Stone Cold Lover (30 page)

Fil quickly discovered that keeping her balance while running through heavy woods with her hands tied behind her back should qualify as an Olympic sport; it was that difficult. Her shoulders jerked every time she swerved to avoid a tree trunk or jumped over a stone or root because she instinctively wanted to put out her hands to assist her movements. If she lived through this, she was going to need a massage in the worst way.

“She can’t get far. Split up and find her. We have a schedule to keep.”

She heard the Hierophant’s orders and could tell he sounded more annoyed at the bother of recapturing her than worried by her escape attempt. He knew as well as she did that there was nowhere for her to go.

Behind her, the
nocturnis
crashed through the brush like elephants. She began to alter her course based on the sounds around her, keeping the noises of pursuit behind her. She also tugged and twisted at the rope around her wrists, attempting to loosen the strands and work herself free. She could do a lot more to save herself if she weren’t tied up, and if she could manage to get out of the rope, it would be worth it to double back toward the beach where they’d landed. With her hands free, she could start the boat’s motor and get herself back across the river. For now, though, she just needed to concentrate on staying out of the bastards’ clutches.

Pulling and twisting against the rough hemp quickly began to rub her skin raw, but she thought she could feel a little more give in the bindings. Pausing to draw breath, she crouched down among the branches of a young evergreen and peered into the darkness. It didn’t take long to convince her that staying on the move was a better idea.

Hearing footsteps drawing closer, Fil quickly rose to her feet and took off again through the bushes. She heard cursing and knew her pursuer had gotten closer to her than she really wanted to think about. She’d have to be more careful, more on guard if she wanted to stay free long enough for Spar to reach her.

She wished she knew how long she’d been unconscious and how long it had taken to transport her unconscious body from her apartment to the island. Either that, or that she’d remained a Girl Scout beyond the first cookie drive. Didn’t they teach kids how to do stuff like tell the time by gauging the position of the stars in the sky? Or did that only work with the sun? Hm, she’d probably been right when she’d told Grandma that the Scouts weren’t for her. Clearly, she’d have made a lousy one.

At this point, all she could do was guess. Judging by how far north they had traveled on the river and the need to maintain discretion when transporting kidnap victims through the streets of a major city—or so she assumed, speaking as one herself—she thought it must be closing in on midnight. Did that mean ritual sacrifices didn’t have to be timed to specific points on the clock? So much for tradition and symbolism. Fil was learning something new every day.

Today, she’d like to learn how not to die. That would be great.

Fil wasn’t one to follow the phases of the moon, but she didn’t remember seeing one in the sky above the beach, and the thick, heavy quality of the darkness all around her indicated they were under a new moon at the moment. It would make hiding easier, but avoiding anyone sneaking up on her that much more difficult. Well, unless she dropped her shields and really looked.

Putting on a burst of speed, she did her best to widen the distance between herself and her pursuers before she paused again, this time leaning against the bole of a young maple tree. Closing her eyes for a moment, she took a centering breath and then opened them to take a new look around her. She couldn’t say she liked what she saw. Thin mists of blackish green and dirty red drifted through the trees, lending the woods an unnatural glow. Wherever the vapors touched, the trees and plants seemed to shudder and withdraw, bending as far away from the foul air as their roots would allow.

If just the remnants of evil could do that, Fil figured it explained the appearance of the trees she’d seen before. Closer to the ritual site, the power of the Order’s evil must act like poison to every living thing around. The thought stirred her anger. The forest hadn’t done anything to deserve this desecration, but then again, neither had any of the people the
nocturnis
had killed and dumped in the woods on the mountain. Neither had the villagers in Afghanistan, or Ricky, or Fil herself. She supposed that was the real definition of evil—the very lack of discrimination in what was venerated and what was destroyed.

A flicker of malignant light peeked through the trees to Fil’s right, and she darted left. She thought that way led toward the outer edge of the island, and she’d prefer not to be herded that way, figuring the cover would thin out beside the water, leaving her more exposed. She’d have to double back around to stay out of sight.

The sharp crack of a branch had her veering again, away from the source of the sound and back toward the deeper woods. She could feel blood beginning to trickle over her wrists beneath the rope that bound her and tugged harder; if she was lucky, maybe the stuff would act like a lubricant to help her slip free. She thought she was making progress when something grabbed her ponytail and jerked suddenly backward.

She flew off her feet and back onto her bound hands. The impact on the already sore joints and raw skin forced a strangled cry from her throat. She could feel dirt and bits of leaves sticking to the bloodied wounds she’d created during her struggles and wanted to laugh when she found herself hoping she lived long enough to develop an infection. Hello, hysteria.

“What an utter waste of time,” the Hierophant sneered, wrapping the length of her wet tail of hair around his hand and using the grip to haul her to her feet. “As you can see, you’ve accomplished nothing but to increase the pleasure I’m going to take in making you suffer before you die, bitch.”

“Bitch?” she bit out as he began dragging her back toward the center of the island. “I’m not the one resorting to hair pulling. Is this going to turn into a catfight? You’re not going to whip out some acrylic nails and try to scratch up my pretty face, are you?”

He ignored her—well, except for a particularly nasty tug that made her scalp scream along with her already aching head. The exertion of her run had not helped her concussion symptoms one little bit.

She had to walk bent over and twisted because of the grip he held on her ponytail, and she fought back new waves of nausea. She’d already seen that all barfing did was make her miserable. She doubted this guy would be as squeamish as barf boy if she puked on his robes, though if he didn’t lay off the hair pulling and head jerking, they were both going to find out.

He led her back toward the twisted dead and dying trees until the forest opened up into another clearing. The Order seemed to like these spots, although in contrast with the area in the park where they had disposed of their victims, this open area had clearly been stripped bare by men. Or at least at their direction. Whether they’d cleared the vegetation themselves or used magic or the labor of some kind of demonic minions, Fil didn’t care to speculate. All she knew was that as soon as they entered the clearing, the rich, fresh, earthy smell of the forest turned to a putrid stink, like death and rot and burning sulfur. It made her wonder if all those stories about hell being a pit of fire and brimstone might not be pretty damned accurate.

Several torches impaled in the earth illuminated the edges of the clearing, and a stone-lined pit contained a roaring bonfire near the center. For a moment, Fil blinked, blinded by the sudden change of light. Pain stabbed through her skull.

The ground here appeared as either bare, blackened earth or patches of some kind of lichen-y, mossy growth that reminded her less of a plant and more of the slimy, poisonous algae that occasionally grew on ponds not exposed to enough sun or fresh water. She thought at least some of the smell came from that, because to her other vision it glowed with the same greenish, purplish, blackish light that had emanated from the plant that tried to eat Wynn. It made Fil wish fondly for another jar of black salt.

The foul carpet climbed the sides of tree trunks and up the faces of a pair of stone blocks placed facing each other roughly five feet apart. Between them a thick slab of paler stone stretched like a tabletop. She didn’t need to inspect it for bloodstains to recognize an altar for human sacrifice. Some things didn’t require little labels for identification purposes.

Her heart leapt into her throat as she realized she stared straight at the site of her own imminent murder. Digging her heels in, she gave one last mighty wrench against her binding and felt a surge of adrenaline as one hand slipped free of the ropes. It felt like she left every inch of her skin behind to do it, but she didn’t care. With her hands free and her life on the line, she intended to fight like the fucking demon they wanted to feed her to.

Fil would not make this easy. She would show the Hierophant and all his fucked-up sidekicks that not everyone stood helpless in the face of Darkness.

Some of them had the Light on their side.

Chapter Twenty-two

Spar fought the need to roar his impatience with the delay. Every fiber of his being shook with the need to act, to spring into the sky and soar straight to the island Wynn had pinpointed as the sacrificial site. She’d resorted to throwing a cast-iron skillet at his head to get his attention.

“It would be the height of macho stupidity to fly in there alone like some tragic hero,” the witch had told him. “You’d intend to save her, but there’s no way. Do you really think the Hierophant is acting alone? You know as well as I do that when it comes to working magic this big, they’ll be using an entire inner cell. That’s a minimum of seven of the most skilled black mages they have, one of whom we think is the leader of the entire Order.
Plus,
quite possibly, the Defiler itself. You know taking that on alone would be a suicide mission. If you want to kill yourself, fine, but at least give Fil a fighting chance.”

Spar had laughed. “And you think that if I bring you along, sprained ankle limiting your movements, your assistance would turn the tide? Do not be ridiculous. You might be a witch, but you are not a Warden and are completely unprepared for this kind of battle. You would only serve to distract me and get us both killed.”

“That’s ‘an amazingly powerful witch’ to you, buddy,” she snapped, her eyes narrowed, “but no, that isn’t what I think. What I think is that the only chance we have of saving Fil, let alone stopping the Hierophant, is to marshal
all
of our resources. Every last one of them. That means we need the other Guardian here, and the Warden-in-training. That’s our only shot at making this work.”

“Kees and Ella are in Vancouver, all the way on the other side of the bloody continent. Shall we send the Hierophant a polite note and ask that he please postpone killing my mate until we have had time to put together a plan to attack him most effectively?”

“Once again, Mr. Tall, Grumpy, and Sarcastic, no, I’m not saying anything of the kind. You said Ella had been studying Warden magic? Well, I have, too, when I could get my hands on it without raising suspicions. Neither of us may be full-fledged members of the Guild, but I think that if we work together, even long-distance, we can put together a portal spell and open a bridge between Vancouver and Montreal. We could have another Guardian and a magic user who has already proven herself in battle here within the hour. Don’t you think that sounds better than running off half-cocked into the face of certain failure?”

“Do you think we have an hour?”

“I think we have more than one. It’s barely ten thirty. If they want to do this right, they’ll time the sacrifice to the Demon’s Hour at three. That will let them raise the most concentrated burst of power.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

Her jaw clenched. “If I’m wrong, then we’re already too late.”

Spar had relented. Reluctantly. He knew he stood a better chance in any battle with one of his brothers at his side, especially when outnumbered and facing one of the Seven, no matter how weak it might be. Still, every minute that passed with Felicity in the hands of his enemy sliced at his soul like a razor. He felt himself going mad, and handed the responsibility for the call to Wynn, along with Felicity’s cell phone. It already had Ella’s number programmed in.

He couldn’t concentrate on the words Wynn and Ella exchanged. He merely knew that the fifteen-minute conversation lasted fifteen minutes too long. He heard the discussion of magic circles, incenses, herbs, amulets, and candles and tried to resist the urge to tear Wynn’s building apart brick by brick with his bare hands. He ground his teeth together until his fangs threatened to snap off at the roots, and his wings quivered with the need to spread and catch the currents of the crisp night air.

He took to pacing through the small apartment, ritual room to bedroom to living room to kitchen to dining room and back again, until his circling drove Wynn as crazy as Felicity’s had driven him. Shouting his name, she dragged him back to her ritual room and pointed to a spot against the wall.

“Sit there and for the Goddess’s sake, keep quiet. It’s showtime, and since this is a first for both me and Ella, I’m going to need to concentrate.” She frowned and rolled her shoulders as if loosening up before a workout. “Of course, feel free to cross your fingers. I figure it can’t hurt.”

He would have crossed his eyes if she told him to; anything to move this faster and get him closer to feeling his mate safe in his arms once more.

Seeing magic take shape was nothing new to Spar, but he noticed that Wynn’s magic had a different feel to it than he remembered from the Wardens in his past. Instead of opening a channel to the magic, like raising the floodgates of a dam, the witch seemed just to remain as she was and let the magic soak into her like a sponge. By the time she cast a circle using the inscribed pentagram on the floor as a guide, she almost glowed with a soft-green light the color of spring leaves. He’d seen the sick and bruised purplish green of the Dark magic at the dump site, and this light seemed to wash the other from his memory, leaving behind the taste of cool water and delicate herbs.