Oka, still carrying Frost, jogged back and sidled up next to me. “I feel the struggle inside you. Be mindful, Pamela.”
“I know,” I snapped. I didn’t need to be lectured. What I needed was to get these damned bracelets off so I didn’t have to be tempted by the death magic. So that I was no longer contained like I was once. How had I forgotten that? Or had I just chosen to block it along with so much else?
“The magic will feel your turmoil and exploit it,” Oka said.
“Oka, I know. I don’t need you treating me like some kind of child too.” The words were loud, and harsh, and the anger that rushed through me flushed my cheeks. Frost leaned over and pet her between her ears. “It’s okay, you can be my kitty.”
But it did nothing to cut the tension between us.
Oka growled at me, as the darkness rose to the surface again in me. Probably feeling it in herself. “That’s exactly what I mean. The darkness is not you.”
I shook my head, seeing only the troll of my past, the abuse that had been heaped on me, and hating that it was happening to Marley.
“Didn’t you hear what Marley said? That bitch of a troll is bullying her. Basically abusing her. You don’t think that’s worth getting upset over?”
“Jasmine is not a troll,” Oka said.
“Semantics,” I shot back.
“I don’t think it’s worth losing yourself to the darkness, no.” She looked at me, and Frost held her fur in clumps between his fists, smiling up at me proudly, oblivious to the tension between me and my familiar.
I smiled weakly at him and turned my attention back to our rough path ahead.
“Just . . . take him away from me,” I said. “I don’t want to hurt him.”
Oka’s ears flattened. “You would never.”
“I don’t know that, not anymore.” The fight whooshed out of me. “Please, just let me be. For a little while.”
Reluctantly she did as I asked, and I walked at the back of the caravan for the rest of the day. Mac tried to come back to me and I sent him away.
The day dragged and my thoughts raced. The darkness in me was quiet. Which worried me.
The sunlight waned, and I snapped out of a walking daze. Richard would want to stop soon, and we’d have at least five more days like this. Five days.
I looked at Oka, and she watched me expectantly. Goddess knew we had enough threats around us to keep us occupied without me losing my soul to the magic in my blood.
Oka was there, her presence in my mind, a question rolling from her to me.
The death magic will swallow you whole. It will make you weak. You know that. You must keep fighting it, Pamela.
Her eyes stayed trained on me, pressuring me to agree with her about the darkness, about the war raging inside me.
The thing was, if I was being honest with myself, I didn’t. Even though I’d only used the death magic a little bit, I could feel it sinking into my soul, making my world darker, and making me stronger.
And I would never have to be that little girl trapped in a room she couldn’t escape again.
14
The caravan came to a halt and I stopped well back from the closest of the shifters. Mac looked back from a chat with Lynx and Crimson.
With a sigh, I started forward. “Any idea what today’s deadly problem on the menu is? Maybe gargoyles? How about a tiny dragon that spits acid and flings Shakespearean insults at us while she does it?” A few of the caravan members side-eyed me, but they did move out of my way.
Mac walked up behind me and put a hand on my back. “Now that’s just crazy talk. Everyone knows that dragons hate Shakespeare.”
His quip made me smile and helped drive some of the bitterness away.
We picked our way to the front, and left Frost with the Humvee, just in case things got ugly. When we got to the front, we found a huge, Grand Canyon-style ravine. The edges of it were raw, open wounds where the earth had been torn apart. Rocks sheared and trees were cut down the middle, the soil was still eroding dangerously in spots. The tinkle of rocks falling and sliding with us just looking at the ravine was enough to say it all.
This was a bad fucking idea.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Mac said.
Richard was right at the front and I made my way to his side. He glanced at me, then looked back to the ravine. “I think there’s a way down for the trucks over that way. See it? Looks like a little road, all the way down the inside wall, weaving back and forth.”
“I wouldn’t call it a road. And it doesn’t look like much options up the other side, though,” I pointed out.
“Might just be hard to see because of the distance?” Richard asked, a bit too much hope in his voice.
“Perhaps,” I said, an ache starting between my eyes. Bad, bad idea. “Richard, do you really want to venture down into that?”
“Look how green it is down there. There’s bound to be food, right?” The hope he had was damned near contagious. Already I knew there would be no swaying him.
“For the record, I think it’s too big a risk. There’s erosion everywhere, this canyon is too new. We should try and go around,” I said.
“Pamela, everything we do is a risk. Coming here was a risk.” Richard turned to Roe. “I find it very convenient you failed to mention this obstacle in your description of the path ahead.”
Roe shrugged. “Didn’t remember it was here.” I looked to Alex, who’d followed me to the front of the line, along with Crimson, and unfortunately Jasmine.
“I can send one of the birds ahead to scout. See how far the wall is. Or maybe just see how wide this ravine is. Maybe we can go around it, as Pamela suggested,” Crimson said.
“That will take time. We need food. Now. We push forward,” Richard said, more than a little keen on getting to the bottom of a would-be barrel, where he and the caravan would be nothing but fish to a predator like Stefan’s Breakers. Who I assumed were still behind us.
Then his words sunk in. “Now? You mean to go down there tonight? The light is already fading, Richard. That will make the journey down even more treacherous,” I said, suddenly questioning his reasoning skills. When was the last time he ate? Or was something else at work here?
Abruptly, he stepped toward me, getting right in my face, something he’d never done before. “Pamela. I am the leader of this caravan. We are going down tonight.”
The growl in his voice was not him at all. But if he thought a little growling would make me back off, he was about to get the shock of a lifetime.
I poked a finger into his chest, hard enough that he winced. “And if the entire damned caravan dies trying to get down there, Dick? What then? Whose job is it to try and fix that shit show? Me. My job. So don’t you fucking well tell me that just because you’re the leader of the caravan you are the only one making this decision.”
His mouth formed a thin line as he set his jaw against me. “We won’t rush it. We’ll go slow. We’ll be at the bottom in just a few hours.”
“You really are a dick.” I shook my head. “This is re-fucking-diculous.”
He ignored my comment and turned away from me.
With a slap on the hood to get the driver’s attention, he pointed at the path. “Take it slow, tight to the wall. Got it?”
From where I was, I could just see the driver’s hands on the wheel. And by the way they tightened, he or she wasn’t any happier about this plan than me.
The shifters wouldn’t have any trouble getting down, but driving a couple trucks down filled with people was just a bad fucking idea.
“Everyone, out of the trucks!” I yelled.
Chris snapped the door open of the Humvee so hard it slammed into the side and bounced back at her. She squeaked and Richard caught the door. And then she stomped away, not even looking at him.
With some people you just couldn’t win.
I sighed and walked behind everyone once more, the Humvee in the lead, the other truck behind it. Maybe I could do something if th
ey started to slide. Maybe.
If I’d had my connection to the earth still I could save them. Hell, I might’ve been able to make a bridge to cross the big canyon. We’d already be on the other side by now.
My frustration built as we headed into the canyon. Once more, Mac and Oka kept their distance from me and my brewing anger.
There had been too many unnecessary risks lately as far as I was concerned and yet I’d been the cause of some of them. Jasmine. Roe. Stefan on our heels. A trip into the wilds with no food. And now this. It felt too familiar. Like we were being herded, pushed by each incident in a specific way. Again. But I didn’t have any evidence except a gut feeling at that point.
By some miracle, or maybe lady luck, we reached the bottom without any major incidents. The stars were out and the lights on the trucks were bright enough to see any dangers ahead as we descended the last twenty feet or so.
When I finally set foot on the canyon floor, I lifted my eyes. Even by the starlight, the canyon bottom took my breath away. An explosion of green, and closed flowers, trees of every kind and even a small river running through the center of the canyon, as if that little thing had carved out this huge ravine. There was a sweet smell on the air like honey, or flowers, I wasn’t sure which, and the air just felt . . . clean and welcoming against the skin of my face.
Paradise, this was surely it.
Without being asked, the caravan set up camp. There was nothing temporary in their movements. Stakes went into the ground for the few tents, and little shelters sprung up like weeds in the trees.
As if this was it, this was home.
The longer I stood there, the longer the silence of the place left me more than a little unsettled. Because beyond the chatter of the caravan, and the babble of the stream, there was still nothing. No birds singing, no bats, not even any archies taking to the sky. No bugs.
I was willing to bet that little stream was barren too. The trees were green, and looked robust, but something told me they wouldn’t have anything edible on them. It was a death sentence to stay here, as it was to stay anywhere, but I seemed to be the only one who sensed it.
It was late, and I knew it would be a short night, but I needed to find Richard. He had to know we couldn’t stay here. We had to get up the other side, just like we talked about. And the sooner the better.
I found him unrolling his sleeping bag just outside of Chris’s tent.
“Still in the doghouse?” I asked as I walked up.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be out of it, frankly.” He grunted.
“She can’t be mad at you forever.”
He shook his head. “What I want is to see that little girl.”
I changed the subject I’d so carelessly wandered into. “Look, some of the caravan is unpacking like they plan to stay here awhile. And while I’m glad they’re happy, we can’t stay here. There’s no food. You must see that, Richard. We need to move on at first light. The sooner we get to that wall, the sooner we’ll have food.”
“Pamela, this is a problem for the morning. Go get some rest.” And then he actually crawled into his sleeping bag and closed his eyes. I held both hands out to my sides.
“Seriously?”
“Go,” he grumbled, his voice already thick with sleep.
I shook my head. What had gotten into him? He never turned me away like that. Especially when he was the first one to freak out about food. Was he losing his mind to the hunger?
The rations we’d had shouldn’t have been enough to drive him crazy. I’d gone without food for days without losing it before the caravan found me. So what was Richard’s problem?
Something else, and another thing for me to deal with. Lucky day. Or night, as was the case.
I chewed the question over and over as I made my way to my own camp, following Oka’s and Mac’s threads as they hummed through me. Mac had a fire going, and Oka curled up next to it, warming her tiny body.
“What’s up? You look like you just drank a glass of sour milk,” Mac said.
“I wish. Richard doesn’t seem too concerned about staying here,” I answered.
“What? They can’t stay here; they’ll die. We have to keep going.”
I rubbed my hands over my face, wishing for a hot shower and a cup of tea heavy on the cream and sugar. Neither was going to happen any time soon. “I know. Maybe he just needs some sleep. Maybe he’ll be more rational in the morning.”
“Oka?” I asked softly, and she kept her back to me. Pretending to be asleep. “I’m sorry about earlier.”
Her ears twitched but she didn’t lift her head. Mac raised an eyebrow and I shook my head. I was exhausted, my side hurt and so did my heart.
I sat down on my bedroll next to Mac. The thing about hope was, if it was false, it was slippery as a bar of soap in a prison, and Dick seemed determined to keep bending over for it.
*_*_*
Mac held me tightly while we slept, his arm draped around my middle, and the other under my neck as a pillow, keeping the darkness back. But he couldn’t save me from my dreams and nightmares.
They started innocently enough, a reflection of my worries and angst.
Jasmine was being a bitch, as usual, but I didn’t know why. The dream just dropped me in the middle of a pile of shit. She had her hands on her hips, and her words were totally muffled, but they still somehow pissed me off. The darkness rose inside me, and this time, I let it, it didn’t even have to take control. The black ropes poured out of my fingertips and engulfed her, tightening until her eyes bugged and her face went slack as if she’d been hung.
And I laughed with glee while it claimed her life.
But the magic didn’t stop there. It moved on and took the shifters in my caravan. Then the humans. And when no one was left but me, the death mist, and the children, I begged it to stop.
“The price for your power must be paid,” the magic said. A woman’s voice. My mother.
One by one, it took the kids. Ruby, Chris’s infant. Lily. Frost was last. He looked at me with those familiar blue eyes. He had complete trust. “Pammy won’t hurt me.”
“No. But my magic will, and the price must be paid,” I said as if I wasn’t in control.
He stuck out his chin, defying me, challenging me to go against him. And I did. Oh, how I did. The thick ropes coiled around him like snakes and claimed him too until he stopped struggling. Tears streaked my face, but I laughed. Tears and laughter, pain and jubilation. Nothing but bodies everywhere, and I stood alone. No Mac. No Oka. Nothing but me and the magic.
The price was paid.
*_*_*
I woke with a start and sat up so fast that I flung Mac’s arms from me. The sun hadn’t even peeked above the horizon yet, but the way my heart was racing, there would be no more sleep.
“What’s wrong?” Mac asked, cracking a yawn and rubbing his chin. “It better be good for you to clock me like that.”
“Sorry,” I said absently. My shoulder smarted a bit. Must’ve caught him on my way up.
“Pamela, what is it?” he asked. Oka crawled into my lap, waiting for me to answer him. She knew. I was sure of it. Our argument yesterday was gone under my need for her comfort. And somewhere inside, Mac knew too, I could see it in his eyes.
“Just . . . a bad dream,” I said, looking at the night sky. It was so dark, but somehow still beautiful. All the stars sparkled, winking at me from the heavens.
“It’s more than that, Pamela, and you know it,” Oka prompted, and I tensed. I really didn’t want to talk about it, even if I knew I should.
“What was the dream?” Mac asked, his hand finding mine.
I swallowed a few times before I found it in me to speak. While everyone slept around us, I still didn’t need them knowing what I’d dreamed. I kept my voice low. “The magic killed everyone. Richard. The shifters. Marley. Frost, Ruby, and Lily. It said that was the price for power.”
My heart beat with heavy, pain-filled thumps and my chest tightened.
I wanted to laugh at her reaction, I really did. But there was nothing funny about this. “I won’t let it kill everyone. Anyone.”
She put her paws on my chest so her nose was right in front of mine. “You didn’t let it do anything in your dream, did you? It overpowered you.”
“It stopped listening to me, yes,” I admitted reluctantly.
Mac crouched in front of me, so both my familiars were right there, eyes on me. “We won’t let that happen, will we, Oka? We’ll help you find a way to control it.” He put his hands on my thighs. I wanted to believe him, I really did.
“How, Mac? How exactly are we going to do that? The witches that are left, they all want to fucking kill me. And the elementals, well,” I held up my bracelets and jangled them. “They don’t care much for me either.”
“They’re all afraid of you,” Mac said. “You’re a threat.”
“I’m a hot mess is what I am. I’m . . . useless.” Goddess, that slipped out before I could catch it, and the tears threatened. “To everyone, even the humans if I can’t get this under control.” I put my head in my hands and tried to create a shelter against the world.
“You will. I know you will. You’re nothing if not a survivor,” Mac said, more confident than I felt.
I mumbled into my hands, knowing they could hear me still. “And if I become the darkness to survive? What am I then?”
Mac didn’t answer me. He felt the truth in my questions as much as I did. “We will still be with you,” he finally said. “And we will stand with you through the storms that come.”
I lifted my eyes to Oka and wondered if that was true for her too. She head butted my hands, and rubbed her furry cheek against my smooth one. “We will still be with you,” she repeated. “Familiars don’t abandon their charges because they are on one side or the other. Dark or light, we are bound to you. We will stand by you until we no longer draw breath, Pamela.”
Caravan Witch (Questing Witch Book 2) Page 16