An Apocalyptic Need (19 page)

He couldn’t see her.

She stepped back and let the energy recede. She countered his question with one of her own. “What have you to do with the
Stellam
? With Lieutenant Alcott?”

The wizard reached small hands toward the door and sparks flew. He grimaced but didn’t retract his fingers. He moved them over the web as if testing it. “The Authority is powerful, with many resources. The rogues needed an edge against them. I provided that edge.”

She watched as he tugged a thread of the web, pulling blue light from it and casting it away as one plucks a string from a favorite blouse. He was dismantling Grimm’s protective web.

Cari’s pulse pounded in sudden fear, but then the energy she embraced within her rolled warmly down her spine and a new confidence fell into place behind it. “You raided the reborn nests and killed Yeira’s friends.” It wasn’t a question and he didn’t deny it.

His small hands worked more quickly on Grimm’s web, flinging sparks of blue light into the air and creating a growing black void where the energy had been.

Cari quietly pulled the darkness around her again, even while she kept him talking to distract. “What’s in it for you, wizard? Why are you doing this?”

His black gaze was feverish, whirling with red and filled with madness. “I should think that would be obvious, girl. I wish to control the Authority.”

“But the rogues…”

He laughed dismissively. “Like the Sorceri they once were, they are weak and many times spineless. I will kill all those who do not fall to their knees before me.”

Cari thought of the hunters she’d known and couldn’t think of a single one who was weak or spineless. Though the rogues she’d known on board the
Stellam
definitely fit that description. She almost smiled. In the natural order of things, the weak were eliminated. Either by conscious effort or enforced neglect.

The rogues would eliminate themselves one way or the other.

The void before the wizard had expanded while they talked. At any moment it would be large enough for him to slip through.

Cari infused the shadows around her with energy, hoping it would be enough to repel him until she could disappear into the night beyond the door.

The wizard didn’t know it but he was inadvertently helping her escape the cabin.

“What exactly is the
Stellam
going to do?” As soon as she escaped, Cari would return to the ship and stop them. Hopefully she could save Grimm from certain death in the process.

The wizard flung a long strand of sparking blue into the night behind him. “I was once a weak and feckless man.” He looked at her, smiling. “I recognize that now. But then a witch named Edwige found me and made me into a perfect specimen.” Another ribbon of blue sizzled to nothingness on the air. “She adored me, you know.” His smile made Cari shudder. “She was anxious to teach me everything she knew. And I excelled in my lessons.” He flung the sparkling blue contents of his hand backward and cocked his head, surveying the void. “Death magic is the most powerful energy available to such as us, girl.” Without warning, he stepped through the void and stood before her. “It is nearly indomitable for those who have the courage to use it.”

Cari glared across the short distance between them, her muscles tightening against the desire to use the energy roiling within her. “You mean those who don’t care about killing.”

He shrugged. “It is one and the same.”

In his nearness, Cari saw the pealing, unhealthy aspect to his skin as well as the patches on his scalp where the bright, brittle hair hadn’t grown or had fallen out. He was unhealthy. Hopefully she could use that against him.

“That still doesn’t explain why you’re here. Why you’re tormenting me.”

The night beyond the cabin door shifted and Cari barely kept herself from turning to acknowledge it. What if Sheriff Miller had returned? Would he have a chance against the thing standing before her?

She knew she had to act.

The wizard lifted a hand and smiled. “I left something behind in you, girl. Something I thought would be useful. Because you also withheld something from me. And I mean to have it.”

With that, the wizard twisted his wrist and agony flared through Cari. Like flames in a fire fed with combustive fuel, the blaze flared into instant conflagration beneath her skin and Cari screamed as the fire consumed her flesh from within.

Audie lifted Yeira’s hand to his lips. “Ready?”

She nodded, clasping his hand in both of hers. “I pray it works, Kord.”

“You and me both, beauty.” He squeezed her hands. “Whatever happens, remember I love you.”

She frowned. “You’re not exactly instilling confidence here, hunter.”

Audie summoned the word he’d chosen and embraced it, infusing it with his unique energy to give it authority. He held both of Yeira’s hands in his own, peering intently down at her. “Pull together every feeling, every thought or observation tied to this person from your visions. Every nuance of the dream you can isolate. It’s all the energy will have to work with once I set it free.”

She nodded.

“Squeeze my hands when you’re ready, glowbug.”

She grinned at his use of the childhood nickname. Audie kissed her knuckles and then watched her carefully as she closed her eyes and worked on focusing the images she’d been dreaming of, trying to wrestle details from a fog of implication and sensations. It would be a miracle if they could pull it off. But Audie loved the woman too much not to try. He’d try anything at that point to take the lines of panic and worry from her pretty brow. Besides, he’d been honest with her when he’d told her he thought it might be advantageous to them in the coming battle.

Audie pulled his guide magics forward and waited as particles of sparking blue energy spun on the air and shot toward them, forming into a tightly spinning column above their joined hands. When he’d extracted all of the available energy in the immediate area, Audie concentrated on twisting it more tightly, forging it into a compact, volatile vessel through which the word would blast, like a bullet spinning through a chamber.

A moment later Yeira’s slender fingers tensed. Audie tightened his grip on her hands and, without further delay, threw back his head and unleashed a single, carefully considered word. “
Locant
!”

The energy hovering above his palm rose into the air and began to spin, faster and faster. The magic spread as it revolved until it filled the entire room where they stood.

Audie had decided to release the word within the finite environs of their concrete-walled sleeping quarters. The farther it spread, the more the energy thinned. By keeping it close, Audie took a calculated risk that the effects would be enhanced. Unfortunately the tactic had the potential to be dangerous.

Hitting the restrictive edge of its boundaries before it was ready, a portion of the magic was forced backward, retracing itself toward Audie and Yeira. The repelled energy buffeted them with unimaginable tension that hit them with the force of an explosion.

Yeira’s shoulders rounded under the pressure, her head bowed, and lines of pain creased the corners of her lush lips. Audie gritted his teeth and shoved the energy back, earning them a modicum of relief that he hoped would be enough.

Trapped and frothing with the need to be free, Audie’s magic sparked once, the force of its illumination pressing their eyes closed and leaving ghostly impressions on their vision.

Moments passed until the energy finally burst free and washed outward, searching for the inspiration of Yeira’s uncomfortable visions.

The ground vibrated beneath their feet and they nearly fell. Audie grabbed Yeira and pulled her close as she screamed and clapped her hands over her ears.

Just when Audie thought his own eardrums might burst, the energy throbbed once, twice and then ripped them into its swirling midst.

~AN~

Grimm forgot the need for stealth as Cari twisted and screamed in obvious agony. He fired Miller’s magic pistol at the creature in the dusty robes. The thin ribbon of charcoal gray energy sizzled through the cabin and hit the hooded figure between the shoulder blades, bowing his back. The oversized black bird that had been on the man’s shoulder took to the air with an alarmed squawk and flew to the top of a scarred wooden armoire.

Cari collapsed to the ground, unmoving.

The robed man slowly straightened his shoulders, the action seeming to pinch the energy from Grimm’s weapon into nothingness. Though the tattered robes emitted a curling stream of gray smoke where Grimm had shot him, there didn’t seem to be any actual damage.

Grimm recognized the oily stench of the man’s power.
He
was the thing that had taken flight from the witches’ cabin as Grimm and Miller had arrived.

A feral, bird-like face looked at him, the eyes swirling with madness and magic. “Ah, the lover returns.” The small man cocked his head, looking every bit the raven he’d taken as his familiar.

With an enraged roar, Grimm dropped the useless eighteenth world weapon and lifted his hands. Blue energy spun violently above his palms, already keying in the robed intruder’s magic signature and marking it for destruction at a cellular level. It was Grimm’s special power as a Sorceri Bounty Hunter. He could enable his guide magics to mark and destroy his enemies.

But the wizard’s strange gaze narrowed and Grimm suddenly knew he wouldn’t have enough time. The creature lifted his hands and sent a wide stream of greasy black energy at Grimm. Grimm barely managed to fling his guide magics between them as a buffer, and he made no headway in pushing the other man’s magic back.

Grimm’s eyes burned, his legs weakened, threatening to bow out from under him as he sent everything he had into his magics. He could feel his very cells contracting under the effort to overcome the small wizard’s prodigious energy.

Still, it would not be enough. The walls of the cabin shook under the man’s power. Glass burst from the window and furniture lifted from the ground and spun, crashing into Grimm as he concentrated on just holding the wizard back.

The raven’s panicked screams rose above the cacophony of energy swirling through the tiny cabin and Grimm had a moment of hope as the heavy wardrobe the bird had been resting on fell over, crashing to the floor and missing the wizard by inches.

The other man barely blinked. A small, mean smile had formed on his feral face as he sensed Grimm’s defeat.

Grimm’s knees hit the floor and his energy sputtered as the wizard’s oily black energy started to burn through the skin on his palms, the agony overcoming the last of his resistance.

As Grimm lifted his head, his gaze locked on the other man in defiance, blue light exploded through the cabin.

The blast of guide magics pulsed against Grimm’s eardrums and blew him backward, to slam against the wall. Debris crashed down on his head as the cabin’s roof gave out under the blast.

The energy throbbed on the air, swirling thickly at its center where two forms began to emerge. Grimm squinted at the forms but dust and debris made it impossible for him to keep his eyes open. He shoved feebly at the ground, trying to gain his feet.

He needed to get to Cari.

Something warm and thick ran from his nostrils and down his jaw. His hearing seemed buried beneath an avalanche of mud. Sound came to him only as a base throb that was indecipherable.

Rhythmic pounding neared and he finally managed to drag his eyes open. A large hand appeared before his stinging gaze and a deep rumble throbbed against his eardrums. He finally recognized its cadence as a voice but the words might as well have been thunder in the sky.

He looked up and saw Audie’s broad face frowning down at him.

Audie’s mouth moved and Grimm read the words,
are you all right?
there. He nodded, clasping the big hunter’s hand and allowing himself to be dragged upward.

As soon as Grimm landed on his feet he stepped around Audie and hurried toward the pile of clutter where Cari had lain. “Cari!” His own voice was muffled and strange in his head. He dropped to his knees and started flinging hunks of wood and tangled strands of torn fabric away, shoving clumps of dusty mud to the side.

The floor beneath the debris was empty. He hung his head, feeling despair ripping his heart into pieces.

She was gone. The wizard had her.

~AN~

Cari awoke to chaos. All around her was the cacophonous sound of growling and crashing, moaning and clawing. Her eyes snapped open and she saw nothing but rust-stained concrete supported by massive metal beams. The view was striped by the metal bars of a cage.

When she moved, the floor beneath her feet swayed and her stomach took a terrifying dip. She grabbed hold of the bars nearest her head, her eyes closing as vertigo swept her.

Cari finally realized where she was. She was locked in one of several metal cages that hung from the ceiling on the
Stellam’s
prison floor. The enclosures resembled the bird cages the
Stellam
had in the arboretum.