Black Wolf (65 page)

Usually,
though, it was only a game, a way of refining one's skills and
using one's wits and imagination.

The lioness'
emerald fangs tore a long gash down the dragon's throat, though she
failed to get a grip on it. More moonlight bled away, the dragon's
colours beginning to dim.

Kevin sent the
phoenix down again, into a dive directly at the dragon's eyes,
while it was clawing and lashing and snapping at the lioness.
Diamond talons struck, raked across one eye, and it looped up and
over the dragon's wide forehead and spiky crest to drive its talons
deep into the other eye.

Patrick let
out a cry of rage; Kevin wondered briefly who Irina was and why
Patrick was cursing her, but getting distracted would be bad. For
example, Patrick had just gotten distracted, and the lioness had
caught the tail-whip in her teeth and chewed it off.

Phoenix and
lioness tore ruthlessly into the dragon, making more and more
wounds to bleed light away, but Patrick dissolved it back into
nothing.

Lioness and
phoenix melted away, as well.

* * *

Hidden by
shadows, Shaine ghosted out the gate, intent on the mage-battle in
front of him. Kevin and Lori appeared to be doing well, but that
would only last for so long.

The thought
flitted through his mind that he could stand back and wait, let the
demon-mage exhaust himself on the two elvenmages, then Shaine could
step in... He banished that idea. In the last few days, despite his
best efforts, he'd learned far too much respect for the pair, and
not solely in magic. He couldn't do that. Besides, Jess would never
forgive him.

Now would be a
good time, he decided, and threw
darkness
over the entire
area, singing as softly as he could.

He was
unhindered, used to the perpetual night at the bottom of the lake;
he used other senses to make his way to the cousins and slip
himself between them, holding one hand of each—they'd be better
able to protect him from the fire-based attacks to which he had
little resistance. Kevin's hand tightened, told him gratitude more
clearly than words; Lori, always the calmer of the two, was shaking
just a little, and gripped his hand with enough force for
discomfort.

The demon-mage
was drawing power from elsewhere, calling light, cancelled by the
darkness; elves being what they were, Kevin had told him wryly,
little except extreme cold was more uncomfortable than absence of
light, and not even a demon-mage was going to be able to ignore
that. The other mage's light began to brighten the blackness
towards grey. Kevin's power surged, and Lori's right behind it,
backing Shaine's, and the darkness steadied again.

Slowly, the
demon-mage won, even against all three of them, and the blackness
dissolved. Shaine let go of the song, not wasting effort on it any
further.

The mage did
not look impressed. He glared at them, then took a closer look at
Shaine and the frown deepened. "You again."

Shaine gave
him a charming smile. "Me again. Just thought maybe I could even up
the odds a little."

"Just as well.
You're as much of an annoyance as this other whelp."

"Oh, come on,
now. I'm much more annoying than Kevin."

The mage flung
pure fire at them, and it wrapped itself in a spiral around them,
drawing ever tighter; he could feel the scorching heat, and cringed
inwardly. The fire reached the boundaries of the glowing shields,
and could go no farther. He gathered himself to throw the cold of
the depths of the lake at it.

"It's
illusion," Kevin murmured. "Don't counter it. Ignore it."

"Like you can
ignore total darkness?" Shaine retorted, but he closed his eyes and
took a deep breath. All he could do was believe Kevin, that the
heat couldn't really hurt him, that the grass around them wasn't
burning.

"Try," Lori
said softly. "We wouldn't let it touch you even if it were real, I
promise."

* * *

This illusion
had to be meant to frighten Shaine; simple fire, even mage-fire,
couldn't frighten another elvenmage. At least Shaine trusted them
enough to not waste power on it, but the meren's hand was clenched
hard around his—it was successfully scaring him, anyway.

The
illusion-fire melted away, and Shaine relaxed.

"Do your
stuff," Lori said quietly.

Kevin felt
Shaine reach for power, gave it readily, felt the intense
concentration as the meren shaped it and began to sing. The same
channel that allowed them to share power gave him and Lori access
to other things, and to this Shaine had already consented while
they were planning: mereni senses being infinitely better suited to
a night battle than elven, he borrowed Shaine's, careful not to
touch anything else, though he was aware of Lori doing the
same.

Merenai
certainly have some odd senses... I'm going to have to ask about
some of this stuff later. No wonder darkness doesn't bother him,
though.

The lake's
surface shuddered, and drew itself together into a formless mass,
defying natural laws entirely. Shaine asked more strength, and the
water-construct's outline flowed and blurred, became four-footed,
two reflected stars settling themselves as eyes, moonlight
sparkling through it in odd ways as the internal currents shifted
so it seemed to glow from within.

A large wolf,
the size of Bane, leaped lightly off the lake onto the shore,
yawned to bare teeth of sharp shell, and stalked towards
Patrick.

This is a
half-trained mereni-mage? Wow! Figure out how to deal with
that!

A barrier of
raw fire didn't stop the water-wolf; it bounded over it, landed on
the far side a trifle smaller. A handful of fire flung at it, it
simply danced sideways to avoid and closed in on Patrick again.

Kevin glanced
sideways at Shaine, found him gazing fixedly at the water-wolf,
every muscle visibly taut, the song never faltering. Concentration
held the wolf together, then? Still impressive. He fed him more
power, careful not to disturb him.

Patrick wove a
ring of fire around the water-wolf, made it too high for the wolf
to jump, and constricted it.

Shaine swore
softly, and the wolf's form collapsed in on itself, leaving only
water seeping into the ground in the centre of the ring.

"That took a
lot of energy," Kevin told him quietly.

"Not just for
him."

"What,"
Patrick asked tightly, "are you?"

Shaine laughed
mockingly. "You figure it out."

"The children
of water and wind are myths!"

"So are wolves
that can kill demons."

Patrick
frowned thoughtfully. "There is that." He shrugged. "Doesn't
matter."

Moonlight
warped itself inside-out and into a gate; two people stepped
through, and it closed.

"Hold it,"
Moira said frostily. "Kevin's blood is
ours
."

Karl bared his
teeth in a lupine snarl, a distinctly eerie effect in the light of
mageshields and moonlight. "And damned good it's going to
taste."

"Who the hell
is that?" Shaine hissed.

"Uh, it's kind
of a long story..." Kevin said.
This doesn't make any sense! Why
would Karl and Moira suddenly be out for my hide? I could see maybe
Jess', since he beat Rebecca... I don't get it.

"But we're in
deep shit."

"That about
covers it," Lori agreed. "What is she thinking? She might miss
Shaine but she has to have known I'm right here and so is
he
!"

"That assumes
Moira thinks," Kevin muttered.
Okay. Um, any two sides could
potentially gang up on the third here and afterwards fight it out
between themselves. I don't like this!

Patrick
surveyed the situation calmly. "You have a claim on him so strong
you're willing to interrupt a duel?"

"We have one
coven-mate dead and one badly injured, and it's Kevin's fault!"

"It's what?"
Kevin heard his own voice hit a high note in sheer astonishment.
"Who'd dead and how am I involved?"
Oh gods, don't be dead,
Becky, please...

"All right,"
Patrick said. "For something so heinous, I'm willing to
concede—make your attempt. I'll take whatever's left of him."

"Don't expect
there to be much," Moira said. "Lori, you can leave if you want,
and the other one. It's only Kevin we owe."

"If I believed
you wanted to challenge Kevin one-on-one," Lori said, "that would
be one thing. But I know what you've been doing, and that it isn't
one-on-one, so not a chance. If you get to have help, so does Kev.
I don't suppose we can talk about this? Who's dead? How? And why
are you blaming Kevin?"

Kevin made use
of the probably very brief opportunity offered, and took a closer
look at the pair with mage-sight. What should have been a smooth
interlacing of sparkling thin threads binding each member of
Whitethorn to each of the others was a chaotic tangle of frayed and
weakened strands—and several ragged ends whipping around like
agitated living things in their own right, bleeding bright drops of
energy. He hadn't even known that was possible. What could have
severed them like that?

Sharing power,
especially deliberately and repeatedly, created a bond that could
never entirely break. Kevin's with Karl remained, and he used that
and their mutual one to Rebecca to triangulate on the red
wolf-bitch.

The threads
linking her to Whitethorn showed no signs of violence, but they
were fading. Either that was a failure to renew it for an extended
period, several weeks at least, or there was deliberate will
involved, dissociating herself from them. Or both. That was
actually more of a relief than it should have been, although it
opened up a series of new, if less urgent, questions.

The rest of
Whitethorn, however... the strand between Karl and Moira remained
strong. The threads to one of the other points in the circle were
tattered and badly damaged, oozing small amounts of energy, and the
threads connecting the last to them and to Rebecca were the ones
that had been torn apart and were leaking noticeably.

He couldn't
even imagine how much that had to hurt. To say nothing of the
emotional level, and whatever trauma had caused it...

Wordlessly, he
shared that with Lori, who had a less ready avenue to track the
connections, and Shaine, who knew very little about coven-bonds and
hadn't yet entirely worked out the sonic equivalent of seeing
them.

*Oh gods,*
Lori whispered. *I've never even heard of anything like that.
That's not just someone dying.*

*If they're
the ones playing with demons,* Shaine said, *then you have an
answer already.*

"Avryl..."
Moira's voice broke in a sob, then spiralled back into rage. "The
demon that killed her explained it all, and it was right. All Avryl
wanted was more books. Rebecca leaving us and Avryl dying and
Duayne maybe dying, all of it, it's all Kevin's fault, and that
damned black wolf of his!"

*Okay, grief,
trauma, already unstable,* Kevin said. *Demon gives her a way to
see Whitethorn as innocent victims instead of responsible for their
own situation. Anyone think it's even worth wondering what kind of
logic is behind this? Or that it's worth trying to argue it
rationally?*

*No and no,*
Lori said sadly. *But I have to try once more anyway.* "Moira," she
said gently. "You're hurting, on a lot of levels. Fighting isn't
going to accomplish anything at all, except probably more pain.
Please, can we..."

"Shut up,"
Karl growled. "Enough talking. Too much talking. This ends. Kevin
pays. No more messing with us,
ever
."

Moira began to
chant—and Kevin cringed, he'd heard those words or similar, all
consonants, earlier. They couldn't fight a...

Demon, taking
on the form of an ethereally lovely humanoid, slender and
silvery-shining and feathery-winged, fairly tall and clad in more
feathers.

Shaine jumped
and cursed, as something small darted around their feet and paused
between them. Kevin looked down, saw the white tip of a tail all
but luminescent in the shadows, green eyes reflecting the light of
his shields back at him.

"Al..." He bit
it off. No point giving her name to the demon. "Get back to Sam!
This is no place for a cat!"

Alfari gave
him a haughty glance, then padded sedately forward to face the
demon.

"Wait," Lori
murmured.

The beautiful
thing whimpered, shrank back away from Alfari.

"Kill him,"
Moira commanded, pointing directly at Kevin.

Unwillingly,
the demon started to edge around Alfari.

One of the
demon-wolves rumbled a warning, shifting position to track it.

The demon
shifted nervously from one foot to the other. "Please, mistress,
some other command..."

"Kill them!"
Moira repeated.

Sam had
insisted that demons were as variable in temperament and values as
the residents of this plane, though bound by conditions that
allowed them or forced them to act here. This demon, aside from
being undoubtedly lesser, felt very different from the other three
earlier.