Heat of the Moment (32 page)

“If Roland could return, he would have. That he needs help—your help—means you have the power, not him.”

He blinked. Maybe I shouldn't have told him that.

“I still have to raise him,” Jeremy said. “He insists.”

“You should probably talk to someone about that voice in your head.”

Jeremy reached into his pocket, took out his keys, popped the trunk. Then he reached inside and withdrew a two-sided knife, the blade a distinctive S shape. I'd never seen it before, yet still I knew it.

The athame of Roland McHugh

“I wonder if I can brand you with this.” He frowned at the head of a snarling wolf carved into the handle. “It'll have to do. You took my ring.”

He backhanded me with no more emotion than swatting a fly. My cheek seemed to explode. I bit my tongue and tasted blood.

I wished for Raye's abilities. Levitation and telekinesis—either one would be handy right now. Toss the knife over the cliff—oh, what the hell, let's just toss the knife
and
its holder too—or lift myself high enough to kick him in the face.

In the distance thunder stirred; the wind picked up, bringing with it the scent of rain. Strange. On the drive here there hadn't been a cloud in the sky.

“Where'd you get that?” I had to keep stalling.

“She gave it to me.” He pointed into the trunk.

A dead woman lay within. Her brown hair was wrapped around her neck a few times, but the ends brushed her breasts. Between them a stain the shade of mahogany bloomed on her once white shirt. She was a big girl. She barely fit inside.

I'd only seen her once before, and under vastly different circumstances—she'd been alive—yet still I knew her.

“Mistress June.”

“Now
I
have the most witch kills,” Jeremy said, and slammed the trunk.

 

Chapter 26

Raye appeared in the doorway of the motel. She frowned at the rifle in Owen's hand. “Where's Becca?”

Owen's gaze swept the cars in the lot, recognizing none of them. “I was hoping she was here.”

Worry cast over Raye's face, and she beckoned him inside. Everyone who'd been there earlier remained.

“No one's heard from her?” Owen asked.

“Not since she left with you,” Raye said.

“Her car's gone, and there wasn't any sign of a struggle.”

“You left her?”

Owen had no excuse. He just nodded.

Fury sparked in Raye's eyes. Her fingers twitched. Owen took a step back, even though he hadn't meant to. Bobby took Raye's hand. “Won't help.”

“I'll feel better.” Her gaze remained on Owen.

“We need him. Conscious.”

She gave a sharp nod. Owen had the feeling he'd just avoided grave bodily injury, and he'd have deserved it.

The fed took the rifle from Owen and set it in the corner of the room. Probably a good idea, though Owen missed the weight of it.

He needed to focus. Becca was gone. Pru was here. Why? His gaze went to the wolf, which stared at Raye as if she were trying to communicate through osmosis.

“I'm not the dog whisperer,” Raye muttered.

“Not a dog,” Bobby pointed out.

“Henry!” Raye shouted.

Everyone waited.

“Anything?” Bobby asked, and she shook her head.

“I could do a spell to bring him here,” she began, and Pru snarled. “Calm down. I won't.”

“Why not?” Owen demanded. “Wouldn't he know where Becca was, if she were in trouble?”

“He might,” Raye said. “Henry's attached to me because we share the ability to speak with ghosts. Pru's attached to Becca because of their shared affinity with animals.”

“Then why is she here when Becca isn't?”

“Pru's not a supernatural wolf.”

“She isn't a natural wolf either.”

Case in point. She was sitting in a motel room with five people and a dog.

“True,” Raye agreed. “But she can't morph in and out.”

“Like Henry.”

“Right.”

“Get him to morph in,” Owen ordered.

“Henry comes when I call if he can. If he doesn't that means he's involved elsewhere. For all I know he might be saving Becca's life. If I do a spell that drags him here then…” She spread her hands. “Bad things happen.”

“So we do nothing?”

The unnatural sensation of helplessness nagged at Owen. In Afghanistan he always knew what to do. He was the guy who did it. He saved lives. He had a plan. He was the man. Or at least Reggie was. Unfortunately, as talented as the dog was at finding people and things, he wasn't going to be able to find a Bronco the way he found an insurgent.

Pru got to her feet, her gaze on an empty corner. Reggie growled in that direction.

“Henry,” Raye said. “Thank God. We can't find Becca.”

She listened. Pru glanced over her shoulder, a worried expression in her green, human eyes.

“What is it?” Owen asked.

“He can't find her either. He was looking, trying, which was why he didn't come.”

“How can—”

Raye held up her hand, and Owen fell silent. “The only way to keep him from finding her would be to ward the place where she is.”

“Why would she do that?”

“She wouldn't,” Raye said. “She couldn't. Becca only discovered who she was yesterday.”

“It's not that hard to ward against ghosts,” Bobby said. “Rosemary does the trick just fine.”

Owen cast him a glance. How did he know that?

The man lifted his chin toward the invisible Henry. “There are some things a father shouldn't see.”

He had a point, and the idea that Becca's real father might have seen even more than her adopted—or whatever Dale was—father made Owen cringe.

“Rosemary,” Owen repeated. “Thanks.” He put buying some on his mental to-do list.

“Have you come to the dark side?” Cassandra asked. “You believe?”

Owen wasn't sure when, or how, or why that had happened—beyond Becca's needing him to—but …

“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

“If it weren't for the warding, I'd think Becca had gone on a call, visited a friend or family, or gone shopping,” Franklin said. “But for her location to be deliberately shielded, and not by her, indicates she's been taken.”

Owen's heart seemed to stop, then start again with a painful jolt.

“All right,” Raye said, but she wasn't talking to any of them, she was talking to Henry. She faced the room. “I need to scry for her location.”

“You know how?” Bobby asked.

“No.” Her gaze met Cassandra's. “But I bet you do.”

“Why would an FBI consultant know how to scry?” Owen asked. He wasn't even sure he knew what scrying was.

“Voodoo priestess,” Cassandra said.

“Excellent.” The more magic, the better. Anything to find, save, protect Becca.

Anything.

*   *   *

The storm was heating up. Wind, thunder, lightning. The lake roiled like a cauldron. Becca could smell distant rain.

Jeremy produced a few zip ties from his fancy pants. “Hands.”

“Fuck you.”

He sliced my wrist with the athame. The way the blood sprayed, he'd hit a vein. I slapped my free hand onto the wound. Sparks flew. I steeled myself against the sickening lurch in my stomach as flesh knit together. Jeremy wrapped the zip tie around my wrists and pulled.

He was damn quick for an asshole.

He grabbed the front of my shirt with one hand, then lifted the other in front of my face and opened his fist. Green flecks that smelled pleasantly of an herb I couldn't place sprinkled against my skin, catching in my bra, sifting across my stomach, and gathering where I'd tucked in my shirt.

“What the hell?” I asked, but he just smiled.

When he bent to bind my ankles, I kneed him in the chin. His teeth clicked together. As he fell backward, he stabbed the athame into my thigh. From the spread of the blood on my jeans, he'd nicked my femoral artery. He was so good at this I knew he'd done it before—many times.

I reached for the athame with bloody fingers. If I wanted to heal the wound the blade had to come out. The instant I touched the handle, lightning fell from the sky, so close every hair on my body seemed to sizzle.

Had I done that? I didn't think so. If I'd brought the lightning, I'd have brought it down on him.

Blood dripped off Jeremy's chin. He lurched to his feet, and I jabbed at him with the knife. He kicked it, and my hands were so slick, the weapon flew.

While he chased the thing, I ran, staggered, then slid in the blood spreading out from my feet like a pool. I wasn't thinking clearly, probably from blood loss. Running wasn't an option until I healed myself. If I didn't do it soon I might bleed out.

I slapped my palm over the wound, gritting my teeth as it came together with a sickening slurp.

Jeremy's arm went around my neck; the knife pricked my skin. “Try anything else and I'll slit your throat. I only need to sacrifice a witch. It doesn't have to be you.”

I stilled. He could keep cutting me; I could keep healing myself. But eventually I'd be too weak to move. I needed to quit while I still had enough blood left to fill my head so I could think. What else did Jeremy need to raise Roland?

Sacrifice of a witch by a
Venatores Mali
with the most kills. Chants of the worthy believers. Plural. Right now there was only him. Wasn't there something about the moon too? It was morning. Which meant I still had time.

He bound my arms to my sides with a bungee cord he'd pulled from somewhere then shoved me toward the cliff. I was half afraid he meant to throw me off. But a few feet from the drop he grabbed my collar. Was he afraid I'd jump?

I should have jumped! Except I wasn't ready to throw in the towel—or my life—quite yet.

“Lie on the stone.” He poked me with the athame. Blood trickled between my shoulder blades.

“What st—”

Then I saw it. Right at the edge of the world, camouflaged by the roiling pewter sky and long summer grass, lay a long, flat, smooth gray rock. A perfect natural altar.

He poked me again, and I did as I was told. Rain spat in my face as he looped a zip tie around my ankles and pulled. Then he stepped back, took out his cell phone, scowled.

“No service?” I murmured. Welcome to my world. “Bummer. How will you summon worthy believers?”

Jeremy's head lifted; his gaze turned toward the trees. Tires crunched on stone. Seconds later a Three Harbors PD cruiser appeared. Chief Deb climbed out.

I had no idea how she'd come to be here, but I was so glad she was. Jeremy was armed, but so was Deb, and as in every action movie from now until the end of the world—gun beat knife. All the time.

Then my gaze lit on Jeremy, and my hope wavered.

Why was he smiling?

*   *   *

Cassandra opened her bag and withdrew a chunk of black stone.

“What's that?” Owen asked.

“Black obsidian.” She took out a white candle.

“You carry around scrying materials?” the fed asked.

Owen was impressed Franklin knew what they were. It made him wonder what else the guy knew.

“Never can tell.”

“Tell what?” Owen wondered.

“Exactly.”

Cassandra moved to the table, set the stone in the center. The overhead lights sparked against the obsidian like stars. She flicked them off.

“Can't have anything reflected in the stone but what we want to see.” She motioned Raye into the chair on one side of the table then took the other. After setting the candle next to the stone, she lit it, then held out her hands. Raye took them.

“Close your eyes, and think of your sister. In a few minutes, we'll open our eyes, look into the stone's center.”

“And then?” Raye asked.

“Then we'll see what we'll see.”

“What about us?” Owen asked.

“Maybe you'll see too.”

Cassandra and Raye closed their eyes. Bobby, Franklin, and Owen stood in a semicircle around the table, no doubt feeling as foolish as they appeared.

Owen closed his eyes and thought of Becca. Couldn't hurt. Unfortunately all he saw was the inside of his eyelids.

Raye gasped, and Owen's eyes snapped open. In the depths of the obsidian, smoke swirled. He leaned in. The mist cleared, leaving behind nothing but a blank, black stone.

“What did you see?” Cassandra asked.

“Nothing.” Raye lifted her gaze. “But I did hear wolves.”

“Really?”

“Didn't you?”

Cassandra shook her head, then chewed her lip.

Owen released his pent-up breath in a rush. “What are we going to do now? Henry can't find her. You couldn't see anything.”

Cassandra held up a hand. “I didn't say that
I
didn't see anything.”

“You did?”

She nodded.

“Where is she? How is she?”

“I didn't see Becca. But I did see a long, flat, raised stone.”

“A natural altar.” Raye had gone pale. “The perfect place for a sacrifice.”

*   *   *

Deb started in our direction. “What's going on?”

“He—” I began.

Jeremy cut me. High up between my neck and collarbone—not an artery, not yet—but with my hands bound together and my arms tied down, I couldn't heal the gash. Blood dripped onto the stone.

Chief Deb had her gun out, but she wasn't pointing it at Jeremy, she was pointing it at the trees, which were shaking with the force of the storm.

“Who's there?” she shouted.

I could have sworn I heard the distant howl of a wolf, and for a minute I feared Pru would leap out. Bound like this, I wouldn't be able to heal her if she were shot. But when the sound died, I dismissed it as the wail of the wind.

Then Owen's mother emerged from the forest. She raced at Chief Deb, arm raised. The watery, gray light of the cloud-covered sun revealed a knife—plain old butcher—but it would … butcher.