Unable to use her arms to catch herself, she stumbled and fell badly into the chair.
“Stay there,” Josh said as she rolled around, trying to right herself.
Dust rose smotheringly on the air from the force of her impact. She sneezed, and sneezed again.
“Gesundheit,” he said absently.
When she managed to maneuver herself to observe him, he’d unpacked what she presumed were the items he needed for the shield spell.
With the gun in one hand, he tipped a sauce bottle so that an oozing liquid poured slowly from it to form an imperfect but closed circle. One with Andrew inside it.
Josh stepped out of the circle and picked up a mess of short dark gray cotton threads.
No, not cotton.
Josh held yeti fur!
Vanessa was only guessing at the yeti fur identification, but the guess made sense. Seth had said that samples from yetis, like those from phoenixes and other rare, powerful fantastical creatures, could be used to increase the power of a spell.
She wriggled. Her pistol was tucked in her waistband under her shirt. How Josh had missed the bulge of it, even with the loose cut of her shirt, she couldn’t guess. Or perhaps he’d recognized it and didn’t care. With her arms cuffed behind her back, she couldn’t reach it. Even if she could, how could she aim and shoot it?
But her knife was in an ankle sheath, and that she could reach and she could use it to slash wildly.
Except…Josh had a gun.
“Stay still,” he reminded her.
She froze. She was so damned helpless!
If Josh calculated that he could test the shield spell before Seth returned, she had a vanishingly small amount of time in which to save Andrew from being sacrificed. The irony that she had to save the man who’d had a geas laid on him to protect her, the man who’d assisted her kidnappers, sent a panicked, fearful giggle up through her throat and out her nose as a snort that mixed with a sneeze.
“Sinuses,” Josh said. “Me, too. This smoke plays hell with my sinuses. I’ll be glad to get out of these mountains.”
“Why were you hiding in a cave?” Vanessa asked. If she could get him talking, that might delay him.
The swift, practiced way he sketched symbols on the floor in chalk dismayed her. He’d obviously committed every aspect of his prototype shield spell to memory and was eager to try it.
He might almost be called high on anticipation. His voice had a squeaky edge to it; that of a man excited by his own daring.
Was he turned on by the thought of human sacrifice? Ew. I’m trapped with a potential serial killer.
At that thought, all of her muscles relaxed from a rush of sheer fear. She slumped, but the dusty back of the armchair propped her up.
Josh frowned at her, puzzled. “You must have seen the yeti? I heard its howl as it escaped. I told Svenson I had to have a yeti. He made arrangements for a hunter to deliver one, but the hunter refused to take it out of the mountains where it was caught. Something about the danger of hanging on to one for too long.” He tossed the chalk away, finished with scrawling symbols.
Vanessa couldn’t sense magic, but the inexorable approach of Andrew’s execution to power the spell was obvious. “What is the danger of hanging onto a yeti?”
“It was just crazy talk,” Josh said.
The crazy man is calling someone else crazy? Vanessa snorted.
“The hunter reckoned other yetis would attempt to rescue it. None of them appeared at the cave. Then again, I had strong barrier spells in place. I was impressed with the way your boyfriend broke them. Andrew said Seth also bound his magic. I’d be very interested in studying the way his magic worked. I could use it to seal a barrier…a shield spell powered by Seth’s magic…”
As Josh’s voice trailed away, Vanessa reached down quickly and grabbed her knife from its ankle sheath.
“What are you doing?” Josh looked up.
Vanessa wiped her face against her shoulder. “My nose itches!” If he had sinus trouble, he’d believe it.
“Maybe I should just shoot you?” Josh’s voice was eerily conversational. It was almost as if he asked for her advice.
“What if I stay here nice and quiet, instead?” Not that she could. The trap had closed around her and Andrew. If she didn’t try to save him in the next couple of minutes, she had a suspicion she’d be too late.
“I’d prefer it,” Josh said. “If the shield spell works as I anticipate, we will be here a while.”
Her eyes widened. She hadn’t considered that if he succeeded in activating the shield spell, she’d be stuck inside it with him. “Um.” What had Seth read out from Josh’s notes on the development of the spell. “Don’t you need to mark the route of the spell? You know, where the shield needs to go up?”
“Already done! I did it while I was invisible. All right.” He hitched up the waistband of his sweatpants. “I would prefer you alive to fill in the time while I wait out the spell. Stand up. Turn around.”
Eek! If she turned around, he’d see her knife, and she wasn’t close enough to use it.
She freaking hated to do it, but she pushed the knife out of sight between the seat cushion and the side of the chair, then stood up.
As she did so, Josh tugged free one of the curtain cords.
Her thoughts splintered. Panic pressed at her. She could guess how he anticipated filling in time with her within the shield spell. Some men celebrated their accomplishments with violent sex, and rape suited Josh’s volatile, immoral profile. But if he didn’t injure her yet, when he got close enough to tie her to something before starting the shield spell, that was her chance to fight him.
Knock the gun out of his hand, first.
It still wouldn’t be an equal fight, but maybe she shouldn’t fight? If she ran, Josh might follow her, and any time she won before he attempted the prototype of the shield spell was time in which Seth could return.
She cast a regretful look at Andrew, still unconscious on the floor, and forced her shoulders to slump. She needed all the element of surprise she could muster. She needed Josh to believe her already utterly defeated, and so, lower his guard.
Then Josh took away her chance of successfully attacking. “Sit down on the floor.”
“The floor? Why?” She needed to be mobile, not rolling around on the floor; and it would be rolling. Flashbacks to her kidnapping reminded her of how arms bound behind your back hindered your mobility. I can still kick him, she promised herself.
But when she lowered herself to the floor, dropping to her knees, and then, at Josh’s impatient gesture with the gun, onto her butt, he moved with astonishing speed and tied her handcuffs to one of the armchair’s front legs. Given the massive weight and size of the armchair, it made a ludicrously effective hitching post.
“Very good.” Wheezing a bit more than he had a few minutes ago, Josh got to his feet and returned to the circle in which Andrew lay.
The big man looked almost peaceful in his unconsciousness.
Vanessa wished he was raging. At least then he’d be awake and maybe able to do something. Her own rage at her helplessness and fear leaked out of her as tears.
Josh flicked a lighter and crouched to touch the flame to the yeti fur on Andrew’s chest.
Vanessa started to scream.
Seth nullified the ward around the cabin Josh was hiding in and walked in, pushing null-space forward to negate whatever else Josh might attempt. Two minutes later, having checked every possible hiding place in the two-room cabin, Seth swore and shoved his gun into the back of his belt.
A fire of self-recrimination blazed through him. He’d been so sure that Josh would be hiding in the cabin, waiting for Andrew, like the coward the two Stag-trained men believed him to be. But Andrew hadn’t tied Josh up. Josh had been free to go anywhere.
The disabled dirt bike stood beside the door. Wherever Josh had gone, he was on foot.
Seth found footprints in the dirt of the track that led to the front gate. T
he first prints were solid boot prints. The second, sometimes superimposed on the first prints, were sneakers, like the shoes Josh had worn at the cave.
Josh had followed Andrew.
Josh needed a sacrifice to test the prototype of the shield spell.
Vanessa was with Andrew.
Seth ran.
Somehow the bastard had hidden himself from Seth’s quick scan of the environment. Perhaps he’d modified a barrier spell to act as a personal shield? The how of it didn’t matter as much as the cold certainty congealing in Seth’s bones. Josh wanted a human sacrifice, and Vanessa and Andrew were at the lodge, within reach, with no magic to defend them from the insane barrier wizard.
Sprinting through the woods required concentration. The day was darkening into an early evening courtesy of the massive smoke cloud. The particles of ash on the air scratched his throat. For there to be ash, the fire had to have come closer. He needed to get Vanessa out, now!
He ran out of the woods, the lodge finally in sight, just as he heard her scream.
He pushed out null-space, determined to nullify Josh’s magical activities till he could physically deal with him. But the null-space rippled, convulsed and smacked back into Seth.
Never had his null-space failed.
He forced himself forward, although his mind reeled from magical backlash. At least his legs still worked. His gun was in his hand.
Then a pressure wave of magical force exploded outward and he slammed into an invisible, unyielding wall.
Josh had tested the prototype for the shield spell, and it evidently worked. Who had he sacrificed to power it?
“Vanessa!” Seth concentrated all of his power into activating null-space. He had to get through the shield. He had to know that she lived.
If Josh had sacrificed Vanessa…
Josh would die.
A second, intense magical backlash swamped Seth; literally staggering him. It didn’t make sense. The first failure of his null-space had happened even before the shield went up. He’d felt the pressure wave of the shield’s construction. What was interfering with his ability to suck up all the magic around him, to bind and render it ineffectual?
The answer approached out of the trees on the far side of the yard. It emerged from the shadows of evening and ran for the lodge. It ran near enough to Seth that he smelled the forest and dirt on it.
A yeti—the yeti from the cave?—ran past Seth straight at the shield spell.
An inferno of magic exploded from the yeti. Its wild magic was what had swallowed his null-space. It had overwhelmed and fried it. The magic that was part of the yeti’s being was too much for a human to contain or negate. Tools would be needed, spells and enchantments, such as Josh had used at the cave. For Seth, the natural force of his null-space shuddered and failed.
But it turned out that he didn’t need null-space to breach the shield spell.
The yeti rammed the invisible barrier, retreated four steps, and rammed it again. On the third attack, the shield tore. Flames ripped out around where the yeti forced an entrance. The fire roared and chewed on the old lodge. Sparks flew wider yet, falling in the woods and igniting the dry undergrowth. Powered by the magic unleashed in the breaking of the shield spell, the fire was ravenous.
Seth ran through it following the yeti through the door that it shouldered open.
Josh lay sprawled on his back over Andrew’s body.
Andrew was dead. There was no mistaking the glaze of death in his open eyes or the impossibly mangled contortion of his body.
“No, no. No!” Josh screamed and scrambled backwards on all fours, kicking at Andrew’s corpse in his attempt to escape the yeti.
Seth looked beyond the hunted barrier wizard to see Vanessa, also on the floor, but alive.
She’d pushed over a massive armchair and was sliding her bound arms from one of its legs. “Seth.”
He was beside her in an instant. Fortunately, the yeti’s presence didn’t interfere with his other magic, only null-space. A tiny open sesame spell released her from the handcuffs that restrained her, and he picked her up as she hugged him.
The fire was consuming the front wall of the lodge and the roof above them. Seth threw Vanessa over his shoulder and ran toward the back of the lodge. He was aware of the yeti following him, more by its scent and the sense of its magic, than by any sound. Little could be heard over the hungry sounds of the fire.
He blasted open a rear door of the lodge as something exploded out front. “Our car,” he said to Vanessa.
Fire wasn’t one of the spells he tended to use. He looked around, trying to calculate how they could escape the conflagration. The forest was burning.
A massive hand gripped his wrist. The yeti had Josh slung over one shoulder in the same manner that Seth carried Vanessa.
“Put me down.” She wriggled. “I can run faster than you can carry me.”
He wasn’t sure of that. In his relief at finding her alive, he was intensely motivated to keep her that way. But he set her on her feet.
The yeti pulled Seth a few steps in the direction of the unburned forest, then released him.
My choice, Seth realized. But the yeti showed sense in running into the wind, away from the path the fire would follow. Seth followed the creature, hand in hand with Vanessa.
Within minutes their lungs ached from the smoke and the effort of running uphill. The yeti set a fast pace, apparently unhindered by Josh’s weight. Or else, without Josh’s weight, it could outrun a cheetah.
Josh seemed unconscious. The yeti had probably knocked him out before taking him. Why it wanted its former captor was a question Seth had no interest in answering; just as he had no interest in saving Josh from his fate. The bastard had killed Andrew and taken Vanessa prisoner for who knew what purpose?
When they cleared the forest and emerged above the tree line, the yeti finally stopped. It dropped Josh, careless of the way his head hit the ground, and stooped beside a creek. It scooped up water and drank.
“I don’t care if the water’s clean or not,” Vanessa croaked. She knelt a short distance from the yeti, drank and splashed her face.
Seth crouched between her and the yeti.
The creature finished drinking and leaned back on its heels. It was taller than Seth, broader, and with a mottle thick fur in shades of white, gray, black and tiny amounts of brown. Its eyes, though, were blue. It looked at Seth, then Vanessa, then back to Seth, and nodded.
Seth had the sense that it indicated approval of him risking his life to rescue her. “Thank you.” Whether Seth could have broken the shield spell if the yeti hadn’t been there, he didn’t know. The point was that no matter how dramatic the yeti’s intervention, it had worked.
Josh groaned, and the relaxed moment vanished.
The yeti stood in a smooth motion that was purely predatory.
Seth stood and reached for Vanessa, pulling her against him. “Don’t interfere,” he murmured into her hair.
“The bastard deserves everything he gets. He murdered Andrew for his spell. It only took a few seconds for Andrew to die, but the spell tortured him as he did.”
“Hell, Vanessa. I shouldn’t have left you with him.”
The yeti crouched where it was the first thing Josh saw when he opened his eyes.
Josh screamed.
The yeti hauled him up and pushed him up the mountain. There wasn’t a trail, but the yeti seemed to know where it was going. In the distance, the final rays of sunset reflected blood-red off a snow-covered mountaintop. The yeti gestured for Seth and Vanessa to follow it.
He wasn’t sure how long she could continue, but she squeezed his hand, and together they climbed the mountain in the dark. When they looked back, the fire blazed red in the night, fierce and devouring, racing through the forest.
A plateau opened out suddenly, small and unexpected behind a rock outcrop.
The yeti touched Seth’s shoulder. Wait, was the obvious, non-verbal command.
Seth s
topped. Vanessa sat on a rock.
“What are you going to do to me?” Josh wailed. His breathing was rough and rasped as his lungs wheezed.
“He has brought you to me.” The voice came from nowhere and everywhere before condensing to emerge from the heart of a shimmering flame. An opalescent bird as high as a house shimmered into being in the center of the small plateau. “You see, I have a voice that you can hear. Judgment must be understood. A favor traded.”
“A phoenix.” Vanessa stood and took a stumbling step forward.
Seth wrapped an arm around her waist, halting her. The yeti had had a reason to order them to remain at the edge of the plateau. This bird was not a physical entity as Seth had always understood a phoenix to be. He’d handled one of their feathers once, and it had resembled an eagle’s.
This bird was a spirit, not a corporeal being, even if it had a vague resemblance to a heron with a round body, long neck and skinny legs. Magic pulsed from it in a way that eclipsed the yeti’s magical potential.
Getting too close to it might destroy them in some way. So Seth held Vanessa, restraining her impulsive fascination, and watched Josh. What happened to the barrier wizard would be their warning of the power the phoenix wielded.
The phoenix’s mother of pearl coloring swirled. The white in it intensified. White-hot was the hottest flame in fire magic. It stood over the fallen wizard, its long neck inclining its head forward in the manner in which a heron stalked a fish. “Joshua Brosky, you bargained to possess a yeti. You are responsible for my friend’s captivity. You tortured him.”
Vanessa ceased straining toward the phoenix and recoiled into Seth’s hold. She shivered against him. “He killed Andrew,” she repeated her earlier statement, obviously traumatized.
“I’m sorry, Vanessa.” He’d wanted to spare her exposure to violence and death, and so, he’d left her behind. But in doing so, she’d ended up in the heart of the tragedy. He held her tight as he concentrated on this new danger: the phoenix. How did it know Josh’s name? For what purpose had the yeti brought Vanessa and him to the phoenix? Josh was to be judged, but they…why were they here? The phoenix had mentioned a trade in favors.
Fire Fall (Old School Book 4) Page 12