’ll drain your life force.”
She made a motion to reach for the weapon Mike held, but he jerked it away.
“Get moving, bitch!” I said.
Ariel’s feet dragged in the sand as she fought my command, but my will was stronger. In minutes, she was over the next dune and out of sight.
“Why didn’t you just kill her?” asked Mike.
Was Mike testing my resolve? He’d been the one pleading with me to give her second chances. Now he seemed to disapprove of my not killing her outright.
Would I have acted any differently than Ariel, were our roles reversed? I liked to believe I was honest and virtuous, but maybe I would have acted the same.
Maybe I saw too much of myself in her for us to work together. Exile with a chance a survival was better than a fight to the death—a fight that might interfere with our primary mission.
Mike was waiting. I decided to go with the simplest explanation.
“I hate killing werewolves,” I admitted. “Female werewolves are so rare; it would be like stomping on the last lotus on earth. There’s always a chance she can reform.”
Mike shook his head. “You saved her life multiple times and all you got in return were attacks. I think you’ve made an enemy for life.”
“I’ll probably regret letting her live.”
Mike shouldered his pack and turned in a circle. “Nothing but desert all around. We have two canteens, some MREs, and no transportation.” He shrugged the pack into a comfortable position and smiled. “This is what we would call a ‘challenge’ in Special Forces.”
“How can you smile?”
“I have faith in Saint Luna. You’ve got werewolf stamina and a bag full of magic tricks.”
“I don’t have a spell that will get us out of this mess,” I protested.
Mike took a deep breath. “One thing at a time. First, we need to find a place to sit out the heat of the day.” He pointed to a distant boulder. “We can get some shade there. It looks like it’s about a twenty-minute hike.”
I nodded. “Good. That’s the way we need to head anyway.”
He started walking, and I followed. “How do you know the right direction?”
“Werewolves have an internal compass. Always knowing where the moon is, and the time, makes it pretty easy to calculate direction.”
I slipped in the sand and slid down about ten feet before starting up the next dune. “It doesn’t work as well near the north or south poles, but here it works well.”
“Built-in GPS,” said Mike. “Must be nice.”
“It’s not just that,” I said. “I can sense the hostages’ location through our pack link.”
“I thought that only worked when you were close.”
; “No, I can feel Logan’s pain from anywhere on Earth.” Saying it out loud brought on the urge to strip and shift to wolf and race to save him. I pushed the impulse down. It was still hundreds of kilometers to his location. Racing off half-cocked would be a disaster.
We reached the rock, a boulder that stood about fifteen feet above the sands. It was like a huge egg, with the wide side down. No handy shelf to perch under.
We huddled down on the western side and drank tepid water from our canteens.
“It’ll be brutal at noon,” I said. “We won’t have any shade, and I don’t have any magic tricks to block the sun. Makes me miss the Alaskan tundra.”
Mike dug through his pack and pulled out some collapsed poles and a bundle of cloth in desert camouflage colors.
In a few minutes, he had set up the poles and draped the cloth over our spot. The tent was more netting than cloth, and its openings allowed air to flow while still blocking the sun.
“I didn’t think about using one of those.”
“You have your magic tricks; I have SEAL survivor training.”
It was already sweltering, even with the shade. Werewolves can handle temperature extremes better than most humans, but Mike would suffer. I gathered a tiny amount of air magic and set up a cooling breeze.
“A breeze,” commented Mike. “That’s nice and cool.” He jerked around. “Too cool. Is this you?”
“Yes. I set up a spell that shunts the hotter air molecules away and pushes the cooler ones toward our shelter.”
“How long can you keep it up? Don’t tire yourself out for comfort.”
“Indefinitely,” I said. “There’s lots of energy here to tap.”
“Won’t other genies sense foreign magic and attack?”
“This spell is tiny in comparison to the others I used. Also, after channeling the genie’s magic to make that globe, I have a sense for how to adjust my spells to make them like the local ones.”
Mike had a puzzled look, so I elaborated. “It’s like learning to add local spices to your favorite dish to make it similar to the local cuisine.”
“That doesn’t make it any easier to understand, Luna,” Mike said as he scanned the horizon for attacking genies.
“It’s hard to put into words, but I’m sure this spell won’t attract attention.”
Lycan Legacy - 4 - 5 - 6: Princess - Progeny - Paladin: Book 4 - 5 - 6 in the Lycan Legacy Series Page 58
