The rocks were almost perfectly arranged to separate the cave into small rooms. I followed Halli into our room and changed into semi-clean clothes. We packed up our dirt covered possessions and went back outside, backpacks bulging. I took a few steps then stopped short, Halli bumped into the back of me.
“Were these here a few minutes ago?” I squatted to get a closer look at the tire tracks and footprints.
She stooped to see what I looked at. “No. I don’t think so. The only tracks I’ve seen anywhere near here have been from our group. That’s one reason we chose this spot, because it was off the trail.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “Let’s follow them. Something doesn’t feel right and I want to make sure whoever made these tracks isn’t still hanging around.”
The tracks came close to but didn’t go into our cave. The wards we’d put up still held firm.
I shrugged my backpack straps higher onto my shoulders and walked in the direction the tracks led, Halli close beside me. They took us around the edge of a high outcropping of rock and through a small slot canyon a jeep would have barely fit through. The narrow way opened up into a small bowl, surrounded on each side by tall cliffs. The bowl spanned about fifty yards.
A menacing feeling raced through my veins. My heart rate sped up and my senses intensified. I looked to my left as soon as I entered the bowl and instinctually pushed Halli behind me.
There was a black jeep parked there. Leaning against the jeep were two men. I heard a noise to my right and spun around. There were two more men, one leaning casually against the cliff face and the other just rising from where he sat on a rock.
Halli moved so we were back-to-back; she faced the jeep and I faced the other two men. The man that had been sitting on the rock took a step toward me. “Well, hello there, girls. It must be our lucky day to have two such perty females find us in such a desolate area.”
“You girls all alone?” one of the men behind me asked.
My voice was steady as I answered. “Sorry for our intrusion. We’ll just be on our way now.” I turned back to the narrow trail and drew in a sharp breath. Another man stood right behind us. He must have been hidden in a crevasse nearby or we would have seen him before reaching the open area.
He stepped even closer. He reeked of alcohol and cigarette smoke. His bloodshot eyes raked up and down my body, then Halli’s. “Why don’t ya stay and play awhile, ladies? Come on in to our little hideaway here and let’s have a talk.”
e was big. He towered over me by at least a foot. A piece of greasy hair fell over his eyes as he lunged for me at the same time as I grabbed for my summoning necklace—that wasn’t there. I’d left it on the bathroom counter. I wasn’t prepared as he tackled me to the ground. I landed hard, with the grease ball on top of me. My breath came whooshing out and the pressure in my chest incapacitated me. I couldn’t breathe. Panic overtook me for a moment before I realized the breath had just been knocked out of me and my respirations would return shortly. The Big Greasy Giant laying atop me didn’t help the breathing problem.
As I lay there in the dirt, a rock jutting into my back below my backpack, I worked hard to inhale. I turned my head toward Halli. I wasn’t sure what had happened to her, I just saw two of the men crouched over her limp body, blood flowing from a large cut on her forehead. I struggled to push my assailant off me. He held me down while another of the goons grabbed my arms. Grease Ball put his face right up to mine and said, “Stay put little lady… or don’t. ‘S always more fun if ya don’t. Don’t even think about usin’ yer voodoo on me. One little spark and yer friend over there gets her throat slit.”
How does he know about our powers? I moved my eyes toward Halli. One of the men held a huge knife to her throat, his intense gaze rested on me.
The guy holding my arms laughed. “Can I have a turn with her when you’re done?”
“Yep, if there’s anything left of her when I’m done. She’s gonna be a fun one.” Grease Ball’s leering gaze made me sick to my stomach.
The fifth guy jumped in the jeep and backed it across the opening of the only exit before joining Halli’s assailants. The only way out would be under, over, or through the jeep.
All five men were huge. By the way they’d taken Halli down so quickly, they’d had some sort of martial arts training, too. The oaf lying across my chest slid off me and he and his companion each grabbed me under an arm and slid me roughly until my back slammed against the rock wall.
Grease Ball grabbed my face in one of his ginormous hands and squeezed hard—I thought my cheek bones were going to crumble. He put his face an inch from mine and said, “Keep struggling if you want to end up like your little friend over there.” He put his mouth on mine in a nausea inducing, slobber filled kiss. I clamped my jaws shut tight but it did no good. He dug his fingers into my cheeks until I could no longer keep my mouth shut. His slimy tongue entered my mouth and I gagged.
I wanted so badly to bite it off. His grip on my face prevented me from acting on that impulse. Panic fled and fury took over. I gagged again and he pulled away from me. “You ain’t gonna puke on me are ya? I’d really have ta punish ya if ya did that.”
His hand moved to the buttons on my jacket and he started undoing them, lingering at the one between my breasts. My anger flared. Magic flowed into every atom in my body. My hair stood on end, little sparks flying. My fingers tingled with magic, blue lightning bolts escaped from my fingertips as the furious magic overflowed. He didn’t notice, too entranced with the buttons of my jacket.
“Abstrudo.” I didn’t yell. I spoke in a low, growling voice. I even scared myself a little.
The two assailants that held me down were blasted away from me. Grease Ball flew fifty yards until he was stopped rather abruptly by the rock wall on the other side of the bowl. The other guy flew into the jeep and landed with his neck twisted at an unnatural angle. He lay still and lifeless, one leg tangled in the wheel-well.
I turned toward Halli, not bothering to take the time to stand. I said, in the same scary, Clint Eastwood voice, “Deflagro.” Two balls of flame shot from my hand, one right after the other, and blasted the tough-guy with the knife as he pressed it against her neck. The second flame-ball hit the guy bending over Halli square in the hip, knocking him away from her.
The third guy over by Halli started to stand and I hit him with a binding spell. I wanted at least one of them to be able to answer some questions. He dropped to the ground as his arms were pasted to his sides and his legs mashed together like they were wrapped in twine.
Then, I stood. My hair still flowed out from my head. Blue sparks still shot from my fingertips. My anger still surged. I stepped toward the bound man and my little friend.
“Witch,” the man forced from his strangled throat. “Get away. I didn’t do anything. They made me help. It was all his idea!” His frantic eyes darted to where Grease Ball lay in a crumpled heap, blood gushing from a wound in his head.
“Shut up.” I kneeled next to Halli, concentrated to calm the magic in my fingers, and touched her arm. There was a deep cut on her eyebrow that was dripping blood down her pixie face. That wasn’t the cut I was worried about. Blood gushed from the wound in her throat. Her necklace, covered in blood, lay broken around her lacerated neck. She responded to my touch and her eyes fluttered open. She raised a hand to her throat, unable to speak, her eyes wide with fear.
I laid my hand on the injured site and frantically forced the healing magic into it. When I lifted my hand away, the skin was perfectly knitted back together beneath the layer of blood.
“Oh, Paige! Thank you, I thought I was dead for sure! What happened?” She looked around and her mouth formed into a shaky half-smile. “Hmm. Looks like you kicked some major butt.”
“Yep. They made me mad.” My hair finally settled down as I felt the immediate rage subside into a deeper, seething, fury.
“They shouldn’t have done that.” Her smile turned to a serious look as I moved to
heal the cut on her head. “What are we going to do now?”
“I’m not sure. I want to question this one.” I nodded toward the bound man with the terrified eyes. “I really don’t think low-life scum like these should be left to walk the earth with the rest of us. What do you think?”
Halli was silent for a moment as she considered her answer. “I don’t know. I don’t like the idea of killing people… even if they deserve to die. We can’t just let them go, though.”
“I think I already killed at least one of them.” I glanced toward the jeep. I looked at the men I’d blasted with the fireballs. The blast had driven them ten or fifteen yards away. They were burned and unconscious, but still breathing. I stood and walked to where Grease Ball lay. The only movement came from the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.
I nudged him with my foot and he rolled to his back with a groan. His head wound had mostly clotted off and the bleeding was now just a small trickle. I turned back to look at Halli and a hand grasped my ankle and pulled. I turned as I fell and blasted a binding spell at Grease Ball. He stared at me with hate-filled eyes.
I smiled. “You picked the wrong little girls to mess with, Grease Ball.”
He winced. “Hmf. Did you make a deal with the devil, too, Witch?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Demon. I asked him to make me rich. We made a deal, my buddies and I would kill you and your friends—after getting some enjoyment out of you girls first”—he eyed me hungrily before continuing—“and he would make me filthy rich.”
“Looks like you got the filthy part of your bargain. How did you meet this Demon?”
He spit, brown juice slid down his unshaved chin. “None of yer business, girl. He said you was a witch. Looks like I shoulda taken more precautions.”
“Here’s the deal, loser. Answer my questions and I might consider letting you live. Don’t answer them and you’ll end up like your friend over there.” I pointed to the guy with the obviously broken neck over by the jeep.
He looked at where I pointed then back at me. “You’ll pay dearly for killin’ my friend.”
I laughed. “You’re in no position to threaten me.”
His eyes flicked to look behind me and then back. I turned just in time to see one of the burned men reach his feet and then fall flat as Halli put a binding spell on him. She did the same with the other guy before he had a chance to stand.
I smiled down at Grease Ball. “So… what’ll it be? You gonna answer my questions or…” I nodded to the tangled body by the jeep.
He swallowed.
“It’s fine if you don’t want to talk. I have three others to get answers from. One of them is bound to talk after they see what happens to you.” I shrugged and stepped closer to him.
“Wait! Wait! I’ll answer your questions. They don’t know the whole scoop anyways, they’re just along fer the ride.” I thought his eyes were going to bulge right out of his head.
“Darn. I was hoping you’d force me to make you the example. Oh well. Now, where were we? Oh, yeah. Where or how did you meet this Demon?”
“I met a couple a young ladies in a bar. They was real into me, ya know? They invited me back to their trailer as long as I brought a case a beer. They was real hotties, those two.”
“The Demon. Get to the part about the Demon before I lose my patience,” I warned.
“Okay, okay. I’m gettin’ to it, jeez. So, these two girls didn’t wanna play the same as what I did, ya know? They was a couple a teases. So I, maybe, got a little rough with ‘em, ya know? Teach ‘em a lesson. Well, they was scared, tied there to the bed.” He licked his tobacco stained lips.
“I don’t want to hear about your depraved brutality. Get to the Demon.”
“I was just about there. Anyways, the girls started beggin’ me to leave ‘em alone—after they’d invited me over and drank all my beer. Crazy bi—”
I kicked him square in the chest. “I’m about ready to be done with you and take what I can get from your companions over there.”
He gasped for breath. He looked at me as if he’d like nothing more than to mutilate my body and throw it in a deep chasm. “Okay. One of ‘em says to me, ‘if ya stop and leave us alone I’ll tell ya a secret. One that’ll make yer dreams come true.’ So I says, ‘tell me more’. And she did. She told me she knew someone that could make a bargain with a Demon. ‘Anything ya want,’ she says. So I got the info from her.”
“Did you leave them alone?” I had to know just how big of a scumbag we were dealing with.
He licked his lips again. “Eventually. Hey, now, she told me everything before I made any promises to her. And, they owed me somethin’ for the beer and all.”
I really wanted this low-life to rot in Hell. My hair started to crackle again. Through clenched teeth I asked, “Who put you in contact with the Demon? Where did this occur? And, what did the Demon look like? Answer quickly or I will unleash on you.”
A drop of sweat rolled down his forehead even though the temperature hovered somewhere in the fifties. “The guy’s name was Randal. I met him outside town, late at night, over by one of the arches. He coaxed the Demon out and we made our deal. The Demon showed me what you all look like and where I would find ya. He looked like a man. Tall, dressed in black, his face and hands were scarred, like from a burn. He wore an eye patch, like a pirate.”
“Was this Demon really there, or was it more like an apparition or something?” My stomach churned, acid raced up into my throat.
He hadn’t described a Demon. He’d described a Warlock.
Brone, to be exact.
The devious Warlock who had masqueraded as a school principal, Mr. Jorgenson, in Seattle. He drugged a bunch of kids with the desire to amass a dark army to help him destroy life as we know it here in the Human realm. We’d stopped his plan, but it sounded like he hadn’t given up—just changed tactics. And it meant he knew where we were.
“I don’t know for sure. There was something not right about him. Like he was shimmering or somethin’. Out of focus, like. And his feet didn’t touch the ground.”
“And he told you he would make you rich if you killed me and my friends.”
“Yeah. That’s what he said.”
“When was this encounter with the Demon?”
“Last night, late.”
“And your friends? Did they make a deal with this Demon?”
“No. I asked ‘em to help me ‘cause the Demon said you all would be tough. He didn’t say exactly how tough.”
“Which arch?” I asked.
He screwed up his face in concentration. “I don’t remember. It was over by the elephants.”
“Elephants?”
“Yeah, a group of rocks that looks like elephants. It was by them.”
I turned around and looked at Halli. The elephant rock formation was one of our refuges. We hadn’t been there, and didn’t plan on it unless we needed to. I hoped it was just the luck of the draw the meeting had taken place there and not that Brone knew about the refuge.
“Hey!” Grease ball whined. “I told ya all I know. Let me go now, we had a deal.”
I laughed, my back still to him. “Ya told me everything before I made any promises to ya,” I said, imitating his slurred speech.
My first human kill had been inadvertent; I’d just wanted to get him off me. I hadn’t been sure if I could intentionally kill another human being… until that moment.
The lightning blazed on my fingertips as I started to turn slowly toward him.
aige. Wait.” Halli stepped to my side and laid a gentle hand on my arm. “Do you think killing him is the best solution?”
“Yes.” I turned around and took aim.
“Paige! I have an idea. Please listen,” Halli begged.
I reluctantly lowered my arm and took a couple of deep breaths to calm the storm of anger ripping through my body. “What’s your idea Halli?”
“We trap them here, somehow, and su
mmon the others. They can help us decide what to do with them.”
“Do you really think they deserve to live? What could they possibly have to offer mankind?”
“That isn’t our place to judge. I agree, they’re a menace and shouldn’t be left to roam around free, but I don’t want you to do something in a fit of anger that you might regret later. You aren’t a killer, Paige. It’s one thing to kill when defending your life, but this is different. We have them under control. Let’s get the others here and make a group decision.”
I sighed and looked at my feet. “We can’t summon them, Hal. I didn’t bring my necklace and yours is broken. They only work if they’re intact.” I raised my eyes to meet hers.
Then I hit the ground, hard. Grease Ball’s binding had obviously worn off. He tackled me full force, straddled my hips and pressed my arms to the ground with his hands. His tackle also knocked Halli down. Just as I turned my head in her direction I saw the first guy I’d bound jump at her before she could get up.
Grease Ball moved his knees up to hold my arms with his full weight, grabbed my shirt with both hands and ripped it down to my navel. Feeling helpless and exposed, my stomach lurched as thoughts of rape raced through my head. Panic surged through my veins like acid, burning, forcing me into action. I activated my shield bracelet and a force field erupted between the bracelet and my attacker’s knee. He flew away from me and landed about ten feet away with a grunt.
“Fulminis!” I cast a lightning bolt at Halli’s attacker. Halli punched him in the throat, collapsing his airway, just before I released the spell. His head jerked back and the blue streak of electricity zinged past him, singeing his hair.
Five: Out of the Pit (Five #2) Page 9