Chapter 10

 

Svenson arrived on the island mid-morning. Three helicopters delivered a dozen people before flying off again.

Olga waited beside Darius just inside the eastern edge of the volcano, hidden in the shadow of rock and vegetation. For three hours, neither had said a word. In front of them, a lake filled the center of the cone. Where once molten lava had raged, now it held blue water as serene as the sky above. Even the helicopters landing and taking off merely disturbed it momentarily before the tranquility returned.

The fauna of the area weren’t as sanguine.

Birds protested the human and mechanical intrusion with panicked squawks and the mass flapping of brightly colored wings as they fled. Olga even glimpsed a large, flightless cassowary running away, seeking the safety of the dense jungle outside on the volcano’s lower slopes.

Svenson and his party occupied the high northern edge of the cone. The distance was too great for her to observe their faces. She hadn’t brought binoculars.

Darius had. He passed them to her, and squeezed her shoulder.

She nodded at him. They had to split up. Two targets rather than one meant that if they were detected their opponents would be forced to divide their attention. He would get into position first, then she’d follow. He needed to be close to Svenson to maximize the effect on the shade of the sunlight stored in the diamond. She didn’t have to be anywhere near as close to cast her illusion, but she wanted to be situated where she could provide Darius with back up.

If things went wrong, they’d have to fight their way out.

Experience had her withdrawing deeper into the shadows that hid her as she raised the binoculars. There’d be no betraying reflection as she studied her opponents.

Nine men, including Svenson, and three women had exited the helicopters.

Four men had emerged from the jungle to meet them. All possessed the magical signature of wizards.

Olga had sensed them since she’d stepped onto the island, and for the last three hours she’d actively tracked them and their eight colleagues who patrolled the perimeter of the island.

Svenson hadn’t stinted on his protective detail for his prospective Shangri-La. He’d hired a mercenary team of powerful wizards. The net of wards, traps and alerts that they’d crisscrossed the island with revealed their badass training and experience. If she and Darius weren’t sorcerers in addition to being similarly trained, they’d have been caught. Or dead.

Through the binoculars, she observed Svenson’s slow survey of the island. He was solemn, and had set himself a few paces removed from the people who accompanied him. A shadow stretched naturally from his feet. Until engaged in active defense of its host, the shade would lie within Svenson’s shadow, undetectable to an ordinary physical or magical scan.

The other eleven people from the helicopters stared and gestured in all directions, taking in the island; their promised Shangri-La.

Olga lowered the binoculars.

Svenson and his shade were Darius’s target.

She had to fool the four wizard mercenaries who’d taken up guard positions surrounding Svenson and the group of visitors, plus the visitors themselves, that the idea of a Shangri-La was a ridiculous con that Svenson had run on them.

Slipping into spellsight, she evaluated the nature of his guests. One was a witch, but the magic barely touched her. Not a threat. Standing near the woman was a tall, thin man with no magical signature, but the crumpled posture of sickness. The helicopter ride hadn’t agreed with him. There was a wizard, and the man standing beside him in a panama hat was an unclassifiable but exceptionally minor talent.

Olga exhaled in relief. None of the guests presented a threat or a challenge to her casting an effective illusion.

Astonishingly, spellsight failed to reveal any enchanted objects in their possession. The absence of even a personal protection amulet suggested that Svenson had insisted on their removal before arrival on the island.

She couldn’t see Darius, which hopefully meant that no one else could either. Now it was her turn to approach Svenson and his party.

Magic shivered across the island. Time had run out.

Svenson was beginning his Shangri-La spell.

Olga slammed up the illusion spell she’d spent the last three hours crafting.

Hedge wizards, like Nick had been, used tiny spells like flashlight beam or a look-away cantrip to direct their audience’s attention in what was, in effect, an amplification of mundane stage magic. What she had to cast and hold was orders of magnitude greater.

First, a screen of invisibility enclosed Svenson and his shade inside—and Darius with them. Then she layered her illusion to the outside of it. A moving holographic illusion took an immense amount of magic and her complete attention. For her personal shield, she activated the concealment charm she wore as part of the bracer on her wrist. Under the direct assault of the four wizard mercenaries scanning the area around Svenson, it wouldn’t last beyond thirty minutes.

But Darius had to wrap this up in fifteen minutes. The light in the diamond would fail then, taking from them their most potent weapon against the shade.

As much as she wanted to see how his battle was shaping, her role was to focus on the story she fed to the holographic illusion. In it, Svenson stood with arms outstretched like a biblical patriarch and shouted nonsense syllables at the sky. There was no sound to her illusion. Instead, she’d replaced it with a howling wind. The wind helped to destabilize and disorient her audience.

She had to craft a believable story, a pantomime that an over-reaching con artist might try to sell. The random gibberish covered by the wind was filler, preparing the way for her holographic Svenson to stab himself in the gut. Except, the twist to the story was that the knife flexed as he did so, and a supposed-to-be-hidden bag of blood showed through an artful tear in his shirt.

Olga had taken her inspiration from the false faith healers who faked operations without surgery; pretending to draw diseased organs out through their desperate patients’ skin. Chicken blood and misdirection assisted those charlatans.

Magic lashed the island. It flared from within the invisible circle she held, but it also crashed across it from random directions. The wizard mercenaries had realized something was wrong and were reacting. But there was also another force, and it was swallowing their magic.

Darius’s shadow lion was loose and guarding its master.

Perhaps guarding Olga, too. She couldn’t check. It was all she could do to hold the illusion of Svenson drawing symbols on the volcanic rocky ground with his fake blood, while she added the next vital layer to her story.

She struck hard at the eleven guests and the four wizard mercenaries present, assaulting them with a malaise spell. The old-fashioned spell was one that flirted with the line between spell and curse. It mimicked the fast onset of the flu virus in its victims. She combined it with her holographic Svenson gesturing with summoning intent, as if he pulled energy from those watching.

She blinked and spared a few seconds to check that they were responding with horror.

They were. One man had fallen to his knees with arms raised in a warding off gesture.

Two of the mercenaries shot attack spells at Svenson.

Olga winced as her invisible barrier spell absorbed them. She adjusted the holograph quickly to show Svenson screaming in anger and flinging the prop knife impotently in the nearest wizard’s direction.

The people who’d joined Svenson on the island had to be sociopaths to so nakedly pursue their survival in paradise at uncaring cost to others. They’d believe that Svenson would try to drain them while faking his own sacrifice via the prop knife and blood bag because that’s something they’d do if they had the power and desire for it.

She was sewing mistrust and anger, but for her con to work, she had to wrap this up in a grand finale and trust that Darius could neutralize the shade on schedule. If not…I don’t know how much magic I’ll have left to help him.

 

Darius had known that it was the last few steps to close with Svenson that would be the hardest. There was no more cover for his movements. To remain concealed would require magic, and the four wizards around Svenson and his group of wannabe-immortals were on high alert.

The mercenaries weren’t even Darius’s biggest problem. He was monitoring the shade attached to Svenson, and he could see its visible marker, Svenson’s shadow, growing impossibly larger and deeper.

Darius held tight to his stealth shield and ran at Svenson. He had about twenty running paces to be within range for a physical attack.

The shade lurking at Svenson’s feet reared up, somehow detecting Darius when neither Svenson nor the people with him noticed. Then again, maybe malice recognized malice? Darius certainly had revenge in mind when he thought of Svenson.

People who hosted shades almost always died when the shade was destroyed. Darius hoped it hurt.

A shade was the ultimate expression of angry nihilism. What it attacked, it obliterated.

What he faced in this fight was the darkness at the heart of humanity: the selfishness that tore the world apart rather than suffer a personal hurt.

He felt Olga’s shield slam down.

Half a second later, the shade smacked into him. It was like being hit by a black hole that wasn’t a black hole, a void that wasn’t empty. Instead, in the absolute darkness, emotions screamed.

This was why the Bible began with “Let there be light.” The absence of light was a darkness of lost souls, a world in which hope didn’t exist.

He pulled the diamond out of his pocket. Intent was enough to release the light in it.

The shade recoiled slamming into Svenson so hard that the man staggered. He glanced at Darius, and away. It was unbearable to stare at the blazing diamond—unless, like Darius, you’d spent an hour perfecting a cantrip to protect against solar glare.

Svenson turned his back on the diamond and Darius. It was the man’s only option or he’d be blinded by the light. He had to trust in his shade’s protection.

The shade lunged again.

Unlike the shadow lion which was out roaming a tight circle to guard Darius and Olga, the shade had its own agenda. It wasn’t a construct. But nor was it animate magic, the sorcerer’s bane that Olga had warned him against. The shade was survival in a brutal world. It was tooth and claw. Its existence was all that mattered to it, and for it to continue its pseudo-life, its host had to live.

Olga had the complicated job. She had to change people’s minds. The layered illusions she was crafting required her complete focus.

Darius considered his job the easier one. He was a trained killer with a sorcerer’s power. For others, tearing apart a shade might be a forlorn hope, but he could channel sufficient sustained power to atomize it. And once it began disintegrating, the shade’s malevolence would scatter under ordinary daylight.

He could break it. He would break it.

The shade came at him, no longer man-shaped in imitation of its host, but all jagged edges, like a gigantic ball of razor wire.

Behind the shade, Svenson crouched and drew on the bare rock. He had a flask of dark brown liquid and was finger-painting with it.

Darius threw the diamond through the shade at Svenson. It struck between his shoulder blades, sending him jolting forward. He caught himself with both hands against the rocky ground.

The shade’s jagged edges contracted. It retreated to form a shield, such as a riot cop wielded, between Darius and its host. The barrier of darkness prevented Darius from seeing, and hence, aiming at Svenson.

So Darius lobbed a sleep grenade high up and over the shield.

The shade stretched out a rubberlike arm and swallowed it.

Darius grinned. The shade was an entity obsessed with survival. It couldn’t strategize. It merely reacted. And it had to protect two separate bodies: its own and Svenson’s; and Svenson was both obsessed with casting his Shangri-La spell and unfamiliar with handling the adrenaline rush of combat. He’d be more hindrance than help to his own survival.

The shade had responded automatically to the threat Darius represented to its host, but that left Darius on one side of the shade in its riot shield form, and Svenson on the other—with the diamond.

The intense glare from the diamond radiated up and outward, everywhere but where the shade blocked it. Svenson was so stupid, panicked or obsessed with his Shangri-La spell, that he hadn’t kicked the diamond away.

Then again, the action was occurring faster than thought. Without battle-honed instincts, Svenson lacked the response any soldier would have had, which would be to treat the diamond as if it was a grenade and get it as far away from himself as possible. Even fumbling blindly, that would have been Darius’s priority.

But no warrior mourned an enemy’s idiocy.

With a backpack full of assault charms, knives, and even a pistol, Darius took full advantage of his adversaries’ vulnerabilities. The pistol was too dangerous to use with the people standing beyond Svenson, but the other weapons could all be expended in a good cause. Maiming or killing Svenson before he could sacrifice a city to his mad plans definitely counted as a good cause.

Darius divided his attack, which forced the shade to do the same with its defense.

Airy-fairy types might have tried to defeat the shade with kindness and positive thinking. Over the long term, say a decade or two, that approach might even work. However, Darius preferred his strategy: smiting it.

The sunlight blazing from the diamond had been layered into the stone magically, which meant that as it emerged, light bent in ways a physicist would have declared impossible. It wouldn’t last beyond a few more minutes, but for those minutes, it eradicated all shadows in its vicinity. The shade could resist the diamond’s light in the sense that the diamond, by itself, wouldn’t disintegrate it. But the diamond’s magical elimination of shadows immediately proximate to it meant the shade couldn’t retreat into Svenson’s shadow. For as long as the diamond blazed near Svenson, the shade stood alone. The shade had to take any damage Darius could inflict.

And he was betting the house on a modified flora crescare spell, a spell for plant growth. Everything else was to serve as a distraction while he used the flora crescare spell to tear the shade apart from inside.

Plants grew by photosynthesis. They absorbed light and converted it into chemical energy to fuel life. Darius had to pour his own magic into the modified spell so that it drew on the shade’s darkness to create an impossibility: a tenebrous plant, a plant that fed on shadows. Just as an ordinary tree’s roots could insinuate themselves into cracks in a rock and grow till they split the rock, a tenebrous plant could break a shade apart from inside.

He would supply the magic to twist a plant’s biological imperative to seek light and photosynthesize it into a search for darkness and the ability to convert it into tangible growth. It might take all of his magic, and would demand most of his attention. The ideal conditions for this sort of ambitious spellcasting was in a meditative, monitored state in a warded laboratory.

He grinned and threw a light spell at the shade, following it with a blade Olga had lent him, one enchanted to cut through anything.

It didn’t quite cut through the shade, but the thing flinched. Then flinched again, this time back toward Darius. That confirmed that the solar powered diamond was working as intended. For a few precious minutes the shade couldn’t find a metaphorical breathing space in Svenson’s shadow.

The flora crescare spell was only a few words. It was the intent that infused them that mattered; that and his ability to channel the huge demand for magic that was integral to the spell. If his concentration faltered, the spell failed. This wasn’t a spell that accommodated human error or frailty. Plants were tough and unrelenting in their pursuit of life, and so was the spell. He cast it as he uncapped a bottle of holy water and tossed the contents at the shade. Dropping the empty bottle into his satchel he drew out a banishment bomb of tulsi (holy basil) and sea salt, and threw that after the holy water.

The shade had actually grown when the holy water passed through it. It wasn’t a demon and couldn’t be exorcised, but it felt the banishment bomb. It morphed its shield form into a pike and stabbed at Darius.

He swayed aside, counting on his personal ward to deflect a single, glancing blow. His attention was on holding the flora crescare spell as it sunk its roots into the shade. He had to keep the damn thing distracted, so he hurled another knife at Svenson, who was exposed now that the shade had committed itself to attacking Darius.

The shade shifted from rigid to flexible form and whipped out an arm of darkness to catch the knife.

Darius felt the flora crescare spell take root.

So did the shade.

Utter darkness flared out, condensed, and struck at him.

His ward broke. His concentration didn’t.

He discarded the backpack and ran to the side, darting in toward Svenson, and away. Time was ticking down. It wasn’t just that the sunlight stored in the diamond would run out shortly, it was that Svenson couldn’t be allowed to reach the stage in the Shangri-La spell where he sacrificed a city to power it, and for all Darius knew, that stage could be one of the earliest parts of the spell.

The persistence of hope charm had been an impulsive inclusion when he’d packed his bag back at his cabin in Maine. Before this fight, he’d tucked it into a pocket, wanting it available if he needed to play a wildcard.

He wore his hair too short to be able to weave its strands into a ring, so when he’d spent some of his two years of self-imposed isolation at his cabin in researching and experimenting with rarer magicks, he’d modified the original instructions for a persistence of hope charm from a hair ring woven from his own hair to a shaving of bark from the logs that formed his family’s cabin.

From his home, from his heritage, from his heart.

He’d soaked that scrap of bark in his tears, which was what the charm derived its power from: tears he’d never wanted to shed. Tears of heartbreak, disillusionment, anger and grief. But above all, those tears had expressed his decision that despite all the pain, he chose to live.

The shade condensed into a furious collection of axes, like a steampunk porcupine, and hurtled at him.

He dove to the ground, rolling out of the way, but he left behind him, hanging for a split second in the air, the persistence of hope charm.

The scrap of bark floated like a feather onto the shade, which abruptly lost its form. The ax porcupine became a shrinking, curled up armadillo.

Darius rolled upward, pouring all of his magic into winding up the rabid flora crescare spell.

The newly-created plant of darkness consumed the shade. Its every leaf was a thorn, and it was starkly beautiful. Cold radiated from it, frosting the ground.

On the peak of a volcano, in the middle of a tropical rainforest, Darius inhaled the scent of a blizzard’s aftermath; the absolute purity of a world that had survived.

He exhaled regret and resolve. The deadly nightshade plant existed because, way back in history, someone had torn a shade apart using a similar strategy, but then, had failed to destroy the resulting plant.

It was too risky; the consequences too uncertain. He annihilated the dark green, spiky plant with fire. He maintained the high intensity flame until the ashes whitened and the thermal currents from the heat lifted them away.

Only then did he turn his attention to Svenson.

The hedge wizard lay in a fetal curl on the ground, clutching his guts as if he needed to hold them in, and whining a high-pitched, wordless complaint of pain. The destruction of the shade he’d hosted evidently hurt. As it should. But he lived.

Darius stooped to pick up the two knives that were evidence of his presence on the rim of the extinct volcano. Sky and earth whirled around him, dotted with golden stars, as vertigo hit him. He’d drained his magic to the dregs. He could only just feel his connection to the guardian lion as it roamed protectively, devouring magic.

He spread his legs wide and remained standing. His own knife went back into its ankle sheath, and he held Olga’s formerly enchanted blade in his right hand. He had to wait till her illusion concluded. Until then, he couldn’t see out, and the other people on the island couldn’t see him.

He stood guard over the whimpering Svenson and waited for his partner to finish her part of their mission.

 

Olga was in trouble. Her holographic illusion of Svenson froze for a second as she detected the real world sound of dirt bikes. She’d mispredicted the enemy’s actions. The eight wizard mercenaries who’d been patrolling the island converged on the top of the volcano. As professional as their defenses had been, she’d counted on them sticking to their posts. Instead, here they were congregating far too close to her.

She reinforced her layered illusion, and braced herself against the futility of regrets. She’d been creeping closer to Svenson and the group so that she could monitor their responses and fine-tune her illusion’s grand finale. Now, she was vulnerable, reliant on her back-up enchanted stealth shield holding.

“Kappa, Sigma, Tau.” One of the mercenaries snapped out the names. “Find the shade.”

Olga bit her lip as she belatedly recognized the obvious point her plan had missed.

A powerful wizard would detect a shade’s arrival on an island they were guarding. That the four on the volcano guarding Svenson hadn’t, didn’t mean that the other eight possessed similarly blunted senses; especially if Darius’s fight with the shade caused its power to flare. Of course the wizards would congregate to take out a shade. It would need all of them, and even then, they’d be unlikely to match Darius’s sorcerous power.

Hastily, she added the image of a shade connected to the heel of the holographic image of Svenson, and braced herself for the wizards’ attacks on her illusion. They’d think they were fighting the shade, but she’d be the one trying to hold the complicated shielded illusion against their combined power.

She’d trained herself to cast and hold multiple spells simultaneously. Few wizards could do so. They risked burning out their magic. Even with her sorcerous magic level, she winced at the danger. The layered illusion was complicated and she hadn’t planned on holding it against a concerted wizards’ attack fueled by fear of a shade.

Three successive blasts of power struck the illusion. A barrage followed.

Pain radiated down Olga’s spine. Her nerves were suffering as she drew on every bit of her magic. The possibility of a Shangri-La had to be definitively disproved, even if the “proof” was an illusion. She had to hold on.

She shuddered with relief as the evil of the shade’s existence vanished. Darius had done his part. Now, she could wrap up the illusion with—

Warm liquid hit her hand. She felt it oozing from her eyes. Blood.

She’d hit the danger zone. She was burning the last of her magic. Dragging up the remnant would erode her capacity for magic.

She gritted her teeth. “Come on.” She had to hold on a couple of minutes longer, long enough to match the evidence on the ground to the finale of her illusion.

The damn wizard mercenaries were powerful and enraged by what she’d convinced them was Svenson’s treacherous attempt to drain their power. The first four, if they but knew it, had lost their magic to the shadow lion. The newly arrived eight assaulted her shielded illusion with war-grade spells.

She stumbled. Her personal stealth shield would vanish when the last of her magic did, and she was out in the open, staring at Darius through her illusion, and seeing Svenson curled up at his feet. Alive.

The illusion wavered, reality and fiction blurring for a split second.

She reached out a hand. The illusion restored itself. Blood splattered on her boots. Her blood.

The split second had been all Darius needed to register the condition she was in.

His animate magic reacted instantly. It engulfed her in raw power. Magic. She could feel its source. The shadow lion roared, soundlessly. It tore the eight newly-arrived wizards’ magic from them, and that, too, flooded into Olga.

And she let it.

The magic that Darius’s guardian construct had stolen from those present on the island it gifted to him, and that mass of power coalesced into animate magic, which sought out Olga. It saved her.

She could have remained magically inviolate—which was what her training dictated—and rejected the invasion of another sorcerer’s animate magic, but this was Darius and she trusted him. His deepest need was to protect her, not to own or use her, as someone like Nick might have.

His magic exploded inside her like an energy bomb.

Renewed, she strengthened her personal shield and used a quick swipe of magic to clean the blood from her face and clothes. She’d freak out—or further freak out—Darius if he saw her up close covered in blood.

As it was, he raced toward her, visible to her by his magic rather than physically. He had his own stealth spell up.

“I’m okay.” She warded off the worried clutch of his hands. “Let me finish this.”

The wizards’ shock at the shadow lion’s complete theft of their magic gave her a brief window of time in which to match the fiction of her illusion with the reality that they couldn’t see. She allowed herself a flicker of triumph at witnessing Svenson brought low.

She grabbed Darius’s hand and pulled him into place with her near, but not in the line of fire, between Svenson and the others. A quickly uttered privacy cantrip meant they could talk without being overheard. “I think reality matches the illusion, near enough.” There was one last touch her illusion needed.

The holographic Svenson collapsed into a curl that mimicked the real one’s position.

She released the layers of illusion, and stood ready to react to anything.

The shadow lion returned to Darius and lay down in front of them. It had consumed all the magic on the island, other than that possessed by Darius and Olga.

She doubted that the sort of mercenaries that Svenson would hire for this job were innocent of crimes, but being stripped of their magic was massive. They were victims, and she had to use their suffering.

The loss of their magic was horrifying enough that it would blank their minds to much else. The Occam’s Razor answer to who had done this to them would be Svenson. Anything else that they might have half-seen or suspected would vanish under their shock, pain and rage. The shadow construct’s theft of their magic bolstered the impact of the illusion Olga had crafted and sunk its roots deep, as trauma did for memories.

Svenson levered himself up. He couldn’t stand, not yet, but he made it to his knees. He was doing better than the wizard mercenaries he’d hired.

For them, the guardian construct’s siphoning of their magic was debilitating. Part of their fundamental nature had been torn away.

But one of the mercenaries wasn’t clutching his head or chest. Instead, he grabbed a knife from his boot.

A well-trained combat wizard went into action prepared for his magic to fail him.

The wizard threw the knife. He’d practiced the move. It was fast and accurate, cutting through the air to lodged in Svenson’s throat.

The former hedge wizard fell backward, dead.

Olga didn’t lie to herself. There’d been time to intervene, to catch the knife or block it with magic. She’d stood aside and let Svenson die. Correction, by her inaction, she’d allowed his murder.

“Not as satisfying as cutting his throat myself, but justified.” Darius turned his back on Svenson’s corpse.

Olga couldn’t. With Svenson dead, there was no one left to provide a counter against her illusion—except for his body. It lacked a knife and evidence of a blood bag, the props she’d used to pretend that he was faking self-sacrifice. It went against her professional instincts, which were to preserve the crime scene, and most especially, the victim, but she cast her magic in a concentrated inferno.

Svenson’s corpse blackened, charred and crumbled to ash.

The eleven non-mercenaries screamed.

In the commotion it was difficult to pick out the pertinent comments, but they were there. They were the comments that confirmed that her illusion had worked. People believed, with outrage and cursing, that Svenson had tried to double-cross them. In their view, he’d gotten what he deserved, burned up by his own evil.

“…stole my magic!”

“My heart. I can’t feel my heart. Life force. He tried to steal…”

“He got me to fork over the money for this island. Me! God knows I want to live, but this was a dang blasted fairy tale. Hey, you! How’d we get offa here? You got a boat? I’ll buy it.”

The wizards, or former wizards, were quieter, but their curses were more bloodthirsty. “If we’d known he had a shade—”

“He didn’t when I met with him.”

“Feeding our magic to his bloody shade!”

“If I could kill him again, I would.”

“And I’d pay you to,” the billionaire, Oro, cut in. “Now, about that boat.”

The mercenary who’d killed Svenson swore, but focused. Without their magic, they’d need other contacts to get and keep work in the future. “We can get you off the island.”

The generalized shouting changed to eleven entitled people demanding that the mercenaries arrange their immediate departure along with access to phones (which Svenson had confiscated).

Olga and Darius crept away. As the sole remaining magical talents on the island, no one was going to pierce their stealth shields and cantrips. Nonetheless, they were silent as they walked down the southern track from the volcano’s crater to the narrow beach. The shadow lion had eaten all the magical traps formerly laid along it.

The spit of land at the western edge of the beach gave them a landmark for when Darius phoned Rest.

The portal opened seconds later.

The speed of Rest’s response and the anxious expression on his face revealed his worry. His grip on a semi-automatic pistol showed that he was prepared to be their emergency back-up. “Okay?”

Darius clasped Olga’s hand, pulling her with him toward the portal. Their sweaty palms slicked against each other, but it was still comforting. “Target eliminated. Evac. Brief at the jeep.”

Rest nodded and grabbed her other hand.

Olga found the in-between of portal travel disorienting. Up and down no longer had meaning. There were visual disturbances that reminded her of tripping out inside a lava lamp and auditory confusion. She clung to Darius and Rest’s hands and kept walking. Their linked hands meant no one would get lost. In three seconds they emerged onto the beach beside their boat. The relief of ground under her feet was immense. So was the sense of safety. She would need a few hours before her adrenaline levels stabilized.

She dug out the crumpled sandwich wrapper that had served as the anchor for the return spell on the boat. That broke the spell.

Darius and Rest picked up the front of the inflatable. They would drag it into and through the portal. Olga gripped the side of it, near Darius. They walked through the portal and out into the cool of an Arizona night.

Donna stood waiting for them. She threw one blanket at Darius, and wrapped the other around Olga as she hugged her. “Are you alright?”

Olga hugged her back quickly before securing the blanket. With the backpack over her shoulder, the blanket was inclined to slip. “We’re fine. Svenson is dead. I think the illusion worked. We’ll catch up soon.”

Meantime, Rest was on his phone confirming details with Austin. Within two minutes, it was back through the portal a final time. They emerged outside Darius’s cabin in Maine. Every window was lit, smoke curled up from the chimney, and the front door was open with Austin and Gabe on the porch. They jogged down the three steps.

Quick hugs and hard back slaps expressed their relief as they met Olga and Darius. “You got the bastard?”

“Yup.”

Rest scooped up the dislodged blankets and slung them over his shoulder. The combat team was disciplined and the mission wasn’t complete yet. They had to get out of here, and Darius and Olga had to settle into the cabin.

“Chocolate bread pudding in the oven” were Gabe’s final words before he casually gripped Rest’s shoulder, and he and Austin stepped into the portal with the courier.

The portal closed.

Olga couldn’t sag in relief just yet. Moving quickly in the cold air, she and Darius headed for the barn and her jeep. A wind cantrip scuffed the dirt and fallen leaves behind them, removing any trace of their arrival by portal. They stripped down to their underwear in the cold barn, shoved their tropical, sweat-stained clothes into their backpacks and stowed the bags in the jeep. Backpacks in the vehicle weren’t suspicious, and besides, no one in 13OPS would risk investigating Olga’s legendary enchanted jeep.

Austin and Gabe had left out clothes for them.

Olga picked up a sweatshirt.

Darius took it from her hand. “Don’t bother redressing. These all can go in the washing machine.” He cast a quick cantrip for warmth.

They’d already used a cleaning cantrip on their boots at Rest and Donna’s Arizona ranch. Carrying their clothes, they ran to the cabin. The barn door thudded shut behind them.

In the mudroom wasn’t the time to be shy. She wriggled out of her bra and panties, and darted into the bathroom. The water pressure in the shower faltered as the washing machine filled, but she managed to wash the island from her body. Wrapped in a towel, she vacated the bathroom for Darius to have his turn.

She may have lingered for a few seconds to admire the view, something he caught.

His grin was wicked, but she couldn’t accept the invitation. Not yet.

Alone in his bedroom, she found her overnight bag. Deodorant, fresh panties…she put back her t-shirt and trousers. To sell the final part of her and Darius’s story, she opened his wardrobe and pulled on one of his flannel shirts.

The soft cotton caressed her skin, enveloping her in warmth and an elusive trace of Darius’s scent. She glanced at the bed. Austin or Gabe, but she’d bet it was Austin, had disarranged the covers to make it look like a frantic tryst had occurred.

“Visitors,” Darius said as he walked in.

The blush of heated anticipation that had been crawling up her body cooled.

He continued tersely. “They’ve crossed the ward. Gregory. I recognize his signature. Plus another wizard and a witch.”

“We only just made it.” She tore a comb through her hair.

He dropped his towel and pulled on sweatpants and a t-shirt. With the fire roaring in the living room, the cabin was toasty warm.

“Socks.” She sat on the rumpled bed and pulled hers on.

 

Darius fought the urge to shove their uninvited visitors off his land, lock and bar the cabin doors, and trap Olga in bed for the next year. Sadly, that would defeat the purpose of all this frantic activity and Austin and Gabe’s high-speed journey across the country in the enchanted jeep.

The story they were selling to 13OPS was that “gee-whizz! Svenson’s dead? We’ve been occupied with private business.” The implication was obvious. He and Olga had raced across the country to his cabin to be alone.

At least he wouldn’t have any problem acting besotted. He hadn’t needed Donna’s seer vision to know that Olga was his happiness and his future. She was tricky, stubborn, powerful and his. His animate magic had recognized the truth before he’d consciously acknowledged his attraction to her.

He wanted her and he wanted to be hers.

Soon, he promised himself. After all, being grumpy and inhospitable would support their story. What man wanted his time with a lover interrupted by her boss?

No man!

He pulled on a sneaker. His prosthetic was designed for when he wore a shoe on his other foot. He could compensate for the shoe’s absence with magic, but it was simpler not to have to.

She leaned across and kissed him. “Showtime.”

A vehicle halted outside the cabin. The engine switched off.

Olga left the bedroom, but not for the front door. She walked into the kitchen, leaving the visitors for him.

An evil grin crossed his face. He’d had lots of practice being grumpy the last two years. He yanked open the front door and stood square in the doorway, folding his arms. “What do you want?”

Gregory walked heavily up the porch steps. A younger man preceded him, a wizard. A middle-aged witch dawdled in the background, rather obviously scanning the cabin and surrounds. “Darius.” Gregory made his name serve as a greeting. “Is Olga here?”

“Yes.”

The unnamed wizard rocked his weight forward onto the balls of his feet.

Darius felt his lips curl into a sneer that said bring-it.

Gregory clamped a hand on the wizard’s shoulder and his voice cut through the gathering tension of a fight. “I need to talk to her. May we come in?”

Olga’s hand landed on Darius’s hip. “Let them in. It’s cold.”

The three visitors all noted the intimate touch.

Darius moved aside.

Olga walked back into the kitchen, his borrowed shirt shifting enticingly over her butt and her long legs bare.

He growled when he saw wizard-boy looking.

Satisfyingly, the man immediately looked away.

“I’m putting coffee on, then we can talk,” Olga called back. “Evening, Leila, Kaden. What news do you have on Svenson, Gregory? Can we go after him?”

Gregory didn’t answer.

Instead, the three 13OPS agents sat at the kitchen table.

Wizard-boy blushed as Olga bent to take the chocolate bread pudding out of the oven and the red flannel shirt rode up to show the top of her thighs.

She straightened and put the pudding on the counter beside the coffeemaker, which she’d refilled.

Two used plates and glasses, plus a couple of dirty mugs sat on the sink. Austin and Gabe had done a great job of setting the scene, right down to a meal eaten together. The packaging for two frozen pasta meals sat beside the frozen pudding packaging. They’d raided the cabin’s freezer to good effect.

“We’ll get to Svenson in a minute, Olga.” Gregory rested his large hands on the table. “You were recalled. I recalled you.”

“I took a personal day.” She picked up a knife, cocking her head to one side. Then she cut into the pudding, slicing it into six equal pieces. “Ice cream?”

Leila shook her head. “You don’t for one second think we’ll believe that sh—”

Olga pointed the knife at her.

“Trash.” The witch substituted her original swearword.

Darius got out six mismatched cereal and soup bowls and slid them down the counter. Then he fetched the vanilla ice cream.

Olga appeared to concentrate on dishing up the dessert. “I knew Nick Sheen in childhood, when he was Nicky Shugak. When you denied me the chance to go after Svenson.” She broke off to glower at Gregory before shrugging and refocusing on the pudding. “I needed time to get my head together.”

“Is that what you were doing?” The innuendo came from Leila.

That was good. Darius would have hit Kaden for that comment, guest or no guest. The positive news was that the 13OPS agents seemed to be buying the story. Darius leant back against the counter, folded his arms again, and scowled at Leila.

Kaden tried a gentler, but still insensitive, approach. “I’m sorry you lost your friend, even if he’d turned into a douche. And the sacrifice scene…the photos were bad. But nothing you couldn’t handle.”

Olga slammed a bowl of pudding and ice cream down in front of Kaden.

He jerked back.

“Never presume you know a person’s breaking point.” Her voice was far, far colder than the melting ice cream. She would have stalked from the room, but Gregory caught her wrist.

“Svenson is dead.”

Her body posture changed in an instant from pissed off woman to laser-focused 13OPS investigator. “When? How?”

“Who got past a shade?” Darius contributed. He didn’t think he was as good an actor as Olga, but he cracked his knuckles and opted to keep scowling.

“That’s what we want to know,” Leila responded, but her suspicious gaze was on Olga.

“We couldn’t find you,” Gregory said quietly.

She tugged free of his hold. “Tell me about Svenson.”

They glared at one another, equally obstinate. Then Olga huffed a breath. “Fine. To speed things up and because you seem to think I’m a suspect.” Her tone was scathing. “You couldn’t find me because I didn’t want to be found. No one at 13OPS can track my jeep—which actually raises the question of how you knew I was here.”

“A drone flying overhead registered light and heat here an hour and a half ago. I had to drag my ass up here because we weren’t sure what was going on with you and if you’d let us,” and now his gaze switched to Darius, “onto your land. Your wards are strong.”

“Evidently with an aerial gap in them, which I’ll fix.”

Olga walked back to Darius and leaned against him.

It was instinctive to wrap an arm around her. He frowned back at Gregory. “Someone shot down the plane Svenson was in, didn’t they?”

Silently, he was impressed how accurately Olga had predicted the unfolding of this final stage of the drama around Svenson’s death. She’d guessed that Gregory would monitor Darius’s cabin and that the eleven entitled and connected people left on the island would waste no time in calling for help and in passing on the details of Svenson’s death and the illusion Olga had sold them.

“No, Svenson didn’t die in a plane crash,” Gregory said.

Olga slapped a hand against her bare thigh. The crack of sound expressed her impatience. “Well, don’t keep us in suspense. How did he die, and did the shade die with him?”

“I have no information on the shade,” Gregory began.

Leila intervened. From the way Olga and Gregory treated her, she wasn’t a director like Gregory. Darius doubted Leila was any higher up the food chain than Olga. But she was on a mission to pick apart Olga’s story.

“The jeep isn’t an alibi. Darius Selbourne has a courier he can call on. They could have driven the jeep through—”

Olga shook her head in violent disagreement. “I would never drive my jeep through a portal. The number of enchantments embedded in the vehicle would make it a ticking time bomb. It could destroy the portal or, if it survived entry, it could destroy me and anyone with me inside the in-between. I don’t have a death wish, Leila.”

Constructing this alibi was precisely why she’d had Austin and Gabe drive the jeep through the night and at enchanted high speed to reach his cabin.

And as Leila backed off and Gregory merely studied Olga and Darius meditatively, Darius had a disconcerting thought.

Olga and he weren’t the only ones playing to a script here. Gregory and Leila were feeding them lines; asking questions, the import of which they could deflect with plausible answers.

What was it Olga had said earlier when she’d developed the illusion strategy to defang the Shangri-La myth and remove the chance that someone might be tempted to try it again?

She’d begun from the perspective of the report that, in other circumstances, she’d have written for 13OPS.

Gregory was doing the same thing. He was providing the means for a report that would clear Olga of even the suspicion of involvement in Svenson’s death and ensure she could continue with 13OPS.

That was important.

Being part of the justice system and serving to keep everyone safe defined Olga. For a second Darius rested his face against her hair. One day his Olga could well head up 13OPS. Her judgement balanced her power and was based on her commitment to her country and the good of the wider world. He would be proud to be her partner.

“So you’ve been here with Darius?” Gregory asked.

“Not for very long. My jeep’s fast, but not that fast.”

He nodded. Then sighed. “Svenson was running a con. He tried to siphon people’s magic and life force to feed his shade.”

While Gregory outlined his understanding of Svenson’s death, basically describing Olga’s illusion, Kaden finished his bowl of pudding.

“What happened to the shade?” Darius asked.

Kaden licked his spoon. “Didn’t have a chance for dinner.”

Leila pushed her bowl of pudding in front of him.

“Thanks.” He dived into the second bowl. “Shades require a host. With its host dead, it would have disintegrated.”

Gregory sighed again. “Can I have a coffee?”

Darius regretted losing Olga when she moved to fill mugs. He picked up a bowl of pudding. Even with the ice cream melted, it was his favorite dessert. Kaden couldn’t have all of it.

Gregory seemed to agree with the latter thought. He pulled his bowl protectively away from Kaden. “The circumstances surrounding Svenson’s death are sufficient grounds for search warrants, especially with the information Nick Sheen set up to leak in the event of his death. We have enough evidence to lay the groundwork to dismantle Svenson’s web of influence and illegal schemes. He was clever, callous and paranoid, but not perfect in his paranoia. We have teams forming up to search Svenson’s various properties for further information. Olga, you can pick which—”

“None.” She passed out coffees and sat down. “I’d like a week’s leave, Gregory, starting now.”

Kaden raised his eyebrows, but Leila nodded faintly.

“Fair enough,” Gregory said. “We’ll leave you in peace, although I need a report from you.”

Olga swallowed a bite of pudding. “Tomorrow.”

 

Darius watched the taillights on the 13OPS black SUV disappear down the track. Satisfaction and relief filled him. He closed the front door and scooped Olga into a bear hug. “That was remarkably easy.”

She cuddled into the embrace. “A good agent knows better than to look a gift horse in the mouth, and we gave them a story they can run with.” She pulled back. “It’s also about racking up favors.”

“Huh?”

She laughed, tiredly. “You’re cute when you’re clueless.”

He squeezed her. “So what did I miss?”

“Gregory is planning on using your courier team. You’ve been elusive to hire, difficult even to get in contact with. But now that he’s seen you and me claiming a relationship—”

“Our relationship is real.”

She smiled. “It is, but Gregory and others in 13OPS will try to capitalize on it. I won’t let them.”

“My team and I are big boys. We can look after ourselves.”

When her response to that was a disbelieving hum, one that indicated she still intended to protect them, he decided to change the subject. Fortunately, there was a subject he really wanted to explore. He scrunched up a handful of the flannel shirt she wore, exposing the edge of her panties. “You look very sexy in my shirt.”

“Mmhmm?” This time her hum was pleased, inquiring and encouraging.

He continued his seduction attempt. “But I bet you’d look even more gorgeous without the shirt.”

A tiny snort escaped in the midst of her giggles. She wrapped her arms around his neck to hold herself up in her laughing fit.

“That was not the response I expected.” He tried to sound grumbly, but his voice was husky. His hands were under the borrowed shirt she wore caressing her butt through the cotton of her panties and up the smooth skin of her back.

She shivered and ceased laughing. “Your attempt at a smooth segue into seduction…funny. But how you make me feel.” She kissed him, her lips warm and soft, hungry. She pulled back. “There’s nothing funny at all about how much I want you.”

She squealed as he swung her up in his arms.

He used a touch of magic to help with the levitation. The bedroom was close. The woman in his arms was incredibly tempting. He lowered her to the mattress and stripped off his clothes. He hesitated at his prosthetic. “On or off?”

Her answering smile held so much love that his dick went hard even as his heart turned to mush.

 

Olga sat up. She wriggled off the bed and knelt to take off Darius’s prosthetic. She pressed a kiss to the stump of his leg; then another kiss, higher, to the inside of his thigh.

He hitched himself back into the center of the bed. “Come here.”

She crawled up over him. He undid the buttons on her borrowed shirt, then kissed her breasts as he teased the edge of her panties. She rolled away long enough to get completely naked.

He watched her. “Condoms in the top drawer.”

Their eyes met.

“Donna mentioned kids,” she whispered. There was time for reckless passion, and that was now, but now could also be so much more. It was the beginning of their forever.

He didn’t smile. But the expression in his eyes was of a man granted his every dream. “You, me, and however many rug rats we’re blessed with.” His chest rose and fell with a deep breath. “No waiting. Not with you. I want everything.” He caught her arm and pulled her over him before rolling and reversing their positions.

She blinked up at him. She refused to cry when they were about to make love.

He smiled at her, slow and sweet, as if he’d seen her tears, anyway. His face was transformed. This was the true heart of her warrior man, devoted and adoring. “I love you, Olga.”

A tear escaped her. “I love you.”

He kissed away the tear. Then he tickled her.

Laughter and tears, sun and shadow. They’d be there for each other, and for their family and friends, in good times and in bad. And as Olga discovered a little while later, with Darius the good times were very, very good!