Authors: Ann Macela

Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Paranormal, #Romance, #Suspense

Wild Magic (29 page)

BOOK: Wild Magic

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“Irenee, push a bolt as much as you can. Kendra, don’t reply,” Baldwin ordered. “Go.”

Irenee stood still for a moment, then with a flourish pointed her finger at the other citadel and cried,
“Fulmen!”

An indigo bolt with many violet swirls streaked across the ellipse and shattered on the walls of the Defenders’ shield.

“Looked like a twelve to me,” Kendra said. “Felt like one, too.”

Everybody on the Defender team nodded their agreement.

From behind Irenee and outside the ellipse, the healer spoke up. “She’s hardly experienced any diminution of energy levels, John. Her walls are as strong as when she started, and she’s regaining energy quickly now at rest.”

“All right,” the Sword acknowledged and rubbed his hands together. “Let’s go to free form and for endurance. Everything goes. Irenee, Swords, we’ll build in increments of whole levels this time, no half measures, beginning at six. Irenee, when you reach your high point, keep throwing them to see how long your energy holds out. Healers, tell us instantly if someone has a problem.”

He looked at each caster, raised his hand, and brought it down. “Begin.”

The concussions and shock waves from the immediate barrage flung Jim back in his seat. Indigo and violet lightning cracked, red and yellow fireballs exploded, and green and blue and lavender laserlike spears of light caromed about the room, off the pentagons and the elliptical shield’s interior walls. Winds howled around the oval. The pentagons glowed ever more brightly until two multicolored, five-sided columns reached the ceiling.

Whipple provided a play-by-play analysis of each attack. Knowing exactly what was being thrown at his mate didn’t provide Jim with a single reason to relax, however, although the energy and potential in each spell awed him. These guys could kick butt!

His soul mate had power he’d never dreamed of.

All her ability didn’t mean, however, she should go off on her own like she’d been doing, he told himself. Teamwork still mattered, and as Whipple had told him, she couldn’t stop a bullet.

Both sides began to throw curveballs, spells that wound around to attack the back or sides of their opponent’s walls, and from time to time Jim lost sight of Irenee when fireballs and lightning collided.

“How much voltage or amps or whatever do they produce with those bolts?” Jim asked during a slight lull in the action.

“We’ve never had a true measurement based on modern physics or engineering,” Whipple, answered. “The use of magic melted the instruments. A couple of electrical-engineer practitioners are working on a new method for calibrating exactly how much energy a team produces. I don’t know how successful they’ll be. We haven’t yet settled on a good measurement term, like a kilowatt, so we’re left with level designations by color.”

Jim decided he might be better off not knowing how much power they were slinging around down there. He glanced back at the big pentagon. A golden band of light floated in the space between the Defenders at the points and the Swords in the middle. He pointed to it. “What’s with the ring?”

“The Defenders create a circle of magical power for the Swords to tap into. It’s how they share energy,” Whipple, replied, sounding extremely satisfied. “Destruction of an evil item takes much more power than one person can produce. We’re hoping you can help Irenee by supplying her with an extra source of energy. If you can’t help create the ring, you may be able to transfer power directly”

Holy shit!
The wind of apprehension he’d felt earlier turned ice cold and gained strength. They actually expected him to produce something like that? Or at least add to it? When all he could cast in reality was a puny lightball? When he could barely control what little he had? When he didn’t have one ounce of proof he could actually share the damn stuff? His center seemed to contract into a lump of pain.

Hy God. What if I can’t do what they want? I’m going to fail her.

He rubbed his aching center and watched the group in the pentagon. He could almost feel the enormous amount of energy pouring into the ring and from it to the Swords.

Another wild exchange on the arena floor brought his attention back to Irenee, and he watched the battle with much more trepidation than a few minutes ago.

Kendra changed missiles to throw rainbow-hued energy beams with both hands. When the multicolored lances hit Irenee’s walls, her indigo and violet barriers flared. When the torrent increased in number and intensity, her magical fortification bent under the pressure, flexing like the tight skin of a drum. Irenee’s defenses held firm under the onslaught, and she appeared unaffected as her walls deepened in color and she returned fire.

Each of the blows, however, hit Jim like a sledgehammer. He couldn’t sit still, but dodged and flinched with each strike. With every cell in his body demanding he go help her, his magic center urging him on to do
something
, he tried to rise from his seat. Whipple grabbed his arm and held him down.

“She’s all right, Jim,” he stated firmly. “You know it, you can feel it. Relax.”

Jim stared at the big mage, then abruptly sat back in his chair. Whipple was right. He could feel Irenee’s power and confidence, her strength and excitement. His center seemed to take a deep breath and calm down, and hoping it knew more than he did, he followed its lead.

He glanced over at her parents, who were watching the battle closely. Hugh was almost glowing with pride, but the tension in both showed in the way they clasped hands tightly. While the brother appeared relaxed on the surface, he, too, was closely following every move in the arena.

The team had reached twelfth level in their bolts, according to Whipple’s commentary.

“What about their swords?” Jim asked. “I only had a glimpse of Irenee’s, and I thought they’d be using them.”

“A blade is pure magic energy, formed into a column in the shape of a sword. Think of it like a handheld laser,” Whipple, answered. “They’re extremely powerful, but energy eaters. We don’t use the Swords’ blades in tests—too exhausting, and entirely too dangerous. With enough power from the wielder or against a very weak opponent, the sword beam can cut right through a lesser pentagon’s walls. A successful attack on a fortress by a strong enough beam can injure, even kill, the Sword and Defenders inside.”

So, from what Whipple, was saying, the Swords needed more energy than they could produce individually to destroy an item. Irenee would need her team’s—and his, if he could work the transfer. She couldn’t do it alone. Okay, those facts perversely gave him cause for optimism. He simply had to make sure she didn’t go after Ubell or his Stone by herself, and she’d be safe.

Yeah,
simply
. He’d stop her reckless actions, even if it took a fight. He could probably depend on Whipple’s help in that endeavor, too. Jim relaxed a tiny bit and felt his center do the same.

Suddenly, the battle intensified, and the change brought him upright. The three Swords within the pentagon
each
began to hurl separate spells at Irenee instead of only one through Kendra.

“Hey!” Jim yelled.

“Take it easy,” Whipple admonished, putting his hand on Jim’s shoulder again. “Look, she’s fine.”

And she was. Previously, Irenee had been standing still while she cast. Now she was moving within her pentagon, almost dancing, hands held up and weaving patterns in the air as if to halt the spell missiles physically and to dodge particularly potent blasts. The glyphs on her robe rippled with colors as the spells swirled around her.

The bombardment seemed to go on for hours, and when Jim looked at his watch, he saw they were indeed into the second hour of the test. He also realized he had been moving in his chair, as though he was evading the bolts. At last he thought he could see her tiring, her energy depleting, her walls weakening ever so slightly. If only he could send her some of his power.

A movement where there had been none drew his gaze. Baldwin. The presiding Sword had been standing immobile inside his own pentagon throughout the battle, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his gown. Without warning he threw up his hands and brought them together in front of his chest. Out of his fingers flew a huge silver energy bolt, straight at Irenee. Her walls shivered, bent inward almost to the point of touching her slight body, and appeared to be on the verge of collapse.

The son of a bitch!

Jim surged out of the chair. He threw something—energy, fire, he didn’t know what or how—at Baldwin just as he saw Irenee rally her defenses, deflect the bolt, and send it careening at the other pentagon where Kendra had to move quickly to parry the blow.

On the balcony, all hell broke loose. Jim’s blast bounced off the glass, almost hit him in the head, and ricocheted around the room. He turned in time to see Catherine and Hugh Sabel duck it and Dietrich hit the floor. Whipple grabbed the missile somehow in a spell and dissipated it before it did real damage.

On the arena floor, Baldwin cried, “Enough!”

Irenee dropped her protective walls and swayed, but remained upright. She looked up at Jim, frowned, and, her voice completely audible in the silence, said, “I’m fine. Really” Then she turned to accept the accolades of the testers.

Jim stood rigid for a moment until he satisfied himself Irenee was, in truth, all right—exhausted, but all right. He relaxed with a huge sigh. Relaxation turned to chagrin, however, when he watched the others restore themselves to order after his spell-casting attempt. “Uh, I’m sorry. I guess I lost my head.”

“Perfectly understandable, my boy,” Whipple chuckled. “You aren’t the first and you won’t be the last to react when your soul mate’s being threatened.”

“The most interesting part is, Jim,” Hugh interjected, “that you could throw anything at all. What did he cast, Fergus? Could you tell?”

“Sheer energy, spontaneous combustion?” Whipple shrugged. “Jim, we don’t know what you are yet, but you pack a hell of a wallop.”

Jim didn’t care about that. He looked back at Irenee. “Is she really okay?”

“She’s fine, and she was spectacular.” Whipple smiled like a white-haired bear who had discovered a big pot of honey. “We have a lot of work to do with the both of you in the future.”

Fine for Whipple to say. Jim had another take on the performances—both his and hers. They showed Jim exactly how helpless he was here. In his new world, if he didn’t do everything exactly right, he wouldn’t protect himself and, worse, her.

God, was he doomed to another loss of the person most important to him?

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Irenee emerged from the arena into the hallway to find her family and Jim waiting.

Her mother reached her first and gave her a big hug. “Irenee, we are so proud of you!”

Her father and even Dietrich followed suit, with her brother, the tease, whispering in her ear, “I’m still a higher level than you.” She punched him in the arm, and they grinned at each other.

She was seriously considering fussing at Jim for causing the disruption that almost distracted her at the wrong moment, but he took her in his arms like she was the most precious thing on earth. All the fight went out of her when she felt the anxiety in his hold and he muttered in her ear, “Damn, woman, you scared me half to death.”

“I’m fine,” she whispered and leaned back to see his face. “Really”

“Let’s have a celebratory drink,” her father said. “You should be hungry”

“Famished.” She kept hold of Jim’s hand all the way to the restaurant.

During dinner in the restaurant, her mother quizzed poor Jim up one side and down the other—in a very polite way, of course. He did a good job of telling her enough to satisfy, without divulging what was only between the two of them.

Irenee didn’t find out anything new about him from the conversation, but she didn’t expect to. He knew how to handle interrogations. She did, however, learn she was even more conscious of his presence next to her than she had been at lunch. If it hadn’t been for the need to replenish her energy from the test, she’d have thought seriously about skipping the meal, taking him upstairs, and getting to know him better.

By talking, of course. About their goals, their families, their approaches to life, their likes and dislikes.

With maybe a few of his glorious, exciting, totally arousing kisses thrown in for good measure.

What was to stop her from doing the very thing before they finished eating? Simply get up and go? They were soul mates, after all. Who was going to object?

Jim nudged her with his elbow. When she turned to him, he gave her a look that could have set an iceberg on fire and murmured, “Let’s get out of here as soon as we can, okay?”

“I’ve been thinking along those very same lines,” she whispered back.

He raised his eyebrows at her.

She could feel her face heat and quickly turned her attention back to her plate.

Sitting on her other side, Fergus leaned forward and nodded at both of them. “I need a private word with you two when we’re done here, okay?”

BOOK: Wild Magic

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