Intuition (The Path to Redemption Series Book 2)

by Kimbra Swain

  “Call me Micah. It’s what I was trained to do. It’s been a long time since I was on an official crew, because I’ve got a family now. But a buddy of mine called me about this. He knows I like weird stuff. I knew to call Pastor Rod,” he explained.

  “Thank you again,” Abby said as we turned to walk away from him.

  I turned back and asked, “Are there any large predator cats out here?”

  “Just rumors. They say there are panthers out in these parts. I’ve never seen one, but sometimes you hear one. Creepy as fuck,” he said. “You hear one?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” I said.

  “Just old tales. Probably some other critter out here that sounds like one of them big cats,” he said dismissing it.

  “Thanks, Micah,” I said walking away from him.

  “So, there is a cat, and what do you want to bet it’s a shifter?” she asked.

  “Yes, it was definitely one. Maybe it sensed me,” I said still worried, because I knew that we were quiet and deadly.

  We walked back to the car in the steady rain. As we approached the car, she raised her hand up and the metallic blanket covering the car lifted. She rolled her palm upward and clinched her hand into a fist. The blanket formed back into the ball. She opened her palm, and it flew to her. It hovered over her hand. She closed her palm, and it disappeared.

  “I hate to compliment you, because you‘ll let it go to your head. But that’s freaking amazing,” I smiled at her.

  She just nodded and put her staff in the trunk, and I took off my rig and ammo belt. “Tadeas, look, it’s the cat.”

  I froze in place. “Where is it? I don’t feel anything.”

  She grinned at me and turned my face around with her hand. I hadn’t noticed it before, but the press box above the football field was emblazoned with a large black cat. The words “Home of the Panthers” crossed the press box in big letters.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said walking toward it. She walked up behind me and put her arms around me. I turned to face her. Ignoring the rain, my lips found hers, and the rush of desire flooded over me. The growl pierced the silence again.

  “Holy crap,” she said.

  “Yeah, let’s go,” I said.

  “I don’t think he likes you kissing me,” she said when we got in the car.

  “He will have to get over it or I’ll fight him,” I said.

  “With immature comments like that, it’s a good thing we are in a high school parking lot,” she quipped.

  “You are mine,” I said not backing down.

  “Yes, I am,” she smiled.

  I backed the car out and turned to go back to highway 216. A large tattooed man sat on a chopper blocking our way out. He had a long black rifle. I looked in my rear-view mirror and two more equally tattooed men sat on bikes. I never heard their engines.

  “Give me your wrist,” Abby said. Offering my left wrist where I wore a protection bracelet that she gave me, she spoke a word in Latin and unseen symbols flared with a blue light and faded. “He’s a shifter. We may have found our cat, or rather he found us. They are protected by shields I can see in the spectrum. Our guns won’t do much, and I put the staff in the trunk.” She opened her hand, and her four orbs floated above it. She closed it back, and they disappeared. The man on the chopper motioned for us to get out of the car.

  I opened the car door and blocked my body with it as much as I could. “Hey buddy, we were just heading out,” I said.

  “I ain’t a cop. Get out and shut the door. Tell the witch to get out too. Don’t try anything,” he said.

  “Okay, but man, we really don’t want any trouble,” I said.

  “Too late for that now. You are trespassing on our territory. Where is your pack? Tell the woman to get out or my guys will drag her out,” he said.

  I thought to myself, “Good luck with that,” but Abby slowly got out of the car and shut the door. I heard more growls, and I looked behind me. The two guys behind us smiled and waved at me. I wasn’t sure if it was them, or if we had more than just three shifters in our path.

  “We are outnumbered, but I’m willing to bet they underestimate me,” she said confidently. She could be so arrogant when I would think she would be afraid, and in the situations where I expected her to be confident she wasn’t.

  “Careful with that ego,” I chided her. “Cats can be extremely deadly.”

  “Whose side are you on?” she teased.

  “Yours. Always yours,” I just laughed. I doubt anything I said would change her mind. I stepped away from the car and shut the door.

  “Very good. See, I knew you could cooperate,” he said.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “Just be patient, sweetheart. We will have some company soon. But I must say, you are one fine piece of ass,” he said. I tensed up and tried to calm myself. She shot me a look. The biker laughed because his provocation was working.

  I heard the gurgling call of a territorial raven and looked at Abigail. Her faced turned white, and she shook her head as if she were trying to ignore it. I remembered her mentioning the ghost haunting her at the graveyard. If we survived Mr. Burly, she needed to tell me that story.

  Hearing the raven, I knew that the omens of the previous days were real, and not a part of a natural paranoia. Someone who knew my past with the Celtic War goddess, Morrigan, Chooser of the Slain, toyed with my emotions. Focusing on the current problem, I shook it off and remembered the biker taunting us.

  “Don’t fall for that Tadeas,” I said to him. He nodded at me, but clearly, he was not happy about the comment.

  “Step out here in front of the car, sweetheart,” he said as he got off the bike, and leaned it on a kick stand. I walked to the front of the car and stood in the headlights. He walked all the way around me with the black rifle leaned against his shoulder. I think he knew he couldn’t hurt me with it.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “You don’t get to know my name, but I know yours, Abigail Davenport,” he said. “I have no illusions that I could put you down, but I have friends,” he said. Four large black cats walked out of the darkness. Two on each side of us.

  “Holy shit. It’s a whole damn pack,” Tadeas said.

  I saw movement in the magical spectrum behind the chopper. A black smoke rose from the ground, and the bitter stench of burned rubber assaulted the air. When the smoke settled, Meredith Spence stood before us in black leather pants and a black trench coat with shiny brass buttons. She sauntered up beside the man. Tadeas tensed ready to strike.

  The biker wrapped his free arm around her waist, and she kissed him. It was a sloppy kiss with way too much tongue.

  “Gross. Get a fucking room, Meredith,” I said. Tadeas’ anxiety crept up a notch. I felt it even with the block on his emotions, which meant he was boiling over.

  “I heard a vicious rumor that the two of you survived the Boulder facility destruction. Seems it wasn’t a rumor after all,” she smiled at Tadeas. “Tadeas, you would be more than welcome in the pack if you’d like to join us. I’m going to kill her, anyway.”

  “What do you want Meredith?” he growled.

  “Damn. You’ve been around this whore too long,” she said. “I’ve discovered that real cats are ferocious in bed.” The biker chuckled as she traced a long, black fingernail down his chest to the waist of his jeans. Meredith didn’t seem like the oversexualized woman that Vanessa Vaughn was, but I suspected that Meredith knew Vanessa. Maybe they knew each other intimately at some point.

  I decided to take a chance and took several steps back and leaned on the hood of the car. “Don’t fucking move,” the biker said lowering the gun to point it at me.

  “Look, buddy, I’m tired. I’ve heard all of Meredith’s grievances with me. I’m not amused, so I’m going to just lean back here until she decides to get to the point,” I said.

  “The point is I will see every drop of your blood leak from your body as you die a slow and agonizin
g death,” she said.

  “Been there, done that,” I replied. “But you go ahead and give it your best shot, but I warn you, if you kill me, you kill him.” I nodded toward Tadeas, and he slowly circled to the front of the car with me. “Besides honey, unless you’ve gotten a power upgrade, I can take you with a flick of my wrist. Plus, I’ll bet my jaguar against your pussy any day of the week.” The biker growled.

  “If you ever call me that,” he growled, but I shot him a wicked grin. He shook his head and smiled back.

  “Oh, how cute, a communication spell. I see you have him protected as well. You should know that I’d never do anything to hurt him,” she said.

  “Actually, we are bonded, thus the whole kill one of us, kill the other bit,” I said.

  “Bonded? You fucked her, Tadeas?” she snarled at him.

  “Not yet, but I plan to very soon. In fact, if you would hurry this along, that would be great. I have plans for the rest of the evening,” he leaned into me. He wasn’t just boasting for them.

  I blushed. “Damn.”

  “Truth.”

  “I’ll kill both of you then,” she said. “You are used trash now.”

  “Good luck with that,” he quipped. I laughed, because I was a bad influence.

  “We are waiting on you, dear. Go ahead,” I said joining his laugh.

  “You have a plan, right?” he asked.

  “Nope,” I admitted.

  “I can’t take them all,” he said.

  “I can convince her to fight just me, then we reason with the cats.” I offered.

  “No. We fight together.” His bravado was irrational, but it was cute.

  “Stop doing that!” she screamed. “I don’t know what you are saying, but it’s obvious you are talking. Just shut up!”

  I laughed at her. “Meredith, you seem to be on edge. Where is dear Nalusa? I imagine your activities in Boulder were not approved. Nalusa is evil, but he has always fought honorably.”

  “You don’t know him,” she said angrily. “He’s taking care of other matters right now. I can handle you.”

  “What about the GEA? Was destroying Theodoard’s stronghold a part of their agenda?” I asked. The stunned look on her face told the story. She didn’t know I knew about the GEA, and she certainly didn’t know I knew that she was in it.

  “I’m done with you,” she said. “Come here.”

  “I think you will have to make me,” I said.

  The biker who still held the rifle pointed at us fired it. The shot rang out in the darkness. Several dogs started barking in the distance. The shot flared when it hit my shield, and the large round thumped to the ground. I looked at it and then at Tadeas.

  “Two twenty-three?” I asked even though I knew that’s what caliber the round was.

  “Two twenty-three,” he confirmed.

  “You idiot, I told you that gun wouldn’t do anything to her,” she screamed at him. “Kill them both.” The cats started to advance on both sides. I stood up and turned to my right. Tadeas turned to his left, and we stood back to back. I reached behind me with my left hand and put it on his arm. I wanted to have contact with him if we had to shift. He pulled both of his guns out. I opened my palm and my four orbs floated above it.

  “Claudo,” Meredith said as an evil grin crossed her face.

  “She’s blocked the way. I can’t feel the edge of the spirit world,” he said.

  “Then we fight,” I said. I could send a resounding pitch through my crystal orb. It would disable the cats. I closed my hand, and the orbs disappeared. I opened it again and only the rose quartz orb returned. I spoke in Latin, “Resono.” The orb vibrated in my hand. I whistled in the highest pitch that I could. It reverberated through the crystal and started repeating itself. The cats whimpered and backed off. The men hit their knees and held their ears. Tadeas didn’t feel the effects because my bracelet protected him from my magic as well as anyone else’s magic, except for Meredith’s spell blocking him from shifting us to the spirit realm. She had more power since our last encounter.

  I left the orb hanging in the air, turning to Meredith and smiled at her. I opened my palm again and spoke, “Fulmen.” The purple tinted lightning orb appeared above my hand.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  “No, you aren’t,” I replied. I held her attention with the lightning orb, but my tiny sun was approaching her from behind like a guided missile of thermodynamic flame.

  She sensed it coming and threw her hands up in the air. She pulled more power than I thought she was capable of doing and screamed, “Tollo!” Both of my orbs winked out of existence. She had negated my power. Only necromancers could negate power. I saw her eyes turn black.

  “Oh shit,” I said.

  Tadeas took his eyes off the still whimpering cats and looked at her. “Meredith, what have you done?”

  “I was shown a greater power by a great man. Vanessa let it consume her. She was unstable, but I control it,” she smiled.

  I was thankful that Lincoln was not alive to see this. Then I felt the rush of darkness around us. Everything of the real world was covered in shadow. I could no longer see the football field or the abandoned school.

  “I taught her everything she knows,” a smooth, yat accent said behind us. “Oh, my, Miss Abigail, it has been a long, long time.” John Mwenye circled around us and walked to Meredith. He stood beside her, and she stared at him like he was a god.

  I tried to retain my confidence, but I knew that John Mwenye was my equal in power. With all of them here, I had no hope. Tadeas sensed my fear.

  “We will fight them until we can’t fight anymore,” he said.

  “It won’t last long,” I replied.

  John put his hand in the air and closed his fist like he was crushing a walnut. My crystal orb shattered, and the pieces turned into flying shrapnel. With the cessation of the echoing whistle, and the cats regained their composure. The biker stood and pointed the gun at us again. I had not attempted to call the sword since the portal collapsed. I reached out with my power to see if I could feel it. I couldn’t.

  “I can’t feel the sword to call it,” I said.

  “It’s okay. We will find another way,” he said. He knew, as well as I did that we had little hope.

  “Will you not speak to me Abigail?” John asked.

  “What do you want me to say, John?” I replied.

  “I can feel the darkness in you. It consumes you. It’s so lovely. I can teach you to use it. You think you are powerful now, but I can make you invincible,” he said.

  “No, thanks, your apprentices end up dead,” I replied.

  “Ah, yes, the lovely Vanessa. She was such an intertwined mix of whore and evil. I do miss fucking her, but that’s about all. You actually did me a favor putting her down. She had lost control. If you didn’t do it, I would have. Even when she was alive, Meredith here showed far more promise than Vanessa ever did,” he explained. Meredith beamed at him. She wasn’t enthralled, but she couldn’t take her eyes off him. He turned to her, stroking her cheek and lightly kissing her on the lips. I supposed that explained her intensified sexuality. Every necromancer I ever met wanted to talk about sex all the time. “Come join us, Abigail. You are far better off with us than that feeble shifter.”

  “I’d rather die beside him than join you,” I said. Tadeas turned his back on the panthers. He wrapped one of his arms around my waist, still holding the gun. I leaned back into him. He held the other trained on Mwenye.

  Mwenye laughed. “Your gun is impotent here. You might as well give up. I will make a deal. Abigail, if you come with us, I will spare his life.”

  “No,” Tadeas said immediately. I cringed. He knew I’d do anything to save him. “Don’t you dare even consider it.”

  A tear rolled down my cheek. “No, Mwenye,” I said. His arm tightened around me.

  “How unfortunate. I was looking forward to all the things we could do together,” he said. “I could corrupt you in ways yo
u never knew existed.” I saw jealousy flair in Meredith’s eyes, and I decided to play the angle.

  “Meredith, it seems all your men want to fuck me. Travis, Tadeas, Mr. Pussy and John here all have propositioned me. You really must be a terrible lay,” I poked at her.

  She stepped forward and threw her arms at me, “CONFUTO.” A blanket of black smoke rushed toward us and dissipated. When I tried to laugh at her failure, I realized she had placed a silence spell on us. I couldn’t even connect to Tadeas. She had grown in power greatly since consuming souls. Mwenye had taught her well, and they both would outlast me in a fight.

  I pulled in power from the humid air after the rain and spoke the word in my own head, “Ignis!” I stretched my hands out and waves of heat built around my arm. “Ecfundo.” The heatwave released in a torrent, and all the cats fell to the ground gasping for air. Smoke shields flared around Mwenye and Meredith.

  “You will see Abigail that your meager spells don’t have power anymore. Watch me take him from you. Perlicio.” She smiled and called Tadeas to her with her finger. I felt him flinch. The word was a form of the word seduce or draw away. He cleared his throat because neither of us could talk. His arm around my waist trembled, and he dropped the gun.

  He gripped me tighter as she giggled. “Come here to me. Perlicio,” she cooed again, her tongue rolling over the end of the Latin word as if it were Spanish. His gun arm sagged as he dropped the gun, then he wrapped it around my waist with the other. He fought the spell, which was astonishing to me. It wasn’t just his will fighting it, but my bracelet protections and our bond fought for us, too. Looking at his arms around me in the spectrum, the purple and red ropes swirled and tightened around us. His breathing regulated, and he no longer trembled. His lips brushed my neck at my shoulder. She could not take him from me. As I stared her in the eyes, the blackness in hers faded.

  “How interesting,” Mwenye said. “They are bonded.”

  “She said that earlier,” Meredith said.

  “It’s extremely strong. I’ve never seen anything like it. Meredith, you might as well forget any ideas you had for the jaguar. He will never be yours,” Mwenye said.