Justice Calling (The Twenty-Sided Sorceress Book 1) (9 page)

I wasn’t sure. I didn’t trust what I might do if faced with a choice between saving Rose and Ezee and letting them die.

Alek had said his vision showed me standing at a crossroads between shifters dying and living. I’d killed one shifter, a man whose name I might never know. It didn’t matter it that it was a mercy killing. I didn’t want to kill anyone.

Lies. I wanted to kill Samir. Sometimes I dreamed terrible and explicit revenge fantasies when I couldn’t sleep on the worst nights. I wanted to rain hell upon him in the worst way. And yet. He had a couple thousand years of practice on me and only in my deepest nightmares did I even speculate how many sorcerers and human mages he’d eaten over the millennia. There was no way I’d ever be strong enough to face him.

And you grow stronger while you run away?
Alek’s words ran through my mind.

I hadn’t grown stronger. The magic I had used in the last two days felt pretty weak to me. My power was still there, but I’d grown out of shape, out of practice. I was getting weaker.

“All the more reason you can’t stay,” I said aloud to the accusing silence. Maybe I was a coward, but I’d be an
alive
coward. And my friends would be safe. I was doing the right thing.

I sighed and wondered who I was trying to convince, standing here arguing with myself in my head about a decision that only had one good answer where everyone got to go on living.

Survive. You are not living, Jade Crow.
Alek’s words in my head again.

Footsteps raced up the street outside, distracting me from my stupid inner turmoil, and I was already turning toward the door when Max, Harper’s little brother, ran into it and started yelling my name.

I unlocked the door and Max nearly fell into my arms as he burst through, talking rapidly.

“Woah there, buddy. Slow down. Who took Rose?” I tried to parse his rushed sentences.

“Harper and Levi,” he said. “They came by a while ago, said I should go get some coffee. I went out and when I got back nobody was there. They took mom. I thought I should run to you cause your phone just goes to voice mail and no one is picking up and I don’t know where they are.”

“I do,” I muttered, thinking hard. Levi had definitely given in too easily. “Idiot.”

“Me?”

“No, not you. Me. I should have known they’d go after Alek. They’re going to try to fight the guy who did that to your mom and force him to undo it.”

“Good,” Max said.

“What? No. Not good.” They were going to go get in the way at best, and at worst get Alek killed if he was distracted trying to protect them. They’d get everyone killed, or enslaved and paralyzed, and universe knew what else. Fucking toast on a stick.

I had to stop them. Or save them. I couldn’t just leave now.

Besides, I really
did
want to fight something. Bernard Barnes wasn’t Samir, but he was a start.

Maybe this was the universe’s way of telling me it was time to stop running.

“All right, Universe,” I said, glaring up at the ceiling. “Message received.”

“What are you going to do?” Max said as he followed me up the steps and into my apartment.

“I know sort of where they were going, but we don’t have the map. So I have to cast a spell on this medallion I took off one of the evil minions so we can track the person who made it, who I bet is the guy your sister and Levi went after, and so we can stop him from killing everyone before the moon hits zenith.”

“Cool,” Max said.

Oh, to be fifteen again.

The medallion was still in the bathroom drawer. I looked it over, finding little imperfections and dents in the clay that I hoped meant it was handmade. The stain on it reminded me of dried blood, and I tried not to think about that too hard as I held it in both hands and called on my magic.

It was a variation of the spell I’d done for Alek, only I needed no compass this time. The medallion would act as my guide. I felt it pulling northwest.

“You have your permit, right?” I asked Max as we descended the stairs to my car. The moon was already peaking up over the buildings.

“Yeah?”

“Good.” I tossed him my keys. “I need to focus on this spell. You’re driving. Try not to kill us.”

For the record, my car started up just fine.

“Pull over here,” I told Max after about half an hour of driving on the narrow highway along the border of the River of No Return Wilderness. “This is where I have to go on foot.”

“The moon is over the trees,” he said as we got out of the car. “How far is it? How long do we have?”

I almost said “who is this we, white man,” but I’d used that line once today and I figured there was some kind of cosmic limit.

“Me. I’m going. You are staying here with my car and making sure it doesn’t get stolen.”

“Stolen. Right.” His shoulders slumped.

“I mean it, Max. Please?” I softened my tone and gave him my best desperate female gaze.

“Okay,” he muttered.

I followed the medallion’s pull into the trees, shoving my way through the undergrowth. It was goddamned dark in here. I used more magic, feeding it into my talisman until the D20 glowed enough that I could see a few feet ahead. The ferns and weeds grew fewer as I moved into the more mature forest away from the road, but I was still moving too slowly. My lungs hurt and my leg muscles burned as I half stumbled, half ran through the dark woods.

This wasn’t working. At this rate, I’d get there about dawn if they were really deep into the wilderness. There might have been an access road or old logging path that provided a better way, but my tracking spell wasn’t Google Maps. It could only tell me direction, not the best route by car.

How long had it been since Alek and company stormed out of my store? Two hours? Three? Maybe they’d won and were on their way back to rub in my face how I’d missed all the action.

“Stop talking yourself out of doing shit,” I said aloud as I stopped moving for a moment and leaned against a tree. I wasn’t sure about lovely, but the woods were dark and deep, Robert Frost had gotten that part right. I guess two of three ain’t bad. Wind rustled in the branches high over my head as I gasped in the cool, damp air.

Wolf materialized beside me and cocked her head at me.

“You going to help?” I asked her, not expecting an answer.

She bent low and twisted her head toward her back.

“Guess that’s a yes,” I said, smiling at her. “Thank you.” I jumped up onto her back, digging my free hand into her thick, warm fur and clinging with my sore legs. I hadn’t ridden on Wolf’s back since she dragged us both bleeding and half dead out of the burning rubble where my family had chosen death and where I’d made my second and most disastrous stand against Samir.

This ride was a lot more fun. She sprang forward, gliding just over the ground in large, smooth bounds. I kept my grip on her fur and on the medallion, holding the tracking spell as best I could, but she seemed to know where to go. We soared through the woods, covering miles in a rush. I finally gave up on the spell and used that hand to grip my braid, keeping my head down as branches whipped by and threatened to tear off all my hair. Long hair can be a bitch.

After an eternity that wasn’t long enough, Wolf slowed and dropped into a crouch. As my ears adjusted to the sudden lack of movement and wind, I heard chanting coming from up ahead. I blinked tears from my eyes and peered into the darkness. There seemed to be more light in front of us than a full moon on a clear night could account for.

Wolf crept forward until she reached the edge of a giant clearing where the trees stopped abruptly and the land sloped downward. In the moonlight I saw a field at the bottom of the hill. Tiki torches were set in a loose ring, providing enough light to make out what was going on.

There were no triumphant friends or even a raging battle. As far as I could tell, my side had already pretty much lost whatever fight had happened.

Within the ring of light were two circles drawn with what I guessed was loose chalk. The smaller circle held a huge white tiger. Alek, I guessed. He was caught within a holding spell, I assumed, since he should have been able to just step out of the thing but instead was turning and growling as though he were caught in an iron cage.

The second, larger circle contained Bernie Barnes in a ridiculous black hooded robe with silver runes sewn onto it. He knelt over a reddish brown dog. No, not a dog. A coyote. Ezee. He was chanting in Sanskrit, the words much less relevant than the twisting shadow lines of power swirling like ghosts above him.

For a moment I didn’t see Harper or Levi. Maybe Max had been wrong. I scanned the ground inside the ring of torches and two dark shapes on the edge caught my eye. A fox and a wolverine, red and fawn fur bright against the dark grass. I couldn’t tell from here if they were alive, but they definitely weren’t conscious.

Rage swelled in me, white hot, and with it came more of my magic. I fed my frustration into it, and gathered power in my hands.

“All right, Wolf,” I whispered to my companion, “the plan is we charge down there and wreck that motherfucker’s night.”

I couldn’t kill him since we needed him to undo his spells, but I could make him hurt. Make him regret ever even thinking about using magic. I could show him what a real goddamn mage could do.

Wolf charged. We burst down the hill and into the ring of torches and I brought my hands up, aiming balls of force right at Bernie’s hooded head.

I totally would have saved the night if the evil minion I hadn’t spotted had waited just another few seconds.

But he didn’t.

Instead he shot me in the back.

The shot was loud. The bullet ripped through me and the pain wiped my grip on my magic. That whole thing with the bullet in the hip? A flesh wound compared to the tearing pain that spiked through my chest. I think I stopped breathing.

I tumbled off Wolf’s back and stopped my fall with my face. My arms and legs didn’t seem to want to respond. I didn’t think a bullet could kill a sorceress, but this one felt like it was giving an A-plus effort.

The pain turned from lightning strikes to a deep, terrifying chill. I heard the chanting continuing and somewhere beside me Wolf growled. She might look scary as fuck, but she can’t actually do anything to a human. Or stop a bullet.

My eyes didn’t seem to want to open, either. The grass was wet and cool on my cheek. Maybe I’d just stay here. It smelled good. Clean. Nothing like blood or dying animals. I don’t like blood. It’s so sticky.

“I got her!” a man’s voice called out near me.

Wolf licked my back, her tongue molten hot, and I screamed. The pain faded back enough that I could think again, and when I moved my hands to get them underneath me and pry my face off the dirt, they sluggishly obeyed.

I raised my head, spitting out blood and dirt. My mouth was gritty but at least my eyes were working now and I seemed to be able to breathe again. A young man in a black robe stood about ten feet from me, pointing a gun and grinning.

I reached for my magic and this time I didn’t try to really control the flow of it. I tore open the dams on my power and let it fill me to the brim. The pain gave up, turning off like a switch had been flipped. I knew somewhere in my subconscious that I was going to really regret this tomorrow, but I wanted to live until tomorrow.

I wrapped one hand around my talisman and struggled to my knees. I thrust my magic down into my left arm and used it to extend my fist, slapping the gun out of the evil minion’s hand. He yelled in surprise, but I didn’t stop there. I swung my arm back, using the same force to punch him in the face.

He went down and stayed down. Guess no one had ever told him not to bring a gun to a mage fight.

I laughed, though the sound came out as more of a hiccupping cough. The chanting grew quicker, more frantic. I twisted and looked at Bernie. The moonlight shone on the huge silver dagger in his hands as he raised it over Ezee’s body. He was twenty feet away from me at least. I tried to rise and my vision swam with red and black dots.

Tiger-Alek roared, drawing my gaze to him. He was closer. I remembered how quickly he could move. He just needed out of that circle.