Magic Triumphs

He laughed. Little streaks of smoke swirled around him. “I will give you a demonstration, Daughter of Nimrod. Then we shall speak again.”

The fire went out, like a snuffed-out candle.

I turned to Julie and the lawmen.

“Well,” Beau said, his voice calm. “Kenny, climb off Meredith, find a phone, and call down to the station. Tell them we’ve got another invasion on our hands and to get the evacuation alert out there.”

I headed to the gas station.

“Where are we going?” Julie caught up with me.

“We’re going to relight that pyre. Are you sure he is human?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Why are we relighting the pyre?”

“Because we’ve got an ancient fire mage on our hands, and he has a vendetta against my family. I need to talk to my father. Check the phone and if it works, call home and leave a message on the answering machine for Erra with everything you heard. Then call Roman and tell him we had a change of plans. Tell him to swing by the house and pick up the box. Adora should be home and she will let him in. We can’t wait till tonight. We need to talk to the Druids now.”

“Why?”

“Because Neig promised to give me a demonstration of his power. He doesn’t consider anything he’s done up to now a proper demonstration. According to him, making two hundred people disappear and sending a human who burned to death to deliver a message doesn’t count.”

“Crap,” Julie said.

“Find the phone. Call Curran after you’re done and tell him not to bother coming here. I’m going straight to the Druids once I’m done, and I doubt they’ll let him in.”

She ran behind the counter. I headed to the pump. Erra had told me that the more I gave of myself to the fire, the louder it would be for my father. This time Roland would answer me. I would scream into that fire and feed it magic until he picked up.

CHAPTER

12

“IT WILL BE okay,” Roman told me from the passenger seat.

I took the turn too fast. The Jeep jumped over a protruding root. The trees on both sides of the road stood so thick, it was like driving through a green tunnel. The witch forest thrived during magic waves.

“I sat by that damn fire for two hours. I fed enough magic into it to wake the dead. I screamed myself hoarse.”

“Parents,” Roman said. “Can’t live with them. Can’t kill them. You call, they don’t pick up. You don’t call, they get offended. Then they chew a hole in your head because you’re a bad son.”

“He is a bad father!” I snarled.

“Okay,” Roman said, his voice soothing. “Of course he is. Be reasonable. This is the guy who ordered his own grandson killed. Nobody is saying that he is a good father. All I’m saying is that parents don’t like being yelled at. He knows you’re upset and he doesn’t want to take your calls.”

“That’s family business. This is an outsider attacking us. This is different!”

Roman sighed. “I get it. I really do. Have you tried pleading? Maybe cry a little? That way he would know it was safe to take the call, and he would swoop in like a savior. Parents love to play saviors.”

I glared at him.

He raised his hands. “All I’m saying is when I need to talk to my dad, I don’t call him and scream at him because he got into a drunken brawl with Perun’s volhv, and Perun’s idiot kid followers decided to Taser Chernobog’s idol in his shrine, because that’s the closest they can come to lightning, and now my god wants them all murdered. I call and say, ‘Hey, Dad, I know you’re busy, but I’ve got a serious situation on my hands and I need your advice.’ Just try my way. I bet it will work.”

“Where the hell is this damn camp?”

“Make a right at the next fork.”

I took the next turn. The Jeep screeched, protesting the bumpy road. It was just me, the woods, and the black volhv. I’d sent Julie back. I’d wanted to bring her, but Roman had dug his heels in. According to him, he’d had to cash in all his favors, and that would only cover him and me.

“I feel like we’re driving in circles.”

“We are. They’re deciding if they’re going to let us in.”

I brought the Jeep to a halt and parked.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t have time for druid shenanigans.”

I shut the engine off, opened the passenger door, and stepped out.

“This is a mistake,” Roman told me.

I looked up into the treetops. “You know me,” I called out. “You know who I am and what I do. I brought you a name today. Neig. Neig the Undying. The legend. I spoke to him and he is coming for all of us. I need to know who he is.”

The trees didn’t respond.

I waited. The forest churned with life. Squirrels fussed at each other. A woodpecker drummed a steady staccato somewhere to the left. Things rustled in the underbrush.

Nothing.

I got back into the Jeep. The witch forest was outside my borders. The land called to me. It needed to be claimed and protected. All that magic, stretching to me. All that life, vulnerable to outside threats. I could claim it and flush the Druids out like foxes out of their flooded burrow.

That was a hell of a thought.

I’d had over two years to deal with having claimed the city. I’d learned to manage the craving for more, but some days the urge to take land, to make it my own, gripped me. My aunt called it the Shar. The need to hold and protect. It was bred into our family to make us better rulers. Most of my now-deceased relatives had been taught how to handle it in childhood. I’d had to deal with it as an adult, and it almost drove me off a cliff. I’d beaten it, but once in a while, when it reared its ugly head, I had to beat it back again.

I wouldn’t be claiming anything today. I would chant the engine back into life, and Roman and I would go home.

“Huh,” Roman said. “I take back what I said. Your way is faster.”

I looked up. A palisade rose in the middle of what a moment ago was dense forest. Huge trees formed its wall, their trunks perfectly straight and touching each other. A gate reinforced with iron and bristling with spikes guarded the entrance. Dark blood stained the tips of the four-foot spikes.

The gate shuddered and slid aside.

“We need to hurry now,” Roman said, grabbing a duffel bag, “before they change their mind.”

We walked to the gates. A Caucasian man in his forties stood in the center, leaning on a staff. He wore plain trousers, boots, and no shirt. Blue whorls and symbols, painted in blue ink, decorated his muscled torso. His headdress, made of a grizzly’s head, gave him another six inches of height. His face fit right between the bear’s jaws. If I fought him, I’d come from the side. His peripheral vision had to be shit with all that fur.

The man glared at us, looking like he was about to roar and unleash a Pictish horde. The last time I saw him, he’d worn a snow-white robe and was groomed like he was about to attend a white-tie event. He’d been smiling at some children at the Solstice Festival and handing out candied fruit with the other druids as part of their community outreach.

Hi, we’re druids. We wear pretty white clothes, hand out sweets, and teach about honoring trees and forests. Look at us, all gentle and nonthreatening. We’d never strip naked, paint ourselves with battle symbols, and dance around in the woods with savage weapons and fur headdresses. Yeah, right. No wonder they didn’t want anyone to come to their masquerades in the woods.

“Is that Grand Druid Drest?”

“Uh-huh,” Roman murmured. “Watch what you say.”

“I always watch what I say.”

“If the words ‘I didn’t know you were having a fancy dress-up party, pity I wasn’t invited’ come out of your lips, I’ll turn around and go home. And that’s a promise.”

“Killjoy.”

“These are my colleagues from work. I have to have a good relationship with these people.”

“Okay, okay.”

Next to the Grand Druid stood a woman. She was about two inches shorter than me, with bronze skin and thick wavy brown hair. She wore an outfit of fur and carried a spear. Judging by the definition on her arms, she could use it, too.