Soul Guard (Elemental Book 5) (15 page)
Read Soul Guard (Elemental Book 5) Online
Authors: Rain Oxford
Actually, she had a point. I did way more dangerous
things on a daily basis for less, and if she was telling the truth, then there
were more Dothra wizards on my side than against me. If I knew ahead of time
when the shadow walkers were going to show up, I could set a trap. “If you
possessed me and used my magic to connect with Darwin, would he be in any
danger?”
“Darwin?”
“He’s got a mind like a supercomputer. If he ever
went evil, he would make the Shadow Master look like a fluffy kitten. In fact,
I know that from experience. His mental processing skills are supernatural.”
She looked doubtful. “It wouldn’t hurt him, but I
doubt he’s that good. I will only be able to stay inside you for a few seconds,
since I’m not a soul guard or a shadow walker anymore.”
“You can try to make it a little less disturbing.”
“Not really. I aim to make it as uncomfortable as
possible for you. We may be on the same side, and I need your help, but you
killed Gale.”
“What do you care? You’re a demon.”
“He was mine!” she screeched. The door burst open and
Henry slammed her to the ground with one of his shifter-enhanced martial arts
moves. He held her pinned on her stomach with her right arm twisted upward so
that he could easily break it if she didn’t submit. “I wasn’t doing anything!”
Henry growled and pressed down on her shoulder. “Are
you okay?” he asked me.
“Yeah, she didn’t do anything.”
“Call off your dog!” Felicity demanded.
“You shouldn’t be making demands in your position.
Henry, let her up.” He did and she climbed to her feet slowly. “I’ll see if
Darwin is willing.”
“Willing to do what?” Darwin asked from the doorway.
Scott was trying to see around him. Darwin pushed Scott into Henry’s room and
shut the door before returning a few seconds later.
“You’ll do it then?” Felicity asked me.
“You said Darwin and I won’t be endangered. To save
the victims of the shadow walkers, I will put up with the discomfort of having
you in me for a few seconds.”
“What?!” Henry asked.
“Trust me; those seconds are going to feel like
hours,” Felicity said.
I sighed and turned to Darwin. “Remember when you
poured information from yourself, through me, and into John’s mind?”
“Yeah.”
“I need to do the reverse. Felicity thinks she can
find out everyone the shadow walkers are after to kill or convert, but she can
only do it for a few seconds, so the onslaught of information is going to be
too quick for a normal person to handle.”
“No problem. It’ll be a little awkward without my
personal computers, but I pretty much fixed your laptop.”
“It wasn’t broken.”
He scoffed. “It so was. Is it just going to be a list
of names?”
Felicity shook her head. “Krechea has a psychic link
with his followers not much different than yours with people. His command is to
build his army and kill his enemies. The shadow walkers sniff out the most
powerful people and keep a constant update through the psychic link. That means
if one of them is almost done persuading a child to give his magic to the
Shadow Master and gets killed, another can take over exactly where he left
off.”
“So even if we get the list, it won’t be current for
long.”
“No, but you can still save hundreds of people. It
will also tell you who they’re going to kill and who they’re going to try to
coerce. They can sense who is not persuadable. What he will get when I tap into
the stream is all of the victims, when and where they’re going to strike, and
how. The children take the longest because they have to be approached
strategically.”
“Okay. Let’s do this,” Darwin said.
“You realize that’s ridiculous, right?” Henry asked.
“You have no idea what Felicity might do if you let her take control of you.”
“That’s where you come in.” I opened the drawer and
pulled out a potion bottle. “This will expel any demon from my body. You’re
going to tie me up and stay close with the potion. If Darwin agrees to it, I’m
going to use my magic to connect to his mind. Felicity will possess me and use
my magic to transfer the information to Darwin. Felicity says it will only be a
few seconds. At thirty seconds, if she doesn’t let me go, use the potion.”
“And neither of you will be hurt?”
“Anyone who can process that much information in a
few seconds is in constant pain anyway,” Felicity said.
“Are you sure about this? She could learn all your
weaknesses and strengths. If this is a trap and she is helping the shadow
walkers, this would be a huge advantage to them.”
“I know.” The thing was, I had seen into Felicity’s
mind, and I didn’t think she was. There was a part of her that really cared
about Gale, and that part wanted to destroy Krechea more than anything. “We’re
not going to beat the shadow walkers if we don’t get ahead of them, and that
means taking a risk.”
“Can Rocky help?”
“His magic is tethered to my life; I doubt I could
stop him if he thought I was in trouble.” Or she. I didn’t really want to think
of gargoyles as having genders. “Alright. I assume you know how to tie a person
up,” I said to Henry as I went to my closet and pulled a roll of rope out of a
tackle box.
“I haven’t tied anyone up before, but I think I can
handle it.” He frowned as he took it. “I would expect Darwin to keep rope in
his closet, not you.”
“I don’t have rope,” Darwin insisted. “Silk ties are
so much better.”
“You are corrupting Amelia, aren’t you?”
He just laughed and muttered something I couldn’t
make out. “Go ahead and do your thing. I’m going to take your laptop into
Henry’s room, kick the kid out, and get ready. Once the data transfer gets
started, don’t interrupt me and don’t use any magic that can make the computer
die.”
He walked out and I used my magic to open a link to
his mind. His wolf was there as well, but it was being quiet for the time
being. I sat down on my bed and Henry started tying me up. “
Ready
?”
“
Yep
.”
“You are going to want to close your eyes for this,”
Felicity said.
“Not a fucking chance.”
“The more you fight me, the longer it’s going to
take, and the worse it’s going to feel for both of us. With the Shadow Master’s
power, the process is easy for any shadow walker. I don’t have that much power
anymore, so it’ll feel like you’re suffocating.”
“Fantastic.”
“Is that tight enough?” Henry asked.
I tried to tug my arms loose, but the rope held.
“Yes, that’s good. What now?”
“Close your eyes,” Felicity insisted.
I did, knowing Henry was ready for anything. I wasn’t
expecting to be kissed, though. It wasn’t even the first time she kissed me. It
was, however, a lot more unpleasant than the first time, because as soon as her
lips touched mine, I felt hot smoke invading my lungs.
I wasn’t a smoker, but I had been in a smoke-filled
burning house before, and it felt a lot like that. The smoke filled my lungs
first and spread slowly throughout my body. When it got to my head, bright
white light flooded my vision.
* * *
When the blinding light finally faded, I opened my
eyes. I felt cooked. My eyes were dry and itchy, while everything else just
hurt. I opened my mouth to speak and ended up coughing. After a moment, Henry
put a glass of water in my hand. The cold water in my throat helped. “How
long?” I asked, my voice raspy. It felt like hours.
“Twelve seconds. Felicity turned into something like
black smoke. When she was expelled from you, she reformed and then just passed
out.”
I looked down to see Felicity on the ground. “You
just left her on the floor?” I set the water aside, stood up with difficulty,
picked up Felicity, and laid her on the bed.
“I was more worried about you being alive.”
* * *
Half an hour later, Darwin emerged from Henry’s room
with my laptop. Scott was sitting on the floor, I was on the couch, Felicity
slept in my bed, and Henry was in the kitchen, making lunch. My body was still
sore, but I wasn’t in serious pain.
Darwin sat down. “I password protected the lists
because I didn’t know who you wanted them sent to.” His voice was a little
flat.
“Are you okay? Was it painful?”
“No. It was fun. I’m just mopey because we have a
shitload of work ahead of us. Your password is d-r-2-3-o-l-m-h-j.” He showed me
three documents on my screen:
Children
,
Immediate Targets
, and
Non-immediate
Targets
.
I opened one of the documents and scrolled through.
“There’re hundreds of names here. How many shadow walkers are there?”
“It looks like seven.”
“Seven?! We’re so worried about seven?!”
“Each of them is easily ten times as powerful as our
best wizards. That’s seven plus four more that are focused on getting
information on you and Hunt.”
“If we can get ahead of them on the immediate targets
list, we might be able to take them out.”
“Did you miss the part where I said how powerful they
are?”
“Yes, you’re right; we should leave them alone to
pick off our allies and build an army.”
* * *
I appeared out of the darkness in Hunt’s private
library attached to his office. When I stepped out, Hunt, Flagstone, and
Remington were staring at me. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.” I wasn’t surprised,
though. It seemed like any time the three were in the same room anymore, they
were fighting.
“I was just leaving anyway,” Remington said, shooting
her father a glare before turning and exiting the office.
Flagstone looked like he was doing everything he
could not to go after her. Hunt made a motion with his hands and the door
slammed shut, effectively warning Flagstone not to try it. “So, anyway, I know
who the shadow walkers are going to go after.”
The plan was pretty simple. Hunt and Flagstone would
go save all the children, because they were both great with them and they knew
how to use the shadow pass much better than me. Since the council was still in
turmoil, Vincent, Maseré, Sean Bell, and Stephen would take care of it. Henry,
Darwin, Rocky, and I would go after the remaining victims.
“Have the wards around the school been reinforced?”
“It is almost ready. I would give it two more days to
be infallible, but if someone needs the protection of the university, it will
hold up better than nothing.”
“That might have to be enough.”
“Devon, it’s time for your three-o’clock
appointment,” Darwin said through the door.
I cussed something at him, which he took as an
invitation. The only reason I didn’t throw a fireball or something at him was
because he had coffee, and I didn’t want him to spill it. I sat up and he
handed the oversized mug to me. “What is it?” I asked.
“There’s a wizard in Oregon who is about to get
killed by a shadow walker.”
“That’s all the info I have to go on?”
“It’s three in the fucking morning,” he yawned.
“I need more than that to find him.”
He rolled his eyes and pushed a link open to my mind.
I saw a picture of a man, staring out the window of an office building in the
middle of the day. I pushed Darwin out of my mind, chugged down my coffee, and
focused on the symbol of my door. The sting in my palm was less conspicuous
each time I entered the shadow pass.
I stood as the darkness swarmed around me and blocked
out my room. With the image in my mind, my instincts led me a few steps before
the darkness fled and I was left in what was definitely the most occult room I
had ever seen. Aside from the fact that the room was round, there were sigils,
circles, and stars etched into every inch of wooden floor. In the middle of the
room was an altar with a single book and two fat, worn-down candles. The only
light was from the two candles on the altar, but seconds later, a large circle
of candles surrounding the altar lit themselves.
And then, suddenly, there was a presence behind me. I
turned, expecting to see a shadow walker. The man was my height with dark
brown, shaggy hair and light brown eyes. He wore a black satin shirt, black
leather pants, black boots, and a metal chain around his waist like a belt.
Around his neck was a thick black leather collar.
Although my instincts told me he wasn’t a shadow walker,
they also told me I was facing one of the most powerful people I had ever met.
At the same time, I wasn’t sensing a lot of magic from him. My instincts told
me he was up there on Langril’s level, yet he didn’t seem to be any more
powerful than Hunt.
“What are you?” I asked, honestly thrown for a loop.
He smirked. “You’re the one intruding on my home.”
“I’m here because someone is coming to attack you and
he or she is very dangerous.”
“So you’ve come to warn me? Good Samaritans are so
rare these days.”
“Well, actually, I came to protect you, but that
doesn’t seem to be necessary. Are you ridiculously powerful, or do you have
something ridiculously powerful on you? I can’t tell.”
He laughed this time, pulled a cigarette from his
pocket, put it in his mouth, and sucked. The tip lit itself. He finally pulled
it away and blew smoke out. “Yeah, I’m really fucking powerful. And really
fucking sealed.”
“What?”
“What part of that confused you?”
“The sealed part.”
“You came here to protect me from a shadow walker and
you don’t even know the basics of magic seals?” he laughed and waved his hand
at himself in gesture. “No matter how powerful you are, there is someone out
there bigger and badder. I managed to piss off that one person who could kick
my ass and that’s exactly what he did. He sealed my magic so I’ll serve him.”
“That is horrible.”
He shrugged. “I tried to kill his son, so I probably
deserved it. I’ll be free of his magic soon enough. Right now, I can only do as
much as a lowly wizard… like you, right? You’re a wizard?”
“I can see why you pissed the guy off. Do you or do
you not need help?”
“I’m immortal. A fight will be fun. Besides, no one
who steps foot in here can defeat me.” He pointed to the symbols on the floor.
“This stops anyone from using magic against me, and it uses the person’s power
against them, so the stronger they are, the more effective it is. You can stick
around to watch if you want.”
“Shouldn’t the man who sealed you protect you?”
“He left a few months ago and I’m left to my own
devices until he or his kids need me.”
“If you seriously don’t need me, I’m going home and
going back to bed. Now, the person who comes here might try to convince you to
join his master’s army to---”
“I only obey one master,” he said, his voice changing
completely. Everything about his eyes, posture, and voice told me he was
absolutely devoted to whoever had sealed him. It was unexpected to say the
least.
“In that case, I’ll be off. Good luck.”
“And you, with your hero thing.”
“It’s not a bad thing.”
“It’s subjective whether you’re the villain or hero.
No matter what you are, when you have power, you’re someone’s hero and someone
else’s worst nightmare. I’m Zeb, by the way.”
“I’m Devon.” I returned to the shadow pass. Whether
he was overconfident or not, I didn’t feel like I needed to step in. When the
shadows left me in my bedroom, Darwin was asleep in my bed. I poked him in the
chest and he woke with a jerk.
“What? Who? Where are we?” He tried to wipe sleep
from his eyes, only to wince from all the cuts and bruises on his hands. He had
explained that he hadn’t completely recovered his energy, so his healing was
going to be very slow for a few days.
“Go back to the couch.”
“No, you got another one at…” he checked his watch.
“Three-thirty.”
“Send Rocky.” The gargoyle appeared right beside me,
obviously having been eavesdropping. I wasn’t surprised, since his life was
tied to mine. I opened the mental link between me and Darwin and he visualized
a young teenaged girl, sitting outside in the sun by the lake. Rocky vanished a
second later. “Done. Now go get on the couch. I’m exhausted.” Darwin nodded,
not getting off my bed and instead snuggling into my blankets. “Darwin!”
“Sorry,” he said, doing an amazing impression of a
drunken sloth for the entire five minutes it took him to get up. He would have
been faster if he was sleepwalking.
* * *
I was awoken again by Scott crawling under my covers.
“What are you doing, Kitten?” I asked, my voice barely more than a murmur.
“Shhh. Darwin said I have to wake you up, so just
pretend I said to get up.” He was already most of the way back to sleep.”
“Tell him to send Rocky.”
“Can’t. Too asleep.”
After a few minutes, I got up and left the room.
Darwin was pacing the living room. “What is it?” I asked.
“We’re okay right now. You have one, but then in a
few hours, you’re going to have to choose between four simultaneous attacks.”
“Where do I need to be right now?”
He showed me a mental picture of her and, a few
minutes later, I was standing in someone’s motel room. It was clean, but not
fancy. I had just enough time to wonder why I appeared in an empty room before
the door opened. The woman I was here to save entered with a young girl right
behind her. She froze when she saw me.
“How do you people keep finding us?” She shut the
door, keeping the child behind her. “You’re not taking my daughter.” She was
stealthy about it, but I caught the motion as she let go of her daughter’s hand
and reached for some kind of weapon.
“I’m not here to hurt you!” I said quickly, not
wanting to scare her when I was supposed to protect her.
“As long as I hand her over, right? Not happening.”
She pulled out a small gun and aimed it at me. Before I could even stop her,
shadows formed a dark mass right between us. Her bullet hit the shadow and went
right through it, grazing me in the arm.
I pulled my penlight from my pocket, clicked it on,
visualized the light spreading further and brighter from the tip of my small
flashlight, and pushed magic into the light like fuel for a fire.
The light on the tip of the penlight began to spread
until it was too bright to look at and flooded the room. Right before I had to
close my eyes, I saw the shadow disperse, almost like it was being ripped
apart. When I could open my eyes again and try to blink the spots out, the
light had faded and my penlight was dead.
“You killed it,” the woman said. “I thought you were
one of them.”
“No, I’m here to help you. You’re on their kill list,
which I was able to get ahold of. How many times have you seen them?”
“They first tried to take my daughter a month ago. We
haven’t been in the same place for more than three days since.”
“These guys don’t care about where you are; if they
know your face, they can find you.”
“The same way you found us?”
“Yes.”
“So you are one of them?”
“No. I’m…” I glanced at my palm. “Okay, say they’re
demons. They want to use your daughter for her magic.”
“Magic? Like what you just used?”
“Yes. I’m a wizard with normal wizard magic, but I
found you because I also have demon magic.” I showed her my palm, where the
faint lines of my symbol were barely visible. “I know a place where you can
stay that will be safe.”
“I’m not going with you.”
“The only thing that can protect you from magic is
more magic.”
“I’ll go somewhere where there’s magic, but I’m not
going with you or any other wizard or demon.”
“So you’d let a human take you?”
“Yes.”
I sighed and pulled out my phone and Drake’s business
card. “Did you change your mind?” he asked by way of greeting.
“I will agree to work at the club for four days a
week throughout June and July only in exchange for a---”
“Thursday through Sunday,” he interrupted.
“Fine.”
“Deal. What do you need?”
I lowered the phone. “What’s the address to this
place?” I asked the woman. She grabbed the notepad that was next to the phone,
which had the address. “I need you to meet a woman and her daughter at a motel
and take her to Quintessence. Get something to write the address of the motel
down.”
“I don’t know where Quintessence is,” he said.
“Shit.” I should have expected that. Drake was human
and although everyone and their mom seemed to know my name and number these
days, the paranormal university was still a well-kept secret.
“Oh, it’s okay,” Drake said. “Kevin knows where it
is. His brothers are apparently heading there for some reason I’m not supposed
to understand.”
“That’s Quintessence for you; don’t look, don’t ask,
don’t tell.” I gave him the address and he said he would be on the next flight
out. “Do you want me to stay?” I asked the woman when I hung up with Drake.
“I’ve been able to protect myself and my daughter for
a month; I’m sure I can last three more hours.”
I returned home a few minutes later to find Darwin
sitting on the couch with my laptop while Scott watched cartoons and Henry
cooked breakfast. “Want to give me a job where I’m actually useful?” I asked.
“Huh?” Darwin asked. I explained the first and second
run. “I have no idea ahead of time how it’s going to turn out. You should be
happy you’re not fighting to the death.”
“I didn’t have a vision before either of them, so
maybe that means something.
“You did help the woman. Where are the bandages?”
“In the bathroom.” I went into the kitchen, where
Henry immediately handed me a mug of coffee.
Darwin came in a moment later with my first aid kit
and a pair of gloves on. “What is it you said about preferring bullets to
magic?”
“Magic lightning attacks, yeah.”
“Anyway, the bullet didn’t do any real damage and I’m
pretty sure you’ve had worse,” he said after a few minutes of examining it.
“I figured as much when I didn’t bleed out and die.”
He cleaned the wound and bandaged it just as Henry
set plates on the table.
* * *
After eating, we discussed the “big attack” that was
coming up at sunset. Rocky was still protecting my mother, so I didn’t want to
send him out again in case a shadow walker was setting a trap. It didn’t take a
genius to know who was important to me. Unfortunately, getting my mother to the
university wasn’t a matter of transportation; she was human. If I had a chance
of defeating the shadow walkers without relying on Quintessence, I had to try.
At sunset, there would be four attacks
simultaneously. There was no way we could save all four people at once and I
couldn’t make a choice on faces alone. I put my vision ring on and told Darwin
to give me the images slowly.
The first vision was surprising, because I recognized
both the people there and the place. Becky Adams, a friend of mine from
Quintessence, Grayson Adams, her father and one of the members of the former
wizard council, and Becky’s mother were sitting in Grayson’s living room.
Grayson was on the couch with an expression as if he was in time out, while
Becky and her mother sat on the couch with matching scowls.
“You’re just going to try to worm your way on top
again,” Becky said.
Grayson glared at her. “I raised you better than to
talk to me that way.”
“Shut up, Gray,” Becky’s mother snapped before Becky
could respond. Right behind the couch, the shadows on the walls and floor
darkened and stretched to form a figure.
I was torn away from the vision as a new one took its
place. This time, I saw a man on a subway train, nodding off in his seat, when
the train suddenly lurched to a stop, most of the people hit the floor,
including him. People didn’t really start panicking, however, until the lights
went out.
The third vision was of a man sitting outside in his
yard with his huge black dog. They were out in the forest, probably very far
from the city. The dog suddenly started growling at something in the trees.
