“An excellent suggestion,” Rowle said. “I was just about to suggest it myself.”
Tess slipped her crossbow off her shoulder and loaded a bolt. I held out a hand and she took it. In seconds, we had meshed.
“You know the drill. Keep Cris between us so I can take the brunt of whatever’s coming.”
“You got it,” Tess said as Bruno curled around her neck. She stroked his head. “You stay still and don’t throw off my aim.”
The little wyvern snorted and smoke puffed from his mouth.
Cris took her wand from a pocket. It was a small thing, hardly larger than a pencil.
“Well, Rowle, it’s your home. After you,” I said.
He nodded and marched toward the front doors with Alex on his heels. The doors swung open as he approached and they stepped out onto the deck. They moved left and we followed, but moving right to give us a clear shot at whatever was out there.
The sun had come out from behind the clouds and the snow was almost painfully bright. I continued moving right, heading for the edge of the deck so I could see the side of the house.
A shadow blocked out the sun and I felt an exclamation of surprise through my link with Tess. Gazing upwards, I saw a boulder the size of a semi falling toward us.
“Frak!” Tess said.
I triggered my shield tat, judged the arc of the falling stone, and activated my levitation tat. I focused on the three of us and poured power into the tat. We rose, accelerating smoothly as I tried to get us out of the target area.
“Heads up,” I shouted in case Rowle and Alex hadn’t seen the approaching boulder.
The descending rock reached us while we were just twenty feet up. It struck a glancing blow against my shield and sent us rocketing away from the house at high speed before it struck the shield Rowle had on his home. The shield boomed, but this time it failed. The boulder tore through the deck and the front wall of the house, carving a hole large enough to park a jumbo jet in.
If we’d been under it, I’m not sure my shield would have held.
I saw Rowle and Alex floating across the snow-covered yard without leaving a track. Rowle had apparently had the same thought I had. If something that size is coming down, you don’t want to be between it and a solid surface. As long as we were airborne, a thrown boulder could always be mitigated.
“Did either of you see where that thing came from?” I asked.
“From somewhere in those trees to the south, if the arc was any indication,” Cris said. “But I didn’t see it until after it had already started down.”
“Okay, we’ll move that way and see if we can find out who’s after us.”
“What about Rowle and Alex?” Tess asked.
I called the wind and started us toward the south. Glancing back over my shoulder, I saw Rowle and Alex climbing onto the lowered neck of a fucking red dragon. How in hell did that man keep summoning dragons for familiars?
“It looks like that out of my hands right now,” I said.
Tess followed my gaze and she swore under her breath. “How much do you want to bet that it’s the same dragon that escaped last November?”
“No takers here,” I said. Then I spotted our familiars rising from behind the house. “Beast and Maia are coming. I’ll modify the shield to let them get us. You’ll have to generate your own when we get too far apart.”
“No problem, I’m ready,” Tess responded.
“Look there,” Cris said, pointing toward the trees we were approaching. Another damn boulder was rising from the trees. “How can anyone be strong enough to toss one of those this far?”
I thought of the Cyclopes and shrugged. “I’m pretty sure it’s not some human magic user. Other than that, I couldn’t guess.” Well, actually, I was guessing another Titan, but I thought I’d save that for when I actually knew. Guessing and being wrong wouldn’t help my image.
Beast reached me and I changed my shield into a dome over Cris and me as he maneuvered beneath us. I took Cris hand and pulled her down behind me as I canceled my levitation tat. I placed a tap on the ley line and topped off my energy as I watched the boulder approach.
“You might want to stay out from under that thing,” I said to Beast.
“No problem,” he growled.
With a flap of his wings, we changed direction and moved out of the missile’s path. I looked for Tess and found her and Maia a few dozen yards off to our right.
I looked back toward the house, expecting to see Rowle and Alex coming toward us. Instead, they were flying west. A portal opened in front of them and they disappeared through it.
“Son of a bitch,” I said. “I never would have thought Rowle would run from a fight.”
“Maybe he’s just trying to get Alex somewhere safe before fighting,” Cris said.
“You think so?” I wondered.
“I wouldn’t want any apprentice of mine coming up against whatever is tossing those boulders.”
I glanced toward Tess, but she hadn’t heard Cris’s comment.
“You may be right,” I said. “Alex hasn’t had a chance to learn anything useful and would just be a distraction.”
“I wasn’t talking about you and Cris. I definitely didn’t mean that Tess shouldn’t help you,” Cris said.
The latest boulder missed us by at least a hundred feet and impacted in Rowle’s yard with a boom. It did appear that it would have landed close to us if we hadn’t changed direction.
“I guess we know who is being attacked,” I said loud enough for Tess to hear. “They’ve stopped
