Laura Jo Phillips (37 page)

“Val, break off and join with the Lobos,” Garen said.  “Try to remove more air from the enclosure.  Trey and I will hold the shock barrier.”

Val did not waste time or energy discussing the plan.  He stepped back, removing his hand from Garen’s shoulder and immediately joined his magic with the Lobos.  He felt the weakening of the barrier at once, but ignored it as he focused on drawing all of the remaining air out of the enclosure through a small gap Garen opened for the purpose.  The gap had to be small to prevent fresh air from entering and making the situation even worse, but after a few minutes they all realized that it was working.  The flames were not flaring up again this time. 

Several minutes later the enclosure was a vacuum, with no air to allow a fire to reignite.  Val thanked the Lobos wearily, then rejoined Trey and Garen to help hold the barrier around the crash site.

“How much longer before we can let this go?” Trey asked.

“If we can cool the interior of the enclosure, not too long,” Garen said even as he worked to begin drawing the heat out of the enclosure.  Without air in the enclosure to conduct heat away, the wreckage would take weeks to cool without magic.  Wielding both air and fire at the same time was something he had never even attempted before, so it was clumsy for him at first.  Before long he understood how to make it work and, with an influx of power from Trey and Val he was soon drawing the heat out of the enclosure and away from the wreckage through the top of the barrier.

“Tiny!” Lariah gasped as she leapt to her feet.  Hurrying as fast as she could given the large swell of her pregnancy, she crossed the garden, threw open the gate and ran through it, Saige and Riata close on her heels.  All three women skidded to an abrupt stop at the sight of the three figures standing just outside the gate.  Two human men, and Darleen Flowers.

Before any of the women could react, one man shot Saige and the other shot Lariah with darts.  Both women immediately crumpled.  Riata stepped forward and caught Lariah as best she could, succeeding in lowering her to the ground safely so that she did not injure herself or her babies.  When she looked up, one of the men had reloaded his dart gun and shot her with it.  The world grew dark and she too crumpled over.

“Hurry up before someone else comes out,” Darleen snapped.

“What do we do with the Alverian?” one of the men asked as he bent down and lifted Lariah carelessly into his arms with a grunt. 

“We’ll have to take her,” Darleen decided.  “Otherwise she will call the Dracons before we are off the property.”

The first man reached Darleen’s red ground-car waiting at the side of the house and tossed Lariah into the open trunk before returning for Riata.  Moments later, all three of the unconscious women were in the trunk, and the men were in the back seat, hunched down below the windows to avoid being seen by any of the ranch hands. 

Darleen drove the ground-car towards the gate as quickly as she dared,  glancing nervously in the rear view mirror the entire time.  After spending three hours on ranch property, her ground-car parked in a small grove of trees in the middle of a cow-pasture, her nerves were stretched to the breaking point.  She had thought Lio’s call telling her the diversion was working would never come.  Once it did come, she very nearly changed her mind about the whole thing.  She had driven across the pasture and back to the gravel road, then stopped for several long moments trying to make up her mind whether to turn right and leave, or turn left toward the house.  In the end she turned toward the house, mostly because there was something about Lio that warned her quitting would be a bad mistake on her part. 

Now, she was terrified that the Lobos or the Dracons would appear before she was safely off of ranch property.  She did not want to think about what they would do to her for her part in this.  At the same time, she felt a thrill of satisfaction that both Saige and Lariah were going to get what they had coming to them for standing in her way.  She never gave Riata a second thought.

It was nearly an hour later before Suly stepped out onto the patio to clear the lunch table and noticed that the women were gone.  She frowned for a moment before deciding that they must have gone inside.  She loaded herself with dishes and turned, noticing as she did that the rear garden gate was standing wide open.  Her heart gave a small leap and she lowered the dishes back to the table with a clatter.

Hurrying off the patio and across the garden, she rushed through the gate and looked around, at first seeing nothing amiss.  A small movement caught her attention but at first she could not tell what she was looking at.  Another small movement and she was running as quickly as her plump legs could carry her across the thick grass, falling to her knees beside Tiny’s prone body.  She realized at once that the dog was breathing, and struggling to get up though he didn’t seem able to make himself do more than twitch at first.  She reached out to place a calming hand on him and felt a dart sticking out of his neck, camouflaged by the dog’s patterned fur.  She pulled the dart out and stared at it for a moment in confusion.

Suddenly she realized that if Tiny were lying here drugged, then Lariah must have been taken.  And since nobody else was around, Saige and Riata must have been taken as well.  She murmured softly to Tiny, apologizing for being forced to leave him lying there, but she had to get to the vox right away.

She stood up and ran as fast as she could back to the house.

Lariah was the first to awaken, her Jasani body throwing off the effects of the drug they had used almost at once.  It would not have worked on her at all if she had not been pregnant with triplets.  Because the babies did not have the same regeneration ability as their mother, Lariah’s body had worked to protect them first.

When she opened her eyes to darkness it took her a moment to sort out what had happened.  The ground-car trunk was not light-proof and she easily made out the unconscious forms of Saige and Riata sharing the small space with her.  She quietly tried to awaken the other two women, but gave up after a few minutes, realizing that the drug would have to wear off a bit first.

Lariah focused on relaxing her body and rolling with the bumps and jolts as the ground-car sped along the gravel road.  Obviously they were still on ranch property, she thought to herself.  She did not know how long she had been unconscious, so she had no way of estimating how much time it would be before they left the property.  She hoped that Suly would discover they were missing before long, and tears threatened as she thought of Tiny.  She closed her eyes and sent her mind reaching for him, relieved when she sensed he was alive, but unconscious. 

She did not know why Darleen was helping those men to abduct them, or why the men wanted them to begin with.  But she had been feeling edgy and nervous all morning, and now she thought perhaps this was why.  Before, when she had been in danger, she had experienced strange moments of deep fear with no reason that she could identify at the time.  Though she had not felt the same deep fear this time, she thought that what she had felt had been a warning.  A warning that she had, once again, ignored.

Well, she thought, no sense in beating herself up for it now.  If she had the opportunity to do it later, then she would.  For now, she had to think of a way out of the situation she, Saige and Riata were in. 

Realizing that she might not have any other choice, she reluctantly considered transforming into her dracon.  Shifting would be risky.  Her dracon had warned her that, as her pregnancy advanced and the babies grew larger, transforming could be harmful to them.  The babies were not shifters, as she was.  The change from human form to dracon form would not harm the babies directly since her body would automatically maintain the human environment in her womb that they needed, but it could cause premature labor.  The closer she got to delivery, the higher the risk became.  Also, delivering the babies while in her dracon form was absolutely not an option.  She wasn’t sure why, but she had been warned that such a thing could not happen without great risk to the babies.

On the other hand, if these people meant to seriously harm, or even kill her, then the risk was going to be necessary.  She hoped it would not come to that, but if it did, she would do what she had to.  In the meantime, she could only wait.  She certainly could not transform into her dracon while locked in the trunk with Riata and Saige.

Lariah wasn’t sure how much more time had passed when she heard a soft moan from Saige, but she was almost positive they were still on the ranch.  Which meant that less than an hour had passed since their abduction.  She shifted slightly so that she could whisper into her friend’s ear.

“We are in the trunk of Darleen’s ground-car and we are still on ranch property.”

“I can’t seem to move,” Saige said softly.  “Am I tied up or something?”

Lariah reached over and ran her hands down Saige’s arms to her wrists.  “No, it must be the drug they shot us with.  Hopefully it will wear off soon.”

Saige tried to make herself relax when she noticed the red tinge at the edge of her vision.  The disease was gone, but not the damage from previous seizures.  She could not afford to have a seizure now. 

She closed her eyes and sent a mental call to Faron, Ban and Dav, but got no response.  She hadn’t really expected to since they were so far away, but she had to try it. 

“Is Riata here?” she asked, remembering only that the Alverian had been with them when they ran through the gate.

“Yes, she’s on the other side of me,” Lariah replied.

“Too bad,” Saige said.  She’d hoped for a moment that Riata had been left behind and was even now calling for help.  She tried to force her limbs to move and was relieved when she was able to get a small response.  The drug was beginning to wear off.  She just wished she knew how much longer it would take, and how much time they had.

“Faron told me that you can shift,” Saige said. 

“Yes,” Lariah replied.  “I’ve thought of that.  There are a couple of problems though.  For one thing, my dracon is way too big for this trunk.  If I shifted, I would be able to easily burst through the metal and get out, but I would probably crush you and Riata at the same time.”

“Okay, I think I’ll vote no on that one,” Saige said.  “For now.  How about once they open the trunk?”

“Well, there could be a problem with that too because of the babies,” Lariah said.  “But, if that is what I have to do to save us, then I will.”

“No,” Saige said at once.  “You can’t risk the babies, Lariah.  We’ll think of something else.”

“I have no wish to risk my daughters Saige, but if it is that or death for all of us, then it is a risk I will have to take.”

“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Saige replied, feeling how weak the statement was.  The thought of Lariah’s daughters being harmed, or worse, made her feel sick.  She determined that she would do whatever she had to in order to prevent Lariah from having to take that risk.

Minutes later the ground-car slowed fractionally, and the bumpy ride smoothed all at once as they passed through the ranch’s main gate and onto paved road.  Saige tried again to move her limbs, with a little more success.  Not enough, she feared, unless they still had some distance to travel.

A soft moan from the other side of the small space told Saige that Riata was awakening.  The drug must have effected her system more than theirs as it had taken much longer for her to awaken.  Lariah shifted toward Riata and filled her in on their situation.

“Saige, can you move?” Riata asked her quietly.

“Not very much.”

“Lariah, stretch one of Saige’s hands over here, and one of mine to her so that I am touching her.”

Lariah complied, placing the two women’s hands together over her own body.  Saige felt Riata’s healing warmth seep into her hand and travel slowly through her body, much weaker than usual, and much slower, but it was working.  Just as Saige realized she had full command of her body once again, the ground-car slid to an abrupt stop.

They all felt the car shift as the passengers got out.  “Pretend you cannot move,” Riata said quickly just before the lock on the trunk turned and the lid popped open.

All three women looked up, squinting in the sudden light, to see the faces of the two men who had shot them with the darts.

“Should we trank them again?” one of the men asked Darleen, who stepped into their field of view.  Darleen smiled down at them, clearly enjoying the sight of the three women in her power.

“No,” Darleen said quickly.  “They are wanted alive and unharmed.  Except for the Alverian.  I don’t care what you do with her.”

Both of the men shrugged and reached into the trunk, one of them grabbing Saige, the other Lariah.  “Lay them down over there by that rock,” Darleen instructed.  “They won’t be able to move for another hour, so they shouldn’t give you any trouble.” 

Saige wondered at that.  If the drug was supposed to last another hour, why had it worn off so quickly?  She thought of the Heart Sight stone, and said a silent
thank you
to the Eternal Pack as she fought to keep her body limp and non-reactive.  But, if the Heart Sight stone had helped her to throw off the effects of the drug more quickly, then why had Riata recovered so fast? she wondered.

 Darleen smirked at Saige as the man carrying her dropped her roughly to the hard ground, next to where the other man had dropped Lariah.  Lariah grimaced in pain, but it passed quickly and Saige knew that whatever damage had been caused by the drop had already healed.  She only hoped that the babies were safe.