Witches' Waves (19 page)

“The water says she's still all right. Scared but all right. Fighting better than either of us could at this point.”

Deck wasn't reassured, exactly. Duals didn't lie, but they could make mistakes just like anyone else could, and he had no idea how Kyle was getting his information. Duals could communicate through telepathic silentspeech with each other but it didn't work well with humans, even witches.

At least not most witches. He suspected Kyle and Meaghan might be able to learn, assuming they all lived that long.

He tried to ask questions. Tried to impress upon Kyle that it was way more important to make sure Meaghan was all right than it was to patch him up. Tried to say something at all.
Death's just death,
he wanted to say.
The Agency can only kill me. They'll do worse to Meaghan, and to Jocelyn, and probably to you.

But words wouldn't form. His head swam as, despite Deck's efforts, the blood flowed out of him.

Swam. Flowed.

Deck pushed through the haze of pain and shock. Blood was liquid, largely water. He knew how water worked. And like all young Donovans, he'd studied the basics of healing, though he didn't have a knack for it.

This was an emergency.

He took a shuddering breath and called his magic.

It took more time to reach the magic than it should—even injured, being this near the ocean should have boosted his power—and when he managed to call a flicker of power, it hurt like the bullet had pierced something vital in his spirit as well as tearing into his flesh. But the cool blue power answered his summons.

He took only a little of it, afraid that if he pushed too much, he might break something else while trying not to bleed to death.

He used that little bit of power to tell the blood pumping out of the wound to slow down and start coagulating.

He just hoped he was doing it right and wouldn't end up with gangrene in his arm or something because he cut off too much blood flow. But one of his relatives could fix that, assuming they all survived. Living was the first step.

Finding Meaghan was second.

And fucking up whoever did this would be third.

Eventually Kyle eased up that ghastly pressure and ventured a rickety smile. “Thank the Powers,” he breathed. His aura was glowing, and Deck suspected he'd been praying frantically all along.

“Let's go!” Deck struggled to rise.

“Okay.” Kyle looked grim. Deck wouldn't have believed, until now, that an otter could look grim, but with blood on his hands and smeared on his legs and torso, his dark eyes wild, he looked as fell as anything Deck had ever seen. “But only because I know you won't stay if I go off without you and I can't stand not being with Meaghan either.”

Kyle ran. Deck ambled behind him. He couldn't move fast, but the slower pace meant he could pull power from an ocean that looked much angrier than it had before and send it to Meaghan without regard to how much it hurt.

Overhead, the sky darkened with storm clouds and lightning flashed.

Chapter Eighteen

Meaghan felt a disturbance in her shields. She made her shields the way Deck did, liquid energy, flexible yet impenetrable—in theory—and he'd reinforced them. The way they were constructed meant she sensed the attack like someone poking at her but unable to penetrate the bubble of energy around her.

She remembered what Deck had shown her. Shut down her visions tight, imagining a steel door like the ones at the Agency facility slamming closed and locking. Pull energy from the water to augment her shields.

But still they faltered.

And the sense that she was hidden inside layer upon layer of the Donovan estate's shields vanished, leaving her exposed. Raw.

Her head swam, not like she was about to have a vision, but like something was interfering with the currents of magic, as clear to her as the currents of the ocean. Frantic, she tried to send a warning down the pulsing cord of energy that connected her to Deck and Kyle, but she didn't know how, especially since she was afraid to open up too much. She didn't want visions, and she didn't want anyone getting into her head because now she knew people could do that and she suspected that someone in the Agency had been doing so all along.

She ran instead toward the sound of the water, calling her lovers' names. A ride didn't take long. With luck, they were close to shore, maybe already coming onshore to steal a kiss.

But she couldn't find them, and the wind and waves drowned out her words. Maybe if she went into the water, Deck and Kyle would notice her and realize something was wrong.

She was knee-deep in frigid chop when she heard an odd noise. Almost not a noise, a soft pop that she suspected a sighted person wouldn't have heard at all. But without the distraction of vision, that out-of-place sound rang loud and clear above the waves.

Deck cried out, loud and pained, and then was silent.

A shot. That sound had been a gunshot, either a long way away or nearby with a silencer—terms she'd picked up from movie sound effects and audiobooks, now all too real. The Agency was here.

And they'd shot Deck.

She reached out again down the cord of energy that connected them, not caring at this point if someone managed to come along for the ride. Just a quick touch…and then nothing.

She thought of following the waves to Deck and Kyle.

At first, she couldn't sense the waves, but after a panicked moment of scrambling to ground and center, she found them again. They seemed dim, distant, but welcoming.

And they let her know Deck lived. She couldn't tell more than that, but he was on the other end of the cord and still alive, though dazed and in pain. She envisioned energy, energy she desperately yanked from the water and energy of her own feelings for Deck, going down that cord to make Deck stronger. She had no idea if it would work, but she couldn't do nothing.

Damn it, they'd been together, connected like this, for only a couple of days, and she'd been using her magic consciously for not much longer than that. Not that she expected an Agency raid to be politely timed or anything, but it would have been nice if she'd had a chance to learn how to defend herself and the others.

Which suggested they'd timed it this way on purpose, an extracreepy notion.

A quick check revealed that Kyle was safe for now, otterside and hiding in plain sight in the waves.
Love you,
she thought, not knowing if the otter Kyle would understand.

There. She'd done what she could for them.

She turned toward where she felt the water meet the sand. Before she could walk more than a step or two, strong arms captured her and a hand clamped over her mouth.

Not Deck. Not Kyle. Cold energy that smelled of sulfur and metal, and a big, unfamiliar male body.
Agency.

Meaghan bit down on the hand that covered her mouth. It probably wouldn't do any good, but it was satisfying.

At the same time, she dropped all her shields and screamed a mental warning. She concentrated on Portia, how Portia felt in her head, the trace of herself the telepath had left behind in Meaghan's head when she'd examined her. Concentrated on Roslyn, who had spent more time with her than anyone except Deck and Kyle. Concentrated on reaching anyone who might be listening. Concentrated on finding the water magic in the Donovan estate's shields and slipping down through that energy, crying out her warning with all the strength of her spirit:
The Agency's here. Deck's been shot. Help us if you can, but protect the baby.

The man picked her up as if she weighed no more than little Jocelyn, slung her over his shoulder. She kicked and writhed, but his arms gripped like iron and her bare feet might have been striking stone for all he reacted. She kept screaming with her mind and screaming with her voice too, although she was pretty sure the man would have gagged her if he'd thought anyone could hear. Agency officers were efficient that way. They were traveling away from the ocean and she couldn't tell how far they'd come or exactly where they were heading, not with him carrying her like a sack of dirty laundry, upside down so her spatial sense was disoriented.

But they hadn't gotten too far from the water yet.

She already knew she was unlikely to drown. And even if she did, it beat several possible alternatives.

Drawing on her rage and her fear and her determination that she wouldn't go back into Agency hands or let the baby end up their tool like she had been for so long, Meaghan called a wave.

She didn't have time to do it delicately, to see a few minutes ahead, observe the wave patterns and direct a wave already slated to be larger than average to hit in a directed way. She just threw energy into the water and hoped.
Get these assholes out of here. Don't hurt Deck and Kyle and try not to harm anyone else. But wash the Agency bastards out to sea.

Seconds before, her connection to the water had been tenuous, but it had bounced back stronger than ever. She'd barely finished the thought when she felt the wave approaching. She took a deep breath, prepared for cold. A male voice shouted just as what felt like a ton of frigid water crashed over them.

The man's grip tightened on her, but she touched the water with her mind, not even sure what she was asking of it, and she was yanked from his grasp by the force of the water. Yet it felt like rescue, not danger. The man's hand closed around her ankle briefly, but she kicked and got away. She started to swim.

She hadn't known she
could
swim. When she'd tried to drown herself, the current had carried her along and she'd thrashed and paddled until her strength failed, but now her body seemed to know what to do and she moved through the waves with confident strength that didn't feel like her own, as if she were channeling Deck's training and Kyle's natural abilities through her own body. Freaky, but at this point she thanked the Powers that Deck and Kyle called on and any other deity that happened to be listening.

She let her instincts and the ocean guide her to a safer place to come ashore. The waves were fierce, stronger than they had been earlier in the day, though not as wild as the great wave she'd called, and bitterly cold. Thunder boomed and rumbled overhead. Not the best time to be in the water, she supposed. But a thunderstorm from a previously clear sky meant that Deck was alive and conscious and pissed as hell, so it made her feel safe, safe as the arms of the ocean did.

Guide me to them,
she begged. For what seemed like a long time, but was really only a couple of frantic heartbeats, nothing happened. Then a current that hadn't been there before bore her…not deeper into the ocean, she sensed, but in toward shore, until a wave caught her and deposited her, not too gently, on the sand.

Someone tripped over her and let out a soft cry of “Meaghan, thank the Powers,” just above a whisper but penetrating.

Kyle, and he was wet and naked and helped her scramble to her feet. “Deck's hurt,” he whispered urgently.

“I know.” He didn't ask how. “How badly?”

“Bad enough, but he patched himself up for now. He's behind us, but keeping up.”

Meaghan's head spun with questions, but Kyle was running and pulling her along after him and she didn't have time or, soon, breath to ask questions, even the most obvious one: Are we running to something or away?

Deck saw Meaghan's dripping hair, heard Kyle's whispered words.

She was all right. Wet, but all right. Probably stunned, but in better shape than he was at the moment. And he'd bet she was responsible for the big wave he'd glimpsed hitting the main beach while mysteriously missing the stretch of shoreline where they were.

All he wanted to do was grab her, hold her close and say, over and over again, like a prayer, “You're safe. You're safe.”

Except it wasn't that simple.

While she might be all right, there was no telling if Jocelyn and everyone else at the house were.

For that matter, he wasn't exactly all right himself. He'd managed to slow the bleeding down and draw enough energy from sea and earth to keep going, but he'd been shot and sooner or later, probably sooner, it was going to catch up with him.

They burst onto a beach swept clean of everything. Even the big driftwood logs were gone, washed away by Meaghan's wave.

Meaghan slammed to a halt. “Is anybody…”

“No,” Kyle answered, and then calmly, “good job.”

Well, that proved she wasn't a long-lost Donovan cousin, some annoying part of his brain pointed out. If agents had been on the beach, they were washed out to sea now, good as dead unless they were exceptionally strong swimmers or just plain lucky. But Meaghan had survived just fine, meaning the ocean—and her magic—didn't reject her.

It was good to be a wild witch sometimes. Especially when someone was trying to put you in a world of hurt and you actually had options for fighting back.

“Where to now?” Kyle panted.

“Main house. Take Meaghan. I'll check Elissa's guesthouse.”

He was already running as he said it. It hurt to talk, let alone move, and the wound was bleeding again, but it was a slow drip rather than a gush so he ignored it. He'd done more painful things to himself surfing. Of course,
to himself
was the key difference.

But he didn't have time to worry, so he pushed on.

Lightning struck the ground about ten feet from him, sizzling a bush. Behind the now-smoldering bush, someone shouted in alarm, and a black and fuchsia sorcerous spell fizzled harmlessly as he ran past.

Okay, the lightning could be handy, if only he could figure out how to direct it. No time to experiment now, though. He had to keep moving.

Another lightning strike, and this time the screams were more pained than frightened. At least they were alive to scream, and he didn't care if a few Agency asshats were charred around the edges. He dodged a shot by flinging himself onto the ground and started a low crawl that would be a hell of a lot easier if his arm worked right.

The farther he got into the estate, the more chaos surrounded him. A lion roared in the woods, and a mountain lion's scream answered. Something gurgled in between those noises and he couldn't decide whether he should feel sickened or grateful that Elissa had married two big carnivores. Magic flared everywhere. Familiar Donovan spells, though many of them felt weaker than usual. Meaghan's wild, improvised water magic. Formal spells that felt like Donovan magic that he didn't recognize—probably Paul, who had an uncanny ability to remember obscure Gaelic wording he'd read once in passing and who, married to a fox and a Trickster avatar, liked shaking things up. Sorcery. Occasionally an earthy magic that wasn't either witch magic or sorcery.

The family ghosts, probably directed by Aunt Bath, but maybe acting on their own, swooped and howled. Akane was obviously at work because parts of the familiar landscape had changed to something both nightmarish and disarmingly cute, like the backdrop to a disturbing anime series. At the same time, he knew exactly where he was.

Lightning flashed more and more often. He couldn't tell if it was striking anyone, couldn't control it anyway. It was pouring, but in a concentrated way, mostly around the main house, so he couldn't tell if that was Meaghan's power or his own working of its own accord, or if Portia or Heather was doing something deliberate. Focusing on a spell seemed too hard. It took all his concentration to keep crawling.

Into a pair of muddy combat boots.

He raised his head. Armed man. Big fucking gun that didn't look quite right, and not just because no gun would ever look right at Donovan's Cove, not even the small pistol Tag sometimes carried.

Time froze. He and the armed agent made eye contact. The man had dark eyes, a complexion that suggested he was Hispanic. He didn't look cruel, and his aura didn't display any of the off colors that indicated pathological levels of sadism or malice. In fact, it looked like the aura of just about every cop or soldier Deck had ever encountered. Serious. Intent on the mission and on staying alive. Asking the questions necessary for those purposes and planning to worry about everything else later. Determined to carry out orders and hoping he didn't have to get hurt or hurt anyone else to do it.

Unfortunately, this guy's mission was putting Deck and everyone he loved in danger. Deck might be able to get the lightning to strike him, but they were too close together. And he didn't really want to kill the guy, let alone himself, just put him out of commission. Making a great effort, he tapped the raw power of the earth on which he was sprawled and the water in the air around him, tugged possibility, said a few words in Gaelic in his mind because he was afraid the guy might panic and shoot if he heard the language of Donovan spells. There was metal in the gun, and metal came from the earth. And even high-tech guns probably didn't shoot as well when they were full of water.

Deck held his breath. The armed man glared, apparently not wanting to shoot him but equally apparently ready to do so if he deemed it necessary.