With a start, I looked up to see Angie on the other side of the window, her grim face cast in an orange glow against the lights of the parking lot.
I opened the door a crack. “What?”
“I, um, don’t suppose you could give me a ride home?”
My mouth fell open slightly. “How did you get here?”
“My dad. He, um, left already.”
“Without you?”
“Well, I was supposed to stay and supervise a girls’ sleepover here with the youth group, but I might have said something negative about the sermon and they decided they didn’t need me after all.”
“If you want out…” I began.
“I don’t know what I want,” Angie snapped. She took a deep breath and started over. “This place is insane right now. I just want to go home.”
“Get in.”
I closed my door, and unlocked the passenger side door for her. A minute later, we were on our way to her parents’ lakefront resort, where she and her family lived on the top floor.
The last time I had visited that resort, Angie had been under the influence of a vampire’s hypnotic suggestion. She had lured me out to the pool where her boyfriend, the vampire, had attacked and nearly killed me. The only thing that had saved me was my pretense that I was under the vampire’s spell myself, and that I enjoyed the agonizing feel of his razor-sharp teeth tearing away flesh. That I enjoyed his licking and slurping my life’s fluid.
My stomach clenched at the memory, but I managed to push it aside. Thankfully, my cousin had forced me to drink a special potion afterward to allow me to remember the event without reliving it. At the time, I had resented his intrusion into my psyche, but I now appreciated it. I didn’t think I could have faced Angie’s home again otherwise. Too bad that same cousin had apparently turned into a vampire himself.
Angie seemed more than a little agitated and restless as we drove. I had always likened her in my mind to a willow tree because of her lean, bony frame, and because she gave the impression that a strong wind would bend her. I could almost feel the wind that night, though the car windows remained closed.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked.
She jumped. “Yeah. Fine.”
“What’s wrong?”
She started to speak, but instead ended up laughing, almost hysterically. “What’s wrong? Come on, Cassie, you’re the detective. Figure it out.”
The insult stung, but I caught her meaning. She’d already confided in me that night as much as she would, and she had already confessed that she hated the things going on around her. What more was there to say? The situation had, literally, exploded the day before when my sister had lost control at the school. The resulting fires still raged.
We rode in silence after that, down the long, winding road that led to the lakefront properties. Her family’s resort was east of town, like most of the touristy haunts. The node, along with the practitioners who clamored for proximity to it, lived to the west.
It took fifteen minutes to get from the church to the resort, a lone beacon lit up against the moonless night. The tourism season was waning, but there were half a dozen cars in their lot, so they must have still been pulling in a brisk business.
Something didn’t feel right, though. I rounded the small canopied driveway before the front doors, trying to shake off the feeling – or at least identify it. Beside me, Angie didn’t move, but her face looked ghostly white, even beneath the golden tan she usually maintained year round.
Two of the nearby parked cars revved their engines. The sound startled me, but before I could react one pulled in behind me, the other in front, effectively blocking me in. I reached into the back seat for my department-issued gun, fully prepared to use it against whoever emerged from those vehicles.
“You set me up,” I said to Angie.
She shook her head.
“You told them it was me, didn’t you?”
“They already knew.” Her voice was so faint, I barely heard her.
My old partner, Rick, stepped out of the car in front of us. He drew a gun. I tightened my grip on mine but he didn’t threaten me with his. Instead he went to the backseat of his car and opened the door. He reached inside and violently jerked someone out.
A woman fell to the ground, landing on her knees and eliciting a startled cry. Rick showed no mercy. With his free hand he jerked her upward by the hair, making her scream.
It was Bethany.
“Drop the gun or I’ll shoot her,” Rick said. “Drop it out the window.”
“I could have let your boyfriend eat you,” I said to Angie.
“You should have,” she said, her voice softer than a whisper.
“No, I shouldn’t have.” I practically snarled the words at her. “I would never have done that to a friend.”
“Drop it!” Rick shouted. “I know you’re armed.”
For a second, I toyed with the idea of threatening to shoot Angie if he didn’t lower his weapon, but he’d see through the ruse. Besides, I had other weapons. Weapons he didn’t know about. With a deep breath, I lowered the window and let my sidearm clatter to the pavement with a loud crack. I half expected it to discharge. I even felt a moment of satisfaction at the idea of it accidentally shooting Rick in the foot, but it didn’t.
“Come out, slowly, with your hands up.”
I thought about the vials of fire resistance stuffed into my bra, and wondered if he’d frisk me. He probably wouldn’t be smart enough to think of it, but it didn’t mean I could risk shoving my hand down my shirt with him watching so intently.
I opened the door a crack, but before I had a chance to move, Angie pressed something into my right hand – something small and warm to the touch. I ran my thumb over the top, realizing she had handed me her own vial of fire resistance, uncorked and ready to drink.
I threw a look her way that she couldn’t have mistaken for anything but abject mistrust.
“Why would I poison you?” she whispered. “They’re planning to kill you anyway.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Move!” Rick yelled. “No tricks.”
Just one trick, I thought. In one quick, lightning-fast movement, I raised the vial to my lips and drank the potion down in one gulp. I threw the vial aside before Rick had a chance to question my movements. He almost did – he had an uncertain frown on his lips. But when I came out, empty handed, my arms in the air, he seemed to decide against second-guessing his fortune.
Two men emerged from the car that had pulled up behind me. They reached me in a few quick strides and twisted my hands behind my back. I didn’t give them the satisfaction of crying out, or even offering much of a struggle. I didn’t take my eyes from Rick’s face, allowing him to become the focus of my rage.
“If looks could kill,” said a voice from just inside the door to the resort. I recognized it as Pastor Roberts’s, but I didn’t look his way.
“Rick,” I said instead, “it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Practically since the day you nearly got us both killed in the diner by being such an idiot.”
“You tried to surrender. I got him to drop his gun.”
“How do you suppose that happened?”
Rick’s face darkened with rage and, perhaps, confusion, but before he had a chance to respond, Pastor Roberts intervened. “Take them around back,” the pastor said.
I didn’t fight them when they took me around the back of the house and deep into the nearby woods, the same woods where I had once sat in wait for a vampire. I believed in biding my time and waiting for the right moment. This, I knew, wasn’t the right moment. There were six men in all, including Rick, Pastor Roberts, Pastor Mueller, and three others I didn’t know.
I felt calm and collected, even when the men shoved and kicked me. I didn’t know if I would get out of this alive or not, even with the fire resistance potion, but the calm infuriated them. I took some pleasure in that.
“No one knows you’re here,” Rick hissed into my ear
when we came into view of the funeral pyre they’d prepared for me and Bethany. “No one’s coming to save you. Bethany’s house is on fire even as we speak, and you can bet everyone will be preoccupied with that.”
“Why would I need someone to save me?” I asked loudly enough for all the men to hear. “Don’t you believe I’m a witch?”
“Is that a confession?” Pastor Roberts asked.
“Disappointed?” I asked. “You wanted to beat it out of me, maybe? Or press stones on my back until I told you the moon is made of blue cheese? Or maybe you want to toss me in the pool to see if I float?”
Pastor Roberts stalked up to me and slapped me, hard, across the face. The sting of it shook my entire body. I had to bite my tongue to keep from crying out, but I didn’t make a peep of protest.
“Cassie,” Bethany said in barely a whisper. “Don’t taunt them. They’ll kill you.”
“They plan to kill me anyway,” I said. “Don’t you? You’ve already tried and convicted me. This is just the execution.”
“Tie them to the stake,” Pastor Roberts said. He turned his back to me, blissfully unaware that he’d just solved half my problem – how to get into the fire before my flame resistance potion wore off. I had no idea how long it would last, but the sooner I put it to use, the better.
That only left the other half of my problem – saving Bethany. They hadn’t frisked me to find the two vials of flame resistance currently warming my breasts. But if the men tied my hands, I couldn’t get the vials out to pass to Bethany. The question was, should I try to make a mad dash to pass it to her now, or try to taunt them into leaving me unbound at the stake so I could do it then?
I turned to Bethany for inspiration. Her eyes were full of tears, her entire body trembling, but she looked me in the eyes with a sort of helpless resignation. No one held her arms as they did mine, apparently not finding her as threatening as they found me. Rick held a gun on her, and that seemed to be keeping her in line.
I looked her in the eyes, trying to communicate without words for her to be on alert. She frowned, but I had no way of knowing if she understood my silent message. I couldn’t wait to find out, either.
I made my move. With a sharp downward slash of my hands, I freed them from the slackened grasp of the man who held them, lulled into a false sense of security by my complacence and calm. I didn’t feel calm anymore. Bethany was only a few feet away, but they stretched like miles in my mind as my feet made a mad dash for my target.
I jogged regularly to stay in shape, but I almost never sprinted. I wasn’t all that fast, which made the element of surprise vital for what I had in mind. I reached inside my low-cut shirt to yank one of the potion vials out. I almost dropped it, but I managed to grasp it just as I swept past Bethany, nearly knocking her over.
She wasn’t my target, or so I hoped the others would believe. I slapped the vial into her hand, not pausing to see if she had grabbed it before I moved past her to tackle Pastor Mueller to the ground.
Angie’s father had not expected to become the object of attack. He toppled backwards onto the ground with a heavy thud, and his head crashed against the grassy earth. I pulled my arm back, made a fist, and smashed it against his nose. It broke with a satisfying crunch.
That was all the time I had. Three men pulled me off the pastor, kicking me in the shins until I went down, and then kicking me in the stomach and ribs.
I didn’t restrain my cries of pain this time. I cried to distract them from watching Bethany, who I desperately hoped had received the potion and understood what to do with it. And I cried to release the pain. Their kicks were brutal. Relentless. They brought tears to my eyes and bile to my throat.
When I felt two of my ribs crack, I thought I had pushed them too far. That they would kill me before I ever made it to the pyre. Stupid move, I chided myself, the potion is only good for fire. But I had needed to pass the potion to Bethany somehow.
Breathing was difficult now, almost as difficult as thinking. Then one of the men kicked me in the head.
I blacked out.
* * *
When I came to I felt like hell. My head throbbed. My chest almost burned where my ribs had cracked or broken. I might have picked up a few new injuries while I was unconscious, too.
My hands and arms were bound to the stake set in the middle of the pyre. I felt Bethany backed up against me, though I couldn’t see her.
“She’s awake,” someone said.
Apparently, they had been waiting for me to regain consciousness. They couldn’t burn me without letting me feel the pain, now could they?
I already felt pain. Every place on my body that had received a kick felt sore and my chest still burned where my ribs had cracked. My head hurt now, too. Throbbed, more like it.
I found my quiet place, trying to push aside the pain. I needed my wits now more than ever.
How much time had passed? I searched the night sky, but it was a new moon, meaning I could tell nothing from its position in the sky. It could have been minutes or hours, for all I knew. If the latter, I would die in this pyre. If the former, I still might. It all depended upon how well I had brewed that potion.
The scent of gasoline assaulted my nose; the wood was drenched in it. The second someone threw a match onto the logs at my feet, I would have my answer.
Did I want them to hurry up, or delay? If my time was up anyway, I wanted as much as possible. My heart began beating faster in response, trying to beat a lifetime’s worth of blood in its few remaining seconds.
Pastor Roberts held a box of matches in his hand. “Would you like to beg God for forgiveness before you die? You still have time.”
Did I? I licked dry lips with a raspy tongue that felt like glue.
Pastor Roberts struck a match at the same time he arched an eyebrow at me.
“Light me up,” I said. “If I’m a witch, you can’t burn me.”
“Stop!” someone shouted. It was a high, feminine voice that came from the direction of the resort. I knew it. It belonged to Angie.
What the hell? I wanted to tell her to leave, but I was also curious what she thought she was doing.
“I’ve called the police. They’re on their way.” She held up a cell phone, as if to prove the point.
The six men stood as still as statues. All but Angie’s father, whose face turned white.
“Angela Marie,” he said. “What have you done?”
“What I should have done in the first place,” she said.
“She’s lying,” Rick said, although he didn’t sound like he believed it.
“String her up with the others,” Pastor Roberts said.
Pastor Mueller whirled on him. “No! She’s my daughter.”
“She betrayed us.”
“And I told you not to involve her in this,” Pastor Mueller replied.
“I couldn’t pass up the chance to get a Scot! They’ll know we can beat them now.”
Their argument barely registered to me. I had eyes only for Angie, who looked small and forlorn in the dim orange glow of the porch light. She had just turned her back on her family and friends, and she knew it. The truth pooled in her eyes, and fell in droplets down her cheeks.
“If you’re going to kill me,” I said loudly enough to be heard over the argument, “you’d better do it now. I think I hear sirens.”
I didn’t. It was a lie. But the sheriff could be a good ten or fifteen minutes away and I suddenly didn’t want to wait that long to test the potion. I didn’t delude myself into thinking they wouldn’t still throw the match. It was just a matter of when. And of how many of us were tied to the stake.
Pastor Mueller seemed to realize that last point as well, because he snatched the box of matches from his colleague. He struck one and tossed it onto the gasoline-soaked logs before anyone had a chance to add his daughter to the inferno.
I closed my eyes and held my breath. Off in the distance, I thought, I might actually have heard the sound of sirens. Or maybe t
hat was some strange near-death flash of hope. Someone had helped save me from nearly every other scrape I’d gotten myself into, but this time, I stood on my own.
The flames were painfully hot. They licked at my feet, my legs, my arms, my head… engulfing me in heat. I smelled gasoline and burning pine.
The potion hadn’t worked, I thought. I was going to die.
I opened my eyes, finding myself surrounded by flames. I couldn’t see for the fire, which was greedily gobbling up every fuel source in sight. My clothes were burning. And the rope binding me to the stake.
It wasn’t quite as painful as I would have expected. Yes, it was hot. I wanted to flee, but it felt more like the moment of warning when you get too close to a fire. Except the moment stretched on and on, never wavering.
Then, suddenly, the ropes fell away. I fled the fire, looking back just long enough to see Bethany also twisting free of her bonds.
Then I turned to the white-faced men who had tried to burn me alive. At least two of them had guns, Rick and one other, but they had them holstered. Unprepared.
Good. Then they wouldn’t see what was coming until it burned them. I was hot. I was fire itself. I remembered how hot Nicolas had been when he’d emerged from Sarah’s house, and a smile twisted my face. Did the dear pastor, who had gotten burned on that occasion, remember?
It didn’t matter. I went for the men with guns first, scorching them with my radiant heat until they fell to the ground. Then I knocked the guns away from them.
I turned to the other four, but they weren’t waiting around for the same treatment. They fled into the lodge. I started to follow but I became aware of the loud scream of sirens, not approaching from a distance, but very nearby.
Backup had arrived.
* * *
The next few minutes were pure bedlam. Deputies stormed the house to arrest the four men who had fled inside, but they weren’t the only ones to arrive at the scene. Several carloads of parishioners had come in on their heels and were putting up a fight. They didn’t notice me at first, naked as the day I was born save for a layer of soot. I made my way toward Pastor Roberts, who was being led outside by two deputies. His face remained ashen, and when his eyes fixed on me, everyone else stopped to stare as well. Silence began to fall in waves as people noticed me standing there, alive.
Mind Games Page 25