Authors: Jenny Schwartz
Plague Cult (17 page)
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.”
“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.”
She nodded. She’d said as much when they debriefed William and the rest of the Collegium team. She’d been so intent on giving her report that, although she’d noted William’s frowning glance at Shawn, she hadn’t questioned it. Not then.
Shawn hesitated. “Even without the nexus, I wouldn’t have been going to Lynx Lookout without energy. Ruth, when I don’t mask my hollerider magic, when it sends out its terror, it harvests the energy of the fear that terror generates. As a hollerider, I grow strong on others’ fear.”
“So you were safe.”
He gave her a disbelieving look. “Is that it?”
“What?” She was baffled. “I didn’t know that about holleriders, so of course I thought you needed help.”
“That’s not what I mean.” He gripped her shoulders. “Other people’s terror energizes me. You’re a healer, can you live with that? You heal people. I—”
She clasped his wrists, looking into his eyes. “You use your terror as a last resort. Your hollerider nature is part of who you are. A strong man. A good one.”
He closed his eyes as a wave of relief and thankfulness visibly swept through him. His whole aura lightened.
In mage sight, Ruth saw her own aura glowing pink with love. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “I love you, Shawn Jackson.”
They were late to their family dinner.
The Collegium
series is great fun to write, and I hope you’re enjoying the journey with me. Each novel is a stand-alone story.
Demon Hunter
and
Djinn Justice
both star Fay and Steve, but after that, the books feature new couples.
Reading order (not that it matters):
Plague Cult
Hollywood Demon
(August 2016)
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