Mike calmed and sat. He shook his canteen to see how much was left and took a careful sip.
“Luna, don’t get mad. But you’re not a good teammate.”
I hate when men say, “Don’t get mad.”
“What? Don’t be silly. Did you hit your head when I pulled you from that exploding plane? Or when I broke the spell that made you Ariel’s slave? Or that time—”
Mike held up a hand and tilted his head, an expression of infinite patience on his face.
I bit back a torrent of examples and took a deep breath. “Why do you think I’m not a good teammate?”
“I have no clue what you can do. You’re so secretive that I never know what’s going on.”
Mike pulled out his silver dagger and placed it between us, hilt pointed toward me. “I swore I would follow your lead anywhere, do anything to help you. And not just because you saved my life a time or two. I believe you have a higher calling.”
He looked down, unable to meet my eyes. “If you can’t trust me, then you should take the dagger back. Find someone else to follow you.”
“But it’s not like that! I trust you. I just can’t brief you when other werewolves are around.”
Mike turned his head around in an exaggerated inspection of the horizon. “There are no werewolves around now.”
I wrapped my anger around me like a cloak. “I’m the alpha. I don’t bargain with my pack.”
“You’re ‘the alpha,’” he said, making air quotes, “but you’re not my alpha. You can’t order me around like a puppy.”
A sudden fear sent shivers down my spine. Would Mike quit now? In the middle of a mission? The fear was followed by a sense of loss. With me, he might survive out here; by himself, he would almost certainly die.
I closed my eyes and consulted with my inner wolf. She projected a wolf cub that had Mike’s face, then the cub grew, progressing from playful nipping and chasing to hunting. Her way of saying that Mike was no longer a puppy. In pack terms, he was demanding respect as he grew.
“You’re right, Mike,” I said. “I’m not your alpha. You’ll never be a were, never be part of my pack.”
His face fell, and he made to get up. “Then I’ll be leaving,” he said.
Would he really head out into that desert, where he would almost certainly die?
“Mike, please don’t go,” I said. Then, in a rush, “You’re not my packmate, but you’re my teammate. Hell, you’re the only person I can work magic around without fearing for my life.”
I pushed the knife back toward him. “I gave you this dagger because I need you. I might be able to do this by myself, but the odds are better with your help. Please take it back.”
After a moment, Mike picked up the dagger and my heart lifted. “I won’t quit right now. But we’re going to have a talk once we get back to Las Vegas.”
“Okay, we’ll have a talk. Until then, we concentrate on the mission.”
Mike gave me a strange look, then stepped over to his backpack and pulled out two tan-colored pouches—MREs.
He sat back down and offered me a choice. I took the beef brisket pouch, leaving him with the beef stew.
“I wouldn’t abandon you in the middle of a mission,” he finally said. “That would be crazy.”
I sighed in relief. “I’m so glad. Because—”
We spoke at the same time. “—you’d die without me.”
7
“You can’t be serious!” I blurted.
“Are you kidding me?” he asked. “You’re strong and fast, but you’re pasty white. A few hours in this sun would burn you to a crisp.”
I rolled up a sleeve and stuck my ‘pasty white’ arm out of the shade, exposing it to the morning sun. The skin on my forearm darkened immediately, settling at a Mediterranean olive tone. It looked like I had dipped my arm to the elbow in dark beige paint.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” said Mike. “Hell, I wish I could. I have to spend two hours a day in the sun to maintain my tan for missions like this.”
I pulled my arm back and rolled my sleeve down. I concentrated and the tan spread over my body. A tingle crept up my neck and across my cheeks as the tan spread.
“Not all werewolves can do this instant tan. Others have to do it the regular way. I learned some tricks from a kitsune shifter.”
“Okay, more tricks. You would still have problems getting to the target.”
I sniffed haughtily. “I could shift to wolf, wrap my body in cool air, and race through the day and night at a speed no human could match.”
“And shift back in Riyadh, a naked woman with no documents who can’t speak a word of Arabic.” Mike scoffed and took a bite of his MRE. “You’d be lucky to end up in an insane asylum.”
My wolf side projected an image of me in a straitjacket, bare bottom hanging out. Smart-ass wolf.
I turned my attention back to Mike. His smile was disconcerting. “Are you enjoying this argument?” I asked.
He shook his head. “This isn’t an argument. Teams do this all the time. One guy tosses out an idea and the next guy tries to shoot it down. It’s how we find the flaws in our plans.” He squinted in puzzlement. “How do wolf packs operate?”
“Generally, they all follow the alpha’s plan. We have more of a top-down structure.”
“Well, since you said we’re teammates, not packmates, we should do this my way.”
“Fine. Toss out your idea and I’ll shoot it down.”
“We need help, some backup,” he said.
“Yeah,” I snapped. “Only our backup got blown up, and I just sent our only Arabic-speaking team member on a walkabout through the desert.”
“Good point,” said Mike. “My Arabic is grade-school level, at best. Probably shouldn’t have put all of our eggs in that basket.”
I felt smug for a second, then contrite. With no backup our mission was over, and the hostages would die.
“Okay, Mike. I screwed up by not having a backup plan.”
“Good thing you’re with me.” Mike reached into his backpack and pulled out a bulky device.
“What’s that?”
“A satellite phone and our backup plan. I reached out to an old friend and set up a fallback.”
Mike spent several minutes texting. Then he pulled out a map and made some notes. It was a geological survey map, but all the writing was in Arabic.
Mike set the map down and went back to texting.
I pulled the map closer to get a look at our location. Werewolves aren’t big on maps—we guide ourselves by the location of the moon and the sun, much more accurately than a GPS could. But this map was strange. I turned it so the compass rose at the top of the map pointed north, and realized the geography was all wrong. Those mountains in the distance should be over that way; the valley shown should be in another direction.
Mike stopped his texting and waited patiently while I fussed with the map. “There’s something wrong with this map,” I said.
“Wrong? I don’t think so.” A pause, then he continued, “What makes you think that?”
“The landmarks don’t line up,” I said. “North is that way, so those distant mountains should be off to our left, but the map shows them as straight ahead. It has to be wrong.”
“No, it’s right. It’s a local map; that’s why it looks wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
Mike reached over and turned the map in my lap so that the compass rose was now pointed west. “Maps printed in the Arabic world always use Mecca as a reference point.” At my puzzled look, he continued, “The top of any locally printed map will always point towards Mecca. It makes it easier for praying.”
Mike pointed to a tiny arrow on the side of the map. “That’s true north. Spin the map around to point that at north and it lines up.”
I was a bit embarrassed I hadn’t figured it out instantly. What other unconscious assumptions did I have that would get me into trouble here?
“Thanks, Mike,” I s
aid. I pointed to where he had penciled an X onto the map. “This is our location?”
“Yes.”
“We need to go that way.” I pointed toward where my instincts said Logan was located.
“Yeah, that’s Riyadh. There’s no way we could survive a trip overland to get there. We’ll have to go west from here to hit the highway and get a ride.”
I read the map again. “The highway is thirty miles in the wrong direction. Then we’d have to wait for a ride. Hell, does this country even have Uber?”
“Let’s stick to kilometers while we’re here.”
“Fine, fifty kilometers then,” I said. “However you want to measure it, it’s still the wrong direction.” I shook my head. “I could make it to Riyadh overland in the time it would take to flag down some random vehicle and convince the driver to help.”
“You know they shave the heads of female prisoners here?”
“What the hell does that mean?” Then my inner wolf sent a duplicate of her previous image—me in a straitjacket, bare ass hanging out—but with a smoothly shaven head. Sometimes, she gets the point quicker than I do.
Mike waved at his phone. “We don’t need an Uber. I have someone coming to meet us on the highway. He should be there by midnight.”
“Midnight? We can get there a lot sooner if we leave now. I bet we could cover fifty kilometers in five or six hours, even over sand.”
Mike waved around. “Can you do this air-conditioning trick while we’re moving?”
“No,” I conceded. “I could do it for me, but juggling spells to cover us both would exhaust me.”
“So we need to stay here and wait for the late afternoon or early evening to start moving.”
“Okay,” I said. “Easy-peasy.” I took a long drink from my canteen, finishing it off.
Mike grimaced and said, “We still might not make it. We don’t really have enough water to last all day out here.”
I instantly regretted finishing off the water. I could survive without any for much longer than Mike. I pulled out my spare water bottle and handed it to him. “Here, you take this. I once went days with only a sip of water.”
“No. We’ll share equally. Just because you survived once doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to dehydrate yourself.”
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll share it.”
“Too bad you can’t magic up some water like you did with the cool air here.”
Ten minutes later, Mike shook me. “Luna, are you all right? You’ve been staring at nothing for a long time.”
“I think I have a way to get us more water.”
“How can I help?”
“Keep quiet and let me work through this spell. This will take a lot of magic.”
After another thirty minutes of meditation, I moved out of the shade and stood in the morning sun. Despite the heat, it felt good to stretch. The rock was about fifty feet—okay, thirty meters—around, with irregular gouges and depressions marking its surface. I circled it once, looking for the perfect spot.
After two circuits, I stopped at one broken section near our awning. A mini-cave, about shoulder height and one meter deep, had formed, perhaps from erosion by the sand-blasting winds. However it had come to be, it was perfect for my spell.
Using my studies with Mason, as well as the magical formula revealed by the genie, I rehearsed the spell.
“Mike, I need some water and the silver knife.”
Thoughtful as always, Mike handed me my gloves before offering the silver knife. I slipped on the right glove, took the dagger, and cupped my empty left hand.
“Pour water from your canteen into my palm,” I said.
“Are you sure this will work? We can’t really afford to waste any water.”
“Have faith, Mike.” I paused for a moment, then said, “I’m going to pronounce a spell in Fae. It might hurt your ears.”
“Okay.”
“Whatever you do, don’t try to remember the words. If spoken with the wrong inflection, they could be dangerous.”
Under a burning sun, using borrowed tools, the last of our water, and knowledge stolen from a mischievous genie, I started the spell.
“Like calls to like; life calls to life; let the earth release the water of life; let this stone weep with joy.”
The earth beneath our feet seemed to drop away and I almost stopped. No, it had instead become transparent to my vision. Layers of sand, rock, and sediment disappeared, revealing the aquifer hundreds of feet below us.
I repeated the spell, feeling how the water below yearned to join us here on the surface. All it would take would be—
I struck the magically hardened silver dagger into the rear of the mini-cave. The stone parted with a shriek. The crack in the stone traveled in a zig-zag lightning-bolt pattern through hundreds of feet of stone and earth, until it finally reached the hidden waters.
It was beautiful—a working of magic so far beyond my abilities I felt as if Mason had been looking over my shoulder, assisting.
I blinked back to mundane reality. My left hand was dry, the water long since evaporated. My right hand was on the vibrating pommel of the magic dagger, still stuck hilt-deep into the rock.
A wave of dizziness passed as the sun beat down on my bare head. When had I lost my hat?
Mike was staring despondently at the damp spot on the sand where the last of our water was quickly disappearing.
“It doesn’t seem to have worked, Luna.”
I took a deep breath and smiled. “O ye of little faith,” I said in my best stage magician voice, then jerked the knife from the rock.
A jet of pure, icy water burst from the crack, splashing me from head to waist in freezing liquid. I stepped back quickly as the flow slowed to a steady stream, quickly filling up the bottom of the cave like a basin.
I smiled at Mike, waiting for congratulations. He seemed dazed, staring at me.
No! He was staring at my breasts! The icy water had made my nipples erect, and they stuck out through the soaked cloth. Werewolves have no use for modesty, but this was a bit much.
“Mike!” I snapped. The dagger quivered in my grip.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he turned away quickly.
He mumbled something even my werewolf hearing couldn’t decipher. One of his Latin prayers?
“Forgive me, Saint Luna,” he said as he turned back to me. Instead of looking at me, his gaze was pointed above my head. “You’re right. My faith was too little. I should not have doubted you.”
I pulled the shirt away from my body and flapped it a few times. It was soon dry enough that it wouldn’t fit like a second skin.
“I’m no saint, Mike,” I said as I dried off.
“‘I’m no saint,’ she says while bathing in water flowing from a cleft rock.” A deep sigh. “I won’t stare again. It was rude, and we have a mission to complete.”
I handed the dagger back to Mike, pulled off my glove, and cupped my hands under the water. I drank five handfuls, then realized that Mike might want to drink.
Mike was looking back and forth between me and the dagger in his hand. “You still trust me at your back with this dagger?” At my puzzled expression, he added, “You seemed really angry.”
“Of course I still trust you, Mike. Sorry I overreacted. Just don’t stare at me like that again.”
Mike sheathed the dagger and put away the gloves. He seemed hesitant to drink.
“Go ahead, have a drink. The water’s pure.”
Mike drank his fill and started filling up our canteens. “‘For I was lost in the desert and thirsted. And water burst from a cleft rock and saved me.’”
“‘Cleft rock.’ I’ve heard that before. Is that a quote from somewhere?” I asked.
“From an old book,” he said.
8
“What old book?” I asked, then held up a hand to stop him. “Never mind. Let’s eat again, fill up our water bottles and talk about the mission.”
In minutes, we were back under t
he awning eating more MREs, our meal accompanied by the cheerful splashing of our impromptu fountain. This time I had the meatballs in marinara sauce, and Mike had the beef ravioli in meat sauce. I really missed Famous Dave’s Bar-B-Que, but bringing pork takeout on a mission to Israel and Saudi Arabia would have been problematic.
Mike savored his last bite, took a long swallow of cool water, and sighed.
The sound of the water changed when the basin began to overflow. “Will this place become an oasis?” asked Mike. “Or will it stop when we leave? Should we try to stop it up to prevent waste?”
“An oasis? I don’t know. The trickle is pretty slow.” I tilted my head to listen. “But I won’t stop it up. The water yearns to be here, to be free.”
Mike snorted. “As if water has emotions.” Then he jerked his head. “Does water have emotions?”
“Not that I know of,” I said. “It’s just a way of expressing something that can’t be expressed in English.”
I had a flash of inspiration. “Mike, do you still have the rest of that apple from this morning?”
He dug into his pocket and pulled out the slightly smushed fruit.
I took the apple and used my claws to dig a hole in the damp sand under the overflowing basin. The fruit—with its seeds—fit snugly into the hole. I covered it with more sand.
I looked at Mike, then gestured over the seeds and whispered a spell.
Mike watched with doubt—a doubt that turned to amazement when the first shoot thrust through the sand and twisted, unfurling tiny leaves to capture the sunlight.
“You can do anything with magic,” Mike said.
“Not really,” I said. “The water wanted to come out. The seeds wanted to sprout. The magic just helped them along.”
Mike took a long drink of water and said, “We have a few hours. Tell me about magic.”
Could Mike understand magic?
I started with the basics. “Everything I tell you about magic is a lie.”
“Is that some kind of Zen puzzle? Anyway, I thought you didn’t lie.”
“It means that understanding magic, working with magic, is an individual quest. We each must find our own way to grasping the power. Some magicians, like Mason, think of magic as a series of equations. Others think of it as music. I think of magic as the dance of energies.”
Lycan Legacy - 4 - 5 - 6: Princess - Progeny - Paladin: Book 4 - 5 - 6 in the Lycan Legacy Series Page 59
