I heard a laugh echo around me. «Oh, no, little ghost. I already told you. You won't trick me again so easily. Go home to your mistress before I send you somewhere you won't like.»
I realized what the wall was; it represented the mage's wards, and they were a lot more formidable than I'd expected. But I couldn't follow his advice. I didn't know how to get back without Billy Joe's help, so I had to go forward. Getting through those wards was matter of life and death, literally.
You can shield with anything as long as it has meaning for you: rock, metal, water, even air. It's simply a way of visualizing and manipulating your power. Eugenie had shielded with mist, which I'd thought was weird, but it seemed to work for her. The mage's wards were strong, but of a fairly normal type: like me, he imagined a wall, only his was wood and mine has always been fire. When I concentrated, I was able to see a fortress of huge trees, like California redwoods, stretching up so high that their tops were lost to sight. In reality, of course, they didn't have «tops»; I knew that wherever I went along his ward line, I would see this same, impenetrable wall.
I looked back to where I had «landed» and saw that an imprint of my body had been burned into the logs, splintering the wood all around it from the impact. That must have been how he had felt me, and it gave me an idea. I hadn't ever heard of anyone doing this before, but then, that went for most of the stuff that had happened to me today. I concentrated, not on his wards, but on mine.
I don't usually feel my wards. The technique is so ingrained that it's like walking upright: it's hard when you're nine months old, but by the time you're an adult, you don't have to think to cross a room. But now I took a few seconds to concentrate, and the familiar curtain of flame rose up around me, a comforting warmth instead of a searing heat. I focused and, slowly, a tiny tendril of fire, shaped like a child's hand, reached out from my ward to touch the nearest log. It caught like dry tinder touched by summer lightning, and soon a whole section of the wall was ablaze. I vaguely heard the mage cursing me, making threats and swearing to bind me to the lowest hall of Hell for eternity. I ignored him. It was taking everything I had to keep the fire blazing and refuse to allow new wood to knit up around the old. I didn't have the strength for smart comebacks.
Finally, after what felt like a week, a tiny hole appeared in the wood. I didn't wait for it to get bigger, but squeezed through. It was a tight fit, and it felt like my sides were being scraped into bloody lines by splinters, even though I knew that was impossible. All of a sudden, the smoke and fire of the burning forest melted away and I could see. The dark parking lot spread around me and a breeze blew across my face. Pritkin, Tomas and Louis-Cesar were across the lot, and my body was looking at me with wide eyes.
I yelled at Billy Joe. «It's okay! I'm in control!»
«Then drop the damned attack! Pritkin's about to have a stroke!»
I looked around in confusion, then peered inside. «I'm not doing anything!» It was true, as far as I could tell. I'd assumed that taking over would break the mage's concentration and solve the problem. But I could see that Pritkin's shields had shrunk to the point where they barely covered the three men and would likely fail any second. «What now?»
I saw my body bend over and whisper to Pritkin. He looked across at me and I waved. His eyes got big. He said something, but I couldn't make it out. «What?»
«The bracelet!» My voice bellowed across the parking lot as Billy Joe yelled at the top of my lungs. «He said to destroy it!»
A dark shape started running at me from across the lot. It had the same deeply unhealthy feeling I'd received from the mage, so I didn't need introductions. Somehow, the other dark knight had figured out what was going on, and he didn't like it.
I looked down and found a bracelet on the mage's left wrist. It was silver and formed of what looked like tiny, interlocking daggers. I couldn't find a clasp; it seemed to have been soldered onto his arm. I looked across at Pritkin and saw desperation on his face. Damn it, this thing had to go now. When tugging didn't work, I bit it, tearing at it with his teeth, concentrating on the bit where two of the daggers came together. Finally, after his fingers were a bloody mess, it came loose.
I didn't have to ask whether I'd gotten it right, because Pritkin slumped to the ground, panting in relief, and the vamps around him sprang into action. Louis-Cesar sent a knife flying into the vamp at my side, which would have taken off the head except that it collided with the oversized steel choker he was wearing. It didn't buy him much time, though. Tomas held out a hand and I finally got to see what had happened back in the storeroom. The vamp dropped to his knees and gave a choked gurgle, and his heart literally leapt out of his chest. It went sailing across to Tomas, who caught it like it was a slightly oversized baseball.