Barbara’s face was set and grim. “Cages?”
Koshka nodded. “And blood. Whatever Brenna has been doing in there, it hasn’t been very nice.”
The thought of Bella being held captive by a crazy, powerful witch and tortured, or worse, made Sam’s heart race. She had to be alive—he still had things to say to her. And if this Brenna had harmed her . . . well, he had a sudden urge to be not very nice too.
“Can you track where they went?” he asked Koshka. “And does anyone have an extra knife they can lend me?”
TWENTY-SEVEN
KOSHKA LED THEM to the mouth of the cave. From there, they didn’t need his ability to trace a scent; Sam and the others could see the scuff marks where more than one person had walked through the dirt and leaves, and they simply followed the disturbed ground as rapidly and quietly as they could.
But nothing could have prepared them for what they saw when the trail ended.
Barbara held out one arm to keep them all from stepping out of the shelter of the trees and revealing themselves. At the edge of the tree line there was a clearing, much like the one where the caravan still sat, except that the foliage had left a larger space, with more open sky overhead.
The clearing itself was lovely, filled with wildflowers and touched by the golden rays of the early evening sun. But within it was a sight so appalling, Sam thought his heart would stop from the sheer horror of it. A perfectly round circle of flames roared like a beast in the center of the clearing, reaching red and orange fingers toward the sky. He could barely see through the smoke and the five-foot flames to where Bella and three men stood, one man leaning heavily on the other two, all of them clearly trapped inside.
“Oh my God,” he whispered. Barbara’s iron grip on his arm was all that stopped him from running into the fire to try and pull Bella out.
“Wait,” she said, barely loud enough for him to hear over the pounding of his heart. “We’ve got to be smart about this. Look.”
She pointed off to one side, where an old woman with wild, frizzy gray hair, wearing a long batik skirt and tunic and a tangled mess of dangling beaded necklaces, watched from outside the circle. The woman was about a third of the way across the space, too far for them to hear her, but Sam could see her lips moving as she held up an empty glass container, aiming its mouth toward the strengthening flames. For now, the fire seemed to be staying put in its circle around those trapped inside, but it was obvious that eventually it would slip its bounds and move inward to consume the four within.
“Is she singing?” Sam asked incredulously.
Beka pressed her lips together until they turned white, and she shook her head. “Chanting. She’s doing magic. It looks like she is trying to pull the energy from the fire into that bottle she’s holding, but it isn’t something I ever saw her do when I was growing up, so I have no idea what the hell she’s up to.”
“Other than burning Bella and the Riders to death,” Barbara added grimly.
“Wait,” Sam said. “You knew her when you were growing up?”
If anything, Beka’s face grew even paler. “She was my mentor,” the blonde said quietly. “She found me as a child and raised me, training me to be a Baba Yaga.”
“Until she tried to kill you not too long ago,” Barbara said in a dry tone. “Now, can we focus on the situation, please?” She tapped one booted foot on the ground as she thought out loud.
“Beka and I can put out the fire if we work together, but as soon as we try to do so, Brenna will sense the magic, and she could probably collapse the flames in on Bella and the Riders before we can get the fire completely out.” She and Beka looked at each other helplessly.
Koshka cleared his throat, sounding like rocks grinding together. “I have an idea,” he said. “But in order for it to work, I’m going to need Sam to do something really hard.”
“I don’t have any special powers,” Sam said. “I can’t do magic. So I don’t see what I can possibly do. But I’ll leap through those flames if that’s what it takes to help Bella.” Hell, doing nothing was killing him anyway. There was no way he was going to stand here and watch her—and her friends—burn to death. He’d already lost too much to fire.
“What I have in mind is going to be even tougher than that,” Koshka said. “And probably more dangerous.”
Barbara raised one elegant ebony eyebrow, and the dragon-cat went on.
“I need you to distract Brenna. And there’s a pretty good chance that doing it will get you killed.”
Sam swallowed hard and then looked across the clearing to where Bella’s red hair could barely be seen behind the growing wall of smoke.
“I don’t care,” he said. “As long as it gives the rest of you a chance to rescue Bella. Just tell me what you want me to do.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
SAM WAITED UNTIL the count of fifty, giving Beka and Barbara time to get into their positions at opposite sides of the clearing, staying back in the trees outside of Brenna’s view. Koshka disappeared, leaving Sam alone to brace himself for confronting the scariest woman he’d ever seen. It didn’t really matter; for Bella, he would have taken on a horde of angry Mongols.
Finally, he walked into the grassy meadow, stopping six feet away as Koshka had insisted. Up close, she didn’t look all that scary. Just some old hippie in a ragged funky skirt, standing around chanting to herself. Until she turned and locked her gaze on his and he could see the raging madness staring back at him. A bead of sweat trickled down his neck, and he suddenly felt every beat of his heart thumping in his chest.
“Hello, dear,” Brenna said, smiling crookedly at him. “Aren’t you supposed to be stuck up in your tower, watching the world burn down around you while you do nothing?”
Well, she obviously knew who he was. That was kind of a surprise. The viciousness of her comment was an eerie contrast to her pleasant expression, but he didn’t let it rattle him. If that was what she wanted, she’d have to do better than to echo his own constant thoughts back at him.
“I’ve come for Bella,” he said. “And her friends. Let them go.” He held out the gleaming silver knife Barbara had pulled out of her boot earlier and handed to him, although he had no illusion that it would be any real threat to this honest-to-badness wicked witch.
Brenna looked at the knife and at him and let out a peal of laughter. “What are you planning to do with that? Put a marshmallow on the end and roast it? You’ve already lost, Sam. In a few moments I will finish the spell and your girlfriend will be burnt to a cinder.” She made a tutting noise and shook her head. “That does seem to happen to the women who hang around with you, doesn’t it?”
Her form began to shimmer and shift, as if it were enveloped in a glittering cloud. Sam rubbed his eyes with the hand not holding the knife, and when he blinked them clear, Brenna was gone.
In her place stood the familiar form of his lost love, Heather, clad in her fire gear, looking just like she did in the picture he had in the tower of them with all the other Hotshots, taken right before the beginning of that last season. Her helmet was tucked under one arm, but she held the other one out to him beseechingly, and said in Brenna’s voice, “Go home, Sam. Go home. There is nothing you can do here.”
What the hell? Sam took an involuntary step backward and then stopped as comprehension hit him like a freight train.
“You. It was you all along.” His fingers clenched around the hilt of the knife. “It was never Heather haunting me. It was you, trying to drive me away from the fire tower. Lady, that’s low.”
Heather’s figure shimmered again, replaced by Brenna’s scowling visage. “You should have listened to her instead of trying to be a hero. Now you’ll get to depart this life with the rest of them.” She shook her head. “Don’t you know that knights in shining armor died out with the dragons?”
Sam heard a strange sound from the forest behind them, so
mething between a cough and a roar, and a huge gout of flame came out of the trees and hit Brenna full force. Before Sam could blink, all that malice and menace had been reduced to a pile of ashes. A tiny trickle of smoke floated up from the place where she’d been standing.
A gleaming brown and green dragon the size of a van slithered out of the woods and said, “Not all dragons, you bitch. And nobody hurts my Baba Yaga.”
As Sam stood frozen to the spot with his mouth open, Koshka shimmered, much as Brenna had, and returned to his guise as a harmless, if overly large, Norwegian Forest cat. The cat sat down and casually began to lick one paw, as if it hadn’t just been a mythical creature who’d turned their powerful enemy into a charcoal briquette.
“Nicely done,” the dragon-cat said to Sam. “You kept her attention long enough for me to get into position and change forms. And you’re not even dead. Way to go.”
Sam snapped back to life and turned around to see Barbara and Beka walking toward the fire, arms raised high and fingers crooked, as if beckoning to the sky. In response, a cloud mass overhead turned from white to gray to black as he watched, and rain poured down to put out the fire. As soon as the flames were gone, the deluge stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
Without any conscious intention on his part, Sam’s feet moved in Bella’s direction, and in a moment he was clutching a soaking wet redhead to his chest, hugging her as she squeezed him back, laughing and crying and kissing all at the same time.
“Aw, get a room,” the dragon-cat said, picking its paws up as it walked into the circle and shaking the water off with irritated little flicks.
But he came over and joined them, leaning against Bella’s legs so hard he almost knocked them both over.
“Count on it,” Bella whispered in Sam’s ear. “Count on it.”
* * *
BELLA RELUCTANTLY LET go of Sam and looked up at him in amazement.
“What?” he asked.
She just shook her head. They’d deal with it later. “I’m awfully glad to see you. Surprised, but glad. I wasn’t sure I’d get the chance.”
“You should have known I would come for you,” he said.
“I wasn’t sure anyone really knew I was missing,” she said ruefully. “I had visions of you all sitting around thinking, ‘Gee, she’s taking a long time in the forest,’ but not worrying about me because I’m a Baba Yaga.” She coughed a little, her lungs still adjusting to blissfully smokeless air.
“Are you kidding?” Koshka said from his place at her feet. “I thought he and Jazz were going to try and search the woods tree by tree.” He preened. “Luckily, they had me.”
Bella bent down to kiss him on top of his furry head, ignoring the hacking up a hair ball noises he made when she did it. Then she went to go give Barbara and Beka each a quick but heartfelt hug before getting on her knees to check on the Riders where they were sitting on the slightly charred grass in the middle of the circle, or in Day’s case, lying down.
The other two Baba Yagas joined her, looking grim.
“What the hell did that witch do to you?” Barbara said with a grimace. “Nothing personal, but you guys look like crap on a stick.”
“A very big stick though,” Alexei said, wiping his sooty face with an equally grimy hand and simply smearing the blackness around. “At least in my case.” He coughed loudly, the sound getting progressively rougher.
“You’d better take a look at Mikhail. Brenna captured him first and he really got the brunt of it,” Gregori said. Despite being as covered with dirt and bruises as the others, he still managed to look as though he was about to sit down to drink a cup of tea before starting his afternoon meditation. It was only when Bella saw the haunted look in his eyes that she could tell that he wasn’t as unshaken as he might try to appear.
The Rider wasn’t kidding, Bella thought, as she moved over to sit next to Day. There wasn’t a part of him visible that hadn’t been beaten or burned or otherwise abused. She was pretty sure he had at least a few broken bones, and she didn’t like the way he held his ribs when he coughed. Always fair skinned to go with his blond hair, the White Rider was so ashen now he was living up to his name.
“Hey, old friend,” she said. “It is good to see you again. But you’ve looked better. You’d better heal up fast so you can go back to impressing the ladies.”
Mikhail grimaced. “No more ladies for me, Baba Yaga. I’m going to take up skydiving instead. I think it’s safer.” He coughed again, and Bella saw a bright bead of red appear at the corner of his mouth.
Trying not to sound alarmed, she turned to the other two Babas and said, “I don’t suppose either of you happened to bring any of the Water of Life and Death with you, did you?”
Beka pulled Bella’s own silver flask out of her bag with a flourish. “Ta-da! Koshka insisted on coming with us, and we couldn’t just leave it behind. Besides, Barbara had a feeling we’d need it, and Barbara’s feelings are never wrong.”
“Well, hardly ever,” Barbara said, winking at Bella. Bella was pretty sure that the other woman was referring to how long it took her to realize she was in love with Liam, the Human she ended up marrying.
Bella took the flask and held it up to Mikhail’s mouth, and he took a long swallow. A little color crept back into his face, and some of the more obvious wounds on the surface began to mend before their eyes, but he still lay there, clearly in pain. Bella bit her lip and gazed up at Barbara in question.
The cloud-haired Baba Yaga knelt down beside Bella and put her hand on his chest, feeling the same irregular and stuttering heartbeat Bella had sensed. The three Baba Yagas exchanged wordless glances, then Barbara, the oldest, held out her hand for the flask.
“The hell with the rules,” she said. “And the hell with any possible long-term consequences. They’re the Riders. They’ve served the Baba Yagas and the Queen for thousands of years. Whatever it takes.” Bella and Beka nodded in agreement.
Barbara lifted Day’s head and put the flask back to his lips. Gregori pursed his own lips in a silent whistle when he saw how much of the Water of Life and Death she was giving him.
“Is that going to cure him or kill him?” he asked, sounding more curious than critical.
“You’re about to find out,” Barbara said in an acerbic tone. “Since you’re up next.”
Each of the Riders got a huge dose of the Water, although none as large as Mikhail had gotten. Barbara put the container up to her ear and shook it, obviously trying to estimate how much was left inside. Then she handed it back to Bella, who was still trying to stop coughing.
“There’s only a drop or two left in there,” Barbara said. “And it sounds like you need it. Go on, then.”
Bella obediently upended the flask, feeling the Water of Life and Death hit her system like an infusion of atomic energy that smelled like flowers. Sighing, she staggered to her feet, with the help of a hand from Sam.
“Thanks,” she said, including everyone in that. “You have no idea how good it is to see you all.” Then she glanced around. “Hey, what happened to Brenna?”
“Don’t worry about her,” Barbara said with a straight face. “She’s toast.” Then she and Beka cracked up, a rare sight for the usually stern Barbara, and even Koshka let out a dragonish snort.
“What?” Bella asked. “What did I miss?” She’d been so busy worrying about the Riders (and being happy to see Sam), she hadn’t even thought to ask how they’d defeated Brenna. Stuck in the circle behind a wall of flames, she hadn’t been able to see whatever happened. She just assumed her sister Babas had dealt with Brenna somehow.
“You should probably come and see,” Beka said. Koshka led the way, his tail held proudly high.
It wasn’t until Bella was gazing down at the pile of ashes that she figured it out. “Koshka!” she said. “You didn’t!”
The dragon-cat scratched one ear with a
hind foot. “Yes, I did. She asked for it.”
Bella bit her lip, torn between laughter and trepidation. “I’m pretty sure the Queen wanted her alive so she could, you know, kill Brenna herself.”
“In that case,” Koshka said smugly, “I’ve saved her a lot of trouble.”
“I hope the Queen thinks so,” Barbara muttered. She patted her pockets fruitlessly.
“What are you looking for?” Beka asked. “Gum? A camera so we can take a selfie with our former nemesis as a warning to all those who would seek to take us on?”
Barbara made a completely nonmagical sign with one finger. “No, you twit. I’m looking for something to put that in, so we can take it to the Queen as proof.”
Sam pulled a slightly crumpled bandana out of his jeans. “Will this do?”
“It’s not very dignified,” Beka said, sounding uncertain. She rooted around in her large bag but clearly didn’t find a better alternative.
“Dignified and Brenna don’t belong in the same sentence,” Alexei said, and spat on the ground. “It is better than she deserves.”
Bella couldn’t really disagree. She knelt down and used a flat rock to shovel as much of the ashes as she could onto the disconcertingly cheerful red and white cloth, and then the motley gang of three Baba Yagas, three Riders, a former firefighter, and one very smug dragon-cat set off for the caravan. It was going to be a long walk, but at least they didn’t have to spend it looking over their shoulders.
* * *
BY THE TIME they got back to the caravan, night had fallen in earnest. An owl swung past silently as they entered the clearing, winging its way back out into the woods they’d just walked through. A sliver of moon rose over the trees, and stars twinkled gaily. Bella wondered if the world had gotten more beautiful or if she was just grateful to be alive and have the Riders back.
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