Owen was.
Fear, worry, and dread punched me in the heart, one right after another, leaving me dizzy, shaking, and breathless. For a moment, everything inside me lurched to a cold, hard, painful stop. Then my mind kicked into gear again, and my body zoomed into overdrive.
I got to my feet, stuffed the giant’s phone into my pants pocket, and started running.
I left the dead giants where they had fallen on the bridge. I didn’t care if anyone found them and realized what had happened, that I had killed them.
Right now, the only thing that mattered was getting to Owen.
So I ran, ran, ran, as fast as I could, my boots pounding along the trail in perfect time to the frantic fear pulsing through my heart.
Must save Owen . . . must save Owen . . . must save Owen . . .
It became like a mantra running through my mind, and I used it to block out everything else. The cold air searing my lungs, the growing stitch in my side, the throbbing sting in my forearm, the blood still sliding down my skin from where Lancelot had cut me with his sword. I ignored it all, sucked down another breath, and forced myself to move even faster.
I hadn’t gone as far into the woods as I’d thought, and I quickly made it back to the end of the trail. I sprinted out into the grassy park and had to stop short to let a group of boys dressed like Vikings pass by. The second they were out of the way, I started running again.
Well, I tried to run. The park was even more crowded than before, and I had to slow down to a fast walk so that I wouldn’t bowl people over. Even then, I still had to pull up, sidestep, and dart around person after person after person, and I had to bite my tongue to keep from screaming at each and every delay.
I finally made it back to the concessions area. Sophia was still inside the Pork Pit truck, and she leaned out the window as I raced by, obviously wondering what going on, but I didn’t have time to stop and explain.
Must save Owen . . . must save Owen . . . must save Owen . . .
The mantra kept pounding in my head, getting a little louder, quicker, and more frantic with each passing second, and I hurried across the grass and over to the blacksmith forge.
A large crowd was gathered around the front of the forge for the latest demonstration. I stood on my tiptoes, but I couldn’t see if Owen was leading the event, and I couldn’t hear his voice over the loud, constant hammering. So I skirted around the edge of the crowd, then zipped through a gap between two people. Eventually, I wound up on the left side of the forge.
It wasn’t as crowded back here, and I spotted a guy in the rear wearing a black leather cap and using a hammer to shape a red-hot sword. Relief filled me, but I forced myself to wait until he’d plunged the blade into a trough of water before I hurried over to him.
I grabbed his arm and turned him around. “Owen! I’m so glad I found you—”
The words died on my lips, and my relief was snuffed out just like the heat from the sword had been in the water.
It wasn’t Owen.
The blacksmith stared at me, obviously wondering who I was and why I was babbling about some guy named Owen.
I dropped his arm, stepped back, and gave him a sheepish grimace. “Sorry. I thought you were someone else.”
The guy shrugged, accepting my apology, and went back to work.
I turned around, scanning the area. Another blacksmith was at the front of the forge, although he’d finally stopped the loud hammering and was now explaining his process to the crowd. A couple of other blacksmiths were also working on their own projects. Kids were running around, while their parents were admiring the weapons, horseshoes, and other items on display. Everything was perfectly normal except for one thing: I didn’t see Owen anywhere.
“Owen!” I called out. “Owen!”
No answer.
I was getting more and more worried and more and more desperate, so I went around to the back of the forge, hoping that he was taking a break. But of course, he wasn’t out here either.
I looked out into the park beyond, but it was more of the same. Kids playing, adults shopping, costumed characters posing for pictures.
No Owen.
I turned around in a slow circle, just in case I’d missed anything, but I hadn’t. I stepped forward and opened my mouth to call out to him again, and my boot scuffed across something on the grass.
A black leather cap with long ear flaps was lying on the ground—the same sort of hat that Owen had been wearing.
Icy dread flooded my heart, but I crouched down and picked up the cap. The leather was crumpled, as though it had been snatched off someone’s head, thrown down, and then stomped on for good measure. Part of the leather looked a bit darker and shinier than the rest, so I rubbed my fingers over that spot. Sticky moisture clung to my skin in a sickening, familiar sensation. I froze a moment, then slowly pulled my hand up where I could see it.
Faint smears of blood were streaked across my fingertips.
I sucked in a ragged breath, even as more and more worry shot through my body.
Owen was gone.
Chapter Six
As much as I wanted to surge to my feet, run around, and scream Owen’s name, I forced myself to calmly, slowly, carefully examine the ground where I’d found his hat.
The grass had been flattened in patches and churned up in others, along with the dirt underneath, indicating a struggle. Owen had come here for some reason, or had been lured here, and then he’d been attacked. In addition to being a metal elemental, Owen was also a good, strong fighter. Even if he’d been taken by surprise, he still would have put up a fierce struggle, and all the flattened grass and disturbed earth told me that he’d been attacked by at least a couple of guys. Probably more of the black-leather-clad giants.
With a heavy heart, I also forced myself to search the ground for more blood, but thankfully, the smears on Owen’s cap were all I found.
I stood up, thinking about what I knew. Owen had definitely been attacked here and then taken somewhere else. Despite the crowds, a snatch-and-grab would have been easy enough to pull off. A couple of the costumed giants could have bashed Owen over the head and carted him off in plain sight simply by making the whole thing seem like an act and part of the ren-faire fun instead of the kidnapping it truly was.
And it was a kidnapping. If someone had just wanted to kill Owen, they could have shoved a knife in his back and left his body here. But there was no body, which told me that Owen was still alive.
For now.
But why kidnap him? Was this some ploy by Hugh Tucker to get leverage over me? To force me to kill another one of the vampire’s Circle enemies? And why grab Owen at the faire with so many potential witnesses around? Why not snatch him when he was coming out of his office late one night? Or from his house, where there was far less chance of someone realizing what was going on?
My hand fisted tight around the bloody leather cap. I didn’t know the answers to my questions, but I was damn sure going to find them out.
And when I found the people who had taken Owen, they were the ones who were going to fucking bleed.
Still clutching Owen’s hat, I skirted around the blacksmith forge, threaded my way through the crowd, and hurried back over to the Pork Pit truck. Sophia had fed the latest wave of customers, and she leaned out the window again, a concerned look on her face.
“What’s wrong?” she rasped.
I quickly told her about the giants following me into the woods and then handed her Owen’s bloody hat.
Sophia studied the hat a moment, then set it aside. Her face darkened, and her black eyes glittered with anger. “What do you want me to do?”
“Call Finn and Bria—” I stopped and let out a vicious curse.
Calling them wouldn’t do any good, since they’d turned their phones off earlier, just like Owen and I had.
“Close up the truck, then go find Finn and Bria and tell them what’s going on,” I said. “Spread out and start looking for Owen. Ask around, and se
e if anyone remembers some giants in black leather carrying another guy. Whoever took him couldn’t have gotten too far away yet.”
“What are you going to do?” she rasped.
“I’m going to find another giant dressed like the ones who attacked me and squeeze him for answers. I don’t know that all those giants are working together, but it’s a place to start.”
Sophia nodded and started closing up the truck. I left her there and hurried over to the wrought-iron fence that cordoned off the park from the gravel lot beyond. I looked out over the rows of cars, trucks, and vans, but I didn’t see anything suspicious, and there were no empty spaces to indicate that a vehicle had recently left.
The kidnappers could have taken Owen out of the park, put him in a car, and driven away, but it would have been much more conspicuous, and they would have had to walk right by the Pork Pit truck to do it. Whoever had planned this had been very careful and smart so far, and I doubted they would have wanted to risk Sophia seeing and stopping them. No, my gut was telling me that Owen was still nearby.
That was my hope, anyway. I wasn’t going to think about all the awful things that might have already happened, all the ways that he could have been horribly hurt and brutally tortured. My stomach roiled with fear, but I pushed it away and instead focused on the cold determination surging through me. I didn’t know what this was about yet, but I was going to find Owen, and the people who took him were going to pay for what they’d done.
With that dark and deadly promise beating in my heart, I moved away from the fence, walked back through the concessions area, and started doing a sweep of the front part of the park, searching for the black-leather-clad giants.
But I couldn’t find them—not a single one.
Earlier today, the giants had been everywhere, but now there was nary a one in sight. That only confirmed my suspicion that they were working together. After all, why stick around the scene of your crime when you’d already abducted your victim?
Still, I kept scanning the throngs of people, desperately hoping I’d spot the giants. All I needed was one of them to talk and tell me where they’d taken Owen. Just one.
No giants magically appeared to answer my silent plea, but as I looked around, I realized that someone else was also missing from the faire.
Pirate Queen Celeste.
My head snapped back and forth, and I scanned the crowd, but I didn’t see Celeste anywhere either. She had vanished, along with the giants.
Oh, I supposed that Celeste could have been taking a break, hanging out somewhere deeper in the park, or maybe even over at the stage, preparing for the next show. But mine was a suspicious mind, and I remembered how the giants had entered the faire as part of her entourage this morning, almost as if they worked for her in real life.
Maybe they did.
Even more telling was the fact that Celeste had tried to cozy up to Owen earlier at the forge. Sure, Owen had said that Celeste had wanted some custom swords, but what if that had just been an excuse to get him alone? I didn’t know that I was right, but I wasn’t going to take a chance that I was wrong either. Not when Owen’s life was hanging in the balance.
So I quit looking for the giants and started searching for Celeste instead.
I went over to a group of people standing in front of a jewelry booth. “Excuse me, have you seen Pirate Queen Celeste?”
I didn’t think a more ridiculous sentence had ever come out of my mouth. Then again, this had started out as a ridiculous day, although it had quickly turned into a bloody one—and would probably get bloodier still, before all was said and done.
Those folks shook their heads, so I moved on. I asked the same thing over and over again of all the kids, teens, and adults who crossed my path, but they all kept shaking their heads no-no-no. Despite the throngs of people, no one remembered seeing Celeste recently or knew where she might have gone—
I spotted a flash of red out of the corner of my eye. I whirled around in that direction, and I saw Celeste disappearing behind one of the vendor booths about twenty feet away.
I glanced around, but I didn’t see Sophia, Finn, or Bria anywhere. I couldn’t wait for my friends. I had to act now or risk losing Celeste, so I headed after the pirate queen.
“Hey!”
“Watch it!”
“Rude much?”
A few people let out angry mutters as I shoved past them, but I didn’t dare slow down to apologize. The only thing that mattered was tracking Celeste back to Owen before it was too late.
I reached the booth where Celeste had disappeared, and I finally did slow down, creeping up to the corner and peering around the side. I didn’t see Celeste or any of the giants, but the booth was close to one of the hiking trails that led into the woods on the west side of the park.
I hadn’t seen any buildings or other structures during my earlier hike through the woods, but this trail was about a quarter mile away from the one that I’d used. Either way, it was the most likely place for Celeste to have gone, so I stepped around the booth, jogged over to the trail, and plunged back into the trees.
I palmed a knife and moved quickly and quietly along the path. Every once in a while, I stopped to look and listen, but I didn’t see anyone on the trail ahead of me or hunkered down in the surrounding woods, and the thick tangle of trees blocked out the clatter and commotion from the faire.
A couple of hundred feet into the woods, I came across another stone bridge that arched over the same creek that I’d seen before. I approached the bridge with caution, but Celeste wasn’t lying in wait underneath it to attack me like a troll, so I crossed it.
I was just about to step off the far side of the bridge when the phone in my pocket started buzzing.
I frowned, wondering why the device was buzzing instead of playing one of the ring tones that Silvio Sanchez, my personal assistant, had programmed into my phone. Silvio and I both loved movie music, and he’d downloaded a bunch of classic cinematic themes into my device.
Then I realized it wasn’t my phone—it was the phone I’d taken off Lancelot.
The phone buzzed a moment longer, then fell silent. I pulled the device out of my pocket and stared at the screen. It was another message from the mysterious Black Rook.
Did you take care of the assassin?
More ominous bad-guy speak, asking if the giants had killed me yet.
I hesitated. I didn’t know if Lancelot and the Black Rook were using keywords or some other code, but it would be more suspicious if there was no response, so I sent back a generic bad-guy answer.
It’s done.
I waited, holding my breath and hoping I’d made the right choice. The phone buzzed again a few seconds later with another message.
Good. Meet us at the barn to get your cut.
The barn? What barn?
Then I remembered the old barn I’d seen perched on the hill beyond the woods when we first arrived at the park this morning. That must be where this trail led and where the kidnappers had taken Owen.
I switched the phone to silent, shoved it back into my pocket, and hurried along. A few hundred feet later, the path started climbing, and that old barn came into view through the trees.
As soon as I spotted the structure, I stepped off the trail and started moving from one tree to the next, steadily and silently making my way up the incline. I didn’t spot Celeste or any of the giants lurking in the woods, and no trip-wires littered the ground. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy of the kidnappers not to leave a rear guard behind or at least a few rune booby traps buried in the leaves in case someone like me came creeping up behind them.
A few minutes later, I crested the top of the hill and hunkered down behind a large boulder at the edge of the woods. The trail I’d been on before ran out of the trees and snaked through an overgrown field choked with tall grasses, winter wildflowers, and other vegetation before ending at a small mowed yard that surrounded the barn.
I studied the structure, but it looked like any oth
er barn in the Ashland countryside—a two-story building that had probably been painted a bright, glossy red at one time but whose color had slowly faded to a dull, rusty brown. The double doors on the front were closed, and shades had been pulled down over the windows, but a faint, steady hum sounded in the distance. Probably a generator to power the lights and pump some heat into the barn.
The double doors were the only way in on the ground level that I could see, so I looked up at the second story, which featured a couple of windows, along with a large single door that probably led to a hayloft. No shades covered the glass on the second-story windows, and I didn’t see anyone moving around up there.
Fletcher had always said it was better to come at your enemies from an unexpected angle, and the old man’s words of wisdom were especially true in this case, when Owen was trapped inside the barn with who knew how many giants. So I started looking for a way to get up to the second level, and my gaze locked onto a drainpipe at one corner of the building. Perfect.
I didn’t want to waste time turning my phone on, so I pulled the dead giant’s phone out of my pocket and texted Sophia, telling her where I was and what was going on. I also sent the same message to Finn and Bria, even though I doubted they had switched their phones back on yet. Once that was done, I slid the device back into my pocket.
I looked around again, but the barn remained silent and shut up, so I surged to my feet, plowed my way through the overgrown field, crossed the mowed yard, and plastered myself up against the side of the building. I drew in quick, steady breaths through my nose, trying to listen above the roar of my heart, but no shouts sounded, and no one seemed to have spotted me.
I took hold of the drainpipe and gave it a hard, sharp tug to determine if it would hold my weight. The dull gray pipe looked as old and run-down as the rest of the barn, but it didn’t budge, squeak, or protest, so I wrapped both hands around it and started climbing.
I dug my boots into the wood on either side of the drainpipe, using my feet to help support me as I reached higher and higher and shimmied up the pipe. The metal was so cold that it burned my hands, but I didn’t dare use my Stone magic to harden my skin.
Winter’s Web: An Elemental Assassin Novella Page 5
