Power Mage 4 Page 2

  Brawley paused for a second to savor the spectacle of this vicious little weakling struggling to find a way to change his destiny.

  Blood welled from the man’s mouth, yet his eyes remained unafraid. They bore into Brawley’s.

  “Fuck you!” the asshole shouted, spraying blood, and brought his rifle off the ground.

  Brawley stomped the man’s wrist, crushing bones and filling the air with the sweet, sweet music of agonized screaming.

  Glaring down, Brawley gave a quick snort, splattering the screaming man’s face with a wave of bull snot. Then he lowered his other hoof slowly, covering the screaming visage. For a second, he just held it there and enjoyed the moment.

  But then his Seeker senses kicked him in the ass.

  There were other would-be killers up above… and Frankie was in danger.

  3

  Brawley started uphill, crushing the man’s skull as he moved forward.

  Realizing a dead man was still impaled on his horn, he gave a quick shake of his massive head, dislodged the corpse, and tossed it aside.

  Remi, whole again, streaked past on his right, snarling like a wolf. She had swept one of the bullpups from the ground.

  Brawley hammered out of the ravine, determined to kill anyone who might do her harm.

  Two men emerging from the RV lifted their weapons. One fired at Remi. The other targeted Brawley.

  Remi raked them with lead, punching a line of holes in the RV. The men’s heads popped, spraying crimson halos, and they dropped, deader than hell. Bloody smears lumpy with brain tissue drained slowly down the bullet-riddled side of the Winnebago as if trying to reunite with the twitching corpses on the ground.

  The beast raged, robbed of his kills. But Brawley held it together enough to register the faint presence of one last adversary.

  Whipping his huge head in that direction, he saw the final adversary one hundred yards away and instantly understood why the threat had registered so faintly.

  The man lay motionless at Frankie’s feet.

  The gorgeous Gearhead leaned over the fallen man with a big pipe wrench raised overhead, ready to strike, giving Brawley a delicious glimpse of impressive side boob.

  Brawley trotted toward Frankie, trying to rein in his beast, which wanted to stomp the skull of the prone man and be done with it.

  But Brawley knew that the man’s still uncrushed skull held valuable information.

  Including the answer to Brawley’s most important question: Who needs to die for sending you after us?

  Because these fuckers had been too organized and too uniformly equipped to be a bunch of random assholes.

  They had been pros.

  Someone had sent them. And that person needed to die.

  Soon. And painfully.

  When Brawley was twenty feet away, Frankie turned and screamed. She backpedaled, drawing back the wrench, her eyes and pretty mouth flying wide open in terror.

  Oh shit, Brawley thought. In the heat of the moment, with his adrenaline pumping and his rage erupting like a volcano, he hadn’t considered that Frankie, unlike the other girls, had no idea that he had cracked his Bestial strand.

  The lovely Gearhead had been in town on a coffee run and did not understand that the two-and-a-half-ton monstrosity lumbering toward her was none other than her employer, friend, and hopefully future lover, Brawley Peckinpah Hayes.

  “It’s all right, sweetie,” Remi said, appearing at his side. “It’s okay.”

  Frankie panted with fear, her large breasts wobbling fetchingly. “What… the… hell?”

  Brawley felt Remi’s hand slap his muscular haunch. “This big-ass buffalo is none other than your studly sugar daddy.”

  “Huh?” Frankie said, looking from Brawley to Remi.

  “Brawley banged Psycho Kitty, cracked his Bestial strand, and…” She reached up to stroke the bloody fur covering his chest.

  Frankie laughed. Which normally would’ve been reassuring. But the sound leapt from her in a wild, cackling burst, then cut off sharply. Her eyes remained dubious. “No shit?”

  “No shit,” Remi said. Then she pointed at the guy on the ground. “Who’s the asshole?”

  Frankie’s eyes lingered on Brawley a second longer. Then they shifted back to Remi. “I have no idea. He was trying to get away, so I smashed his window out. Then he tried to do something to me. I think he’s a Seeker or maybe a Bender. But I cracked him in the head, and whatever he was trying to do to me just stopped. For a second, I thought he was dead, and—”

  Frankie burst into tears.

  Remi hugged the badly shaken girl.

  Then Brawley’s other women arrived.

  Frankie composed herself and filled them in.

  “I wondered what was going on,” Frankie said. “A policeman has the road blocked a mile back up the road.”

  Which explained, Brawley reckoned, why a bunch of people hadn’t pulled over to snap pictures of the humongous bison and his naked beauties.

  But the roadblock was suspicious as hell. Brawley snorted, wishing he could speak.

  “I agree, husband,” Sage said, and the blond beauty wiggled her nose, squinching her sexy librarian glasses up the bridge of her nose. “The roadblock is very suspicious.”

  “What the hey?” Nina blurted, turning her mismatched eyes toward her Seeker sister-wife. “You speak buffalo now?”

  Sage smiled. “I do not, but I was curious about the meaning behind our husband’s snort, took a logical guess, and sensed that my assumptions were correct. Also, Brawley is not a buffalo. He is a prime specimen, perhaps even the prime specimen, of Bison latifrons, the so-called giant bison, longhorn bison, or super bison of the Pleistocene Epoch and the largest bovoid to ever roam the earth.”

  Sage turned and made a sweeping gesture with her arm. In her nakedness, the gesture made the svelte beauty look like a runway model who had forgotten to get dressed before shooting a commercial. “In his Bestial form our husband is nine feet, three inches tall and weighs five thousand and seventeen pounds.”

  Nina’s jaw dropped, and she regarded Brawley with bulging eyes. “I think we’re going to need a bigger Winnebago.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Callie said, stroking his shoulder with a warm hand. “Just focus on the idea of returning to your human form, Brawley, and will it to be so. You can do it, my love.”

  Brawley gave a nod of his massive head. He stilled his mind, imagined returning to human form, and gave the mental command.

  Just like that, he collapsed into himself. As his body shifted, slugs dropped from his flesh like lead mushrooms.

  Rocked by the transformation’s speed and painlessness, Brawley laughed. He pulled Callie into his arms and planted a quick kiss on the white stripe that split her calico hair. “We better get the hell out of here,” he said. “That roadblock smells fishier than a stocked pond in a drought.”

  “You read my mind, handsome,” Remi said. She was standing very erect, bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet, and staring up the road. Watching the effect of that bouncing on her perfect body, Brawley started getting erect, too.

  But he booted his Carnal lust before he hardened fully. They had to get out of here. He turned to Frankie. “Did he look like a real cop?”

  “What?” Frankie said. She was staring at him with something like awe.

  Brawley grinned, realizing he was buck naked. Oh well. Let her look. He had nothing to hide. But he decided to have a little fun with her. “My eyes are up here, darlin.”

  “Huh?” Frankie said. “Oh. Um.” She tore her gaze from his semi-hard manhood and turned bright red. “I was just… I mean… yes, he looked like a legit cop. His cruiser was parked sideways in the middle of the road with its flashers on. He had cones set up and gestured for me to exit, but I was worried about you guys, so I slowed before the exit and accessed the RV’s security cams and saw men coming out of the van with machine guns. The cop was shouting then and pointing at the exit. So I killed his engine an
d electronics and roared past him.”

  Brawley nodded. “So the cop looked legit but was obviously part of this hit.”

  “But that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s with these people,” Sage pointed out. “As a willing participant, I mean. If this man that Frankie knocked unconscious is a Seeker as I suspect, he might have convinced the police officer to blockade the road.”

  “Good point,” Brawley said. “Time to figure out what the hell’s going on here. Wake up and talk, you son of a bitch.” He kicked the fallen man, who was returning to consciousness. Dude had one hell of a purple bump on his forehead.

  “I’m not able to penetrate his truth,” Sage said with a frown. “He is heavily cloaked.”

  Brawley nodded. “I’ll make him talk. Nina and Callie, go raid the bastards that tried to kill us. Those are nice guns. Fetch their wallets and salvage any body armor worth keeping.”

  The girls nodded and jogged off.

  Brawley paused for a second to watch their shapely asses. Then he said, “Remi, search the van. See what you can find. Frankie, kill the engine and sweep it for any equipment we might use, sell, or study.”

  While the girls got down to business, Brawley and Sage focused on the asshole Frankie had dropped.

  For a second the man remained groggy. Then he gasped. “You’re him, aren’t you? Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, you’re the power mage.”

  “I am,” Brawley said. “Question is, who are you?”

  “I apologize for interrupting, but because you are in the midst of an emotionally trying situation, I would point out the obvious and underscore the fact that attempting to harm or mislead us would be suicidal,” Sage said, and Brawley knew she was hosing the guy down with juice. “You understand that your only chance at survival is to cooperate with us.”

  “Yes,” the man said, and rose shakily into a kneeling position. “Please don’t kill me.”

  “I ain’t making no promises,” Brawley said. “I don’t make a habit of leaving enemies on my back trail.”

  “Please,” the man begged, his weakness and lack of integrity rolling off of him in stinking waves. “My name is Davis Beecham. I’m a Seeker. I didn’t even want to—”

  “Shut up,” Brawley said.

  Beecham closed his mouth and whimpered.

  “Talk is cheap,” Brawley said. “And slow. Ditch your cloak and let us in.”

  Beecham’s eyes swelled with panic, and he started groveling again. “Please, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

  Seizing Beecham’s head in his big hands, Brawley said matter-of-factly, “Buddy, you hitched your wagon to the wrong outfit, and now you find yourself in a ditch. That ain’t my problem. It’s yours. But I’m fixing to solve the problem for you if you don’t drop the cloak. You got three seconds, or I snap your damn neck.” Brawley infused this ultimatum with enough juice to drive home that he was speaking the truth. “One, two—”

  “All right!” Beecham blurted, filling the air with the stench of his cowardice.

  That’s what drove this guy, Brawley realized, as soon as the blubbering asshole removed his cloak. Fear. Perversion and lack of self-control and deep fear, the man all gurgle and no guts, with a nasty streak to boot, the sort of guy you couldn’t trust any further than you could throw him… and that was with both hands tied behind your back.

  Texans have famously big hearts and can forgive any sin except one: cowardice.

  So when Brawley took measure of Beecham, it was like slurping up a mouthful of puke. Instantly, he understood how Beecham had gotten into this situation. Understood the man’s insatiable perversions, the money he’d blown to acquire drugs that he’d used to ply females—some of age, some not even close—into having sex with him.

  Which was an astonishing revelation, considering Beecham was a Seeker. But the man was rotten to the core and filled with a self-loathing so pervasive that even with his psionic gifts, he couldn’t muster the courage to seduce and successfully bed a woman. Besides, the son of a bitch got off on the depravity and seedy manipulation. Why, this one time—

  Brawley hauled the Seeker reins hard to the left, leaving that particular trail of discovery, and focused on the big questions, the who and why behind this hit.

  The answer astounded him.

  How in the hell?

  Brawley opened up the flow of Seeker juice a touch and took one last snapshot of Beecham’s truth in case he needed to analyze it later. Then, holding the blubbering and cowardly pervert’s head in his hands, he twisted sharply, snapping Beecham’s neck.

  He felt a quick rush as the boost hit him, cranking his psi score to 207 points.

  But there was no joy in the kill, no pride. Ending Beecham had been like swatting a buzzing fly.

  “Brawley,” Frankie said, coming around the van with a shocked expression on her face and an all-too-familiar silver paddle in her hands. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  “Don’t be so sure, darlin.”

  “This is a psionic detector,” she said, giving the silver contraption a shake.

  “Makes sense,” he said, and revealed what he had learned but still could not understand. “These assholes, including a psi mage, were working for the FPI.”

  4

  “This stretch of ground we’re driving across now is the Callahan Ranch,” Brawley said, a grin coming onto his face despite the rough ride. The damn road was busting up like a boomtown freeway. “Next ranch is home.”

  The girls cheered. They had been traveling for a long time, sleeping in shifts, and were now deep in West Texas, the sunbaked land of sand and sagebrush. In a few minutes, they would finally reach Brawley’s home.

  But Frankie slammed on the brakes.

  Three black cows stood in the road.

  Brawley leaned close to the windshield. “Must be a break in Widow Callahan’s fence.”

  It was a cruel irony, having to stop so close to home. But if your neighbor had trouble, you helped. Period. And that went double for widows.

  He popped his door. Heat flooded the air-conditioned RV like he’d opened an oven. “I gotta round up these cows and let Rodrigo know. Callie, you want to give me a hand?”

  “Sure,” the cat girl said, happy to be chosen.

  They stepped into the blistering afternoon.

  The cows stood a little way off, eyeing them with uncharacteristic alarm. The animals looked poorly. Bony for Angus and skittish.

  That was peculiar.

  “It’s hot here,” Callie said, sounding surprised.

  “Don’t worry, darlin,” Brawley said. “It’ll cool down for at least a week or two in December.”

  Their voices spooked the cows, who lumbered across the road and away from the ranch. One of them limped, hauling an injured hind quarter.

  “Cows,” Callie called softly. “Here, cows.”

  Brawley almost laughed. She sounded like a toddler trying to call cattle.

  But no matter how Callie sounded to him, the cows instantly trotted toward her.

  “You gotta teach me that trick someday,” Brawley said.

  “Sure,” Callie said with a proud smile. “It’s a cinch, really. You just sort of send them a command with your mind.”

  Eyeing the cow with the injured hind quarter, Brawley thought, Come on, girl. Come on over. Psionic energy tingled lightly over his mind.

  The cow limped over, staring at him with her big, sad eyes. Not just sad, he realized. Pleading. He could feel her need, her worry.

  He had always been in tune with animals, but this was different. The cow wasn’t talking to him or anything like that. But he could feel her confusion and pain and desire for assistance just as clearly as he could see the cloud of flies swarming around the gaping wound high up her hind leg. She looked like she’d been shot.

  Yes, his gut told him. The cow had been shot.

  But when he wondered who had shot her, Brawley came up blank. That was strange.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said. “This c
ow needs a vet, or she’ll die out here.”

  He reached out and stroked her long face, which was drawn with malnutrition. What the hell was going on here? Rodrigo was a good ranch manager. Had something happened to him?

  Something was off here. Badly so. He could see that and feel it, too.

  He crossed the road and started up the widow’s drive, which had been recently widened resurfaced with gravel. He willed the cows to follow. Thanks to his Seeker senses, he didn’t need to turn and check. He could sense them back there, following him like new calves.

  As they approached the hands’ bunkhouse, his sense of them ebbed away. But when he turned, he saw that the cows were still following him. Then he shifted his attention and spotted something that told him how they had escaped.

  The fence wasn’t broken. Someone had left the gate wide open.

  Strange, that. But good. Because if the fence was broken and Widow Callahan was shorthanded, that would’ve further delayed Brawley’s homecoming. And he was ready to get home.

  Brawley gave Callie a quick kiss. “Thanks for your help, darlin. Head on back and let the girls know I’m going to check and see if everything’s all right.”

  With a little luck, Rodrigo might be done for the day, enjoying a cold one in the bunkhouse. Start early, end early was the cowboy way in West Texas.

  Callie jogged back down the driveway toward the RV. Brawley watched her for a few seconds, once again captivated by the way her juicy ass flared so unnaturally between her tiny waist and slender legs.

  Then he closed the gate, told the cows to go find their herd, and walked up to the old adobe bunkhouse.

  The main house was a good way farther up the lane. That was all right. He wouldn’t go up there and trouble Widow Callahan.

  He needed to talk to Rodrigo, who had worked this farm for forty-some years and who’d managed it soup to nuts for the decade since Mr. Callahan had passed.

  Mr. Callahan’s ancestors had carved out the ranch back in the mid-1800s, around the same time Brawley’s family had staked their claim.

  Side by side, the Hayeses and Callahans had endured Indian raids and prairie fires, tornadoes and cholera, hail and full-blown blizzards, and of course severe drought, more than one of which had lasted several years. Through it all, they had survived, each family helping the other generation after generation.