But she wasn’t so shortsighted that she couldn’t see this for what it was. It was an opportunity to run away. She may never know who or what had given her this moment by attacking Sam, but she wasn’t going to waste it.
With that in mind, Logan straightened, moved toward Dominic. “Let’s go!”
He looked up. His eyes were a little unfocused. He was still under the influence of whatever abuse Sam had put him through. “Logan?”
“Yes, Dom!” she looked behind her and then beyond them, trying with all of her might to pierce the darkness and see what lay around them. The train was never a really long one; it should be coming to an end any second now, and the two of them could get past the tracks and try to find the car. Maybe – hopefully – Sam hadn’t taken her far from it and Katelyn.
She looked back at Dominic. His normally strong form looked rather shaken. He was more pale than normal, and his green eyes had a bluish tint to them, like the color of a troubled sea. It occurred to her that he might be bleeding internally. Who knew what Sam had done to him? He might need to go back to the hospital.
But right now, they needed to run.
“We have to get out of here!” she told him, trying to be heard over the roar of the locomotive. “Right now!”
He seemed to digest what she said, and his beautiful eyes focused a little more. Finally, he nodded.
The last car of the train rumbled past, and a wall of quiet followed ominously after it. Logan didn’t hesitate. She broke into a run, knowing that Dominic would be right beside her. Together, they hopped the tracks and raced into the moonlit unknown.
After a few strides, Dom took point, leading her through the underbrush and hills much more efficiently than she could. Maybe it was a guy thing. Or maybe he’d done this before? Either way, she didn’t complain, since he was taking them further away from Sam with every running step, and for that she was grateful.
Eventually, a sound cut through the darkness, distant at first, but growing louder with each passing second. It was a horn.
This time it was a car horn. It was honking furiously.
Dominic seemed to hear it as well, because he steered them toward it, following as instinctively as she would have. The honking became more distinct, and it was clear that the person doing the honking was frantic.
“Katelyn!” Logan exclaimed as they cut through a final clearing to find headlights shining dimly up ahead.
“Logan!” Katelyn called back. “Logan! Where are you?”
Logan couldn’t see her yet. She didn’t bother replying; she just ran. The headlights of the Beetle weren’t very bright. They seemed to be facing the opposite direction. But they illuminated the grounds around them and were enough to guide her and Dominic.
At last, she could see the curves of the Volkswagen, and Katelyn could hear their footsteps. She turned to face them as they ran up to the car.
“Get in!” Dominic commanded. “And give me the keys!”
Katelyn didn’t hesitate. She tossed the car key to Dominic, he caught it in mid-air, and the two girls piled as quickly into the car as they could manage.
Logan cursed herself for not keeping her own vehicle gassed up. The Beetle only had front doors, and it was a tight squeeze getting one person into the backseat in a hurry. Logan ducked low and slid into the back, pulling the passenger seat back so Katelyn could get in next.
No one said anything in their rush; the frantic timeliness of the moment was all too apparent. They were escaping. That was decidedly clear.
Dominic had no sooner slammed his door shut than started the car and was pulling it out of the clearing in a spray of gravel and dust. The headlights illuminated the road Logan and Katelyn had left earlier. Dom straightened the car out, took the bump as quickly as the Volkswagen could manage, and steered them back down the road toward town.
“Where did you go?” Katelyn asked, turning in her seat to glare at Logan over the head rest. “You just freaking vanished on me!”
“Sam teleported me or something!” Logan replied.
“Son of a bitch,” Dominic spat.
Katelyn’s glare became a wide-eyed look of astonishment. She turned back around in her seat and slid into it. “Crap,” she muttered. “If he can do that, what the hell else can he do?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
There was nothing to see beyond the glass of the back window. No matter how Logan strained, her vision couldn’t pierce the darkness and dust they were leaving in their wake. She kept thinking about her unseen savior, the man who had taken Sam down long enough to allow her and Dominic time to get away. It couldn’t have been Mr. Lehrer. If it was, then where was Meagan? And Lehrer was human, anyway. Sam could definitely hold his own against a mortal.
Logan finally gave up and turned around to face the front again. Dominic sat behind the steering wheel, silent and staring straight ahead. Beside him in the passenger seat, Katelyn glanced furtively at them both, but kept quiet.
“Where are we going?” Logan asked.
Dominic didn’t answer at first. She wondered if he hadn’t heard her, but then he licked his lips, and said, “I don’t’ know.” He hesitated. “Sam said something about not being able to touch you because of a spell Meagan and Mr. Lehrer cast for you.” He turned and settled his green-blue eyes on her. It really was strange how they’d changed a little. “Do you know what he was talking about?”
Logan frowned. “No.” She shook her head. Something nasty occurred to her. “Is that why he….” Beat you up? She thought. Was Sam trying to get an answer out of Dominic that Dom just didn’t have?
Dominic held her gaze for a second more and then returned his attention to the road. But the look had been hard enough that it cut right through her. Guilt pressed in on her chest and stung the backs of her eyes. She felt a weight over her cheekbones, that strange, heavy feeling one got just before they had to cry. She clenched her teeth together and took a deep breath in through her nose.
Concentrate. What spell was Sam referring to? What spell?! He didn’t mention anything when I met him next to the tracks…..
And speaking of Lehrer and Meagan – where were they right now? She was positive that hadn’t been them back by the train, but she hadn’t been able to contact them, and neither had Katelyn.
“I think he might be talking about the protection spell Meagan and Mr. Lehrer were going to cast for you. They talked about it at the library tonight,” Katelyn said.
Dominic and Logan stared at her, Dom intermittently as he was driving.
She shrugged defensively. “That’s all I know, I swear.”
“Mr. Lehrer would know more,” Logan said. With that thought, she pulled the cell out of her pocket and dialed the number she’d already tried close to twenty times that night. She knew he wouldn’t answer; it was instinctive at this point, and in fact, this time it went straight to voicemail as if the phone were turned off altogether. Lehrer’s voice came on, prompting Logan to leave a message. But she didn’t bother. Instead, she hung up and re-pocketed the phone.
“I still can’t get through to them.” She had no idea what this spell was all about.
“Southbridge and the ravine,” Dominic said suddenly.
Logan blinked. “What?”
He ran a hand through his black hair before replacing it on the steering wheel. It seemed to be an act of frustration, as if he couldn’t quite remember everything clearly. She wondered whether he had a concussion. Probably. That’s usually what it takes to knock someone out.
He most likely shouldn’t have been driving, but he’d seemed fairly adamant about getting the keys from Katelyn. Maybe it was a guy thing.
“Sam mentioned something about the ravine,” he said.
“If he mentioned Southbridge then maybe he’s talking about the ravine south of town?” Katelyn suggested helpfully.
Dom nodded. “Yes. He said it didn’t matter if I wasn’t going to cooperate because the bottle had been tossed into the ravine near Southbridge and o
nce he had it,” his gaze cut to Logan in the rearview mirror. “He would have you.”
Logan considered that, trying to dissect it in order to make sense of it. “Bottle?” she eventually asked, feeling stupid.
Dominic shook his head and exhaled. “I don’t know. Some bottle that Lehrer put a spell in.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and swallowed so hard, she could see his throat work from behind. “He wanted to know the components, the words to the spell. Something like that. And when I couldn’t tell him anything, he said it didn’t matter. He would get the bottle out of the ravine.”
There was a moment of silence in which they all undoubtedly tried to understand what Dom was talking about.
“Well, then we need to get it before he does,” Katelyn said.
A beat passed. Logan sat back and peered out the side window. She wasn’t so sure about that. She was having mixed feelings about all of this. No one could get through to Lehrer and Meagan. Were they alive? Alec was already dead. Who else had Sam hurt because of her? Who else had he harmed because she wouldn’t simply just give in and give the Lord of the Dead what he wanted? She felt she was pulling the entire world down into the darkness with her.
And Dom? He’d been dragged through the dirt, perhaps seriously injured, and he literally hadn’t even touched her since she’d awoken him on the tracks. He seemed distant. He was in pain no doubt, and that would account for some of it. But he was angry too. She could feel that particular emotion emanating off of someone a mile away. She was so accustomed to it, she could now tell not only when someone was feeling it, but who it was directed at.
Dom was angry with her.
He had every right to be. She’d gotten him beaten to a pulp and his best friend killed. Whatever he’d told her about sticking together and fighting this through side by side when they were alone in the high school hall the other day… that had been in another time, in another world. And feelings changed. Trauma did that to people.
She would know.
“The ravine is to the left of us,” Katelyn said, leaning forward to peer at street signs and gauge their location.
Without a word, Dominic took the next left and drove down the dark road toward whatever lay ahead.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Dietrich Lehrer had always been of the mind that magic was a lot more like the Force from Star Wars than it was like anything you would find in a store on Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter universe.
In reality, magic truly was a part of each living being. Some people were capable of harnessing this magic, and others, in fact most people, were not.
It was the way in which the magic was harnessed that became the deciding factor in a magic user’s supernatural makeup. For Logan Wright, magic was that which flowed through her fingertips and was formed on paper. She was a bard.
A bard’s power was muted in this world, but still held some sway. Well written letters and speeches had changed the course of history, and truly great authors had given children the will to learn to read.
Bards also held the power to create the very spells that witches and wizards cast. A spell written by a bard carried more inherent magic than one that didn’t. The October Ritual that Lehrer’s grove performed every year was one such example. The words to the spell had been written by a Keltic bard long, long ago.
Right now, Hell Hounds bore down on Lehrer and his young witch companion, and the lives of several non-magic-using innocents were at stake. It was going to take a lot of magic to get them out of this bind. A bard’s written words would have come in quite handy. But it was a luxury they didn’t possess.
“Put your hand on the ignition,” Dietrich instructed, glancing nervously out the window as another of the Hell Hounds rose onto his back legs to paw the rolled-up window. Something like oil and blood remained smeared on the glass as he slid away. His growl reverberated through the vehicle.
Meagan didn’t question Dietrich, and he was grateful for that. What he was about to do was absolutely insane. But it was the only thing he could think of. If it was going to take magic they didn’t have in order to get them out of this mess, then he needed to steal that magic from somewhere else. The dogs outside were constructed of magic – evil magic albeit, but magic all the same.
His plan was to harness that magic, start the car with it, and get them both the hell out of Dodge before a dozen innocent people came out on their front doorsteps and were ripped to shreds.
“Concentrate, Meagan,” he told her. “I want you to let what I give you flow through you and into the car. Just focus on starting the car. Got it?”
She nodded hurriedly, and he fisted the handle that would manually roll down the window. Every Jeep he’d ever been in had possessed old-school manual fixtures such as this one. It was irritating on a normal day, but in this case, it gave him more control over how fast he could roll the window up and down, and right now… that was a good thing.
One, two – three.
Dietrich worked himself up, took a deep breath and held it, and rolled down the window, letting in the night and fangs and the claws and death.
A furry, toothy maw nudged its way into the crack his window provided, and Dietrich didn’t bother rolling it down any further. He released the handle, the window pressed in on itself with the weight of the hound behind it, and Dietrich pressed his hand to the animal’s throat, squeezing as tightly as he could.
It was a near impossible hold. One always thinks that if a dog ever attacks them, they’ll just be able to reach up and grab its throat and squeeze until the animal suffocates or dies or at least lets go. But a dog’s neck is pure corded muscle, and it’s much, much stronger than a human grip. And these were magical dogs. That made it worse in spades.
Dietrich growled as the animal’s claws found purchase in his arm, digging deep furrows right through the material of his button-up shirt and suit coat and into his flesh. He felt muscle tear, so quick and deep, it was nearly painless. It was something he would feel later.
He tried not to think about it. He looked into the monster’s eyes, drawing its return gaze. The dog bared its teeth, growled like the abyssal creature it was, and smoke escaped its jaws to curl around them.
Dietrich focused on the glow of the iris, the smell of the sulfur, and the pulse of the beast’s magic as he used the animal’s sudden stillness to extract that magic from its very veins. The dog seemed to falter, its growl weakening. Dietrich’s grip tightened when he felt the first wave of unnatural power leave the dog’s body and enter his own.
The beast’s growl died and the dog whimpered, suddenly unsure. The smell of sulfur grew stronger. Something hit the windshield, no doubt a fellow Hell Hound come to help. Dietrich paid it no heed. Unless the glass around them should break, they would be safe.
A new sound joined the noises of the Hell Hounds’ siege. It was the Jeep’s engine, slowly turning over. Dietrich couldn’t spare Meagan a glance but the fact that the engine was coming alive told him she was holding her own and his plan was working.
Dietrich redoubled his efforts, wincing when the dog turned its head and sank his fangs into his left hand. Tendons slid to the side or popped, and his grip automatically loosened. But the pain was brief, drowned out by the adrenaline and magic coursing through his veins. Again – he would feel it later.
The Jeep’s engine roared to full life just as the first of the neighborhood doors popped open and a head peeked out. Dietrich could sense the sudden change in the dogs’ attention as some of them slid away from the car to glare at the newcomers.
“Move over!” he bellowed, releasing the Hell Hound he’d had a grip on and slamming the Jeep into reverse. His hand was slippery and the gear shift slid from his grip a few times, but Meagan’s fingers closed over his, held them in place, and together, they maneuvered the Jeep first back, then forward and down the street.
Large black blurs with red glowing eyes were highlighted briefly in the headlights and then knocked to the side with a sickening thump and
whine as the Hell Hounds tried to stop the Jeep and failed. As they were thrown to the shoulder of the road, they burst into flame and vanished, the magic that fueled their existences going out like extinguished candles.
Dietrich followed the lights of their eyes like targets, aiming the vehicle with cruel precision to take out as many hounds as he could. By the time the road was coming to an end, he’d run over what felt like a hundred animals. He could imagine what the front of the vehicle looked like; fur-spotted, covered in blood and other bodily substances.
He turned the Jeep sharply to the right at the next intersection and floored the gas pedal, leaving nothing but vanishing fires, curling smoke, and a handful of confused, sleepy people in their wake.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
London, England 1561
Hugh Draper barely listened to the man who stood at the open door of his cold, damp cell. He pretended to listen, nodded his head once in a while, and even turned to glance over his shoulder from time to time. But his attention was really focused on the task at hand.
The jailor behind him leaned against the stone wall, his once white sleeve long since stained by the muck and grime of the stone around him and of the sweat of long hours and poor hygiene. The jailor’s little daughter stood beside him – or rather, under him – her tiny hands wrapped around his thumb and curled into the skirt of her aproned dress.
Draper would occasionally turn and meet her questioning, slightly shiny gaze and give her a wink. She was a sweet child, all rags and coal rubbings and ratted hair atop perfect skin, rosy cheeks, and the possibility of youth. She was the jailor’s daughter. Her mother had died in childbirth and the jailor had no choice but to bring her here with him to the Tower. In ten years, she would no doubt be a harlot on the streets and in the cubbyholes of London’s rank and dank darkness.
The October Trilogy Complete Box Set Page 27