The front door opened, and a man stepped inside. Tall, lean, a trim beard and dark eyes beneath a shock of black hair. Dimples, whom Bear had called Palmer Hain. I couldn’t make out the details of his face because they were blurred by his magic. He was at least as powerful as I was. In a battle of spells, Rolon wouldn’t stand a chance against him.
Maybe Rolon saw this as well. For a third time, he produced his weapon. Hain’s expression betrayed no hint of fear. He made a small, sharp gesture with his right hand, and Rolon went down in a heap, his eyes rolling back in his head, the pistol slipping from his fingers. I didn’t know if he was dead or alive.
Nor did I have time to find out. I warded myself: Hain, me, and a sheath of power. I didn’t bother warding myself against Saorla; her power was beyond me. If she wanted to kill me herself, there was precious little I could do about it.
Hain’s gaze snapped to my face as I cast. He threw a spell at me. I couldn’t tell what it was. The impact jarred me, made me take a step back. But my warding held, and a second later he swayed as his attack rebounded on him.
By this time, Bear’s transformation was nearly complete. The good news was he had taken the form of a black bear, as opposed to a grizzly. The bad news was that he might have been the biggest black bear I’d ever seen. His bellow had become a full ursine roar. I backed away, thought about reaching for my Glock, but reconsidered. I didn’t want to kill the guy, for his sake and mine.
“I had thought to spare you, Justis Fearsson. I saved your life more than once because I thought you could help us kill Namid’skemu. But that opportunity has passed.”
The bear lumbered toward me, Hain behind him and to the side. If one of them didn’t kill me, the other would.
Weres, when they shifted, took on the attributes of their totem creatures, and black bears, as a rule, tended to be timid. They weren’t natural killers. I cast again: a solid piece of wood, the bear’s nose, and a good hard thwack. Bear howled and reared at the impact of my spell, but he broke off his advance.
I wasn’t done. Hain, unlike the bear, was every bit a killer. I’d seen the look in his eyes the night he murdered the homeless man. And I was certain that he had warded himself against any direct magical assault.
I threw another spell at Bear, this one more aggressive. I heard bone snap and a deafening shriek of agony, watched as the animal toppled over, narrowly missing Hain. And as the weremancer danced out of the way of the werebear, I cast my third spell. My magic, Hain, and a hole in the floor beneath him.
He fell, though he was able to throw himself to the side and avoid being swallowed by the hole I’d conjured. Bear continued to flail and howl, and Hain had to roll away from the creature.
Hain, Bear’s CD rack, and a firm shove. The rack crashed down on the weremancer with a cascade of jewel cases and discs. He groaned and tried to push the rack off of him. But by then I was in motion. I closed the distance between us in two quick strides and kicked him in the head. Hain went still.
Bear’s cries had become loud whines, and his writhing had slowed. Still, I held out some hope that he would crush Hain and finish him off.
“Impressive,” Saorla said from behind me.
I spun, bracing myself at the first touch of charged air on my face. But still I could do nothing to keep her spell from hammering into me. I flew across Bear’s living room, slammed into a wall, and slid to the floor, dazed and sore. It was like I’d been backhanded by King Kong.
She walked to where I lay and stood over me, her mouth set in a thin, hard line.
“I am not certain what I ought to do with you. You are more than you seem, and we have invested much in preparing you for Namid’skemu’s death. We learned your defenses, studied your wardings, saved your life when we had to. That took time, effort. I am loath to waste it.”
“When did you do all of that?” I asked, trying to clear my head and buy myself a little time.
“We have been doing it for quite a while now. This is why we studied your father.”
That got my attention. “You’ve been hurting my father so that you could learn about me?”
“Of course. Why else would we bother with an old man who has lost his mind? You use different warding spells, but your magic and his are similar, as is the case with all children of weremystes.”
I nodded slowly, and sat up. I had noticed in the past that the blurring effect I saw with every other myste I met was absent in my dad, and I had even wondered if this was because our magic, for lack of a better analogy, operated on the same frequency. Here was proof.
“He was right, then,” I said. “He kept telling me that he didn’t matter, but that I did. You were testing him to get at me.”
“Aye, we were. But now Namid is warned against us. He will not be so quick to answer your summons, and he will be ever more cautious. Your value to us is largely gone. I ought to kill you and be done. But you intrigue me, and you have proven yourself unusually resourceful.” She glanced back at Hain, who hadn’t moved since I kicked him. “He is one of my best, and you defeated him. I did not expect that.”
Bear, still in animal form, continued to watch us, even as he licked gently at his broken leg.
“Well, you might as well kill me,” I said to the necromancer. “Because I won’t be joining your army. I’m no chess piece.”
She faced me again, solemn and beautiful. “I can compel you,” she said. “Not all the time, but during the phasings. And I might even be able to force you into a phasing, as we force the weres to turn.”
I felt myself blanch. The phasings were bad enough three nights out of each month. But to be subject to them at someone else’s whim might have been enough to convince me that I ought to take blockers, the drugs some weremystes used to suppress the phasings. I had refused in the past to take them because the relief they offered from what Namid called the moontimes came at a cost, namely my access to magic. I was willing to endure the phasings as the price of being a runecrafter. But I would give up spellmaking forever before I allowed Saorla to use me as another of her magical slaves.
“This frightens you. I can see it in your eyes.”
“I’ll take blockers,” I said. “I’ll take my own life if I have to. You will not own me in that way.”
“You choose death, then.”
“I choose to fight.”
I cast the spell as quickly as I had ever crafted any conjuring. Namid had long wanted me to cast without hesitation, to make my magic as immediate as thought. That’s what I tried to do now.
Yes, she was a creature of magic, much as Namid was. But she had taken corporeal form here in this house, and I was banking on this being her one potential weakness. I didn’t go for a direct assault; she’d be expecting that. And there were no more shelves to bring down on her; I’d used that up on Hain.
But there was plenty of stuff lying around the room. I opted for something small and hard that wouldn’t draw her attention. The elements flashed through my mind. Saorla, the stone ashtray on Bear’s coffee table, and the distance between them. I didn’t wait for the magic to build. I didn’t even pause to visualize the spell in action. It was the runecrafting equivalent of grabbing the ashtray and hurling it blindly. Except far more accurate.
The ashtray spun like a Frisbee and rammed into her face, an inch below her left eye. She let out an enraged screech, even as she fell to the floor. She was on her feet again before I could cast a second spell, blood pouring from an uneven gash across her cheekbone. Pain exploded in my head-a thousand hot metal spikes piercing my skull. I clutched at my temples, screaming, unable to stop myself.
“You will pay for that, Justis Fearsson,” I heard her say, so close she might as well have been breathing the words into my ear. “You will die in anguish, slowly, so that you have plenty of time-”
Gunshots blared, three of them in quick succession, and blood began to spread across the front of Saorla’s dress. I glanced to my right. Rolon lay on his side, his pistol held before him, his face wan. I grabbed my Glock from my pocket and opened fire as well, squeezing off six shots. Every one found its mark. Her chest and her gut were glazed with blood. Her body convulsed with the impact of each bullet, but she didn’t go down. I knew we couldn’t kill her; and the next time I saw her she would be totally healed, not to mention totally pissed. But all I cared about right now was surviving this encounter.