“Okay, I need to clean this mess up. Fly over to the south side of the river and locate the portal these guys used. Open it up and then come back for me.”
Beast growled out an affirmative and leapt into the air.
I turned back toward my apprentice and saw that she was struggling to lift the neck of one of the apes’ mounts. I was down a little in energy, but my reserves were slowly coming back up. I expended a little power to levitate down the slope and landed beside her.
“Having problems?” I asked.
Tess stood, her gloves green with the blood of the mantis creature. “Yeah, the first one was easy to retrieve, but the shaft broke off when this thing fell. Can I borrow your knife?”
I pulled out my tantō and passed it hilt first to her. Tess took it and knelt beside the mantis again. The blade cut through the creature’s exoskeleton like it was butter and in a minute Tess pulled the knife out of the wound she’d made and jammed her hand into the beast’s neck. She fished around inside the wound for a few seconds and then pulled the broken shaft of the quarrel and the broadhead free of the wound.
Tess shook some of the clinging flesh and blood off her gloves. “I guess I’ll have to wash this off in the river. I’ll clean your knife too.”
I walked with her the few yards to the edge of the water. This time of year the Canadian River was shallow, nothing like the flow it had during spring rains or when the Sangre de Cristo Mountains were shedding their snowpack. Still, there was enough water for Tess to rinse off the broken quarrel broadhead, my knife, and her gloves. Her gloves, like the rest of her leathers, had been spelled to protect them–and by extension, her–from damage. This included spells, fire, impact, and by side effect, even water.
She stood and passed me the knife. I held it aloft and triggered my fire tat for a moment. Flame washed across the blade, drying it instantly.
I sheathed it as Beast returned and lit beside us.
“Did you find the portal?” I asked as he folded his great leathery wings against his body.
“Yes,” he growled. “It’s a hundred feet past the top of the riverbank.”
“Okay, let’s get airborne. I want to be able to see what I’m doing,” I said.
Beast knelt, and I motioned for Tess to climb aboard. She climbed onto his shoulders, just in front of his bat wings, and I climbed on in front of her. Her hands slid around my waist, and her fingers interlaced just over my belt. As I gripped a handful of Beast’s mane, Tess pulled tight against me, and Beast leapt into the sky.
Unlike the times when I rode him alone, Beast’s takeoff was almost gentle. He always treated ladies differently than me and enjoyed seeing if he could jar me loose with abrupt launches. It hadn’t worked in years, but he never stopped trying.
“Mesh with me,” I said. A few seconds later, I felt Tess’s mind joining with mine. When we were fully meshed, I was ready to use my cleanup as another training session.
Powered by Beast’s wings and his inherent magic, we quickly flew up until we were a couple of hundred feet above the river. From there, I could see the portal Beast had found. It should have closed by now, but for some reason this portal was remaining open. I raised my right arm and triggered my wind tattoo. The branches of the trees we’d camped beneath and the brush along the river began to lean as a funnel formed. When it was strong enough, I directed it down toward the bloody bodies of our enemies. With a little more concentration, I moved the top of the funnel to the portal and held it there. Sweat was beginning to bead up on my forehead as I concentrated on moving the funnel across the riverbed, making sure I didn’t miss a single body. Within a few minutes, the riverbed had been scoured clean of apes, mantises, and vegetation. When the last body disappeared through the portal, I canceled the wind and directed Beast downward.
He landed beside the portal, but we stayed mounted. I activated a tattoo on my left thigh. This spell not only closed the portal the apes had used but locked it so that it couldn’t be opened again without either myself or someone powerful enough to break my lock. Few beings on Earth could unlock a portal once I had closed and locked it. Unfortunately, Rowle, the renegade Wanderer who had become my archenemy–When did I start referring to him as an archenemy? Geez, I sounded like a comic book hero–was one of them.
“Okay, Beast, let’s get back to camp,” I said.
“That was pretty cool,” Tess said as we dropped the meshing and were once more alone in our heads. Her hands had left my waist and were gripping my thighs, close enough to my crotch for me to realize that I probably should have been paying more attention.
“You’ll be doing similar stuff before long.” I wasn’t kidding her. She had come so far in her training in our week together that I was continually amazed. What had taken me a month or more with my own mentor, Walt, she had accomplished in days. I was guessing it had more to do with how completely we were meshing. Our meshing allowed her to sense more of how a Wanderer’s magic worked, but at the same time, it gave rise to feelings that had led to at least one marvelous bout of passion. The closer the meshing, the more our emotions fed upon the connection. Regardless of my initial wishes to keep everything between us platonic, the intensity of our training and subsequent actions had left me unprepared for how intense our passion would
