by Black, Tasha
A light breeze caressed her skin and the boys stopped for a moment.
She heard a murmur in the air, like her mother’s soft assurances at bedtime that tomorrow would be better.
The boys began to yell again.
But from nowhere, Lana had found her voice at last.
“Leave me alone,” she shouted. The words rang out strong and proud.
And she swore she could feel electricity in her fingertips.
Though they had never left off their teasing before, the boys scattered immediately, looking startled, maybe even frightened.
Lana smiled as her friend ran back to hug her.
“You were so brave,” Ayana said.
In the heart of Glacier City a woman walked home with a briefcase. Headlights flashed past and there were the sounds of bus engines and friends greeting each other, horns blaring, and the construction site ahead.
From the din there emerged the sound of a single engine gunning out of control.
A soft breeze lifted her hair for a moment. She felt dizzy in its wake, as if she had inhaled a dangerous drug instead of the stale city air.
She turned to the sound of the engine.
A bright blue delivery truck careened through the intersection out of control. Her eye followed its eventual path onto the crowded sidewalk.
Without knowing why, she lifted her hand as if she were an orchestra conductor telling the string section to rest.
The truck came to a jarring stop just as its tires touched the curb.
Onlookers screamed and gathered to look at the truck, which had miraculously managed to stop on a dime.
The woman looked down at her hand.
It looked the same as it always had. But she felt a tingle in her skin, like she had touched a live wire.
On a dusty lot, a small boy waited for the pitcher to throw the ball.
The bat felt alien in Takeo’s hands, as it always did. He never once hit the ball. He didn’t want to play baseball, but his mother liked him to have an activity.
The big boy at the plate wound up his arm, and Takeo braced himself, hoping at least he wouldn’t get hit this time.
A light breeze swirled the dust of the baseball diamond to life for a moment. It seemed to be dancing just for Takeo.
Then the ball was whizzing toward him, more slowly than ever before.
He observed the ball and his arms swung the bat of their own accord, knocking it so hard that it sailed merrily through the air, over the heads of the whole opposing team, and into the distance.
There was a moment of stunned silence and then his teammates were shouting for him.
“Run, Takeo,” his best friend Shinji cried, pointing to first base. “You did it!”
Takeo’s heart nearly exploded with pride as he dashed off, for the first time, not back to the dugout.
In a sun-baked desert, a man shaded his eyes with his hand once again, begging the universe for some sign of where he might find help.
In the shadow of the broken down car, his wife huddled with their two-year-old son.
They had been here nearly twenty-four hours. The boy would not make it much longer.
A whisper of cool air embraced him for a fleeting instant and was gone.
In its wake he saw a shimmering path.
It must be a mirage.
He approached it.
It didn’t fade. Instead the path sparkled and surged, like sunlight on the surface of a pond.
He dashed back to the car, grabbed three long-empty water bottles.
“Where are you going?” His wife’s voice was a worried croak.
“I’ll be back, stay where you are,” he said, his eyes back on the path.
Two hours later he returned to her, the bottles full.
He had followed the shimmering path to a trickle of water flowing in a crevice surrounded by weedy trees.
They would make it until another car came along.
And in the small college town of Tarker’s Hollow, Pennsylvania, Ainsley Connor opened her eyes…
Chapter 8
Ainsley felt the magic flowing into her.
A trickle at first, like tears of joy.
She opened her eyes.
Magic didn’t appear out of nowhere. And this was good magic, warm and cozy. It didn’t have anything to do with the spiders ensnaring her.
The monster above her hesitated, closing its eyes and tasting the air with its beautiful onyx mouth.
Whatever the creature sensed must not have pleased it. The thing shook its head until silver hair swirled around, an unpleasant expression twisting its lovely features.
But by then, the trickle inside Ainsley had given way to a raging torrent.
Her skin tingled as tiny fingers of flame began to spread over her body. Tiny wisps of smoke rose from her as the flame caught on the webbing and licked at her clothes.
Ainsley had never felt such power.
She shrugged off her charred bonds, delirious with the energy that coursed through her, even as she wondered if it would consume her.
But as the flames fully engulfed her, she realized that she felt no heat at all.
The spiders were backing away, cowering from her.
“You should be afraid,” she said, her voice sounding like a chorus. “You threatened my family. And you don’t have much longer to live.”
As Ainsley rose from the dirt, she felt her clothes burn away from her body, the ashes gathering at her feet.
She kept rising, her toes leaving the sod until she hovered a few feet from the ground.
She held her hand out, palm open, in the direction of the massive spider-thing.
The beast darted away.
But before it could take a single step on those spindly legs, a gout of flame exploded from Ainsley’s outstretched hand.
The monster was knocked off its feet and enveloped in fire. The huge creature was incinerated within seconds.
The smaller spiders let out a chorus of squeals and began to move out in a sea of furry legs.
But Ainsley had plenty of fire to go around.
One moment the clearing was alive with scuttling forms.
And the next, there was nothing but a hundred piles of smoldering ash.
Ainsley drifted to the ground as the flames flowing over her faded and disappeared.
She could still feel the warm tingle, just beneath the surface. The power still belonged to her.
“I found them,” a voice called from the hillside.
A moment later, several figures stepped out of the cavern from the other side of the pocket dimension.
Jenny came out first, followed by Mac, who scrambled down the hill to Ainsley in a cascade of skittering gravel, a tortured expression on his face.
“Ainsley,” he said.
“I’m fine,” she assured him.
Tokala emerged from the cavern next and then helped Bonnie out.
Bonnie, dressed for work in heels and a long skirt, observed the rocky hillside with some alarm.
Tokala swept her up in his arms and jogged down the steep hill to join Ainsley and Mac as if he were walking down a set of stairs. When he reached them, his forehead creased.
He placed Bonnie gently on the ground, then paced in a circle around the clearing, making motions with his arms that Ainsley recognized as warding symbols, but different from the ones she’d been taught.
She made a mental note to ask him about them. Bonnie’s mate could open up a world of magic to them if he…
Mate.
Erik…
Ainsley called on her wolf senses to find her mate. Desperately she searched the trees until she found him.
Erik lay at the base of a large oak in his wolf form, bound in silken web.
“Erik,” she moaned, placing a hand on his shaggy chest.
His fur was reassuringly warm, and there was shallow movement in his ribs. He was breathing, but lightly. The poison had affected him badly if his wolf wasn’t able to keep up with the hea
ling.
Suddenly, she was back in her dining room in Tarker’s Hollow watching Grace extract strands of magical poison from his wounds - the night he’d sacrificed his wolf to save Ainsley.
More wolves were pouring out of the tunnel, but Ainsley had eyes only for Erik. She could hear Mac shouting instructions to them all to cut down the other spider victims.
“Get them help,” he called. “And find Yusef Ennis.”
She allowed a whisper of flame to emerge from her fingers and used it to melt the webbing away from Erik, piece by piece.
At last his massive form was free. The breeze rustled his fur lightly giving a brief illusion of movement.
But he remained limp on the ground at her feet.
She could see the wound where the spider monster had bitten him. It was gaping, the blood barely coagulating.
“Erik,” she murmured, pulling his head onto her lap. “I don’t know what to do.”
Mac looked up at her from across the clearing. Her beta had heard her distress call before she sent it.
She turned her attention back to Erik, stroking his glossy fur, running her fingers through his scruff.
Stay with me, my love…
Tokala ran to them, kneeling beside Erik, scenting his wound.
“Ainsley,” Tokala said, “help me.”
She watched as he held his hands over the black wolf’s torso as if it were a campfire.
“Kiken temei,” he sang in a low voice, and looked to Ainsley.
She held her hands out over Erik and repeated the words of the song as well as she could.
“Kiken temei,” he sang again. “Ktenamukw machikwi.”
“Kiken temei,” Ainsley sang back to him. “Ktenamukw machikwi.”
The edges of Erik’s wound were pulling upward.
“Kiken temei,” Tokala sang. “Ktenamukw machikwi.”
Ainsley sang it back again as she watched droplets as thick and shining as tar, flowing in reverse out of the wound. It was like watching a rainstorm backwards.
Tokala motioned above Erik and the droplets whirled around, forming a cloud of inky evil.
He rose slowly to his feet, motioning the cloud before him.
There was silence in the valley as he walked, the words of the song coming faster, the rhythm becoming frantic.
At last he stopped before a hole in the ground Ainsley hadn’t seen before.
“Ktenamukw machikwi,” he cried one last time as he slung the cloud down into the earth.
A group of packmates joined him and they covered the opening over with dirt and rocks.
Ainsley wondered if the hole might have been the hiding place of the leader of spiders.
But then Erik began to stir in her arms and the world disappeared.
One moment she was cradling the massive head of a shaggy black wolf.
The next she was holding her mate in human form, his face pressed against her belly where the baby stirred as if in recognition.
Erik blinked awake, his large, dark eyes arresting as they had always been.
“Did we win?”
His whispered question filled her heart with pride at his fierceness.
“I think we did,” she whispered back, holding him close, the tears sliding down her cheeks to bathe his bare chest.
Later - Grace
Grace watched Julian in the mirror as he tied his tie.
He was so handsome. She had forgotten the details during his absence - the dimple on his left cheek, the distracted way he ran his hand through his hair, like he was doing now.
“Let me help you with that,” she offered.
He turned to her, dazzling her with his warm smile.
She smiled back. How easy it was to be happy when the man she loved was here.
She slid her hands up Julian’s chest on the way to his tie, enjoying the feel of the muscles beneath his Oxford.
He took her hand and bent it down to kiss it slowly, his lips grazing the small platinum band he’d put on her finger in a quiet ceremony the day after he returned to her.
There was a tiny drop of blood on his collar.
She froze, struck by the reality of him, by the fact that this was all happening, a commonplace moment, a wife straightening her husband’s tie.
It had been almost two months since they destroyed the moroi together, and she was still shocked sometimes that he was actually there. She found herself reaching out to touch him constantly, needing the reassurance that he was not just another vision.
“What is it?” His soft question roused her.
“Looks like you cut yourself shaving,” she said.
“Bugger,” he exclaimed.
“You’d think you’d be better at it after a hundred years,” she teased, undoing his tie so he could change.
He pulled her in so close she could smell his shaving cream, a fresh masculine scent that was almost minty.
“Maybe I was too busy getting good at more important things.”
“Ha,” she smiled. “More likely you had your nose stuck in some obscure magical tome that only three people have ever read without going insane.”
“That’s important too.” He studied her for a second. “Although less so now, I suppose. Since the proverbial cat is out of the bag.”
Grace bit her lip.
She was still torn about what she had done that night back in Fletcher’s Cove. She had let all of the moroi free to do who knew how much harm.
But she had also reconnected the world with the magic it had lost, giving people the power to deal with the moroi and to do so much good.
When they first got back to Tarker’s Hollow she’d taken her abuela aside to tell her about the dreams - dreams where Grace had broken down the barriers and loosed a deadly flood on the unsuspecting people.
Abuela just laughed and told Grace that sometimes dreams were prophetic, and sometimes they only meant you’d eaten a bad enchilada.
Time would tell.
In the meantime, Grace had an event to prepare for.
She began to unbutton Julian’s shirt so he could get a fresh one.
“You changed it all, you know,” he told her. “Magic will never be the same after the gift you’ve given them.”
She smiled up at him as he unfastened the cuffs of his shirt and slipped it off.
“Some of them will need help understanding their new powers,” he continued. “They’ll need a teacher. And a safe place to learn.”
“Are you suggesting we turn Tarker’s Hollow College into Hogwarts?” She was only half kidding - it was a cool idea.
He stared at her blankly.
“Have you read any books written in the past century?” she asked.
“Why? Are any of them any good?”
She smiled, shook her head and grabbed him another white Oxford from the wardrobe.
“That’s too bad,” he said, looking at the shirt in her hands. “It’s so much more enjoyable when we’re taking things off, isn’t it?”
She giggled in spite of herself.
He slipped the shirt on, then pulled her in close and nuzzled her neck in a very serious way.
“Stop it,” she protested weakly. “You know we can’t be late.”
“We still have plenty of time,” he murmured into her neck. “Besides, they’re not going to start without the maid of honor.”
He was right about all of it.
And besides, she couldn’t have resisted him if she’d wanted to.
Grace had always been in control of herself, polite, studious, neat and tidy.
But there was something about this man. He made her helpless and wild all at once.
And the knowledge amused and excited him.
He chuckled as she melted against him, arching her neck up for his kiss.
Then she felt the roughness of his five o’clock shadow against her skin and she didn’t care if he laughed at her, so long as he didn’t stop.
“Grace, my love,” he teased, the words tickling her se
nsitive skin. “Have you done any magic today?”
A jolt of desire shot through her as she remembered the first night they had been together. A night when he refused to make love to her for fear that she only wanted him because of the price of her magic.
“No,” she whispered to him, shaking her head.
He slid a hand down to the small of her back, bringing the zipper of her dress with it in a metallic whoosh.
“Pity,” he murmured as he slid her dress down to reveal her bare breasts. “Oh,” he breathed.
She felt her nipples go stiff with desire and for once was happy that she was small-breasted enough to go without a bra. She waited, heart thrumming in anticipation.
Julian was a creative lover. He had used his magic to transform her small apartment into a tree house, and the interrogation table at the police station into a bed of flowers. There seemed to be no place so humble he couldn’t transport it, not even that stone chamber where he had reclaimed her as Javier and Cressida slipped away. The granite walls had given way suddenly to a sunset beach, with gentle waves bathing them in warm froth.
But tonight he gazed down at her appraisingly.
“It’s your turn, I think,” he said at last. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Grace was swooning with desire already. She despaired at the thought of coming up with something, using her magic and making the need even more acute before it would be satisfied.
“Or maybe you’d rather just go along to the campus?” His tone was teasing, but Julian could be stubborn.
Frantically, she tried to imagine a place he would love, a bit of magic that would make this special for him.
It was too hard for her addled brain to decide.
Because every moment they had spent together had been special to her, from the very first one.
Her magic acted before she could even consciously decide.
A soft glow exuded from her palms.
Suddenly, the apartment was transforming, long grass sprouting from the area rug in front of her sofa. Scraggly pine trees rose from the floorboards. The footstool faded into a tree trunk with a Coke bottle sitting on top.
“Oh,” Julian sighed.
