“Well?” he snapped.
“They’re here!” he said triumphantly, joining them.
Perking up, Victor grinned. “Good. Do you have a room number?”
“They refuse to give them out.”
“No matter. Jeff, go in there and mind probe that clerk. Get the room number for the so-called Mr. and Mrs. Paul Hornsby.” Was that Black and the woman? Victor hoped so. The only way to find out was to break in and see.
“Right.”
Victor looked up. The stars were close and bright. The dawn was edging the mountains. “I’d like nothing better than to catch them unawares,” he told Lothar.
“Do you think capturing them is the best idea?”
“There’s nothing like a threat to get one of them to spill their information to us,” Victor said.
“So if it is Black and the woman, you’re going to tell one of them that you’ll possess the other? They know what that means.”
“Yes. I have to vary my tactics and strategy every time the Taqe send out a team. The last mission was easy. This one hasn’t been. First, we’ll verify it is them. Next, we’ll figure out which one knows the most. Then, we’ll threaten that person so that he or she will give us what we need. After that, we’ll take them to wherever it is and let them retrieve the emerald sphere.”
Lothar chuckled. “That’s a good plan. They won’t be expecting us to have a card to get into their room. I imagine they’re feeling pretty smug and safe about now.”
“Asleep and unaware,” Victor said, grinning in anticipation. He heard the door open and close. Jeff came down the stairs.
“Room 401.”
“Good!” Victor looked around. “First, let’s case this place and find out where all the exits are on that floor. I want to know they’re there before we attack. This time, we’re going to get them….”
COLT AWOKE WITH A JERK. Disoriented for a moment, he felt a sizzling sense of danger. Throwing off the blanket, he stood up in his boxer shorts. He twisted around and looked toward the door. The sorcerers had found them! Hissing a curse between his teeth, he ran to the bedroom. Opening the door, he called to Shelly. She was asleep, the sheet pulled up to her waist. The cotton nightgown with the pink ribbon around the oval neck did nothing but make her look incredibly beautiful.
“Shelly! Wake up!”
Instantly, she jerked awake. “What?”
“We’ve gotta get out of here. Now! I can feel them!”
Disoriented, Shelly threw off the sheet and leaped out of bed. “But…how?”
Grabbing a T-shirt from the drawer, Colt pulled it over his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Hurry and get dressed. Take only the pack. The cell phones are in there, right?”
Sleep torn from her, Shelly lurched toward the drawers. “Uh…yes…yes…”
They quickly got into their jeans and hiking boots, grabbed their coats and hitched up their knapsacks onto their shoulders. Within five minutes, Colt was cracking the door to their room. He peered out into the hall. It was quiet. Heart pounding, he turned and whispered, “Come on. We’ll take the exit stairs.”
Shelly followed and they ran lightly down the carpeted hall to the exit door. Adrenaline pounded through her. Mind spinning with shock, she slipped through the door and quietly closed it behind her. Taking the flights of concrete stairs, they made it down to the first floor.
Colt hesitated inside the door. There was a rectangular glass window on it. Carefully, he looked one way and then the other. The hall seemed deserted. “Let’s go,” he rasped, opening the door. It squeaked. He froze.
Shelly crowded up to his side. “What?”
“The noise of the door,” he said. Sweat trickled down his temple. He felt hot and nearly suffocated in the jacket. Outdoors, it was in the forties and he knew he’d need it.
“Can we get to the car?”
“That’s where we’re going.” Again, he eased the door open a little more. It didn’t squeak. “Let’s go!”
They hurried down the empty hall to the rear door that led to the parking lot. The cold of the morning hit them. Shelly followed Colt closely. Looking around, she felt terror. Every deep shadow along the lodge wall turned into a man waiting to jump them. Mouths dry, they left the safety of the building and moved into the trees that surrounded the huge parking lot.
“Damn!”
The word exploded softly from Colt. Shelly ran into him. He’d stopped so suddenly she didn’t have a chance to halt. The sulfur lamps showed the parking lot clearly. As Shelly caught herself and looked where Colt was focused, she gasped. There, standing alongside their red Prius, was a man. A young man in a hoodie.
“His aura. It’s the same as Nelson’s. He’s a sorcerer, Colt. They know our car,” Shelly whispered, grabbing onto Colt’s upper arm. “What are we going to do?”
As he scanned the area, Colt knew they were safe in the trees. “Let me think,” he growled. He’d thrown up a powerful bubble of protection that made them invisible to anyone, even a sorcerer. Watching the man near their Prius, Colt was satisfied the protection was working because he wasn’t picking up on them.
Dawn was coming, but it was still dark in the valley. “We need to get to the canoe livery. They won’t expect us down there. Chances are they’re in the hotel and already in our room.” He glared toward the lodge.
Shelly gulped, her pulse pounding with abject fear. The young man at the Prius didn’t seem to be aware of them and that was good. Her fingers dug into the down jacket Colt wore. “The canoe?”
“We have to get out of here,” he rasped. “They obviously expected us to go to the car. That’s why there’s a guard. We have to start thinking about what they won’t expect us to do.”
“When they find us gone, though, they’ll come out here looking for us.”
“I’m guessing they will,” Colt said harshly. He turned and gently gripped Shelly’s arm. “We have money, food in our knapsacks, bottles of water and cell phones—everything we need to keep on point to locate this emerald. That sphere is a lot more important than we realized from our dreams. We wouldn’t have so many sorcerers after us if it weren’t.” He shook his head and added, “We’ll use the trees as cover. They go right down to the canoe livery.” Colt searched her fearful expression. He wanted to say everything was going to be all right, but he didn’t know if it would be. Yellow Teeth was somewhere. Colt wasn’t picking up on him but he knew the Skin Walker wasn’t far away. Heart pounding in his chest, he felt an overwhelming need to protect Shelly against all of them. She was just as necessary on this hunt for the sphere as he was. Each had skills that would help to find the emerald. He gave her a tight smile. “Ready to follow me?”
Nodding, Shelly gulped, “Yes, let’s go. If we can get a canoe and paddle away and hide in the darkness of the lake along the shore, they won’t pick up our trail.”
“That’s what I’m hoping,” Colt told her. He turned and started off at a slow trot within the edge of the trees. The dawn light was just enough to ensure that he wouldn’t stumble and fall over limbs, exposed roots or downed branches scattered across the pine needle–strewn forest. He didn’t want to move too fast for Shelly’s sake. The hair on the back of his neck felt stiff and hot. Their lives were on the line. Savagely suppressing his own fear of the darkness and knowing that this was the time of day that sorcerers roamed the earth in search of a body to possess, Colt used his anger as a shield. He was damned if any sorcerer, known or unknown, was going to get to them. No way.
“WHERE ARE THEY?” Victor barked, looking around the empty hotel room. They had switched on the light and no one was around. Lothar came out of the bedroom looking angry.
“My lord, they somehow must have known we were coming.” He triumphantly held up a billfold he’d found on the floor. Inside was a picture of Shelly Godwin. He grinned. “They were under an assumed name.”
Victor jerked the blanket off the couch. He glared at the photo. “At least we know we’ve got the right co
uple. They’ve left their clothes here. That tells me they didn’t leave very long ago.”
“Jeff is at their car. He has telepathy. If he saw them, he’d call us,” Lothar said, scowling as he looked around the room.
“Damn them,” Victor muttered. Glaring around the room, he rubbed his chin. “They can’t get to their car. So where else would they go?”
“They used a canoe at the other lakes. Why not this one?” Lothar said.
“That’s it! Come on, you and I will go down to the dock. We’ll leave Jeff with the car. We have to find them!”
RUNNING HARD FOR the wharf, Shelly felt her legs getting wobbly—from fear of being found by the sorcerers and not from lack of physical stamina. Colt had already arrived at the line of canoes lying up on the dock. He turned a dark green one over and slid it quietly into the water. Standing by it, he gestured for her to hurry.
The thunking of her boots sounded hollowly along the wooden wharf. Gasping, she climbed into the bow of the canoe. Colt handed her a paddle.
“Hurry!” he urged in a whisper. Leaping into the canoe at the stern, Colt pushed them off. Just about four hundred feet down from the wharf there was a thick line of trees and bushes overhanging the edge of the lake. He dug his paddle into the mirror-like water. Shelly was paddling hard. The canoe turned and they moved it as quickly as they could through the cool morning air, patches of fog hovering near the surface of the lake and into the dense brush along the shore.
Breathing hard, Colt kept looking over his shoulder. He felt the sorcerers. They were close! Would they spot them? Heart pounding like a freight train in his chest, his hands tightened around the paddle and the canoe surged forward.
VICTOR TORE DOWN the slope at a gallop, though the grass was slippery with dew. Searching the quiet, calm lake, he saw nothing. Lothar ran at his side. As they made it to the boat livery, Victor skidded to a halt. Breathless, he looked around, his eyes narrowing as he tried to ferret through the darkness and fog across the long lake. There were loons somewhere out in the darkness beginning to call to one another, their tune haunting.
“I don’t see them,” Lothar said, leaning over, hands on his knees, catching his breath. “Maybe they didn’t come here.”
Anger and frustration surged through Victor. “I don’t know! Do you pick up an energy trail on them?” The problem with being in a human body was that Victor could not use all his array of detection skills due to the solidity of the form. Right now, he didn’t want to get rid of the human body because it served him and his plan.
“No…nothing. What now?” Lothar said, his voice sounding defeated. “Black is a Warrior for the Light. He can protect them in a bubble and we won’t find him. I’ll bet that’s what has happened.”
Looking at his watch, Victor said, “We’ll wait until 6:00 a.m. By that time, that mindless clerk we probed at the desk will be switched off with a new clerk for the day. We’ll wait until then. We’ll ask about the canoe rental. Someone has to show up down here and have a list of names on it.”
“But if they took one now, how will the employee know?”
Sometimes, Victor wanted to scream. “Stupid, one of the canoes will be missing! That’s how he’ll know.”
“Oh…”
Shaking his head, Victor said, “Let’s go. I want to tell Jeff what has happened and what we’re going to do.” He could use telepathy but Victor’s powers were not as strong or solid as they were in spirit. Walking along the wharf, Victor counted the canoes. There were nineteen of them. Was one missing? Had the Taqe taken one? Were they hidden somewhere along the edge of the lake? Until he knew, Victor wasn’t sure what to do next. If the Taqe had indeed stolen a canoe, then the three Tupay were going to check out the shore of this lake.
Lothar, sensing his concern, said as he huffed up the slope, “What if they aren’t here?”
“Then we need to keep Jeff at their Prius, get in our car and drive around and look for them. There are other lodges nearby. They might have hitched a ride with someone out on the main highway. We need to drive along it and look for them.”
Shaking his head, Lothar followed him down the length of the lodge toward the parking lot. “This team is slippery. Not like the other one.”
Snorting, Victor growled, “The Taqe learned their lesson well. They’re not about to send out anyone from now on that isn’t smart and alert. They lost one of their team members and they’re trying to stop it from happening again.”
Glum, Lothar walked quickly at Victor’s side once they rounded the corner of the lodge. In the distance, he saw Jeff leaning against the Prius, arms against his chest, looking bored. The dawn light was sufficient now for them to be able to read his expression. “Well,” the knight griped, “if that’s the case, it’s harder on us, too.”
“They’re evolving their strategies,” Victor said. “That’s no surprise. They’re choosing people who can run the game as quickly as we can create it.”
“I just want to know how they knew we were coming.”
Shrugging, Victor said, “It doesn’t matter. What matters now is to find them. They’re either somewhere on that lake or hitching a ride on the highway.”
“YOU OKAY?” Colt asked. He dropped the canoe into the brush along the bank of the lake. Dawn was coming, a pinkish cast behind the Rockies silhouetting their jagged, snow-covered peaks. Shelly had knelt on the pine needles and was opening her pack.
“Yes, just shaky with adrenaline is all,” she said.
Colt knelt opposite her and shrugged out of his own day pack. They were hidden in a grove deep within the woods. The thick wall of brush along the lakeshore was a perfect screen to hide them. His hands were scratched where he’d hauled the canoe through the bushes. “I feel the sorcerers leaving,” he said. Unzipping his pack, he drew out a bottle of water and a protein bar.
Nodding, Shelly said, “Yes, they’re not so close now. Even I can feel their energy isn’t as strong as before.” Relief made her hands less shaky.
Looking toward the lake, the predawn pink mirrored on the surface, Colt thought how beautiful and serene the lake was right now. “I feel them continuing to hunt for us. They’re going in a different direction, away from us. That’s good.”
Taking a swig of water, Shelly asked, “What do you think they’ll do next?”
Colt peeled off the wrapper of his protein bar. “I think they will figure out we’ve either gone to the highway to escape them because we can’t get to our car or we’re out here at the lake.”
Brow wrinkling, Shelly said, “How could he know we’re still here?”
“Sorcerers aren’t stupid,” Colt murmured between bites. “We took a canoe from the livery. I’m sure someone from the lodge comes on duty at six or seven o’clock. They’ll count the canoes and find one missing. All they have to do is go down and ask the guy about it and that will confirm we took one.”
“The sorcerers can’t be sure we took it,” Shelly said, feeling fear snake through her again. Colt appeared calm and self-assured. She felt like spaghetti that had been overcooked.
“Oh, I think they can,” Colt said. “We can’t assume they won’t know, Shelly. That would put us in more danger than we’re already in.”
“I guess you’re right,” she grudgingly admitted. “Right now, I’m so scared I can hardly walk, Colt.”
With a tender gaze, Colt reached out and cupped her fiery cheek. “Take some deep breaths. That’s what I’d do when I was a kid and scared of the Skin Walkers walking around our hogan at night looking for a way in. It helps calm you.”
The warmth of his calloused hand eased some of her fear. She touched it. “Thanks.” She laughed a little, her voice high and off-pitch.
While he didn’t want to remove his hand, Colt forced himself to. They kept their voices to a bare whisper even though they were surrounded by a good twenty feet of bushes on all sides. “People who work the mystical realms of life learn about the light and the dark. You’ve lived in the light world, but n
ow you’re learning about the dark side of it,” he said, finishing off his bar. There would be no bacon and eggs today.
“I know, but the dark side always sounded so detached to me because I had never interfaced with evil before this,” Shelly admitted, opening up a protein bar.
Colt gazed at the calm lake. The sun was going to rise in about an hour, around 6:00 a.m. “We have about an hour before sunrise. After we get done eating, we’re going to have to start looking along the shore of the lake. The sorcerers won’t be able to confirm we’re here for that hour, so it gives us a head start of sorts.”
“Okay, I’m ready.”
After he got up and shrugged into his knapsack, Colt picked up the canoe. He turned it over so that he could hold it across his shoulders and stabilize the sides with his hands. Luckily, it was a small aluminum canoe. Moving slowly through the brush, he reached the lakeshore where there were no rocks, only soil, grass and some wildflowers along the edge where the fir and spruce trees stood. As gently as possible, Colt set the canoe down, turned it over and slid it quietly back into the water.
Shelly then climbed into the bow and picked up her paddle. Colt wanted her up front, to not only look for the twin boulders, but to feel any vortex energy that might be nearby. Quietly dipping the paddle into the water, Colt guided the canoe about three feet off the lakeshore. Ahead was a wide talus slope, and he hoped against hope that it might have the boulders they were looking for.
The water dripped and fell off the paddle with each rise and fall of his arms. The canoe was stable and Colt watched Shelly, who peered over the left side, looking for clues among the rocks. His heart wrenched within his chest. The sorcerers were still close. Colt could feel them sending out weak energetic feelers trying to locate them. Luckily for them, they were cloaked and there was no way the evil trio could find them. One hour. That was all they had. More than ever, Colt wanted to live to love Shelly. Would the Great Spirit give him that chance?
The Adversary Page 15