Priceless

by Shannon Mayer

  My fingers tightened on the collar as the werewolf spun and scrambled back down the stairs and out the open front door, dragging me with him. The porch stairs bounced me hard as he ran full tilt out into the closest field.

  Wheat stalks waved above my head as Alex ran, my body flopping limply, hitting every protruding rock that crossed our path. Damn, I was going to be bruised tomorrow. Of course, that was assuming whoever was trying to kill me would give up and go away.

  A flash of blue ripped over our heads. Apparently they, whoever they were, were not going away just yet.

  “Alex stop,” I said. We couldn’t just keep running. He skidded to a panting, shaking stop, his sides trembling with fear more than exhaustion. As a werewolf, he had more than enough strength to drag me around.

  I lay there on the dirt, my mind racing with options. There just weren’t that many. Rolling over to my belly, I began to army crawl deeper into the wheat patch. Alex crouched down and mimicked me, his claws digging into the soft, dry dirt.

  If we could get around to the back of the house, I had weapons there stashed in the cellar. In particular, a water gun of sorts that worked off of a pump action that I could load with salt water—salt water worked wonders on magic users, blocking their ability to spell. I only had my two blades on me; I’d been stupid to try and face whoever was in the house without more.

  Halfway through the wheat, I closed in on the back of the house, when a wisp of smoke curled past my nose. Alex whimpered. A crackle of the fire they’d lit reached my ears, just as I saw the first sign of flames curling toward us.

  “Mother fuckers,” I hissed. No choice now. I jumped to my feet, fought the first wave of vertigo and sprinted across the last hundred feet to the back of the house, Alex tight on my heels.

  A bolt of blue electricity propelling a rock clipped my heel as I dove for cover, spinning me in the air. Hitting the ground hard knocked the wind out of me, but I didn’t slow down; I couldn’t, not if I wanted to make it out of this alive.

  The wind blew hard, fanning the flames right toward the house at a speed I wasn’t sure I could beat. Ripping open the cellar door, I pushed Alex down ahead of me and slammed the door shut, barring it behind us.

  “Damn it all to hell,” I grumbled under my breath, like it was a normal occurrence for me to be attacked in my own home. Because it wasn’t, and the whole thing was freaking the hell out of me. Worse, if I let on how scared I was, I’d have Alex spazzing out in a split second. Let me tell you, having a panicked werewolf in a tight confined space is not a good idea, even if you are Immune.

  I flipped on the light switch and the fluorescent bulb buzzed to life. The cellar door would buy us time—if we were lucky, about ten seconds before they blew it off its hinges.

  I grabbed a flak jacket; it was thin, the lightest one on the market, to make it easy for me to hide it under my clothes. It wouldn’t stop the spells, but it would help protect my body, which right now needed all the help it could get.

  Pulling off my shirt, I slipped into the spelled flak jacket and strapped it on, tightening it so it couldn’t be blown off me, then pulled my shirt back over it. Next came the pump action spray gun—yet another of Milly’s good ideas. Loading it with salt water from a sealed milk jug in the corner, I once more owed my friend. “Thank you Milly,” I said under my breath.

  With a shudder, the cellar door blew open. “Behind me, Alex!” I shouted.

  I grabbed an arm length sword off the wall and faced the open door with both weapons. Nothing moved. Even the sound of the wind seemed to have died down.

  Gliding, as if it were on wheels instead of feet, a cloaked figure moved in front, blocking the light. Alex let out a whimper and scuttled backwards. I kind of wanted to do the same. The person’s face was not covered by the cloak, but was instead distorted with some sort of spell, leaving the face a blur, like when you adjust the T.V. rabbit ears, and everything scatters across the screen. Flashes of eyes, mouth and ears whipped around on the face, leaving me unable to give any sort of an impression of whether it was even a man or a woman.

  Freaky.

  “You will not come for the girl. She belongs to us.” The voice was a monotone, giving nothing away.

  I leaned forward on one of the swords. “Well, I can’t do that. How do I know you aren’t molesting her, or worse, making her into the next Martha Stewart?”

  Silence. “You are insolent.”

  “I’ve been told that a time or two,” I said, a distinct throb starting at the base of my neck. “Tell you what, I won’t come for her if I can keep you tied up here in my basement and make use of you as I will. I mean, that’s a fair trade—”’

  The door slammed shut and I laughed. “Really? Locking me in my room because I’ve been naughty? That’s the best you can do?”

  I didn’t hear the flames right away, not over my laughing. I shrugged, not worried in the least. There was a second way out leading to the trap door in my kitchen below the table. Trotting down the dirt hallway, I climbed the four-step ladder, grabbed the handle and twisted hard to the left.

  Alex whimpered and I frowned. Twisting it again, I jammed my shoulder against the trap door and pushed again. Nothing.

  “Alex, help me,” I said, feeling the first stirrings of panic. How had they known the trap door was even there?

  The werewolf climbed the ladder beside me, his movements awkward and the space tight. “Now push, buddy.”

  Together we shoved hard on the door as the room filled with smoke. It wouldn’t be the flames that killed us. Shit, shit, shit.

  Even with both of us pushing with all we had, the door didn’t budge; the wood didn’t even splinter and break. They’d re-enforced it with a spell.

  We were trapped.

  15

  He sped the whole way back from New Mexico to make up time, lights flashing on his SUV, sporting a massive hangover. O’Shea picked up Martins and filled him in before they raced to catch Adamson, the tracking device working well for once, showing him she’d gone home.

  “There’s got to be a ring of them working together. I think she’s working with someone who kidnaps the kids, then she ‘finds’ them for a cost. A perfect sting on parents who are desperate.” O’Shea actually wasn’t sure of his new theory, he was just so pissed she’d dodged him again, he’d grasp at anything.

  “Why wouldn’t she just phone?”

  “Taps.”

  “She doesn’t look like the type to kill anyone, especially not her own sister. Nor the type to kidnap kids for money.”

  O’Shea snorted. “That’s what she’d like us to believe, no doubt. But we can have a chat with her, try to loosen up her tongue.” That brought a far too intimate image to mind, one that he quickly banished. He took the turn-off leading up to her home without pausing to even check the road sign. There were many nights he’d staked out her house early on, waiting, hoping for the break he’d need to finally put her behind bars. But what he’d seen was a woman who’d grown up with no family, alone in the middle of nowhere. He tried not to think about how it must feel for her to be alienated from everything she knew.

  As they pulled into the yard, a strange sight met them. Four hooded figures stood near the back of the house, not trying to conceal themselves, but standing there, not moving. Smoke curled around their feet, looking like it came from the other side of the house.

  “What the hell is this?” Martins asked.

  O’Shea shrugged. “No idea.”

  They stepped out of the SUV in tandem.

  Martins walked forward first, taking the lead, showing initiative, which was a surprise.

  “Hello, we’re looking for—” His words were cut off when the figures shot at them.

  Except “shot” wasn’t quite the right word. They lifted their hands and stuff poured out of their fingertips, straight at the two agents. Bright blue and green, the ‘stuff’ zipped toward the junior agent first. Martins reacted faster than O’Shea thought he would, diving behind a
hedge alongside the house. O’Shea used the SUV as a cover, his mind struggling to make sense of what he’d just seen.

  “FBI Agents! Put your weapons down!” He fully expected them to react accordingly. Not so much, as it turned out.

  They continued to send that sparkling crap toward both of the agents, which left the agents no other choice. Martins shot first, his aim way off the mark if the way the scarecrow in the field behind the figures jumped was any indication.

  O’Shea leaned against the door and shot, his gun misfiring, not once or twice, but three times. “What the hell?”

  Martins ran from the hedge across to a small pump house for better aim. Again though, his shots went wide—all four of them. This wasn’t possible.

  Smoke continued to curl out around the house, but that wasn’t what stole his attention from the fire fight. It was the screaming.

  O’Shea didn’t think, he just burst from behind the Jeep, firing at the figures as he ran. A spiral of blue hit him, absorbing into his skin, and he held his breath, stumbling with the anticipation of pain, loss of vision, something bad. But there was nothing. Blinking, he stood back up and looked around. There was only one figure left and it stood five feet from him. He raised his gun as Martins ran up beside him.

  The cloaked figure tipped its head sideways, as if considering them both.

  “Lower your hands,” O’Shea barked.

  As if on cue the figure whipped its hands up, and O’Shea fired. He watched in horror as, in slow motion, the bullet curved almost ninety degrees to blow a hole in Martins’ forehead right next to him.

  O’Shea froze, unable to comprehend what had happened, his mind reeling at the impossibility of what his eyes were telling him.

  More screaming. Adamson was screaming for him, his partner was dead and the bullet was from his gun. His eyes flew back to where the figure had been, but it was gone along with the others.

  In that moment, O’Shea felt his world spin out from under him; the only thing keeping him from losing it was the woman who cried out for his help. Holstering his gun, he pushed everything else away and ran toward her voice.

  *-*-*-*

  “Rylee. Scared,” Alex whispered, his body pressed hard against mine as we crept forward. The only chance we were going to have was to break out through the flames and hope to hell we didn’t catch fire. Not how I saw my day panning out when I got up that morning.

  “I know, buddy. We’re going to run fast, around the house to the Jeep,” I said, scratching him behind the ear. “Understand?”

  He huffed into the dirt. The smoke filled the room fast, my lungs ached, my eyes burning and my hope fading. If they, the bastards who’d taken India and attacked us here, had blocked the trap door, I doubted they would have left the cellar door to chance.

  “Now,” I said, prepping my body to hit hard, hoping I was wrong, hoping the door wouldn’t be barred magically.

  Our bodies hit in tandem and we were flung backwards, bitch slapped by the power that held the door against us. I grabbed the jug of salt water and flung it on the door, but it did nothing; the spell was on the other side.

  Intermittently howling and choking on the smoke, Alex sat on the floor, tears streaming down his face.

  Even with all the weapons I had, there was nothing to break through magical barriers. There’d never been a need, and we were about to die because I hadn’t been prepared.

  I slumped to the floor, as a gunshot went off outside.

  “What the hell?”

  Alex answered. “Guns.” He paused. “Big guns. Man with gun here.”

  Man with . . .

  “O’Shea!” I screamed. “Here, we’re trapped!”

  Another round of gunshots went off, then the sound of sirens. Shit, I’d never been so happy to have a constant tail from the agent that had tried to frame me for murder.

  Coughing, I crouched back to the floor. Within moments, there was rattling on the cellar door and then it flung open. But it wasn’t O’Shea.

  “Milly!” I ran up the steps and caught her in a hug. She was crying, her hands white with powdered salt. The fire raged behind her, but it wasn’t as close as I’d thought; the smoke had just been funneled toward us. Nice.

  “I’m so sorry, Rylee.”

  “Hey, you made it in time, that’s all that matters.” Alex ran around us in circles, yipping until O’Shea ran into view. The wind, the real wind and not some magicked wind, picked up and blew the smoke and fire back out into the wheat field. That wasn’t good either, but better than the alternative.

  I turned to face him, putting Milly just behind me. I couldn’t help it; we were a team, but when it came to O’Shea’s anger, she didn’t deserve to get the brunt of it.

  But he didn’t flare up. His face was pale, and it occurred to me he’d just seen magic for probably the first time in his life.

  “Where’s mini-me?” I asked, hoping to shake him out of his stupor.

  He stared blankly at me.

  I stepped closer and touched his arm, the chill of his skin evident even through the shirt. “Where’s your partner?”

  “Dead. I don’t . . .” He shook his head. “How did this happen?”

  I wasn’t entirely sure what he was talking about. “Milly, what happened?”

  “I knew you were in trouble, could feel the vibrations stronger than anything ever before.” She pushed a long strand of dark brown hair off her forehead to reveal eyes that at times could be a soft green, and when she was pissed deepened to an almost neon green that flashed. Right now they were as soft and gentle as I’d seen them in a long time.

  She went on. “I came out to the house, but they had already trapped you. O’Shea and his partner showed up—”

  “Those people attacked us, we shot at them and . . . .” O’Shea stared at me as if I was going to have the answers. Oh, this was not going to be good. “Our bullets swerved, came back and hit Martins, right in the forehead.”

  “Was it your bullet that swerved back?” My mind already caught on to the implications.

  O’Shea frowned. “What does it matter? He’s been killed in an impossible situation.”

  The sirens were almost here. “Listen, there isn’t a lot of time. Think, O’Shea. You’re going to tell people the bullets did whatever the fuck they wanted, swerved back and shot your partner with YOUR bullet? You’re about to be implicated for murder.”

  His face paled. “They won’t believe me.” He put a hand to his head. “I wouldn’t believe me.”

  I couldn’t help it. “Just like you won’t believe me when it comes to Berget.”

  Again, he just stared, his eyelids twitching as I watched emotions run across his face. Anger, fear, disbelief.

  “Come on,” I said. “We can’t be here if you want to stay out of jail tonight.”

  “I’m not going with you. That’ll only prove I’m guilty,” he said. “When you run, it shows your guilt more than anything.”

  Well if that wasn’t a dig at me, I didn’t know what was. I laughed; I couldn’t help it. Milly, standing beside me in her fashion-forward bright white pantsuit, was shaking her head.

  “Rylee is right, Agent O’Shea. You can’t prove your innocence. There aren’t even any of the perpetrators here to point fingers at. Unless you did manage to shoot one of them?”

  He shook his head. “No, but you’re innocent until proven guilty. You should know that, Adamson.” Already the shock was wearing off and he was sliding back into this usually difficult self.

  Shrugging, I turned my back. “Come on, Milly, if he wants to spend the rest of his life in jail for a murder he didn’t commit, then let him.”

  We started to walk away, but it was Alex who stopped us with words he shouldn’t have been able to utter. “Man with gun. He come with.”

  I spun in time to see O’Shea stumble backwards, eyes wide at really seeing Alex. He pulled his gun on the werewolf. I bolted toward them, but it wasn’t me that got to O’Shea first. It was Milly.
>
  She slammed him with a knock-out spell that rolled his eyes back into his head and dropped him to the ground.

  “Good shot,” I said.

  “Thanks.” She gave me a smile.

  Grabbing Alex by the collar, the three of us ran around the side of the house as the fire trucks and police cars screamed into the yard. We pointed around the back of the house and they sped off in that direction.

  As I shoved Alex into the Jeep, a black unmarked pulled in. “Damn.”

  Three hours later, we—Milly and I—were still explaining the same story over and over. I had been trapped in the cellar, Milly had showed up and heard gunshots, but neither of us had seen anything. Now it was up to O’Shea as to whether or not he dug his own grave.

  We were released just as they brought O’Shea out of the house. In handcuffs.

  I was surprised to feel a pang of guilt hit me. What the hell was that about? I tried to push it away, but it overrode any attempt I made to shrug it off. O’Shea hounded me for years; with him locked up, I wouldn’t have to worry about who was following me around anymore. I let out a sigh. “You know this complicates things.”

  Milly touched my arm. “Your life would be easier without him in it.”

  “And yours would be easier without me in it,” I said.

  She ducked her head, shame flushing her face. “You’re family, you and Giselle. The Coven gave me leave to help you on this case.”

  “Why?”

  She didn’t answer, our conversation interrupted.

  O’Shea and his guards walked passed us. I wanted to make a smart remark; I knew that walk of shame. In fact, it had been O’Shea who’d walked beside me.

  But I couldn’t make the words form. He was as innocent as I was. Magic had a funny way of making humans believe the wrong thing.

  We were allowed to stay while the police did their investigation, they told us ahead of time that it would likely take all night. They had lights on tall stands lighting up the yard as if it wasn’t close to midnight in the middle of October.

  Milly helped me make a late—very late—dinner of pasta and steamed veggies from the garden. Neither of us spoke as we cooked, except for the “pass the salt” variety of conversation. As soon as the food was ready, I put Alex’s share in his bowl. He cleaned it in about thirty seconds flat—except for the carrots, which he left in the bottom of the dish.