Black Wolf (3 page)

"This is
Jesse," Rebecca said. "He's having some bad luck right now. Jesse,
the blonde is Moira, and the brunette is Avryl. Have a seat, make
yourself comfy."

Jesse shrugged
to himself and joined the women on the blanket.

As it turned
out, it was past time for lunch but they'd been waiting for
Rebecca, and Moira had a cooler that held an astonishing amount of
food. There was also lots of orange juice and vodka, with Moira
usually making the drinks, and no one asked his age. Avryl had a
small compact stereo and apparently there was at least one radio
station that could be picked up around here.

Compared to
the parties he was used to, this was pretty tame… but the vodka was
better than nothing at all, and the company was friendly and easy
on the eyes. To say nothing of being his best chance not only of a
place to sleep that wasn't under a tree and more to eat than a
chocolate bar, but also of finding a way to get back to the city.
At least with nothing but vodka, he was unlikely to have another
blackout that would leave him up in the Northwest Territories or
something.

By the time
the sun began to edge down below the trees, Jesse was definitely
feeling a lot more relaxed. Moira had started a small campfire in
an area she and Avryl cleared of grass and then ringed with stones;
Jesse didn't see how she started it, only that it didn't seem to
take her nearly as long or be nearly as difficult as he'd thought
campfires usually were.

Avryl,
giggling, told them about something she'd heard about, that if
everyone joined hands and concentrated on gazing into the fire,
then they'd all see the answer to their greatest question. By that
point, Jesse didn't much care whether it made sense, and would have
gone along with weirder things to keep from disrupting the mood. He
found himself across from Rebecca, with Moira and Avryl on either
side.

Something
about this felt wrong, though, as he joined hands with Moira and
Avryl. There was something about it that felt vaguely familiar, and
for some reason that created enough nervousness to reach through
the haziness. Why was he so foggy, anyway? He hadn't had
that
much to drink all that quickly…

Before he
could figure it out, Avryl began to speak in a kind of sing-song
rhythm. "Just look at the fire, slow your breathing down, in, now
out, in, and out… look at the fire, don't look away, let everything
else just go away, relax and be open to whatever's going to happen,
don't fight it… just breathe, in, out, and look at the fire..."

Automatically,
Jesse obeyed, ignoring the sense that something was just not right
about this situation. The flames seemed to twist into odd shapes
that he could almost recognize, but they were always gone as soon
as he focused, and he could never quite get a clear look.

With no
warning at all, pain slashed across him, pain that was beyond
anything he'd ever imagined. Avryl and Moira both tightened their
grasp on him, kept him from pulling away, as every nerve in his
body came screaming awake, and yet it ran deeper still, on some
level that he couldn't even really identify, let alone name.

On the heels
of the pain came the pleasure, the most incredible high he'd ever
felt. Yet the agony was still there, twined around and into the
high, a brutal reminder of mortality even while the ecstasy tried
to convince him otherwise. Trapped between the two, all thought
stopped, and the universe became an eternity of waiting for an end,
yearning for it and fearing it at the same time.

Abruptly,
Avryl and Moira let go, and the high vanished, leaving only the
pain that made him want to scream except that too many muscles were
locked tight, made him curl in on himself moaning.

"I wouldn't
worry about getting home," Rebecca said. "That's the least of your
problems right now. But then, I hardly think it's going to make the
world a lesser place, to no longer have someone like you in it, now
is it?"

He heard them
move, heard them simply walk away. Somehow, the blanket that had
been under him wasn't there anymore, he couldn't hear the fire
anymore, it was just him and the grass and the trees around him,
and the overwhelming pain.

He heard
something bark nearby, and hoped vaguely that it was someone's dog,
not a wolf or something looking for an easy meal.

"Oh gods,"
someone whispered; cool light fingers brushed his cheek. "Oh,
Rebecca, what have you done this time?"

The pain went
away, but it took the rest of the world with it.

* * *

Kevin woke
sharply, heart pounding, with images in his mind of glass breaking
overhead. It took him a moment to sort out that it wasn't his own
dream; his coven-mate Flynn was still asleep, and dreaming, and was
reaching towards him in fear. He felt Flynn jolt into
consciousness, with no lessening of the sense of dread.

*Kev! Shield
Bane! Heavy!*

Confused, but
willing to trust the seer, Kevin scanned the area for Bane, got the
mental echoes of creeping up carefully on a trio of sleeping male
mallards, tension and anticipation. That was enough for him to pour
sunlight energy into a bubble around Bane, one that would keep any
kind of outside magic from reaching him.

The ducks
sensed it and exploded into a flurry of escaping feathers and alarm
quacks; so did Bane, who threw a wordless, irritated question at
him.

Before Kevin
could explain, pure raw energy slammed into the shields with
dizzying force. Bane yelped, more in surprise than fear—not much
frightened Bane—and crouched where he was, instinct telling him to
get back to his coven-mates to defend them against whatever was
attacking, reason telling him that if he moved it would be harder
for Kevin to protect him.

Kevin threw
more of the power he'd absorbed from the sunlight into the shields
to reinforce them. Without Flynn's warning, his normal shields and
the ones built into the tent would all have shattered like an egg
under a hammer, but this one held, deflecting the attack away and
scattering it harmlessly. Just in case, he poured more power into
the shields woven into the framework of the tent. A second blow
against Bane, the third targeted the tent…

"What on
earth…" Deanna began sleepily, aware of the fluctuations in ambient
energy levels even if she couldn't track them directly, and then
her tone hardened. "Rebecca?"

Carefully,
Kevin searched outwards, holding the shields steady; this was a lot
harder than multiple butterflies, and could be a lot more
devastating if he dropped any of the balls he was juggling. Anger
surged—that was Rebecca, all right. Why couldn't she just leave
them alone? Why did she have to wreck their peaceful camping trip?
He pulled up whatever power he had left, shaped a window in the
shields around him and Deanna just for an instant as soon as the
fourth blow had been rebounded, and furiously flung everything he
had back in the direction from which the attack had come, targeting
it on Moira's very visible energy signature and Rebecca's
unmistakable presence.

He didn't
think it actually reached them; something else absorbed it before
that. But the blows stopped, and right now, that was good
enough.

He reached to
Flynn, hoping the seer would have a better idea what was going
on.

*In the
forest,* Flynn said. *Get moving before he dies! I'll find one of
the healers so you can use me as an anchor. Find him!*

Kevin winced.
Running around a forest in what was, to him, utter darkness
punctuated by heat images really wasn't going to be a lot of fun.
Well, Deanna would help. *Dia, Bane, not sure if you caught that,*
he said, mentally instead of out loud, so he could send it to both.
As the only telepath in the coven, he tended to find himself the
centre of communication. *Flynn says there's someone who's going to
die if we don't find him.*

*Stay there
until I get back to you,* Bane commanded. *I don't want you
wandering around a night-time forest without me if Rebecca's in the
area.*

*Hurry,
then.*

*Already on my
way.*

Kevin called
just enough light along the ribs of the tent that he could see to
find his shorts and running shoes; Deanna had already rolled to her
feet, not needing the light so much, and was ready to go. By the
time Bane ran out of the trees, they were out of the tent and Kevin
had an approximate fix on which direction. If it weren't that he
would have to create a gate to get Flynn and one of their healer
friends there as quickly as possible, he'd have let dryad and
werewolf go alone. Arguably, he could let them go, then gate
himself to them,
then
gate the healer in, but two gates
without even much moonlight would leave him too exhausted to walk.
And creating light while in the trees would only cause disorienting
moving shadows and interfere with Bane and Deanna.

So, instead,
he gave his coven-mates what information he could about the
direction of the lingering traces of power, and trusted them to
keep him from walking into a tree. He wasn't expecting it to be all
that far; there'd be too much power loss over long range.

It certainly
felt like an awfully long way to go.

*Here!* Bane
barked sharply, mentally and aloud both.

"Clearing,
about eight feet ahead," Deanna murmured.

They finally
stepped out of the trees, and with intense relief Kevin called a
floating sphere of light to hover in the air and give them all a
reasonable view of their surroundings.

The clearing
was small, and mostly empty. There were lingering traces of
illusion, still strong enough that Kevin could see what it had
been. Why had Moira created the illusion of a campsite? The only
things real were the remains of a fire, which still shimmered with
mage power—created by, extinguished by, and he thought manipulated
by an elvenmage—and an impression under the one person still
present that suggested a blanket woven by a mage out of light and
then left to dissolve when no longer useful.

Deanna
crouched beside the black-clad figure that lay on the grass, curled
into a tight fetal ball, breath coming in rapid ragged sobs of
pain.

"Oh gods," she
whispered, reaching out to run her fingers down his cheek. "Oh,
Rebecca, what have you done this time?" She looked up at Kevin, and
he didn't need to read her mind to know what she wanted him to do.
No one should have to experience that much pain. Gently, Kevin
wrapped his mind around the stranger's and thought
sleep
at
him. His breathing slowed and evened out somewhat as he lost
consciousness.

*Ready,
Flynn?*

*Yes,* came
the prompt reply.

Reaching to
Flynn, using him as an anchor to spin a doorway of light and energy
linking
here
and
there
, was one of the most tiring
things he'd done yet tonight. Pixie-slight Gisela, her long
honey-brown hair dripping wet and a pale summer dress clinging to
her damply, darted through on bare feet. Flynn, his ever-present
cards in one hand, followed her, and the gate imploded, leaving
them in twilight. Not that Kevin really needed to see the redheaded
seer, whose mother's Scottish blood showed in every line of his
body.

Gisela dropped
instantly to her knees next to the stranger, laying a hand on his
cheek—about the only skin accessible with his arms and hands
clenched tight against his chest. Her eyes closed as she
concentrated on what healer senses could tell her about what was
going on in his body right now.

Kevin studied
him as best he could while waiting. Young, slender, probably no
taller than Flynn. Black hair that didn't look like it had been cut
or even washed lately, pulled back in a rough tail with strands
escaping to frame his face. Dark skin, maybe Native, with one
silver crescent stud bright through his ear. Features slightly
delicate, very sensual... attractive, even streaked with drying
tears and dirt, but not strong enough to be handsome, Kevin
mused.

"I don't know
everything that's happening, there's too much all at once," Gisela
said worriedly. "He's been ripped wide open psychically, and I
think it overloaded his whole nervous system. He's already in
shock, and even before this, he had an awful lot of stuff going on.
Flynn's right, he's going to die unless I can do something..."

"Do what you
can," Flynn said softly, toying with his cards without actually
pulling any out to look at. He wouldn't have gone to Gisela if she
had no hope of saving the stranger, Kevin thought; he would never
do that to her. So he must see a reasonable chance.

Gisela nodded,
and tucked her hair back behind her ears. For a moment, by
magelight, she looked less like the seventeen-year-old
mostly-trained dryad healer she was, and more like she'd be in
another couple of decades when both she and her gifts reached full
maturity. She moved so she was sitting on the ground with her legs
crossed, the stranger's head on her lap, and closed her eyes
again.

Bane prowled,
agitated but lacking a target, circling around them in wide
loops—practically daring anything to attack again. Kevin, Deanna,
and Flynn settled themselves near Gisela, not close enough to
interfere, and Kevin let the light fade away, in case he needed
that power for something more urgent. In the mostly-dark, his
heat-vision came back into play, and unless the stranger was a
dryad, his body temperature was definitely cooler than normal.