Student Bodies (20 page)

At this point, everything went from scary to downright terrifying. There was a spare tire chained to a rail inside the box, so I pushed it back toward the cab with my feet and then I scrambled in between the tire and the tailgate. There aren't any seatbelts in the box of a half-ton truck and if George Standingready hit a big enough bump, I'd wind up thrown from the vehicle. I needed stability – as much stability as I could find – because what I had to do next required every ounce of concentration that I could muster.

And Constable Ewanchuk wasn't going to have any of it.

I saw her arm poking out the driver's side window and in her hand was her sidearm. Without even thinking, I drew from my spirit and raised a dome of magic. Ice-cold wind battered the side of my face as I concentrated. I saw a series of flashes coming from the muzzle of the gun and in less time than it takes to blink, three bullets slammed into the dome. My Shadowcull's band burned against my skin as I pushed my spirit further just in time to contain the impact of another three rounds.

“Son of a…” I growled. It might be one thing to use a magical shield to protect against the lash of an enemy's spell, but it's another thing entirely to contain all the super-concentrated kinetic energy of bullets flying faster than the speed of sound when you're driving at sixty miles an hour. Ewanchuk would eventually break through my protective field and my heart sank at the realization that one of those bullets could easily tear off the top of my head.

We hit a bump and I was tossed into the air, but I had a hand on the frozen rim of the spare tire and I landed hard on my tailbone. Another three flashes from the muzzle of the gun caught my eye and I struggled furiously to maintain my magical shield. Only this time, two bullets slammed into the shield. The truck swerved sharply to the right and I spun around to see George Standingready holding his left shoulder with his right hand. Twyla grabbed hold of the steering wheel and screamed at her grandfather.

“Take your foot off the gas, Grampa!”

He leaned over to his left and I saw a smear of bright red blood on the windshield. The truck slowed as Twyla struggled to keep the vehicle in a straight line.

And that's when Constable Ewanchuk's police cruiser slammed into the rear of the pickup. We pitched down a sharp shoulder and the truck ploughed into a thick snowdrift, sending me flying out of the back of the box.

As I flew through the air, I caught sight of where I was going to land – a barbed wire cattle fence.

Perfect.

 

 

CHAPTER 21

 

I don't remember actually landing in the barbed wire fence. I remember watching in horror as the police cruiser's grill smashed into the truck's tailgate. I remember the vehicle swerving sharply to the right and then hitting a massive bump that jettisoned me from the box. After that, everything went blurry. I opened my eyes and tried to stand but I was waist deep in snow and my jeans and my winter coat were snagged in the rusty half-inch barbs of frozen wire. I felt the sharp sting on the side of my face and a thin trickle of blood rolled into the corner of my mouth.

Constable Ewanchuk climbed out of her police cruiser, her gun at the ready. She glared at me with a look of stone-cold hatred in her eyes as she adopted a firing stance and aimed her weapon, so I raised my magic and bellowed, “
Hexus
!”

She fired her gun only to have the weapon explode in her hand in a flash of yellow light. Things seemed to move into slow motion at this point: another flash of light, a small puff of black smoke and finally blood and flesh splattering in all directions. Ewanchuk shrieked in a voice that was more animal than human as she looked down in horror at what was left of her right hand; a bloody, pulpy stump of flesh and ligaments. Two fingers dangled from a flap of skin and blood seeped through the fingers of her other hand as she covered the wound in an attempt to stem the flow. My hex had worked brilliantly causing the gun to blow up in her hand – she wouldn't be shooting anyone today.

But that didn't mean there weren't other ways to take me down. I was still stuck in a barbed wire cattle fence and any struggling on my part would only entangle my body worse than it already was. So, I shut my eyes and concentrated. I blocked out the pain of the rusty barbs digging into my flesh and then I whispered a word of magic. A fine current of supernatural energy ran over my body as I grated my teeth together and increased my focus. In seconds I could feel the wire beginning to give way enough to free my snagged up legs and torso. I slipped out of my winter coat; my magic blowing the zipper open. I glanced down at my jeans and saw they were torn open in multiple places. The snow was stained with my blood. I staggered through the waist-high drift and glared fierily at Ewanchuk.

“You bitch!” she roared as she clutched the bloody stump at the end of her right arm
“
You blew my hand off. But that doesn't mean I can't lay a death curse on your sorry ass!”

I gazed at the wreck that was George Standingready's pickup truck. It lay on its side and there was smoke coming from the engine. Ewanchuk stood between me and the burning vehicle and a surge of panic twisted my stomach into a tight ball. Twyla and her grandfather were still inside. I was just about to lash out with a flurry of spells to protect myself from whatever Ewanchuk was going to throw at me when a powerful wave of magic poured out from the cab of the truck. An explosion of supernatural force shook the ground and the passenger door blew off the crumpled vehicle and shot twenty feet in the air. Seconds later a pair of hands emerged clutching the floor of the truck: two leathery, gnarled hands that had seen a lifetime of hard living. Two hands blazing with magical energy. It was George Standingready. As he pulled himself out of the smashed vehicle, I saw a battered and bruised Twyla, her arms wrapped tightly around the old man's strong neck. He cleared the vehicle and deposited his granddaughter a safe distance away, and then he turned his attention to Ewanchuk.

Blood coven magic didn't have anything on what I saw George Standingready do next. He reached into one of the pockets of his parka and then in a quick, swift motion, he pulled out his own beaded pouch, only this one was slightly larger than Twyla's. George Standingready's eyes narrowed menacingly. He squeezed the pouch tightly in his right hand and cried out in his native language.

And Ewanchuk literally dropped dead right before my very eyes.

But the old man wasn't done yet. He cried out once more as he tore the blood mage's spirit right out of her body and then lashed it with a binding that crackled with magical energy, a ribbon of power looping around and around the translucent image of Constable Ewanchuk hovering inches above her corpse. George Standingready squeezed his fetish again and the ribbon tightened like a noose on the neck of a man being hanged.

The spirit screamed at the display of the old man's power. It gazed down at its body with a look of horror in its vaporous eyes and then it shrieked. A mournful, tormented wail rang out and echoed down the empty country road as it struggled against the binding.

“My granddaughter told me that your master placed a geas under pain of death should you reveal her whereabouts,” Standingready snarled. “Yet I killed you where you stood with a single word and I have the power to bring you back. Your keeper holds no longer holds any power over you now that you're dead, but I do. So, where is she hiding and where did she take the boy?”

“
I don't know!
”
the spirit wailed.

George Standingready gave his fetish another tiny squeeze and Ewanchuk's ghost shrieked in pain once more.

“Wrong answer,” he said as he shifted his gaze to his blazing pickup truck. “You'll tell me where she is and where we can find that boy or I'll torch your body right before your dead eyes. I'll burn it just enough to leave you scarred and disfigured. I'll raise you back from the dead so that you can experience the pain of your own seared flesh. Have you ever talked with a burn victim about how it feels to be burned alive?”

And then the old man did something I didn't see coming from a mile away. He unzipped his parka and tore open his plaid flannel shirt to reveal a torso that was covered with scar tissue. It stretched up from the belt on his trousers, across his stomach and chest and was slightly lighter in color than his unburned flesh. And it was thick and in layers; as if someone had smeared the scarred flesh onto the old man's body with a trowel.

“
I know how it feels,
”
he growled. “I know the madness that can set in because even though the flames might have been extinguished, your body still feels like it's on fire. You feel like you're bathing in acid and your dead skin comes off in strips every time the doctor or nurse changes your dressing. And no amount of morphine can numb the agony of your rotting flesh; it's like hell itself has lit you ablaze from within and even when the burns heal, your body is a twisted mass of scars that forever remind you of the day you dared to dance with fire and lost. I can do that to you – I
will
do that to you, if you don't tell me what I want to know.”

Dear God.

George Standingready was a serious magical badass of epic proportions. And the spirit of Constable Ewanchuk didn't waste a single moment to spill the beans.

“She has taken the boy with her and you have to believe me when I say that I don't know where she is hiding him. Adriel isn't stupid enough to remain in one place for too long. You won't find her because her power shrouds her magical signature. You won't find the boy either because he is hiding in plain sight.”

I stomped up to the spirit and snapped at her. “What do you mean he is hiding in plain sight? What the hell is that about?”

The spirit bobbed up and down; its face wavering with each gust of the frigid breeze.

“She will have wiped his mind clean save for a series of painful images. Every mean-spirited attack the boy faced. Every single humiliation; she has stolen his memories save for the ones that will fuel his malice toward those who hurt him. He is enthralled and is wandering the streets of the city and you will not find him in time. Tonight everything changes. Adriel will destroy your coven, witch.”

“And what about the students from my school?” I said. “You don't even care if she kills a bunch of frigging teenagers?”

Ewanchuk's ghost threw me a wild look. If she hadn't been driven mad by practising black magic, George Standingready's spell would surely do it in a heartbeat.

“You know so little, Shadowcull,” the ghost spat. “Your coven is in possession of something Adriel wants more than you could ever dream of; I don't know what it is, but I do know that its power is worth killing every white witch in the city to gain possession of it. The attack on those two boys was simply a test of Adriel's spell. She had to see how well it would work before she draws out your stinking coven by enslaving the multitude. Your coven will do everything in its power to save the students at your school and their efforts will weaken their spirits to such a point that Adriel can destroy them with ease. Everything is playing out as she had foreseen and there's not a thing you can do to stop it now.”

It was like someone had stolen the breath from my lungs. Everything I'd ever known about my father's service as the coven's Shadowcull told me that he carried out his function to the best of his ability. Yet the spirit's suggestion that the coven was in possession of something a Black Mage would kill innocent students to obtain told me that it had to be the Book of Names. The true names of all the players in the supernatural world would be more than enough of a reason to kill my father. But he hadn't revealed any knowledge that the coven had the book – something didn't add up.

“I've heard enough,” said George Standingready. Twyla got up from the snow and brushed herself off. She limped over to her grandfather and took hold of his hand. He loosened his grip on his fetish and whispered, “Be released, spirit.”

The vaporous form of Ewanchuk started to spin, faster and faster as it fell into her body. Living energy crackled loudly as I watched the police officer's hands begin to twitch. Her body spasmed violently like she was having a seizure. George Standingready raced over to Ewanchuk and pressed his entire weight against her shoulders, gripping them tightly with his strong hands. She continued to spasm for another twenty seconds until her eyes opened. She looked up at the face of the man who'd threatened to burn her body and let her ghost toast marshmallows and then she began to sob. The old man placed a hand on her forehead and the other on the bloody stump that was once her right hand. He closed his eyes and whispered a word of power in his native tongue and smoke began to rise from her wound. Then he removed his hand and emitted a satisfied sounding grunt.

And Ewanchuk gazed up at him with a look of icy terror in her eyes and said, “Yes, I will.”

Twyla helped her grandfather back to his feet. “She'll do what, grandfather?”

He slipped his fetish back into his pocket and started walking toward the police cruiser. “She'll drive us back to the city and she'll have never heard of Julie Richardson or anyone with our last name. My old pickup is going to blow any second now so we need to hustle our asses the hell out of here. Let's move.”

Ewanchuk scrambled back to her feet and stalked back to the police cruiser. George Standingready climbed in the passenger side as Twyla and I hopped into the back seat. In seconds we were racing back down the highway toward the city so I spun around and stared out the rear window. The truck exploded in a flash of brilliant yellow light and thick black smoke.

“God damn it,” the old man growled. “I loved that truck.”

 

CHAPTER 22

 

Ewanchuk deposited the three of us at my doorstep and sped off. Mom was waiting for us with Betty and she offered a warm welcome to both Twyla and her grandfather. We headed inside and she closed the door behind us, her face a lined with worry.