Blazing the Trail (24 page)

But Jared was daring. Jared was reckless.

Maybe Jared had less to lose.

Or less to live for.

I felt that we were on opposite sides of an abyss, that there could be no middle ground. There was only one thing I could say.

“I’m sorry.” I turned and walked away from him, past the bike and down the street, feeling the weight of his gaze as he watched me.

And when he finally started the bike again, its sound faded from earshot.

He rode in the opposite direction.

That was that.

But this time, I’d sent him out of my life.

Funny, but it didn’t feel like much of an accomplishment.

I
FEARED
I
COULDN’T
go into that glamour and survive, not without a better plan, and I resented that Jared had expected me to do it at his request. On the other hand, I had a niggling sense that I’d made a big mistake by turning him down. I walked back to school to get my car, arguing both sides of it in my mind until I was sick of myself.

Eventually I heard the faint hum of a motorcycle cutting in and out. I was sure it was the Ducati and I suspected that it was trailing behind me, even though I never caught a glimpse of Jared. The engine was throaty, maybe a bit unhappy to remain in a low gear. It both irritated me that Jared was following me and pleased me that he was sticking with me.

As usual, he was mixing me up in a very big way.

It was getting dark, though, and I was starting to glimpse the golden glint of the eyes of ShadowEaters in the periphery of my vision. When I looked straight at them, they faded from view, as if they’d never been.

As if they were figments of my imagination.

But I could feel them.

And I could hear spellsong.

Faintly.

Hauntingly.

How many apprentice Mages did they have to divest of their shadows before they could attack me outright? Were they mustering power? Or waiting for an opportunity?

It took me a while to realize there was another song on the wind, mingling with the throaty purr of the Ducati’s engine.

It was Jared. He was humming that song of his, the one called “Snow Goddess,” the one I thought was about me.

That’s what he was doing: trailing behind me and defending me with his spellsong. Keeping the ShadowEaters at bay.

Maybe I hadn’t ditched him after all.

My heart did that stupid lurch thing where it leaps and practically sticks in my throat.

I finally reached the school, only to discover that the little red Toyota was parked all by its lonesome in the lot. It seemed to look particularly ill used, battered, and sad. But it was mine. I was feeling a bit bashed up myself. Maybe we belonged together.

I got in and started it, turning up the heater to full blast. My fingers were too frozen to even compose anything on my messenger. I sat there, letting the ice in my veins thaw, and watched the spellsong swirl around the car. Orange, viney Mage spell light, interspersed with flickering purple Jared spell light. Jared’s spells looked like barbed wire, with big nasty spikes. I had to like that.

I was so busy looking that I didn’t see Suzanne, not until she rapped on the passenger’s-door window. I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound.

What she said astonished me even more.

“Hey, freak. Give me a ride.” She yanked open the door and flung herself into the passenger’s seat, treating me to a vicious glare. This made me wish I had locked the doors as soon as I’d gotten in. “Let’s go already.”

“Excuse me? I never offered you a ride.”

“But Trevor is a no-show and I’m freezing my ass off, and you owe me big-time.”

I didn’t move. “I don’t owe you anything.”

“Oh no? I could make your life miserable in so many ways,
and you would deserve it. But give me a ride and we’ll be friends.”

I laughed. “With a friend like you, I wouldn’t need enemies.”

“Listen, bitch,” she began, and pivoted to face me.

But I had had enough of Suzanne for one day. I turned on the beguiling flames pronto and she forgot whatever she was going to say.

Her mouth dropped open a little bit. “What’s wrong with your eyes?” she asked, her voice already a bit dreamy. She was pretty suggestible, which worked for me.

“There’s nothing wrong with my eyes,” I said in my beguiling voice.

“Nothing wrong,” she echoed, then shook her head and looked away. “This is some kind of freaky dragon trick you’re trying to pull on me and it isn’t going to work.”

She reached for the door handle but I hit the power locks, glad yet again that my dad loves his toys. This car had nothing on the new sedan he’d parked at the airport.

Even with all its gadgetry, I didn’t lust for the sedan, though. It was the ancient gas-powered Lamborghini that snared my heart and held fast.

“Hey!” Suzanne shouted, then turned to look at me again. I had the flames in my eyes turned up, ready for her, and smiled when she stared.

Caught.

“You didn’t see anything in the bathroom today,” I said, low and enticing.

Suzanne licked her lips, fighting the notion.

I tried another tack. “You got a shot of me naked.”

“Naked,” she echoed with satisfaction.

“Just to humiliate me.”

Her eyes shone. “Just to humiliate you.”

“But there was nothing strange about it.”

“Nothing strange,” she echoed softly.

“Just a skinny butt.”

“Just a skinny butt.” She said that with malice, savoring her advantage in the curve department over me.

I was tempted, you know, to shift shape in the car when she was trapped with me, to compel her to watch me make the change, just to find out whether some humans really could be driven insane by the sight of the transformation. I’d never done it really slowly, never lingered in it so there could be no doubt of what was happening, but I wanted to now. Just for the sake of gathering evidence. Proving theories. For the benefit of
Pyr
and mankind.

But I stuck with beguiling.

Who says I’m not a good kid?

I dropped my voice an increment lower and made it softer. “There are no dragon shifters in our school.”

She closed her eyes and I thought I’d lost her. Then she shuddered from head to toe and I saw how much that lie relieved her. “No dragon shifters in our school,” she said, as if the weight of the world had slipped from her shoulders.

“Arty kids, losers, math whizzes, jocks. The usual variety.”

She smiled. “The usual variety.”

“Nothing special at Ridgemont High.”

Her lip curled and she glanced at the school. “Nothing special at Ridgemont High.”

I let my voice become normal again. “So, you want a ride?”

Suzanne started, as if awakened from a long sleep, then glanced at me. “Well, there’s no one else around, is there? Beggars can’t be choosers.” She gave me an address on Riverside Drive.

“You live there?”

“No, freak. Trevor does. I’m going to find out who he thinks he is, leaving me standing in a snowstorm.”

I had to razz her a bit, make our exchange seem authentic. “Does he usually forget about you?”

Suzanne was annoyed with me and with him. “He was supposed to meet me after his jazz session and give me a ride home, but there’s no sign of him.”

“Funny he’d do that. Maybe he’s got another girlfriend.”

“Be serious. I’m the best thing that ever happened to him.” She punched savagely at her messenger. “He’d better have a good excuse. I left my car at home today because of him, and passed on a ride from Trish in her new car.” She flicked me a look. “It’s not like I’d volunteer to be seen in this heap.”

“You have an interesting way of saying thanks,” I noted as I made to turn down Riverside Drive.

“Don’t go all the way to the house!” she instructed. “The last thing I need after this day is for Trevor to see me in this car with you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said tartly after I stopped at the corner.

She got out of the car, leaning down for one last taunt through the open door. “You should be thanking me,” she said. “I’m probably the most popular person you’ve ever had in your car.”

“So what?”

“So I have the Midas touch. This could change your social fortunes, Sorensson.”

“Not if no one sees you,” I smiled. “But it’s okay. Let’s keep both of our reputations intact.”

She slammed the door then, content that she’d won a round. Meanwhile, I was feeling triumphant that I’d secured my cover according to the Covenant.

One more item off my To Do list.

Too bad there were still so many more.

There was no chance of that depressing me. I watched Suzanne walk down the street, swinging her backpack onto her shoulder. To my surprise, a wraithlike shadow separated itself from the shadow beside a house. Suzanne started; then I overheard her greet Yvonne.

They walked together, and I had time to think that they deserved each other before Yvonne glanced back at me. Her eyes shone gold as she smiled.

Then I blinked and she looked normal again.

I looked in my rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of a guy on a bike tagging behind me. I saw the gleam of Jared’s protective spell and the sight of both made my heart skip a beat.

It was true that he didn’t have all of the information, but neither did I. I knew just about nothing about spellsingers.

Maybe if we pooled our data, we could find a solution.

Maybe it was just an excuse to talk to him again.

Maybe I didn’t care.

I
WALKED INTO THE LITTLE
park opposite the Jamesons’ town house after I’d parked the car, relieved to be within shouting distance of dinner. I wasn’t quite ready to go in, not when I had questions for Jared. I could hear the thrum of the bike trailing behind me still and see the wispy tendrils of Jared’s spell wafting around me. It was like a gossamer net, spun out of sapphires and amethysts, protecting me but not confining me.

There was so much I didn’t know about spellsong, so much I would probably never understand. His spells could be so many different colors and shapes. All I knew for sure was that Mage binding spells were orange.

I turned to face him, staring at the silhouette of his figure
on the motorcycle at the end of the block. He didn’t move closer, just braced his heels on the ground. Waiting. Giving me space. Not expecting me to answer to him, either.

Could he read my thoughts, even at this distance?

“What are they?” I asked. “The ShadowEaters?”

He took that as encouragement to ride the bike closer, then turned off the engine when he was beside me. He didn’t get off the bike, and he didn’t have his helmet on.

“They’re Mages who took the last rite.”

So the Bastians had it right. “Their book calls it metamorphosis.”

He nodded, scanning our surroundings even as he listened to me, humming when he wasn’t talking. He hummed a little harder before he answered me, buttressing his spell, then spoke quickly. “By eliminating species of shifters, they assume the powers of the shifters that are no more. They also strengthen their own ability to shift between forms.” He glanced around us, looking worried, so I tried to fill in the gaps.

“I’ve seen Adrian rotate between forms,” I said, and Jared hummed some more. “He can take the shapes of all the eliminated shifters. Or he could until he became a ShadowEater.”

“But he couldn’t hold any of those forms for long. It was a fleeting transformation.”

I nodded. “He held the other human form for a while at boot camp.”

“A sign of his prowess. The more proficient the Mage, the longer he or she can hold a form. They all max out around a week, and it completely wears them out.”

“And the metamorphosis?”

“Is an advanced rite for full Mages to move to the next stage. They were supposed to become immortal and move beyond the constraints of the physical realm.”

“But that’s not what happened.”

He shook his head. “They did it too soon, I think, before they had mastered all the necessary skills. Instead they got stuck halfway between human and immortals.”

“Can they take other shapes?”

“No. They have only their former human skins, filled with spell light.” He grimaced, hummed a bit more. “I don’t think they understood fully what it meant to fulfill the rite. The ritual talks about joining the divine and becoming divine.”

“But it’s not very divine. They’re predators, always hungry for more shadows, at least from what I’ve seen.”

Jared smiled. “It wouldn’t be the first time that the advance publicity oversold the attraction.”

I smiled back, unable to help myself. “But was there just one group who did it? Is that where they all came from?”

“The story is that there was a mass rite several hundred years ago. All of the full Mages participated, thinking they were going to change the world. And all of them transformed into ShadowEaters.”

“You never told me that part.”

“I thought it was a bullshit story—you know, the kind of thing they’d made up to make being a Mage sound cool. I never really believed that ShadowEaters had been created from human Mages.”

“But I saw Adrian do it.”

He nodded ruefully. “So it was true. Which explains why all you shifters thought they weren’t an issue. Essentially they would have disappeared, all at once.”

I nodded. That made sense to me. “So, the power surge from eliminating all shifters would catapult the newer Mages into that divine immortality, as well as the Mages already trapped as ShadowEaters. So what happens if they succeed in becoming pure spirit?”

He exhaled. “A universe filled with powerful malice, instead of striving toward goodwill and peace.” He met my gaze. “Probably one without shifters.”

Right.

He frowned at the bike. “Not a place I want to visit, much less live.”

It didn’t sound as if I’d have a chance to live there.

Jared’s expression was grim. “There has to be a way to beat them, dragon girl.”

It would have been nice to know how.

The glint of golden eyes was clearer now in the shrubbery at the perimeter of the park, and even with Jared’s spell enfolding me like butterfly wings, I shivered at the sight of them. It seemed to me that I could hear them salivating, and felt them drawing closer. I could see tendrils of spell light inching toward me, easing along the ground like thick vines. One dared to breach Jared’s spell, and sparks flew from the point of contact. The Mage spell fell back, singed, but three more tendrils took its place, edging closer.