Smoke and Mirrors (40 page)

He did get in a few good kicks that knocked the air out of her again though.

When he fell back, the vines wrapped around her ankles withering with his failing concentration, she let him go, crab-walking back a few paces to get some distance between them. He lay where he’d fallen, gasping for air and clutching at his chest.

“You will never touch me or my family again, or I will make what I just did feel like a holiday. You understand me?”

Viper didn’t respond, still gasping like a landed fish. Kimberly slowly rose to her feet. She folded her arms, both in an attempt to add weight to her scolding look, and to hide how badly her hands were shaking.

“Answer me, or I’ll do it again until it sinks in. Do. You. Understand?”

“Yes,” he choked out, so pitifully that she almost apologized then and there. It was only knowing what he had done to her mom and her cat that kept her from offering him a hand up.

With that in mind, she backed up another couple of paces in case he got it into his head to shift and exact immediate, fiery revenge.

The wyvern slowly rolled to his stomach, pushing himself up to his hands and knees. He didn’t look at her right away.

“You’re going to clean up the mess you made here,” she ordered. “Right now. You’re not leaving this park until every trace of magic mischief you planted is gone.”

He gave a short nod, then got to his feet. When he looked at her, there was murder gleaming in the depths of those yellow pits of fire in his irises.

“One more thing,” she said, pointing directly above their heads. “I don’t think you’ve had the pleasure of meeting my familiar. He would have joined us, but he was a bit busy picking up my mom.”

On cue, Cormac let out a deep, reverberating roar that shook the trees surrounding the meadow. Viper flinched and crouched down, his gaze turning to the circling serpent in the sky as distant screams and sirens followed Cormac’s arrival.

Kimberly suppressed a sigh of relief when she saw the figure dangling from the dragon’s claws.

The one part of Cormac’s plan she hadn’t been certain about was whether he could find and save her mother while also being able to teleport to the park in time if Viper got his hands on her. Originally she was supposed to lure the wyvern away from the traps he’d laid for them both so Cormac could have a clear path to fly to the rescue if she wasn’t able to stop Viper with what she’d learned.

Kimberly lowered her voice, going deadly serious in an instant. “You caught me unprepared the first time. I will never make that mistake around you again. I promise you, what Cormac did was a love tap compared to what I’ll do if you ever try to mess with me or my family again.”

Viper nodded and hissed a few words. “I heard you the first time. Gods willing, this will be the last time our paths will cross.”

“Good. I’ll be watching.”

He took a few unsteady steps back and began the process of shifting into his true form. Tendons creaked and popped, muscles expanding, bones twisting into new shapes. In the light of the setting sun, the wyvern’s golden scales shone like bright sepia toned mirrors. As he stretched his wings, while mostly healed, they still looked tattered and oddly ridged in places where the scar tissue grew thick.

With a string of rumbled Words, the few spells he’d laid that had not been triggered by her runic stones were disarmed. A sharp gesture with a ribbed wing dispelled the evidence of the ones she’d triggered.

He spared her one last look with a slitted, reptilian eye, gleaming amber in the light of dusk. It didn’t require words to know that he was thinking something murderous. She returned his look in kind, making her best effort not to quake under his fierce stare.

A rumbling growl and a flick of his barbed tail later, and he was aloft, drifting into the clouds. The rattling clack of Cormac’s teeth snapping together followed the wyvern’s retreat.

Followed by the panicked shriek of Kimberly’s mom.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

By Wednesday night, Kimberly was fairly certain she was going to lose her mind. After Cormac had saved her mother, Heather was convinced there was a monster waiting around every corner. It took a great deal of coaxing and hand-holding to get her to meet with Rieva.

That meeting was the only thing that went well. Cormac’s lessons made it harder than ever for her to pretend like what she had learned over the last four years applied to her the way it did to the other students. While she was capable of mimicking a number of spells and some aspects of their arts, it had never been so clear to her that she had her own path to walk, which made focusing on the remainder of her finals a herculean task.

It was only a word from Professor Reed in the hallway on Wednesday afternoon that reminded her she needed to attend some meeting in the dean’s office that night.

She was tempted to blow it off, but she needed to stick around to use the summoning hall to remove the bond she had with Eddie and replace it with a bond to Cormac. Tricking Viper into thinking Cormac was her familiar was likely the only thing that had bought her time in the Other community to prevent the wyvern or another like him from attempting to mess with her. The only reason she hadn’t done it sooner was because she needed to take the time to redraw a full binding circle and figure out how to sneak Cormac in without sending a panic through the school.

She thought having the legitimate excuse to be in the school after hours would make things easy. If only.

At the end of the school day, once most of the students, save for the few who also had meetings in the dean’s office, were gone, she went out to the street and led Cormac and Eddie through the portal.

It wasn’t her imagination that the portal had seemed reluctant to let the dragon through, taking longer than usual to deposit them on the other side, even with her hand on Cormac to act as a temporary key to let him pass. Once they reached the other side of the gate, the runes around it were tinted an angry red, and a dull, pulsing alarm was ringing through the halls.

Eddie nearly smothered Kimberly when he threw his arms around her, looking every which way for the source of the danger. Cormac’s growl drove Eddie to thrust her behind him instead, lifting his fists in a valiant—albeit misguided—attempt to protect her.

Cormac’s reassurances that they would all be fine was the only thing that kept Kimberly from hyperventilating and rushing straight to the dean’s office to apologize. She was too frazzled to notice the fine lines appearing around his eyes as he spotted the dragon skeleton on display only a few yards from where they stood. Assuming his low, rumbling growl was due to Eddie’s overprotectiveness, she straightened and tried to put on a brave face.

Only to slump again as Professor Lim rushed into the gate room to investigate the alarm. The look he shot Kimberly made her shrink into herself, biting her lip, which had the centaur bristling and stepping forward aggressively.

Cormac ushered her aside as the professor, ignoring the centaur’s posturing, stalked up to the gate. He examined it briefly before laying a hand on one of the runes to deactivate the alarm.

He then turned on the trio, demanding to know who Cormac was and what he was doing there. It took a great deal of convincing to get the professor to believe that the dragon was there for her meeting with the dean that night. It was only after telling him to check with Professor Reed that Professor Lim backed off, but with the promise to have her head in a basket if he found out that she was only there to cause mischief.

Once the professor left, Kimberly was shaking so badly that Eddie stepped in to support her as they headed to the summoning room. That drew another irritated growl from Cormac, which made Eddie tilt his head up and go tense, his arms tightening around Kimberly until she squeaked for air.

As soon as Eddie let her go, Cormac stepped in to wrap his arms around her instead, glaring at the centaur over her head. Eddie’s nostrils flared and his eyes went wide, putting Kimberly in mind of a horse preparing to charge.

Between their posturing and aggressive behavior, she didn’t need to worry about the magi killing her. These two would give her a heart attack first.

It was only her sharp, “Knock it off!” that got them to stop glaring daggers at each other long enough for her to shrug off their hands and take the lead, stomping her way to the summoning room.

With all of the stress and worry destroying her concentration, the spell to release the bond with Eddie backfired. Cormac had to step in and walk her through how to get the backlash giving her a screaming headache under control.

Half an hour later, Eddie was free and saying his goodbyes, Cormac was doing his best to rush the centaur out the door, and Kimberly was trying to keep her head in one piece with nothing but her hands and a handful of aspirin.

Cormac had to coax her through the steps of starting the binding spell, verbally walking her through the process until instinct kicked in and she powered the circle on her own.

When his thoughts and memories swirled through her head, she burst into tears. That sent him into a panic, thinking something was going wrong with the spell. It took her several minutes to get herself together enough to choke out that nothing was wrong.

Seeing how much he loved her, how sorry he was for everything he’d done to hurt her, and how badly he wanted her to be safe and happy had been the straw that broke her composure. Hearing the words was one thing. Feeling what he felt, knowing for the first time in weeks with certainty just how much he wanted her, and how much of a struggle it had been for him to step aside for her to make her own choices instead of acting like the possessive beast he was born to be, filled her with such a combination of love and relief, it was all she could do to finish the spell.

The immense rush of power when she completed the binding made her black out, which had Cormac in a panic all over again. As soon as the circle disintegrated, the dragon dashed forward, scooping her up in his arms and checking her over for injuries.

She flinched and opened her eyes with a gasp as he shoved even more power into her in an effort to heal whatever was wrong. With a flail and a wheezed “Stop!” he did.

“Oh, god, my head,” she groaned.

“Are you okay?”

“No. I will never be okay. All the Tylenol in the world will never make this okay.”

He snorted, running his fingers through her hair. “You gave me a scare. I thought something was misfiring on the spell.”

“Yeah. Me. Owwww.”

“I would ask what you saw, but I think that will have to wait. What time did you say you needed to be at that meeting?”

Her gaze went to the oversized clock hanging on the wall. With a strangled sound, she shot to her feet and pulled on his arm, dragging him with her. He snagged her bag for her on their way out.

When they reached the front office, the dean’s secretary put down the scrying stone she was staring at and frowned at the two. “Kimberly Wells? You’re late. Go on in, everyone is waiting.”

Cormac held the door for her. She paused, fiddling with the hem of her shirt as the attention of Dean Colin Morrell, Professor Reed, Arnold Moore, and a woman Kimberly didn’t know, was focused with keen intent upon her. The newcomer had steel gray hair done in a severe bun, green eyes sharp enough to cut glass, and a pinstripe suit that immediately put her in mind of old gangster movies.

Dean Morrell waved Kimberly in, though his brows shot up near his receding hairline as he noted her pallor and the man trailing behind her. Cormac briefly inclined his head in greeting to everyone, though his lips thinned when he spotted the woman in the suit. He took a deliberate protective stance behind Kimberly when she sat in the chair the dean indicated.

“Well, Ms. Wells,” the dean said, “it seems you’ve survived the trials and tribulations of receiving an education at Blackhollow with enough distinction that you’ve garnered some intense interest from a very prestigious coven. You know Mr. Moore and Professor Reed, of course. Let me introduce you to Alexandra Peterson, CEO and coven leader of The Circle. And is this…?”

Cormac’s eyes narrowed; the only visible sign of the discomfiture Kimberly could feel was twisting his stomach in knots. His voice, though deeper in timbre than usual, was steady. “Her familiar.”

The dean rose from his seat, sketching a formal bow with his hand over his heart. “We are deeply honored by your presence, wise one.” The other magi followed suit, murmuring their own greetings.

“Mr. Hunter, it’s been too long,” Alexandra said, nodding to him briefly before turning to Kimberly. She leaned over to extend her hand, which Kimberly shook in a daze. She wasn’t sure yet if it was how upset Cormac was or the presence of the leader of The Circle that had her so out of sorts. Maybe both. “How do you do. I have heard a great deal about you from Mrs. Reed and Mr. Moore. They speak very highly of you.”

“I… oh, I… uh…”

Arnold clapped Kimberly on the back, making her jump and Cormac glare at him. “She’s good people. No security threat to us.”

“Yes. Aside from all her other qualities I was telling you about, Mr. Hunter tells me she’s got a knack for making unusual allies,” added Professor Reed.

Kimberly twisted around to give Cormac a questioning look. He stared hard at Professor Reed instead of meeting her gaze.