Page 71 of Wind Called

It was a time for action.

She raised her hands, knowing they would emerge outside Marc’s rapidly disintegrating barrier…but also knowing they only had this one chance.

Her kind of magic didn’t need anything more than that. No invocations to the four quarters, no crying out to them to save her.

No, she only had to think of fierce breezes sweeping down the canyons, gathering strength, coming to protect the one woman in the McAllister clan who could hear their voices on the wind.

She called it to her now, imagining hurricane-force gusts, the sorts of frightening, swirling downbursts that came when the monsoon storms were their strongest. It was desert strength she needed now, born of Sedona’s red rocks…and yes, its vortexes.

It came out of nowhere, tugging strands of hair loose from her ponytail. No, not at full strength yet, but she knew that, even if she was the one who’d summoned the wind, she still needed to treat it with the proper respect.

“Get down!”

She pulled Marc with her as she fell to her knees and then flattened herself against the floor of the not-quite cave. He didn’t protest, as though he could tell she knew something he didn’t…and that he had better go along with whatever she told him to do if he wanted to survive.

All this had happened quickly enough that the thief barely had time to react before the winds reached him, howling, hungry, certain they’d found their prey. He also dropped to his knees, but because he wasn’t lying flat the way Bellamy and Marc were, the gale was still able to catch hold of him.

For a moment, it pushed him up against the rear wall of the protected space, splaying his limbs wide as if propping him up in one of those awful spinning carnival rides her cousin Roy had convinced her to go on when they were both little kids. But then the wind seemed to understand that wasn’t the desired outcome and instead pulled him away from the wall, turning him over and over again as he rolled across the floor of the place where he’d taken shelter.

His fingernails scrabbled against the red rock, trying to find some purchase, trying to find something he could hang onto.

And then he disappeared again.

But Bellamy could still hear the horrible sound of his nails scritching against the rocky floor, and it came to her.

He couldn’t teleport like Seth.

No, the thief was a warlock who could turn himself invisible.

A terrible scream hit her ears then, sounding far too high-pitched to have come from a man’s throat. One moment of even more awful silence, followed by a thud that had a horrible note of finality to it.

Both Bellamy and Marc remained pressed against the cave floor for a moment longer, as if neither of them could quite acknowledge what had just happened. But then he pushed himself up to a standing position and looked around, brows pulling together.

“I think he’s really gone,” he said.

Bellamy got to her feet as well. “You’re sure?”

He flashed her the smile she’d come to know and love so well. “Since no one’s throwing knives at us right now, I have to believe your winds pushed him off the cliff.”

Holding hands, they walked as close to the edge as they dared, then looked down.

No one was there.

How could he have survived a fall like that? Could the thief also fly as well as turn invisible?

Marc passed a thoughtful hand over his stubbled chin. “I think we’re going to have to head down there and see what we can find.”

From the ledge almost a hundred feet above, there hadn’t been much to see. But down here, Marc could easily spot the clump of crushed manzanita almost directly below the place where the winds Bellamy had summoned had pushed the guy off the cliff.

And when he reached out, he could feel one sprawled arm…and the rest of the man’s body.

“He’s really there?” Bellamy asked, her voice barely a whisper, as if she was afraid the mere sound of it would be enough to bring the Collector’s thief back from the dead.

“Oh, yeah,” Marc replied. “But don’t worry…he’s not going anywhere.”

Although she didn’t reach out to touch the body — he guessed she wasn’t willing to go quite that far — her expression was troubled. “It’s weird that he didn’t turn visible again when he died. I’ve never heard of someone’s magic holding on after they were dead.”

Marc hadn’t either, but he knew there was a whole lot about the magical world he didn’t know. Probably just a strange quirk of the thief’s particular talent.

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