Wanderers 3: Garden of The Gods (The Wanderers) Page 5

  “Sure do say.” She motioned to the booth and set the menus on either side of the table. I unbuttoned my jacket and slipped it off, tossing it into the booth before sliding in after it.

  “Can I get you some coffee and is your girlfriend coming right away?”

  “Coffee will be nice, black, please and water. Tell me, why did you ask about a girlfriend? I said my partner was getting us a room.”

  “I heard you ride up. I may wear contacts, but I can tell a woman when I see one. A real looker too, I was surprised to see you riding bitch.”

  “Bitch?” I asked.

  “Shotgun? Whatever you prefer,” Pam added. “Now my husband, Raymond, has his own bike, an Indian, just like mine, but mine’s prettier. I don’t think Raymond has ever ridden bitch behind me. I think it must be your youth. People our age are more traditional about such things.”

  I was tempted to make a comment about having the person in front bouncing up and down on my nut sack, but decided that Pam might think that was a little crude of me.

  “There comes your girlfriend. I’ll get those coffees,” Pam said and turned away.

  “She’s not–” but Pam was already walking away.

  I took off my gloves, storing them in my jacket, and picked up my menu. The selection was Mexican and American, like almost every small restaurant in the southwest.

  Tess joined me a minute or two later. She slid a plastic key across the table at me. “Got us the last room on the end to the right. That okay?”

  “Sure, we’ll do less damage to the structure if we get attacked.”

  Tess frowned. “Say what now? You think that’s possible? I mean, if Beast took care of our stalker then we should be safe, right?”

  “We’re probably safe, but we’ve been getting surprise visits damn near daily since I got you. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were a danger magnet.”

  “Hey, it’s not my fault,” Tess said with a little bit of heat.

  I grinned and shook my head. “I’m messing with you. No, I’m sure it’s Rowle cooking up something to keep us amused.”

  “Oh, okay, what looks good?” She asked opening the thin sheet of paper that made up the menu.

  “I’m getting a hamburger and home fries.”

  “That sounds like a good start; let’s see what the dessert looks like,” Tess said.

  I grinned. Her regrowing her left hand and most of her right leg had burned a lot of stored calories. Nothing is free and to build the muscle, bone, and skin; Tess’s body had converted fat. She hadn’t been overweight when I found her, but now she was marathon runner lean. I’d encouraged her to eat, but she was barely keeping up with the healing spell’s demands. I should finish the rest of her foot in one more healing session and then she could add a little fat. Wanderers try to maintain a little extra weight, not much, just enough to be able to heal injuries without losing too much mass.

  Come to think of it, I could use a little extra mass myself. Coming back from the dead hadn’t taken as much to repair as Tess’s limbs, but it still dropped my surplus fat level.

  The hostess came back over and took our order. I let Tess order first and then just told Pam to put a two in front of that.

  “I wasn’t expecting you to be that hungry,” Tess said.

  “The way things have been going, I need to add a little fat. Just in case.”

  Tess nodded, understanding my reference.

  “So, straight to training after we eat or did you want to nap?” Tess asked.

  “Training. There’s a lot of daylight left, and we might as well make use of it.”

  “So, what’s next?”

  “More of the same, Apprentice, more of the same. We’ll practice some of the techniques you’ll need to burn your own tattoo, and then we’ll go over the familiar summoning spell.

  Tess smiled; wide enough to make my own cheeks hurt. “Great, I’m excited.”

  Chapter 5

  Raphael

  We finished eating and returned to Tess’s Harley. Beast, still behind his hawk glamour, took flight as we mounted up. I sat behind Tess again and directed her up Hill Street and into the mountains northwest of town. A ley line passed across Raton on an east to west heading, and I wanted to be close to it for Tess’s training. Hill Street became Old Raton Pass Road in a few miles and the terrain grew steeper and the trees not much more than small evergreens. After fifteen minutes or so, I had her pull off onto an unimproved road that led along a ridge top. The road dead-ended in a flat area that faced the mountains to the west. The ley line crossed almost directly above the clearing.

  I stepped off as Tess killed the engine. Beast lit behind us and dropped his glamour.

  “Beast, while we’re training, I’d appreciate you keeping a close eye on the surroundings,” I said. “I don’t want anybody or anything sneaking up on us.”

  “Of course,” he growled.

  Tess took off her helmet and followed me a short ways to the center of the clearing. There wasn’t any grass, but a little snow lay in the shade of the short pines at the forest’s edge.

  I took out my salt bottle, uncorked it, and tossed the contents into the air. As the salt fell, I cast the circle spell and the crystals lined up and dropped into a circle around us.

  I sat cross-legged in the dirt and Tess immediately copied my pose, sitting close enough for our knees to touch. We joined hands without speaking, and I concentrated on meshing auras, minds, and emotions with her. In less than a minute, we were totally meshed and ready to start training. Her ability to mesh fully with me so quickly had surprised me at first. I’ve meshed with Wiccans and a few others over the decades, but no one had been able to accomplish it in less than five minutes.

  *Close the circle,* I told Tess through our link.

  She concentrated and with almost no assistance from me, applied energy to the salt and an energy dome snapped into place above us. In order for her to practice magic inside the circle, she either had to cast the circle or mesh with me before I cast it. Since I also needed to be able to cast magic, we had to mesh. She needed training, so, of course, I’d assign her all of the tasks that she could do. The more she did them, the more natural it was and the faster she could accomplish them.

  *Have you been practicing the shield spell?* I asked.

  *Yes, yesterday and again today as we rode. I’m pretty good at following orders, if I do say so myself.*

  “Okay, then show me,” I said, switching back to verbal. Direct communication over our meshed link was as easy as speaking, but I had a lot more practice at verbal communications. Besides, with our emotions meshed, we could feel a lot more than words could communicate. I’d forgotten that until I tried a little fib about my feelings and Tess had called me on it.

  I watched as Tess concentrated and then began to trace the shield spell in the air between us. I mentally counted off the seconds from the time I gave her the instruction to the moment she spoke the two words required to complete her shield spell. It snapped into existence inside our circle in just over twenty seconds.

  “That’s good. Keep up the practice without actually speaking the words until you can get it under five seconds.”

  “I don’t see why I need to be able to generate the spell so fast. I have your watch, and you said I could start working on my own tattoos as soon as I was ready. I think I’m ready,” Tess asserted.

  “Really?”

  “You said yourself that I’m progressing very fast. I think I’m ready,” she repeated.

  “Tess, while it’s true you’re learning much faster than I expected, I’m still your mentor, and I’ll decide when you’re ready. As for the watch, its shield can be activated faster than you can perform your own spell, but it won’t be as powerful as your own spell. Besides, the shield tattoo is the same pattern as the one you’re learning except with the addition of a little trigger pattern, which will replace the words to the spell. When I feel you can trace the pattern in your sleep, then I’ll let you try bu
rning it into your flesh.”

  “Burning?” Through our link, her apprehension was obvious.

  That was understandable. She’d had significant burns on her face from the same blast that had taken her hand and leg.

  “That’s right. Cancel your shield,” I ordered, standing up.

  She did so without comment.

  I turned my back and lifted my leather jacket and shirt above my waist. With the skin of my back exposed, I focused on my shield tattoo. While inert, it was invisible beneath my skin, but once I activated it, I felt it warm and Tess’s face was lit by its green glow. My shield appeared inside our circle. The tattoo would continue to glow as long as it was active.

  “See the pattern?” I asked, looking down at Tess over my shoulder.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you see how it’s different than the one you’ve been practicing?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Yeah, there’s two little marks at the end point of the trace.”

  “Exactly.” I let the tat go dark and tucked my shirt back in before sitting back down. “If you really think you’re ready, then you can take Walt’s grimoire for your own and start practicing that pattern. When you can generate a glowing pattern in the air without making a mistake, I’ll let you start burning it.”

  “Is it going to be painful?” Tess asked looking uncertain. It was the only time I’d seen her look hesitant about any of her training.

  I grinned. “It’s not comfortable and hurts more than getting a regular tattoo, but I think you’ll manage the pain. If you want, you can do the first one while we’re meshed. It will lessen the pain.”

  “You mean you’ll share the pain?”

  “Yes, you’ll have me to take some of it,” I said.

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t seem right to let you share my pain when I’m the one that needs the tattoos.”

  “Don’t let that worry you. I’ve done dozens of tattoos, and the pain doesn’t bother me anymore.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  Oops, there’s that emotional link again.

  “Okay, it does bother me some, but not like it did the first time,” I corrected.

  “Did your mentor, Walt, mesh with you when you burned your first one?”

  I would have liked to lie to her, but she’d know. “No, he didn’t. Walt and I never meshed totally. I think it was the emotional component. Guys just don’t like getting that much into an emotional link with another man.”

  “Are you too macho?” Tess asked. I didn’t have to see her grin to know she was just jerking my chain.

  “Found out,” I admitted.

  “What now?” Tess asked.

  “Now, we’ll start working on something else. The shield needs to be your first tattoo and will go the farthest toward keeping you alive if we get into a fight. But I know how boring it gets repeating the same spell over and over, so,” I pulled my grimoire out of my pocket and set it on the ground between our touching knees.

  “Show me what I’m looking for,” I commanded.

  The grimoire opened, and pages flipped past until the small book remained open. I picked it up and handed it to Tess.

  She looked down at the right-hand page. “Wind? You’re going to teach me wind summoning next?”

  I nodded. “You did say that you couldn’t wait until you could create your own dust devil.”

  Her smile was infectious. I’d forgotten how much fun learning some of the spells could be. Maybe that’s why Wanderers were always reaped when they were young. Young people just have more enthusiasm for learning new things. I’d been the same way once. These days, I learned everything that I thought I needed, but learning a new spell just didn’t excite me as it had when I was Tess’s age.

  “How do I start?” Tess asked.

  “The same way you did the shield spell. The difference is that the shield will always form around you unless you concentrate on it having another form. Wind, however, doesn’t have a default setting. You have to activate the spell while thinking of what you want it to do.”

  “You mean like this morning when you brought it in from one direction the first time and then switched it into a funnel?”

  “Exactly,” I said. I looked south toward the bright sun that had passed the zenith an hour or more ago. A few low clouds were passing near us.

  “Look there,” I said indicating the clouds.

  Tess followed my gaze, and I focused on the page in the grimoire. Reading the pattern upside down was no trick for me since I had learned that pattern years ago. With Tess following along, I traced a glowing pattern in the air between us and then spoke the three words necessary to activate that particular spell. At the same time, I concentrated on those clouds.

  The wind spell snapped as it activated and, at first, nothing appeared to happen. Then as the mass of air I was controlling picked up momentum, the clouds begin to hurry across the sky toward us. I held my focus for nearly a minute, feeling Tess’s excitement grow as the spell’s energy flowed through us.

  I canceled the spell, and the clouds continue to rush across the sky as the air mass gradually slowed without my energy to push it on.

  “Now, it’s your turn. Trace the pattern, speak the words, and focus on what you want the wind to do.”

  “It’s that simple?” Tess asked.

  I laughed and shook my head. “We’ll see how simple you think it is when you complete the spell.”

  Tess grinned and studied the spell’s pattern.

  I tapped the ley line and topped off my reserves of power. Since we were meshed, the inrushing energy came to both of us. I felt her emotions rising with the energy. Like always, meshing and jointly using magical energies had an amorous effect on a person’s feelings. I did my best to quell them without being blatant about it. Whether Tess noticed my efforts, I couldn’t tell. She was concentrating on the spell and might have missed it. Not that it mattered to her, but I didn’t want to interrupt her training with a bout of something that I wasn’t sure I wanted to get back into with her.

  After a few minutes, Tess lifted her eyes and raised the book higher between us. She began to move her right index finger in the air while keeping her eye on the pattern. I only had to stop her twice when she made a slight error that would have kept the spell from activating. Of course, there’s always a small chance that the error would have created some other spell, but the odds were against it.

  It took her nearly ten minutes to complete the pattern from start to finish without a mistake. She spoke the three words, and I felt the snap of energy. I monitored her focus to see what she was going to do with the wind.

  A second later, I felt my hair start to move.

  Uh-oh.

  Suddenly we were sitting in the center of a dust devil. Sandy grit blasted at us, gathering speed in just a few seconds.

  “Kill the spell,” I ordered.

  “How?” Tess shouted. It was rapidly getting noisy inside our circle.

  *Just think of ending it.*

  *Okay.*

  A second later, I felt the energy leave the spell. The dust devil continued to bombard us. I triggered my own wind tat and pushed energy into the opposite direction. In another couple of seconds, the air inside our circle was once more still.

  I looked at Tess’s wind-tossed hair and knew my own was just as bad. I could feel the grit that had gotten against my scalp and down my collar. Every tiny movement rubbed the grit between my clothes and skin. I needed a shower. I could get it out without one, but that would require me to strip naked, and I wasn’t in the mood, no matter what my emotions were beginning to tell me.

  “Ick,” Tess said pulling at the back of her collar.

  I waited to see what she would say next.

  She looked at me, her blue eyes warm, and her breath coming a little faster. “Well, I apparently did something wrong.”

  My own pulse was increasing with hers. It’s a requirement in meshing for your pulse and breathing to synchronize.

  I tri
ed to tap down our emotions again and saw that Tess noticed it immediately.

  She opened her mouth to say something, and I cut her off.

  “Let me guess. You were trying to create a dust devil,” I said.

  She frowned but nodded. “Yeah, but not inside the circle. I thought it would form outside it.”

  “Did you specifically concentrate on it being outside the circle?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  She looked chagrined. “Well, no. I just assumed that it would be outside.”

  “And that’s why magic isn’t as easy as it looks when I do it.”

  Tess shook her head. “I’m sorry. I feel stupid for doing that wrong.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t, I made plenty of my own mistakes when I was learning. That’s one of the reasons we always train inside a circle. If I’d been following your thoughts closer, I would have noticed that you hadn’t concentrated on the dust devil being outside the circle. It’s as much my fault as yours.”

  “Then it’s your fault that my clothes feel like they’re made of sandpaper?” She squirmed and pulled at her crotch.

  I laughed. “Consider it an object lesson to pay more attention before you activate a spell.”

  “Hell,” Tess said as she flexed her shoulders. “How am I going to concentrate on training when I feel this miserable? That damn sand got everywhere.”

  I resisted laughing, but she felt my amusement through the mesh.

  “Okay, Boss, how do we get the sand out?”

  “I prefer to take a shower, but a dip in a cold stream works just as well.”

  Tess made a point of examining our surroundings. “I don’t see either one on top of this mountain. Got any other suggestions?”

  “Well, we could strip, and you could try blowing the sand off of us,” I offered.

  She pursed her lips, and I could feel that she was seriously considering the idea. After a few seconds, she shook her head. “No, with what I just did, I don’t think I’m ready to try blowing sand off of my bare body. With my luck, I’d end up sandblasting our skin off.”