Heart Mates (25 page)

Ivan pounced. Noah twisted but didn’t get away fast enough. Ivan bounded after and caught Noah’s rump with a swat, sending him stumbling.

Noah was definitely tiring now. Eventually he’d make another mistake and then a fatal mistake.

Seeing the invisible was impossible, so what? She had to do it anyway, and she had to do it
now
.

A beam of sun hit her in the eye, dancing with dust.

An omen
…no, a
clue
. Light beams were invisible, but dust revealed them. The hide spell might not be invisible if the loose blue chalk Mr. Kibbles had given her was magic.

She jammed her wand between her teeth and fumbled out the small box. Inside, a baggie with a twist tie confronted her. She untwisted, her fingers starting to sweat because it was entirely possible she was twisting the wrong way and actually making it more impossible to get at.

The wire fell apart. The baggie gaped. With a relieved huff she scooped out a handful of blue powder, sparkling in her Witch’s Sight. Magic chalk dust.

Ivan pinned Noah to the ground with one paw. Noah kept twisting, barely avoiding Ivan’s snapping jaws.

Heart hammering, Sophia threw the handful over the struggling pair.

“Hey,” Bonnie said. Sophia ignored her.

Fuzzy strands sparked blue around the dog. Added benefit, Ivan sneezed, his paw coming up.

Noah wriggled out, panting and wheezing—his bright red blood smeared along the crushed grass.

No time for subtlety. Nothing held back. What the hell. She should have died four years ago.

Time to go out with a bang.

“I sing silver, I sing gold.” She grabbed her wand out of her teeth and threw it at Noah. “Hide—
revoked.
”

She smashed her last dome.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Sophia hit the funeral seal so hard the dome exploded. Her full power blared free. It sang forth exuberantly, streaming after the wand toward Noah.

The magic she’d used to confine it—the death sacrifice—flew back into her. The kick was so hard it folded her in two. All the air expelled from her lungs in a shocked gasp.

But that wasn’t where she felt the brunt of it. Head, hands—heart.

The death magic exploded directly into her heart.

Her chest crushed with dark pain.
Heart attack
. She had maybe a second of consciousness to grab back her released power and use it to try to save herself.

A second Ivan would use to kill Noah.

A flight attendant once told her why, in an airplane, if the cabin suddenly depressurized, people were instructed to put on their own air mask before helping others. “Don an air mask, help another, save two lives. Help another who can’t help you, and you’ve only saved one.”

But in a plane, she’d have a few moments before oxygen deprivation killed. She had a second or two at the most, and so did Noah.

Her or him.

She chose him.

Her magic blasted into the flying wand just as it struck the hide spell. The wand sliced cleanly through.

Frayed ends of spell popped up as she keeled over. She lay on crushed grass, gasping, unable to breathe. Black tunneled her vision. She was heading into unconsciousness.

But as she lay there a strange thing happened. A magic wind rose, catching the frayed hide spell and unwinding it. The wrappings fell away. The hex underneath started to unravel. Strip after strip came loose.

Golden light lanced out from underneath.

Like a beached fish, she gasped on the crushed grass, wondering what was keeping her alive but even more awed by what she was seeing with the last of her etheric sight. Golden light was heavy-duty power, not simple shifter magic or even the power wielded by most wizards.

As strip after strip of hex unwound, more light bled through, brighter and brighter. Green hissed as Noah’s poison just burned away.

Her forehead broke out in beads of sweat. It looked like the mother of all primal magics was about to break free.

The hex tore. A blinding sheet of white light burst forth on the etheric. Colors danced in afterimage on her third eye, shards of blue and green and yellow.

With it burst a torrent of memory.

A small boy, dark-haired, stood in a warm kitchen. He had a cookie. He turned toward Sophia.

It was Noah.

He smiled. “This is great!”

A tall woman in a slacks and a ruffled white apron appeared next to him. Her tawny hair descended in thick waves to the band at her waist. Her eyes were the same shape as Noah’s, her nose the same elegant length. Their hair and mouths were different but even with the distance of memory Sophia could see this was a shifter, and his mother.

Noah’s mother raised her head suddenly, her nostrils flared. “Simon.”

A robed man appeared behind them. Sophia’s breath hitched.

It was a wizard prince.

His hair was black like Noah’s. His mouth…that was Noah’s sensual mouth.

“I hear,” the wizard said. He had Noah’s deadly stillness. “Take the boy out front…” His brows compressed and his eyes faded as if he was staring far into the distance. Then they snapped back to Noah’s mother. “No. They’re coming that way. Go out the back. Take the boy away, Hayley. Quickly.”

It was memory, colored with a child’s limited understanding. Witches had a technique to join memories with later adult perception, something like television captioning. With the last of her conscious will, Sophia synched up Noah’s for him.

“Mother/Hayley/shifter,” floated under the tawny-haired woman. “Hard man/Simon/wizard,” was under the man.

Noises came from outside. “Bad men,” the caption read. Then… “Wizards. Hunting.”

Hunting…oh God. They were hunting Noah.

Simon pushed Hayley to go, then ran the other way as Noah’s mother hustled Noah outside.

“Meeting the bad wizards,” read the caption.

It erased.

Slowly came, “Holding them off. Fighting.” The revised caption was dusted with surprise.

The memory played on. Wizards burst around the side of the house in a whirlwind of magic. Hayley grabbed Noah to her. The tightness of her grasp, the shaking of her body, told Sophia the woman knew they were dead.

Suddenly Simon appeared, wedging himself bodily between the attacking wizards and his family.

“Jumped,” read the caption, but Sophia knew that wasn’t right. Without training, Noah wouldn’t know his father had transported, a horrendous power suck and rarely done. Yet Simon had used it to get there in time, to get between the wizards and Hayley and Noah. By the way Simon staggered, Sophia knew it took almost everything he had.

Not only very powerful, he must have loved them very much.

Sparks filled the air around the wizards, the roiling fury of a mage-battle with heavy magic. Shadows shifted and foreboding filled Sophia. Even though this was a memory, she mentally urged Hayley to go faster.

A cawing cut the air. Flying through the cloud of battle magic was a black bird.

“Raven!” Noah struggled in his mother’s grasp.

Sophia thought at first it was Simon’s familiar. But no, a cat bounded out of the house with Simon’s wand.

A fourth enemy wizard appeared, following the raven, clad in a shimmering pale robe with a thick white collar. The wizard didn’t join the battle but stood apart from the rest, his collar undulating around his neck…not a collar. It was a ferret familiar.

The pale-robed wizard pointed. The raven cawed—and flew where the finger pointed, back-beating its wings as if appalled, but at the same time irresistibly compelled.

The bird had been magically bound by the enemy wizard.

Simon’s face froze in an expression of despair so profound Sophia understood the truth.

The raven was in the power of the enemy wizard, and was the boy’s familiar.

Noah’s
familiar.

“Raven!” Noah saw the bird and struggled free from his mother’s arms to run toward it. “Beloved pet,” was the subtitle. Even now, Noah didn’t know.

“No!” Simon’s arm shot out. The boy ran into a wall of air.

Simon swept his wand to point at the raven. A burst of magic pushed the bird up into the air, farther, farther, until it was a black speck in the sky. After Simon’s own bodily transport, Sophia knew it was a suicidal use of power. He wouldn’t have enough left to keep his family safe and his own life intact and still fight the remaining wizards and their familiars.

There’d be no happy ending here.

Simon’s familiar joined him, fighting back to back. The remaining black-robed mages circled them, wands pointed. The ivory ferret and his master watched with unholy glee.

Noah’s mother caught Noah, wrapped arms around him and ran. Simon slashed at the enemy mages with wand and hand, covering their escape.

But as they ran, a ruby red beam of magic shot straight from Simon’s heart. It bathed Noah and his mother as they ran toward the woods.

He’d unleashed his life magic to protect them.

Simon died.

The last black-robed man pointed his wand at the still-standing corpse and hit it with a blast of fire. The corpse fell.

Slowly, the adult Noah’s mind captioned the frozen scene.

“Hard man/Simon/wizard,” it started. Then it erased, replaced it with one word.

“Father.”

Her heart contracted.

A couple coughs and it started beating smoothly.

Sophia opened her physical eyes. She was alive.

A wizard prince’s life magic, sent straight from the heart, had kept Noah safe. In turn Noah, wizard prince and alpha wolf, had given it freely to his mate. To her. It had burned away her death magic and kept her alive.

The ring of pack was blinking, blinded by Noah’s mage light ripping free. She gathered hands and legs under her.

Ivan stumbled around snapping air.

A dark, horrible growl turned all their heads.

A huge black wolf, bigger and badder than anything, stood where only moments before the rat dog had been. His eyes were a brilliant gold, his body armored in a golden aura of magic.

Noah, finally made whole.

He stood there, their king, while their sight cleared. One by one they saw him. Awe filled their faces.

Hesitantly, one by one, they knelt.

Ivan was the last to see the haloed black wolf. In shock he whimpered and pressed his body close to the ground. He scuttled forward nearly on his belly and pawed entreatingly at Noah’s foreleg.

Noah snarled. Ivan cringed and groveled. Noah barked. Ivan rolled onto his back, baring his belly and throat to Noah’s huge tearing teeth.

Sophia couldn’t watch; she couldn’t look away.

Noah snuffled Ivan’s throat…then nodded. He shifted, fluid and perfect, into a man.

Mason stepped into the ring. “This Challenge is over. The loser’s penalty is death, but the winner may have mercy. What is your will for the challenger, my king?”

“Ivan.” Even Noah’s voice was golden, more resonant. “For your part in this, you are exiled from this pack for the rest of your natural life. You four.” He pointed at Bonnie, Clyde, Killer and Attila. “Wait for me in the store. Marlowe, with them. We’ll discuss your roles in this later.”

As they slunk away, the rest of the pack slowly came to their feet. Howls rose from the circle, even the humans eerily wolf-like. Noah nodded once.

He nodded a second time to Mason. Mason came to his side.

Then Noah nodded to Sophia.

The ring of pack turned outward, toward her, and again knelt.

Noah opened his arms wide.

She should have hesitated. Thought it over. Wolves took their ceremony seriously, and her actions would have grave consequences. But she was too glad to have him whole.

She ran to him. He enfolded her in his arms and she clung to him in her relief that he’d survived. That she’d survived.

A sharp caw cut through her relief. Overhead. It was an echo of Noah’s childhood memory.

A black bird. A raven.

This was not memory.

The raven landed despondently on a tree branch. He’d searched for days, starting at the first touch of dawn and not stopping until the last echoes of sunlight died from the sky.

This morning was the fifth since feeling his master’s power flare. The pressure on his skull was unbearable. His brain was nearly exploding out his ears.

This was the day he’d go insane.

Regret tightened his chest. He thought he’d have longer.

He looked at the ground, so far below. Calling to him. Cool, damp with dew. He’d go insane, then die. No one would know.

Or care.

No. He had to believe, somewhere, his master would care. His master would feel it.

He sucked in a hard breath. He couldn’t die. He was a familiar, damn it. Reservoir of magical wisdom. His master needed him.

He would not give up. Pain nearly killing him, he hefted himself from the branch and flapped awkwardly into the rising sun. He flapped without direction for what seemed like an eternity. Gradually the sun rose. His pain rose with it. Determination waned.

His wings were so heavy. So very heavy. He sank toward the ground. He’d rest, only a moment. Only a moment and he’d be on his way…so very heavy.

Golden power slashed through the morning. His master’s magic flared bright in his eyes, startling a caw from him.

A wave of pure white light rushed toward him, over him.
Heart’s magic
. It wasn’t for him so didn’t cure the pain, but the sheer joy lifted his agony somewhat.

His master was nearby
.

The raven gathered himself. It took every bit of strength and will he possessed, but he floundered east, his wings beating erratically.

His shoulders itched with the sensation of being followed. But there was no bitter taste, and the tympani pounding in his head drummed away caution. Pain nearly blinding him, the hope of meeting his master spurring him, he flew on.

The woods opened to a field. And there he was—tall, dark-haired, the grass waving like a green halo around him. The raven’s master.

The wizard’s arms were wrapped around a woman. She was crying, hugging him like she’d never let go. The raven sensed magic in her too, not so surprisingly because magic called to magic. But his master’s magical scent entwined with the witch’s—as if they were mated shifters rather than witch and wizard.

If the raven hadn’t been half crazy with pain, he would have paused.

Need made him spiral down.

As the raven landed, the change came. First his intermediate form, his body enlarging, arms emerging, wings shifting to his back. Feathers spreading, becoming short silky body hair everywhere except his huge black wings. He stood at the edge of the field looking in amazement at his hands. His fingers were long, strong, bronzed.

One thing broke clear through the pain. He had
thumbs
. Oh, fucking
finally
.

His master caught sight of him. A strange look came over the wizard’s face. His master’s witch caught his master’s expression, then looked toward him too.

“An angel,” she said. He could hear her despite the length of the field, as if his ears were attuned to her voice as well as his master’s.

“Not an angel.” His master’s brow was furrowed in puzzlement. “Someone…connected to me. R-Raven? No wait. Your name…I name you Bram.”

Bram
. The familiar’s body convulsed again as his wings receded and disappeared. This time the healing magic was for him. His headache receded to a dull throb as his brain damage reversed.

He glanced down at himself. Black jeans topped solid, well-made boots. A plain tan T-shirt lay under a leather jacket. He was now a normal man in jeans and jacket, stylish without being fussy. He approved.

Bram went to greet his master, a fully functioning familiar at last. Automatically he said the words he’d been rehearsing since that first flare of magic a week ago.

“Master. Good to meet you. I will fetch you a wand, when you’re ready… Oh, and an evil wizard was following me. He wants to kill you.”