A woman’s voice called out from the top of the draw. “It was a cow. A damn cow. Stupid beast ran straight at me. Sorry, Sheriff.”
Arjenie heard something. She must have, though the sound didn’t really register in the busy din of her brain. But that barely heard sound sent fear flooding through her, made her spin around—and cast up one hand, fingers spread, and concentrate with all her might.
A half-dozen balls of mage light sprang into being. The sudden brilliance gave her a great view of the monstrous bear charging them like a freight train.
And the black wolf leaping off the rocks above it to land on its back.
A gun went off. She wanted to hit whoever did that—couldn’t they see that they might hit Benedict? But the wolf had already bounced off, as if he’d used the bear’s back as a trampoline. Maybe he’d just wanted to get its attention.
If so, it had worked. The bear turned to face its attacker, baring those horribly big teeth, and rose up. And up. And up. Kodiak, she thought numbly. That had to be nine feet of bear, and the only one that big was the Kodiak, which absolutely could not be down here in Virginia and—
Another shot. Another, at a different timber, and she saw that one of the deputies was shooting his rifle and the sheriff had his handgun out and maybe she should drop the mage lights and get out Benedict’s .357, but oh God, they’d just made the bear mad because it dropped to all fours again and charged.
She sent one of the mage lights winging straight at its face.
It wouldn’t burn. Mage lights produced no heat at all, which wasn’t possible according to physics but seemed to be true. But bears were supposed to have poor sight. Having a light shining right in it eyes should blind it or at least confuse it.
The bear skidded, batting at the light with one enormous paw—which of course did nothing. Mage lights had no physical substance.
The wolf raced in—and latched on to the bear’s nose.
It swiped at the wolf with that huge paw. The wolf went sailing—and a wall of fire sprang up in front of her. No, around her, all the way around her and Aunt Robin and Sammy. “Uncle Clay, Seri’s still out there! I can’t see! Drop your fire!”
Uncle Clay’s strong arm gathered her close. “Hold tight.” He raised his voice. “It’s a thin ring of fire—you can get through if you hurry! Don’t worry about your clothes—I can douse fire as easily as I can start it. Don’t run, don’t attract the bear’s notice—but if you can get here without it seeing you, you can come through the fire!”
“No, don’t say that! The bear can hear you!”
“The bear?” That was Sammy, incredulous. “The bear doesn’t speak—”
More shots rang out, a dizzying cascade of shots that hurt her ears. At first she thought her ears were ringing oddly, but after a couple seconds she knew that wasn’t it. She really did hear Havoc’s shrill, excited bark.
“Havoc!” Robin cried. “Clay—”
“No.” He said that in a final voice—no as in I will stop you. Do not think of leaving the safety of this ring of fire.
If you could get in through the fire without getting hurt, you could get out that way, too. “I’m okay,” she told her uncle. Was Havoc’s bark fading, going away? “I—no, Sammy, don’t!”
Even as her cousin turned an astonished face her way—he hadn’t done anything—Clay turned to look at him, his arm loosening just enough for Arjenie to pull free, suck in a lungful of air, and fling herself through the fire.
She stopped a few feet outside it and stood, gasping and only slightly singed, in the trampled dirt and grass. At some point in all the chaos she’d lost focus, and all of the mage lights but the original were gone, but that first one still bobbed obediently over her head. Plus the fire gave out light as well as heat, so she saw pretty well.
Sheriff Porter knelt beside one of his deputies. Rick, that was his name. The man lay on the ground. She couldn’t see how badly he was hurt—the sheriff’s body blocked most of her view. But she knew it was Rick because his skin was pale and the other deputy was black, and besides, when she looked around she saw that deputy running toward them from the other side of the cul-de-sac.
It was what she didn’t see that held her mute and still. No bear. No Benedict. And no Havoc.
Arjenie had learned that adventures tended to be ten percent frantic action and ninety percent waiting. The next hour and a half drew a big, red underline beneath the waiting part.
Rick had still been alive when the ambulance pulled away. He’d been lucky in one respect. The bear had only gotten in one good swipe before taking off . . . and Sammy’s Gift was healing. He’d been unlucky in that the swipe had been to his gut. Those claws had ripped through flesh and muscle like it was toilet paper.
Gut wounds were bad. She knew way too many statistics about them. Sammy had kept Rick going, had started the healing—but he’d emptied himself doing it. He’d drawn from Uncle Clay, too. Uncle Clay didn’t have half the spellcraft that Aunt Robin did—it wasn’t a big interest of his—but he had what might be a secondary Gift, or at least an ability that had been passed down in his family. He could share power with another Delacroix without a circle.
He and Aunt Robin were still down in the draw with the swarm of officers. They couldn’t make a proper circle with Sammy depleted, but Aunt Robin could scry for magic and try to find the bear.
Arjenie was up at the top of the draw, sitting in the sheriff’s car. Seri and Sammy were up here, too, perched on the trunk of the deputy’s car. They were playing one of those phone games where you can invite someone to play against you—not with their usual high-spirited rivalry but quietly. As if they needed to think of something else, anything else, other than what had happened.
Arjenie was using a phone, too. Not hers. Benedict’s. His brother had called him on it and Arjenie had answered. “Surgery,” she repeated. “Well, obviously Nettie can’t call me right away. But I really, really need to talk to her as soon as possible.”
“I’m leaving for the hospital now,” Rule said.
“Who is she operating on? Is it someone I know?”
“Noah Stafford. He doesn’t live at Clanhome, so you may not have met him. We don’t know yet what happened, but he was in bad shape when they found him.”
“Do you think it has something to do with the war?”
“Possibly. His chances are good, since he’s lasted this long, but one of the injuries was to his jaw, so he won’t be able to speak for a while.” There was a pause, and what sounded like a car door slamming. “As soon as Nettie’s out of surgery, I’ll ask her to call you.”
“That’s a lousy time to be hit with bad news. Or anxious news, rather, because it isn’t really bad. Benedict couldn’t have been hurt too much or he wouldn’t have taken off after the bear like he did.” Nettie was Benedict’s daughter. She was a shaman and a physician and she was fifty-four years old, which was why they didn’t advertise the relationship outside the clan. People weren’t supposed to know that lupi lived a lot longer than humans . . . if they didn’t get eaten by a bear, that is. “It can be rough being so far away and worrying.”
“She’ll be puzzled, as I am. It’s not like Benedict to take off in pursuit and leave you undefended.”
“I’m ridiculously defended. If I were any more defended I couldn’t get anything done at all. But I need to find him. He’ll be expecting that.”
“I think,” Rule said dryly, “he’d expect you to sit tight in the safest place possible and wait for him.”
“That’s what he’d want. It’s not what he’d expect.” Movement glimpsed out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. “Oh, the sheriff’s here with my aunt and uncle. I need to talk to them. And you probably need to get off the phone, anyway.”