Tresia (Stone Mage Saga Book 3) Read online

  Tresia

  Stone Mage Saga, Book Three

  Raven Whitney

  Raven Whitney LLC

  Contents

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Dear Reader

  About the Author

  Also by Raven Whitney

  Tresia

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016, Raven Whitney

  ISBN: 978-1-939359-21-6

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and/or reviews.

  Cover design by The Killion Group

  (http://thekilliongroupinc.com/)

  Editing by Tracey Govender

  (http://traceyedits.blogspot.co.za/)

  Proofreading by Proofreading by the Page

  (https://www.facebook.com/Proofreadingbythepage/)

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank both of my parents first for being so incredibly supportive of their starving artist as I pursue my dreams. Also, for letting me and my kitties live in the barn. My mom, in particular, deserves a bear hug for passing on the writing gene to me and showing me how to use it.

  My friends— who've been with me since before any of us had boobs and read every draft of this book and assured me I wasn't a total hack— deserve a medal. Since I'm too broke to get any made, this'll have to do. I love you guys. Truly, madly, and deeply.

  Finally, I'd like to thank my editor for reigning in my crazy, and my proofreader for being so patient with me.

  1

  Lexie's rage-filled battle cry— as epic as that of a warrior queen's— reverberated through the house, jerking me from what was a relatively peaceful slumber. It was followed promptly by the sound of her hitting the side of the house.

  With great reluctance, I made myself vertical and trudged from the cozy back bedroom to the front of the tiny beach bungalow. Peering out of the window, I saw Lexie using the corner post of the porch to pull herself up. Her ankle dangled limply at a forty-five degree angle.

  I padded barefoot out onto the front porch, being very careful of where I stepped to avoid getting splinters in my feet. Leaning gingerly against the railing, I held my open hand next to Lexie.

  Without a word, she handed me the knife she held, hilt first.

  Smiling a little at how strange our life had become, I dragged the blade across the outside of my forearm. I held it out as far as I could without tumbling over the edge.

  Hopping a little, she rotated so that she could stick her ankle under the dripping flow of my blood. As it fell onto her exposed skin, her ankle crackled back into the correct place, making faint popping noises as it moved.

  “Thanks,” Lexie said, still grimacing from the pain. It must have been a bad break in order for her to feel it. Now that she was a zombie, she couldn't feel pain, pressure, heat, or cold as strongly as she used to. It took a lot for her to make that face.

  “Not a problem.” I handed her back her knife and went to go make myself some breakfast, leaving the door open. It's not like there was any air conditioning to keep in and that sea breeze was refreshing.

  To Jack, Lexie shouted, “You are so gonna pay for that!”

  “Then bring it here, sfaciatella.” His trademark shit-eating grin was audible even from inside.

  “It's bring it on!” Lexie corrected, charging at him again.

  Sighing, I ran my hands over the rat's nest on my head and popped a bagel in the toaster oven. It was hardly a five-star breakfast, I admit, but our cupboards were pretty bare and stocked mostly with non-perishables. Jack was the only one who could leave the house and was terrible at grocery shopping, no matter how clear I made the list.

  The bungalow was a pretty basic surf shack: two bedrooms, one bath— or half bath, I should say since the only shower was an outdoor beach shower in the backyard— with a kitchen that only had a hotplate, rusted 60's-era fridge, dormitory-style microwave, and the much abused toaster oven. The whole place couldn't have been more than six hundred square feet.

  When Lexie first saw the little faded periwinkle and cream house, her discomfort had been palpable and not just because we'd just been kidnapped. Again.

  “You know,” she had said. “I have access to half a dozen beach houses. Two of which are on private islands. We could go to any one of those.”

  Jack had scoffed at the suggestion, which had been a transparent effort on her part to at least get us back into familiar territory where we could call for help. “You had access to half a dozen beach houses. You are not that rich girl anymore. We stay here. It is protected.”

  Lexie had pouted for two whole days after that. She wasn't accustomed to houses that were smaller than her old bedroom, but she got used to it. By the time we had come out of the bedroom without Jack being gone, almost a month had passed.

  Being kidnapped— again— hadn't been easy on either of us. Jack had insisted he was on our side, but we'd been understandably apprehensive. Now, we were pretty sure he didn't have plans to kill us, but neither of us trusted him completely.

  Watching the ocean, I waited for the bagel to toast and looked out over the busy North Carolina beach that was crawling with people. It was such an unlikely place for a hideout, but it was ensconced in dome-like glamour and barrier spells so strong that anyone passing by didn't bat an eyelash when I would throw fireballs or Jack would fling me across the expansive front yard because they couldn't see or hear a thing. I'd thrown everything I had— though it admittedly wasn't much at the time— at that barrier the night after we arrived and it hadn't even twitched.

  Lexie had asked him once why he chose such a crowded place to hide in. He'd said, “Bikinis and beer,” like that explained everything.

  It had been over nine months since Jack kidnapped Lexie and me from Liam's custody and seven since we decided that he was an ally. It didn't make sense that he would be so adamant about training us if he was planning on trying to kill us.

  Before Jack came back, I'd known that— theoretically— there was somebody out there that I shared a special stone mage bond with. He had explained it to me as being similar to a familiar bond, only where both parties were equals, rather than a master and pet.

  Most typical mages take a familiar by bonding on the soul level to an animal who then becomes beholden to the mage's will. A mage can command the familiar animal absolutely and as their souls are connected, resurrect that animal should its body die.

  Lexie and I were the only known exception to that rule. Jack hypothesized that since she was a zombie, that brought her innate level of magic energy down to a level where I could bind her as a familiar. I had no idea how I managed to pull that off, but I wasn't complaining.

  Mages simply didn't have strong enough magic to form the kinds of bonds their Atlantean ancestors could on their own. However, as the Atlantean stone sets individually bonded to their mage in much the same soul-deep manner as a familiar, by exchanging a
stone, it created an indirect bond between individuals.

  That bond was what kept me alive through the hell of Octavius' castle when I should have died. The person on the other end of that bond had brought me back to life each time I'd died, but I never knew who it was.

  When Jack took us, he revealed that it had been him who had bonded to me that day in the coffee shop by exchanging a power. He'd swapped both of the fire magics our sets of stones conferred to us, so neither of us gained or lost anything in the process. He'd said he thought it was only fair that he didn't take anything from me when he was the one bonding to me without asking.

  What he wouldn't tell us, no matter how much we asked or prodded was why. Why did he bond with me, of all people? If the whole object of bonding was not dying, I was probably the worst possible person to choose. I had a lot of power, but not much skill to use it. Not to mention the enormous target on my back.

  Even aside from the fact that we knew next to nothing about him, something was strange about the mysterious, amicable, flirtatious Italian guy. It might have just been my paranoia, but I was hesitant to trust him all the way. There was something important that he wasn't telling us.

  He'd never done anything to make either Lexie or me think that he meant us any harm. At least not that we had seen, and we'd watched him like a hawk for months. What was certain, though, was that he meant Liam harm. Jack had promised Lexie and I that he wouldn't kill Liam if they ever ran into each other again. But he never said exactly what was going on between the two of them.

  Just as my eyes started to glaze over in thought, Lexie sailed through the air, flailing like one of those inflatable sock men found on every used car lot. She landed unceremoniously in the surf, making a towering splash that had to hurt, even for her. It was a good thing the glamour that kept us hidden extended a ways into the water and the barrier prevented any harmless bystander from getting injured during our daily training exercises.

  She crawled onto the beach on all fours, as menacing as that wet girl who crawled out of the television in that horror movie.

  Uh-oh. This ought to be good.

  I grabbed my bagel out of the toaster oven before it dinged and went out onto the front porch to watch the carnage.

  Choosing the only wicker chair on the porch that didn't look like it would collapse, I sat back and munched on my warm, but still soft bagel.

  Lexie made it to the edge of the wet sand and stood slowly, cracking her neck from side to side. She'd managed to hold onto the knife and was clutching it in her hand.

  She lunged at Jack, so quickly she was almost a blur.

  Not missing a beat, he flicked a finger and she back-flipped over him, landing on her back. The impact was hard enough that the sand formed a dent around her so deep it obscured her.

  “Ouch,” I mumbled in sympathy. Though she could muster great bursts of speed and strength, she was still so terrible at hand-to-hand fighting that Jack could usually turn it against her. In the six months since we agreed to start working with Jack, Lexie hadn't made a lot of progress. Though she had advanced beyond our six-week women's self defense course, it wasn't by much.

  Jack straightened himself. Waving his hands, he scolded, “You always shout every move you make and charge like a wild beast. I could beat you with both hands tied behind me.”

  A middle finger emerged from the hole.

  He snorted and grabbed her by the wrist to pull her up.

  Lexie groaned and wiped the sand off her backside. Limping a little, she hobbled over to the porch. “Your turn.”

  “I just got up.”

  “I have been at it for the last six hours. I have sand in places where there shouldn’t be sand.” The whites showing around her eyes and the edge of hysteric laughter in her voice told me that if she had to go one more round with Jack, she might stab him for real. She really needed the break.

  I huffed. “Fine. Need any blood for that leg?”

  She nodded and passed me the knife. I jabbed the meaty pad at the base of my thumb and smeared the blood where she pointed to her knee. It kind of sucked having to stab myself a few times a day because as a zombie, Lexie couldn't heal on her own anymore, but it would suck more if I didn't have my best friend. And I could always close the wounds with my healing magic, so I wasn't a tender pincushion all the time.

  “Anywhere else?” I asked.

  “Not unless you're willing to open a vein to rinse the sand out of my butt crack.” She griped and went inside to go to the shower spigot in the backyard.

  Snorting, I fixed the cut, wiped off the rest of the blood on my shorts and went back to my bagel.

  No sooner did I swallow the last bite of my breakfast that Jack half-hopped up the three stairs onto the porch. If he ever got worn out, I'd never seen it.

  “You're awake,” he smiled, clapping me on the shoulder as he passed me walking into the house. “Come with me. I have a surprise for you.”

  Chalk it up to morning pessimism, but that didn't sound good. I stood and followed him through the house to the back door. “Um, Lexie's taking a shower.”

  He shrugged and opened the door.

  My heart leaped into my throat. I snatched the belt on his jeans and dragged him back inside.

  A knock sounded in front of Jack. I peered around him to see that Lexie's knife was now embedded in the door, still humming from the impact. It was right where his face would have been. At least her aim was getting better.

  “See?” I jerked the blade out and pointed it at him.

  He held up his hands in a mock surrender and rolled his eyes. He turned around and walked the ten steps back to the kitchen.

  I closed the door and turned to face him just in time to catch the water bottle he'd tossed me.

  Jack chugged half of his bottle, then wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. “American women. You are like nuns… and not the ones of my youth.”

  I sipped at my own water. “And what about the ones strolling around in barely-there bikinis just outside?”

  Beaming, he responded, “Closer to their pre-Puritan roots.”

  There was no winning this one. Letting the subject drop, I asked, “So what's this surprise of yours?”

  “You will see.”

  “No hints?”

  He thought about it and pointed his finger at me, warning, “Do not lecture me when you see it.”

  “Well that's ominous.”

  He smiled in response and grabbed a tube of kids' yogurt out of the fridge. It was a good thing he wasn't human, otherwise he would be diabetic by now. He sat on the couch, crossing his legs and stretching his arms across the top, looking for all the world like the cat that ate the canary.

  “Hey, asshat, occupied means occupied.” Lexie stormed back into the house, wrapped in an over-sized beach towel and carrying her clothes under one arm. She stepped right in front of him, her foggy blue eyes burning like a propane flame as she warned, “Keep out.”

  Unfazed, Jack snickered from around the tube of sugary yogurt still dangling from his mouth.

  This only further angered Lexie. “Next time, I'm aiming for your other head.” She stormed off to our room. While I was the only one who slept there, we both kept our clothes and what few belongings we had in the practically closet-sized bedroom next to the kitchen.

  “You really can be a pig sometimes, you know that?” I chided.

  Sounding much aggrieved, he sighed, “Yes, I am such a bastardo that I took the both of you in.”

  “Because you need me to stay alive so you don't die.” He wasn't going to try to skew his self-centered motivations to make me feel guilty. As bonded Stone Mages, we both needed each other to stay alive. So long as one lived, the survivor could resurrect the other if we died just as a mage could resurrect their familiar.

  I had Octavius— the psychopathic head of the Paxians' most vicious criminal syndicate— and thus all of his business partners and employees wanting me dead so he could use my powers to take over the world.
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  Jack didn't say exactly who wanted him dead, but I got the impression there was a long line to piss on his grave. I knew that he had some sort of hostile history with Liam— my friend who worked for the Pax— but I didn't know if it was personal or professional. Even though I knew little about him, I was glad to know I had a badass safety net who had a vested interest in me remaining alive.

  I probably wasn't as much of a comfort to him, considering I had only basic skills in controlling all of my genera magics, no raw magic ability, and virtually no skills in battle. But that's what all of this training has been about– not only staying alive, but also having some semblance of freedom.

  When Lexie and I made the decision to come out of our room, Jack had immediately proposed we start training to gain strength. At the time, we were still sleeping with one eye open and didn't want to work with him. He hadn't pushed. He'd only said that if we ever wanted to leave, we had to be strong enough to fend for ourselves since he couldn't be around all the time to guard us. Otherwise, we'd have to stay in this beach shack for the rest of our lives to keep from getting killed.

  It took us two whole months of watching and analyzing his every move for us to trust him enough to train with him.

  “The reasons do not matter.” He waved his hand. Jumping to his feet, he tossed the empty tube into the trash can and grabbed my arm again to pull me into the backyard.

  “You don't have to drag me like a lump, you know. My legs work just fine,” I complained, but didn't try to take my arm back.

  He continued to pull me along as though I hadn't even spoken to the shed on the back corner of the lot. It was a creepy shed to look at it from the outside. With its rusted sheet metal paneling and pieces of exposed wood, it looked like exactly the sort of place a woman didn't want to be. And the chopped up pieces of gashed training dolls from my swordsmanship lessons gave it a certain serial killer flair.