by Eden Rivers
As soon as she’d dressed, she packed her clothes into the backpack Zach had provided. If they had to run again, this time she wanted her things with her. Sweet goddess, what had she been thinking when she signed up for this… This what? Fool’s errand? Although to her, it felt more like a crusade, determination fizzing through her consciousness dark and bitter, like ‑‑
A chair crashed in the other room, and Alec came pounding around the corner toward her. “Heads up! Zach’s on his way in, and he’s running hard.”
Before she even heard Zach’s frantic warning echo through her thoughts, she grabbed her backpack and sprinted through the door. So much for Zach’s theory that it would take Jaimis’s people a few days to find them this time around.
His own pack slung over one shoulder and Zach’s over the other, Alec followed quick on her heels. They met Zach in the driveway, and they all raced toward his Jeep.
Before they could reach the Jeep, though, one of the tires imploded with a hiss. Alec grabbed her close, reached out for Zach, and spun a concealing spell around them before she had time to be frightened.
The woods! Alec’s order ripped through her thoughts with enough urgency to rock her back on her heels.
Never losing physical contact with the two of them, somehow Alec managed to hand off Zach’s pack and get his own situated securely on his back. Sky followed suit, sliding her arms into the backpack straps, careful to maintain body contact with Alec so she wouldn’t step out of the concealing sphere of magic. She ran so hard her feet stung, never mind she wore thick socks and a pair of running shoes.
Her breath rasped through her chest, and she struggled to keep up with the two men as they dragged her toward the tree line behind the house. Heads up. Witch. Powerful!
Fast on the heels of her silent warning, a blast shook the ground under their feet, and shockwaves of heat followed. Acrid smoke filled the air with the stench of scorched steel, burning gas, and rubber.
Zach’s face twisted into a mask of anger. By the Horned God, whoever just blew up my Jeep’s going to pay for it. His thought echoed through her mind with the impact of all his rage behind it.
Goose bumps rose along the backs of Sky’s arms. When they planned this game of cat and mouse, they’d been counting on the fact that Jaimis would want them alive, the better to punish them ‑‑ retribution for the scars Alec had inflicted during their escape and for Sky’s disloyalty. They’d also assumed he’d send his lackeys after them, not one of the dark lords. The spike of power they’d felt before the blast belonged to a witch nearly as powerful as Jaimis.
And a woman, from the feel of the power. More likely than not, she’d meant to catch them near the SUV and take them out in the blast. With her throat closing around her breath, Sky struggled not to panic. The smell of the burning SUV mingled with pine as they crashed through the brush and small trees, making enough noise that Alec’s concealing spell would hardly do them much good. At least they’d be all but invisible, and when they got far enough away to slow down a bit, they could work on limiting the noise.
A branch slapped across her neck as they headed deeper into the dim light of the woods, the sting eerily reminiscent of the lash of a whip. Zach steered them toward an overgrown path, little more than a deer run, really.
Quiet now.
Alec’s warning simmered through her thoughts, sweeping her back to the last time he’d wrapped her in a shroud of mist and attempted to spirit her away from danger. She slowed her pace, careful not to snap twigs as she walked. Her lungs burned, and sweat coated her back. Her heart beat so hard against her ribs, she half feared their pursuer would hear it.
How?
Zach’s silent query echoed her own confusion as to how a witch managed to evade their powerful wards, but if she had things right, he wouldn’t like the answer. A dark lord.
A witch that powerful wouldn’t have to cross the threefold circle of wards around the house ‑‑ wouldn’t have to sneak past Sorren’s guards. What she needed to figure out was whether one of Jaimis’s minions was acting on her own ‑‑ a power play, perhaps ‑‑ or if Jaimis put out orders to kill first and ask questions later.
Power play, would be my guess. Zach’s assessment didn’t do a blessed bit of good to quiet her fears.
Sky winced when she slammed her toes into a fallen log, her fear magnified by the pain. When they’d crafted the plan to draw Jaimis out of hiding, Sorren had been frank about his fears concerning the dark lords. In the space of a year, Jaimis had transformed his power base from almost nonexistent to nearly impenetrable. A ring of powerful, malcontent witches, the dark lords were only too eager to buy into Jaimis’s plans.
Alec grabbed her wrist, and the three of them froze in place until he signaled for them to move forward. Whatever had attracted his attention, hopefully it didn’t involve more of Jaimis’s folks lying in wait in the woods. Every muscle ached with tension as she picked her way through the fallen leaves, trying hard to walk as quietly as the men.
But then, if they had a dark lord on their trail, with the superior tracking skills of a powerful witch, a little noise wasn’t likely to make much of a difference in their fates. The dark lords were a far cry from the “harm none” norm of witch culture. Jaimis’s followers presented a formidable lot. And if one of them was acting on her own, outside Jaimis’s orders…
A stick cracked under her shoe, and Sky cringed at her lapse of concentration. Too caught up trying to ferret out Jaimis’s plots to keep my own blessed ass alive. Furious, she focused all her concentration on the forest floor underfoot. Alec made no sound as he walked beside her, and despite his muscle-laden frame, Zach’s steps fell nearly as quiet.
The woods around them rippled with the sound of wind in the trees and shifting leaves, but no bird cries. No small animal noises. Trouble.
Someone’s tracking us. Zach’s warning echoed her fears.
Her pack chafed against her back, and she wished like hell she’d taken time to braid her hair, because it stuck to her neck in a sweaty mess and drifted forward around her face and arms in the breeze.
“Oh!”
Her ankle wrenched, and her foot slipped into a hole beside a mass of roots. Pain shot up her leg, and she clenched her teeth. She’d been watching, bless it. But bushy ferns covered the dip in the forest floor. Zach wrapped an arm around her waist, steadying her as she extricated her foot, and Alec bent to feel her ankle.
Sprain, most likely.
Alec didn’t have to explain that they couldn’t stop to wrap her injury here, with the forest quiet around them, the absence of bird and animal calls indicating someone either lay in wait ahead or followed behind. If Jaimis’s witches were acting independently, then there was no way of telling if the woman who blew up the car was alone or traveled with friends. Alec steadied her as she limped along between the two men, careful to stay within the cloak of shadows and silently cursing the weight of her pack.
Her fury almost stronger than her fear, she raged inwardly at the dark lord for making her feel like prey. If nothing else, at least the motive was clear. We present as much a risk to the dark lords as we do to Jaimis.
She felt a shiver of agreement from Zach. In ordinary times, she’d resent knowing both Alec and Zach had been mucking around in her thoughts, but the connection just might help them get out of this mess alive. Three sets of survival instincts had to be better than one.
As they stumbled along over uneven ground, Alec touched her thoughts. Jaimis is smart enough to know we have a better chance of tracking him than anyone else. But he wants us alive. Revenge.
When Zach jumped in and continued Alec’s reasoning, the three-way connection threw her off balance almost as much as the crisscrossed maze of fallen branches. The dark lords know you two have the best chance of finding Jaimis. Since he knows the dark lord's identities, they have a hell of a lot to lose if you find him ‑‑ and nothing to gain by keeping you alive to hand over to Jaimis.
Sky bit her lip when her i
njured ankle jolted on an uneven slope and held tighter to Zach and Alec’s arms. When Zach threw her to the ground, she cursed under her breath, but understood when a shot ripped through the air. She fell clear of Alec’s concealing spell, and although she scrambled back into the mist, that moment of visibility would give anyone holding a weapon a chance to ‑‑
Another shot rang out, and fear clawed at her belly as the three of them crawled through damp leaves and over fallen logs, escaping at a snail’s pace. She was half inclined to abandon her pack but knew the supplies it contained could be crucial to her survival. At least being down on her hands and knees gave her ankle a bit of a rest, but that would hardly matter if the shooter caught up with them.
“Stay low. They’ll be shooting to wound, hoping to cause enough pain to compromise your powers so they can drag you back to Jaimis.” Zach spoke in a hoarse whisper and dumped his pack beside Alec. “Get Sky at least a few miles from here, then set up camp for the night. If I don’t catch up with you, move on to the next safe house tomorrow. The list is in my pack.”
What the fuck? Don’t you dare ‑‑
Alec’s warning broke off as Zach wrenched out of his grasp, darted to the left, and ran hard uphill. Sky felt fear for his friend singe through Alec like a forest fire, but he slung Zach’s pack over his shoulder and kept her moving forward, creeping toward safety. Another shot fired, and it took her a moment to realize their opponent hadn’t moved in closer.
Zach the ex-cop. Only goddamned witch I know who’ll carry a gun.
Alec’s thought held as much relief as condemnation of the practice. At least Zach wasn’t bent on a suicide mission. Unable to help Zach, she focused on getting as far away from here as possible. Only Jaimis’s human thugs would carry guns, and the threat of being delivered wounded and powerless to the rogue witch turned her mouth dry and stole her breath.
When the next shot exploded through the quiet of the forest, pain rocketed through her as if she’d been hit herself. Her arm burned, raw and fierce, and her breath shuddered through her in staggered gasps. Zach!
Her silent cry exploded through her, followed fast by Alec’s. Think, bless it! There had to be something she could do to ‑‑
Sorren’s people. Some of them have to be closer than half a block from us by now. As soon as the car exploded, they’d have started looking for us. Find them! Alec’s desperation and near-panic hit her like a slap in the face.
As Alec steered them in the general direction of where they’d heard Zach go down, Sky hurried to keep up, ignoring the stabs of pain through her ankle and the ghost pain along her arm where her mind insisted she’d experienced a bullet wound, even though her eyes verified she was unharmed. The clean scent of pine and fresh earth seemed horribly out of place, coupled with so much hurt and fear.
That’s not the way my gift works. I can’t contact them if I’ve never met ‑‑
Laura! The witch healer who’d mended the gash on Alec’s face after she’d nearly brought the ceiling down on their heads in the cabin when she’d wielded her damaged magic. Clinging to the hope that the redheaded woman had been guarding the house when the car exploded and that she’d be able to reach her, Sky lowered her shields and cast outward, seeking a familiar thought imprint.
With her psychic barriers down, Zach’s pain all but brought her to her knees. The dark, garbled thoughts of the man who’d shot him swirled through her head in a dizzying spiral. Blackness started to crowd around the edges of her vision, but Zach only had one chance, and she’d be damned if she’d waste it. Trying again, she called out for Laura, a witch she hadn’t spent more than fifteen minutes with, and that in the midst of a frantic escape.
This time, she picked up the thoughts of the dark lord stalking them, who was strangely panicked that one of Jaimis’s human paramilitary types had also found them. Fear raged through the dark lord at what Jaimis would do if he learned she’d defied his orders. The woman’s terror rocked Sky loose from her moorings. Sucked into the dark lord’s psychic world, Skyler tried to make sense of the fact that the woman had been trying to scare them off with the explosion, equally determined that they give up their search for the rogue witch, and that Jaimis not get his hands on them.
Focusing harder, Sky blocked out the chaos of the dark lord’s mind and cried out for Laura, over and over, letting the call ring with her fear. When she felt the brush of the witch healer’s thoughts, she flashed an image of their location. Staying low to keep out of the line of fire and still wrapped in Alec’s concealing spell, they finally reached Zach. Alec’s shadowy cloak closed around the fallen witch until he was enveloped in silver mist, hidden from view.
Bless it, which direction had the shots come from? She dropped her shields again, fighting nausea as the psychic babble threatened to knock her senseless. Sorting out the threads, she located the thoughts of the shooter, and then pulled her shields tight around her.
East of us ‑‑ he’s shooting from a tree.
At least he’d have to scramble down before he gave chase, and with Alec’s concealing spell, they had half a chance. Zach groaned softly as Alec tore off a strip off his shirt and bound it over the wound. Power rippled around them as Alec drew strength from the energy and half dragged Zach to his feet. As adrenaline hammered through her system, the three of them made painful progress toward the west, away from the shooter.
Back near the road. There’s a hollowed out spot in the rocky hillside, almost a cave.
Sky nodded her understanding. Enough shelter to tend Zach’s wounds until Laura found them, and hopefully enough to keep them hidden from dark lord and human alike. The scent of pine mixed with the coppery smell of blood, and she tried not to speculate on the seriousness of Zach’s injuries. She didn’t feel his pain anymore, and her relief that he wasn’t suffering mingled with fear that he might be going into shock. How he managed to stay on his feet, leaning heavily against Alec, she had no idea. Now that Alec was supporting Zach, she had a hell of a time limping along with her sprained ankle.
By the time they reached the carved out indent in the hill, more of a mess of crumbled earth and rocks than an actual cave, her ankle felt like someone had dipped it in molten lead. And yet Zach, his arm coated with blood from shoulder to wrist, didn’t seem to be feeling much of anything. Not a good sign. Working with Alec to make the injured witch comfortable, she pulled a blanket out of her pack and spread it over Zach.
Alec gave her a look. He’s going into shock.
Laura! She cast outward again, carefully picturing their hiding place once she latched on to the healer’s thoughts. As soon as she’d passed on the information, she slammed down her shields against the dark lord’s agitated thoughts and the frantic ramblings of Jaimis’s human thugs. As Alec tore open the first aid kit, Zach closed his eyes, and his head dropped to the side. He’d surrendered to unconsciousness.
For all she’d never been a spiritual sort of witch, she reached out to every goddess and god who might be in psychic shouting distance of these cursed woods. Please! Words of invocation and ritual escaped her, boiling down to that desperate plea. Zach’s face looked ashy yellow, and sweat coated his body.
Please! Hear me!
Chapter Five
Sky paced the length of the main room in the hunters’ cabin, then paced back to the couch where Zach lay, pale and unresponsive in the late afternoon light. Every time she tried to swallow, her tongue seemed to get in the way, and her throat felt like dry leather. Her ankle, however, felt better than ever after a dose of Laura’s healing power.
“Sit!” Alec grabbed her hand and pulled her down beside him on the braided rug. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to shout. It’s just…”
“Look…” Laura put aside a bag of herbs and glared at Alec, then Sky. Standing there with her jeans and blue cotton blouse stained with Zach’s blood, tendrils of red hair plastered to her sweaty cheeks, she looked about ready to pitch a supernatural temper tantrum. “I’ve told you, Zach’s going to be fine. He
needs to sleep, twelve hours minimum, maybe more. You remember that from when you were injured, don’t you?”
Low blow. But then, they weren’t exactly making Laura’s job easier with their pacing, worrying, and bickering. “Sure, they told me I slept a few days after Jaimis…” Bless it, any attempt to nonchalantly let the words roll off her tongue vanished when she looked down at Zach’s bloody clothes.
Alec rested his hand on Sky’s shoulder and fixed Laura with a glare. His power rose to the surface in an ominous warning. “You think we could lay off the painful questions?”
“Not a problem.” Laura glared right back at him. “As long as you can show some trust and stop disrupting what I need to do here. Zach’s arm is going to need my attention for the next several hours. I give you my word, I can heal him, but negative energy disturbs my focus and therefore limits my healing power.”
Sky stood and grabbed Alec’s hand, and he moved with her to the ratty armchairs near the hearth. Despite the daring rescue she’d managed, Laura didn’t make her list of favorite people. Not by a long shot. In-your-face didn’t even begin to describe the healer’s attitude. But she’d pulled them out of an impossible spot, and if Zach’s well-being depended on kowtowing to an arrogant witch healer, then so be it.
“Let us know if you need us to help with anything ‑‑ cleaning him up, fresh bandages, boiling herbs…” Alec’s voice trailed off, but it seemed he’d reached the same conclusion about tiptoeing around Laura for Zach’s sake.
“Cleaning him up right now would only disturb him. I’ve got the wound clean. The rest will have to wait until he wakes.”
Sky exchanged a look with Alec as Laura went back to tending Zach’s torn skin and muscle. You don’t like her either.
Frowning, Alec picked a thread from the faded brown armchair and twirled it between his fingers. More like don’t trust her.