“Nearly fixed,” Shawn corrected. “I need to handle one more thing.”
Gosh. She’d forgotten. The men, possibly mages, who were congregating at Lynx Lookout wanted to collect rings enchanted to control those around them. Zach’s evil couldn’t be allowed to outlive him. And in a bizarre irony, it would have gotten a boost from his death. Death magic didn’t care who it consumed. “We have to go.” If my legs will move.
Shawn half-carried her out to the truck. She felt him use a flicker of magic to smudge the evidence that they’d ever been at Mason’s house.
“I’m taking you home.” His tone of voice was final.
If he expected an argument, he was wrong. “Thanks.” She was too tired to be anything other than a hindrance to him. “Are you fit to—”
His hollerider nature brushed against her aura, sparking.
She smiled tiredly. “Happy hunting.”
Shawn left Ruth and the truck at Rose House and blurred to Lynx Lookout. He didn’t waste power masking his magic, and so terror rode on the outskirts of his passing. He hoped that the terror that travelled before him would scatter the men gathering at the lookout, but he doubted it. Men who knew to enact an enchantment at a nexus—and who weren’t deterred by the FBI and other authorities swarming the area on the hunt for Zach—wouldn’t run from him.
More fool them.
Lynx Lookout was the highest point for miles around, but it was off the main roads, and difficult to access—by car. Blurring, Shawn was there in two minutes.
Twelve men, and Zach would have been the thirteenth.
They wore business suits or expensive sweaters and jeans. All ages, but all characterized by avidity. They were ravenous for power.
They’d sensed his approach. It showed in the stiff uneasiness of their posture and the way they glanced at each other and around. They stood in a rough circle, terrified.
Shawn halted. In mage sight he saw the symbols Zach had inscribed on the ground. The spell had the scent of the dead enchanter’s magic.
“Put on your rings,” a gray-haired man ordered.
“I want to know what’s out there, first.” A guy about Shawn’s age wasn’t taking orders from anyone. “And where’s Zach?”
“Haven’t you watched the news?” Mr. Sarcasm was short and chubby.
“Put your damn rings on,” the initial speaker snarled. “I don’t want to lose mine because you’re all gutless cowards.”
There was a wordless mutter of resentment, but everyone shoved on their rings.
“Now, the chant.”
Shawn wasn’t going to wait for the spell. There was evil here; low level but with the potential for so much worse. He flung his magic at the spell Zach had inscribed on the rocky ground.
It exploded.
Shawn just had time to recognize the irony that Zach’s old spell had exploded in his face, after he’d set up Zach’s fall from grace with the FBI via plastic explosives. Then the nexus ripped open.
Ruth sat in the truck, staring at the front of Rose House and not seeing it. Shawn had just vanished. She could feel the terror he left behind, the impact of his unmasked hollerider nature, but it didn’t affect her. What had her sitting there stunned, and what had kept her silent on the way home, was one thought.
At Mason’s house she’d become the plague, the essence of death and devastation, and her hollerider had still held her. The silver she’d seen in her trance hadn’t simply been her love for Shawn. It had been their love. He’d held her and given her the lifeline back from near-death to life.
Carla, however, hadn’t just experienced an epiphany. The ghost shouted impatiently from the front porch. “Ruth! Ruth, are you all right? Where has Shawn gone?”
Ruth opened the truck door and dropped to the ground, the thud of her feet hitting it jarred up through her bones and reminded her just how tired she was. “I’m fine. The plague is…I destroyed it.” She wished there was a railing on the porch steps. She’d have used it to pull herself up. As it was, she plodded up the five steps till she stood facing Carla. “Shawn has just gone to deal with a few possibly magical idiots before they cause trouble.”
With anyone else, after they’d held that containment ward, she’d have worried at them confronting the group of potential mages at Lynx Lookout. However, she’d checked Shawn’s aura during the drive and his magic wasn’t depleted. It was why she hadn’t fought his going alone. That, and he wouldn’t have listened—unless she’d lied and said she needed him to stay with her. And she’d never do that. She had too much self-respect, and too much hope for their long term relationship.
“Carla,” Ruth said wearily as the ghost stood between her and the door. “I need to sit down.” Lie down. Collapse. Whatever.
The ghost extended a hand, as if to help Ruth, then sighed. “Can’t touch you. I have the fire going in the parlor.”
“Thank—”
Boom! Magic crashed, pouring across the country, rolling through town to Rose House and beyond.
Ruth spun around. “That’s from Lynx Lookout.” And it hadn’t felt like Shawn’s magic. “I have to…keys! Where did Shawn leave the…in the ignition!” She’d been too tired, and he too preoccupied. The key was still in the truck.
“Wait!”
Cold gripped Ruth’s elbow. Freezing cold, clamping and creeping through her veins. She whimpered.
Carla released her instantly. “I’m sorry. Sorry! But, please. Before you go to help Shawn. You said he went to fight mages.”
Shawn had thought they might be mages. The crash of magic pretty much confirmed it. “Yes,” Ruth said.
“Then you need to take this.”
“What?” Ruth couldn’t see that the ghost held anything, and for herself, she was desperate to go to Shawn. I left him to fight alone. He hadn’t left her to battle the plague alone. I should have gone with him. Only, she was so tired. What help could she be?
“It’s inside. I can’t tell you what it is. I can’t bring it to you. You have to go into the turret part of the parlor. I told you. I dropped hints.” Carla agitatedly pushed open the front door. “Please, you need this to fight evil.”
Ruth glanced towards Lynx Lookout. No further magic crashed towards her, but she didn’t know if that meant she should be relieved or worried. However, one thing was indisputable: she’d exhausted her own magic. Even with the nexus nearby, she didn’t know how much help she could give Shawn. If Carla truly had something that could help in the fight…Ruth stumbled after Carla into the parlor.
Up at Lynx Lookout, Shawn staggered back three steps as the blast of Zach’s inscribed spell ignited the nexus. It flashed mage-fire around the rings the twelve men had pushed onto their pinkie fingers. Five of the men fell to the ground. Of the seven who retained their feet, four struggled to pull off their rings. That left three men intent on mastering the enchanted rings they wore and tapping the wild magic that flowed through the nexus.
Shawn didn’t need to tap the wild magic. It recognized him. He was a hollerider, one of the Wild Hunt. The raw magic streamed to him.
He braced his legs wide as the power tried to lift him up, tumble and carry him with it across the hill country. He resisted the exultant surge of energy and life, even as he snagged a strand of it.
One of the three men still standing and fighting to control the wild magic, turned towards Shawn. If he could identify and face a hollerider at an open nexus point, he was a powerful mage. The man flung a compulsion spell at Shawn. It roared a demand that Shawn submit. Whatever the nature of the enchantment Zach had set, this mage was using the ring to enslave.
Shawn laughed. He heard the feral amusement, the echo of a wolf’s howl, in the sound.
The four men who’d torn off their rings fled down the hill.
Shawn sent out the magic he’d borrowed from the nexus. It whipped out, stinging and destroying, yanking the enchantment from the rings and binding the magic of the three men who’d thought to challenge him. He considered a minute,
while the pine trees behind him soughed in the storm wind pouring from the nexus.
Justice.
He tore all magic from the twelve men and gifted it to the nexus. With the sacrifice, he sealed the outflow of magic, restoring the wild magic’s natural course through the land.
The storm of magic vanished. The clearing at the top of Lynx Lookout smelled confusingly of winter snow and summer’s scorching heat. Then that, too, was gone.
And so was Shawn.
In the parlor, Carla zoomed past the fireplace and the comfortable sitting area in front of it where Shawn and Ruth customarily sat. The ghost went straight to a portion of the wainscoting at the wall where the curve of the turret met the straight edge of the main house. She tapped on it, then looked impatiently at Ruth.
Ruth dropped to her knees in front of the paneling and pressed at it, then tried to get her fingernails into a crack and pull it. “How do I…?” She remembered Shawn unlocking Mason’s front door. It wasn’t how she used her healing talent, but it was a very minor magic. Perhaps she retained enough energy for it. She murmured the small charm that trainee guardians called “Open Sesame”.
The paneling swung open.
Stale air wafted out. Ruth instinctively closed her eyes and turned her face away.
“What do you have there?”
“Shawn!” Ruth fell over as she tried to turn around and get up all at once.
He caught her, crouching and supporting her.
She didn’t care about staying upright. All that mattered was that he was here and safe. She clutched at him.
“I’m okay, honey,” he said softly. “And the rings are disenchanted.” He smoothed her hair, touched her face and lips as they wobbled. “We’re okay.”
She nodded even as she tasted the saltiness of her tears. “I was going to save you.” She wiped at her eyes. “But Carla said I needed something hidden in this secret cupboard. She’d been dropping hints earlier but I wasn’t listening.”
“What’s in there?” Shawn asked Carla.
The ghost seemed calmer. She stood in the middle of the room. Truly stood, not just floated above the floor. “I can’t tell you. Not till you’ve found it. It’s why I’m a ghost, tied here.”
“Unfinished business.” Shawn glanced into the cupboard. With one hand steadying Ruth, he reached past her.
“Oh my…it’s a sword.” She forgot her tears of relief in sheer amazement.
“Excalibur.” Carla sat on the window seat. “Now that you’ve found it, it’s not a secret.” Her clothing flickered and became the long skirts and romantic white summer gown of a young woman in the early 1900s. Rosebuds formed a crown on her dark hair.
Shawn lifted the sword, turning it.
“It’s not very long,” Ruth said.
“A sword for battle.” Shawn stood and swung it. Magic sung through the air. He lowered the sword. “It’s truly Excalibur?” He looked at Carla.
She smiled at him and Ruth. “It is truly Excalibur. When Kenneth, my fiancé, went to fight in the Great War, he entrusted me with the sword. He was a journalist, an ordinary Londoner who’d worked his passage to America. He gave me the sword and he told me to keep it for him. He said it was Excalibur and that he was a mage. I thought he was romancing. I didn’t believe in magic.”
Carla stretched out her hand.
Shawn crossed the room and gave her the sword, hilt first.
She turned it over, studying it.
Shawn returned to Ruth, helped her up, and cradled her in front of him.
The warmth and strength of him seeped into her. “Kenneth died in the war,” she said quietly, remember the story Carla had told them when she introduced herself.
“And I had his sword. A piece of metal. A cold reminder of war. I couldn’t throw it away, but I didn’t want it. I hid it here in the secret cupboard.” She stood and brought Excalibur to Shawn. “When I died, I found that magic was real. I felt I’d let Kenneth down. I’d locked his sword away when other mages could have used it to fight evil. Kenneth…” She smiled. “He told me not to worry so. He has always believed that when Excalibur was needed, it would be found.”
Ruth hesitated. They hadn’t needed Excalibur to fight evil. Shawn, her own hollerider, had fought and won, alone.
He answered Carla. “We will find the right person for Excalibur. Ruth is a healer and I’m a hollerider. My magic is that of the Wild Hunt. Excalibur needs a leader. A guide, not a guard.”
“Excalibur will find its next wielder.” Carla leaned forward. She kissed Ruth’s cheek, and this time her touch wasn’t cold, but fleetingly warm and with the scent of roses. “Good-bye.”
She vanished.
Shawn set the sword aside.
“Carla?” Ruth turned in his arms. “Is she gone, forever?”
“I think so. She’s passed on her home to you.”
“To us,” Ruth said, not thinking, just speaking the truth in her heart. For an instant her heart paused, fearing that she’d pushed too far, spoken too much too soon.
“Ours.” Shawn sealed her mouth with his.
The growing thunder of a helicopter proved impossible to ignore, interrupting their kiss.
Ruth was conscience-stricken. “I forgot to text William that everything was okay. That we’d destroyed the plague.”
Shawn glanced out the window. “I think you’ll be able to tell him yourself.”
The mages in the helicopter cleared a landing area in Ruth’s front yard. The helicopter set down, and five men and women jumped out; including William, the Collegium’s chief healer.
Shawn rested his forehead against Ruth’s. “Time for a debrief. Then our time.”
Chapter 15
“A debrief, you said.” Ruth collapsed into an armchair in front of the parlor fire. “We seem to have been talking and talking and—” She yawned, and apologized. “Talking.”
Shawn grinned. “We had to do a fair bit of listening, too.”
She mock-scowled up at him. They’d had to listen to a lot of worry and fuss. It wasn’t just the Collegium support team who’d descended on Rose House. Her family had been about two hours behind; stirred up after hearing Peggy’s account of not simply witnessing Zach Stirling’s murder, but the mysterious illness Ruth had healed her and Mason of.
Fortunately, thanks to William’s healing talent, Ruth’s magical-depletion exhaustion had lifted before her parents arrived. She was tired, but healthily so. And finally, blissfully, alone with Shawn.
Outside, her somewhat flattened front yard was the only evidence of the day’s hectic activities. The helicopter and its mage passengers had flown back to San Antonio, to portal back to New York.
Ruth’s mom, Helen, was expecting them at the farm for dinner. More talk! But Ruth knew her mom needed to cook for them. It was Helen’s way of caring. “We should expect a feast,” she said, thinking aloud.
Shawn raised an eyebrow.
“Mom’ll be cooking and cooking, she’s been worried.” Worried enough that the most extraordinary event had taken place: the diner was closed.
“We’ll see how Peggy and I feel in the morning,” Helen had said.
Ruth knew Peggy would feel fine. One of the Collegium healers who’d arrived with William had driven to the hospital where Peggy and Mason had been undergoing a checkup, and had healed the last trace of strain caused by the plague from their bodies.
“Eating your mom’s cooking isn’t actually a hardship,” Shawn said.
She smiled at him.
He grinned back at her, rueful. “Although not being alone with you is. We promised we’d be over in an hour. If we’re not, I reckon Joe’ll be back looking for you.”
Ruth reckoned her dad would be, too. Quieter than her mom, he’d still been visibly rattled by Peggy’s story. The relief on his face to see Ruth smiling as she waved off the helicopter had been huge. It had been even more visible in his aura.
She glanced at the grandfather clock. “Just time to shower and change.
” The thought of clean water was blissful. But having to move…she groaned.
Shawn extended a hand and pulled her up. “Forty minutes till we have to go. I could shower with you to save time?” Mischief twinkled in his hazel eyes. And desire.
“Would that really save time?” Ruth pressed into him, shifted so that they rubbed against each other.
“Nope.” He laughed and kissed her. Kissed her again.
She wove her arms around his neck.
His kiss deepened. Their naked hunger rocketed the teasing embrace to devouring passion. “A cold shower,” he muttered.
“Oh, yeah.” There were words they had to say. But not now. Now the truth was in what they’d shared in the last few hours, and in how she ached to stay in his arms.
Shawn headed them for the stairs. They climbed them lazily, arms around each other’s waists, pausing at the stained glass window on the landing with its image of roses.
“Carla’s really gone,” Ruth said. She’d feared a ghost in her home, but now that the haunting was ended, she missed her.
“Only as far an anyone is,” Shawn said.
She glanced at him.
“Just as far as the next room, my mamaw says.”
“I like that. Heaven next door. I want to meet your grandma.”
“She’ll want to meet you, too. She’ll want to know if I’m good enough for you.”
Ruth laughed. “It’ll be the other way around.” Shawn’s grandma, all of his family, would want to know about the healer who loved him. But Ruth refused to worry. She and Shawn were right together. Her family had seen it. His family would, too.
“One last bit of talking. The debrief.”
She focused on him, shocked at how all humor had fled his face, and at how stiffly he stood near her at the bedroom door. “What is it?”
“When you felt the nexus burst at Lynx Lookout you were going to come to my rescue. You worried I’d exhausted my power holding the containment ward.”
Plague Cult Page 17
