We reached the ceiling in a few seconds and I looked for a spot to breech without doing too much damage to their facility.
“Ah, Rafe,” Tess said.
“Yes?”
“The flyboys seem to be having trouble.”
I turned my head and looked down at the six Airmen. The foam was nearly over their heads and they were still a long way from the safety of the hangar’s door.
I groaned. “Damn, who has a fire suppression system that’s dangerous?”
“A lot of people, haven’t you ever heard of halon?”
“That’s not really dangerous, is it?”
I felt Tess shrug against my chest.
“Well, we can’t have them suffocating,” I said.
Triggering my wind tat, I held it until the air inside the hangar was moving down the front of the massive doors and across the floor where the six men struggled. It was a little tricky not to knock them from their feet and back into the foam, but with a little skill (I’ve practiced with this spell a lot and I’m getting better all the time) the foam was pushed back from them and within a minute they had all reached the exit. As I cancelled my tat’s energy, I saw the witch give me a thumbs up. I nodded in acknowledgement and turned back toward the ceiling.
Picking a spot between the rafters, I triggered an energy blast that blew a three-foot wide hole through the insulation and the exterior metal skin of the hangar. We floated through the opening, barely touching the edges of the hole as we did.
As soon as we reached the roof, Maia and Beast lit to either side of us.
I set us down and cancelled the levitation tat. Easing my grip on Tess, I expected her to pull away and mount her familiar. Instead, her fingers gripped the back of my head and pulled my lips down to hers.
She kissed me with passion.
“Ahem,” Beast growled. “Can’t you two save that for later?”
I felt Tess’s lips move against mine as she mumbled something into my mouth that I was sure Beast wouldn’t have appreciated if he’d heard her.
Tess released her grip on my head and stepped toward Maia who was already kneeling.
“You’re a wet blanket, Beast,” Tess said as she swung a leg over Maia’s neck.
I chuckled and levitated myself onto Beast’s shoulders as he growled an unintelligible response in his own language.
“Well, we’ve had a productive night. Now let’s go home.” Home? I don’t know where that came from. Since I became a Wanderer, a long time ago, after my first death, I’d not had a home. I think I once stayed in one place for all of two weeks. Half of that had been waiting for a job that Verðandi had summoned me to and the other half was relaxing on a nearby beach on the Pacific coast of Panama. What was happening to me? Wanderers don’t have homes. Granted, operating out of Joe Leatherneck’s cabin, God rest his soul, was convenient while rounding up the escapees from our final battle with Rowle, but any day now Verðandi was bound to send another summons and we’d be on the road again.
I caught Tess studying me and realized we were still meshed. She was picking up my stray thoughts. I couldn’t imagine what she must be thinking. I shook my head and mentally kicked myself for even considering Joe’s cabin a home. Wanderers do not have homes.
“Okay, let’s get going before any more flyboys show up.” I dropped our meshing as Beast leapt into the night sky. Maia and Tess took to the air right behind us.
As we gained altitude, I concentrated on my remembrance of Joe’s cabin and activated my portal tattoo. Energy flared from my tattoo and a rift appeared in the night sky just ahead of us. A strong wind blew toward the portal. The pressure differential between our sea level site and Joe’s cabin at more than seven thousand feet created gale force winds.
Beast flew toward the portal and I turned to make sure Tess was right behind me. She was, but she was casting a spell and watching the ground behind us. What was my apprentice up to?
We popped through the portal into the cold thin air above Colorado Springs. Maia and Tess came through seconds later and I closed the portal, killing the gale of warmer air that had followed us from Florida.
Joe’s cabin was a couple hundred yards below the glow of the Will Rogers memorial on the side of Cheyenne Mountain. It made spotting Joe’s cabin from anywhere in the area a snap. Without direction, Beast dropped toward the front of the cabin.
We set down in the short driveway and I dismounted. When Tess slid from Maia’s shoulders, I gave our familiars the rest of the night off. It was shortly after midnight, if I’d judged our travel time correctly and our familiars would have plenty of time to find food in the local forest.
A blast of air swirled Tess’s lengthening hair as they took flight. It still looked unbalanced because her burns had removed all of the hair on the left side of her head, but even on that side, her red hair was nearly two inches long.
She turned, catching me studying her.
“What?” she asked.
I grinned. “It’s nothing.”
“Nothing? Then why were you staring at me? Do I have something on my face?”
“No, I was just wondering how long you’d let your hair grow out,” I confessed.
She smiled. I still had my enhanced senses tat active and I could see the smile spread across her face. Moving up to me, close enough to put her hands on my hips, she said, “How long would you like it?”
I cleared my throat. “Ah, it doesn’t really matter. I just–”
She
