The Wizard’s Shield

Chapter 3-4

This was more like trying to stay on a

bucking bronco. The wind twisted and bumped and rolled beneath her.

Exhilarating in its way, but taking every bit of energy she could

find to stay with it and guide it. Fortunately she only had to

remain in control for a few seconds.

Using the power of her will alone, she nudged

the gust to take aim right on the handyman’s rear end, with an

upward motion that should bring him straight into the window.

“Now!” she yelled, the word a cue to herself

and a warning to Michael.

She guided the gust of wind into Jim, trying

to take him on the legs and backside and lift him. She rode with it

as his body rose, adjusting the force to the right angle to push

him inside, shoving hard, then trying to restrain it and brake once

he was mostly within. It still slammed him into the room with too

much force. The handyman shot through the window, crashing into

Michael and knocking them both backwards. Ilene released the wind

and gasped as something hit her with enough force to send flashes

of light swirling in her vision. She fell backwards.

She didn’t see what happened next, though she

felt the house rattle as the two men hit the far wall. By then she,

too, was on the floor. Jim must have kicked her in passing as he

was propelled into the room. Fortunately—sort of—he’d caught her

thighs and not the bruised ribs.

The gust she’d used retained force enough to

overturn an armchair and take most of the remaining books off the

shelves before it wore itself out.

Ilene struggled to her feet, gasping as her

bruised ribs protested. She’d rather have stayed where she was for

a bit, but too many other things were happening.

“Ilene!” Michael called her name.

She looked up and saw him disentangling

himself from the other man. Crossing the room to them involved

batting away papers that flew into her face, dodging books and

other debris flying around the area. Something hard hit her knee,

stopping her for a moment. She got to the men just as Michael

lurched to his feet.

“Help me shield,” he said, the words more

curt order than request. He glanced quickly at the handyman, who

was also rising, and Mrs. Wendall, who’d watched the whole thing.

“Downstairs,” he told them. “Twister coming. Guest bathroom.”

Ilene didn’t see if they went. The roar of

the still-rising wind outside and the gusts rattling furniture

around her warned of increasing danger. She immediately began to

concentrate on warding off the storm, which also meant fighting

whatever powers were using it to attack.

Michael took her hand, led her to the most

sheltered corner of the room, and pulled her down to sit beside him

with their backs against the wall. He positioned himself so that he

bore the brunt of the wind’s battering. Despite the circumstances,

she couldn’t help a brief shudder of awareness of his hip and

shoulder touching hers. She’d once loved this man so much it had

nearly killed her when he’d disappeared.

He used their joined hands as a conduit to

touch her power with his.

“You think we’re better at this now?” she

asked.

“We’d better be.”

They’d tried this once as teenagers. The flow

of their mingled power had quickly grown beyond what either of them

expected or could control. In their clumsiness, they’d nearly

caused a serious wreck on a major highway nearby. The results had

frightened them so much they’d never done it again.

They hadn’t talked about it, so she didn’t

know if another feature of that joining had scared him as much as

it did her. The intimacy of it had gone beyond even their tentative

touches of each other’s bodies. There had been seconds when she

felt she was inside him and knew him in ways people weren’t meant

to know each other. Bits of his memories and feelings knocked at

her brain, which wasn’t ready to accept or process them.

When she felt the gentle nudge of his mind

against hers, she shielded against the intrusion into her mind,

leaving just enough opening to let his power mingle with hers and

his understanding of the situation to penetrate.

A tornado bore down on them, and lightning

still threatened. She forced herself to concentrate on directing

her power to flow with his. His magic touched her carefully, not

with the rush of their youthful experiment. It sought what she

would channel to him, rather than demanding all.

She got another surprise as she let her power

follow his lead in deflecting the worst ferocity of the storm. He

wasn’t shielding just themselves or the house. He protected the

entire island.

“Take the lightning and help me with the wind

when you can,” he said.

Ilene didn’t answer, but he’d feel her nod.

He’d know it when she scanned for the polarizing fields that

indicated impending lightning strikes in the area, just as she

could feel him working with the air, confronting the extraordinary,

essential ferocity of the tornado. He let her see he planned to

divert it to a path that would carry it through the unpopulated

north side of the island, up to an inlet and then out to sea. It

would take an enormous expenditure of energy. A good thing she’d

eaten as much as she had that morning.

The lightning strikes came often and

viciously, almost all aimed at the house or nearby. The roar of the

wind and rumble of thunder made a continual racket that shook the

place and pounded at her ears. She struggled to maintain her

concentration. It was harder to send her awareness farther away and

to continually scan a wider area, but with a stretch of her power,

she could do it. Each time she felt the charge building up anywhere

on the island, she moved the field and guided the strike to an

empty spot. Fortunately there was plenty of now-deserted beach area

to take the bulk of the discharges.

During the lulls between strikes, she gave

Michael a boost in his attempt to redirect the tornado.

Their efforts probably took no more than ten

minutes, fifteen at most, but it seemed like much longer to Ilene

because every minute of it demanded her utmost concentration. She

poured out power in quantities she’d rarely undertaken in the past.

It was like running a long distance race for a person who’d trained

mostly for sprints, do-able with an effort of will and an

outpouring of adrenaline, but it sapped mind, body, and spirit.

As strong as he was, she sensed even Michael

found it difficult to control the awesome power of wind moving so

fast. They had one small advantage, though. Unlike the lightning,

they weren’t fighting another mage for direction of it.

Someone had likely encouraged it to form by

increasing the heat differential from ground to cloud and had given

the winds’ speed a boost when they began to swirl. Once that was

done, the vortex was nudged toward them and set free to do its

damage on its own. At least they were only fighting the power of

nature and not an opposing magical force as well.

Lightning quieted for a moment, letting her

join her power to his. Together, they pushed at the wild, violent

winds of the storm. It reminded her of her earlier effort with the

gust that had propelled the handyman back into the room. Trying to

guide a wind of that speed was like mounting a bucking bull. It

rolled and bounced and threatened to suck up everything she gave it

without any noticeable effect.

Working together, they redirected the winds.

Ilene abruptly found herself riding that crazy, maddened bull of

furiously swirling air for a few short moments. She bobbed and

rolled with it, part of it for a grand second or two, shoved one

way, then another, somersaulting, rolling, clinging onto it for all

she was worth.

As they pushed together, something new

happened, something even more fantastic and wonderful and amazing

than magic. Their power didn’t just join together into one flow

this time. It blended. It became not two lines running side by

side, but one solid, interlaced river of energy. In the process, it

formed something far stronger and harder than just their two

individual outflows of power.

Using that blended stream, Michael and Ilene

rode the wind of the tornado together. They rolled with it, flew

with it, and finally mastered it. She’d never done anything like

it. Riding the roller coaster with her father when she was a child

had offered a small, pale, weak foreshadowing of this. Skiing down

Snowshoe Mountain on a college break only hinted at the glorious

rush of speed and power.

And she shared it with Michael, sailing along

beside him, joined with him as they flew.

It startled and thrilled her, but it couldn’t

last long. It took too much energy out of both of them. With so

much force available, though, it didn’t need much time. With just a

few seconds of work, they turned the tornado to a path that would

take it out to sea.

The rest of the storm followed along with it

and ran out over the ocean. They dared not rest until it was well

away from them, however, so they continued their watchful

vigilance. Ilene deflected the occasional leftover lightning

strike, and Michael kept the winds away until the storm had moved a

mile off the coast and no longer offered any threat.

At last, in concert, they released their

concentration and let the flow of power wane. Ilene came back to

awareness of the room around her, startled to discover Michael not

only still held her hand, he’d moved closer. Her head rested

against his upper arm. She straightened up and drew a deep

breath.

“Are you all right?” Michael asked.

She shrugged, tamping down her annoyance that

he wasn’t even breathing hard. “Winded. Haven’t done that much

heavy lifting for a long time.”

He nodded. “Can’t say I redirect tornadoes

every day myself.”

“More of a once-a-week thing?”

“I prefer to save it for really special

occasions.”

“Should I feel honored?”

“If you want.” He pushed himself to his feet,

then ruined the macho effect by turning pale and swaying. Blood ran

down the side of his face and along his right arm. She couldn’t

tell if the smear on the left side of his tee shirt had come from

somewhere else or represented another cut.

Ilene moved to his side. “You’re hurt. Let me

see.”

He followed her gaze to the blood running

down his arms and smudging his clothes. “Scratches. I’ll clean them

up. That was…an interesting experience.”

“Very. Do you get attacked that way

often?”

The question seemed to startle him, but the

reappearance of Mrs. Wendall and Jim saved him from having to

answer.

“My goodness, what a mess,” the housekeeper

said.

“I’ll clean it up later.” Michael looked

around. “Mrs. Wendall, would you take Ilene back downstairs. I’m

sure she needs to rest after all the excitement here today

following her accident yesterday.”

“I meant you, Michael,” the woman said.

“You’re bleeding.”

“I know. I’ll take care of it.” He turned to

the handyman. “Jim, a word with you, please.”

Because she was looking right at him, Ilene

caught the flash of fear in the handyman’s eyes.

“I feel fine, really,” she said. “Why don’t I

stay and help you clean up.” She eyed the small runnels of blood on

Michael’s temple and arms. “You need to get those cuts

bandaged.”

Michael gave her a hard, cold look.

Mrs. Wendall apparently didn’t see it. “She’s

right. Those look kind of nasty. Might even need stitches.” The

housekeeper nodded toward Jim. “Both of you. Looks like you were

lucky and didn’t cut anything major.”

“I’ll worry about it in a minute. First, I’d

like to speak with Jim privately.”

For a moment Ilene held Michael’s eyes. What

she saw there frightened her, though she refused to let it show.

Something angry and ruthless lurked in his expression, reminding

her again of her doubts about what was going on at the window

earlier. But arguing with him wouldn’t gain anything.

“I could use the rest,” she admitted.

He nodded, with no change of expression. Mrs.

Wendall rolled her eyes, shrugged, and led her out of the room and

back to the staircase. “Men. No more sense than fleas when it comes

to taking care of themselves.”

Ilene had no intention of going back to her

room, but she had to find a way to distract the housekeeper.

Reaching out with her power again was almost more effort than she

could manage, but she searched for something she could easily

displace. Fortunately, she didn’t have to. A crash sounded from

somewhere in the vicinity of the kitchen, all on its own.