Read Online Pyromancist by Charmaine Pauls - Free Book Online

mic.
    Lann was the wizard-like aeromancist on the
team, who had, only minutes ago, used his art, one of the seven
forbidden by common law for four centuries, to clear the weather
for the helicopter to take off. If Lann had spotted a suspect, it
meant he had picked up someone via their satellite tracking.
    “I’m listening,” Josselin said.
    “At your twelve o’clock,” Lann said. “She’s
on the jetty.”
    Josselin turned his head and saw the profile
of a person at the top end of the quay in a navy blue rain jacket
and red fishing boots.
    “Got it,” Bono said, “turning a
hundred-and-eighty degrees. Shall I take this baby down, Joss?”
    “Is there space to land?” Josselin said.
    He sure as hell didn’t feel like dropping
down with the rope again as he had in Cairo just a week ago. He
didn’t feel in top form this morning and a Tarzan act might just
have him spilling his guts all over the sea and the pier,
attracting sharks the likes of Cain, who’d start asking questions
about his wellbeing and insist on a renewed psychological and
physical examination. This time, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to
prevent the demons in his soul from making themselves known.
    “I can land her, no problem,” Bono said with
a tinge of excitement in his voice, which should have had Josselin
worried. Bono was an air cowboy who only enjoyed his job when it
required crazy, impossible stunts that put his skill to the
ultimate test.
    “Let’s go,” Josselin said nevertheless,
feeling stranger by the minute. It was more than his physical
hangover. He wiped a hand over his unshaven face, the stubble sharp
under his palm. He suddenly wished that he hadn’t vomited the
bottle of pills out, and wondered what the hell had happened. Maybe
he should ask a geomancist to toss a few rocks into the sand to
tell him, he thought grimly.
    His thoughts dwelling in a different
location, he kept his eyes trained on the target in question. The
young female remained in her position at the top of the jetty. She
wasn’t the fish they were after. She was the bait, so to speak.
Even with the distance still too far for him to form a visual,
Josselin already had a bad feeling about this.
    “We’re on level zero,” he heard Bono say,
which was the cue for the ground team to move in.
    Before Bono cut the blades, Josselin already
had the door open. He tried to shake the uneasy feeling that
wouldn’t let him go. He felt like he was on the other end of the
fishing line. It had him hooked like the damn fish, and
experience had made him clever enough not to ignore his instinct.
For some strange reason, he was in no particular hurry to capture
the ‘suspect’ who couldn’t legally be called a suspect, as he
wasn’t in charge of any ‘officially’ approved operation.
    Slowly he got out and turned to face the
woman he was supposed to take in, with or without her cooperation.
They didn’t exactly do things by the book, and now he, for the
first time since joining the team, wished there were some kind of
law they operated within to protect the fragile looking being who
stood dead still at the end of the walkway, as if she expected
him.
    At that moment, she looked back over her
shoulder, no doubt taking stock of her escape routes. A man in a
brown leather jacket and jeans tucked into his boots exited the
woods. He stood watching the helicopter and the female, and her
head turned back to him, Josselin.
    Just looking at her he knew she would go
without a fight. Not because her spirit was weak. There was
something else. He couldn’t be sure. He only knew he wasn’t looking
forward to this interrogation. It didn’t seem ‘right,’ which was a
strange word in his vocabulary.
    He saw the black SUV making its way down the
hill as he closed the distance between himself and the woman. As he
got nearer, she looked like she was, in fact, going to bolt, but he
was close already.
    “I wouldn’t if I were you,” he called to
her.
    His words had the desired