Divided against Yourselves (Spell Weaver) (34 page)

“To the family of Oberon, king of all English faeries.” Whether she was truly a reincarnation of Oberon’s mother or not, I was not in a position to reject her claim out of hand. The original Taliesin had never been in this exact situation, but he knew enough about faerie law for me to understand the firestorm I would set off if I took her fate in my own hands, and Oberon afterward claimed her as family.

“I accept your surrender but not yet your kinship claim,” I said in as authoritative a tone as I could manage. “You will be our prisoner until your right to invoke a relationship with Oberon has been settled.”

“As long as you fulfill your obligation to investigate my claim before trying to determine my fate yourself, I accept your terms,” replied Morgan, already recovering some of her former haughtiness.

Of course, a long faerie legal wrangle was about the last thing I needed, but at least Morgan would be out of circulation for a while. Well, at least she would be if I could figure out the answers to questions like, “Where can we keep her prisoner?” Even more pressing questions needed to be answered first.

“Shar, check on Al…check on Carla; if she’s still bleeding, try to stop it. Everybody else, cover Morgan. I need to check on Nurse Florence.” The pier was too narrow for all the guys to actually be within striking distance of Morgan. As Shar moved around her to reach Alcina, however, Dan moved into position and held his blade at Morgan’s neck. Just in case Morgan somehow got out of range before he could strike, Khalid stood close at hand, holding his dagger. I would have had him step back, but what would really have been the point? The kid would find a way to do what he wanted, regardless of what I said.

I sprinted back to where Nurse Florence lay, unmoving. Even from a distance, I could sense she was still alive, but just barely. It was at this point I wished I had been more insistent about her teaching me to heal. The original Taliesin had been able to do simple things like stopping bleeding, but he had never faced a situation like this. I couldn’t very well call the paramedics. I hated to even think it, but there was only one person I could call. I pulled out my cell and called Carrie Winn’s private number.

“Yes?” said Vanora groggily, but as always in Carrie Winn’s voice.

“It’s Tal.” I could almost feel her become wide awake, even over the phone. “I’m sorry to bother you, but we have a situation. We captured Morgan and Alcina, but Nurse Florence is just barely alive, and I don’t know how to heal her. We’re at Goleta Beach, near the pier.”

“I’m on my way!” she said very quickly, then hung up on me. I might not like the woman, but she had proved she would do whatever needed to be done. I glanced over at the guys, who seemed to have their part of the situation in hand, and then I focused on keeping Nurse Florence alive. I hadn’t mastered the kind of energy transfer she had used to revive me, but I knew how to sing energy into people, so I started singing my heart out, and though she didn’t revive noticeably, at least she did not sink any closer to death.

It suddenly occurred to me as I sang that, though I had not studied healing magic in detail, I had certainly experienced and witnessed a great deal of it. Could I perhaps have learned some of it without realizing that was what I was doing? Before I could explore that possibility, however, a portal snapped open nearby, and a clearly exhausted Vanora, in her usual guise as Carrie Winn, stepped through. She must not have been able to locate a body of fresh water nearby, so the only way to get here fast was the Annwn shortcut, much as the Order cautioned against using that route too much.

“Tal, let me see her,” she said, all business. I stepped out of the way, and Vanora quickly knelt at Nurse Florence’s side to examine her.

“Thankfully, she will live!” Vanora said after a minute. “It will take time for me to get her ready to travel, though. Some of my security men will be here soon to take Morgan and Alcina into custody.” She looked up at me. “I’ll want to get the details of what happened here, but I need to take care of Viviane first. Good job, though.” Then she was focused on the healing, and I knew enough not to try to talk to her anymore, so I walked toward the pier, just to make sure everything was still all right.

Even at first glance, I could see that everything had gone horribly and completely wrong in the few minutes I had sustained Nurse Florence before Vanora arrived. Stan was convulsing on the pier, and Dan had just swung his sword away from Morgan’s throat and straight at a distracted Gordy, whose concern for Stan nearly got him killed. He noticed Dan’s attack only barely in time to parry Dan’s blow, and because Gordy wasn’t really well positioned, he staggered backward, in turn knocking Carlos off-balance. Dan advanced relentlessly, swinging like a crazed killer, wielding his blade with a kind of berserk energy that kept both Gordy and Carlos on the defensive, as well as apparently protecting Dan from being struck with fear by Gordy’s sword.

Meanwhile, Morgan had taken advantage of the uproar to drive one of her ever-present daggers into Shar, who had just been getting up from where he knelt by Alcina, Zom raised, presumably about to try to disarm Dan. Shar managed to twist, wrenching the dagger out of Morgan’s hand and aiming Zom right at her, but her strike had gone deep, and even through his shirt I could tell blood was oozing down his back.

What could have caused all this mayhem? There could only be one answer.

Alcina!

She must have regained consciousness while Shar was checking her for bleeding. Perhaps feigning continued unconsciousness, she might have tried to control him, but, assuming he was retaining skin contact with Zom, she wouldn’t have been able to. Realizing she wasn’t getting anywhere, she had reached out for Stan, perhaps seeing him as the most vulnerable, but somehow her attempts to control him had gone awry, perhaps because of David’s presence within him. I’d need to be closer to be sure. Then she had managed to get some kind of hold on Dan, how strong I couldn’t yet tell, but I feared pretty strong from the way he was acting.

In any case, Vanora could not take her attention away from Nurse Florence right now, and her security men were at least a few minutes out. If the situation could be saved at all, I would have to do the saving.

I let White Hilt blaze and floated up onto the pier, as close to Morgan as I could get without getting between her and Shar’s blade.

“You have already surrendered, Morgan. Stand down, or I will give no quarter!” Morgan shot up into the air, and I followed, matching her speed in a way she probably didn’t anticipate.

“Last chance!” I yelled.

Again Morgan’s first response was derisive laughter. “If you had the guts to kill me, you would have done it already!” she shouted back, mockingly.

Trying hard not to think, I let White Hilt’s flames engulf her. No, I didn’t want to kill her, even now. I just had no choice.

I had braced myself for her agonized screams as the fire bit into her skin. I’m not sure whether I was more shocked or relieved when I heard none. Probing within the flames, I could tell that she had prepared herself for a fire attack in much the same way I had prepared myself for Alcina’s mind control. If I could keep up the fire long enough, though, I would eventually eat through her protection, so our duel became a question of which one of us could last longer, much as my earlier duel with Alcina might have if Morgan and Khalid had not intervened.

I could still hear the clash of faerie steel below, and though I kept most of my attention on Morgan, I risked a quick scan of the area below. Shar seemed to be trying to force Alcina to remove her spells—not a good tactic, since she knew he couldn’t really hurt her. Even from up here, I could feel him weakening. Gordy and Carlos were holding Dan at bay, but only just. Stan was still writhing helplessly behind them.

Where was Khalid? From up in the sky, I couldn’t tell. I guessed he was trying to maneuver invisibly. If so, I was too far away to be sure. I could only hope he wouldn’t get himself hurt in the battle.

Abruptly my attention was pulled back to Morgan. I knew she would try something, but I wasn’t expecting the approach I was feeling. Morgan’s signature attack had always been electrical storms, so I figured I would be dodging lightning any second. Instead, I felt intense cold coming from the center of my fire, slashing at it, weakening it. I tried making the fire hotter, but the cold almost immediately became more intense, as if in direct response.

In a moment a sword tore through the outer edge of the fire, its blade gleaming icily in the moonlight. I tried to seal the gap, but the sword sliced through the flame, not with its metal, but with the intense cold it generated.

Perhaps from us Morgan had learned the advantage of keeping a surprise weapon in reserve. Perhaps she had just obtained this sword. Either way, I doubted the fact that its power was the exact opposite of White Hilt’s was coincidental. Morgan had prepared very well for a battle she knew would happen sooner or later. That said, I wasn’t seeing any sign that she could channel the power of her sword in the way I could channel White Hilt’s. Clearly, the sword could radiate cold, but at least she could not throw waves of cold at me. Well, she couldn’t unless she was saving that for a later surprise.

Glancing north, I thought I could headlights coming down Sandspit. If so, that probably meant the cavalry, in the form of Vanora’s security men, was coming to the rescue. They could resolve the still-raging battle on the pier, but they couldn’t help much with Morgan. That part of the battle I would have to win on my own.

In the past I had been good about thinking “outside the box,” but right now inspiration seemed to have deserted me. All I could think to do was keep the fire at maximum intensity until one of us tired, and if it happened to be me, I would be in big trouble.

I risked another scan of the pier and cringed inwardly at what I could sense. Shar, realizing that threatening Alcina was not working, charged Dan in an effort to disarm him. Normally he could have, but he was still bleeding, and Dan still had a manic, adrenaline-overdrive kind of strength. To my horror, he managed to knock Zom out of Shar’s hand. Shar made a clumsy grab for Zom, missed, and then recoiled as Dan stabbed him in the right arm. Zom tumbled into the ocean, and I knew Shar could never follow it in his current condition. I would have thought Gordy and Carlos could have attacked Dan from the other side, but he had them enough off-balance that in the few seconds it took Gordy to make a decent thrust, Dan twisted to face him and successfully parried. Of course, Shar, Gordy, and Carlos were all handicapped by not wanting to hurt Dan. Dan, in his magic-crazed state, seemed to have no such inhibition.

I glanced north again. No more headlights. Straining a little, I could see that the vehicles were not Vanora’s security vehicles after all. Most likely a few guys had decided to take their girls parking for some late-night shenanigans.

Where were Vanora’s security people? If they didn’t arrive soon, Dan might conceivably win the battle on the pier. Perhaps Alcina would escape with him at that point, and we’d be right back in a hostage situation. Considering the shape Dan was in right now, we’d be lucky if that was all that happened.

Morgan still seemed to be hacking away at my fire without trying a direct attack, so I risked letting my mind wander back toward Santa Brígida to see where they were. It took a couple of minutes, but I found them—trapped way back on 101, on the wrong side of a jackknifed truck that effectively blocked all westbound traffic at that point. Brushing across the driver’s mind, I discovered he had swerved in an effort to avoid a deer and lost control.

Deer on the 101? Pretty much impossible—unless of course Morgan had conjured something up, an illusion perhaps. I hadn’t felt her sending any power in that direction recently, but I could somehow have missed it, or she could have preset some kind of trap in the time right after she had been forced to leave the “meeting.” She certainly knew that Vanora’s security force was tied up in Santa Brígida, but perhaps she wanted to ensure that if they were redeployed, they would not get in her way. If so, she had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. It might take hours to get the westbound 101 open again, and even if the highway patrol managed to extricate the vehicles currently on the interstate, that operation would take longer than we had.

Well, desperate times called for desperate measures. I hated to lose Morgan, but I had to take the chance. The most I could hope for with her in the short term was another stand-off, and the way conditions on the ground were, there would be casualties unless I intervened. Knowing she still needed me for something suggested she might follow me if I descended, so I took the chance. Releasing her from the flame, I dropped with almost sound-barrier-breaking speed. She hadn’t expected that move and floated in the air, bits of ice drifting from her blade as she watched me fall, her mouth open in surprise, her eyebrows raised.

I was coming down so fast I barely had time to look around, but I could see that Shar was trying to stop the copious flow of blood from his arm and that Gordy and Carlos couldn’t seem to do much more than keep Dan from lopping their heads off. Alcina? She still looked unconscious, but if she had enthralled Dan as completely as it seemed, she wouldn’t have to stay conscious for his rampage to continue; the spell had a life of its own, as I well knew.

At least no one was dead yet. Bracing myself, I hit the water with almost stunning force and dove until I grabbed Zom, after which I came gasping to the surface and shot back into the air. As I had hoped, Morgan had descended, but much more cautiously. Seeing the emerald flash of Zom in my hands must have given her pause, because she knew it put me out of reach of her magic. However, there was no way I could cover all my scattered friends on the dock, so she would probably decide to threaten them to get me to back off.