by Anna Abner
“I have another idea,” she announced.
David startled and the recliner wobbled beneath his feet.
“When they come back,” she said, “I can shield us from their spells. It’s not much, but at least we can be free from pain and torture.”
“What could we do while behind your shield?”
“You can cast a necromancy spell on them. Put them to sleep like they did to us.”
He shook his head. “I can’t do that. I’m not, uh, magical.”
It irritated Dani that he was unwilling to inch out of his comfort zone, even a little, to help her. “Well, let’s see how the shield works, then.”
“Okay.” He hacked at the exposed beams above his head. Dressed in a white undershirt, with a light sheen of sweat on him, he didn’t look like a city manager. Though he was the only city manager she’d ever met, she pictured them like a group of accountants. Thinning hair. Cheap suits. Kind of nerdy.
David was anything but a nerd. He was Auburn’s city manager, though. Which meant he was supposed to know everything that went on in his city, even the submission of her little business license application.
Maybe he thought it was silly for a twenty-four-year-old woman to even try to open her own business, but Dani wasn’t like other women her age. She’d been emancipated at the age of sixteen and had been working full time ever since. Taking care of children was all she’d ever wanted, and opening her own day care center seemed like the next logical step. She’d saved over a quarter of each paycheck for the last couple of years, put together a business proposal, and designed the floor plan. She’d assumed getting her business license application approved by the city of Auburn would be the easiest step involved. Then she got the rejection letter in the mail.
“I thought you would like my day care center idea,” she said softly. “Or were you still upset about our date?”
“Huh?” David dropped his arms to his sides. “What idea?”
“I applied for a business license in Auburn for my own day care, but it was rejected. I figured it was you getting even or something.”
“Dani, I wasn’t mad at you. More like disappointed, I guess.” Something shone in his eyes, a sincerity that made her believe him. “I didn’t know you wanted to open your own business.”
“Yeah. Well, it didn’t work out.”
“It wasn’t me. I never heard about it.” He averted his gaze, poking at the wall with his bracket. “But when we get out of here—and we will get out—I’ll take a look at the application, okay?”
She liked this tougher, more take charge David Wilkes in his sweaty undershirt and with his hair all mussed. A thrill of attraction zinged just under her skin. If she weren’t such a danger to him, she’d be all over him.
At the sound of tires on gravel, Dani jerked to her feet, her pulse thundering through her ears like a freaking locomotive. “David?”
He went very still for a split second, and then he leapt into action.
“Help me. Don’t let them see what I’ve done.” He shoved the recliner into its original position while she used his wadded dress shirt to sweep the wood and plaster debris into the corner beside the door.
The place stank of scorched wood and drywall dust. They were caught.
David slapped at his dirty clothes. “If you can counter Jeff’s spells, then for God’s sake, do it.”
No shit. But she didn’t say that. He was already in a panic.
She jumped into position in front of the door, and David joined her, shoulder to shoulder. Damn it, she still held his wadded shirt in her hand. She dropped it. But it was enough of a delay to screw her shield plan all to hell. She reached for David and drew on her magic, but too late. Jeff had already cast his dirty necromancy.
The door swung open, and she didn’t even get a good look at their returning guests before pain hit her square in the face.
Choking and gagging, Dani collapsed to her knees. Black spider webs spread up both her arms. With a frustrated groan, David launched himself at the door.
And made it halfway before his body seized up and crumpled. He knew how to move his muscles. He really did, but they weren’t answering a single message. He collapsed on the cold concrete floor, helpless, his arms and legs as useless to him as a couple pairs of camel humps.
The Carver didn’t enter the room. He didn’t have to. “I don’t think either of you is properly inspired. Did I mention this is supposed to be a quick summoning spell? It’s why I supplied a witch to boost your power. Jeff, I don’t think he’s listening. Get his attention.”
A tickle started between David’s shoulders, which quickly morphed into a weight bearing down upon him. Pressure built. Though he fought, it was like moving a car off his back. Impossible. Muscles popped, and bones creaked under the invisible block of concrete. Another couple of seconds and his ribs would splinter like Popsicle sticks.
“Do I have your attention?” the Carver asked.
Undivided.
“Looks like you need a little more motivation.” The Carver dialed a number into his cellphone. “Talia, introduce yourself to Mr. Wilkes’s son, Ryan.”
David didn’t know who this Talia person was, but it hardly mattered. The threat of danger to Ryan was a masterful stroke of psychological torture, and it was working. David could take a lot of abuse, but the sound of his sweet boy’s name coming out of that monster’s mouth drove him three miles past crazy. Stuck to the floor like a butterfly pinned to cardboard, David vowed to destroy the Carver and anyone who aided him. No, not just destroy. Cause pain. Utter and absolute agony.
David cried out, tears burning his eyes like acid. “Don’t you dare. I will kill you. I will strip your flesh from your—”
The weight increased, which stole his breath and then his voice. He was a pathetic, helpless jellyfish. Kill the Carver? What a joke. He’d sooner kill a giant from a fairy tale. He was completely, embarrassingly inadequate.
“Last chance, fuckwit. Start the spell or your son finds out how I got my nickname. Clear?”
The heavy steel door banged closed, the lock slid, and the weight disappeared from his spine. David crawled to Dani. She was waking, too, struggling for breath. It was then he saw her arms. Those black webs remained. He knew what that meant now. Her magic was bound.
“You okay?”
“That piece of shit.” She rested her head in her hands. And then she noticed the webs. “What the hell?”
“We’ll worry about that later. Dani. They threatened Ryan.” David’s throat was suddenly thick with unshed tears. “We’re getting out. Right now.”
Though pain rifled across his shoulder blades, he ignored it and dragged the recliner under his jagged hole in the ceiling.
“I don’t care what it takes.” He picked up his L bracket and attacked the wooden boards with renewed fury. He’d take it apart with his bare fingers. His teeth, if need be.
“My magic.” Dani rocked gently back and forth as she examined her hands. “They bound my magic.”
Chapter Five
If David wanted to see his son again—and he very much did—it was time to move. “We’re going home.”
He chipped at the final barrier between him and freedom, but it was a lot harder tearing out the two-by-fours without Dani’s heat spell. If David dug in a corner of the L bracket like a crow bar, though, wood splintered.
Dani climbed to her feet, still a little unsteady. “Everything has spun out of my control, David. I’m sorry. I thought I could handle this.”
It wasn’t her fault. The men who’d captured them were psychopaths. It had nothing to do with her, and there was nothing either of them could have done to prevent it.
Over and over, hack and chew. After a few minutes his biceps ached. A while later his muscles plain refused to wield the bracket, and he switched arms. But his left side was weaker than his right, and his progress slowed.
He wedged his bracket between two pieces of lumber and pulled with all his remaining strength
. Crack! David broke through thin flooring mat, and then linoleum, and finally open space. “Holy shit!” He could do this. It was possible. He laid into the wood, levering out whole sections. The space grew from the width of a single two-by-four to three. He could see a kitchen above them.
David was so close to getting out he threw himself into the last stretch, slamming his fists and palms into the chewed-up wood, not even caring about splinters or abrasions or infection. Working through pain and blood and possibly a broken finger, he slammed his hand again and again. Wood split. He broke off another section.
There. A jagged oval hole into the kitchen above and freedom. Adrenalin and hope mashed together into a heart-hammering cocktail.
“Dani?”
“I’m right here.” She stood below him.
“I’m going to boost you up.”
But she didn’t climb onto the recliner.
“Come on.” He gestured for her to give him her hands. “I think you’ll fit.” Two minutes and they’d be free.
Still, she didn’t move.
“Dani! We have to get out of here!” What the hell was wrong with her? He’d broken through. Couldn’t she see?
“My magic,” she said, holding out her spelled forearms. “I can’t leave without my magic.”
He didn’t say it out loud, but Dani’s witch power was pretty freaking low on his current list of priorities. Who gave a crap if she had webs on her arms? It was time to leave.
“Don’t do this,” he said. “Get up here.”
“David,” she snapped, shaking her hands at him. “I am not leaving with my magic bound.”
“Yes, you are.” He squatted and grabbed her under the shoulders. Already-exhausted muscles screamed as he lifted her up beside him.
“No,” she said. “They’ll come back and take off the spell. We’ll go then.”
“It’ll be too late. Ryan will be at their mercy.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but then she closed it and reached for the jagged opening. He made a stirrup with his fingers and helped her squirm through the space. Relief was a jittery flush of emotion. At least, if nothing else, Daniela was out of this godforsaken hole in the ground.
“The house sounds empty.” Her footsteps crossed the floor above. “David,” she cried out, “It’s Cole!”
* * *
Cole Burkov owned a comic book shop in Auburn, North Carolina, was a necromancer, and Dani’s friend. Currently, he lay on his stomach, his hands bound behind him with duct tape.
“Cole?” Dani knelt beside him but didn’t touch him. He was out cold, his face bruised and swollen. “Oh God, Cole.” They’d hurt him.
A banging sound and then David’s voice behind her. “Who’s Cole?”
“A friend.” She turned and gasped at the sight of him. David was bleeding from half a dozen different gashes on his torso. He must have barely squeezed out of the hole.
“He’s not one of them?” David asked.
“No. Definitely not.”
David tore the tape off Cole’s wrists and rolled him onto his back, sucking in a sympathetic breath. The whole left side of Cole’s face was bruised and puffy. They hadn’t hit him with just magic, but something blunt as well.
The neon-orange marks of a sleeping spell floated around his scalp. She leaned in to get a clearer view. “Son of a bitch. It’s a nightmare spell.” Frustrated beyond reckoning, she punched the floor. “He’s trapped in a nightmare, and I can’t do a damn thing about it.” Was this stage two of their plan? Parade an injured Cole in front of her? Threaten to hurt him worse if she didn’t cooperate? Well, she was lucky she’d gotten out earlier than expected because their plan would have worked. If it meant saving her friend’s life, she would’ve summoned a demon into Derek Walker and worried about the consequences later.
“Enough. We have to get away from this place before they come back.” He hefted Cole over his shoulder, wincing as more blood blossomed through David’s formerly white undershirt.
“What if there are others like us? We have to check.”
He didn’t look like he’d waste the time, so Dani added, “You go and I’ll catch up.”
“I’m not leaving you alone. Just hurry.”
The house was a single-story cabin with a kitchen, a small living room, and a bedroom the size of a walk-in closet. All stripped of furnishings and empty. No clues as to who lived there or why the Carver used it as his torture chamber. They found the basement door, but didn’t go down.
Both front and back doors were covered in barrier spells, the kind the Carver and Jeff could remove when they arrived to antagonize their prisoners, and then reapply to keep everything safe inside when they left.
“We can’t get out the door. But they didn’t bother with the window.” Dani kicked at the large picture window in the living room with the heel of her foot. It cracked but didn’t break. The Carver might return at any moment, possibly with reinforcements. She kicked it again, harder. About half the glass shattered and fell away, leaving sharp teeth around the perimeter.
“Be careful,” David said, his voice tense. “If you sever an artery you’ll be dead in minutes.”
His safety squad thing was kind of cute. She’d been taking care of herself for so long it felt nice that he worried about her well-being. Not too many of her foster parents had. And her parents sure hadn’t or they wouldn’t have abandoned her to the state. But David seemed to genuinely care about her and it caused an odd squiggly sensation in her belly.
Dani kicked out the shards one by one, scratching her calf. She ground her teeth at the pain, but the cut wasn’t deep. Thank God. Because David looked like hell and might just pass out half way down the driveway. She may have to get all three of them out of there.
They staggered outside where the moonless night settled over the earth like a heavy blanket. Dani could barely make out thick forest all around and a single dirt road leading out. The complete lack of ambient light made her uneasy. Nothing but trees, earth, and sky.
“This is dangerous,” David grumbled. “I can’t see my hand in front of my face.”
“We know we’re close to the highway,” she said, picking her way down the drive. What she wouldn’t give for her magic and a simple fluorescence spell. “We’ll follow the road until we see lights.”
David was breathing heavily, and they hadn’t even left the yard.
“All we have to do,” Dani reasoned, “is find the road and flag down a car.”
“Be careful. There are pine cones everywhere.”
Was he always such a safety nerd? “You focus on staying on your feet, big guy. I’ll worry about staying on mine.”
“Lead the way,” he said.
Dani headed into the trees along the edge of the driveway. If their captors returned, they might not be visible in the foliage. But it quickly became obvious David was losing more blood than he could afford. He tripped on an exposed root and crashed to his knees.
“Dani,” he called, his breath loud and ragged in the quiet. He reached out one hand to her. “Hold on to me so I don’t fall over.”
Swallowing, she stared at his outstretched hand, unable to think what to do. Taking it would screw her no-touch policy all to hell. But she couldn’t not help him.
“Please,” he added.
Bound magic was harmless magic. Dani backtracked and clasped his hand, their fingers intertwining.
“Help me back onto the road,” David said.
She led him onto the smoother dirt lane snaking away from the house. Together they trudged along, but Dani wasn’t even aware of her legs moving, though they guided her in the right direction. All she could see and feel and process was her hand in David’s. Like the perfect pair of jeans, he fit exactly right.
When she’d touched him to cast on the ceiling, she’d been concentrating so hard on not killing him that she hadn’t spared a thought to how it felt.
His fingers were not only longer than hers, but thicker, too, and they stretche
d hers wide to accommodate them. The skin of his palm was soft, but his fingers were rough. And strong. He squeezed her hand once, maybe by accident, and she sensed the power in him.
Though, at the moment, that strength was flagging. “I can help you with Cole,” she offered. “We could carry him together.”
“Just find a car,” he huffed. “None of us are going to make it unless we get to the city.”
His words rang in her ears. Their current predicament was no joke. Just because they were out of the basement did not mean they were out of danger. They had no food or water. They were miles from Auburn. On foot, they could be days away from a hot meal and a warm bed. Dani scanned the horizon in every direction, looking for the faintest glow of civilization.
The narrow lane merged into a paved road. On either side of the asphalt ran miles and miles of pristine pine forest. And nowhere did she see any sign of life.
“Pick a direction,” she said. “Left or right?”
“Left. Always left.”
They ambled along making slow but steady progress. “You doing okay?” She kept pace with his slower gait as they stuck to the center yellow line.
“He’s heavier than he looks.” David’s laugh sounded more like a wheeze.
“You’re bleeding.” A lot. She nibbled at the already stubby nails on her left hand, the one not holding onto David for dear life.
“I scratched myself squeezing out of that hole, but I’m fine.”
Dani wasn’t so sure. “Stay strong, okay? I don’t know what to do if you pass out.”
“I’m not going to pass out,” he said with conviction. “I didn’t claw my way out of that hole just to faint in the yard. There will be a car. We’ll flag it down, and we’ll get help.”
They continued in the darkness, the only light coming from the stars overhead. More stars than she’d ever seen before.
“Which preschool in Auburn does Ryan go to?” she asked, just to keep David talking.
“It’s called New Horizons. It’s great.”
“You like your new job?” Though it wasn’t terribly new. He’d been there for almost a year.