“Truth spell token,” Austin said as he lobbed a thumb-sized wooden figurine over the circles of protection and containment and into the arena where Darius strove to master the rune.
The guardian pounced on the wooden figurine. Possibly there was a tiny flare of light as it consumed the small amount of magic the figurine had contained. It was too minor to be sure.
Darius clapped his hands together.
Donna jumped.
Rest caught her hand and curled her fingers back around his belt. If they had to portal out, they’d need to act fast and stay connected.
The guardian’s fiery form contracted. It changed. It shrank and seemed more solid.
“I have it leashed,” Darius said. “I reached through it as it consumed the truth spell, and the magic powering that spell is mine, now. I own the rune.”
“You sure?” Austin asked. As the only other wizard present, he had the best chance for understanding what was happening and helping if it went wrong.
Darius’s shoulders lowered fractionally, his tension relaxing. The guardian shrank further. The construct moved to him and sat at his feet. “Yeah.”
Austin strode forward. “Test it.” With crazy courage, he crossed the circles and entered Darius’s circle of protection.
“Hey!” Rest was too slow to grab Austin, but his sudden movement jerked Donna forward. She bumped into his back.
Also too late, Gabe halted with a kick up of dust at the edge of the circle of containment.
Rest reached around and tucked Donna against him. The three of them stood there, helpless to do anything other than watch and worry as Austin faced the construct and the guardian lurched, grew and wavered, before sitting back at Darius’s boots.
Gabe released his breath in a long, sighed out curse. “Austin, you idiot.”
Darius, however, gave Austin a nod of respect.
As much as Austin had nearly frightened the life out of her with his courageous act, Donna appreciated just what he’d achieved. Temple guardians were traditionally designed to defend against other wizards by stealing their magic. There could be no better proof that Darius had mastered the rune than the fact that it hadn’t attacked his friend.
Darius tapped his chest where the snarling lion was branded over his heart. The guardian sprang up, burning a crimson-edged yellow, and vanished inside Darius. It was spooky yet reassuring.
Donna’s whole body relaxed in a rush that had her leaning into Rest for support.
In absorbing the rune and control of its guardian, Darius had become far more than what he’d been. The implications would reveal themselves over time.
Chapter 8
Lunch was a celebration. True, they were only eating sandwiches, but the relief and triumph in the air made them taste better than gourmet pizza. Darius—and all of them—had survived the guardian.
Darius and Austin’s debriefing gradually shifted into planning the team’s next move. Darius looked more relaxed than Donna had ever seen him. “The magic from the ruined temple is potent. I suspect it’ll surge when I call on it. The challenge will be not to overload the spells I’ve mastered.”
“If we’re going to do this, we have to establish our reputation.” Rest rolled his shoulders, loosening up like a boxer before a bout. “One strong enough that no one ever thinks of challenging us.”
“We send a message,” Austin agreed.
Gabe reached for another cookie. “A message needs a messenger.”
“We have Paul Webb’s phone number…” Donna trailed off. The men were looking at her with amusement that totally failed to hide their eagerness to metaphorically punch someone. They simmered with the need for, if not violence, then action.
Rest put it into words. “You don’t deliver this kind of message by phone.” He glanced at the others. “Webb will have wards. I can’t open a portal through them.”
“You can after I break them,” Darius said. “My new ability to siphon magic from other magic users is something I’d prefer to keep secret.”
Donna nodded. She was the only one not from the original team. It was her loyalties he wouldn’t be sure of. “Understood,” she said as curtly as any of them.
Rest grinned.
She kicked his boot. She hadn’t meant to be cute.
Darius continued as if he hadn’t noticed the byplay. He had, his eyes had flickered between them, but he was a professional planning a combat mission. Planning revenge. He stayed focused. “The message we deliver is twofold. First, no one is to mess with us. Second, that Rest will not deal with an intermediary. Both messages are delivered when we get through Paul Webb’s defenses and into his home to leave our message pinned to his body.” As Webb had arranged for the message to Rest be pinned to Darius’s unconscious body.
His fingers flexed, a wizard wanting to sketch a spell. “You’ll need to write the note, Rest.”
With the kitchen so small and lacking sufficient chairs, and the porch hot, they were sitting in the living room. The air conditioner rattled loudly but kept things cool. Rest got up, and returned a minute later with a spiral bound notebook and pen. He sat back down beside Donna, flicking the notebook open to a blank page and resting it on the arm of the sofa. He began drafting the note aloud before putting pen to paper. “I don’t—”
“We don’t,” Donna corrected instantly.
Austin saluted her with his glass of juice. Ice cubes jangled. “Make it clear you’re not alone. Details later.”
Rest tapped the end of the pen against the page, nodded, and began to write. His handwriting was bold and deliberate. “We don’t deal with intermediaries.”
“Short, to the point, and likely to get a response from whoever hired Webb.” Austin drained his juice.
Rest signed the note and tore the page from the book. “Now, we deliver it.” He looked expectantly at Darius.
Donna spluttered some of her water. “Now?”
“Uncle Bo provided me with background on Paul Webb,” Gabe said. “I looked up some other stuff. Everyone has routines. Habits and preferences make even the most paranoid predictable. Webb’s passion is Morgan horses. He has a horse farm in Maryland. Clients are never invited to it. It’s his retreat. Given that most people are on vacation now, chances are high that he’s there, taking advantage of time when he doesn’t have to be making connections. Webb’s a different sort of agent to Uncle Bo. Where Uncle Bo has built his business on anonymity, Webb relies on being there. He’s the known face, the fixer who can connect a person with someone who possesses the magic to solve their problems.”
“How sure are you that Webb’s at the horse farm?” Rest asked.
“It’s a calculated guess with a high degree of probability.” Gabe paused. “Even if he’s not…the farm is his pride. We can deliver at least part of the message just by going in.”
“There’ll be wards,” Austin said.
Gabe nodded. “And resistance. Webb is a fire mage, and I believe he’ll be there. Even without him, he employs five staff and given that the farm is his retreat, I suspect he lets his hair down there, which means he won’t want to hide the reality of magic.”
“So the staff have magic talents?” Rest’s question was more in the nature of a comment.
“I’d assume so. There’s a caretaker for the property, his wife’s the housekeeper, and there are three who work with the horses. Their talents may be house- or horse-focused, but chances are high that at least one of them will have combat capabilities.”
“We go in hard and fast,” Darius said. “Disable, not kill.”
Donna opened her eyes wide at that.
“Paul Webb is the target. We’re looking to limit collateral damage.” He addressed Gabe. “You’ll carry two guns. Tranq darts in one. I’ll spell them to work immediately. Bullets as back-up. Austin, ready your sleep spell.”
Austin laced his fingers, stretched and released them. “Six sleeping beauties. Are we waiting till night time? If they’re already asleep, it’ll make thing
s easier on the spell. Even if an alarm wakes them.”
“One a.m. Eastern Standard Time.” Darius stood. “I need to practice channeling my magic. I’ll be in the barn.”
“Your first spell better be for ice,” Rest said. “Or you’ll get heatstroke. This is Arizona, not Maine.”
“I’ll manage.” Darius started for the door. He either really needed to practice channeling the reservoir of magic at his command into spells, or else he just wanted some time alone. He paused. “Rest, look at a map. Choose a location to portal us to just outside the likely wards on the horse farm. Then prepare to open a secondary portal to the house when I’ve broken the outer ward.”
“Will do.”
Darius left.
Through the window, they watched him walk to the barn.
“The rune will change him,” Rest said quietly. “It’s a good thing he’s strong.” Rest sighed the sigh of a man with a weight on his shoulders, but one he was capable of bearing. “We’re concealing the guardian’s siphoning of magic on this mission, and we won’t discuss it with anyone.”
Austin frowned, appearing uncharacteristically grim. “I’ve heard rumors of a rare talent that can block another magic user’s access to their magic. This is something more. With the rune on him, if knowledge of it got out, people would call Darius a magic vampire. There’s real terror at the thought of losing your magic.”
“More than that,” Rest said. “When I faced the temple guardian, the way it sucked out my magic would have killed me if it completed the job.”
The memory of her seer vision that had shown her Rest facing that fiery construct replayed in Donna’s mind. She’d told Rest that it wasn’t a demon, and the guardian wasn’t. It was a magical construct. But if people learned of the power Darius now controlled via the rune, not only to drain their magic possibly till death but to use that magic in other spells, they would consider him next thing to a demon. Power that they couldn’t comprehend or control scared people.
“Darius was lethal before.” Gabe brought them back to reality and common sense. “We all are.”
“I’m not,” Donna said.
Gabe began collecting plates and empty glasses, studiously avoiding looking at anyone. “As long as you can live with the fact that we are…”
Rest’s shoulders twitched. He studied his friend, suddenly alert as if hearing a warning.
Donna heard it, too.
Gabe was in a relationship, a serious one. He’d learned that partnering with a warrior required its own strength, one that he appreciate in his woman, and one that he wanted Donna to realize she needed.
She stood, collecting the last of the glasses. “You trained for combat. You have the experience. I get it. And I respect your abilities.” She smiled slightly at Rest who watched her warily, alerted by Gabe’s attitude that this was important. “I’ll wait here while you deliver your message.”
“Thank you,” Rest said low.
“If there’s anything I can do to help with preparations, just ask,” she said to all of them.
With an afternoon and evening to fill in before the mission, Rest had hours to kill. It took only a few minutes to choose the location for his first and subsequent portals. He checked that neither Austin nor Gabe needed to be couriered anywhere for further supplies, and when they didn’t, he confirmed that Austin would keep an eye on Darius. Then Rest mentioned his personal plans to Gabe—it would be a bad idea to just vanish—and tracked Donna down.
She was in the new adobe house, which suited him just fine.
He’d chosen the site for the house carefully. It commanded a view across the desert, and he intended to put in a second, solid driveway from the road; one that wouldn’t wash away in a downpour.
“It’s surprisingly cool in here,” she greeted him as he entered the living room. She sat on the window seat again, where she could look out across the desert.
He hoped it meant she liked the view and that she could accept the desert. It was, as she’d said earlier, very different to her current home in San Francisco. He could live anywhere, but he’d chosen this land for a reason. The old rancher who’d sold it to him had revealed its secret, entrusting it to Rest. Now, he would trust it to Donna. He extended his hand in invitation. “I have something to show you.”
He led her outside. The storage shed was large enough to double as a garage. He’d built it first, using it to learn about adobe construction beyond what a month-long hands-on course had taught him. The shed backed against the base of the low rocky hill. Recycled wooden boards provided a level floor.
Rest nudged a mostly empty cardboard box aside with his boot, crouched and lifted a hidden trapdoor. “There’s a cave at the base of the hill. I excavated a second, easier entrance and hid it with the shed.”
When Donna didn’t move—and to be honest, didn’t look too impressed—Rest grabbed a flashlight. “I’ll go first and light your way.”
“Uh, the temple ruins…”
“This is totally different. Trust me.”
She took a deep breath, then smiled. “Okay.”
“It’ll be worth it,” he assured her before climbing down the ladder. “Your turn.”
She descended carefully.
He reached up, putting a hand on her hip to steady her. Not because she needed it, but because he wanted to touch her. As she reached the floor of the cave and turned around to examine it, he slid his arm around her.
The flashlight he kept for using in the cave was purposely low beam. Any brighter and the glare would have been brazen rather than fairytale in its effect.
“Pyrite. Fool’s gold,” he said in explanation as the light glittered and reflected off the myriad of golden specks in the rock walls of the cave. It was roughly double the size of the shed above it, narrowing back and down into the base of the hill. But even more beautiful than the shimmering fool’s gold was the sound of water trickling from a small, but ever-running spring.
“Water in the desert,” Donna said with awe as she heard it.
“It’s safe to drink. I had it tested.”
She knelt and dipped her hand in the water. “It’s cold.”
“I come here sometimes when I’ve been working on the house and gotten too hot. It’s better than air-conditioning.”
“More natural,” she said absently. Water droplets splattered as she shook her hand. “Rest…”
Disappointment crawled through him at her tentative tone. “You don’t like the cave. It’s okay. I should have thought. After the cavern beneath the temple ruins—”
“The cave is beautiful.” But when she stood, she didn’t return to him. Didn’t hug him. She hugged herself, her arms wrapping around her ribs.
“What’s wrong?” he asked bluntly.
She dropped her arms, her body language at least relaxing that much.
He didn’t like the thought that she protected herself, or her emotions, from him. How had he gotten things so wrong? He’d thought she’d like the secret cave.
“Rest, why did you hide the entrance to the cave?”
The question struck him as irrelevant. He frowned, trying to understand her reason for asking. “Its existence is a secret confided in me by the previous owner of the land.”
She nodded. “But you’ve had the ranch warded. Who could get in to discover the cave?”
“The wards only stop people with ill intentions against me personally,” he objected. But then he stopped and thought.
She was right. In the nearly two years he’d been here, there’d been no one on his land who’d been a threat to the secret of the cave. Even if he’d told everyone in the town of Tedium, the locals shared his aversion to outsiders. They wouldn’t have mentioned the cave or risked making it even small-time famous. Tourists were discouraged.
“Hiding the entrance to the cave seemed sensible.” Yet that certainty that he needed to conceal the cave seemed questionable now. He heard the hesitation in his voice.
Donna did, too, and her tone
echoed his. She spoke slowly, warily, but didn’t try to retreat from whatever was bothering her about the cave. “It feels like a bunker, Rest. I know you can portal out of here any time you want, but this feels like a hiding place.” She drew a deep breath. “It makes me doubt if your team and I have done the right thing. If we’ve pushed you.”
“Pushed me into what?” He was baffled. No one forced him to act against his own conscience and needs, not since leaving the military.
She shrugged jerkily and half-turned away. The glittering gold-flecked walls were mesmerizing, but her actions were clear avoidance. She didn’t stare at them so much as avoid looking at him.
He put a hand on her arm, drawing her gaze back to him. “What are you imagining about me? I’m glad you’re here.”
“Even if it ends your quiet retreat? You have a beautiful home, and the team and I invaded it. Everything will change. I…” She clutched the sides of his shirt. “I find the desert awe-inspiring. It’s something special. But it encourages isolation in a way that you’ve made work for you, and which I couldn’t.”
“I do leave here. I portal out on courier jobs.”
Her fingers dug through the cotton of his shirt to press into his skin. It seemed an unconscious act, but one that betrayed just how disturbed she was by whatever thoughts were churning in her mind.
He cupped her face. The chill of the cave had brushed lightly over her skin and he felt it. He felt her face warm with his caress.
Her gaze was steady, hopeful yet unsure. Her fingers, at least, relaxed their death grip on his shirt.
“I’m not a hermit,” he said quietly. “The hard work of building the house helped me sort out some things in my head. I didn’t—don’t—have PTSD, but there were things I did in the army and later in the combat courier missions that I had to come to terms with. Memories. Regrets. Acceptance of my talent and skills. Maybe I did need time alone for that, but I’m not anti-social. I know my neighbors. I swap ranch work for help with the house. With the house nearly finished, I was probably nearing a time of change even if you and the team hadn’t arrived.”
Desert Devil (Old School Book 5) Page 13
