“I’m what?” The earth shuddered once more. He gripped the edge of the crevasse with his mind reeling. He had to get her out. How was he going to get her out?
“You have power,” she said. “You carry it, but you don’t use it. I need you to say the last part of the incantation. Luis opened the fault. You need to be touching him when you say it.”
“This is crazy.”
She coughed again. “You dream, yes? You know things, and you don’t know how. Ian, we don’t have time.”
Ice raced throughout his body. All the cues, dismissed before now, flooded his mind. His inexplicable pull toward Sara. The dreams of her murdered father. The way his skin prickled when he met Flintrop. “What do I have to say?”
“Just grab him and say terminatus. And Ian—get Sara out of here. She’s pregnant, and that makes her more powerful. They’ll kill her to hold the ley line open if they can.” Silver eyes blazed into his through the crack in the rubble. “Stop them.”
Pregnant. They’ll kill her.
Before he could react, the rift shook, spilling gravel onto both of them. Sizzling air stung in his nose. The atmosphere snapped and guttered. A charge burst along his spine, and the ley line flickered. He braced his feet against the sides of the trench and pitched upward with his heart thundering.
Clouds surged in the sky. The ground screeched again, and he stumbled. Pain spiked in his belly as it echoed the rending of the earth. His breath whooshed out, and he heaved for air that had gone blistering cold.
Sara struggled to her feet, close by the collapsing wall of the ruin. Swaying in the quake’s aftershocks, she lurched away from the fault and dropped to her knees.
Luis stirred and shook his head. His attention landed on Hakon’s sword, and he crawled to it. Picking it up, Luis battled to his feet and stumbled toward Sara.
Oh, Christ, no. I love her.
Ian sucked in a frigid breath, but it wasn’t enough to shout a warning. He forced himself upright and staggered toward them. Luis raised the sword to swing at her. Sara knelt gasping, unaware of the danger. Step, stagger, step...too damn slow! He forced his feet to move faster.
Racing footsteps sounded behind him. Ian glanced over his shoulder. Flintrop dove toward him, his face a livid, bloody mask of hatred.
Ian whirled to avoid his grasp, but not fast enough. Flintrop seized his right arm and unleashed his power.
Electricity fizzed though their point of contact and raced, snapping, up Ian’s arm. His world exploded into agony. He screamed and toppled, reaching even as he fell. His left hand brushed Luis’s arm. “Terminatus,” he gasped out with the last of his breath.
The shock flew, sizzling, from his fingers and into Luis, who gave an earsplitting shriek and crashed to the ground just short of Sara. The sword thumped to the earth.
Ian dropped like a stone.
****
The ground lurched. The screaming of a thousand voices rent the air in a wild surge, and then cut short. Stunned into incomprehension, Sara looked from Ian’s prone form to Flintrop, standing above him. Flintrop’s lips pulled back in a snarl of satisfaction, then he lumbered toward the collapsed wall. He hefted a stone the size of a cement block to his shoulder, then staggered back toward Ian with the gleam of bloodlust in his eyes.
Wrath swept through Sara and washed away her fog of confusion. Trembling, she thrashed to her feet, calling on everything she had left and pouring her fury into it. The shapeshift took hold in a brutal storm. Flintrop’s figure blurred as her human vision gave way to animal sight. She smelled the blood-mad reek of his scent and heard breath whistling in his throat. She opened her mouth to scream, and out came the enraged roar of a grizzly bear. She charged.
Flintrop raised the stone over Ian’s head, growling, and it began to fall.
She plowed into him and took the blow on one broad, flat shoulder, arcing over Ian’s body. Her momentum carried Flintrop backward. Snarling in his face, she hooked an enormous paw around him and scooped upward. The stone tumbled from his grasp. Flintrop sailed into the air and landed ten feet away.
Ian’s rifle lay nearby. Flintrop launched himself at it and turned it on her, then fired.
The shot missed her by inches. She galloped the few strides to him and bashed the rifle out of his hands.
He clapped a hand against the left side of her muzzle and released an electric charge. Lightning exploded inside her head. Bellowing in agony, she jerked backward and swung blindly at him with the last of her strength.
Her strike connected with a thwack, and she heard bones breaking. Flintrop’s body went slack, and he tumbled into the fault. He’s bleeding. Gifted blood.
No sooner had that thought entered her mind than the eerie voices screeched one last time. The ground rumbled, and then all was quiet.
It was over.
The scent of burnt fur stung her nostrils. A tremor ran through her body. She swayed and collapsed, losing hold of the shapeshift, then passed out.
****
When Sara came to, tearing pain settled in behind her eyes. She raised her head. Gooseflesh bloomed along her arms, and she trembled in the icy air. Her breath puffed out in steaming clouds, adding to the fog covering the ground. Her right shoulder throbbed. She didn’t have the strength to cradle it.
A dark haze hovered somewhere to her left. She shook her head, but it didn’t dissipate. She pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. Disoriented, she shuffled forward. Her hand landed on something sharp that sliced along her palm. She snatched it away with a hiss and saw fresh blood welling in a drying cut. Old blood crusted along a gash in her forearm.
A sword lay on the ground before her. She looked along its length without recognition, trying to rid her vision of the partial haze.
The mirror shine of the sword blade, edged with feathers of frost, revealed the reflection of her eyes. Her right eye showed hazel. Her left was green. She blinked, and it didn’t change to brown. She knew it should have, but couldn’t remember why. Confused, she waved a hand in front of her face from right to left. A little more than three-quarters of the way across, her hand disappeared from her line of vision, swallowed by the haze plaguing her.
She had lost part of the vision in her left eye.
Her head pounded. She shook it again, trying to come to terms with the blind spot in her vision.
Faith. Ian. Memory returned, and with it, awareness of her surroundings. Sitting back as if in a trance, she looked around.
The reddish glow of sunrise lanced through the fog, gradually unshrouding the bodies strewn like wreckage across the moor. Michael lay twisted several feet away. Luis was sprawled at the edge of the ruin.
And Ian. He lay face down, eyes closed, limbs thrown askew in the way he had fallen. Dried blood stained the shoulder of his T-shirt. She saw blackened scorch marks on his right arm where Flintrop had touched him, and more on the fingers of his left hand where he had, in turn, passed the shock through his own body to Luis. His hair fluttered in the breeze. No other movement disturbed the silence.
Choking, Sara crawled toward him and clutched at the back of his T-shirt. “Ian.” She nudged him. His body jerked with her push, then lay still again. Her throat tightened to a strangle. She shook him harder. “Ian. Ian!” He didn’t respond. Dark blood collected, glistening and sluggish, in the torn flesh of his shoulder. She bit off a moan. With her hand shaking so hard she could barely steady it, she touched two fingers to the hollow in his throat.
No charge. No pulse. His skin felt cold.
No. No no no no no. “Nooooooo!” Sara balled her fists, nails digging into her palms, heedless of the stinging wound in her hand. She turned her face upward and screamed, long, incoherent, full of rage. Her power burned through her body, humming in her ears, sizzling along her skin...
...but it wouldn’t bring him back.
She let the scream die off, its muffled echoes ringing across the foggy moor. When it faded, an awful emptiness replaced it. Tears surged up and began to flow
down her cheeks. She gave a thin howl of misery and crumpled beside his body.
A hand descended on her shoulder. She flung out an arm to decimate her attacker.
Her blow never landed. “Sara, get up,” Faith murmured.
Dazed, Sara raised her head. “Faith?”
Her sister gave her arm a gentle tug. “You’ve got to get up. The ley line isn’t finished closing. Hakon says we have to go right now.”
Weary, chilled, Sara laid her head back down.
“Sara.” Faith’s voice rang through her throbbing skull, and she winced. “Get up right now. You’re pregnant.”
Shock. The return of her senses blasted her back to reality. She whimpered and curled into a ball, folding nerveless fingers over her belly.
Pregnant. The word knifed through her, and she ached. She couldn’t look at Ian’s body. He’s dead, oh God oh God oh God... She rolled and battled to her feet, groaning as her frozen muscles protested the movement. Faith wrapped a supporting arm around her, and a fresh onslaught of tears stung down Sara’s cheeks. Don’t look. Don’t look at him. Just walk. As they staggered away, she caught a flash of white from Ian’s T-shirt. Cutting off a mournful cry, she hugged her belly, and stumbled away with her sister into the fog.
She didn’t know how far they’d staggered when she saw someone approaching through the haze. She swayed, wrestling with her blind spot. “I can’t fight them, Faith. I have nothing left.”
They lurched forward, step by step, to meet whatever came.
Dustin materialized first, sweeping out of the fog in a long coat, with a knapsack and shotgun on his shoulder. He spotted Sara and her sister and shouted, “Lambertson!”
Lamb came out of the haze at a fast walk, which became a jog that overtook the younger man.
Sara turned her head to watch his approach with her good eye. He’s going to kill us, she thought, remembering Ian’s warning about Lamb’s involvement. She halted, swaying on her feet. Faith stopped beside her.
With an oath, Dustin drew to a stop several strides from where she and Faith stood. The shotgun remained on his shoulder.
Lamb reached them in another four running steps. Sara braced and raised her fists. She began sliding into unconsciousness even as a feeble rumble of defiance bubbled from her throat. Her knees buckled.
The older man caught her and swept her off her feet into his arms. The dizzying movement shook the last of her strength out of her. “Sara. Bloody hell! Dustin, radio the helicopter and get it down here. Now! Sara, darling, hold on...”
The waters of oblivion closed over her head once more.
Chapter Nineteen
“How did this happen, Faith? How did it happen?”
Faith had never seen Lamb so upset. She turned in an uncertain circle in the otherwise empty hospital waiting room. How much to tell? “I...”
Lamb came forward, looking angry. “Three people have died on this project. With Cameron, that makes four. This is a disaster. And now your sister is injured, and—” He broke off and spun away to pace the polished floor.
She reached into her coat pocket for the two journals wedged there: the one Flintrop had stolen, and the new one that had replaced it. “I think— Lamb, can I trust you?”
He stiffened. She knew the question had stung him. She’d never had to ask before. “With your life. You know that.”
She hated the doubt creeping through her skin. She called on her psychic power, and tears blurred his figure. A shiver skipped down her spine.
He stared. Stared some more. Nothing in his aura suggested deception. She didn’t bother blinking to let her eyes change back to their normal blue, wanting him to get a good look at the silver. She handed her journals over. “There are some things you need to know about Sara and me.”
With an unreadable face, he took the journals and sat in a corner of the room. For the next hour, he neither spoke nor looked at her, absorbed in her written words.
Faith gazed out the waiting room window at a park across the street. A blond man in a red sweater was pushing a curly-haired child on the swings.
For no particular reason, she thought of Hakon. He’d protected her...as much as a ghost could protect her against a group of madmen bent on destruction. She’d never felt that safe before, even when the fault caved in on top of her and stopped just short of crushing her.
Now that their secret had been revealed, would she and Sara ever be safe again?
The door opened. Her mother rushed in. “Oh, Faith. Sweetheart, I came as fast as I could get here. Are you all right?” She pressed her hands to either side of Faith’s face.
Faith hugged her mother. “I’m fine, Mom. Sara’s still unconscious, but the doctors say all her vitals are good.”
Lambertson closed the books, and stood. “Angela. It’s good to see you. I only wish it were under better circumstances.”
“Hello, James.” Her mother kissed him on the cheek.
Faith tried not to look surprised at the affectionate gesture. Lamb’s gaze flickered over her, still unreadable, and she looked away. In the park across the street, the red-sweatered man and the child had moved on to a slide.
“Angela, why don’t you go and sit with Sara? I’d like to speak with Faith for a few minutes.”
Faith tensed. She murmured a quick goodbye to her mother. The door closed with a thump, and the waiting room went silent and sterile.
When Lamb spoke, she heard him force calm into his voice. “Robert told me once that if anything ever happened to him, I was to watch over you and Sara. He sounded so grave at the time that it worried me. Now I know what he was protecting. Not just his children, but their gifts. Your gifts.”
She couldn’t find anything to say at first. She cleared her throat, but no words came. She crossed the room to sit down. “Dad... He knew?”
Lamb sat beside her. “I think he must have. I never saw him so serious. He wrote a letter, sealed it, and made me swear to give it to your mother when you were older. I guess it’s time.” He studied her journals, still in his hands, then gave them back to her. “I spent a lot of years working with your father. Nothing ever made me question his judgment until now. I don’t know if I’m the right person for this.”
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
A warm, rough hand slid into her own. “You don’t have to be. I made a promise, and I intend to honor it.”
Lamb reached up without hesitation, and pushed an errant lock of her long, blond hair behind her ear. “I’ve known you girls since you were children. You’re as much mine as you ever were your father’s. You are bright, talented, beautiful young women who make me proud. Whatever else you are, you’re still that, Faith, darling.”
They sat there for a long time, just holding hands.
Lamb cleared his throat, and sat back in the chair. Faith sat back, too, their hands still linked. “Do you know,” he said, “I always thought it strange, but your father had an uncanny knack of knowing things before they happened.” His mouth twisted into a rueful smile. “He was appallingly good at betting on sports.”
Faith laughed, but it came out as a sob. She covered her mouth, and hot tears trickled down her cheeks.
He squeezed her hand. “As for what happened on Hvitmar, I had some of my contacts comb the site before the police arrived. They’ll find nothing to endanger you or Sara. I’ve spoken to the inspector, and so far, it appears he’s attributing your actions to self-defense.”
She nodded and wiped away her tears.
“You should get some sleep,” he said after a long silence. “I’ve rented a room at the bed-and-breakfast down the road. Take my keys, and go rest a while.”
“No. Not until Sara wakes up.”
“Your mother and I can stay with her.”
“I want to be here, Lamb.”
They fell into silence again. Faith heard the faint ticking of the clock on the waiting room wall, and counted the passing seconds.
Dustin entered the room. Lamb and Faith stood u
p. “Thomas is in a bad way,” Dustin said. “The doctors don’t think he’ll ever see again. He’s already confessed to Cameron’s...” He trailed off and wiped his sweat-beaded forehead. “He’s willing to testify.”
“Thank you, Dustin,” said Lamb. “Someone will need to call the Flintrop offices, and tell them what has happened to Michael, Luis, and Alan. If you’ll excuse me.”
When he had gone, Faith went back to staring out the window. By now, the red-sweatered man and the child had left. A pang seized her as she wondered if Hakon would ever contact her again. She hadn’t heard so much as a whisper from him since the closing of the ley line. I miss you, she thought, only now understanding how much his ethereal presence had comforted her. During all that turmoil, all that uncertainty on the island, she had always felt he was watching out for her.
Warmth spread through her body. She’d find him again. Someone, somewhere cared about her, and for now that was enough.
Dustin came up behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. Thank you,” she murmured.
“And Sara?”
“Still not conscious,” she said.
“Would you like me to stay?”
“No, thanks. My mother is here now.”
His hand lifted from her shoulder. She heard him move toward the door, and turned around. “Dustin?”
He paused with his hand on the door handle.
“How did you know to go get Lamb before the—before it happened?” she asked.
“Lambertson asked me to keep an eye out for you.” He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I never trusted Flintrop, anyway.” Before she could say anything further, he left.
Faith sighed, too. Her sister hadn’t woken up since they’d brought her in.
Faith sat down and prepared for a long, restless wait.
****
Sound returned first.
The incessant drone of a television chattered away in Sara’s ear. “...Authorities are still investigating last week’s tragic events on Hvitmar, where geologists say an earthquake split the island almost entirely in two. Madeline Burgess has the story.”
The Serpent in the Stone (The Gifted Series) Page 25