Fearless (The Blue Fire Saga) (50 page)

Jenna silently cursed herself. She had made it impossible for Kristi to speak to anyone else about Jenna’s role
in Kristi’s transformation
, but had not thought to forbid Kristi from speaking about it to her.
Oh, well, she thought,
since she wanted
both
Kristi and
Marcio’s
help, she would probably have had to te
ll him
eventually.

“I, uh, gave Kristi a bit of help before you found her,” she said to Marcio.

“A bit of help, huh?” A half-smile curved
Marcio’s
lips as he recalled the strange, almost irresistible pull that had led him to Kristi. “I’m pretty sure you did more than that.”

Jenna sighed. She decided she m
ight
as well come clean. With a glance as Kristi, she dissolved the spell that kept Kristi from speaking about what had happened,
then
turned back to Marcio.

“The only way to save Kristi was to find a vampire
to complete her transformation. I may have provided a slight
push for you to come find her.”

“Trifling with vampires is dangerous business,” Marcio said.
“Even for a witch.”

Kristi turned to Marcio and took his other hand.

“Please don’t be angry with Jenna,” she implored him.
“She gave me a choice of finding a volkaane to destroy me or a vampire to turn me. I chose vampire.” She rose up onto her toes and kissed Marcio on the cheek. “Surely, you are glad I did.”

Marcio smiled. “Yes. I’m very glad.” He turned to Jenna. “I suppose I must thank you as well, then.”

Jenna returned his smile. “Well, I’m glad that’
s settled—b
ecause I may need your help.”

Marcio arched an eyebrow. “Go on.”

“Can we sit? This may take a little time to explain, and I’ve walked many miles today.”

“Of course,” Kristi said, realizing she had already forgotten what it felt like to be tired.

“You two can sit there,” Jenna
said, indicating the fallen tree
. “I’d like to face you. Marcio, could you bring that rock over here for me, please.”

She pointed to a large boulder on the far side of the small clearing.

“I’ll get it,” Kristi said. She bounded over to the rock and lifted it easily, carrying it back to Jenna and Marcio
and setting it down a few feet from the log
. She still thrilled to her new strength
and loved any chance to use it
.

“Thank you,” Jenna said,
sit
ting down on the rock while the two
vampires settled onto the log. She was
pleased to see
they
still maintained their extraordinary strength. If they agreed to help her, and she decided to go forward with her plan, they were going to need it.

43
.
THE BOUNDARY

E
arly Wednesday afternoon,
Leesa was hanging out
in Cali’s room
. They had both just gotten back from their classes and were catching each other up on their respective days. Cali had turned on her stereo and
Gotye
was
whin
ing about
“being cut off” by
somebody that he “used to know.
” Leesa liked the song’s catchy beat
and
especially like
d
Kimbra’s
vocals when she
cut in near the end
.

Leesa
had tried to keep h
erself busy since getting
back from her meeting with Dominic. Unless she was mentally rehearsing her part in the upcoming mission,
which she did many times a day,
she didn’
t like to think about it;
staying busy and enjoying her friends was the best way to try to put it out of her mind. Spending time with loved ones was especially important
now
in
case things turned out badly. For that reason, s
he’d had dinner with her
mom and brother the night before. She was pretty sure she had hidden her anxiety, although
Bradley had looked at her funny
a couple of times.

Cali was tel
ling Leesa about something humorous
that had happened in her biology class
when
Leesa’s
cell buzzed. She looked down at the screen
—it
was the call she had been expecting and dreading. Standing up, she put the phone to her ear and moved across the room
to the open doorway. “Be right back,” she mouthed to Cali as she stepped out into the hallway to take Dominic’s call.

“
Where are you?” Leesa asked him. “Have you found the boundary?
”

“Not yet,”
Domini
c replied
, “but I
have to
be getting close. I’m just west of Meriden. Since we know your magic was weakened in Middletown, the boundary
must
be somewhere in between.”

“I understand,” Leesa said. Meriden and Middletown were only ten miles or so apart.

“Timing will be critical,” Dominic said. “The black waziri are not far behind me now. You
need to get started, so you can
be close by when I find the boundary. Drive a few miles outside of Middletown and wait in your car.
I’ll call
again when I locate the edge of the magic
.”

“Okay. I have your box with me and the car is right
outside. I’ll leave
now
.”

“You remember what you have to do, right?”

Leesa sm
iled, thinking about her near constant thoughts about her
upcoming
role.

“Yep.
I’ll be ready.” Scared as hell, she thought silently, but ready.

“Good girl,” Dominic s
aid. “I’ll call as soon as I find the boundary
.”

The phone went silent in
Leesa’s ear. She returned t
o Cali’s room.

“Stand up,” she told Cali.

Cali looked puzzled as she got to her feet. Leesa wrapped her arms around her best friend.

“I love you,” she said, squeezing Cali tightly.

“
I love you,
too,” Cali said, returning
Leesa’s
hug and then pushing herself back to arm’s length. “So why
am I not liking
the sound of this?”

Leesa sucked in a deep breath. “There’s something I have to go do. It might be dangerous
.” The words sounded ridiculous as soon as they left her mouth. She wondered if she had ever made such a complete understatement before. “That’s all I can tell you.”

Cali stared into Leesa’s eyes.
She wanted to question Leesa to try to learn more, but she pushed the thought down. She knew Leesa would tell her more if she could.

“Then you had better call me the second it’s over,”
she said
instead
. “I’ll be worried sick
about you
until you do.”

“I will, I promise. It’
ll probably be
at least
a few hours
, though.
Maybe more.
”

“I don’t care. And I don’t care what time it is
, either
. You call me as soon as you can.”

“Deal.”
Leesa hugged Cali one more time and then limped from the room.

She hurried down the stairs and out to her rented car, which was parked right in front of the dorm. She dropped her purse with the all important box inside
it
onto the passenger seat and settled in behind the wheel. A moment later, she was heading toward the
campus exit, driving toward
whatever fate awaited her.

While Leesa headed west from Middletown, Dominic was driving slowly east
, his eyes carefully scanning the air ahead of him for any sign of magic. He wasn’t sure exactly what he would see when he came to the edge of the zone of weakening magic, but he was pretty sure he would recognize it. The immense amount of power necessary to drain
seemingly all
magic over such a wide area could not be hidden from so
meone who knew what to look for—
and he wa
s someone
who knew
. So were his black brethren, but he was counting on the signs being so faint and his enemies so focused on
destroying
him that they would not notice, at least
not
until it was too late.

Every mile or so, he left the highway and drove in varying directions on side streets, just to delay his pursuers, who would be driving much faster
than he was. If he
kept going in a straight line, they might overtake him before he was ready. As he had told Leesa, the timing
of all this
was going to be critical.

Finally, he spotted it: a very faint shimmering in the air, almost like waves of heat radiating up from the road, but far less visible t
han
real
heat waves would be. He eas
ed
over on
to the shoulder
and stuck hi
s head out the window for a better look
. The
re was no doubt. The
magic was there, less than a hundred feet in front of him.

He got out of the car
and walked slowly forward, careful to stop a good ten feet from the almost invisible curtain of magical energy. He studied the area on the other side of the boundary carefully, l
ooking for the perfect place to set his trap. There was a small diner up ahead on the left side of the road,
but the right side was mostly trees. Interspersed with the leafless deciduous trees
,
he saw several small stands of green mountain laurel. The closely pack
ed
leaves would provide some cover for Leesa after she activated his avatar. The place wasn’t perfect, but it was better than he might have expected.
There was even a slight incline
he could roll
his empty
car
down
. The tiny dip would carry the vehicle
across the boundary while he hid on this side.
It would be one more piece to draw his pursuers into the
danger
zone.