I felt Kett falter behind me, and I slowed to hook my arm around his waist and pull him with me.
He snarled but didn’t pull away.
I didn’t look at him. I was afraid I’d see red eyes and full-on fangs. I was hyperaware that my neck was very exposed on my left side. I wrapped my right hand around my knife and pushed myself to run faster.
I wasn’t too sure that following the bear’s path and dragging Kett with me was the right thing to do, but I still hadn’t given up hope of finding Kandy. Bears didn’t eat humans, right? Right?
Kett stumbled, practically yanking my shoulder out of its socket. I clutched him tighter. Once again, though only a couple of inches taller than me, he was suddenly very heavy.
I heard the river just as Kett wrenched himself away from me and dashed ahead. I followed, my shoulder screaming in relief at losing his weight.
I sprinted out of the forest to find myself on the smooth-rocked edge of a large river. It was wide and full, but I had no idea if it was the Squamish or some other. A logging road, I guessed, ran parallel along the far side of the rushing, frothing water.
I couldn’t see Kett anywhere, though I was fairly certain I’d just been right behind him. Nor could I see Kandy or evidence of the bear. I faltered, unsure whether to turn left, right, or attempt to swim across the river to the road. Because all roads led somewhere, right?
Something shrieked behind me. It didn’t sound human, but I wasn’t sure if animals screamed like that.
Involuntarily — or perhaps instinctively — I darted forward at the sound and stopped at the edge of the river with the water at my back. The water-worn stones were wet and well polished underneath my feet. It would be easy to lose my footing if I panicked, even in my thick-tread hiking boots. So I willed my heartbeat and breathing to slow as I glanced around.
Trees and more trees spread off from either side of the river and road. The river twisted, seemingly endlessly, in either direction. Multiple mountains loomed all around me.
I still had no idea where I was, but now I’d lost both my companions.
The river had to be crazy cold, seeing as how it was fed by the glaciers of those mountains, now more intimidating than beautiful. Their peaks were still snow capped even this late in July, though the summer had been warm and unusually dry in Vancouver so far. So, river, cold. Deadly cold, if one was stupid enough about it.
Focus. Focus.
I reached out with my dowser senses and looked for a glimmer of Kandy’s or Kett’s magic. I closed my eyes and slowly pivoted, though the movement was more psychologically than physically necessary.
There … I felt Kandy not too far away, but on the other side of the river. I kept turning. Had Kett also crossed the water, thinking I’d follow? I couldn’t feel him —
Oh, shit.
I opened my eyes.
A black bear, a coyote, and a red fox sat at the edge of the forest about fifteen feet away. The woods at their backs, the river at mine. Something shrieked at me from the trees. No, cawed — really, really loudly. A crow. A huge crow. A raven.
The raven shrieked a second time. It was perched on the lowest branch of a cedar tree just behind the other three animals.
What the fuck? Pardon my language, but please what the fuck?
“A bear, a coyote, and a fox walked into a bar …”
The animals just watched me, but I was absolutely certain that watching might turn into rending in the blink of my eye. They all tasted of the same huckleberry and wild onion magic that had wafted off the grizzly bear. Had some sorcerer spelled all the freaking animals in the forest? Well, all the animals with teeth and claws? Of course, I hadn’t seen any beavers yet. They usually stuck to rivers … like the one at my back.
I settled my hand on my knife and took a step back. The river boiled up over the top of my boots, eagerly wetting my socks and calves. It had to have been a sorcerer, not a witch, of course. Witches were one with nature and would never endanger an animal. Well, most witches …
The raven screamed again. I imagined it would go for my eyes. I liked my eyes. They were perfectly indigo blue, and very helpful for seeing and such.
“You guys seem to be missing your buddy. You know, nine feet tall, brown hair, a little on the heavy side?” The animals shifted but thankfully didn’t talk back. The sarcasm was more for my benefit than theirs, anyway. Confidence building, you know. Seeing as I was about to do something crazy.
I took another step back, up to my knees in the river now and barely able to keep upright in its strong pull. I couldn’t fight all of them if they attacked at the same time. Instant healing was probably only good if I wasn’t torn to bits. Not that I wanted to test it.
The black bear — smaller than the grizzly by like 50 percent, but able to climb trees — reared up on its hind legs. Why I knew or thought of the tree-climbing thing, I didn’t know. The raven could just fly over the river, of course. And maybe the bear could swim across?
It didn’t matter.
The coyote and fox gathered themselves and leaped for my throat. Or so I imagined.
They missed as I jumped backward into the icy river and let it take me.
The water rolled over my head and sucked me down. I hit something with my leg, but my scream of pain was swallowed by the water. Then something else slammed into my shoulder … rocks, boulders in the river. I surfaced — though through no effort of my own — and managed to get a lungful of air after expelling a gallon of water.
I went under again, pulled effortlessly by the vicious current.
I lost all sense of up, down, sky, or water.
I slammed into more rocks, wrapping my arms around my head in a fleeting hope of protecting what little brains I had.
Then I prayed that drowning was a better death than being mauled and torn to pieces.
CHAPTER THREE
After I didn’t immediately drown — though once again, this wasn’t due to any brilliant strategy on my part — I slowly figured out how to maneuver myself closer to the opposite side of the river.
I hauled my soaking-wet ass to shore. The sun had come out, but I was seriously freezing.
I was dignified enough to not simply flop face down on the rocky bank. Instead, I chose to perch on a boulder. Okay, I obscenely wrapped myself around it in an attempt to steal every iota of heat it had accumulated during the short amount of time the sun had been out today.
My clothing had survived the river fairly well. The left pocket of my Gore-Tex was ripped and the hood was missing. However, seeing as I still had two working feet, legs, and hands, as well as my head intact, I figured that potentially drowning had been a successful risk. Yes, I liked to justify my crazy decisions after the fact. Don’t we all?
Unfortunately, now I really had no idea where Kandy and Kett were. I wasn’t sure how far I’d been dragged downriver, but I couldn’t sense either of them. I also couldn’t sense any huckleberry-and-onion magic either, so I guessed that the spelled or ensnared animals weren’t near. I wasn’t fully certain an animal’s behavior could be controlled with a spell or that their minds could be ensnared, but I also wasn’t completely versed on all the powers of all the Adept.
Yeah, big surprise, huh?
Sorcerers, I knew, worked from books and with magical objects. The magic on Kandy and the animals didn’t appear to come from an obvious object or weapon, but that didn’t rule out a book of power. Sorcerer books weren’t the same as the spellbooks Gran had collected from her ancestors or created herself. Witches were directly connected to the magic within the earth. Sorcerers needed a conduit. So, a sorcerer was stalking these woods? Even though everything I knew about sorcerers indicated they weren’t much for hiking or roughing it in general? Plus, what would be the end game?
I also wasn’t sure what river I’d just pulled myself out of. I’d gotten seriously turned around in the forest. Kett had said to head southeast, but that was entirely unhelpful without a
compass. If I even knew how to work a compass. Which I didn’t.
Oh! Maybe there was an app for that … if my phone wasn’t completely wet fried. Damn. I wasn’t even six months into my three-year contract. And, of course, if I could have downloaded an app, I could probably just call someone instead. Sometimes my own stupidity seemed almost willfully ignorant. Like when Sienna had been — No. I wasn’t dwelling there anymore.
I stood up — stiff in my wet, tight jeans — and stared at the river. I’d seen a logging road from my vantage point on the other bank. It might still be nearby if I headed back into the woods. But if this was the Squamish River — I was hoping the presence of the logging road verified that — then did it run toward or away from Squamish, Howe Sound, and therefore Vancouver? Or did it run through this massive valley somewhere into … I didn’t know, Haida Gwaii?
I had no idea. I put off the course direction decision by heading straight back into the forest to find the logging road. Maybe I’d be lucky and find a marker or a sign telling me which way to turn.
I really, really just wanted to be warm and dry and making cupcakes. I’d been working on a cherry buttercream icing since getting my hands on fresh, fairly local — from the Okanagan — cherries this summer. There had been a late frost that had delayed the cherry season. I was waffling over possible cake bases, either my favorite dark chocolate cake or a fluffier white. Maybe I should do both and let the customers decide. I was also toying with the names Kiss in a Cup or Harmony in a Cup. Both concepts were wishful thinking on my part. However, to my dismay, so far I couldn’t get the frosting thick enough to spread without the sweetness of the icing sugar overwhelming the cherry flavor. Kandy didn’t mind eating the experiments, though.
I stumbled out of the woods onto a hard-packed dirt logging road. I’d missed the step down, hence the stumble. The road looked well used, and not badly overgrown. Two cars could pass easily if they were careful, but actual logging trucks would need to back up.
So … right or left? I peered up at the mountains surrounding me, but they weren’t helpful. I stretched out my dowser senses to feel for Kandy and Kett but couldn’t find them, not even with my hands wrapped around my knife and necklace.
I dug into my unripped jacket pocket and pulled out the few jade rocks I’d collected from the river earlier. Could I somehow make a compass or some sort of tracking device to get me back to the car? I hadn’t deliberately tried to make a magical object since the night I’d used the ring off my necklace and a hank of hair to track Sienna down. And most days — honestly — I regretted doing that more than just about anything I’d ever done.
That night, I found Rusty’s half-eaten body, then had discovered that Sienna had done the eating. Most likely consuming the flesh of her boyfriend, a latent necromancer, to raise the corpse of my would-be boyfriend, Hudson. Hudson, a werewolf, had been in town with a few of his pack members to investigate the murder of another werewolf, who — it turned out — Sienna had also killed, somehow using the magic contained in my trinkets to anchor her own.
Yeah, it sounded just as insane in my head as it had been in front of my blind eyes.
I hadn’t actually known before that night that I was capable of more than simply sensing magical objects or things — that I had the exceedingly rare ability to create them as well. It wasn’t remotely an even trade, finding out that I’m possibly an alchemist, but losing my sister to her blood-magic addiction, and … well, her need to be more. To be something special.
Ironically, she got her wish — along with a postmortem tribunal. She, along with her boyfriend Rusty, had been found guilty of three murders, four attempted murders, and the practicing of blood magic. None of the so-called attempts — namely Kandy, Kett, Desmond, or me — had wanted to be included in the charges. Wounded pride on the part of the other three made them underplay the severity of the evening. Perhaps they were embarrassed that a half-witch managed to lure, bind, and then practice blood magic on them. Or maybe it was the humiliation of being rescued by me, someone who was also way beneath them in the power department. And me … well, I just couldn’t believe that Sienna would actually try to kill me. Yes, I had justified to myself getting stabbed — twice — by my own sister.
The witches Convocation — headed, to my surprise, by Gran — had been unanimous. Scarlett, my mother — and this was even more surprising — had demanded to fill a vacant seat on the Convocation before the trial. A seat that had been available and offered to her every year for the previous ten years.
So, yeah. Sienna’s actions had been extreme and damaging enough that my free spirit of a mother had tied herself to the Convocation for life, to make sure … what? That practitioners of blood magic were further ostracized? Sienna was already dead. There was no punishment beyond that, was there?
I shook off the dark thoughts and bounced the stones in my palm. I was starting to shiver again. I needed to keep moving. I couldn’t create a magical compass or tracking device, because I didn’t have anything to tie the stones to Kandy’s or Kett’s magic. I had nothing that would enable a stone to detect direction — specifically, southeast.
I turned and took a few steps left, against the flow of the river behind me. Then I stopped and turned in the other direction.
It was a freaking road. It led somewhere in either bloody direction.
So I walked, keeping all my senses on alert for magic … and bears, of course.
∞
Turns out I was being wary of the wrong predator.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d walked. It felt like hours, but the vampire would have called it minutes. My clothes weren’t dry yet, so I was still freezing every time the breeze picked up.
I still couldn’t feel any trace of Kandy or Kett. No other magical glimmers, either. I was utterly useless. And utterly lost. Thank God my chocolate bar hadn’t completely washed away. Yes, I checked. I’m aware that reflects badly on me.
Off to the right — so back toward the river, though the road had curved away from the bank at this point so I could only hear the water rather than see it — I felt a hint of the huckleberry and wild onion magic. I darted into the trees to the left, put a few feet and a few huge cedars between me and this new gathering of magic, and paused.
I waited to see if this grouping — I could feel four distinct magic users now — was tracking me, or if I’d just inadvertently happened upon them. They didn’t seem to be moving closer … maybe they were along the river’s edge? I couldn’t tell. This entire reaching out with my dowser senses and tracking magic was still way new to me.
I also couldn’t tell if I was sensing the spelled animals from before — either the grizzly or the black bear, the coyote, the fox, or the raven — or if maybe I was sensing the spellcasters, or witches, or sorcerers themselves.
I wasn’t a complete idiot. I mean, it was pretty obvious even to me that Kandy and then Kett had been hit and incapacitated by some spell. Even though werewolves and vampires were supposed to be quite resistant to magic. I remembered Kett and Desmond slowly breaking free of Sienna’s blood-magic-fueled binding spell. And bindings had been her specialty, even without the blood magic power boost.
Okay, keeping with the I’m-not-a-complete-idiot train of thought … I should keep off the road. If the magical signatures I could feel by the river — moving away from me now — were human and looking for me, they would eventually cut over to the road. If they were animals? Well, then I was probably screwed. But I couldn’t completely leave the road or river because it was the only means I had to orientate myself at the moment.
I turned to scan the forest behind me. Perhaps there was another path?
Oh, yes. That looked like one. It was narrow, but obviously a commonly used path for forest animals and such.
Obviously, because there was currently a gigantic mountain lion stalking along it toward me.
The mountain lion — it was too large to simply be called a cougar — paused and lowered
its head to glare at me.
Yes, glare. It was easily nine feet nose to tail and over two-hundred plus pounds. Its front paws were the size of side plates, claws retracted. Its broad shoulders, tawny fur, and green eyes would have been gorgeous if the cat hadn’t been about to eat me.
Wait a second … green eyes?
The mountain lion pulled its lips back in a low-pitched hiss that ended in a rumbling growl as it started stalking toward me again.
I would have, should have, been pissing my pants, except I knew this beast. It wasn’t a friend, but it wasn’t a foe … at least, I didn’t think so. It did seem really pissed. Not that I’d ever seen a pissed mountain lion before.
Indeed, as the beast stalked closer — taking its time and underlying its movement with a growl meant to freeze me in my tracks — I felt the shapeshifter magic gather and roll over me. This magic was spicy, dark hot chocolate with a thick creamy base. It gathered all sparkly green around the huge cat. Then in the moment I was forced to look away because it was too bright, the mountain lion transformed into Desmond Charles Llewelyn, Lord and Alpha of the West Coast North American Pack. I’d nicknamed him McGrowly — in my head — because he scared me and I needed to make him at least slightly ridiculous somehow.
Desmond was absolutely gorgeous and dangerous in cat form. But as a man, he was hard — almost overly muscled — and exceedingly difficult.
And completely naked.
Okay, Jesus. Of course he was naked.
And now I was staring.
He growled — his vocal cords still more cat than human — and padded the last few feet toward me. His broad toes curled in the dirt and leaves underfoot as if he still had claws. The hair on his head was darker than his tawny cat fur, but a similarly colored dusting of hair covered his chest, down his insane abs, and through to his … Well. I seriously hoped he was a shower, not a grower, because … err … for his girlfriend’s sake of course … not me —
“What have you done with my wolf?” he asked with a snarl as he crossed the last couple of steps between us. “It felt like you were dying, dowser. And now I find you here, cowering in the woods. Half-soaked and without your protector, who I can’t smell anywhere nearby.”
Trinkets, Treasures, and Other Bloody Magic (Dowser Series) Page 3