Authors: Belinda Meyers
Feeling her cheeks burn, she turned
back around. Stumbled a bit, kept going. They entered the town. Old-fashioned
stone buildings, most one story but a few two-story, loomed around them, and
fog slithered over the cobblestone streets. Little if any sound came from the
buildings.
“It’s like a ghost town,” Matt
said, careful to keep his voice low.
“Well, no one actually lives here,”
Jackie said. “It’s not even a real place. It’s like a little bubble reality, a
sphere of existence that’s kind of tucked away in the bigger, realer world, if
that makes any sense.”
“So how do we find Tannenbaum? He
said he could hear water. Well, you can hear it all over town.”
“It’s not a very big town. I guess
we just go house to house and see if there’s any noise or activity.”
He nodded. Once more, he took
point, glancing around each corner they came to, then gesturing her forward
when he judged the coast to be clear. They looked in the window of every house
or business they passed. Finally they saw a light peering out of a structure
ahead—what looked like a tavern. Approaching it warily, they attempted to peek
in through the windows, but the drapes were drawn.
Matt looked at her sideways. “Are
you ready to go in? Anything could be waiting for us in there.”
She straightened her back and stuck
out her chin. “I’m ready.”
He grinned, wrapped his hand around
the knob and shoved the door in.
Chapter 8
Matt’s grin turned into a scowl as he swept the chamber with
his penetrating gaze. He’d been trained to spot and defeat ambushes, and he
peered around him with an expert’s ability to foil attack.
It was a simple room with a bar
along the back and a few chairs and tables that had been pushed to the edge of
the chamber, leaving plenty of room for the centerpiece: in the middle of the
room a thin man dressed in golf clothes sat strapped to a chair, ropes
criss-crossing his chest, arms and legs. A gag had been placed over his mouth.
If this was Tannenbaum, then that was probably to prevent him from speaking
spells. Huh, that was weird. Matt had already bought into this crazy new world
and was trying to fit his old skills into it, or maybe the other way around.
Well, he’d been trained to adapt quickly, so that shouldn’t surprise him,
really. Somehow it did, though.
Wizards
and dragons—Matt old boy, what have you gotten yourself into?
To Jackie, he said, “That
Tannenbaum?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve
never seen a picture of him. It’s not Walsh or the creepy guy from the bar,
though. And he’s not using a glamour to disguise himself. So I think so. It’s
how he described himself.”
The man in the chair tried to say
something around his gag, but the sounds came out muffled. Matt stepped forward
to unbind him. As he did, hairs prickled along his neck.
He spun. Ducked—just in time. A
whip made of shadow flashed through the place where his head had just been.
Crack!
Matt could feel the awful power
of that blow and knew it would have killed him. That was no ordinary whip.
The wielder of the surely magical
weapon, just now becoming visible, had evidently cloaked himself with some sort
of spell, but Matt had sensed the trap even as the asshat had sprung it. The
man was tall and pale, though clad in dark clothes. Wearing a sneer, he coiled
his shadow-whip back for another strike.
Jackie flung some powder at him
from one of her pouches and spoke some words Matt didn’t understand. The asshat’s
whip-arm became encased in ice, stopping his next strike … but only for a
moment. The man uttered a word, and the ice shattered loudly.
Jackie’s spell had given Matt all
the time he needed. He loosed his bear, and with a growl it exploded from him,
became him. Bounding across the floor toward the magic-user, Matt had time to
see the man’s eyes narrow in hate and the muscles in his whip-arm begin to
bunch for another blow. Matt was on him before he could lash the air again with
that devastating whip and tearing at him with fangs and claws.
Matt slammed the guy over the head
with a paw, and the man collapsed seemingly unconscious.
Matt paused, wondering if he should
just kill the dude.
“Wait,” Jackie said.
Matt slipped back into his human
form again. Panting, he turned to Jackie, afraid he would see revulsion in her
face—after all, he’d just attacked and nearly killed a man. He was just
following his soldier’s instincts and training, though. The whip-guy had been a
lethal threat and had had to be neutralized in whatever manner possible, and
Matt wasn’t exactly carrying a tazer. But Matt couldn’t have taken it if Jackie
had looked on him with loathing, and he felt dread rise up in him when he swung
his gaze to her.
He blinked in surprise when she
threw herself against him and wrapped her arms around him. He hugged her back. Had
she been scared for him?
“So what do we do with him?” Matt
said.
“I don’t know, but I’ve heard there’s
a magical prison. A place for criminal wizards.”
He laughed. “Like in Harry Potter!”
She rolled her eyes. “I guess.
Maybe Tannenbaum will know how to get him there.”
The man in the chair made more
muffled noises. Matt crossed to him and took off the gag, then started to untie
him.
“Let me,” said the man, and said a
string of alien-sounding words. As if under their own power, the ropes popped
off and fell away. The man stood and rubbed his joints and flexed his limbs,
getting the circulation back in them. He was about fifty-ish and looked more
like a golf pro than a wizard, but whatever.
“Tannenbaum?” Jackie said
cautiously, coming forward.
“You can call me Bryan,” the man said.
He studied Matt, making an obvious effort not to look at Matt’s dong. “You must
be one of Pine Ridge’s famous bear shifters.”
“I don’t know about famous,” Matt
said. “But yeah.”
“Well, I thank you. Both of you.”
Tannenbaum looked to the crumpled form of the whip-wielder. The whip itself had
vanished like smoke. “Jeremy there planned to torture me to death once Walsh
was finished with you.” He said this last word with his attention on Jackie.
“‘Jeremy’,” Matt snorted, with a
shake of his head. “I guess ‘Wormtongue’ was taken. Anyway, Jackie said
something about a prison …”
Tannenbaum nodded. “Since he’s
unconscious and unshielded, I will have no trouble transporting him.”
“To the prison?” Jackie said.
“Well, a holding cell to await
trial. Then prison, yes.”
Tannenbaum clapped his hands and
Jeremy, if that was his name, vanished. Matt whistled.
“Some trick,” he said.
Jackie sucked in a breath, and Matt
could see that she was starting to get nervous. Her face had gone tense and her
eyes were fixed on Tannenbaum. The mage raised his eyebrows in anticipation of
what she would say, and Matt could see him start to brace himself. The time for
the business of the day had come. The time to get what Jackie had come for.
In a strained voice—she was
obviously having to force the words out—Jackie said, “I have the item. The
ring. Do you still want to help me restore my fire?”
Tannenbaum patted the chair with
long-fingered hand. “You mean, did my treatment under Jeremy’s care make me
reconsider your request? No. No, it didn’t. If anything, it pissed me off and
made me more likely to help you. In fact, I’ll cut my price in half. Just for
you.”
Jackie let out a long breath and
sagged backward, clearly hugely relieved. Matt threw an arm around her
shoulders and she flashed him a grateful smile.
“I have the ring here,” she said,
tapping her purse.
“I didn’t have time to gather all
the ingredients for the spell before Jeremy showed up.” Tannenbaum moved to the
tavern’s bar and picked up an object there, and Matt almost laughed to see it
was a fanny pack. The dude had his magical whatsits in a fanny pack! Strapping
it around his waist, the mage said, “I’d selected most of them, but I’ll need
the spores of a certain fungus to finish.”
“Where’s this fungus?” Matt said.
Tannenbaum grimaced. “In the tower.
At the top.”
“Like a greenhouse?” Jackie said.
“Well, maybe a
magical
greenhouse,” Tannenbaum said. “But to get to it we’ll have
to navigate our way past those golems, and I don’t like our chances.”
Matt made a fist. “I like our
chances just fine. One bear and two magic-users. We should be able to tackle
just about anything.”
“The golems are resistant to most
forms of magic,” Tannenbaum said.
Jackie nodded. “I tried an ice
spell on one, but it just shrugged it off.”
Matt stifled a curse. “Well, we’ll
just have to be sneaky then. I mean, it’s either that or wait for Walsh to show
up and finish us off, right? And if we can give Jackie back her fire, we might
stand a chance against that asshole.”
Tannenbaum tapped his chin
thoughtfully. “Well, we do have his ring. He relied on that to steal
dragonfire, and I’m willing to bet not having it will impede his efforts to do
it again.”
“
Impede
,” Jackie repeated. “Not
stop
?
I hadn’t been sure, but I had been hoping it might stop him altogether.”
“I’m not sure, either, my dear, but
I would suspect not. He is very powerful and will probably have an alternate
way to extract dragonfire—a backup, if you will. But it will be slower and
clumsier, otherwise he would use it and not the ring. At any rate, I will be
there to distract him. And our bear friend here, too. So yes, I think we stand
a chance of defeating him.”
“Will it mean killing him?” Jackie
said, and Matt could hear her reluctance to end the man’s life. After all he’d
done, and she was still hesitant to do it.
Matt decided to take the burden of
guilt off her shoulders; she had enough problems as it was. Speaking before she
had a chance to, he said, “
Fuck
that
guy. He’s not human, not if he can take someone’s essence away from them for
his own gain. Plus he killed your dad and grandmother—and probably plenty
others, too. Maybe we can take him alive and put him in this magical prison,
but if we can’t, oh well.”
Jackie swallowed, then nodded.
“Yes, I think you’re right.”
“I agree,” Tannenbaum said. “But
we’ll take him alive if we can. With me to serve witness, the Magical Justice
Court should move to convict.”
Matt kissed the top of Jackie’s
head, then removed his arm from her shoulders and flexed his hands, already
imagining them becoming claws once more.
“I guess we have a plan,” he said.
Chapter 9
Jackie assisted Tannenbaum, letting him put an arm around
her shoulders and propping him up while Matt took the lead and they left the
bar. As they went, Tannenbaum hissed ragged breaths. Jeremy, if that was the creep’s
name, hadn’t physically beaten Tannenbaum, but apparently he’d inflicted a series
of magical assaults on him when he was tied, gagged and helpless. Real class act,
that Jeremy. Walsh obviously surrounded himself with winners. Typical.
Tannenbaum seemed to gain strength
with every step, and by the time they were two blocks from the tavern he could
walk on his own, though his expression was still wan and he moved in ginger
little steps.
To distract him, Jackie gestured
around them and said, “This place is amazing! A whole little pocket universe.”
Tannenbaum gave a pained smile.
“Thank you, my dear. I erected these little folds in space and time when I
first moved to Pine Ridge. I’d nearly forgotten I had them. I certainly had no
clue where that water sound was coming from.” He cocked his head, as if
listening to the sound of the surf crashing against the shore. Dark houses
surrounded them, kind of eerily, but they produced no sounds of their own, and
the surf was quite loud.
“Why did you build them?” Jackie
said. Ahead, Matt was peering around the corner of a silent building. Evidently
satisfied, he edged forward and gestured without looking behind for them to follow.
They did, talking just loud enough to be heard over the sound of the sea.
“Oh, to escape enemies if need be,”
Tannenbaum said. “A mage for hire attracts them like a mattress attracts bed
bugs.”
“This sort of magic is beyond
anything I know.”
“Oh, it’s beyond most of what I
know, too. Or
where
I know,” he added
significantly, tapping his nose.
“What does that mean?’
Tannenbaum looked evasive for a
moment, then said, “Well, some areas of the world are stronger in magic than
others. In places the walls between worlds are thin. This mountain is one such
place.”
“Walls? What walls? What
worlds
?” It was as if Tannenbaum were
speaking Greek. The only world Jackie knew these days was New York. It was
certainly a world unto itself, that was for sure. And it did have plenty of
walls. But she didn’t think that’s what Tannenbaum was talking about.
With an air of showmanship, he
said, “Why, the Fae Lands, of course.”
“The …
Fae
?” Jackie wrinkled her nose as if she’d smelled something rank.
Ahead Matt had half-turned, as if listening closely. To Tannenbaum, she said,
“You’re putting me on.”
“I’m not, my dear.”
“Faeries!” she scoffed. “There’s no
such thing as fairies.”
“The Fae are quite real.”
Tannenbaum hitched his chin at Matt. “Ask your friend. He knows, I’m sure.”
Jackie studied Matt, who was
frowning. “What does he mean, Matt?”
The bear shifter glared at the
mage. Fog curled through the town streets, wreathing Matt’s gleaming, muscular
body with a faint sheen of moisture and making him seem ghostly and, well,
frankly, kind of awesome. Awesom
er
.
Jackie tried not to stare at his
cock, though, as she asked the question. His face looked downright guilty, and
that told her something. Matt was holding something back from her. An
unreasoning flash of anger coursed through her.
“Well?” she pressed.
Matt let out a long sigh, his
breath steaming in the cool air. “It’s true,” he said at last. “The Fae are
real.”
“You’ve
seen
them?”
“I’ve seen enough.”
She scowled at him. “What’s going
on? What am I missing?”
Matt glanced away, looking
troubled. “I’m forbidden from talking about it, Jackie. I mean, to outsiders.”
“
Out
siders? After what we …” She swallowed and felt her cheeks burn.
Repeating herself, she said, “Outsiders?”
He seemed to be feeling less
chipper, to judge by the set of his shoulders. “I just mean, someone not in my
crew,” he said lamely.
Tannenbaum cleared his throat.
“I’ve heard a rumor, Jackie, from spirits I commune with, that the Pine Ridge
bear shifters are custodians of a great secret, something that has to do with
the Fae. I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s big. It’s why I moved here.
To increase my abilities. The very air here is redolent with it—magic.”
Jackie crossed her arms over her
chest. “Matt, what do you have to say about all that?”
Angrily, he kicked a loose stone
and it spun off into the night. Miserably, he said, “Jackie, I can’t talk about
it. Not unless I claim you or my alpha gives permission. I just … can’t.”
She glared at him, then softened.
She could tell the subject was agonizing to him, and the last thing she wanted
to do was hurt him. Still, it galled her that he was keeping secrets from her
after all she’d shared with him. It just didn’t seem right somehow, and she
couldn’t help but feel a little miffed.
But, as her grandmother would have
said, you have to pick your battles, and she somehow sensed that this wasn’t a
battle she should pick. If Matt was holding something back, then he was doing
it for a reason, and it didn’t have anything to do with her.
After a long moment, she went to
him and wrapped her arms about him. He seemed surprised for a moment, then
hugged her back. Tight. She smiled against his taut chest and felt tears burn
her eyes. When she pulled back, she could see him blinking rapidly.
“I’m sorry I pushed,” she said. In
a lower voice, she said, “Tell me when you’re ready, though, okay?”
He cleared his throat. “I will. I
swear it.”
Jackie turned back to Tannenbaum to
see him watching them with a small, sad smile. That smile seemed to hint that
he had known love once, too, but that somewhere along the way he had lost it.
For a moment Jackie wondered what his story was and just how he had come to be
a mage for hire living in a “thin” place in the mountains of Colorado. Before
she could ask him about it, though, Matt said, “Come,” and resumed leading the
way.
Jackie fell back beside Tannenbaum.
“So, you were saying,” she said.
“I was?”
“About creating these … folds in
space or whatever.”
He shrugged. “Just one of my little
tricks, made possible by being here. I never imagined being held prisoner in
one of them, though, the folds in reality. But that Jeremy, he was clever, and
I think his master had given him some wards and spells to use against me. When
he knocked on the door, he hadn’t alerted any of my traps or safeguards, and I
had no notion that he might be hostile or even a magic-user. I thought it might
be a salesperson, or even you, somehow having come early and having found my
personal residence.
"Much to my surprise it was
that … well, let us just say ne’er-do-well … and before I could speak a single
spell in defense he had frozen my tongue with a curse. After that I was easy
prey, and he had various tools with which to disarm my various traps. Amazing,
really. I must admit that I was impressed. I think his master, this Walsh, was
responsible for most of those tools, and that does not make me eager to face
him in battle, I admit.”
“But you will.”
Tannenbaum nodded shakily. “I will.”
He flexed a bony fist, then let it drop. “I
am
eager to make him pay for the tortures his lackey inflicted on me.”
“Here we are,” Matt said.
They’d cleared the last building
and stood on the beach near where they had first entered the hidey-hole town,
or whatever it was.
“You guys take it from here,” Matt
said.
Jackie nodded to Tannenbaum. “Would
you like the honor?”
He gave a tight smile and raised
his hands, fanning out his fingers as if feeling the air, or maybe the magical
vibrations. With his free hand, he grabbed Jackie’s hand. Understanding, she
reached out for Matt with
her
free
hand, and he grasped it in his large warm paw, forming a chain.
“Let me make sure the way is
clear,” Tannenbaum said. “That there aren’t any golems waiting for us just on
the other side.” He closed his eyes and seemed to concentrate, then breathed
out. “It’s safe. For now.”
“Then let’s do this,” Jackie said.
“Vigazco,”
Tannenbaum said, speaking the magical command precisely and with authority.
The air rippled around them, and
Jackie felt her stomach cramp. For a moment it felt like they were being picked
up by a tornado and deposited elsewhere. When she opened her eyes, they were
standing in the hallway in Tannenbaum’s mansion right before the painting of
the seaside town, just where they had left this reality for the other.
She lost her balance for a moment
and had to lean against Matt’s warm, hard body for support. He held her up
easily even as his large square head turned this way and that, his eyes
narrowed. He was making doubly sure there weren’t any golems about, she knew.
She loved the feel of his warm, firm flesh under her fingers. As if carved of
marble, he didn’t even budge against her weight.
Relaxing somewhat, evidently not
seeing any golems, he whispered, “You okay?”
“I’m good. You?”
“Never better.”
She wasn’t the only one that seemed
to be enjoying their contact. He was getting a little hard again. Well, maybe a
big hard again. Separating herself from him, she grinned and said, “Later.”
“Better be,” he told her, and
winked.
To Tannenbaum, who was tactfully
studying the ceiling, she said, “You okay?” When he nodded, she said, “Good job
on the spell. You did much better bringing us back than I did getting Matt and
I there in the first place.”
“All in the wrist, my dear.”
She gave a small laugh, careful to
be as quiet as possible. “Okay, so where’s the tower? Let’s get up there, get
the spores and restore my fire before that jerkwad Walsh shows up.”
“That’s the plan.” Tannenbaum
paused a moment, as if orienting himself, then set off down the hall to the
right. “This way,” he called softly over his shoulder.
Matt didn’t seem to like letting
the mage go first, but there didn’t seem to be a more practical option, so he
fell in directly behind Tannenbaum and Jackie took up the rear. She didn’t mind
going immediately behind Matt, since
his
behind was so easy on the eyes.
She constantly had to resist the
urge to reach out and slap one of his muscular, flexing buttocks. She didn’t
want to distract him, though. She knew he was trying to protect them all—her
most especially. She loved how protective he was, and how calm and cool he was
when action was required.
Tannenbaum paused at the next
hallway intersection and peered around the corner. He stiffened and drew back.
Turning to the others, he shook his head grimly, and distantly Jackie could
hear the
clomp clomp clomp
of a
golem. The three waited breathlessly. The noises didn’t grow any louder, and
soon they faded. The golem hadn’t come up this hall but had continued down the cross-hall
it must have been going down already. Good.
When the
clomps
had faded completely, Tannenbaum resumed the way, passing
down this hallway to another intersection, pausing to look around, then hooking
a left and lightly jogging down this new hall. Jackie marveled at all the
ornate fixtures and rich carpeting. This place was amazing.
The mage paused at a handsome
stairway leading up in a spiral, ascending into what Jackie could see was the
spire she’d seen from outside. It was half Victorian, half Gothic, and quite a
bit larger than she had realized earlier. Was this like
Doctor Who
, where things were bigger on the inside?
Tannenbaum craned his head, looking
up, and Jackie could almost see his ears twitch as they strained to catch any
alien sounds. Apparently satisfied, he nodded to Matt and Jackie and whispered,
“I think it’s clear. Let’s go.”
Clomp
clomp.
Jackie felt the hairs prickle down
her spine. A golem was about to turn into this hall from a side hall, she could
hear it. Amazing how this place with its thick walls and carpeting could muffle
their sounds until it was almost too late.