Highland Sorcerer

Highland Sorcerer

By Clover Autrey

Copyright 2012 Clover
Autrey

Smashwords Edition

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents are either the product of the author's
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual
persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or
locales, is entirely coincidental.

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of this author.

Charity Greves barely plunked her purse
down on the counter when a mini-cyclone rippled through her
kitchen, lifting her hair and zinging an electrical current down
her spine—and a naked bleeding man materialized out of thin
air.

And dropped to the linoleum.

Hey. She'd just mopped that
floor.

She frowned. Sorcerer.

Had to be a sorcerer. They were the
only magic wielders around who had the ability to travel a rift
from one place to another.

A powerful one by the looks of him.
There weren't many who could tune in and sense a healer across
distances and fewer still who could open and travel through a rift
while in the weakened condition he appeared to be in.

Her pulse kicked up a notch in fear.
Backing up toward the door, she grabbed her cell phone to punch in
911, wondering just how dangerous the sorcerer could be, except…he
didn’t look all that dangerous sprawled on her floor, bleeding all
over it. Kicked puppy was more like it. And she was a healer who
couldn’t exactly explain how a naked guy ended up in her apartment
in that condition. Geez, get a grip and take care of the
man.

He’d obviously come for help. Which was
mildly flattering that someone within the magical community had
actually heard of her for him to seek her out. Unless he had simply
let his senses pick a healer out at random. All right, that wasn’t
so flattering.

Charity pulled a stack of hand towels
from a drawer and knelt down beside the guy. After all, it wasn't
everyday she came home from the herb shop to have a wounded
sorcerer travel across space especially for her world-renowned
healing abilities.

Okay, so she wasn't world-renowned, and
she’d only been sought out maybe three times before. At most. And
one of those was a sorcerer seeking her mother, but technicalities.
She'd been present when he came.

"All right, big guy, what's going on
with you?" Yikes. These were not wounds of the stubbed-my-toe
variety. He was covered in welts and gashes, blood and grime across
his torso, hips and legs. Some of those cuts looked pretty deep.
His eyes remained closed though the thick lashes fluttered with
each pain-filled rise of his chest. His wrists were torn and chafed
as though some kind of bindings had encircled them for a long time,
some kind of thick band, not rope. Since nothing inorganic traveled
through a space rift she couldn't be sure.

Whatever he'd endured, it had been
horrible and her heart went out to him. What on earth had this
sorcerer gotten himself into? And a more troubling thought: Would
whatever he’d gotten himself into follow him here? She really
didn’t want to get into any magical squabbles.

She lifted his head off the floor to
get a few of the folded towels beneath him and then smoothed a lock
of sweaty dark hair off his cheek.

He flinched at the touch, eyes snapping
open, and before she knew what hit her, Charity was rolled onto her
back with two hundred pounds of disoriented naked male on top of
her, pinning her wrist against the floor.

His gaze tracked around her kitchen,
dark brows scrunching together at the shiny red trash compactor
before settling back on her.

"Are ye the Healer Enchantress?" he
rasped and promptly passed out.

Charity's breath poured out in a
whoosh. The guy was heavy. This close he didn't smell so great
either which, considering the coating of dirt and sweat and blood,
shouldn't be unexpected, but geez. Well, her outfit was
ruined.

Argggh. Really? He was all muscle.
Really heavy muscle. She pushed at his chest while at the same time
tried to wriggle out from beneath him. She finally got him rolled
over, his arms flopping to either side.

This was not going so well.
And what was up with
Healer
Enchantress
? The women in her family hadn't
been called that for centuries.

Pulling herself up, Charity scurried
around him to get near the top of his head where it wouldn't be so
easy for him to grab her again. She hoped. The man was
quick.

She tapped his cheek. "Hey mister."
Nothing. She poked his shoulder. "I'd, um, go ahead and heal you,
but, uh, you know it works better with a name. Soooo...could you
wake up again—more calmly this time? I really do want to help." And
let him get on his way.

Not so much as a twitch.

Great
.

Okay, then. She stretched her hands
wide over his chest. It really would be better to have his name in
the mix. Names held power. And he clearly needed her best.
Especially since, well, she wasn't exactly the most skilled healer
in the family even on her best day.

The thrumming started in the pit of her
belly. It pulsed like a bass drum through her body, drawing forth
with each beat of her heart the innate magic that was hers by birth
and heritage.

Magic flowed through her, tingling
beneath her skin like static electricity. The ends of her hair
lifted. Focused, Charity anchored the magic deep within her core
and guided the power through her arms into her hands and
outward...to go into him.

The man gasped. His back arched, neck
stretched. Shoulders and head ground into the floor, but she kept
going, kept pouring the healing into him, even knowing she caused
him pain.

Healing was never easy. Not for the one
being healed nor for the one doing the healing.

The cuts on his flesh began mending,
decreasing in size. The bruises lightened. Tendrils of opaque pink
light twisted between her fingers. The man's eyes flared open.
Piercing ice-blue. His hands caught around Charity's wrists as
though to hurl her hands from him, but instead his hold
tightened.

"Toren," he heaved out, eyes locked
with hers. With the speaking of his name, magic flowed out of him,
into her, forceful and hard.

Stunned, Charity shied back from it,
until the awful quaking of his body tore at her healer's heart.
Bearing down, she rode the tremendous wave of energy like a pebble
rolling with a landslide.

She grasped onto his magic, adding it
to her own, enhancing her limited supply. The healing flowed from
her like the pull of a tide, streaming into him, knitting flesh and
bone. A rib moved beneath her palm. Calcium fused back
together.

She went deep inside him. She didn’t
mean to, it just kind of happened, like being sucked into a
whirlpool of churning magic. She felt adrift in strong emotions.
His. She swirled through them like a leaf in turbulent water, but
wow—he was beautiful. Or rather, his essence was beautiful. He was
protective to the extreme. And kind. He carried a depth of love and
compassion that he rarely brought to the surface. There was also a
streak of determination and stubbornness. He was a man accustomed
to making quick and lasting judgments—Charity tried to pull away
from the emotions, not understanding how she knew all that about
him in a mere instant. She just felt it. She knew this man better
than she knew anybody, yet she didn’t even know him at all. They’d
just met. This was some deep and weird messed up kind of magical
energy going on between them.

His thoughts jumbled inside her head.
He was confused. Disoriented. And deeply worried. About himself?
No. Others. Others were in danger. He was determined to endure.
Give them a chance…

Charity tried to break free of his
turbulent emotions. She didn’t understand them, but they were so
strong, dragging her under. She didn’t want them. And they were so
powerful. He loved deeply and worried deeply, intoxicatingly so.
She had to break away. She pulled back on her magic, dragging it
away from his and felt the slide of his thoughts trickle away,
fading from her head.

She could think a little more clearly
now and dove back into the process of healing, searching for other
injuries or illness. Another broken rib. Broken fingers. Torn
ligaments in his shoulder. She worked efficiently even though she
had never even attempted to heal so many injuries at once. Her
magic would usually be at an end by now until she could rest and
replenish what she’d used from the earth. But with the magic she
had borrowed from him, she seemed to have a ready supply so she
kept going, healing as much as she could while she
could.

That was the thing about magic. It
could be shared between willing parties, though never just taken.
However, even borrowed magic could still only be used in the medium
of the current magical wielder. Charity could draw from the
sorcerer’s reserves, yet that would not give her the abilities or
skills of a sorcerer. The only thing she could do with it is heal.
And it worked the other way around. If the sorcerer drew upon her
magic, his would be enhanced, but he still would not have the gift
of healing.

She and her sister shared magic every
now and then, and they’d both helped their grandmother when she
healed a few of the more extreme injuries, but she’d never once
experienced this sharing of emotions before. Which…the flow of
healing abruptly stopped seeking for wounds as she was struck by a
disturbing thought. Could he be experiencing her emotions right now
as well? She didn’t want a stranger—a sorcerer at that—knowing her
so intimately.

And it was intimate, dammit.

Think on that later. Heal
him while you still have strength,
her
inner voice reasoned. Fine. She resumed the current of magic,
moving to the second broken rib. This was going to hurt. She
readied for it, yet the pain of mending bone clawed at her throat
and with the healing came images—sensations. Not the emotions
again, but a full-on viewing.

What the hell is this now?

She’d never had a viewing before
either. It wasn’t exactly what healers did. Healers, well, healed.
Plain and simple.

Images flooded her mind’s eye. It felt
like looking through the long cylinder of a telescope and then
zooming in with the lens. Charity glimpsed a woman at the other
end, her features indistinct and hazy. And then she was there in a
darkened room beside the woman. Toren was there too. Leather bands
with glowing gold markings secured his wrists against a fitted
stone wall. His head hung down. Dark hair obscured his face, yet
Charity knew it was him. She felt the unique strength of his
magic.

She watched the scene around her as
though she were a specter inside the room with them. The sorcerer
really was a prisoner. The leather bands had caused all the damage
to his poor wrists. It was archaic, completely surreal. Okay, there
were a lot of magic wielders who were just plain nuts, but
seriously, who did things like this? The woman’s long nails grazed
over Toren's bare chest.

Without thinking, Charity grabbed for
the lady’s arm to stop her, but her hand passed right through.
Because, oh yeah, she wasn’t really there, because in truth she was
watching a replay of scenes from Toren’s brain while she was in the
process of healing him. A healing that had been interrupted by a
viewing. This was so weird. She wished it would stop, that this
motion picture would shut off.

Toren moaned, trying to lift his head.
Firelight flickered across his sweat-soaked skin. She wrinkled her
nose at the scent of smoke and pitch.

A tattered plaid kilt slanted low
across his waist in contrast to the woman's pristine white gown.
They looked like they'd stepped onto a historical movie set. The
woman placed her palm to the wounded sorcerer's ribcage. Her lips
moved. As though it possibly made any difference, Charity leaned
forward, concentrating on the words.