“I’m too tired,” she said.
“We all are,” I replied, “but I’d rather not be attacked in my sleep.”
As we walked, I talked to her. “You saw the darkness in me, Sage. If I use my magic, it will come out and no one wants that, least of all me.”
“You used your magic back there,” she pointed out.
“I know, and it tried to take me over.” I looked at her. “Which means you need to step up. I can open myself to the dark magic, but only at a great cost. The smaller but no less important tasks need to be on you.”
Goddess, I hoped I was right in trusting her.
Sage stared at me. “There is something else you would have done instead of the archies, isn’t there?”
I nodded. “A barrier, clear and sensitive to supernaturals. It would go off like an alarm if it was touched.”
She drew herself up. “Can I do it?”
I raised both my eyebrows.
Oka tightened her hold on me. “If she gave you the reins of her magic, with our energy, we might be able to pull it off.”
I held a hand out to her before I changed my mind. “If you trust me to work through you, we’ll use our combined energies and I’ll see if we can pull it off.”
She put her hand in mine after only a brief hesitation. I closed my fingers around hers as we started to walk again.
“Call your magic up,” I said.
Her magic was the same colors as I’d seen in her aura and she literally handed them to me.
Sweet goddess, they were weak.
I sent my energy and Oka’s down my arm into the magic.
She gasped. “I can feel that.”
“You want to use your connection to the earth,” I said. I coaxed her magic through the steps as carefully as I could, and while it took a few tries, I managed to get a seven-foot-high barrier up.
Better than nothing, even if it took the last dredges of my energy and Oka’s.
I let Sage’s hand go and nearly fell over. I pointed to the faint blue lines emanating from the barrier that only Sage and I could see.
“That’s going to be directly connected to me. If an ugly hits the barrier, I’ll know.”
“Why did you want me to see this?” she said. “And you left me all my energy.”
I pointed at the camp. “I want you to try to make a smaller barrier around the kids in the Humvee. Before you go to sleep.”
She shook her head, fatigue written all over her. “I already said—”
I held up a hand, stopping her. “I know. You’re tired, but you saw me do it with your magic. Now is the time to push through. That’s how my training was. No chance to breathe, just survive.”
Sage stared hard at me. “You think I can.”
“I do. I could not have done it if your magic wasn’t capable,” I said, and that was the truth, even if it had been powered by my energy and Oka’s.
Sage nodded slowly, turned and walked away. Was it just me or did she stand a little taller?
“That was well handled,” Oka said as she hopped from my shoulder and stretched. “On both your parts.”
I had nothing left in me to chatter about the change in circumstances. “Time to sleep, cat, or we’re no good to anyone.”
I made my way to the edge of my new barrier. Even with it attached to me, I wanted to be close to it.
If I was going to be this caravan’s protector, then I needed to be on the frontlines.
A yawn cracked my jaws and my eyes fluttered closed for a moment. A hand dropped onto my forearm and I spun, yanking a curved blade from my side.
I had it pressed against a bare male throat before I realized who it was.
“Shit, Dick, don’t sneak up on me like that!” A shaky breath escaped me. That had been close.
“Wilma used to call me Dick when I was being an idiot.” He smiled, and it was . . . tired. And so sad.
He shook it off. “I only stopped to ask where you are going? We have sentries, you don’t have to be on guard.”
I brushed his hand off. “I’m going to sleep on the outskirts. Just like always.”
“No, that’s not right.”
“It’s better if something comes along. It’s where the tutelary should be,” I pointed out. “I might be able to stop whatever it is before it slams into the rest of you.” Because the thing was with this many attacks so close together, I had a feeling we weren’t done.
And that made me nervous as a sack full of heebie-jeebies. Don’t ask, it’s an English thing.
“You said I am in charge? Are you reneging on that?” He arched a brow at me.
I made him wait a moment before I answered. “No. You are in charge.”
He smiled. “We need you near the children. I would rather you were closest to them in case of any attacks.” He closed the distance between us and lowered his voice. “Please, I couldn’t bear to lose any of them or . . . Chris and the baby.”
His throat bobbed once, his eyes intense even in his fatigued state. I stared hard at him. “You . . . are you in love with Chris?”
What kind of drama had I just stumbled on? I could see it in his eyes that he cared for her more than just as a friend. Damn, he moved fast, seeing as he’d lost his wife only two months before, and Chris was way more pregnant than that. I shook my head.
He turned away. “It’s complicated.”
I stared hard at him. “Richard, don’t make me call you Dick.”
He gave a dry laugh and motioned for me to follow him. “Another time we can have that chat.”
Though the sun was high, there was little movement. Most people were crashed out wherever they could. Tents had been hastily propped up around the three vehicles and sleeping bags had been crawled into.
But unlike before, the tents were tight against one another, not spread out for personal space. For the most part, any person could reach out and touch another. It was striking after seeing things from the perspective of an outsider.
Curiosity got the better of me as it so often did. “Were Macey and I the only loners in this group?”
Richard glanced at the tight-knit tents. “No. But you know how it is. When something like this happens, commonality brings us together. If Macey were still with us, she’d be here too.”
“While the idea is heartwarming, we lost too many people for me to be glad of it,” I said.
Oka paced along next to me, her body brushing my leg here and there.
“I agree but look at the good that comes out of it,” Richard said. “Some days that’s all we can do—take what good we find.”
As we walked, I did look. Where people were asleep, they reached out to others. A hand on a leg. Arms around each other. I saw Lucy curled up with Tom, another man laying with his head on her legs and her hand on his head. Nothing sexual about it, just comfort.
Like a family.
Like a pack.
My heart twanged.
This . . . was what I’d been searching for all along. I stopped where I was and closed my eyes, fighting the tears and losing. Too tired to fight. Richard put a hand on my shoulder.
“Pamela?”
“Give me a second,” I whispered.
He dropped his hand and I forced a big breath of air into my lungs. I brushed a hand over my face.
He said nothing as he pointed to a tent between the Humvee and one of the other trucks. Inside was big enough for six people and there was an honest to goddess foam mattress. And a sleeping bag that didn’t have any holes in it. And a pillow. An actual pillow.
A prize for being the caravan witch. I shook my head. “Nope. It’s going to be a cold night, Richard. There are people out there who are hurt. They shouldn’t be out in this.” The nights had been cold during our travels. Not deadly by any stretch of the imagination, but still, this just wasn’t how things worked in my mind.
“That’s your call,” he said, but he smiled. “Wilma would have loved you to bits.”
I snorted. “I doubt that. I wo
uld have kept myself hidden if she’d been the witch I think she was. You wouldn’t have needed my help and I would have slipped out of your life before you even knew I’d been here.”
“Touché,” he said. “But even so, she would have wanted me to offer this to you. And if it had been her, she’d have said the same thing you just did.”
I caught movement around the front of the Humvee. Sage was walking with her fingers trailing on the vehicle, sweat on her brow as she worked to create a boundary.
Richard followed my gaze and frowned. “She is lucky you spoke for her.”
I nodded. “I know it and so does she.”
Oka patted my leg. “You’re going to fall over. Find a place to lie down first.”
I reached down and picked her up. “Fill the tent with whomever you like. Oka and I will sleep close enough. Okay?”
Richard put his hands on his hips a moment before he gave a quick nod to me. “Wait then, just a moment.” He ducked inside the tent and I shifted from one foot to the other, as I cracked another yawn.
“We haven’t had an actual bed in years,” Oka said, wistfulness in her voice.
“Don’t want you to get soft on me.” I yawned a second time. I was going down fast. “Besides, it could divide the group, make Sage hate me again. We don’t need that.”
“You aren’t their leader,” she reminded me. “Richard offered you this, and they all seem fine with it. Well, they’re all passed out, but whatever.”
“Oka,” I scolded through a third yawn.
Richard popped out of the tent, his eyes searching the area. “Who are you talking to?”
“My cat,” I said. “It’s a bad habit from being on my own so long.” The lie was not really a lie, which made it easy.
Oka let out a soft meow while she perched on my shoulder, all innocence and sunshine. He looked at her, opened his mouth to speak and then thought better of it as he snapped his mouth shut.
He thrust two things into my hands. The pillow, and two still-wrapped if well past their best-before date granola bars. Premium rations. My mouth watered as I read the words “dark chocolate and cranberry granola.”
“Richard. I can’t take these. Then I’ll be the dick.” I held them out to him. He pushed them back.
“Pamela. You’re thin even after a month with us. You need your strength. For God’s sake, or the goddess, or whoever you answer to, take them. You do no one any favors by falling over. Eat them and go to sleep.” He waved me off, that spine of his showing again.
I liked him better and better.
Or maybe I was just letting myself see people for who they really were.
“Go on, get out of here. I need to move people into your tent.” He turned me around and gave me a push on the back.
“Richard, I can help. I never meant to—”
He smiled, just a half grin really, and put a hand on my shoulder. “I know.”
“I can help.”
Oka groaned. “I just want to sleep.” But there was no real heat in her words.
His eyes locked on me a moment and then he nodded and pointed to where a tarp was set up in a mock tent, off the side of the truck farthest out of the circle. “There’s where the wounded are. Let’s start there.”
I followed him, and my feet froze as I stepped into the tent. “The injuries, who tended them?”
“Well, Sage would have,” Richard said. “But there was no time. We have Nathanda, our nurse, but many of the injuries are beyond her skills.”
“Get Sage,” I said. “Neither of us are done here.”
Richard obeyed me, allowing me to take charge as I’d allowed him.
Oka crept close. “You are on the last of your reserves. Neither of us has anything left.”
“Will you lend me some energy?” I whispered to her.
She bobbed her head, sighed and sat beside me. “Of course. You don’t have to ask, you know that.”
I ran my hand between her ears. “What would I do without you?”
“Die a horrible, slow death,” she quipped.
A laugh escaped me, but it cut off as a groan flowed from the man closest to me.
There was a flap of the tarp as Sage stepped in and dropped to her knees beside me. “I worked the boundary, it isn’t very big.” Fatigue sat heavy on her. But we weren’t done.
The nurse was quiet as she worked on those she could tend to, her blond hair a tangled mess but her movements sure and smooth despite the obvious fatigue.
“We’ll work on it, every day,” I said. She sucked in a sharp breath and I held up a hand before she could say anything else. “We need to help these people. Are your herbs straightened out yet?”
She blinked a few times and I saw the flash of irritation before it subsided under acceptance. “Yes.”
I quickly gave her instructions. She would take the lead and I would assist. We worked through the worst bleeders first. I stitched them closed and Sage used her herbs as poultices to pack the wounds.
We worked quietly together, and I saw her for the first time in her element. Her magic hummed happily as she delved wounds, healed broken bones and eased pain in her patients.
“This is where you belong, Sage,” I said as I mopped a sweaty forehead. I was next to useless without my magic here, but even before, healing was tough for me. I could do it. But I was born to do battle; I knew that in the core of my being.
Richard leaned over me. “Well done. Both of you.” He looked to the nurse. “And you too, Nathanda. We could not survive here without you.” She smiled, but it was tired.
Sage kept her head down and moved to the next patient, pointing at the first. “He’ll need water and extra rations. By tomorrow morning he’ll feel good, but drained. He’ll be back to slinging his own arrow for us in no time.”
Richard nodded. “I’ll move him out of your way.”
That was the pattern we fell into. Sage patched them up where she could, I helped, and Richard moved them.
Of the nineteen in the caravan, there were seven in the wounded tent.
By the time we were done, I was truly wrung out. I thought I couldn’t be more tired than when I’d started, but I was wrong.
I sat back on my heels, exhausted.
“Thank you,” Richard said. “To all of you.”
Sage’s head snapped up and tears shimmered in her eyes, but she said nothing.
“You’re welcome.” I pushed myself to my feet. “I’m going to bed now. I saw a nice mossy area out there. If you need me, that’s where we’ll be. Get some sleep. I think Wilma was right, a storm is coming. And we need to be ready for it.”
Sage nodded, and I stood, stiff from hunching over the wounded for so long. I stretched as I walked out of the tent. The day had waned and still most people were sleeping.
I walked to the edge of the camp, careful not to disturb anyone.
There I found a small fire already going, and a relatively hole-less sleeping bag spread out on a bed of moss along with the pillow Richard had given me earlier. I looked over my shoulder and Richard waved at me before turning away.
“Get some sleep, Richard,” I said even though he couldn’t hear me. “Or you’ll be nothing but a Dick tomorrow.”
Oka grunted. “A useless, tired Dick.”
I laughed. “Oka.”
“I’m just saying.” She leaned into me. “You did good today, Pam.” She pushed her way into the sleeping bag, her entire body disappearing.
“Ditto, cat,” I said.
She purred and was sound asleep before I was. Lucky for me, I lay there wide awake as the day slowly darkened.
I couldn’t seem to shake the sense of unease that had settled over me.
A storm was coming.
The dark magic in me was growing stronger and my reluctance to use it was fading.
And why did I feel like I was going to be right smack in the middle of something bad? I needed help. I needed someone who could see the storm and at least tell me how I could prepare for
it.
“What I wouldn’t give for someone else’s insight,” I whispered to myself.
Call it a hunch, but the laughter that curled through my mind as I fell asleep told me my work for the day was far from done.
Chapter Fifteen
Dreams were a strange thing for me. Mostly because they always seemed so real, and I knew from experience, just because it was a dream didn’t mean it couldn’t be real.
I opened my eyes as if I were waking and found myself sitting on my bed in my room, all the way back in the farmhouse that I’d lived in with my mentor. With my family. I ran my fingers over the quilt, feeling the stitches and squares of different material as familiar to me as the clothes I wore.
A shout caught my ear and I stood hurrying to the window. Below me, Rylee and Alex walked toward the barn, Alex in his human form, his dark head bowed to Rylee’s flaming auburn locks.
I put my hands to my mouth, then shoved the window open and leaned out, wondering if they would hear me if I shouted.
“Rylee,” Alex’s voice reached me as if I stood next to them. “I think she’s lost.”
She put an arm around his waist. “I can’t Track her. But that doesn’t mean you won’t find her.”
It was everything I needed and wanted, my whole heart wrapped into a single image.
I just couldn’t decide if it was actually happening, or just all my hopes expressing themselves in a dream.
A knock on my door turned me away from the window.
Of all the people I’d have expected to see in a dream, he was one of the last. Why couldn’t it have been Rylee? Or Liam?
Faris’s blue eyes twinkled as he stepped over the threshold of the door. “Well, little witch. You’ve got yourself all tangled up this time, don’t you?”
“Faris, what are you doing here?” I asked. “I mean, really, why you?”
He laughed at me, flashing his bright white fangs. He’d been a vampire in life, and I’d had a few dealings with him. More often than not, he’d caused us all problems, at least until he’d fallen for Rylee. Then his heart had made him give the ultimate sacrifice to save her.
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