Redemption, p.7
Redemption, page 7
part #1 of Earth Sorcerer Series
I didn’t hesitate, and I sent a heavy burst of raw earth magic at his shields, concentrating on the magic and not my sight.
I hit, and started to wear down his shields, but less than a second later he skipped to the side and returned my attack. He moved faster than I could see, which is why it was so critical not to fight with my eyes. My earth blast tracked his magic and stuck with him, while a dome of physical earth rose up around me to counter his attack.
His air magic went right through it, and impacted my shields, but the blades of air he sent harmlessly bounced off the wall of earth. It was a cheap trick, but it meant I didn’t have to waste my magic burning off physical air attacks. At least, not until he broke through.
The wall exploded rather spectacularly, but I wasn’t inside it anymore. I was under the earth beneath the patio. Hopefully, Gianna would forgive me, because the vast patio surrounding the inground pool exploded off the ground and raced toward the air sorcerer.
The air sorcerer dropped his shielding around the wolves to better protect himself from my raw magic that had almost gotten through his shields, and now the physical stone hurtling in his direction. He dodged the latter, and then hesitated, probably unsure as how to attack me when I was below the ground, outside of his raw magic I mean.
It was a simple counter, but effective, without anything but raw magic able to attack me, I’d moved the footing of the fight to a contest of pure magic power, which I’d win if he was stupid enough to stick around. To be honest, I was a little surprised he hadn’t just run, which meant his pride must’ve gotten the better of him. Maybe he was just concerned word would get out, and no one would hire him anymore after abandoning his employers.
At the same time, it wouldn’t do to get cocky. I was more powerful and wearing down his shields, but I was also the only one splitting my focus in that moment, by shielding two vampires while he’d temporarily withdrawn his support of the shifters to strengthen his shields.
I set the trajectory of the large blocks of patio stone as they flew past him into the sky, and then withdrew my magic from them altogether as pure momentum had them flying off.
His air magic tried to surround me underground, no doubt to rip me up out of the earth where he could get to me with other attacks, but I dispersed his attempt by flaring my shields and shredding his magic, while for one second I sent a pulse of magic twice as powerful as my raw earth stream along it. It made me temporarily vulnerable, but not long enough for him to capitalize on it.
He absorbed the attack, but also as I’d hoped he’d moved back and up away from me by about fifteen feet. Sort of a flinch, one I’d been hoping for. It was human nature, and something I’d used against Kas in our fights a number of times.
I grinned, as I’d hoped, like me, he was tracking me and my attacks with his sense of my magic. My magic was no longer in those patio stones, and my other attacks and pulse had his full attention. They’d stopped rising and had started to fall to earth. Non-magical but extremely heavy three foot square and two-inch-thick patio stones started to rain around him, and one slammed into him. Like I said, the second tip, he couldn’t dodge it if he was too stupid to see it coming.
Sure, his shields easily stopped it from braining him, or even hurting him at all, but magic also yielded to physics, which meant it pushed him down and sent him spinning toward the ground. It wouldn’t take him long to recover, but he didn’t have long.
My magic stream stopped attacking him or his shield altogether, and went back into the stones, which raced and enclosed him while he was still disoriented, and I pulled down hard. Instead of slamming into the earth next to the mansion, the earth opened up and swallowed the bastard.
His magic fought, hard, but the lower he got the less magic he had, until it was completely cut off at around two hundred and fifty feet. The winner in a tug of war was always raw strength. His shields fell, and I crushed him into paste. Not to be cruel, it would’ve been far crueler to withdraw my magic and bury him alive, to let him slowly suffocate.
I brought the stones back up, a couple of them were broken, but the patio didn’t look half bad when I finished. I even fixed the divots in the grass. As far as inside the house, once the shields had dropped the pack had lost their edge. Shifters were powerful, and fast, more than a match for a two-hundred-year-old vampire.
Sherry, Raymond, Gianna, and two of her enforcers were far over that age, and they ended the battle extremely quickly after that. The house would need a remodel, but they didn’t lose anymore vampire lives. Based on what I felt, they’d lost twelve vampires in the attack. I could feel the dead bodies of course, and the minerals and metals in their bodies cooling. It was an unfortunate loss, but it could’ve been a lot worse. They’d have lost the whole coven in Vancouver without me.
I’d definitely earned the support the vampires had given me that morning. I also felt… pride? I didn’t feel good about the deaths of course, or killing, but in preserving the lives of my allies.
I helped bury the bodies, literally. The vampires would also track down and get me all the assets of the air sorcerer I’d taken down, for a five percent retrieval fee. That fee made them very thorough and good at their jobs, since the more they retrieved for me was the more they got as a result. One of those win-win situations I liked.
At his power, he’d been a mercenary for a handful of years, which meant I’d probably just made more cash than I’d stolen altogether in the last six years. At least single digit millions, if not more. I definitely wouldn’t need a human job to make money, but it still appealed to me as a hobby and I’d look into that kind of stuff once all the dust settled with the cabal.
If I survived. The future was just too unsure to make solid decisions that way.
Chapter Eight
A second shower, khakis, and a collared shirt later I was barely on time to meet Katy outside the building. She pulled up in a growling mustang-GT convertible with the top down, and she waved happily as I headed her way. I loved the car, but it was a bit odd getting into the passenger side. I might’ve been twenty-two, but I’d been using my power to get around since I was sixteen, or if it was close, walking.
In short, I wasn’t used to being in cars, or any motor vehicles.
Katy looked fantastic, or sexy beyond belief if I was honest with myself. More so in the loosely conforming red sundress with just a peek at her vast cleavage and only hints at her sumptuous and tight in the right places hourglass body than she had been in the barely there club dress last night. There was definitely something to leaving some things to the imagination.
Her long curly strawberry hair was up in a messy bun, revealing her graceful neck and petite ears appointed with diamond studs. The gentle beauty of her face was even more apparent without being framed by her curls. No doubt the loose hairs were from the wind, but that didn’t detract from the view in the least, quite the contrary in fact. She also had a casual pair of brown sandals at the end of her very long and toned legs, that I somehow resisted looking directly at. The only other jewelry she wore was a necklace, which was spelled with protections.
“Love the car.”
She smiled a bit shyly, but her voice was clear and sweet, “Thanks, you can’t drive.”
I didn’t think she was nervous, perhaps that tentative smile just meant she’d be a tad more conservative alone, without the benefit of two girlfriends present, not to mention a few drinks. I felt similarly. It was different as I had her complete attention, and she certainly had mine. I reminded myself this wasn’t a date, but given how she was dressed up, even casually so, I questioned that certainty.
Without harping on it too much, it was different for me. I knew I wasn’t a bad looking guy, never had trouble getting attention before, but starting a new relationship, even a friendship, wasn’t something I was used to or one of my strong points. I didn’t imagine most of my future friends would bully themselves into my life like Kas had.
Katy was also the youngest of the three, and actually looked her age, right around nineteen. I knew Miku was over a hundred, Lisa over two hundred despite her appearance of mid-twenties, and Reah looked nineteen but was probably closer to her late twenties. No judgement there, she’d been doing magic since she could talk probably, and supernaturals grew up faster.
I was tempted to drop a compliment on her appearance, but I reminded myself again I wasn’t on a date.
I laughed at her comment, “Wouldn’t know how. You know people die in these things right?” I asked only half teasingly, as I filled the body of her car with my magic. Nothing short of a missile would hurt the thing at that point, and I was fairly sure an Abrams tank would come in second best in a confrontation.
She snickered as she pulled away from the curb.
“Italian okay with you? I’m starving.”
I smirked, “You’re driving.”
She grinned, “Good answer. Have you thought at all about what level of relationship you want?”
My mind went in the wrong direction, but I brought it under heel. Still, based on her alluringly mysterious smile I wondered if she was flirting with me.
“From what I understand we’re both allied to the coven, so there’ll be a little crossover, if they call on you when I call on them?”
She nodded, “Some, but limited. It would include support in a critical situation if the coven called us in, but that doesn’t extend to say… warding your home. They can’t ask us to do something for someone else like that.”
She pounded the gas to swerve in front of another car, and then laughed when I grabbed the oh shit bar.
I nodded, pretended my whole body wasn’t tensed up, and somehow my voice came out confidently even if I’d left my stomach fifty feet back in the other lane. No doubt lying on the side of the road next to my man card.
“I do want that. The home warding I mean. Something to at least alert me if I’m sleeping or away, and to protect me long enough to take stock and meet the threat. Perhaps something to make it sturdier as well, less likely to be set on fire, or hit by lightning. I may also need help tracking someone on occasion, though I’m hoping that won’t come up too much outside of my work with the vampires. I’m bound to make enemies though, unrelated to my alliance with the coven, even if the cabal backs off.”
The vampires could do a lot of things for me, but wards and tracking weren’t among their skills, they used the witches for that too.
She nodded, “We can do that. Also healing potions. From what I understand you heal a lot faster than a human, but not like a vamp or shifter. We can also put up a permanent glamour so that your neighbors won’t notice anything out of the ordinary if it comes up. We can enchant things as well, but I get the impression you won’t really need that service. Miku and the other vamps love to conceal weapons. There’re a couple of options there, for those things I mean.”
She pulled over and stopped in front of a small Italian restaurant, and we got out and headed inside. We weren’t all that far from the coven building. She smirked with a flirty tilt of her head, when I held the door open for her.
We dropped business for a moment as we were seated and ordered our drinks. I perused the menu long enough to decide on a shrimp primavera, and Katy ordered the veal. I was pretty relaxed, since there were no other supernaturals in range, and I was enjoying the company.
“So, you’re taking over the family business?”
Katy smiled, “You could say that. My mother has turned some things over since I graduated. I’m taking a couple of online college courses for the business side of our store, but most of my focus is on our world and alliances. My mother is still young though, not even fifty yet. We age slowly, and I look more like her little sister than daughter. I can do pretty much anything she can, but my point is that she’s a long way from retiring. Mostly I’m handling this because I’ve met you and know you a little. What about you, any plans?”
I shrugged, “I’m going to wait for things to shake out, and then see how much spare time I have before doing anything in the human world. I don’t really need to, but I don’t like to be sedentary.”
She smiled, and her eyes wandered down for a second, “I can tell.”
Yeah, that was definitely flirting.
“Two options?”
She nodded, “We can trade favors and use cash, or we can ally directly and work for each other with no cost.”
I frowned, “That second one sounds like it would be rather… lopsided, wouldn’t it?”
She tilted her head, and seemed surprised and a little angry, “That impressed with yourself?”
I snorted, “Other way around, Katy. I’m not underestimating myself or my power, but I was thinking you’d be out at my house once a week at least to support the various wards. How often are you attacked and need a big hammer to… hammer problems into pieces.”
Damn, real smooth Tony.
She blushed rather prettily, and looked at me apologetically, “Oh, Tony, I’m so sorry. I misunderstood, and I should’ve known better than to jump to that conclusion. It just never occurred to me you’d underestimate what that would mean for my family. We would use you for that, on the rare times we were threatened by an outside coven, but there are many other things that you could provide. We use a lot of semi-precious gems and crystals in wards, tracing spells, even offensive spells that we pre-make for battle or prepared defenses. Some rare spells require raw unworked silver, or even the occasional diamond.
“An earth sorcerer would be ideal to provide those things with a little effort on your part, mostly time, and it would save us a whole lot of money and trouble with suppliers, not to mention raw sea salt and a few other rare minerals. Components for spells and potions are expensive, because most of the easily sourced stuff out there is processed. We need all natural and the more recently it’s been taken from the earth the better. That’s more than worth a couple of hours a week maintaining wards with company I enjoy.
“Lastly, don’t underestimate the intimidation factor in such an alliance either. It would be a blessing for us and cut down on even the few dangers we face now. Very few witches would be foolish enough to challenge us for our territory if we had an alliance with a sorcerer, the head coven of all vampires, and a pack of shifters.”
I gave all that a little thought, and she was right. I hadn’t considered they’d want me to provide spell components, something easy for me but so important for them.
I nodded, “I hadn’t considered all of that. Precious gems and metals might be an issue though, depending on how things work out with the cabal. Semi-precious stones and various minerals won’t be an issue at all, nor sea salt.”
She asked, “Depending on what exactly?”
I shrugged, “If they back off I’ll respect their claims, which means I can’t fish silver or diamonds out of the earth. If they attack anyway, won’t back down, and Melody, me, and the others put a few down, then obviously some of those claims will be forfeit. If that second scenario happens,” and I don’t die, “then I can provide all of what you mentioned.”
I left off the, if I don’t die, part.
She nodded, “Still worth it.”
I smiled softly, and backtracked to her little speech, “So, you enjoy my company?”
She blushed, “So far.”
“Me as well. So, an alliance then?”
She nodded, “I believe so. We’ll go by the store afterwards, so you can meet my mother. I can’t imagine she’d object.”
“We should trade numbers now that I have a cell. Also, share a note, so the list of stuff you need from me gets updated on my end too. I’ll gather once a week, and hand it over when you come by for the wards?”
She smiled, “Works for me.”
We did that, I also gave her the address, and explained I’d need it warded in a week, barring the deal going sour for some reason. I was sure it’d be fine, but an inspection was a bit more than just a formality after all. The seller could change their mind or drag things out with counteroffers as well. Sure, the vampires were handling it, but there were coven laws against using compulsion for anything past criminal investigation and coverups for the secret. Using compulsion outside of feeding and covering things up, like for business deals or even personal relationships, was a death penalty offense. No second chances.
I was more relaxed having that out of the way, save meeting her mother for final approval, especially after Lisa telling me that Tina was prickly. The main course arrived, and our conversation moved away from business.
She prompted, “It couldn’t have been easy to be on the run for so long.”
I told her a little about what that’d been like, and also managed to learn a few things about her as well. She was confident in her power, extremely intelligent, and very focused on her magic. It wasn’t just how she made her living, it was her inheritance and her passion. She was anything but flighty, worked hard, and Sunday night at the club was one of the few times a week she really cut loose.
When she wasn’t out doing wards or working with an ally, she could usually be found in the store.
There was definitely some chemistry between us. I felt more than attracted enough that the thought of pursuing something with her was on my mind, but my life was a little undefined at that moment and I had a whole lot going on. There was also the worry of souring our brand-new alliance if things went south. Still, I immensely enjoyed our banter, very light flirting, her beautiful smile, and the company over lunch. She was an unusual and captivating mix of both vivaciousness and shyness that greatly appealed to me.
Another issue there was that I knew some witches greatly desired children with sorcerers, to add strength to their magical line. Most if not all parents wanted more for their children, and in the case of witches that meant greater power even above all other relationship concerns.
I didn’t get that vibe off of Katy at all in her obvious interest. She wasn’t hunting me, or offering a quick tumble in the hay. It was obvious she was interested in me, and not just my sperm, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to get to know her a lot better first. Honestly, she also had me more than a little mesmerized. The way she smiled, moved with grace, her dulcet voice, her intelligence, and her curves and beauty were in there as well. All of it devastating enough on my libido to warrant caution.
