Kat Richardson: Downpour

Costigan cackled and muttered, dancing side to side where he stood and casting weird, energy-tailed gestures at Jewel Leung, who was cowering in her seat, gasping and clutching her chest. Geoff groped for an oxygen cylinder and mask under her chair, but he seemed afraid to take his other hand off her and couldn’t quite reach it.

Faith paused in frog-marching Ridenour to shout at the old man, “Cut that out!”

Costigan spat at him. Faith rammed his free fist into Costigan’s belly, knocking the breathless bokor to the floor. “I’ll be back for you later, you damned lunatic.” He wiped the spittle off his face and shot a scowl at me. “Help Newman with his wife. Then stick this idiot somewhere he won’t scare anyone else. And you,” he added, pointing at Willow, “stop acting like a juvenile delinquent and don’t break into any more trucks!”

He grabbed Ridenour again, but the ranger now seemed to be all right on his own. The two men headed for the door. Faith cast one more appalled glance at the light and noise still rioting above the lake and shook his head, muttering, “I miss my damned dog.”

Quinton was closest to the Newmans, so he crouched down and dragged the oxygen from under the chair, handing it to Geoff. While Geoff helped his wife, I grabbed onto Willow’s elbow and pulled her with me toward Costigan. Quinton joined us in wrestling the writhing bag of bones and spite to his feet.

“I guess a punch in the stomach works pretty well,” Quinton said, patting his pockets. “Not as messy as a knife between the shoulder blades, either.”

I frowned at him, but Willow laughed. Obviously I was missing the joke.

Willow started to make a gesture over Costigan, but I stopped her. “There’s no telling what’s going to happen to magic right now. Better stick to the mechanical means of keeping him out of trouble.”

“Oh,” she murmured. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a wadded handkerchief that didn’t look like hers, and stuffed it into Costigan’s mouth.

Quinton found a roll of duct tape in his endless pockets and put a patch of it over the hanky before using most of the rest to bind up Costigan’s arms and hands so he wouldn’t make any more interesting gestures. For good measure, Willow removed his cross, but it crumbled away to a twisted handful of rust, bones, and thorns in her grip as soon as the chain was clear of his body.

She gave him a sly look. “Oh, you are a nasty little man,” she whispered. Costigan’s eyes widened with fear, and he squeaked through his gag as she waved one of the bones at him and sang in a low voice that slid and rattled on the spine like blues, “Black cat bone, black cat bone, think my woman done took my black cat bone. . . .” She snapped the bone in two and threw both parts into the fireplace. Costigan whimpered and slumped in our grip, shivering, his skin suddenly wrinkling with goose bumps in his undressed state. Willow glanced at me with overly bright, defiant eyes. “It wasn’t his,” she said.

The sound of the lake changed, the roar pitching upward and then booming while the room filled with searing whiteness. The house shook and waves battered the windows, flinging gallons of icy water into the building. Jewel made a panicky moan behind her oxygen mask while Geoff lifted her out of the chair and tried to rush her to the door.

“We’d better get that lake fixed soon,” Quinton yelled, “or there won’t be much left around here.”

“We need the anchor stone!” I yelled back over the noise. The hot light was fading a little, but it left normal vision stunned and dim. “Get the Newmans and Costigan out of here and into Geoff’s SUV. He can drive them someplace safe while we try for the anchor—”

“It’s here,” Willow said, her voice cutting through the roar of the lake’s power with silky ease. “I left it by the door.”

So I had felt the stone enter the room. Good to know I wasn’t imagining things, but we still had to figure out how to get the stone back in place.

Quinton and I helped Geoff move Jewel and her oxygen into the Mercedes. Then we hauled Costigan to the SUV as well and locked him in the cargo area at the back. He made no protest, but we didn’t trust him, even if he had started shivering violently. Geoff called him a mean old bastard, but he threw a blanket over the man anyhow.

Willow met us at the dock with the stone in her arms. The agitation of the water had died down a little, but the lake’s surface was still chopped into rough waves and icy spume that had coated the short dock in a thick layer of frost. Hard, sharp shards of snow stung our faces and hands as the wind cut into us, even through our coats. One of the boats had been rammed into the dock with such force that the bow had knitted into the nearest piling in a shredded mess of fiberglass and wood. The remaining boat was small but looked sound, if somewhat waterlogged, since it didn’t have any real cabin, just a partial enclosure and windshield over the steering wheel near the front.

“How are we going to do this?” I asked over the howling of the magic-fed storm.

“I’m driving,” Quinton replied, “while you look for the broken waveguide. It has to be near Barnes Point, since that’s where the stone was hauled up.”

I glanced in the direction of the hatchery building where I’d first met Ridenour. It looked a dreadful, cold distance away.

“It’ll be OK,” Quinton said, seeing my worried look. “This little boat is seriously overpowered, even with three people in it,” he added, reaching to pat the massive outboard engine and nearly slipping into the lake as his feet slid on the frozen dock. “Whoa! We’d better get to it.”

We climbed in, trying to keep our feet out of the chilly water in the bottom. Quinton struggled to get the frost-crusted engine started, but after a minute it roared and then settled into a throaty burbling.

Willow had put the stone down in the bottom of the boat where it glowed bright green and gold once it was in the water. Then she’d dug into a cabinet under the seats and found what looked like pairs of padded suspenders, which she handed out while Quinton was coaxing the engine. “Self-inflating life preservers,” she explained. “You pull the cord if you go in the water.”

I didn’t think we’d have enough time to do anything but drown in water that cold, but I didn’t say anything and struggled into the weirdlooking garment anyway. I’d never spent much time on boats, but I guessed Willow had since she had grown up near the lakes, and I’d take her word that even a powerful mage might need a little help if they fell in.

Quinton cast us off and then eased the boat out into the lake before opening the throttle and sending us slamming across the waves toward Barnes Point. We all huddled under the little shelter to avoid the worst of the storm and spray.

“Why is it so bad?” Quinton asked, looking at the lake that still shot light and streamers of energy into the sky, illuminating the boiling clouds overhead. “It’s as if the lake got pissed off. . . .”

I looked to the south. “I think I underestimated the ley weaver,” I replied, “or its connection to Shea. The power jumped up exactly when Shea broke the window. Can you see how Beauty is getting smaller and changing color? I think it’s pumping accumulated power back into the lake, either to help Shea or to create an overload that might kill all of the other mages.”

“Is re-laying the anchor actually going to help?” Quinton asked. “I mean . . . that’s a lot of energy. . . .”

Willow cut in. “No more potential than the lake has always had. The leylines always managed the storms in the past. They channeled the wrath of Storm King; they can manage this.”

“If we can repair them,” Quinton replied. “I’m not sure how we’re going to do that. Harper can find the broken line of the waveguide— at least I think so—but I don’t know how we’re going to find exactly the right place to put the anchor back down or make sure it goes into place.”