Free Cast Into Darkness by Janet Tait

leave—now.
    He dropped the squirrel and turned, jogging back to the truck. Then he stopped and took a deep breath, then another.
    No. It’s the backlash from casting. The fear isn’t real. Hamilton security isn’t on its way.
    He turned back toward the estate. Took a step closer, then another, each time fighting back the terror that threatened to overwhelm him. By the time the brick and wrought-iron fence loomed before him again, the paranoia had become nothing more than background chatter.
    Hoisting himself up to the top of the brick wall, he scrambled to find a handhold on the narrow ledge where the brick met the wrought iron. After getting one foot planted on the ledge, he reached up and grabbed the railing. His hand touched the metal, his yellow aura flickering then steadying. The shimmering curtain of the security grid held steady.
    So far, so good. He pulled himself partway up the fence, his feet following where his hands led. This idea hadn’t been half bad. Now all he had to do was stay cloaked, slip inside the house, get the stone, and—
    A talisman buried in the fence flickered. The yellow in his aura wavered then bled out. His caster aura flared back, the colors as bright as the sails of a fishing boat in his father’s harbor. The grid darkened from red to black. At the edge of his hearing, barely within human range, a hundred trap spells screeched their warnings, their tendrils vibrating as they let go of their perches and rocketed toward him with all the speed of a school of piranhas.
    Kristof dropped back to the ground, heart hammering in his chest. He rolled forward, taking too much of the impact on his hand and feeling the snap of the delicate bones inside his wrist. He stumbled to his feet and ran.
    Need to clear the teleport block to get out. There, that purple glow around the fence’s perimeter. Probably triggered by the trap spells activating.
    A twig snapped off to his side. Then another. A glimmer darted from tree to tree at the edge of his vision. Several more glimmers beyond. Hamilton casters, cloaked like him.
    A purple mist swam along the ground between the fallen branches and leaves, searching. The trap spells—now active. They would rip his cloak spell away before smothering him in their vapors, choking the life from him.
    He dodged around their perimeter, evading a tendril that reached for his ankle. He tapped out a quick animate spell and aimed it at the hoe, still leaning against the tree trunk where he’d left it. It danced toward the fence, scraping against the ground and catching a tendril of the trap spell in its metal blade. The spell’s energy rushed for it, surrounding it and pulling it into a pile of maple leaves.
    He ran, the tendrils streaming past him toward the hoe.
    But the trap spells weren’t his biggest threat. A faint rustling in the undergrowth, then his skin stung all over with burning pain, as if a bandage had been ripped from his entire body.
    His cloaking spell vanished.
    He tapped out a shield spell as he ran, almost stumbling over the short incantation.
    There must be three, maybe four casters here. They’re everywhere. They’ve found the truck already, tracked the guy I took out. They know who I am.
    He shook off the backlash as the shield’s bright blue glow sprang up around him.
    A lightning bolt hit his shield, a sharp buzzing sound and the smell of ozone filling the evening air. Two more followed, then a sonic spell screamed past his ear. His shield’s glow faded to the color of the afternoon sky.
    The truck waited ahead, its white body glowing with the last rays of the setting sun. If he could make it past the truck and to the road, he should be able the clear the teleport block.
    A force like a battering ram slammed into his chest. He flew backward and onto the ground, the wind knocked out of him, shield ripped away, blood pounding in his ears. The kinetic punch came from the direction of the truck. He couldn’t see anything or anyone there, not