I turned toward Tess. “We’d better clear out of this area. There’s no reason to make it easy for him.”
Tess’s lips quivered as though she was going to say something, but then she nodded and let go of my hand.
“Well, Verðandi–” I began, but the goddess was already gone. I growled to myself and turned toward Beast.
“We’ll fly. We can’t take the time to drive,” I said as I took a handful of Beast’s mane in my fist.
“Do you want to open a portal back to the cabin?” Tess asked. She was already sitting astride Maia.
I swung onto Beast’s shoulders. “I know you could open a portal for us to get back there, but we’re at that cabin too much as it is. With Rowle still alive we can’t risk being in a location where he might find us. We’ll head east, let’s go.”
Beast immediately leapt into the air with Maia and Tess less than a second behind us. Beast gained altitude until we were a couple of hundred feet in the air and Maia had come along side of us on our right. The sun was just cresting the horizon, but with the thick moist air of south Texas, it was an indistinct bright spot rather than a circle of fire.
“Are we glamoured?” I asked. It was a pain in the ass to have to ask. I’d always been able to see past glamours with my enhanced senses tat, just one more thing to be pissed at Rowle about.
“Certainly, standard hawk glamour for both of us,” Beast said.
“Okay, level off and maintain a good pace, but there’s no reason to tire yourselves out. We have a long flight to go.”
“Where are we going?” Tess called.
“I thought we might visit Cris, outside of Atlanta.”
“Oh? Any particular reason you want to visit an old snuggle bunny?”
I did a double take toward Tess. Was she seriously acting jealous? “Not for snuggling, if that’s your worry. The Wiccans are capable of some damn powerful magic when it comes to healing. I was thinking that she might have a way of getting this residue out of me.”
“Then why don’t we go to Huntsville? You said Abigail’s coven was as powerful as any you’d come across.”
“True, but Abigail wouldn’t be my first choice. There’s that trust issue.”
Tess nodded thoughtfully and then brightened visibly. “Eglin Air Force Base is a lot closer to Atlanta.”
“Yes, of course, but what–”
“I memorized the location with Joe’s remembrance spell. I could open a portal to there and cut hours off our trip.”
Of course, I’d noticed she was lagging behind when we left the climatic hangar. She’d been casting that spell of Joe’s that would let her remember everything about the location so she could open a portal back there.
“All right, it would get us there a lot sooner. Do you want to land and mesh or do you think you can cast that spell without assistance?”
Tess bit her lip and appeared to give my question some thought. “I think we should mesh. I’ve never cast that spell and if I don’t get it right it’d be a waste of time.”
My thought exactly, but with my limited abilities, I wasn’t sure I would be much help.
“Okay. Beast take us back down, anywhere away from people,” I said.
The portal spell went off without a hitch and we popped out above Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida panhandle. We emerged about forty feet above the climatic hangar. If I were being honest, I’d admit that I was a little concerned about Tess performing that spell without my being able to help. Hell, I was still getting used to the idea of being able to portal to any location I could recall.
“Okay, Tess, close the portal,” I called to my apprentice as I oriented on the bay, getting my bearings for the flight to Atlanta.
I heard a loud boom immediately below us and an instant later felt something strike my back. A shock went through me. I spasmed and I had a moment of “oh shit, I’m falling,” before I blacked out.
Chapter 21
Raphael
My damn head hurt. As did my back, my left shoulder, left hip, both buttocks…hell, what didn’t hurt? I opened my eyes and immediately shut them back. The room was too damn bright. I tried activating my healing tat, but then remembered that I’d lost it along with most all of them. Even if I had the healing tat, I couldn’t activate it. Not having my tats was really beginning to piss me off. When I found out who set that damn trap, there was going to be retribution.
Why didn’t I automatically think it was Rowle? Oh, yeah, he was dead. Tess’s bolt had taken him in the chest and with that weird blessing gift of Joe’s; she wouldn’t have been able to miss.
Then who was screwing with me? Was it the same being that had set the black goo trap?
Oh, wait. Verðandi had told us that Rowle was still alive. What was wrong with my memory?
I forced my eyes back open and looked around. I was in a non-descript room with concrete walls, no window, and a steel door. Recessed pots provided light that were a little blue for my liking. I was in a chair. It appeared to be metal. My hands were fastened with cuffs that had a foot long chain which ran through a metal loop on the steel table I sat beside. I had a bad Déjà vu-ee feeling pass over me. Was I dreaming the last five months and still strapped to that chair at the Colorado Springs airport?
No, then I’d had all of my tats and I could feel their magic. Now I couldn’t even feel the two I still had.
What
