All Your Wishes

by Cat Adams

  Rahim flicked a switch and the glass of the skylight tinted until it was the dark gray of expensive sunglasses. The pain of the sunlight faded as the glass darkened. While I could no longer see the play of colored light cast by the gemstones, I felt it in painful flares of blistering heat against my skin. It was fascinating and more than a little scary. If the circle had this much latent energy, it was hard to calculate how much juice it would give an active working.

  “So,” Rahim said, giving me an eager and somewhat calculating look, “are you willing to assist me?”

  I stayed right where I was, near the wall, outside the circle.

  “I think you should try it the other way first.” I smiled at him sweetly. “With the power in this circle, you may have enough magic that you won’t need me.” The circle was that amazing.

  He didn’t bother to hide his disappointment. “As you wish.” Retrieving his bag, Rahim moved to the center of the circle, where he took out the jar, the gem, and a rondel dagger.

  The knife looked old, as if it had actually been made back in the Middle Ages when that style of blade was popular. The hilt was round—hence the name—and made of carved wood, well worn from use and dark from the oils of the many hands that had undoubtedly wielded it over the centuries. The blade was a little over a foot long, tapering to a needle point, and was coated with some sort of green paste—I didn’t know what, but I was guessing it was poisonous. It smelled bitter.

  Rahim repeated the preparations he’d made on my new casting circle back in California. When he’d finished, he returned salt and holy water to the bag, leaving it outside the circle and not far from the door, where it would be handy to grab when it was time to leave.

  Finally, he moved to the center of the circle, picked up the dagger, and began to chant.

  I should have seen it coming. Seriously. I knew I couldn’t trust him. I knew there was a link between me and Hasan and that Rahim wanted to exploit that link. But I didn’t think that he’d be able to use Hasan’s jar on me.

  I was wrong.

  Power hit me like a club, staggering me. I stumbled one step closer to the circle’s outer edge before I could stop myself. Bracing my legs, I fought hard not to move, not to lose consciousness. I was sick and dizzy from the magical blow, but I wasn’t giving in. With more effort than was pretty, I managed to pull Kevin’s Glock from my holster, training the gun onto the center of Rahim’s mass. “Stop it, now.”

  Rahim snarled, his face growing ugly with anger and strain. He shouted words in a language I didn’t recognize and made a throwing gesture with his right arm.

  The gun melted from my hand; just turned to liquid and slid through my fingers to form a puddle of goo on the floor at my feet.

  What the fuck?

  I didn’t have time to think about it. In an eyeblink I felt as if a rope had been flung around me, pinning my arms to my sides, and dragging my body off balance like I was a lassoed calf. I was yanked forward, closer and closer to the edge of a circle that had come to life.

  The air around me was thick with power. The circle began to heat and flashes of light, like miniature bolts of colored lightning, began zipping around its edges in a dizzying array that grew faster and more frenetic with every word Rahim uttered.

  I fought hard, screaming with rage and betrayal. The bat within me came rising to the surface like a whale breaching the water. It was not enough. When I crossed the circle, a sound like rushing wind drowned out all other noise and the colored lights all went to a brilliant, near blinding, white.

  The flare of power was agonizing. I felt as though my entire body was aflame. But it wasn’t all bad news, because I felt Rahim’s control slip in that moment. The shift lasted only an instant, but that was all I needed. Moving with vampire speed, I pulled one of my knives from its sheath and used it to slice at my invisible bonds.

  Rahim shrieked in surprise and pain. He shouted and made the same throwing gesture as before, this time aiming at the knife in my hands. I felt the flare of heat as the spell hit … and then felt the spell shatter against the magic the blade contained. Invisible, burning shards of power zoomed in all directions, like glass from a cup dropped on the floor.

  I staggered to my feet, and found myself isolated in an eerily silent dome of light. Directly in front of my face, the air blurred and rippled, parting to give me a plate-sized porthole, through which I could see and hear another location, presumably the one where Hasan was hiding.

  The window was directly between me and Rahim, blocking my view of whatever my “client” was up to. I took a pair of quick steps to one side, which turned out to be a very good move, because that meant that I wasn’t where Rahim expected me to be when he swiped at me with the dagger.

  Rahim’s movements were inhumanly fast and his eyes were glowing red—more magic at work, or was he not as human as he’d seemed? I could smell the paste on the dagger’s tip. Whatever it was, I didn’t want it touching me, and I sure as hell didn’t want to get stabbed.

  With my bat in the driver’s seat, everything was in hyperfocus; my hearing intensified, as did my sense of smell. Best of all, my strength and speed went off the charts. I was able to drop and roll under Rahim’s attack and immediately get to my feet, using the single, fluid motion I’d practiced so many times during training. Rahim spun to face me, but not before my leg shot out in a kick that caught the outside of his knee, driving it sideways with a sickening pop and wet tearing sounds as the joint separated and soft tissue tore.

  He screamed and, while it was inevitable that he’d fall, he threw the weight of his body forward, trying to close the gap between us and catch me with his blade. He missed, but only by a fraction of an inch. I danced out of the way and was brought up short by the electric heat of the spell circle. I smelled my hair burning and felt blisters rise on the exposed skin closest to the barrier.

  He’d locked the circle! I wouldn’t be able to leave, couldn’t pass the perimeter until Rahim released the magic, crossed it himself, or died.

  We were effectively fighting a cage match.

  Hissing in surprise, I shuffled away from the edge of the circle, moving on the balls of my feet, keeping my body at an angle so as to present the smallest possible target to the Guardian. At the same time, I drew my second knife. I held the blades ready, one high, one low, potentially both weapons and shields against his attack.

  Rahim lurched to his feet. Gasping in pain, he managed to stay upright, keeping most of his weight on his good leg.

  I knew this was going to be a dirty fight. I had him on reach, but Rahim’s blade was longer than mine and poisoned. Then again, if he wasn’t fully human, perhaps the magic in my knives would be toxic to him, as it was to other magical beings. I could only hope.

  I circled him, gliding, moving quickly but with care, trying to draw him off balance. Watching carefully, I saw that he was desperate—which makes most people careless in a fight—and while he wasn’t unskilled, I could tell that he didn’t practice regularly. I do. I train hard, particularly with my knives, since they’re my favored weapon.

  The circle gave me another advantage. Keeping it up and locked was a huge power drain, and all that power was coming from Rahim. The longer our battle lasted, the better off I’d be. I could see the strain telling on him more with every passing second.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

  It was Hasan who answered, audibly, through the window, while Rahim panted for breath. “He hoped to use our bond to tie me to you permanently. Then he’d kill you. The human sacrifice would power the spell that would drag us both into the jar for eternity.

  “Failing that, giving you true death would make you useless to me after a few minutes.” Hasan’s voice echoed, ringing like a gong off the walls of the circle. “This plan will fail.”

  Beads of sweat broke out on Rahim’s face. “You cannot enter this circle. You can do nothing to stop me,” Rahim snarled.

  “I don’t have to. She’s better than you are.
” This time Hasan said the words both in my mind and aloud. Again the circle rang with his voice, loud enough to give me an instant, intense headache. I blinked back tears that blurred my vision. Rahim saw his opening and lunged; I sidestepped the attack, slashing at his arm with the knife in my left hand and simultaneously executing a leg sweep that took his good leg out from under him.

  Rahim shrieked in pain, twisting as he fell. He swept the dagger toward my outstretched leg and I heard the sound of fabric ripping as the razor edge of the blade tore through my pants. I danced away, waiting for but not feeling the sting of injury. Nor did I smell blood.

  The dagger had missed my flesh. I almost sighed in relief.

  My erstwhile murderer hit the floor, screaming in frustration and agony.

  KILL HIM!

  “No.”

  I looked down at Rahim. He was done. That last attack had taken it all out of him. He lay on the floor, panting, his face gray with fatigue and running with sweat. I knew I could kill him easily, and a big part of me wanted to. But sad to say, the world’s best hope rested in Rahim’s knowledge.

  “He would see you dead.” Hasan tried to reason with me. “He is a danger to you.”

  “Not right now he isn’t.”

  I stepped away from the fallen man, keeping him in my peripheral vision as I moved to look through the magical porthole that still hung in midair near the circle’s center. It was wavering now, in time with the beats of Rahim’s heart. It would close when he lost consciousness—which I suspected would be soon—and I wanted to make sure I got a good look at what was on the other side before it did. I peered through the opening at an underground cavern, carved more by nature than by man and magic, with seeming passages leading beyond it, into shadowed depths.

  The space was lit by balls of mage light as well as by more prosaic electric lanterns. Huge stalactites in shades of variegated brown and gray stabbed down from a cavernous ceiling like the fangs of some huge carnivorous beast, their white tips dripping the mineral-filled water that formed them. The floor was bare stone, with some areas blasted smooth by magic and swept clear and others left natural, covered with stalagmites, dirt, and loose stone.

  In the largest open space was a casting circle almost identical to the one in which I stood, down to the placement of the gemstones. I focused my vision on it and the only difference I could see was that the runes were all written in a single language. I was surprised that I didn’t at least recognize the writing, since El Jefe had made us cover all the current and ancient magical languages in his courses. I should have known what it was, but I didn’t. On the other hand, the markings looked somewhat familiar, enough to tell me I’d seen similar runes before. I cudgeled my brain, trying to remember where, but came up empty.

  In the distance I heard a man and a woman, speaking quite softly. Their words had an odd, echoing quality, probably because of the cave’s acoustics. Her voice was waspish. Again, I felt I should recognize it, but damned if I did.

  “She’s not dead. How can she not be dead? Finn’s gone. His ghost was here to see her dead, and now he’s gone and she’s not.”

  “Ah, the miracles of modern medicine. Apparently they managed to revive her.”

  Bob Davis, again. I was really beginning to hate hearing his voice.

  “It doesn’t affect the bigger picture,” Davis continued in a reassuring tone.

  “I don’t give a damn about the bigger picture. I want her dead.”

  “Be careful what you say, Meredith. Our master would be none too pleased to hear you talking like that.”

  Meredith, as in nurse Meredith Stanton, one of the two survivors from the black ceremony at the Needle. Well, well.

  Stanton’s voice grew sullen. “I serve the master. You know that. But that thing has thwarted us at every turn.”

  “That’s not why you want her gone.”

  “No. She murdered Harold. She should pay for that.”

  Okay, that wasn’t fair. I had not “murdered” Harold Halston. When I disrupted the ceremony at the Needle and shot the vosta they’d been using as a focus, the backlash had killed Halston. It was not my fault that he couldn’t shield in time. Well, all right, maybe I bore some indirect responsibility for his death, and I certainly couldn’t say I was sorry it happened. But it wasn’t murder.

  “She will,” Davis told Stanton. “Just as painfully as I can manage.”

  Oh, great. Just what I needed to hear.

  Actually, it is. You have enemies before you—can you really afford to leave one at your back?

  He had a point. I stared through the porthole, memorizing details of the cavern. Davis and Stanton were both wanted by federal authorities. If I could get enough information on their hideout, I might be able to call in an anonymous tip and let the Feds take some preemptive action for me.

  That would just leave Rahim for me to deal with, an enemy I was going to keep a very close eye on, and whom I knew I could take. Besides, call me suspicious, but it seemed to me that the more Hasan wanted Rahim dead, the more I needed to keep the Guardian alive. Preferably far, far away from me, but still, alive.

  Hasan laughed and the sound of it chilled my blood. I want your body. I can’t reach you in that circle. That is unacceptable.

  Not to me.

  You’re not the one whose opinion matters. I am. You see, I’ve ingested the power of the stone. I am strong enough now that I have broken the bonds the Guardians placed on me, all those years ago. I am free now, free to do as I choose.

  My choice is this: If you don’t do exactly as I say, I will exact retribution on a scale that beggars the imagination. I will make it hideously, painfully personal. To keep me from doing that, you are going to present yourself to me at the Temple of Atonement in southern Colorado. In my mind I saw a map, with a location circled in blood red. Be here by nine o’clock tomorrow morning.

  And if I’m not?

  First, I will kill everyone you care for, starting with your dear old gran. Then, my eye will move outward, to the general public.

  To prove that I can—and will—I will give you a small show of power. To give you … incentive.

  The image in the porthole shifted. Instead of the cavern I saw an oil-drilling platform somewhere in the middle of an ocean.

  Watch.

  With sick fascination I did: A huge explosion rocked the facility; a fireball consumed men who swarmed over the platform’s surface like ants; oil pumped from the burst pipes like blood from a severed artery, black fluid slicking the surface of everything it touched, covering the water below in an ever-expanding pool.

  I will see you at nine. Don’t be late.

  18

  I was still staring at the flaming oil rig when the porthole winked out as Rahim lost consciousness. One second it was there. The next it wasn’t.

  He wasn’t dead—the circle was still up. It wouldn’t be if he were gone. I approached the body sprawled across the floor cautiously just the same. He could be playing possum.

  I kicked his knife to the other side of the circle before bending down to check his pulse. It was weak, but there. His color was bad, his breathing ragged. He needed help, now. While part of me was angry enough to think it served him right to let the circle drain him to death, another, larger part thought better of it. So I dragged him right up to the circle’s edge, then rolled him over it. The circle collapsed as soon as Rahim was on the other side.

  With the pressure of the circle’s magic gone, I felt much better. Moving quickly, I grabbed the rondel dagger and my recorder. I needed to hide them, and fast. Thinking quickly, I slid off my right shoe and stripped off my sock. I thrust the blade of the knife into the sock, then slid the bundle through one of the loops in my jacket, where I normally stowed a stake for killing vampires. Not a perfect solution, but the best I could come up with on short notice. At least the sock was long enough to cover the entire blade—I wasn’t sure how much of the metal had been tainted by the poison and I didn’t want to risk even casual
contact with that toxin. The dagger felt awkward and lumpy beneath my jacket and I was painfully aware of the need to be careful not to do anything that would cause the blade to jab through the protective fabric. I slid my shoe back on and dropped the recording device into my pocket. Only then did I open the door to the casting room and yell for help.

  People came from all directions, and more quickly than I expected. Then again, this was the part of the building where people worked difficult experimental magic. Probably this wasn’t the first emergency they’d had to deal with. Nor was it likely to be the last.

  A bear of a man with grizzled hair and beard, wearing gray dress slacks and a charcoal sweater, shouldered me easily aside. Squatting down beside Rahim, he searched for a pulse and shouted for a woman standing in the hall to call an ambulance. I thought I recognized her as one of the secretaries I’d passed in the hall on the way to the workroom, but I could have been wrong.

  A crowd was gathering, peering in through the doorway.

  “Good God, what happened to his leg?” the man trying to help Rahim asked.

  “We were sparring and there was an accident,” I lied. As I spoke, I pushed a little with my siren abilities. They weren’t in top form this far from the water, but anything I could manage would be better than nothing. I needed Rahim to get help without anyone thinking too hard about what had happened to cause his injuries. The big problem was the magical strain. That was what would kill Rahim—and pretty quickly if it wasn’t treated soon.

  The grizzled man—probably another professor—shook his head, waving a hand in front of his face as if to shoo away a buzzing fly. But his next words let me know that my push had hit home. “He’s overstrained his magic, but he’s breathing and his pulse is good. We need to get him to the hospital as fast as possible, but he should pull through.”

  There were murmurs of relief and some of the watchers—mostly those who looked older than the average college student, so presumably teachers—began shepherding others away from the scene.

  The woman I thought was a secretary glared at me as she pulled out a cell phone and called 911.