by Holley Trent
“Just give me something to do and I’ll do it,” Miles said quietly. She shifted finally-sleeping Nick to her other shoulder. He’d cried for an hour straight, and not even Mom could calm him. It was obvious who he wanted, and she wasn’t there. “I don’t know why this crap always happens to her. Just unlucky, I guess. Tides need to change in her life.”
Mason had been trying to make that happen for days—since he’d plucked her out of the campground.
“Where might Edgar have gotten access to something that could knock a grown woman out in ten seconds?” Hannah asked. “I saw him grab her, and I saw him push something against her thigh. Had to have been a syringe.”
“His daddy is a large animal vet,” Hank said. “I get the sneaking suspicion that whatever he had in that syringe was meant for one of us. Ellery was just convenient. He probably had more of it, too.”
She let out a long breath. “Give me a phone, and I can call a doctor I know who might be able to make some guesses about when whatever drug it was would wear off. If she’s not being continuously dosed—”
“There might be a window of time where she’s lucid,” Agatha finished. “I may be able to get in touch with her if she’s near an open window or something.”
Mason handed Hannah his phone.
He didn’t care who she called, really. She could call the National Guard on him and his brothers as long as she did it after she called her doctor friend—as long as she put Ellery first.
Mom jiggled her keys and tipped her chin at John. “Why don’t you come with me? I need to go see a certain vet and ask him if he’s been keeping good track of his drugs.”
“He frightens you?” John asked.
“No. I don’t trust his wife. If she thinks one of her boys has gotten into trouble, she’ll do her damnedest to cover it up. Want you to keep an eye on her while I shake down the vet.”
“Got it.”
“And I’ll just … ” Mason fiddled the hem of his shirt and scanned who was left in the room.
Miles handed Nick over to him. “Why don’t you let us worry about Ellery? You worry about your Cougar problem.”
“She’s part of the Cougar problem.”
“Right. I understand.” She squeezed her eyes shut and gave her head a slight shake. “Or at least I think I do. I haven’t gotten out much in the past week, but I’ve picked up a few things here and there.”
When she opened her eyes again, she furrowed her brow, her expression set with contemplation. “You know, there’s this doctor in the emergency room Ellery always talks about. She thinks he fancies himself Superman. He tries to be everywhere at once and be the savior in every case, even when other people are perfectly equipped to take on some of the work. He’s good at his job. Kind, eager, energetic. But, every so often, he burns out spectacularly and we don’t see him for a few weeks. Always right beforehand, he gets sloppy. Misdiagnoses easy things. Naps too much on the job. He’s excellent, but inconsistent.”
Mason was certain she had a point in there somewhere, but he was having a hard time grasping it.
“You have all the tools you need to be Superman, if you want,” she said. “Your Kryptonite is that you don’t let the people who can handle the small stuff do their jobs. Your job is being alpha and daddy to that little boy. Go do that. Let us deal with the rest.”
He sighed. “I don’t like the idea that Ellery is lumped in with the rest. She’s one of my topmost priorities.”
“Good. I’m happy. Really, I am. She needs that. But Ellery has taken care of herself for a long time. She can do so for a little while longer while you get your mess together. You wouldn’t want her if she didn’t have a little fight in her, would you?”
He had to admit that he wouldn’t. She’d never be the kind of woman who’d sit still and wait on him if she thought she could do something herself. She was take-charge.
Alpha’s girl, like his mother had been.
He just hoped she knew that, wherever she was. Hoped she didn’t give up.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ellery came to in pitch darkness.
She was cold. Her thigh throbbed from where it’d been pricked, and her entire body tingled with retreating numbness.
She rolled her head to the side and put her cheek to what felt like a cement floor.
Water dripped percussively somewhere in the room.
A broken pipe?
Thump. Thu-thump.
No. Hollow thuds. Water on metal. A sink, perhaps.
She was so thirsty. Her tongue was dry and cottony, and so thick. She could hardly swallow.
Groaning softly, she pushed herself upright and laid her head left, then right, to loosen the kinks.
What had happened? Everything had happened so fast.
She’d seen Mason fighting, and a demon, and …
“Millie?” she whispered. Had Millie been taken, too?
Thump. Thu-thump.
“Are you here, Millie?”
No response. No Millie.
She stood, slowly, to allow her circulation to improve in her addled brain.
So dark. So thirsty.
Holding her hands in front of her, she shuffled blindly toward the source of the drips.
One step. Two. Ten little steps until her thighs bumped the cold, hard edge.
She patted around the rim until she found the handles, then nudged on the cold water. She put her mouth right below the tap and drank her fill of the stale stuff.
Ugh. Should have let it run.
Hard water. Tasted like the water at Mason’s, so she was probably still in the area.
She shut off the water, dried her hands on her sweatpants, and revolved, systematically scanning the pitch-black room for even pinpricks of light. There were none.
She’d have to use her hands to see. If there were water in the place, that meant it was intended for human habitation. That meant there had to be an air source, too. And that air source could be a way out.
She eased to the closest wall and pressed her palms to it. Cold and rough, just like the floor. More cement? Perhaps she was in a basement or garage.
She patted her way around and tried to make sense of the things she felt. A bookcase; that was easy. That lower thing that she bumped her hip against had to be a desk. She paused when she reached a column. She felt up and down it, and stopped when her knuckles brushed over something soft. She pressed at the forgiving thing. It bounced back, having the resistance of tight springs. She pressed again, this time with both hands, and scoffed softly at the realization.
It was a mattress. She patted up higher. No, two mattresses. Bunk beds.
Curious.
And around she went. No light switches. No windows. No doors, that she could find.
She clasped her fingers around something hard and round, no thicker than a man’s thumb, but rigid. She skimmed her fingers down it, stopping when a rung stopped her passage. Then across to another vertical bar.
She patted up and then down to be sure.
It was a ladder.
She looked up at the ceiling then bent down to the floor to pat it just to be sure.
No, the floor was smooth. The ladder was bolted to it, and didn’t lead to a level farther down. If she wanted out, she needed to go up. She didn’t know what she’d find up there, but she couldn’t stay.
She’d spent too much of her life being indecisive and letting things happen to her. No more waiting around. She may not have had a lot of power on her own, but she had heart and she was going to use it. After all, she needed to tell that goofy Cougar some very important things. And Nick was probably overdue for a diaper change and needed to eat something. And that damned Darnell … she needed to make sure he hadn’t been licking himself again.
She chuckled dryly as she tucked her foot onto a low rung. To think that a week ago, she’d been looking for a ticket back to North Carolina, and now she was seriously chagrined at the thought of going back—at having to leave long enough to take care of bu
siness.
With each bit of altitude, she paused to tug on the rung above to ensure it could hold her weight. They were probably sturdy enough. Someone had gotten her down into the dark pit using it, so it had to be more or less reliable.
Her fingers slapped against the ceiling, and suddenly vertigo set in.
She clung tightly to the rungs and closed her eyes against the swirling sensation. She wasn’t that high up. Maybe nine or ten feet. She was an air witch, so she’d certainly survive the fall.
“That’s right,” she whispered. “I’m a witch whose power comes from air.” She’d been so used to not drawing on her power that using it still wasn’t automatic. “I won’t fall.”
She loosed one hand from the rungs and patted overhead until she found something that felt like a latch. Briefly, she thought of letting it be. She’d seen way too many Star Trek episodes where the intrepid crews of the various USS Enterprises opened Jeffries Tube hatches only to find themselves in the middle of a phaser fight. She had no phaser. She didn’t even have her freakin’ athame or so much as a plastic spork, and she was getting more than a little pissed at people taking her shit. It was like the nurses at work who borrowed her stethoscope and never brought it back.
She yanked the latch.
Why did she always have to track down her stuff? Why couldn’t people just return them like they were supposed to?
The latch gave way with a clunk, and after moment of electronic whirring, a sliver of light appeared at the lip.
She gave the hatch a little push, and it swung up like a hydraulic trunk door. She listened.
No footsteps. No yelling. No phaser fire, of course.
Just the low rumble of music muffled by headphones and some dipshit singing along to what sounded a hell of a lot like one of those cornrows-wearing white rappers, and the scent of old food. Chicken fried rice, if her nose was any good.
She poked her head up.
Dirty blond hair. Bobbing head bent over a small table. Narrow back. Had to be a teenager. The pattern of his polo shirt seemed familiar, but she couldn’t put a finger on how. She climbed out, already pulling static from the air into her hands, and took a moment to glance around the small room while his back was still turned. It was barely larger than her grandmother’s potting shed. Just enough space for the hatch, a door, a window, and that table.
She walked to it, cracking her knuckles and grinding her teeth.
That shirt was part of the grocery store uniform. Millie had one, and so had that stock clerk—the one Mason had tried to avoid a conversation with. Had he thought something like this could happen?
When her shadow darkened the screen of Ralphie’s phone, he whipped around. “You should be—”
“Nope. I shouldn’t be. I’m sick of people telling me what I should be doing. I get to decide.”
He started to stand, so she zapped him. Just a little zap, really. He was only a kid.
That probably explained why he wet his pants. Being a nurse, she wasn’t squeamish at all about searching them. Good thing, because the little turd pile had filched her dagger.
• • •
As Ellery took off across the landmark-free desert, she gripped her athame’s hilt tight and cursed herself. She’d taken a couple of ROTC courses early in college thinking she’d enlist after graduation as an officer and let the armed services pay for her master’s degree. One of those courses was about orienting and reconnoitering. If she’d been less distracted by the sergeant’s high and tight—
Well.
If she’d been less distracted all around, she might have had some freakin’ idea of how to navigate toward safety.
Ralphie had apparently been dropped off and had no vehicle for her to steal, and she didn’t want to be anywhere near Cougar sniffing distance by the time someone came to relieve him of babysitting duty.
She stopped.
Damn. Maybe she shouldn’t have left him. Mason might want to hold him for leverage.
“Just a kid, Ellery. He’s just a kid.”
She started running again, wishing she hadn’t dropped out of that couch-to-5k program four days in. She’d be lucky if she’d make it a quarter mile without keeling over.
“Can you hear me, Agatha?” She didn’t bother whispering, but she sure as shit didn’t yell it, either. She could no longer see the shack behind her when she turned, but she was still close enough that a Cougar could probably catch up if he caught her scent or direction. She tried to tread on patches of green instead of on the naked soil, but she might run out of that soon.
She stopped again.
She should leave a mark of some kind so Mason and the others could find the place later. Who would have thought to look for a fall-out shelter in the middle of the freaking desert? There probably wouldn’t even be a record of it in the county offices. Just the land itself.
Nah. She ran. Any mark she left would be traceable not just by the good Cougars, but by the shady ones, too.
“Agatha?” she repeated. She used her dagger to focus her power behind her and kicked up a little wind to disperse her scent.
“There you are! Where are you? Are you all right? Put out a little juice so I can find you.”
“I don’t know where I am,” Ellery panted. “I woke up fifteen minutes ago, found myself in the dark … ”
She could either run or talk—not both at the same time. She slowed to a granny jog.
“In the dark and underground. I think it was a bomb shelter of some sort. I literally shocked the piss out of Ralphie Sheehan and left him at the entrance after stealing back my dagger. Right now, I’m trying to put some distance between me and him in case someone decides to join him soon.”
“You can blame his brother for this. Can you put off a little power so I can home in on you?”
“I’ll try, but I’m so … ” She stopped and bent, catching her breath. “Tired. Tranquilizer hasn’t completely worn off and my power is a little scattered right now. How … how is Mason? Is he okay? I … saw the fight.”
“He’s fine. Angry.”
So dizzy. Her pulse pounded in her ears, and her uneven breaths seemed to reverberate in her skull in chorus. She slowed her breathing more, but the echo remained.
No, echoes. More than one. Different rates. Not in her head.
Shit.
She stood, slowly, and turned, already pulling in all the wild magic she could grab to cast it back out.
She expected to see a cougar there, but the shape wasn’t right. More canine. Not the wolves she’d become familiar with back in North Carolina. Smaller. No less dangerous.
Coyotes.
Two of them.
The one on the right bared its teeth at her. The other took a tentative step forward, growling.
“Fuck.” She held her dagger in a stabbing grip and put up her free hand to motion for them to stay back.
“Goddammit.” She took a few slow steps backward. “I’m just a nurse with a cat. I like simple things. Cheap chocolate. Fresh coffee in the afternoon. Brand new hair elastics before they get stretched to death. This has to be my payback for the sin of envy. Yep. I envied Gail for her life, and look what it got me.”
She pushed out a blast of air that knocked the two encroachers back a few yards. Had she been back in humid North Carolina, that same magic would have buffeted the two canines with shards of ice. She’d have to adapt to the desert. Use it. Use … the soil.
She decided the next time she pushed air at them, she would wrap some of the desert dirt up in it. It’d sting their eyes and fill their noses. It’d give her some space.
“I’m not in the mood, y’all. I swear, I’m not.” She kept moving backward, pushing up more silt as she went until there was so much sediment in the air, she couldn’t see them. She turned and ran. “Any time now, Agatha.”
God, she was going to need to do cardio a little more often. That’s what she got for playacting when she went to the gym with Miles. The elliptical machine did great things for
her ass, but not as much for her stamina.
“Give me a little more,” Agatha said. “I can feel you in general terms, but the search radius is still too large.”
The coyotes caught up to her. One nipped at her ankle, and she slowed enough to bring the hilt of her dagger down between its shoulder blades. “I’m not food!”
The other one arced around in front of her and looked to be preparing to pounce.
For once, Ellery didn’t think. Instinct took over. Her vertical leap was nothing like her sister’s, but it got her into the air above them and out of reach of their snapping maws.
“I don’t know how good a coyote’s memory is, but I suggest you take a good look at my face so that the next time you see it, you know what witch not to mess with. I’m usually a turn the other cheek kind of gal.” She pointed her athame in their direction and drew circles in the air, creating an imaginary perimeter around them. She traced it again and again until a column of quickly-spinning dirt pinned them in. She kept the circle going, adding more soil, nursing more wind into it.
“If you do me wrong,” she said, “I’mma let you get away with it once or twice. Might talk about you behind your back, though, because I’m Southern. But this is just too much, doggies. I don’t know if you know who my boyfriend is, but he’s the alpha Cougar around here.”
If that declaration impressed them, they didn’t show it. They were too busying trying to pass through her swirling dirt walls and getting knocked repeatedly back on their furry asses.
She put a few yards between her and the mini-cyclone to give her self some clean breathing air. Moving was a little easier when she didn’t think about it too much. It was as easy as floating in a big pool. No ripples. Just her.
“Y’all may think he’s passive, but I’m not so sweet. Nope. I’m pretty terrible when I get in my moods, and I’m more than happy to kick up a stink on his behalf. So, remember my face, ’kay? Tell your friends. Hell, go tell your alpha that he can fuck himself, too, ’cause I’m not going anywhere and I will make your lives miserable if you mess with my motherfucking happily-ever-after. I’ve got two goddesses on my side and assorted other weirdoes, too. Come at me.” She kicked up a little dirt in the middle of the circle just for pettiness.