Force of Nature Read online

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  For Dad, who listened to me narrate this story from start to finish on a road trip. Without his input, it would not have come to fruition. For Sharlene, who has been there for me for my whole life, and has constantly encouraged me to follow my dreams.

  Chapter One

  “I’m coming, I’m coming!” I called out to the honking car as I scrambled to find my keys.

  A pair of arms caught me in the doorway, scooping me up easily. I looked up into the deep sapphire eyes and melted. I often had a hard time believing that the man holding me up was actually real. He was so perfect he could easily be a figment of my imagination. I felt the faintest brush from his unshaven face as he kissed me lightly on the forehead. It was only a moment but it was still enough to give me tingles.

  “Have fun,” Connor said as he set me back onto my feet.

  “Yeah, because dress shopping is totally my idea of fun,” I replied, rolling my eyes.

  “I could tell her you’re sick. I know plenty of fun things we could do here, and none of them involve dresses,” he grinned.

  I swatted him playfully, resisting the urge to take him up on his offer. “You’re terrible. Besides, she’d drag me out even if I was sick. She’s even booked us into some posh hotel. Anyway, shouldn’t you go home at some point?”

  “Don’t you like me here?” he asked with mock sadness.

  “Oh, hush. Of course I do, you know that. It’s just you finally got your place rebuilt but you never spend any time there. Anyway, you’ll need to get new clothes at some point, right? It’s been a couple of days.” I pinched my nose at him, even though he smelled wonderful, as always.

  “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.” He paused thoughtfully before adding, “You know, there is an easy way to solve that problem.”

  He had lost me. “Sorry, what problem?”

  His eyes glistened and he smiled crookedly as he spoke. “The problem of me not spending enough time at my new house, of course.”

  Oh. That problem. It had been just over a month since his house had been destroyed, and I was painfully aware of the cause: me. I had just discovered that I am essentially a magical battery, able to store more power within me than any wizard or sorcerer can find on their own. When Casper, a bitter fallen star hell bent on getting back up into the sky, had found out about my special ability he wanted to exploit it for his own means.

  Maybe exploit is the wrong word, as his actions would have destroyed me in the process. I had gone into hiding at Connor’s, except that Casper managed to conjure up a magical thunderstorm which had acted like a homing device, overloading my body and forcing an enormous surge of energy violently out of me. The surge had alerted him to my whereabouts and soon after, he came to the house, destroying it when he realized I had already fled.

  I hadn’t lost the guilt I felt from the whole ordeal, and I still can’t bring myself to go back, despite Connor’s reassurances that it hadn’t been my fault.

  Connor raised both eyebrows at me, bringing me back to reality as he awaited my response to his loaded offer. Luckily, the car horn blasted again, giving me a perfect excuse to avoid answering. I wasn’t about to have this conversation right now.

  I stood up onto my toes and kissed him. “I’ll see you tomorrow okay? That is if I don’t kill myself with tulle first.”

  “Seriously, Alex, try to have a good time.”

  I gave him one last exaggerated eye roll as I closed the door and raced down the stairs, tripping over the last step and crashing into the main doorway. I trip on that stair so often my fall was almost down to an art form, and I knew exactly how to brace myself as I smacked into the glass of the main door. I saw Maria shake her head at me as she bounced impatiently in the cab.

  “Hurry up!” she cried, as I shuffled into the taxi. “We’re going to miss the ferry!”

  “It’ll wait,” I joked. “I told them you were coming and that they should roll out the red carpet.” She didn’t catch my sarcasm, but that was normal for Maria. A lot of things flew over her head, especially now that she was so focused on her wedding.

  Maria is my best friend, former roommate, and now a bride-to-be. I have the lucky distinction of being her Maid of Honour, something I have no experience in whatsoever. Her fiancé, Justin, had only proposed six weeks ago, but she was determined to have a June wedding, which meant scrambling to get everything pulled together. Fortunately for me, Maria is a bit of a control freak and has taken to planning every last detail without my help. Aside from moral support, my only real task was to stand beside her and hold her bouquet.

  The only thing she couldn’t decide on was her dress. After scouring every last bridal shop in Victoria with no success, she decided that we needed to go to Vancouver for a shopping trip. Despite my lack of enthusiasm for dress shopping, I was glad to get away. My life had felt so intense recently that I needed the escape, even if it was just for a day.

  “How are the glasses?” she asked as I buckled into my seatbelt. “It’s too bad the contacts didn’t work out.”

  “Yeah. They were too much of a hassle.” As far as Maria was concerned, I had switched to contacts because I had “broken” my old glasses. That was only half true. My old ones had broke, but only because I had hurled them across the room while I was recovering from third degree burns, and more importantly, from temporary blindness. When my sight returned, I had been shocked to find out that I no longer needed glasses, and had thrown them off my face in reaction to the blurriness they caused.

  Still, my newly enhanced vision could be overwhelming at times, as everything was incredibly enhanced. I could make out grains of wood on a table twenty feet away, read text in a magazine from across a room, and see more colours than I had ever known existed.

  It felt weird though, not wearing glasses, as I had needed them since I was four. I remember looking in the mirror shortly after my transformation and frowning at the unfamiliar face in the mirror.

  “What’s wrong?” Connor had asked.

  “I don’t look right. I don’t look like me,” I had answered with frustrated whining.

  “You look beautiful,” he said, and I rolled my eyes at his cheesiness. “I’m serious, Alex,” he added, his tone definitive.

  I touched my thumb and index fingers together and flipped my hands upside-down onto my face, making frames around my eyes. “Much better!” I joked, turning to face Connor.

  He hadn’t been as amused as I was. His face was thoughtful. The next day he handed me a pair of prescription free glasses with a tiny red bow around one arm.

  “I think you look great either way,” he said, “but I’m betting not wearing them is driving you crazy, like you’ve lost something.”

  The second I put them on I felt complete again, and he was right. It had felt like I was missing a part of me.

  “They’re really nice!” Maria chirped. “Much better than those old plastic ones you used to have!”

  �
��Were they that bad?”

  She smiled and nodded, and she appeared to ponder her next question carefully before speaking again.

  “So, how’s things with you and Connor?” she asked, trying to sound smooth but failing miserably.

  “It’s great,” I replied, hoping she wouldn’t ask for details. I wasn’t entirely lying. Connor and I were great, with one exception: he is adamant against me using force lines. Force lines are the pale blue ribbons of energy that float effortlessly through the air. Wizards draw their power from them, but even the best of them can’t see them. They have to guess based on what they can feel around them.

  For some unknown reason I can not only see the lines, but also take from them, acting like a battery for others to draw from. Connor doesn’t like the idea of me being saturated with energy; he worries that the power will draw all sorts of creatures to me, including unfriendly ones, and that I won’t have a way to protect myself. It doesn’t matter to him that the only reason we won our fight against Casper and his allies was because of my ability to store the energy in its most potent form. I had transferred it to Connor as his own stores ran dry and with the new energy he was able to cast a spell strong enough to defeat Casper and his army.

  Nonetheless, Connor insisted I stay away from them. I disagreed vehemently, insistent that there had to be some good reason why I could do what I could do. Why shouldn’t I be able to investigate that? Fortunately for Connor, I had been so busy trying to keep Maria from burning out with her wedding plans that I hadn’t had a chance to explore my ability, though I thought about it a lot.

  “Earth to Alex! We’re here!” Maria had already paid the driver and was climbing out of the taxi. I followed, amazed that we had gotten here so quickly.

  We didn’t have to wait long before boarding the ferry. It was the first one of the day, so it wasn’t that busy. We found a couple of seats near the front, and I stretched my feet across to the empty chairs facing us. One of my stipulations for agreeing to go this early in the morning was that I got to sleep for the nearly two hours it took to get to the mainland. Maria hadn’t minded this at all, content to read bridal magazines the whole time. I dug my mp3 player out of my bag, having loaded it with some of my favourite symphonies in order to drown out the background ferry noise while still allowing my brain to shut off. Once I was comfortable, I slipped off my glasses and closed my eyes.

  Usually, I have no problem falling asleep while travelling. I’m the kind of person that can sleep on the bus if I have to, and still wake up in time to get off at the right stop. It’s even easier on the ferry; I’ve always found the dull vibrations of the engine somewhat soothing.

  Today felt different though. Every time I got to that point where dozing would turn into a deep slumber, I would twitch. Never enough for anyone to notice, mind you. It wasn’t like I would kick my foot or anything, it was more like my finger would jerk, or my cheek would go into small spasms for a second, just long enough to keep me from reaching my sleep target.

  At first, I didn’t think anything of it. It’s totally normal for the body to expel all the built up kinetic energy before it shuts down. But after forty-five minutes of restless dozing, I realized that it was something else, something familiar, but I couldn’t be sure. I paused Mozart, trying to focus on anything unusual. There were several hushed conversations, but they all seemed quite normal.

  Another twitch, this time in my arm. I opened my eyes slowly, careful to let my eyes adjust to light. Maria didn’t seem to notice that I was awake. She was too busy taking notes regarding wedding planning. Across from us, a man was concentrating hard on his crossword puzzle, his pencil bending slightly from the pressure of his hand. The scratching noise of the lead on the paper was faintly squeaky from his fervent concentration. To my right, an exhausted looking mother was explaining to her child all about the ferry as he pointed to things and asked questions. She looked a bit exasperated as she answered her child’s continuous barrage of curious questions, and it made me hope that someone was going to meet them on the other side so she could have a rest. Everything around me was very normal. Why did my gut tell me otherwise?

  Suddenly, my foot twitched, more so than any previous spasms, and I felt a slight static shock. Immediately, I knew what was going on and my body stiffened defensively. Someone was using magic nearby. The problem was, who? And more importantly, why? I scanned around, searching for a giveaway.

  Fear raced through me as I remembered the unnatural lightning storm which had alerted Casper to my whereabouts weeks earlier. Was someone trying to find me? No, that couldn’t be right. No one else knew about my power beyond a select few at Mobius.

  No one except the one who got away, my mind reminded me. One person had survived the battle. One person had escaped. A person who had every reason to want my power.

  Merlin.

  Chapter Two

  I froze at this realization, and my finger twitched again, sparking gently with a static charge.

  “Are you okay?” Maria asked, and I jumped in response.

  “Um, yeah,” I lied. My head whipped around again as I searched frantically for my nemesis. He had to be on the ferry. I could feel it.

  “Are you sure?” she asked, clearly confused by my behaviour.

  “I think I’m going to just go get some water. I’m feeling a little seasick. I’ll be right back, okay?”

  She nodded, and went back to her magazine. I put my glasses back on, out of habit. I didn’t need them to search. I had no idea what I was going to do once I found Merlin. He wouldn’t do anything serious in public, right?

  Another twitch. It felt stronger, and I guessed I was getting closer to him. I had only seen him once, and only for the briefest moment, so I wasn’t totally sure who I was looking for.

  I twitched again, this time in my shoulder, and I started to wonder what this would feel like had I been saturated with energy like I had been the first time this happened. I shuddered at the thought and forced it out of my mind. The thought had distracted me for just long enough that I hadn’t noticed the woman in the wheelchair pull in front of me; I collided into the side of her, nearly falling into her lap. Before I could apologize, she turned her chair around and spoke.

  “I knew that was you I saw earlier! How are you, Alex?” The woman looked up at me, her face straining for beauty, but only reflecting age. Her over-processed auburn hair was ravelled around her head in a messy bun, and loose strands fell untidily around her face. One eye locked with mine, while the other reflected an endless, swirling pool.

  “Morgan! Wow! How are you?” My eyes involuntarily darted to her chair, and I immediately regretted the question. I hadn’t seen her since the battle, and had no idea she was in such bad shape. I remember seeing her hit with a spell, but in the chaos of all that was happening I hadn’t noticed the damage.

  “I’ve had better days,” she said, and cracked a thin smile.

  A realization crossed my mind. “Morgan? Was that you just now? With the spells, or whatever that was? I felt something weird.”

  She chuckled quietly. “Yes, Alex, it was. I couldn’t be sure it was you I saw earlier, but I remembered how Casper found you, so I basically crafted a low-level version of his spell in order to check. I’m not the most mobile at the moment, so I figured I would bring you to me.”

  I wasn’t sure how much I liked that, and was even less sure about how to respond.

  “I thought you were him,” I mumbled.

  She chuckled. “You did? So you thought you’d seek him out? All by yourself? Brilliant.” Her sarcasm wasn’t lost on me.

  “Yeah, I suppose that was kind of stupid,” I admitted. I think it’s obvious to say that I’m glad it was you instead.”

  She smiled, exposing several deep cracks in what used to be perfect skin. “I see you aren’t using the force lines though,” she added. “I think you would have come sooner if you had a bit more energy for me to draw on.” She never stopped smiling, as she found the whole situa
tion to be quite amusing.

  “No,” I answered defensively, “Connor doesn’t want me to.”

  “Ha! And you listened? Why? If I were in your shoes I would want to know everything there is to know about the kind of power you have.”

  I knew exactly what she meant, as I had thought the same thing many times. “Yeah, I know. But he seems to think it’s dangerous, I guess.” I shrugged, hoping to convey nonchalance despite my own feelings on the matter.

  “Hmm.” She pondered my words for a moment. “Well, I suppose he’s right. But still, there are controlled ways to experiment. Mobius should finally be open again next week, so you could always train there you know.”

  I considered that. “You know, you are absolutely right. I don’t see why I can’t train. Mobius is the safest environment anywhere.”

  “Exactly!” She grinned, and I gathered she probably knew something more about the situation than she was letting on. Then again, with her amazing ability to see into the future, she probably knew a lot more about a lot of things. I liked this look she was giving me; it had sparkle and passion behind it. Her expression made it easy to see how much Morgan really loves magic.

  “Still, I doubt Connor would help me though. Can you teach me?” I liked this idea. I didn’t know Morgan that well, but she was hundreds of years old, and as an expert spellcaster I knew she would have a lot of wisdom to share.

  She looked at me with a saddened expression. “I’m not coming back to Mobius.”

  “What? Why?”

  She gestured at her chair, and then in a whisper replied, “It’s a curse, Alex.”

  I looked at her, feeling totally confused, glancing back and forth from her face to her chair. I didn’t like this attitude she was taking. “No! I’m sure you’ll be as good as new in no time! If not, you can’t give up! The world is not closed off to you just because you have wheels!”

  She looked at me with the same sad expression. “No, Alex. It’s not the chair. It really is a curse.” She emphasized the last word with such intensity that shivers raced up and down my spine in response.