Bone Dry: A Soul Shamans Novel (Volume 1) (5 page)

“No one walked up to the car to get in before it started. I wasn’t watching them, but I didn’t hear anyone, and I certainly didn’t hear any car doors open or close,” she said, keeping her voice low. “They’d been sitting there. When they saw us, that’s when they started the car. Now it’s slowly following us. And I swear I can feel their eyes on my back.”

“Good ears.” I felt like I should have put two and two together myself. I’d been too focused on the stupid carving in the floor that I hadn’t been paying attention to my surroundings.

I blinked. Carving. Strange people watching us. What if the person in the SUV was the shaman who had summoned the spirit?

“What should we do?” Laura hissed.

The car sprung to life, tires crunching on gravel as it peeled away from the curb.

My feet moved. Fast. No real thought behind it. Just the instinct to run. Laura was right beside me, our legs moving in sync.

The car screeched to a halt, and I heard car doors fly open.

“Stop!” a guy yelled, and I twisted my head to look over my shoulder.

As soon as I saw him, I felt the familiar tugging in my forehead just over my eyes. He was a shaman.

Young, tan, wearing some weird construction uniform and standing there with a huge ass gun trained on me and Laura. On the driver’s side of the car, another guy stood in the exact same pose.

That only made my legs move faster. Anyone who points a gun at me is someone I need to get the hell away from ASAP.

I grabbed Laura’s arm and pulled her into the bushes lining the edge of the street. We darted into Kylie’s next door neighbor’s yard.

Car doors slammed. A second later, I heard the pounding of feet on pavement.

We had some distance between us, but they’d be right behind us soon. And from the look of their muscles, they could probably run a hell of a lot faster than we could. Not to mention the whole gun thing.

I didn’t want to die today.

Suddenly, all the shaman magic that had sent tingles through my body felt zapped away from the intensity of my fear. It was like a crash, my head full of wasps and my body stiff and sore.

I swore under my breath and paused a beat to kick off the flip flops seriously slowing me down.

Laura grabbed me and propelled me forward. We flew through mulch, kicking flowers as our legs sliced through the air. My eyes watered, the wind rolling off the ocean stinging them. I had no idea where we were going. To Laura’s house? I was pretty sure letting these guys know where she lived wasn’t such a good idea.

We careened into the backyard. My chest blazed with my pounding heart. The salty taste of ocean air burned my lungs. I told my legs to move faster. I heard something crash behind us, but I didn’t turn around. All I could do was run.

We needed to lose them.

Why hadn’t they shot at us yet?

“Boat keys?” I huffed, glancing sideways at Laura. Her face was beet red, strands of her long hair plastered to her forehead.

“Not with me,” she said, fists pounding the air.

“Nathan,” I puffed back. “Go. To. Harbor.”

We raced into the next yard through a line of perfectly trimmed hedges. Sharp branches slashed my skin, but I barely felt them with the pounding in my head.

My back and neck seemed to burn in random spots. I could almost feel the bullets piercing my skin before a shot was even fired. I cringed at the slightest sound, expecting each time to be the one that meant a trigger had been pulled.

I shoved the branches out of my way and bee-lined for a house’s back porch. The platform came up to my waist, and I ducked under the wood, following Laura. My feet scraped dead leaves. The crumpling sounded like fireworks in the sudden quiet. Both of us stopped, standing frozen, breathing heavy.

I turned to look behind us. The shamans were racing into the backyard, glancing around. They didn’t see us. Yet.

Only two more houses to go, but the shamans were headed our way. They’d figure out fast where we’d gone.

We both moved slowly, weaving through the thick supporting beams. The guys didn’t hear us even though my heavy breathing was as loud as thunder to me.

When we got to the edge of the porch, Laura and I glanced at each other. For a moment, I wondered if this was the last time I’d see her. All the shamans had to do was shoot us in the back when we started running toward the fence separating this yard from the next.

Laura took a deep breath, turned and ran. I threw myself forward, hands reaching out for the fence only a few feet away.

“Stop! We know what you did in there!”

Blood rushed into my ears, and a cry of fear lodged in my throat.

Run, run, run!

Heavy pounding sounded behind me.

I cursed, reached up and grabbed the edge of the fence. The wood dug into my palms when I pulled myself up and over. I dropped down on the other side, and one of my toenails jammed into my toe. I swallowed my scream and kept going, Laura only two steps ahead. Twigs on the ground stung my bare feet, but I didn’t let it slow me down.

Just one more house.

I risked a glance behind me and saw a shaman pulling himself over the fence. He was staring right at me, his features curled up into an expression of murderous rage.

Holy shit!

We raced toward the road. The harbor was so close.

It was all I could focus on, my eyes blurring, my feet burning and my lungs aching inside.

Ahead of me, Laura threw herself up the stairs and down the wooden planks of the dock. I followed her, and two steps up, my foot caught on the edge. I stumbled, knees slamming into the boardwalk. Splinters of wood dug into my skin.

“You okay?” a guy’s voice asked, just as a firm hand grabbed my arm to help me up.

I stood and looked into Nathan’s wide eyes. Thank god he was working today.

“We need a boat, Nathan,” I said, jogging backward toward the lines of yachts and runabouts. “I don’t have time to explain. We just need to get out of here.”

He glanced over his shoulder and saw the two shamans hurtling toward us. Nodding once to me, he pointed at a tiny runabout at the end of the dock. “That one is mine. Go now.” His voice sounded alarmed, and his feet clapped on the boardwalk behind me.

I curved around the corner and rushed past two surprised-looking men—Mr. McLean and Mr. Sanders. They both docked their boats here, too. They said something to me, but my head was too full of static to hear.

I spotted Laura at the end of the dock. She was already inside the white runabout gripping the wheel. I leapt inside. I put my hands on my knees, leaning over and gulping air. I grabbed the side of the boat to steady myself and screamed when someone hurtled in next to me.

“Relax, it’s just me,” Nathan said, moving to the wheel. He turned the ignition, slammed the gas and backed the boat away from the boardwalk.

I glanced at the dock where Mr. McLean stood near the entrance with his arms crossed. One of the shamans was staring at us, but the other was shaking his head and backing away, and their guns were nowhere to be seen. I let out a sigh of relief. For whatever reason, they were turning away from the dock. They couldn’t catch up to us now.

I collapsed on the floor of the boat.

“Holly, what’s going on?” Nathan asked over the purr of the boat’s engine.

“Nothing is going on.” I leaned against the side and closed my eyes. “Everything’s fine.”

Somehow, I doubted he’d believe that. I didn’t even believe it myself.

CHAPTER 6

F
ifteen minutes later, we chugged through the waves just outside Seaport’s main harbor, the signature red barn casting eerie shadows on the boardwalk. Nathan slowed the runabout as we cruised by, and all three of us stared at the dozens of boats anchored in the calmer water.

“I don’t think we should dock here,” I said, hanging my hand over the side of the boat and feeling the cool spray of the water on my fingers. “Honestly, I don’t think they’ll be there, but just in case they’re trying to find us, this is where they’d go looking.”

“Who is ‘they’, Holly?” Nathan cranked the engine to pull away from the harbor. “What’s going on? Shouldn’t we call the police?”

Laura and I exchanged a look. The binding spell was wearing off, but I knew we were on the same wavelength anyway. Tell him as little as possible.

“Listen, Nathan.” Laura leaned back in the boat chair. “Thanks for leaving work to get us out of there, but everything is fine. We just had a little…argument with those two. No need to call the police.”

“They had guns,” he said. The wind ruffled his wavy brown hair as he stared hard at the shore. “I saw them before they put them away, right when you fell.”

I opened my mouth and closed it. I could see we weren’t going to get away with not telling him anything.

“Alright,” I said. “But don’t tell anyone else, okay?”

He looked back and forth from me to Laura before nodding his head. But he didn’t look very happy about it.

“Those two guys are like me,” I told him. “People who can interact with spirits. Laura and I kind of pissed them off.”

“Pissed them off enough to want to shoot you?” He held the wheel and looked over his shoulder at me, skepticism clearly displayed on his face.

“I don’t think they were really going to shoot us,” Laura said.

“They were probably just trying to scare us. And it worked,” I said. “But who knows, maybe they just wanted to talk or something.”

Nathan raised his eyebrows. “Talk.”

“Once we saw the guns,” Laura said, “we were outta there.”

“What did you do to make two guys mad enough to chase you with guns?”

I narrowed my eyes. “I told you more than I wanted to. It’s spirit stuff. I don’t want to go into the details.”

“This sounds nothing like the spirit stuff you helped me with.”

“Right.” I turned away to stare out at the deep blue ocean touching the edge of the pink sky. His spirit hadn’t been summoned. It was just a regular attack, some spirit who had wandered in from Lower World on the scent of fear. “You thought you were being haunted, and I did a quick spell to get rid of your problem. Not all spirit stuff is that simple. Some of it is more complicated.”

“Thought?” He frowned. “Just be careful, okay? This complicated spirit stuff seems really dangerous.”

“Nathan, it’s none of your business,” I said, snapping my gaze back to him. I hated being rude, but I also really hated when people stuck their noses in where they didn’t belong.

His eyes showed hints of sadness before he turned away, clenching his jaw. “No, I guess it isn’t.”

My head dropped into my hands, and I wished I could take back my words. He’d helped us, and this was my response?

A few minutes later, Nathan powered the boat into a smaller harbor. We shut it off, tied it up and hopped out onto the deserted boardwalk. The wooden planks creaked as we walked toward the gravel parking lot.

“So, now what?” Laura stuffed her hands into her pockets. “It’s a little far to walk.”

“Let me make a call,” Nathan said, swiping his phone. Laura and I stood there silent while he spoke low to someone on the other end. I think we were both still kind of shell-shocked.

“Parker is on the way,” Nathan said when he pocketed his cell.

“Parker?” I asked.

“Yeah, Parker Sanderson,” he said. “He moved here a couple of years ago.”

“Oh, that’s right,” I said, remembering who he was. A preppy guy like Nathan. Being so focused on my mom, I hadn’t been keeping up with real life. Plus, I’d never really hung out with that crowd. Laura lived in their neighborhood, but she’d never fallen in with them either.

I glanced down at my watch and cringed at the time. I was way late getting home. Mom was there alone and waiting, maybe even worried about me. I hadn’t been late for dinner in a long time. Ever since the attack.

“I wasn’t trying to pry, you know,” Nathan said. He was doing a clenching and unclenching thing with his jaw, making the angles of his face stand out. The wind had battered his hair, leaving a couple of strands falling into his eyes. I had the sudden urge to brush them off his eyelashes, but instead, I cleared my throat and stared down at my bare feet.

“It’s okay. Thanks for what you did. I’m sure all of this seems a little crazy.”

“A little bit, yeah. Of course, not much crazier than that time you fainted in my bedroom. That was pretty wild.”

I snorted. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”

“It’s not every day a girl just falls into my arms,” he said, elbowing me in the side. “So, will you tell me what’s going on?”

I rolled my eyes. “Won’t give up, will you?”

“Listen,” he said. “I’m just worried, that’s all. Guys chasing you with guns isn’t anything to joke around about. I don’t want you guys to get hurt. If there’s anything I can do to help you with this…Don’t forget my offer to be your sidekick.”

A smile tickled the corners of my mouth. “I appreciate the concern, but I can handle it,” I said, even though I didn’t really believe that myself.

“I still owe you from when you helped me out before,” he said. “With the spirits.”

“Yeah, and you paid. We’re even.”