Trinkets, Treasures, and Other Bloody Magic (3 page)

The bear was vacillating — yep, I pull out the big words when a weird situation gets weirder — as it swung its huge head between Kandy and me.

I waved my knife. The bear didn’t even blink. Maybe he was nearsighted? I wasn’t terribly interested in getting close enough to find out.

I stepped sideways. The bear watched me, though its head was turned toward Kandy. I took another step toward the unconscious werewolf —
 

Loud noises! Bears hated loud noises.
 

I clapped my hands together and stomped my feet. The clap was pathetic because I was still clutching my knife in one hand. The stomping was ineffective and muffled by the blanket of needles that covered the ground underneath all the trees.

The bear swung its head back at me. I took another step, attempting to place myself between it and Kandy.

The bear raised its head and opened its mouth. Its many teeth were wider and much more pointy than my fingers. It bellowed at me.

Its wet, hot breath buffeted me. But while I clenched my inner thighs and attempted to not pee my pants, I felt something underneath, something I’d been too pumped on adrenaline to notice right away. Namely, magic. Specifically, something magic on or around the bear. Was the animal spelled?

The bear lowered its head, rolled its massive shoulders forward, and lumbered toward me.

I tried to turn and execute another side kick. I didn’t actually want to kill — if I even could — a confused, spelled bear. But the bear moved quicker than I anticipated. It batted me sideways, hooking me from hip to upper ribs with three-inch claws.

I brought the knife up and slashed it across the bear’s shoulder as it flung me sideways again.

It bellowed with pain.

I tumbled then landed down on one knee, but half-turned as I caught myself to raise the knife between the bear and me.

Except it didn’t attack further. It somehow — I saw it, but I still couldn’t figure it out — rolled its head under Kandy and flipped the werewolf over its shoulder.

Kandy groaned as she hit the hard muscled meat of the bear’s back, and for a brief moment, she opened her blazing green eyes to look at me.

“Shit!” I swore, scrambling to my feet.

The bear took off with the werewolf slung across its back.

Uh-huh. Yeah.

My feet kept moving, which was good because my brain was stuttering to a halt. A bear was kidnapping my friend. It was freaking insane.

The deep claw puncture wounds on my side closed, though my T-shirt and jeans were probably ripped and covered in blood.
 

With my knife still in hand, I chased after the bear.

Yeah, again. I chased. A bear.

The eyes of werewolves glowed green, as Kandy’s had, only when they were accessing their shifter magic somehow. But Kandy wasn’t changing forms, so her magic was doing something else. Perhaps burning off the foreign magic I’d seen on her belly and chest. I didn’t know, and I certainly wasn’t going to leave her at the mercy of an obviously deranged bear.

I caught up to the grizzly. It was fast, but I — as I was still learning — was faster.

I grabbed a fistful of its pelt on its right back haunch and yanked. The bear skidded right, but then attempted to twist away from me.

I was trying to wrestle a bear. Maybe I was the insane one.

I avoided another paw swipe. The bear seemed more interested in getting away than fighting, so it was easy to anticipate its half-hearted defensive strikes.

I reached for Kandy. She lifted her blazing green, unfocused eyes and raised her hand toward me. Her other hand was clenched tight in the bear’s fur. The bear twisted away and I nearly lost my footing, and then my shoulder, as it veered by a large cedar tree. My fingers skidded down Kandy’s forearm, keeping me from getting a grip on her. The bear was trying to scrape me off its back with the bark of the trees as if I was an annoying insect.

Asshole.

I’d show it.

I raised my knife, then plowed face first into a large block of dense ice.

I crashed to my knees and brought my hand up to my bloody, crushed nose. Pain ricocheted though my skull. Tears streamed from my eyes. Jesus. It felt like I’d bitten clear through my bottom lip.

I spat a mouthful of blood out all over a pair of Merrell hiking boots that were an exact match to the ones I currently wore, except for the size. What the hell?

I craned my neck and head upward. Expensive jeans, expensive leather belt, blue lightweight Gore-Tex jacket that was torn in a few places and spotted with dirt, bark, and leaves. Underneath the jacket was a gray T-shirt stretched over a trim, but clearly muscled upper chest. All of which led upward to a chiseled, angular, too-pale face.

Freaking Kett had just broken my nose.

“Kett!” I cried, because I have a difficult time not just stating the obvious when stressed. “I was wrestling that bear!” My voice was dreadfully nasal. I snapped my nose back into place. It instantly healed, though I saw spots floating before my eyes for a few blinks afterward. “It was a contest of wills, and Kandy was the prize.”

I stumbled to my feet, using various bits of Kett’s clothing as handholds. Well, one handhold. I kept the other hand, the one dripping with my blood, over my now healed nose. I wasn’t sure that the sight of so much blood would sit well with the vampire.

I must have sheathed my knife at some point because I could feel its magic on my right hip. I didn’t remember doing so.

Kett swayed on his feet.

Every bone in the front of my body felt bruised. “Kett,” I said again. “Kandy is in —”

Red rolled over Kett’s ice-blue eyes. The eyes that were currently fixed on mine. I’d never seen Kett’s magic operate like that before. Usually his eyes filled with blood when he needed to feed, but this was different.

“Dowser,” he murmured. “Found you.” He reached up and brushed the curls away from my cheek. It was a lazy, intimate caress. The hackles on the back of my neck tingled a warning.

Predator alert. Predator alert.

Kett listed sideways and stumbled. His eyes, which flashed red again, never left my face.

He tugged my hand down from covering my nose, running his thumb thoughtfully across my blood-covered palm. Then he lifted his eyes back to mine. “All healed?” he asked. His tone was softer and deeper than usual.

“Yes,” I answered, completely bewildered.

“You’re going to have to run now, little dowser.”

“Can we just skip the running and chasing part? You don’t look hurt. You don’t look like you need to feed. And Kandy —”

“Not me, dowser. You. You need to head southwest, back to the car —” He stumbled again, as if swooning. I grasped his upper arms, though I loathed to touch him while all covered in blood. His potent magic tingled all the way through his jacket into my hands.

“I don’t know southwest. I don’t know where the car is.”

“Find a river. Follow it back.”

“Kandy —”

“No. You’re going to need your Gran. Get Pearl.”

“Kett.” He was really starting to freak me out. He was heavy — oddly heavy for his size relative to me — and getting difficult to hold steady.

“I’m right behind you.” He stepped back so my hands fell away from him. “Go now, dowser.” He swayed as if buffeted by a nonexistent wind.

“You don’t seem okay.”

“I can still keep up with you.” He grinned. His teeth were too pointy for my liking. “You still move more like a human than you should.”

“How would you know?” I snapped. Yes, the topic of my parentage was an instant trigger.

“It would be a shame for you to die. I would do anything in my power to save you. Don’t make me save you, Jade.”

A chill ran down my spine. His use of my name, and what I was pretty sure was a threat to my humanity — or whatever I was — completely unnerved me.

I turned and ran.

Kett followed, but he wasn’t chasing me.

The bear had bulldozed a path through the underbrush, so I followed it. Least resistance and all that.

I all-out sprinted. Not really knowing where I was going, but still running as fast as I could.

I felt Kett falter behind me, and I slowed to hook my arm around his waist and pull him with me.

He snarled but didn’t pull away.

I didn’t look at him. I was afraid I’d see red eyes and full-on fangs. I was hyperaware that my neck was very exposed on my left side. I wrapped my right hand around my knife and pushed myself to run faster.

I wasn’t too sure that following the bear’s path and dragging Kett with me was the right thing to do, but I still hadn’t given up hope of finding Kandy. Bears didn’t eat humans, right? Right?

Kett stumbled, practically yanking my shoulder out of its socket. I clutched him tighter. Once again, though only a couple of inches taller than me, he was suddenly very heavy.

I heard the river just as Kett wrenched himself away from me and dashed ahead. I followed, my shoulder screaming in relief at losing his weight.
 

I sprinted out of the forest to find myself on the smooth-rocked edge of a large river. It was wide and full, but I had no idea if it was the Squamish or some other. A logging road, I guessed, ran parallel along the far side of the rushing, frothing water.

I couldn’t see Kett anywhere, though I was fairly certain I’d just been right behind him. Nor could I see Kandy or evidence of the bear. I faltered, unsure whether to turn left, right, or attempt to swim across the river to the road. Because all roads led somewhere, right?

Something shrieked behind me. It didn’t sound human, but I wasn’t sure if animals screamed like that.

Involuntarily — or perhaps instinctively — I darted forward at the sound and stopped at the edge of the river with the water at my back. The water-worn stones were wet and well polished underneath my feet. It would be easy to lose my footing if I panicked, even in my thick-tread hiking boots. So I willed my heartbeat and breathing to slow as I glanced around.

Trees and more trees spread off from either side of the river and road. The river twisted, seemingly endlessly, in either direction. Multiple mountains loomed all around me.

I still had no idea where I was, but now I’d lost both my companions.
 

The river had to be crazy cold, seeing as how it was fed by the glaciers of those mountains, now more intimidating than beautiful. Their peaks were still snow capped even this late in July, though the summer had been warm and unusually dry in Vancouver so far. So, river, cold. Deadly cold, if one was stupid enough about it.

Focus. Focus.

I reached out with my dowser senses and looked for a glimmer of Kandy’s or Kett’s magic. I closed my eyes and slowly pivoted, though the movement was more psychologically than physically necessary.

There … I felt Kandy not too far away, but on the other side of the river. I kept turning. Had Kett also crossed the water, thinking I’d follow? I couldn’t feel him —
 

Oh, shit.

 
I opened my eyes.

A black bear, a coyote, and a red fox sat at the edge of the forest about fifteen feet away. The woods at their backs, the river at mine. Something shrieked at me from the trees. No, cawed — really, really loudly. A crow. A huge crow. A raven.

The raven shrieked a second time. It was perched on the lowest branch of a cedar tree just behind the other three animals.

What the fuck? Pardon my language, but please what the fuck?

“A bear, a coyote, and a fox walked into a bar …”

The animals just watched me, but I was absolutely certain that watching might turn into rending in the blink of my eye. They all tasted of the same huckleberry and wild onion magic that had wafted off the grizzly bear. Had some sorcerer spelled all the freaking animals in the forest? Well, all the animals with teeth and claws? Of course, I hadn’t seen any beavers yet. They usually stuck to rivers … like the one at my back.

I settled my hand on my knife and took a step back. The river boiled up over the top of my boots, eagerly wetting my socks and calves. It had to have been a sorcerer, not a witch, of course. Witches were one with nature and would never endanger an animal. Well, most witches …

The raven screamed again. I imagined it would go for my eyes. I liked my eyes. They were perfectly indigo blue, and very helpful for seeing and such.

“You guys seem to be missing your buddy. You know, nine feet tall, brown hair, a little on the heavy side?” The animals shifted but thankfully didn’t talk back. The sarcasm was more for my benefit than theirs, anyway. Confidence building, you know. Seeing as I was about to do something crazy.

I took another step back, up to my knees in the river now and barely able to keep upright in its strong pull. I couldn’t fight all of them if they attacked at the same time. Instant healing was probably only good if I wasn’t torn to bits. Not that I wanted to test it.
 

The black bear — smaller than the grizzly by like 50 percent, but able to climb trees — reared up on its hind legs. Why I knew or thought of the tree-climbing thing, I didn’t know. The raven could just fly over the river, of course. And maybe the bear could swim across?

It didn’t matter.

The coyote and fox gathered themselves and leaped for my throat. Or so I imagined.
 

They missed as I jumped backward into the icy river and let it take me.

The water rolled over my head and sucked me down. I hit something with my leg, but my scream of pain was swallowed by the water. Then something else slammed into my shoulder … rocks, boulders in the river. I surfaced — though through no effort of my own — and managed to get a lungful of air after expelling a gallon of water.

I went under again, pulled effortlessly by the vicious current.
 

I lost all sense of up, down, sky, or water.

I slammed into more rocks, wrapping my arms around my head in a fleeting hope of protecting what little brains I had.

Then I prayed that drowning was a better death than being mauled and torn to pieces.

After I didn’t immediately drown — though once again, this wasn’t due to any brilliant strategy on my part — I slowly figured out how to maneuver myself closer to the opposite side of the river.