The fourth time, Christine was tired of getting zapped, and her resolve and focus firmed. Her shielding held for a handful of seconds before Ruby got through. The praise she gave Christine, as well as the approbation of the group, bolstered the woman. She’d also been able to detect those shimmers around her own hands, not just Ruby’s.

Students gave a hundred extra miles for even the most minute success from their hard work. It spurred the teacher as well, such that Ruby found herself grinning, genuinely proud of them.

Several more times and Christine found the groove. She anchored the shield and held it for a solid minute until Ruby let it go.

“Yeah.” Ruby gave her a high five, which Christine returned with a pleased smile and a shaky hand. “Now, in a few moments, we’ll break out into pairs and let you all practice that.”

“But we don’t know how to do the zapping part,” Sally said.

“Yes. That’s a more complicated skill, and one we’ll discuss after you get this down. Right now, you guys are like rookie cops. No chief in his right mind would give you a Taser until he was sure you have the control skills to curb a quick trigger finger. Sally, you were getting a little heated in your political discussion with Georgia last night. You might decide to zap her to prove your point about Middle East policy decisions.”

As the women laughed, Ruby moved back to the center of the circle, to the laundry sack she’d laid there earlier with tools for today’s lesson. “Here you go. One for each pairing.” She pulled out an assortment of colored Nerf balls, tossed them to every other woman in the circle. “You can do this at home as well, with a trusted family member or friend. If your shield is working, the ball will veer off when it’s thrown at you, as if a stray wind caught it. It’s best to use Nerfs, particularly for the homework. Far easier to explain to nosy neighbors than you slingshotting the hundred balls your husband shoots out of his pitching machine at you. Though if you get that good, you get to graduate Hogwarts.”

More laughter. She could see each woman was eager to try it. “All right.” Ruby sobered. “Get to practicing.”

DAY SIX.

“All right, this lesson is how we’re going to spend most of our Saturday. By the end of it, I guarantee you’ll all hate me. If you don’t, I haven’t drilled you enough.”

“If we say we hate you now, can we go ahead and break for Danish?” Sally joked.

Ruby snorted. “Obviously too much energy in this crowd, if I have a smart-ass before I’ve finished my coffee.”

The ladies were now coming “to class” like Amazons in training. It was the most dangerous time, when they had more knowledge of their capabilities than they’d known was possible, but little practical experience. However, like fighter pilots, they just needed a certain amount of cocky enthusiasm to get into that cockpit. Ruby was glad to see their spirits were holding. It had been a tough week, and today was going to be even tougher. It was good for them to get this lesson when they were less fresh, though.

She was tired, too, but for different reasons. Each night, when Linda was asleep and the women were safely away from the property, she walked that line. She wasn’t foolish enough to call him outright, but if Asmodeus was making incursions here, she was sure she’d feel something, some sense of him stirring or moving in the area. She felt the incursions, but not from him. From that nebulous, unknown threat that Derek had detected. If the demon ever did show, though, she’d show him what her capabilities were now. They’d settle what lay between them, with no one else in harm’s way.

At least the pleasure and challenge of teaching this group was keeping her occupied, diluting the frustration. Sort of. The thorny possibility of him not coming in range at all while she was here was starting to dig into her consciousness.

“Okay. What if this circle was broken and one of you was dragged out of it? How do you get that person back inside and the circle recast, the fault line reinforced? Say Smart-ass Sally over there got knocked out, so the line is broken. I’m right next to her, so I pivot, move forward and anchor that perimeter with me.” Ruby stepped with purpose outside the circle, touching Sally lightly as she did so. “I am the circle. It’s not separate from me, so when I step out, that circle comes with me. I know you’ve all seen Gladiator. Seriously, who can resist Russell Crowe in a short tunic?” There was a quick titter, but thirteen pairs of serious eyes remained fastened on her.

“Remember those diamond formations during the staged Battle of Carthage? It’s the same theory.” She pointed toward the ground. “This is the starting point of a new circle. Get away from the idea of a circle as a shape. In this kind of magic use, it’s a concept. When you adjust your position, you will align with me left and right from this protective point, like that triangular diamond shape. The attacker’s energy will flow along the sides like a current. A spell or energy casting, once released by the user, can’t change course. It has to unfold as intended. So I plant my ‘shield’ in front of the fallen member”—she pantomimed it—“and someone else drags her back into the perimeter. You close ranks, bring all those shields together even more tightly, back into a closed shape. Then you hold.”

Her voice sharpened. “When Underworld creatures assume corporeal forms aboveground, it takes a lot of energy. Because of that, most have blissfully short life spans in that form, and they don’t like Light energy. If you have the stamina, you’ll force them to give up. The army trains their soldiers over and over in the same methods, establishing muscle memory, helping them to act under extreme circumstances, where that training is the only thing that can keep them from either panic or overthinking a situation, both of which can get them killed or defeat their objective.

“Now, once the Underworld creatures give up and appear to vanish, do not assume they’re gone. You will move as one unit to the fault line, stretch out over it like I showed you earlier this week, and reinforce it. The same way you’ll do daily to hopefully prevent any such attack from ever happening.”

She stepped back into the circle perimeter. “All week long, I’ve been teaching you the individual steps of the full dance I just described. So today, we’re going to practice the entire sequence, over and over again. You get this down, you have the building blocks you can break down or chain together to use for defense, protection and enhancement of not only the fault line, but yourselves and your sisters. Just like Mr. Miyagi, putting together wash-on, wash- off.”

The women chuckled. However, as hands briefly clasped, squeezed, Ruby saw them acknowledge the serious nature of what they were doing. As the week had progressed, it had become more real to them, the idea that a time might come when it would be about more than reinforcing the fault line. Lives might be at stake. Those clasped hands were solidarity, sending the message: We can do this.

And Ruby was the one making sure they’d be ready. Their lives might depend on her teachings. She swallowed.

“Let’s get started.”

Chapter 8

BY THE END OF THE DAY, LINDA WAS SO WORN-OUT RUBY fed her dogs, ordered her to go to bed and sleep in Sunday morning. She’d given them all the time off, knowing they needed the break at this point.

As for her, she was still wired. Earlier in the week, she’d asked Linda about a good place to practice her shooting. Apparently, on the north end of the property there was a clearing and natural embankment she could use as a firing range and backdrop for the bullets, respectively, so they wouldn’t zing through the woods and be a hazard. The nearest neighbor was a couple miles down the road.

She took her Sig, the Desert Eagle and a pump-action riot gun, Derek’s purported favorite. Most of it she carried in a large mountain backpack, working out her muscles with the heavy load. By the time she reached the location, she was out of breath. As she set up her targets, she decided to work with the pump action first.

She’d left Theo and the shepherds locked up in the guesthouse. While Theo was used to the sound of firearms, hearing the muffled reports behind the steel-reinforced door of her indoor firing range was a bit different from being right next to her when firing. She’d brought her ears, a sound-muffling headset, to dampen the high-decibel range. At home, she had a pair with a built-in connection to her music player, so she could play some heavy metal as she did her target practice. It kept her mind from wandering into disturbing areas. But here, where the surroundings were less familiar, she wasn’t going to block her senses to that level.

She rapid-fired the riot gun’s six slugs, reloading smoothly when needed, checking her target work as she went along. Just like the shielding, shooting for defense was something that had to be accurate based on repeated practice, not dependent on careful sighting every time. She was pleased to see her bullets grouped in a lethal cluster in the center mass of the paper target. After putting the shotgun through its paces, she moved on to the Sig 226, her preferred weapon for concealed carry, though it was bigger than more recent models. While the grip was a bit larger for her hands than recommended, she liked the solid feel of it. The vendor who’d sold it to her had grinned when she said that.

That’s the way most women are about their first gun. They tend to think the bigger one does the best job.

He was right, but it didn’t change the instinct. Even now, having so much more knowledge of firearms than she’d had then, such that she knew a smaller grip gave her better control, she’d still take that Sig over the sleeker Walther she’d left at home.

After she did about fifty rounds with each weapon, she policed her brass, then took a seat on a stump. Slipping her feet out of her shoes now that there was no danger of hot shells falling on her toes, she propped them on the edge of the cut tree, rocking on the point of her buttocks as she popped open her soda, took a sip from it. One hundred percent Dr Pepper, no additives today. Being immersed in all this the past week, and being away from Raina, Derek, all of them, she’d had no need for deception.

That thought should have made her miss them less, but of course that wasn’t the case.