Soul Guard (Elemental Book 5) (16 page)

The next vision was of a man and woman leaving a bar
together. Although the man looked wasted, the woman was clearly not. She had a
very sinister aura as she pushed him against the door of his truck and kissed
him. After a few minutes, she pulled away. “You’re going to love the power he
gives you.”

“Is it really necessary? I have enough magic,” he
slurred.

“Not if you want me.”

I was expelled from the vision forcefully enough that
it took me a few minutes for the world to stop spinning before I realized I was
back in my apartment.

“Did you see anything helpful?” Darwin asked.

“Yes. I saw that we need more help.”

“Did you see a way of setting a trap?”

“How much time do we have?”

“Six hours.”

“That should be plenty of time. We don’t have to
worry about paradoxes or anything now that I’ve had the visions, right?”
Vincent had told me when he first started teaching me divination that everyone
had an infinite amount of possible futures. This makes accurately reading the
future a game of chance and numbers.

Each of those paths is created by our decisions, and
each is weighed in their potential. For example, there is a possibility that I
would forget to replace my penlight and there is also a possibility that I
could win the lottery. Since it was much more likely that I would forget to
grab a working penlight, there was more potential in whatever paths were
created from my absentmindedness. However, once I grabbed a new light, all
those paths are destroyed and all that potential is lost.

The trouble with divination goes even deeper than
that. There are different kinds of potential. The fact that I have not yet one
the lottery does not mean I have less of a chance in the future. Although my
potential futures of how I use my lottery winnings will diminish in number,
they will never diminish in potential until I either alter the chances or die.
Thus, if I suddenly stopped buying lotto tickets, the potential of those
futures occurring would decrease.

Alas, I had never bought a lotto ticket in my life,
so my chances weren’t great.

“Soothsaying isn’t my area of genius,” Darwin said.
“If it weren’t for the fact that I know you’re level-headed, I would say it’s
codswallop.”

“Okay. Well, let’s assume then, that we won’t destroy
the Earth by preventing my visions from coming to be.”

To change a future that I saw in a vision is not
always simple; it means fighting against the potential of all those possible
futures created by the event like gravity. Unfortunately, according to Vincent,
there was a price in shaping the future just as there was in using any other
magic. Sometimes we can predict the consequences, and sometimes not. Divination
is basically used to see the consequences of our actions ahead of time, but
they never give us the whole picture or all of the other paths that can result.
No mortal mind could handle that.

*          *          *

Henry drew sketches of the female shadow walker who
would try to seduce the wizard at the bar while Darwin looked up the name of
the bar and found its location. Since it was in Nevada, we had to add a few
extra steps to the plan. First, Darwin went to the library to scan the sketches
to his flashdrive and sent copies to Masere. Once that was done, we called
Maseré and had his pack police get ahold of the police in Nevada. They were
supposed to tell the police this person was wanted for multiple accounts of
murder and that she would be at the bar.

Leaving it in their hands for the moment, I used the
shadow pass to take Henry and me to Becky’s house. She didn’t live with her
parents, and I was a little curious to see what her house actually looked like.

Becky was a bisexual feminist, an activist, a
tree-hugger, and anti-government, but she was shy about her magic. She seemed
to think she only got into Quintessence because her father was a member of the
former wizard council. I didn’t agree. Although I learned something new about
her every semester, there was nothing about her that was weak.

I knew so many people who were stunning on the
outside and spewed hateful trash every time they opened their mouth. Regina was
one such person. Becky, on the other hand, was the kind of woman who someone
could overlook until she spoke up. I knew she could shut an entire room up with
one sentence that cut through all the bullshit.

If I wasn’t nearly ten years older than her, I
probably would have been trying to push her boyfriend out of the picture.
Instead, I was content with her being one of my most sensible friends.

Her house was… exactly as I had predicted. It was an
efficiency apartment with a living/bed area, a kitchenette, and a beaded
curtain that led to a bathroom. It smelled like dirt and plants, probably
because both windows were open and potted plants were balanced on the sills.
The couch was dark brown with tears in it, the coffee table was unpainted, and
the kitchen was cluttered with vegetable plants and ceramic dishes. There
wasn’t even a little television.

I wasn’t surprised to see Becky on her couch, which I
assumed served as her bed. I was, however, surprised to see her asleep in
Brian’s arms. Brian was a hyena shifter who (for some reason) considered me his
alpha. After a lifetime of abuse from his sisters, his mother kicked him out
with nothing but the shirt on his back and a strong fear of females. Becky was
apparently helping him to get over it.

He was also awake, and watching me expectantly. “I
need to talk to her,” I whispered.

“She just got to sleep after a big fight with her
father and she’s supposed to talk with him again this evening. You can wait.”
His voice was soft and soothing so that Becky wouldn’t wake, but also
completely confident. That was a new side to the normally timid shifter.

“Not if she wants to be alive tomorrow,” I said.

He narrowed his eyes and Henry growled at him. His
eyes widened as if he was surprised. “I know you wouldn’t hurt her, but that
sounded like a threat.”

“It is, just not from me. I had a vision of her
getting attacked tonight and we can stop it from happening if we act now.”

That got him moving. He woke Becky, but only after
brewing a cup of tea and fixing her some kind of stuffed omelet with peanut
butter and jelly. When he woke her up and she happily devoured it before acknowledging
mine or Henry’s presence, I gagged. Henry elbowed me in the side.

“Sorry to interrupt your… feast… but we need to worry
about saving your life tonight.” She just looked at me expectantly, so I went
on. “Tonight, when you and your parents are sitting in the living room, a very
powerful wizard will appear and either try to convince you to serve his master,
or kill you.”

“How powerful?”

“More powerful than Hunt or the entire wizard council
put together. Remember Felicity?”

“The skank who tried to help my father destroy
Quintessence with me in it? Yeah.”

“Well, she wasn’t even from Earth, and neither is the
one who’s going to attack tonight. Now, stopping him will be difficult because
he can appear wherever you are. The only way to know for sure when and where
he’ll show up is to make sure it happens just like in my vision. The problem is
that this guy is nearly undefeatable.”

“Okay, so it’s a bit sticky. What’s the plan?”

“Do you think your father has any good books on
trapping powerful beings?”

“Oh, I’m sure of it. You three get in the car; I’ll
be out in a minute.”

“Shouldn’t we wait in case---”

“No, definitely not,” Brian interrupted, pushing me
towards the door.

*          *          *

Half an hour later, we arrived at Grayson’s huge,
light blue New England Colonial house. “I see the council members got paid a
lot,” I commented as we drove up the long driveway in Becky’s red Mini Cooper.

She rolled her eyes. “They weren’t a non-profit
organization, no. I couldn’t wait to get away, especially when my father said
he wouldn’t pay for it.” Brian reached over and took her hand. She smiled at
him.

We went inside and she first showed me to her
father’s library. It had high ceilings, fancy light fixtures, and top quality
furniture that looked like it was there for appearance rather than use. All the
walls were painted white. I wasn’t surprised to find that, while the library
was a bibliophile’s dream, it looked like no one had ever been in it.
Obviously, that wasn’t the case, because it only took Becky ten minutes to find
the sizable books she was looking for.

Then she led us to a basement, which was set up for
magic. Like in Zeb’s occult room, this room had magic symbols all over the
floor and an altar in the middle. Unlike in Zeb’s room, this room was
rectangular and had bookshelves of esoteric paraphernalia. “We really have to
be in the same room?”

“Anything we change can ruin our element of
surprise.”

She nodded, grabbed a cloth sack, dumped the contents
out onto the floor, and began gathering everything we needed into it. When she
was done, we headed back upstairs and she showed us to the room she and her
parents normally met for “conferences” in. It was definitely the right room.

All of us got to work. We moved the couch so we could
lift up the antique rug. Then Brian and I set candles and incense where Becky
indicated and Henry drew sigils on the floor with salt and chalk.

“So, how is this going to go down?” she asked.

“Well, you and your mother are sitting on the couch.
I’m not sure what you guys have said up to the point of attack, except that it
happens right after your father says, ‘I raised you better than to talk to me
that way’ and your mother says, ‘Shut up, Gray.’ At that point, you have about
five seconds before the wizard appears.”

“And you’ll be hiding somewhere, waiting?” she asked.

“No. Sorry, but I have to… catch a train.”

“Seriously?”

“Afraid so. There are more of these powerful wizards
and they’re out to cause trouble.”

“Will this be enough?” Henry asked, standing and
checking out his work.

“That will stop anything,” Becky said. “All we have
to do is activate it when someone is standing in that circle and they’re not
going to have enough magic to charm a mouse. Even if I can’t activate it, my
father can. We’ll be fine.” She then hugged me, which she had never done
before. “Thank you for helping us.” We moved the rug and couch back carefully.
Just as I grabbed Henry’s arm, she said, “You know, if the wizard is coming
here because he wants to kill other powerful wizards, it’s going to be my
father, not me. Did you think of that?”

“Becky, you are three times the woman you think you
are and twice as powerful as your father.”

She scoffed.

“I’m serious. Any wizard can light a candle or make a
potion. You can make people listen. That’s rare.”

She blushed. “Well, I’m glad you think so, because
I’m going to be on the new wizard council when it gets going again, and I was
hoping I could convince you to be on it with me.”

“Not a chance. I’ll see you later.”

*          *          *

Next, Henry and I stopped by the vampire hunter shack,
which was deserted, fortunately. We went down into the underground site and
gathered up all of the light bombs. Since we had no clue how they worked, we
grabbed everything else that looked like it was electrical, just in case it was
needed. With that done, we used the shadow pass again to return to the
apartment.

Darwin was interested when we showed him the bombs,
but his eyes really lit up when we dumped the electronics out of the bag in
front of him. We left him to figure out how it worked while Henry made lunch.

“I may never eat the school food again with you
around to cook it just the way I like it,” Darwin said, taking a plate of
something he called Omurice.

Henry smacked his head lightly. “I’m not your maid.
Pick up your trash.”

“Call my mother to do it.”

“Have you figured out how to work the bombs yet?”

“Duh.” He set the plate of food aside, searched the
mess on the coffee table, and picked up one of the turtle-shaped bombs and what
looked like a black plastic key. “This is your basic on/off.” He then picked up
what was clearly a detonator. “And this is your ‘never press’ button.” He put
it down and stuck the key into the middle of the flat side of the bomb. When he
turned it, the other side lit up with a circle of blue lights. “Unlock, press the
button, boom.” He turned the key the other way and the lights went out. “Lock,
press the button, fizzle, you still got your face. Got it?”

“Yes. Can you tell if it’s dangerous to anyone other
than vampires?”

“No, and going by your plan, we only have enough to
test one. That’s assuming there is a zero percent dud rate, which I’m sure it’s
higher.”

“Okay, what’s the safe thing to do?”

“Dispose of these and let the shadow walkers kill the
wizards.”

“What is the humane thing to do?”

“Well, if I say euthanasia, you’re going to slap me.
If you insist on putting other people’s lives ahead of your own, take the spare
out where there are no people, detonate it, and hope you don’t lose your face.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I’m not laughing. This is going to be dangerous.
We’re not just dealing with nut job humans and murdering fathers anymore.” He
dropped the stuff back on the table, walked into Henry’s room, and shut the
door.

I sighed. “Make sure he eats,” I said, picking up one
of the bombs, the detonator, and the key.

*          *          *

Instead of trying to use the shadow pass again when I
was already starting to feel like death warmed over, I got in my car and drove.
Between the visions and the rapid visits to the shadow pass, I knew I was going
to run out of steam very soon, and it wouldn’t come on slow. I would be fine
one minute and crash the next. Fortunately, I didn’t crash in the car.