Chapter Eighteen

Leif shifted in his chair, which immediately drew Germaine"s eyes on him. Trying to remain nonchalant, he crossed his legs and folded his hands in his lap, and after a moment his captor returned to staring at the wall and humming the occasional tune.

They"d been in this cramped office for probably a couple of hours, now. He was still chained up, but Germaine had generously removed the gag with a stern admonishment to remain silent or else he"d put it back on. At one point, Germaine had allowed him to take a leak just outside the door, but the shackles, gag, and a blindfold had all been implemented, so the most Leif could do was try to draw his bathroom break out as long as possible on the off-chance that someone would possibly see him. Maybe a passing helicopter?

He did have one thing going for him. He"d risked speaking up, asking to make himself a final drink, and Germaine had smiled sardonically while holding up one finger. Leif had taken a deep breath to think, then settled on making himself a Screwdriver cocktail that granted Telekinesis, one of his first ever potions, and definitely the most versatile. He"d made it a triple and poured all his power into it before chugging it down, nearly tasteless from the cold.

So now, he had his kit in arms-reach, a waning Bullet Barrier effect, and a fresh Telekinesis that was probably strong enough to lift a couple hundred pounds.

If the opportunity arose, anyway. If Germaine could detect bullets mid-flight, then nothing Leif threw would be faster than that.He"d also have to wait before doing any clever effects, like using a rock or something to scratch hidden messages. Maybe when the time came, he could throw enough things at Germaine to distract him, and with the element of surprise make an actual run for the road.

There was a faint chime from Germaine"s phone, and his face was briefly lit up by blue light as he checked it.

"Fifteen minutes until my acquaintances arrive with a spare rental car. Stand up."

Leif got to his feet, tensing. He wrapped his telekinetic grip first around the heavy counter, then the door, so that way Germaine couldn"t just shut it on him.

"I"m letting you go," Germaine said, then began making arm movements. The chains around his body fell away, then slowly returned to their proper places as part of the wall and floor.

"Wait, you are?" Leif bit back his words before he could ask about the whole maiming thing.

"Don"t remind him!"he told himself.

"Yes, dear little Leif. I had much time to muse over the situation, and though removing your eyes and hands would send a very specific message, it would be in very poor taste, which is not like me at all!" Germaine ran a hand across his head, looking embarassed. "Besides which, my own dear little Robin would have my head if I told them that I bought their future safety at the expense of an innocent healer."

Hardly believing his luck, Leif bent down cautiously to grab his alchemy bag. "So I can just, like, walk out the door?"

"Not just yet, but soon," Germaine said, flashing him a smile that was probably meant to be charming, but… no, not under these circumstances. "You"ll stay with me until my ride is here, then it"s off you go. If you face the road, and then head right, you"ll come up on a gas station. Do be careful of traffic when you go. For now, we"ll head outside together to wait."

Leif took a moment to secure his alchemist"s kit on his back while Germaine unplugged the heater, light, and generator. After checking his phone again, he grabbed a backpack in either hand and led the way out into the cold, holding the door open for him with a slight bow.

The snow had stopped falling, and the sky was a dim gray from clouds backlit by a crescent moon. Leif rubbed his hands together, then stuffed them into his armpits, wishing again that he"d worn a thicker outfit as he focused on his surroundings. He"d believe himself safe only when he was back home with his boyfriends.

Leif inched himself further away from Germaine as they walked, and he made sure to constantly have something heavy in his telekinetic grip, just in case.

Germaine stopped near a pile of old rebar, still a ways from the road itself, and pulled his phone out. Leif took a few extra steps, listening to the crunch of snow underfoot and gazing out at one of the street lamps. He felt lightheaded and giddy, and could barely contain the urge to start running. Soon he"d on his way, and then it would be just a brisk hike to the gas station. He could ask the employee to call the police. Or maybe DOMA? Yes, that"d be better.

"Hmm."

Leif looked over. Germaine"s back was turned mostly towards him, but it looked like he was still browsing on his phone. Leif watched him cautiously a moment longer, then looked back out.

"A curious thing," Germaine said, a strange note in his voice. "I just received an email from my inside contact in the police force, stating that the hit on Robin was orchestrated by DOMA. Very curious, wouldn"t you say, Leif?"

"What?" Leif tried to take a step back, but stumbled when his feet didn"t move. Windmilling his arms, he struggled to remain upright as Germaine walked around to his front. A freezing sensation crept up his legs, and looking down he saw in the dim moonlight that his legs were being engulfed up to the knees by earth.

"It would make a kind of sense, wouldn"t it? By tricking Robin into sharing our rendezvous location, you get a guaranteed chance at killing me." Germaine"s hair was growing into a tangled mess by the sharp wind. He shook his head once to get some of the whipping strands out of his face, but didn"t bother after that. "But you can"t have a mage like Robin still helping me out. So you shoot them."

"That wasn"t the plan at all! Orlan, listen."

"Are they even still alive?" he pressed. "Maybe the message I got from Robin was a lie after all. Who are you really, Leif?"

"I"m a bartender. I can make a healing potion, sometimes. I"m, I just…"

"Perhaps I shouldn"t let you go just yet, no."

Germaine swung his hands out like a maestro"s first movement. Leif had swung his kit off of his shoulders in an attempt to do… something, anything, but was forced to drop it when more stone tendrils rose from the ground, wrapping around his forearms and pulling them down tightly against his side.

Leif darted his head around, looking for an avenue of approach. He grabbed a piece of rebar. Then some loose stones, a handful of dust… what else would help? Germaine"s clothes, maybe? Choke him with his own necklace?

Leif fought down panic, trying to think, and then felt something odd in the distance.

"I won"t hurt you, if you cooperate," Germaine said coldly. "But I am owed some answers, and I am very much at the end of my patience. You would do well to tread lightly these coming days."

Leif bowed his head as he focused, then lifted it sharply. The "odd thing" was his spirit senses detecting someone who"d consumed one of his potions, approaching rapidly. Very rapidly. They had four legs, a giant beast shape… Tucker!

Germaine shaped a gag and made to put it around Leif"s mouth. Tucker was about to arrive. Distraction time?

Leif played his wild card. He threw sand at Germaine"s face, threw rebar at his back, and twisted the necklaces tightly, cutting off air supply.

Germaine"s shock didn"t even last long enough to register beyond an eyeblink, being replaced by anger as the runes on his chest and arms flared. The necklaces snapped off, the dirt was pulled out of his face, and the rebar hung suspended in the air, wobbling as Leif and Germaine fought to control it.

It bought an extra few seconds, though, enough time for Tucker to close the distance and leap towards the geomancer, shifting into his bipedal form.

Germaine ducked, rebuffing his assailant with a column of stone risen from the ground. Reaching claws snagged on his chest, drawing blood, but more columns arose, blocking progress. Germaine leapt backward, gestured…

"No!"

Leif bent his telekinetic will, but failed to stop a flying rebar from piercing through his rescuer. Tucker was skewered through his middle, the ten foot bar of metal stabbing through flesh and ground alike, and he howled in pain.

Germaine was quick to summon a flashlight into his hand out of one of the backpacks, shining it at the blood-coated rebar. "An invisible beast! But I can feel your footpads on the ground, and your paws that grip the bar. I am sorry, Detective Johnson, it was a good try but you"ve failed once again. I"ll call an ambulance for you once we"re on our way. I trust your hearty shifter stamina will sustain you until then."

"Quit your high-and-mighty posturing, Germaine," he said, growling. "You"re not taking Leif anywhere."

Leif stopped his futile and painful attempts to squeeze his hands out of the stone binding. That voice… it wasn"t Tucker"s. Looking more carefully with his spirit senses, he saw that the rebar was pierced through a shifter, yes, but not a familiar one. The snout was longer, and the madly swiveling ears were triangular, not broad and floppy. The canine—no, the lupine shifter was also a bit shorter and bulkier than his boyfriend.

"What"d you go and kidnap him for, huh?" the werewolf continued, then grunted, leaning over and clutching at the lower end of the bar before continuing, sounding short of breath. "You went too far this time. But if you"ll just come in and talk with us, with DOMA, we can fix all of this mess."

"DOMA killed my love!" Germaine shouted at him.

"Robin"s still alive!" the shifter shouted back, then jerked on the bar. It came free from the ground, at the cost of sliding several clearly agonizing feet backwards through the wound. He took a couple of staggering steps towards Germaine. "I just spoke with them."

"You lie!" Breathing heavily from exertion, Germaine caused a dozen reinforcing bars to flow off the pile and through the ground like shark"s fins, which surrounded the shifter despite his dodging, forming a cone-shaped cage around him. Leif saw Germaine drop his arms heavily, and they dangled at his side, his flashlight tilted up to shine on the cage.

"You lie," he said stubbornly. Leif saw him catch his breath, then reach out with his geomancy for one of the last remaining bars. Slowly, one of the ends began reshaping into a point.

Focusing, Leif grabbed the same bar with his telekinesis, managing to rip it from Germaine"s power and send it flying some yards away. Germaine turned towards him.

"Enough. I have no patience left for you."

As Germaine approached, Leif had about two seconds to recognize an airborne duo with his spirit senses before a small shape fell out of the sky. In a flash, the tiny form grew much larger, grabbing Germaine from behind and twisting his arms back roughly.

"Leif!"

Right muzzle shape. Proper green eyes. Appropriately wagging tail, at least for a second or so.

"Tucker!"

"Earthen Barrier! Make one and drink it, quickly fast please!"

"Tucker, I"m—"

"Now!" his boyfriend cried, and Leif was taken aback by the note of fear. Then Tucker looked fully at him, and seemed to take in the stone that bound Leif"s arms and feet in place. "Oh. Oh, bad, no."

Germaine couldn"t twist out of Tucker"s grip, so he looked to be resorting to geomancy. For some reason, however, the pillars he was making were moving at a slower pace, in that Leif"s eyes could follow them as they were generated. The snail"s pace seemed to surprise Germaine, too, but before he could adapt, Tucker bounced a couple of steps away from the forming columns, bringing the geomancer with him.

Leif inspected Tucker more closely, seeing which of his potions he was using, then understood.

"No, it"s okay," Leif said, focusing on his kit. "I got this."

Leif used his telekinesis to bring his bag up in front of himself. He didn"t even need to grab the dropped flashlight, since he"d gotten a chance to study where the contents were when he"d contrived to mix a Screwdriver cocktail, and he"d spent the last couple of hours rehearing in his mind.

Leif"s Earthen Barrier was a simple margarita. Nearly as fast as he could think about it, the small Giara bottle containing Patrón Silver floated up out of his bag, along with triple sec, lime juice, and the thermos with ice.He found that mixing the margarita for the Earthen Barrier cocktail was vastly different when done by telekinesis rather than by hand, messy and uncoordinated, and the proportions were definitely all wrong, but in the end he had the ingredients gathered in a shaker and proceeded to mix them at an inhuman speed. He poured himself a healthy measure into a salt-coated glass, then magicked the glass to his lips and downed the chilled drink rapidly.

Almost immediately, the bindings around Leif began lifting away like ashes, forming into a widening shield of stone around himself. Leif focused on expanding the barrier, making sure that the orbiting stones passed around the other three without striking them.

Grabbing the shaker and the margarita glass, Leif hurried over to stand beside Tucker where Germaine was still trying to get his geomancy running again.

Germaine grunted, then seemed to relax against Tucker. "Is this a ward? No. It"s similar, though. I can feel the earth, but I can"t grab it with my runes. What did you do?"

Ignoring him, Leif offered the potion up to Tucker, but he shook his head. "Give it to Clairmont."

Leif hurried to do just that, not letting surprise slow him down as he turned to the executive director, who was apparently a wolf shifter. With a glance back and a gesture, Leif called his alchemist"s kit to himself, then reached through the bars to give him the glass.

"Sir, I can heal the stab wound if you"ll let me. Or should I try to get you out, first?" Experimentally, Leif tried lifting one of the bars out of the ground, but they were stuck fast.

Clairmont downed most of the margarita, coughed, then drank the rest. He turned to look at him and shook his head.

"I can slip out of the cage myself as soon as we remove the embedded rebar. I"ll kneel, you pull it out from behind." Pressing his muzzle up between the bars, he leaned in as close to Leif as he could, whispering, "And make sure one of us stays close to Germaine at all times. Lilithian figured out that where your earth potion and his geomancy overlap, yours seems to win out and acts as a natural ward."

"Got it. I"ll make the next batch with a wider radius, then." Leif tested, and found that he could grab hold of the rebar with his telekinesis. "I can pull the bar out myself with magic, but let me get a Recovery potion ready, first."

As Tucker carried Germaine closer to Leif so that his geomancy could be triply diminished, Leif used his special simple syrup to craft the healing cocktail. When it was ready, he slid the rebar out with his magic, gave the growling director the cocktail, and watched as his flesh knit itself almost back together.

"Clairmont, I"ve heard of you!" Germaine said brightly. "Is this where you tear my throat open for all of my nasty, terrible crimes, like for the bombs I set off?"

"Don"t be stupid, Germaine," the director said. He shifted into a wolf form, walked easily between the bars, and then shifted into his human form right next to where Leif was kneeling beside his kit, putting away his things; at a different time, Leif might have appreciated the dangling view that was at eye level, but all he wanted right now was to get everyone clear and safe. "We both know you didn"t plant the bombs."

"Ah, then this situation must be—"

"Kindly shut your glib mouth. You"re caught, you"re powerless, we"re bringing you in. You can call Mx. Sinclair along the way to confirm that they"re fine, apart from a headache, then we"ll sit down and have a pleasant discussion about how you"re going to provide testimony in exchange for partial immunity." Clairmont looked down at Leif, then back over to Germaine. "You committed a kidnapping, so full exoneration probably isn"t on the table anymore, but we"ll see what the mythic council—"

"Wait!" Tucker interrupted, tilting his head. Leif noticed the comm set tucked away behind his ear. "Rickert says we"ve got police incoming. Lots of lights and helicopters a minute out."

"Damn it, alright." Clairmont started gesturing. "Don"t know how, probably a phone trace, but let"s just clear out."

After a couple of quick orders, Tucker shifted into his pony-sized, dire beagle form, while Clairmont shifted into a similarly sized wolf. Grabbing his backpack, Leif climbed up onto Tucker"s back, holding him tight.

"I love you so, so much," Leif whispered into his fur, then nearly fell off when Tucker started wiggling and wagging his tail with unprecedented abandon before steadying himself.

"It"s a novel experience to be riding an invisible mount," Germaine said, awkwardly astride the director.

"Just stay focused on hanging on, unless you want to try your luck with the same men who tried to kill your partner," Clairmont growled, setting out at a quick trot with Tucker beside him. "And Leif, if you can, try to make another Camouflage potion for the lawbreaker while we ride, as a just-in-case."

Trusting in Tucker to keep him stable, Leif started using his telekinesis to dig through his kit for the necessary supplies as they made their getaway.