Frost. They would tear him apart. I cried out, sobbing.
My train of thought cut short when my face hit the ground, tackled from behind.
Mac and Alex pulled at me . . . and they were zombies. Flesh hung from their faces. Alex had an eyeball hanging from its socket, and Mac was missing an arm. Still they forced me down, using my shock against me. How had this happened? How had they been changed so fast? Were they taken down while I was fighting that damned elemental? What would I do without both of them?
My world threatened to collapse on me, and I let the rage take me. I had nothing left to lose as the black magic rolled inside, ready to decimate every last zombie in the canyon.
“Only the zombies,” I forced my thin connection to spirit through the darkness to bind it to my command.
The magic in my blood fought me, and I bound it tighter, pulling hard through the crack in my bracelet. My bones ached, my heart felt as though it would shatter, my vision wavered on the edge of passing out.
“All the zombies,” I whispered, a hitch in my throat as I stared at Mac and Alex.
They let me up and drew back from me as I lifted my hands. The magic swirled around them, then shot outward, spreading across the swath of living dead.
Not only those in the box canyon with us, but those attacking the caravan. I closed my eyes and saw it in my mind’s eye. Saw the dead go down in a sparkling flash of black and pink.
I opened my eyes. Mac and Alex were still there and I sobbed. “I don’t want to do this.” But . . . I had to. Blades drawn, I knew this would be a thousand times worse than killing Macey. I would never escape what I was about to do, ending the two men I loved. But I couldn’t let them roam the earth killing children, killing anyone. That’s not what they would’ve wanted.
I closed in on Mac first, ready to take his head when a huge orange tiger leapt over his shoulder and tackled me right in the chest. Her huge paws pinned my shoulders down and I blinked up at her.
Her mouth was right in front of my face, a growl rolling from her.
“Oka?” I asked.
She swallowed and looked down at me. “You back among the land of the living now?” she asked, but she didn’t let me up, the weight of her big paws holding me down easily. But I trusted her and didn’t fight her hold.
“What?” I blinked and looked around. Mac and Alex drew closer but were notably keeping their distance. They weren’t zombies. At all. Their skin was intact. Alex’s eyeball was neatly in place, and so was Mac’s arm.
“You’re not zombies?” What had I been seeing?
My mother’s laughter floated through me. Almost. I almost had them.
“Sorry?” Mac said.
“No, I just . . .” I sat up and felt the need to rub my eyes to make sure what I was seeing was real. The elemental, the fight, how much of it had been in my mind, and how much of it had bled into reality?
“You can let me up,” I said.
Oka backed off . . . some. She took her paws off but didn’t move from between me and the men. I didn’t protest. It kept me grounded, helped me understand what exactly was real. I turned my eyes away from Alex and Mac and took in the scene.
All the zombies were down. Every last one of them, their heads had been crushed like grapes, complete with green-gray ooze spilling out. If it didn’t make me so happy, I would’ve vomited at the sight and smell.
Check that. I gagged and turned to the side, dry heaving until the urge passed, my belly sore from the efforts.
I thought of the caravan, and an image flickered. Richard rounding people up, Crimson helping. The kids with Chris. Frost and the others were alive. I could almost feel them as if they were bound to me like Oka and Mac. They were fine. I’d done it. I’d wrangled the magic and saved everyone. Sure, I’d lost touch with reality, but it was a small price to pay for the lives I’d saved. Right?
“What do you want to do, Pam?” Alex said, approaching with less caution than he had before. He’d pulled on some clothes, though he was still covered with bits of flesh that were not his own.
There was only one person who would answer for this.
“Roe,” I said. “We need him still. And he’s going to answer for this.”
Oka leapt off me, her lips pulling back over her massive gleaming teeth. She took off running, I assume in the direction Roe went.
“I do love a chase. Alex, stay with her,” Mac said as he blew me a kiss, shifted and took off after my cat, leaving Alex and me alone.
What had he seen? What had I looked like with the death magic pouring out of me, crushing zombies like a handful of berries? Was he afraid of me now?
I wrapped my arms around my middle. I was afraid of me, there was no way he wasn’t.
Alex reached out a hand to me, and I pulled away from him, cringing.
“Pam. I’m not afraid of you. That will never happen,” he said with a shrug.
“But what did I do?” I still felt the death magic coursing through my veins, ready to take its next victim. It had taken zombies this time, but it wanted more, and it had tricked me, showing me Alex and Mac in a way that would make me attack them.
Would the time come when I let it have exactly what it wanted? Somehow, I knew my magic anticipated exactly that, and the thought horrified me. Whose life would I let it claim next? Roe’s? Stefan’s? Jasmine’s? What happened when it wasn’t an enemy? A justifiable loss?
As their names rolled around in my head, a flash of vengeance snapped through me. It would be good to rid the world of those who’d caused us pain, wouldn’t it? Villains, all of them. But then, what was I? Nothing but a wielder of death magic. Wasn’t I a villain in my own right?
Wasn’t I as bad as those I hated? Killing and wanting to kill.
The elemental was right. I was disgusting, filthy. “You shouldn’t touch me,” I said quietly as I wrapped my arms around myself, drawing my cloak around, wishing I could hide inside it forever.
Alex crouched down in front of me. “Pamela. You are not a monster. You saved us all.”
I didn’t look at him as I thought about how it felt to kill that man from Stefan’s army, and the zombies. How good it had felt to have his heart stop beating while my magic pulled at him.
“Alex . . . it felt . . .” Nope. I couldn’t say it out loud. I wouldn’t admit it to one of my oldest friends. Even if he said he wouldn’t turn his back on me, he didn’t know what I was, what I was becoming.
“It doesn’t matter how it felt. War is war. A victory often means death on the other side. Does that make the winner evil if he relishes the fact that he didn’t die that day? That someone else took his place?”
“War is different,” I said, avoiding his gaze.
But he grabbed my chin and forced me to look at him. His hand was hot on my face and I wanted badly to keep my eyes down, look at his feet, my knees, anything but his golden eyes and the comfort I knew would be in them.
“Look at me,” he said, and there it was, that Alpha he’d become.
I looked up at him if for no other reason than the fact that I was proud of him for finding his Alpha.
“How is it different from right now?” he asked when I finally met his gaze. “We are at war with the world. With anything that would try to take our lives. Hunger, beasts that roam, Stefan and his gang, the list goes on for you, Pam. Seems your life is war. And, after all, you’re the hero of your own story. Not the monster. Even if you’re covered in some pretty foul shit.”
He gave me a lopsided grin and picked off a piece of something from my hair, his nose crinkling at the smell. I couldn’t help but give him my own half smile, though it was an effort. I wanted to believe him. “You really think that, don’t you?”
“Yuppy doody.” He winked.
I wanted him to be right, but the doubts were there. Because I knew the truth.
I let out a breath and offered him my hand. He hauled me to my feet, and my legs were definitely wobblier than I expected. I thought Alex would reach out,
take me in his arms, hold me, something, until I was a little more stable, but he didn’t. He watched me for sure, made sure I didn’t go down, but he kept a companionable distance. Had he been lying? Was he truly afraid of me?
“You know, Mac isn’t half bad. He’s a good match for you,” he said as he looked around, checking the zombies with the toe of his foot.
“What?” I asked, shock catching me off guard and making me wobble even more.
“I talked to him. You’re lucky. Or maybe he’s the lucky one. I haven’t decided yet. But it’s a good fit.”
There was no time for me to ask him just what they’d talked about on their hunt for food.
Because Roe tumbled through the crevice in the wall, Oka and Mac behind him.
Roe struggled to his feet in front of me, and my magic roared to life, demanding blood. His blood. He’d been responsible for all of it. He’d lied, and that was the least of his crimes. I reached out and put a hand on Alex, and the magic subsided to a manageable level.
Your wolf and bear will not always be with you, Pamela. Then you must face me and your power. There will be a reckoning.
“Not today,” I muttered.
“What do you want to do with him?” Mac asked as he drove Roe forward.
A plan formed, quickly, and I let go of Alex.
“Let’s get him out of here, I can’t stand the stink. Then tie him up,” I said. Mac shifted to two legs and snagged one of our bags out from under a bloated wolf carcass. They went ahead of me.
“I’ll catch up in a minute,” I said. Oka shot me a look and I gave her a nod. “It’s okay. I just need to prep.”
She left with the three men, reluctance showing in every line of her body. I backed up a few steps, alone in the canyon. I closed my eyes and clenched my fists as I once more let the magic come to the surface. I needed strength for what was coming, and Alex was right in one way. This was war. This was a battle.
“Take the ogre’s magic for your own, but don’t kill him.” I opened myself to spirit and threaded it through the black mist. It writhed as it condensed.
Bitch.
“Right back at you,” I said. Every muscle in me wanted me to lie down, to just close my eyes and sleep for days, but we weren’t done here, not yet.
I made my feet take the steps toward the crevice in the wall, through the dark space and into the night on the other side. Night . . . it felt as though days should have passed, not just a few hours.
On the other side of the crevice, Alex and Mac had Roe against the rock wall on his ass.
I went straight to him and held out one hand, palm down, fingers pointed at him. The black mist poured out, sparkling with pink threads. Roe’s eyes bugged out. He writhed on the ground, but they’d tied him up well.
“No. Don’t do this. I can still help you,” Roe said.
“You’re a fool if you think I’m going to kill you,” I said as the mist wrapped itself around him, mimicking the ropes. “No. I’m not letting you off that easily, Roe.”
My magic caressed him, and he let out a low groan that I really did not like. “Just like that. Little harder.” He moaned the words.
“Just his magic.” I fought my own magic to stop it from . . . doing whatever the hell it was doing.
His eyes swung to mine. “No! You can’t have that. I’ll—”
“You’ll what, Roe? What exactly will you do? I believe I’ve already shown you what a mistake it is to cross me. You’re a slow learner.”
He slammed his mouth shut, and through the dark mist, his eyes bugged out as my magic squeezed every ounce it wanted from him before drawing back to me. With all his magic, I controlled him now, not that mark on his arm. This was different than the binding, more complete. And it wouldn’t wear off as he’d said my spell had. This was done until he found a way to break it, or I let him go.
“You’re not killing him?” Alex asked, more than a bit perplexed.
“No. He’s owned by someone. Someone who seems to be hunting us.” I drew myself up for what I was about to do. “I still have a lot of questions. And he’s going to lead us to the answers.”
18
With Roe’s magic and binding to me fully in hand, I led the way back to the river. I wanted to get clean before anything else. The smell of the dead things was heavy, cloying and fucking everywhere. We walked through the woods, and they held a certain beauty to them, if you discounted the dead. I could barely walk without crunching some part of them beneath my feet.
Oka rode on my shoulder so she didn’t have to pick through them.
“Princess,” Mac said.
She took a mock swat at him. “Jealousy is not becoming on you.”
The woods were thick and green, screaming late summer with every breeze that rustled their leaves. But it brought no peace to me and what I was going to do next. The silence of the woods followed us everywhere. The constant reminder of what was at stake.
Eventually I couldn’t smell the zombies’ gore anymore, but I was partly convinced I’d just gone nose blind to it.
We came to a small waterfall that cascaded into the ravine where the caravan must’ve been. I peered over but didn’t see them. We’d walked a ways from them by that point. I did see that lush greenery, though, and a crystal-clear pool at the bottom. It was idyllic in a world of nightmares.
Still, no fish swam in the water, no deer or animals came for a drink. There was nothing. I put a hand to my belly, feeling like I had only a few months before. On the edge of nothing, ribs under every touch, so hungry, I wasn’t even aware of it unless I thought about it.
I eyed Roe. I’d get my answers from him, one way or another.
I knelt at the bank of the river and did my best to clean up while I thought about how I was going to get those answers. The water was tempting; I hadn’t been really clean in months, and this water was free of shark fish or anything else that might eat me or sung like siren. But the risk of being sucked over the edge of the waterfall was a bit of a buzz kill, so I settled for doing what I could at the river’s edge, turning the water a strange green with zombie guts and blood. I moved upstream a bit to get the second layer off. Oka was there, getting a drink.
“Oh, thanks for muddying my water,” she said as I scrubbed my arms and face.
I splashed her and she arched her back at me. “Any time,” I said as she stalked away to a safe distance and went to work furiously cleaning herself.
I took my time cleaning, guarding my thoughts against Oka and Mac. I couldn’t let them talk me out of what I was about to do. Frankly, I wasn’t sure I’d go through with it. Would the old Pamela be willing to go so far for answers? The old Pamela never had to. The world before was different. Easier.
I almost laughed at myself as I peeled green guts from under my fingernails and rinsed my hands in the water for the umpteenth time. After all the abuse I’d lived through in the world before, the war against the demons I’d survived, I never would’ve thought the world was easy then. And maybe it wasn’t. Just different. I always had people around me who knew what they were doing. People who guided me.
I had Oka, Mac, and now Alex. But they all looked to me for what to do, not the other way around. And who did I have to look to? The darkness?
I shook my head. No. I was looking to do the right thing. And in order to know what that was, I needed answers from Roe. I would do what it took to get them. It’s what my mentor did, what she’d taught me to do. At least, that’s what I told myself as I stood and shook out my hands, water droplets flicking through the air.
I walked back to the group, and as casually as I could, sat down. The night would be over in a few hours, and I could see that Roe was half asleep. Alex yawned. Mac’s eyes were on me. He knew something was up.
“Mac, would you get a fire going please?” I kept my tone light. “And Alex, would you find some sharp sticks?” My eyes went to Roe so he had a chance to see where I was going with this. “Ones that are good for skewering.”
Alex frowned as he stood. He didn’t get it yet, but he would. “Sure.” He headed off to do as I asked. He didn’t point out the fact that we had no meat to roast. Nor were there any animals around to catch to fill that need. He trusted me, and whatever I was doing. Good thing one of us did.
Roe, on the other hand, swallowed hard, but held his chin high. Maybe he didn’t think I had the stomach for what he likely suspected. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. We were both about to find out.
I had to be stronger than he thought I was. Stronger, even, than I thought I was.
The boys were quick to work, quicker than I wanted them to be, and before I knew it, the fire crackled nicely, casting a warm orange glow across our campsite. Alex was back with a half dozen sticks in no time. He even built a nice little turner to hang meat over the fire. There was nothing left to do but get started.
With Roe being tied up, he wasn’t much of a challenge for me, but binding him that way didn’t force the answers I needed from his mouth. I had to press him. I took out one of my knives as I closed in on him and pressed it lazily against his bare thigh. He knew what I could do. No need to push too hard to fast.
“So Roe, you feel like chatting or shall we see what your pain threshold is?”
“Chat away.” He smirked up at me.
“Who is the one who branded you?”
I half expected him to answer me. He’d seen what I could do with my knives. He’d felt their steel against his ball sack. I didn’t want him to be that dumb, I didn’t want to do this.
His laughter told me he was. Dumber than a damned doornail in a rusted doorway. But his idiocy didn’t stop there. He actually hawked up a loogie and spat in my face.
The saliva and snot slid down the side of my cheek and I didn’t move, didn’t so much as flinch as a spike of anger shot through me. If I slid to the left, my blade would be over the main artery. It would be so easy to watch him bleed out, to watch him die slowly, as the blood pooled below him.
But . . . instead, I took my knife tight in my hand and sliced into the meat of his thigh, cutting off a good chunk. The blade cut deep into his muscle, and made a nice, clean slice, deliberately missing anything vital and taking only meat. I made myself smile as the blood poured from the huge wound I’d made, even while I wanted to recoil.
Caravan Witch (Questing Witch Book 2) Page 19