Magical Weddings (22 page)

****

Colleen covered her lower face with her hands, pressing the fingers of both against her lips to repress a whoop of joy. Deputy Ericks and the men from the county hadn’t quite left. Slowly, the sheriff’s cruiser backed up and onto the highway, and then drove off.

“Oh, my God. Oh,” she said once they were out of sight. “Is what just happened what I think just happened?”

“Drayhome will never fall into human hands,” Ax said.

She wanted to dance. If only she knew how. She settled for thrilled pacing.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t…they’re gone.”

Ax nodded and automatically reached out to steer her from the lawn onto the drive and toward the house. She accepted his touch without thinking, comfortable with it. Her mind happily flew, mood soaring like a starling freed from a noose trap back into the wild.

“Drayhome is safe. Thank you, Ax,” she said. “I just can’t believe…I’ve been so afraid. Oh, God. It’s over.”

Ax allowed her to bubble and babble until she realized he wasn’t smiling. Instead his head bowed as he matched her shorter stride. Expression withdrawn, his eyes stared at the ground. Her excitement quickly wound down.

“Ax?”

No response from the tall warlock at her side.

“Ax. What’s wrong?”

“Hmn?” She knew him well enough to know he pretended not to hear.

Why isn’t he happy? What isn’t he telling me?

“Not another secret,” she said.

“What? No.”

She halted. He kept on walking so far away in thought he didn’t notice. She caught up, grabbed his arm and pulled him to a stop.

“Tell me.”

He turned to face her, and smiled at last, but it wasn’t an Ax-like smile, not nearly. This one carried too much weight for a heart as optimistic as his.

Then the answer hit her.

“Oh. Ax.”

Her anger flickered back to life but anger not for him, for herself, laced with guilt.

I put him up to this. How selfish can I be?

“What did this cost?” she asked.

That surprised him. Clearly, he’d readied himself for a question, though not that particular one.

“Huh?” he said.

“I asked,
what did it cost you?
”

He shrugged off her concern and started walking again. They passed the fountain where the water lilies struggled in the cold. Blossoms had shriveled. Stalks browned and toppled over on themselves. Pads riding the water’s surface had turned mushy, resembling broad leaves of lettuce thrown in a freezer. Where the hummingbirds sheltered, if they sheltered, she did not know.

“How much? I know records warlocks don’t come cheap.”

“It’s on the eye for an eye payment plan,” he said. “Fee to equal the service rendered. You know, a house for a house.”

“A house for a…oh….no.” She was horrified. She put her body in front of his, halting their progress and forcing him to pay attention. “Not the loft.”

“About time Reggie started living above ground,” he said.

“But Ax, that was your home. You love that–”

He put an index finger to her lips, silencing her. They stood toe-to-toe, inches away. She had to tip her head back to look up into his eyes. His gaze, intense and quiet, traveled her face. She felt his attention sweep over her brows, the curve of her high cheekbones, along the soft slope of her jaw, the inspection ending at her lips. His finger pulled away and he bent down. His cheek, icy from the weather grazed hers, but his lips were warm as he leaned in to give something of himself to her, to take something away.

Colleen was caught unaware. Before she could surrender to the solemn kiss it was over. Ax stepped back, favoring her with another of those un-Ax smiles.

“You have a million things to do still,” he said. “Go do them.” He backed a few more steps, and then turned away. “I’ll go direct parking.”

But he didn’t head to the wide expanse of gravel designated for wedding parking. He made his way back up the drive toward Drayhome’s entrance.

That’s how she understood. They hadn’t won. This wasn’t over. She knew what came next and what he meant to do on her behalf. She saw how it all would end.

“Ax,” she whispered.

Call him back
.

He won’t listen.

Beg
.

You know he won’t stop.

Terror for Ax set her in motion. She’d leave Drayhome. She’d go right now. It was the only way.

I need to pack. I need to show I’m willing to comply
.

She pivoted on her heel and rushed up the steps to the front door, for just a moment glancing to the right. Lysée stood in the window bay. She’d witnessed the entire series of events. Strangers coming onto their land. Ax thwarting the eviction. Colleen’s premature elation. His somber good-bye.

They exchanged a look. Lysée’s worry was impossible to miss.

“Tell me,” she mouthed through the glass at Colleen. “Please?”

Colleen took a deep breath.

She wouldn’t fight Ramsay Wise’s power play. She’d abandon the estate and her responsibilities to their heart and home as he decreed, but it was time she did something else as well. Stop hiding behind her duties as caretaker. Stop shrinking from interaction and putting others off.

She and Lysée had important matters to discuss.

Ax waited at the end of the drive to Drayhome, not sure when his time would come, but guessing it would be later than sooner. The Priest always preferred to be last to arrive so he could make an entrance, and never traveled to an official function without an entourage, typically comprised of the weaker members on the conclave, who clung to his power with the ample lips of cleaner fish sucking dead tissue and whatever leftovers they could glean from the skin of their larger host. Unfortunately, even the sycophants rated high on the spectrum of talents and could squash Ax easily. You didn’t win a spot on the conclave without some major juice. Though under Raymond Wise’s metaphorical thumb, Ax had never aspired to join the rest of the retinue. In their eyes he was dumb muscle only.

His gut twisted and swam with acid, nothing in it but dread and the sour backlash of defeat on its way. He caught himself pacing and stopped, forcing stillness into his body, calm, holding sentry at the very edge of the property, feet spread and solidly grounded.

Witches and warlocks arrived throughout the morning. He waved them on toward the parking areas north and east of the house. Realistically, no one needed him to do this; most he welcomed were decades, in many cases over a century older than he. They’d come here countless times before in response to the wedding spell. They knew the drill. Several favored him with speculative looks, but his expression did not invite chitchat and they drove on.

The bleak morning transitioned into a darker, colder noon. Clouds stretched and expanded their girth, their heaviness dropping them lower and lower to the dark, wet Earth. Distant thunder rattled trees, while barely there ice crystals swirled in the wind.

He tried to think of last things, but the only image that filled his mind was Colleen’s beloved face right before he’d turned away from her, those incongruous red lashes and deep brown hair, the eyes he could tell were seconds away from grasping what he intended. Nothing from his past lifted to the present to haunt him. Nothing he could have done or should have done or wished he’d done with his life would answer when he called for regrets. Except for Colleen. He should have been more to her, helped her understand the world was not so terrible a place that she couldn’t have the life she was meant to live, complete with the richness of friendship and love.

If only I had five minutes more.

It took everything in him not to turn and look back at the house.

Here they come
.

It figured they’d take the Jag; the black luxury car went with their tuxedos. Runyon sat behind the wheel. Though Ax couldn’t easily identify the other occupants through the tinted windows, Ramsay Wise’s energy signature was as obvious as his ego. He rode in the back. Two other conclave members traveled with him and Runyon, both warlocks. The Rede had at least that much in common with humans; a lack of female representation at the top. No witches held positions on the conclave. It hadn’t always been that way in Breens. Fire, one of the two elementals they’d lost after Spirit went missing, had been a witch.

Trailing the Jaguar, a pair of 5-ton, 26-foot moving vans geared down as the procession approached Drayhome.

Ax stepped into the middle of the drive, blocking entrance to the estate. Runyon and the warlocks in the trucks had no choice but to brake to a stop while still on the highway. Runyon frowned slightly and tapped his horn, expecting Ax to get out of the way.

Ax held his ground.

Runyon’s expression segued into scowling irritation. The warlock turned in the driver’s seat to speak to those in the back. Half a minute later, Runyon finished talking, and put the Jag in park. The motor switched off. All four doors on the XJ6 opened at once.

The High Priest of Breens Mist was first to set foot on the pavement, not because he was in a hurry, but because the others gave him complete deference.

Anyone who hadn’t met Ramsay Wise might have assumed because he headed the conclave he had some age on him, which he did. Few in Breens were older. In looks, however, The Priest might have been confused with someone barely out of his teens. Witches and warlocks aged much more slowly than humans, but at varying rates to each other, and Wise was one of the slowest. Only his voice betrayed that seeming youthfulness, by sounding eerily senatorial, which wasn’t normal aging among their kind. Listen to him with eyes closed and it would be tempting to think a sixty-year-old politician did the speaking, hearty, strong, but not the kid who faced Ax now.

No one closed their eyes around The Priest, however, because it required more effort than most had in them. Wise possessed the most startling, inhumanly blue eyes of anyone Ax had ever met. Everything around them appeared washed out by comparison, dull and lifeless, especially true on this day when the skies drowned the world in grey dirge. The blue in those eyes sucked things into it with the inexorability of a black hole. You didn’t look away, because it was
impossible
to look away, and because anyone who didn’t pay rapt attention provoked the warlock’s displeasure.

“Problem, Terry?” The Priest asked in that freakish and disturbing voice.

Besides his mother, Wise was the only other person to ever call him that. He didn’t mind his mother had used the name she’d given him, but he hated it when The Priest did and Wise knew it.

“No problem,” Ax said.

“So?” The Priest said and shrugged. “There’s a reason you’re blocking the way?”

“You aren’t welcome here today.”

Wise laughed, professing astonishment. “Really? I think the place magic would beg to differ.”

So subtle were his orders to the warlocks with him, had Ax not been in a state of hyper-alertness, he would have missed any sign of movement.

Led by Runyon, the three warlocks with The Priest left the car, coming toward him. Wise remained behind, casually leaning against the open car door, his forearms resting atop the doorframe.

“I repeat, you’re not welcome here,” Ax said to Wise, ignoring the other three. “Nor are your trucks needed any longer. Drayhome is safe in The Rede’s hands. Humans won’t be seizing the property. Not today or ever.”

Runyon obstructed his view of Wise before Ax was done speaking, so he couldn’t be sure what effects his announcement might have had on The Priest. Had Wise heard the news before coming here, or did it come as an unpleasant surprise? Beyond Runyon, Ax thought he might have detected power flare before it was ruthlessly tamped down.

Runyon got in his face, moving in toe to toe with Ax, while the other two crowded him on right and left. Unlike Ax, who maintained his rigid stance, Runyon stood completely at ease, insouciance palpable. Every seam on Runyon’s tuxedo jacket was flawlessly tailored, too perfect to have been constructed by machine or human hands. His dark eyes glittered with amusement as he regarded Ax, dressed in his more humble wool shirtsleeves, and jeans.

“Oh, look, if it isn’t the Warlock of Fencing,” Runyon said. “Put up any nice picket fences lately?”

“You’re kidding,” the warlock to Runyon’s left said. “
That’s
his gift? He installs fencing?”

Runyon shared a grin with the other two. “I hear he’s a whiz at deer netting.”

Ax stared at the warlock, unflustered.

“I also do walls,” he said.

With a single word, he loosed the spell.

“
Linne
,” he said. In Irish Gaelic, the language The Rede had adopted for their own,
linne
translated to
ours
.

At first, the phenomenon sounded no greater than the rumble of thundersnow threatening Breens Mist from the far horizon. In seconds, however, the noise and vibration swelled, until they equaled the deafening thrum of a jet’s turbines powering up, except it wasn’t thunder or a jet. Runyon lost his grin, the other two lost their footing, the three searching for the source of the disturbance, until they recognized it came from beneath their feet, rushing, surging upward toward them all.

Ax’s chest swelled with breath taken soul deep into his lungs and when he breathed out, the shaking intensified by a magnitude of ten. He sank his awareness into the ground along the perimeter of Drayhome’s vast acreage. He used his ability to dig down into the Earth for her bones and sinews, gathering the pieces he needed, and then deeper still. Intuitively, he’d always known what lay below. Even if none of them, other than Colleen, ever fully understood what it was or how to communicate with it, he believed each of them had a connection to it.

Spirit’s well of place magic.

Ax reached. His mind and energies labored with the effort. He felt his power thin to the point of fraying, but would not give up. He could not accomplish what he meant to do with innate strength alone. He needed an energy larger and more permanent than his would ever be.