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Authors: Ann Macela

Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Paranormal, #Romance, #Suspense

Wild Magic (40 page)

BOOK: Wild Magic
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Like its smaller remnant, this segment of the Cataclysm Stone drank in the light and surrounded Ubell, the staff, and itself in a pool of shadow.
When Irenee looked at the hideous monstrosity, a black flare lit up its insides and reached for her. The snake running along her back turned into a python trying to squeeze her spine. A icy knot formed in her stomach, and sudden nausea made her feel like throwing up.
Her Sword defenses met the challenge automatically, however, and her center immediately warmed and aimed its heat at the cold spot. She threw her shoulders back to stand tall and angry. No way was this perversion of magic going to destroy her or her soul mate.
“
Castellum!
” She set her pentagon. Indigo walls with violet streaks sprang up around her and Jim.
“Fulmen!”
She shot an indigo lightning bolt at the Stone.
Jim grabbed her shoulders as if to pull her behind him.
“No! Feed me power!” She sent a blue energy bolt after the lightning.
The Stone absorbed the two bolts, but Ubell didn’t return fire. Surprisingly, he didn’t seem to know what to do for a moment. Then he laughed, like a dog’s bark, and braced himself, the staff in his left hand and held toward her.
Jim put his hands on her back, and she felt her well fill with his energy.
With his right hand, Ubell threw a fireball. At least she thought it’s what he intended. The pitiful spark, no better than
flamma
to light a candle, wobbled across the space between them, finally fizzling on her barricade.
Ubell evidently didn’t have the skill to lay down a fortress or shoot an offensive missile. Good! That made him vulnerable.
Irenee fired directly at the warlock, and he ducked, using the staff as a shield.
“Dodge this.” She shot a lightning blast, and the boom rebounded off the walls and windows. The Stone drew the indigo arc into itself and dissipated the effect.
“We only have to hold out a little while until the others get here,” she told Jim over her shoulder. “We can do it!”
She threw another lightning bolt. The Stone deflected it to the side, and plaster flew when it hit the wall by the door.
Ubell was talking to the crystal, although she couldn’t make out the words. He put both hands on the staff and sent her a concentrated look of hatred. Out of the Stone flew several rainbow-colored bolts that rattled her fortress walls only slightly.
She had expected more power from the monster on top of the staff. It appeared, however, Ubell was manipulating the Stone, not the other way around, and her human opponent didn’t know how to use his crystal. This might be his first actual fight with the abomination, and his inexperience and ineptitude would give her an advantage.
The battle with Finster’s remnant had not given the team a problem until the item was in its death throes and its other section came to help. She knew she couldn’t destroy Ubell’s Stone by herself, even if it didn’t have outside aid. In her favor, the monster didn’t have an expert wielding it, either. Therefore, all she had to do was hold off the attacks and stall for time and the Defenders’ arrival. With Ubell obviously being more hindrance than help, her chances for success were good.
Time to get serious. She drew her sword, and the blade glowed almost pure violet when she shot an indigo beam directly out of its tip. She hit the Stone in the middle of its fractured face.
Ubell howled when the Stone deflected the beam, and the energy stream splintered around it, one piece almost hitting him. The Stone returned a crackling ray of its own, and her fortress repulsed it, but her walls definitely rippled from the hit.
Oops! Slight miscalculation. The last shot held more power, greater ferocity, better focus. That blow definitely came from the Stone, not Ubell. It was probably giving up on its “master” to run its attacks.
She and the Stone traded hits back and forth for several minutes, each shot more powerful—and energy consuming—than the last.
The good news? From the color of her blade, she was rising in level again. The bad? She was using power faster than she wanted to. She had to ration and couldn’t shoot a continuous beam at Ubell, or she’d run out even quicker. Jim was helping her maintain her necessary amount, but how long would his last?
The Stone’s bolts were not diminishing in strength and, an ominous note, were becoming tinged with black. Was it realizing its potential? More bad news for her and Jim.
Where was John? Where were the Defenders and Swords?
Another blast from the Stone shook the floor, which was scored now with black ruts from the deflected lightning bolts and energy beams. Although scorched in places from the fireballs, the wood wasn’t burning—yet.
Irenee looked closely at the smirking man behind the staff. What was she thinking? She’d never get anywhere going directly at the Stone. Ubell was an attractive target of a weaker sort.
She gathered herself and aimed a violet, searing beam at the base of his robe. Maybe she could give him a hot foot!
A hit! Ubell jumped, took one of his hands off the staff, and bent over to shake his smoking robe. His movement turned the Stone’s face away from her.
“Yes!” She pointed her sword directly at Ubell and fired several bursts in succession.
The monster had to be complaining to its so-called wielder because Ubell quickly put both hands on the shaft and aimed the smooth, sloping face at her again. She could see his mouth moving, but couldn’t hear his words in the din of thunderclaps and beam whooshes as the Stone answered her shots. He looked like he was apologizing.
She blasted him again, and after three more shots, he was definitely cringing, held upright only by his grip on the staff. Her attention to the man seemed to take the Stone’s concentration away from attacking her, and the evil item was working more to deflect her bolts than to strike at her fortress.
The problem was, her well was definitely running out of power. Jim’s stream into her had slowed and greatly lessened in strength. Surely the others would get here soon. She put more power into the walls of her pentagon. If she had to, she’d divert all her energy to her fortress.
“I need more if you have it,” she told Jim.
“I’m about to run out,” Jim gasped in her ear.
CHAPTER FORTY
 
Jim was so weary. He’d wasted some of his power earlier on that miserable excuse of a
flamma
to set Ubell’s coat on fire. With Ubell out of the room, he’d almost managed the strength spell he and Johanna had been working on, when Leroy hit him again and broke his concentration. The beating hadn’t helped his reserves, either.
Somehow he had to keep going, keep supplying Irenee with energy. Where in hell would he get it? He could feel her power diminishing, and his bucket was almost dry. Nobody had ever explained what happened when a practitioner ran out of energy. He probably would need a transfusion of some kind—or he might simply fall over.
If they both ran out, Ubell and his Stone would kill them.
What could he do? There had to be something!
He looked around wildly. No ammunition. Nothing to throw. Where was a good rock when he needed one? Or even better, a cannon.
His eyes fell on Leroy collapsed behind the column.
Oh, wait. Could he get to the guy?
He threw the last of his power into Irenee. At this point, what did he have to lose?
“I don’t have any more energy,” he told her, “but I have an idea. Cover me.”
She didn’t reply, only nodded, and sent another beam from her sword at Ubell.
Jim let her go, took two running steps, and dove for Leroy. He slid on his stomach across the stage, ending up behind the stout column and almost on top of the thug. A chunk exploded from the column plaster just after he reached its protection.
He grabbed his gun out of the man’s belt and stood up, keeping his back against the column. He made sure a round was in the weapon’s chamber and braced himself, ready to turn and fire. When he looked at Irenee, she was looking back at him. He leaned enough to peer around the column at Ubell. “Ready!”
“Ready!” she answered.
“I love you!” he shouted.
“I love you!” she yelled back to him. “One, two,
three!”
On three she threw a brilliantly violet beam at Ubell’s head. He yelped and ducked, and his sharp movement jerked the staff and the Stone’s face to the side.
Jim came out from behind the column. His first shot missed because Ubell was moving to the side, dodging Irenee’s beam. He aimed at Ubell’s head and fired, just as the man swung the staff his way.
CRACK!
His bullet hit the Stone dead center, and crystal shards flew from it in a black cloud.
“AAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHH!” Ubell clutched his head and collapsed. The smoking black staff fell over by his side.
When the walls stopped shaking and silence returned, Jim took three steps to Irenee and caught her as she threw herself into his arms and held on tight. They only raised their heads when someone yelled, “Irenee! Jim!”
Swords blazing in their hands, Baldwin and Johanna, with a bunch of Defenders behind them, threw open the ballroom doors, only to stop abruptly at the threshold.
“Nobody move,” Baldwin ordered, staring at them and the collapsed Ubell. “Are you two all right?”
Jim had only the strength to nod, and Irenee did the same.
“That was gunfire we heard? You shot the Stone?”
Jim nodded again.
“Were either of you hit by the splinters?”
“No,” Jim and Irenee said together.
“Well, it’s one way to kill the thing.” Baldwin cancelled his sword and put his hands on his hips while he surveyed the room.
Jim also looked around, now that he had the chance. Ricocheting energy beams had gouged hunks of plaster out of the walls, and yellow and white bits lay scattered in clumps about the room. The ruts in the floor had stopped smoking, and the surface had buckled in places. Obsidian shards were stuck in the floor, walls, and doors in about a ten-foot radius around Ubell’s body. Miraculously, the crystal chandeliers had hardly lost a single prismatic drop and those not covered in soot still reflected rainbows.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” Baldwin said. “Jim and Irenee, you stay there until we get the Stone fragments out of the way. Healers, see if you can reach them by the side door. Everybody, be careful where you step.”
He pointed at the obsidian shards. “Defenders, get the removal kits and start collecting every piece of the Stone. Every little bit. Watch out for those big chunks by the staff. Use extreme caution with them. Remember, the pieces are still evil and hold power, so use tongs or pliers to pick them up. We don’t want any evil rubbing off on anybody. Looks like we’ll be able to give every Defender team in the country a chance to destroy several of them.”
He turned to Johanna. “You and I will get Ubell and his henchman out of here. Ubell doesn’t appear to have any shards in his face, but I see some in his robe. Somebody bag the robe after we get him out of it and put it and what’s left of the staff in the Hummer. Let’s take the men downstairs to the study where Finster collapsed. You know, some medical problem must run in this family. This cousin seems to have suffered a similar affliction.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
 
After he and Johanna took Ubell and Leroy downstairs, and while the others worked to pick up the Stone fragments, Baldwin came to the stage.
Jim was sitting in the throne, holding Irenee on his lap. He couldn’t let go of her, and she wouldn’t let go of him. Just the way he wanted it.
“The healers say you’re going to be fine,” Baldwin reported. “They applied some quick fixes and will look you over again back at the center. How are you feeling?”
“Tired, very tired,” Jim answered. Now he knew what happened when you ran out of energy. He was staying upright by sheer willpower.
Irenee, her head on Jim’s shoulder, only nodded.
“I have to call my boss,” Jim said and picked up his phone from the table. Except for his weapon and ammo clips, he’d already put the rest of his stuff in his pockets.
“Does it still work?” Irenee mumbled.
“Ubell threw it across the room after you hung up on him. It didn’t seem to work after that” He flipped the lid and punched the
on
button. Nothing happened. “No, it’s dead.”
“All the magic killed it, not the throw,” Baldwin said. “It would be better—and traceable—to call from the phone in Ubell’s study. Before you do, however, I’d like to ask, are you going to tell him and the agency about us?”
“What good would it do? Even if I did, I doubt he’d believe me.” He rubbed his free hand through his hair and winced when he brushed the bump on his head he’d received in the van.
“Let’s get the two of you to the study. While we were clearing a path through the crystal pieces, I alerted Fergus, Miriam, and Rachel about the situation. They said to tell you both congratulations and thanks. You have done some excellent work here. We also came up with some suggestions for handling the situation concerning your task force.”
BOOK: Wild Magic
9.25Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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