Triple Cross

by Tymber Dalton

  “Shouldn’t I call them and warn them, then?” Mai said.

  “Yeah, come to think of it,” Elain said, “that might not be a bad idea.” She looked at Lina. “See? I’m not perfect, either.”

  Lina playfully punched her in the shoulder while Mai got on the phone.

  Elain set off, letting her instincts lead the way. She kept her nose high, where the scents really were. The cockatrice had shifted and leapt, carrying Lacey, from tree to tree for a short distance from the house. Far enough to throw off their lupine trackers.

  Or so they thought.

  Elain knew it would take several hours for the kidnappers to make it to the rock pile. Hopefully, Kitty and the others could get there first and lie in wait. There, she’d seen, the cockatrice planned on sacrificing Lacey on the stones.

  She just didn’t know why yet, what other purpose they had to do it. Had they wanted to murder the old Seer, they could have done it in her home.

  Because Aliah wants me. And something else. Although Elain wasn’t exactly what that other something was, yet.

  Elain told her sisters what she knew as they hurried through the woods. The cockatrice would take longer to get to the rock pile because they were trying to stay concealed.

  Hopefully, they’d either beat the abductors there, or get there at the same time they did. And, hopefully, Kitty and the others would already be waiting there.

  “Here’s a question for you,” Mai said. “So what the heck are we supposed to do when we get there if it’s just the three of us and the others aren’t there yet?”

  “Well, we can throw magick at them,” Lina said.

  “How can you be so cavalier about that?” Elain asked. “‘Oh, just throw magick.’ How do we do that if we don’t know the frickin’ spells? We don’t have fireballs, kiddo.” She patted her jacket pocket, where she carried the gun. “I got Smith & Wesson. I trust him better than any spells or magick.”

  Lina grinned. “You are the frickin’ spells. We are the frickin’ magick. That’s what I keep trying to tell both of you. The magick is inside us. Say something that rhymes, and put all your heart and soul into the intent. That’s it. It doesn’t even have to rhyme, it’s just more powerful if it does. Yeah, some of the prewritten spells are easier to use, especially when we were first starting out. But we’re hella powerful now, girlfriend. We can, literally, make this shit up as we go along.”

  “You researched the hell out of the spell to remove Callie’s curse,” Mai said.

  “That was different. We were reversing very old, very strong, very dark magick that had been cast. Something specific. We made a fucking house disappear.” Lina waved her hands in a circle in front of her face like a magician. “Poof. You think we can’t throw a few spells?”

  Mai looked as doubtful as Elain felt. “I thought you said we had to be careful about what we did,” Mai said.

  “You do. Intent. You don’t walk down the street and trip someone out of the clear blue. You use your magick defensively, to repel an attack. Or proactively, for protection of yourself or an innocent. Or to do something good, beneficial. You keep your intent positive.”

  “Kicking cockatrice’s asses isn’t exactly positive,” Elain muttered.

  “Don’t start none, won’t be none,” Lina said. “They bring it? We’ll finish it.”

  “How do you reconcile that with what we did at the meth lab?” Mai asked. “We went in there and attacked them.”

  “Cockatrice have declared war on our kind,” Lina said. “Believe me, if I thought we were powerful enough to join hands and make every last one of those fuckers disappear off the face of the planet right now, I would. There are some of them who are have very distant genetics, who were interbred with humans so many times they don’t even know they have cockatrice blood in them. Now those, some of them might be assholes, but they’re not involved in what I’m talking about. The assholes like Yellowstone. The guys we took out at the meth house. They are actively involved in a covert war against humans and other shifters.”

  Lina waved her hand around, indicating the forest. “They had a literal fucking world of possibilities and potential. They didn’t have to start a meth lab. They could have pooled their money and bought a Subway franchise. Or a landscaping business. No, they started making and selling drugs. And Kitty said they had active ties to violent nests and activities. They weren’t some poor schmuck caught carrying an ounce of weed when he got pulled over for a busted headlight. They were genuinely bad, remorseless people.”

  Lina stopped walking, confusion on her face as she reached out and grabbed Elain and Mai. “I could read them, at the meth house. I could read it in them. Didn’t you two see it? The evil in them?”

  Elain and Mai exchanged a glance. Elain started to shake her head no, then hesitated. “I didn’t try to read them. I didn’t know that was something I could do then like that. Not from a distance. I usually need to touch someone to feel things about them.”

  Mai shrugged. “Me, either. I rely on you guys.”

  “Huh.” Lina nibbled on a thumbnail. “Okay. Duly noted. At the meth house, I could actively see a dark aura around all of them that our guys didn’t have.”

  “You can see that all the time?” Mai asked.

  “No, not really. It’s like…” She thought about it. “Kind of like this supernatural heads-up display appeared in my brain when we were heading into the fight. Once things kicked up.” Now she really seemed to ponder it. “Hmm. Guess I’ll have to play around with that.”

  “Baba Yaga said she didn’t know what I’d be able to do,” Elain admitted. “Maybe this is what she meant.”

  “I wish I even knew what I can do,” Mai muttered. “Other than my dreams, I feel pretty dang useless unless I’m working with you two.”

  “So we’re just going to take the three of us in there and blast their asses with spells?” Elain asked. “That’s your plan?”

  “You said there’s only four of them,” Lina said. Then, she grinned. “Hey, anything worth doing is worth overdoing.”

  “Great, then let’s move our asses,” Elain growled as she started waddling again as fast as her legs would carry her. “Because we’re wasting time.”

  * * * *

  Lacey hoped the girls had heard her cry.

  I’m a fool.

  She had been the target. Had she gone with Jocko as she’d originally planned, she wouldn’t have been there for them to kidnap.

  She would be the reason Mai nearly died.

  Goddess, please give me strength.

  The two cockatrice didn’t talk as they moved silently through the woods. They took turns carrying her, jumping from tree to tree, staying off the ground for the first couple of hours, eventually returning to the ground more frequently, until their entire trail was overground.

  She didn’t know how long it was before they finally stopped. Lacey was shivering from the cold.

  They dumped her onto a hard, rocky surface.

  “Hello, Lacey Fraser,” a woman said.

  * * * *

  Aliah stared down at the wolf Seer. Yanking the pillowcase off the woman’s head, the old woman didn’t appear to be much of a threat.

  And if anyone came after them, well, she had a few surprises ready. She hadn’t spent all her years with Cameron without learning a thing or two about booby traps. She’d set up several along the roads leading to the fire road, and another on the fire road itself, each one progressively worse, any of them alone enough to disable several vehicles. From the old favorite of roofing nails dumped in the road, to an electric-eye tripwire on a game camera, which would then trigger a well-balanced log crashing down on top of them, to a few improvised explosives.

  She’d studied the roads for several weeks before planning. No houses along them, most of the Clan leaving or gone for the Gathering, the only people using those roads that particular morning would be her, or anyone who thought they were going to catch her.

  And she’d laid a damn goo
d scent trail along the road outside the Seer’s house early that morning, to lead them that way, into the snares. Not even the three guys she’d hired knew about the snares. She’d sent them detailed topography maps ahead of time of how they were to lay their trails away from the house once they abducted the woman, and where to meet up with her at the rock pile.

  The first time she’d actually seen them in person was earlier that morning, when she met up with them in the parking lot at the shopping center. They’d thought she was nuts when she had them go off-road on carefully selected bypasses, but she’d claimed it was for tracking purposes. She’d then assigned two of the guys to grab the woman, and one to observe and follow, after making sure the wolves had followed the false trail down the road.

  Right now, she had to focus on what she was doing. She’d left Cameron safely tucked in the cave a little bit away, dressed warmly and with a blanket draped over his carrier. She hated to do it, but it was the only way. She couldn’t have him there with her. The men didn’t know about the cave because she hadn’t told them.

  They also didn’t know she had a gun.

  “You have something very important,” Aliah told the wolf. “And you’re going to give it to me whether you want to or not.”

  On top of the monolithic pile of rocks, she’d set up her makeshift altar, just like the Grimoire Lilitu described.

  Upon which the Seer now lay. Aliah had everything she needed ready, including the book turned to the page for the spell she was going to work, a rock weighing down the pages.

  She reached down and ripped the tape off the woman’s mouth. “I want to know what is buried in your backyard, Seer.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Aliah grabbed the silver collar and pulled her up onto her knees. “Oh, I think you do.”

  She held up the ceremonial knife, enjoying the way the wolf’s eyes went wide with fright.

  * * * *

  Oscar was driving in the lead, heading toward the fire road. His personal opinion was that they were following a false trail, but Elain was the Seer, and she’d told them to go to the rock pile, and this would be the fastest way there.

  When he turned off the main road onto the side road that would take them to the fire road, he felt a bad rumble in the base of his skull.

  He slowed.

  Behind them, Kitty nearly rear-ended him in her SUV.

  She rolled down her window and screamed at him. “What the hell are you doing? Move your ass!”

  He stopped, threw the truck into park, and got out, leaving it running. “Kitty, they said there might be traps. I’ve got a really bad feeling.”

  “Screw that, we need to get our asses there first. Do you see any traps? The traps will likely be on the trail itself, not on a fucking road. That’s their normal MO.”

  He turned. No, the road ahead looked clear. A graded, muddy, sloppy trail, but he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, the hatred and anger radiating off Kitty in almost visible waves told Oscar she wasn’t thinking clearly. She was taking this way too personally. He could sympathize, because he loved Lacey, too. But rushing into things would get someone hurt.

  Or worse.

  He started to turn back to her, to try to calm her down, but she gunned her SUV, cutting around him and heading down the road.

  “Dammit,” he muttered, jumping back in his truck and following her.

  Seconds later, she started swerving. He braked hard just in time to see her pull over, all four of her tires starting to lose air.

  She got out and kicked at the front driver tire, howling her rage to the air.

  He parked and jogged toward her, instantly seeing what happened. It looked like someone had dumped several buckets full of roofing nails all over both sides of the road.

  He’d stopped just in time.

  “Come on!” he yelled, waving her and the other shifters back to him. “My truck. Jump in.”

  The shifters piled out of her SUV as they abandoned it. With them all loaded in the back of his truck, he shifted into four-wheel drive, backed up, and cut the wheel hard, taking them off the road and onto rough ground. Now that he knew what he was looking for, he saw where he could cut back in on the other side of the SUV and miss the rest of the nails.

  But they’d have to go slow and keep an eye out for any other traps.

  It took them three hours to drive a stretch of road that would normally take less than an hour. They’d found two additional traps, each more deadly than the last.

  Despite Kitty being nearly crazy with anger, he couldn’t risk going any faster.

  Slowing down even more, the fire road turnoff was less than a quarter mile ahead.

  In front of them, a bull moose stepped out of the woods and into the road.

  “Move it, Bullwinkle!” Kitty screamed from the back of the truck.

  Unable to help himself despite the gravity of the situation, Oscar had started laughing when the moose took a step toward them in the middle of the road.

  Then, it exploded.

  He slammed on the brakes. All of them stared, stunned, as a spray of what was once moose blossomed where the IED had vaporized most of it. The moose’s head gracefully arced through the air and landed with a loud kerthunk on the hood of his truck, denting it before sliding down the front grill and leaving a bloody trail behind, one antler hanging up on the hood ornament before it finally fell.

  He jammed the truck into park and shut the engine off. Pounding on the inside of the roof so Kitty would pay attention, he yelled, “We’re fucking walking in from here.”

  “Agreed,” she called back, sounding as sick as he felt.

  * * * *

  When Mai went to check her phone, she realized she had no signal. Without stopping, Elain pulled hers out of her pocket, too.

  Zilch.

  Ditto Lina.

  “Guess we’re on our own,” Elain said.

  “Do you want me to shift and run ahead?” Mai asked.

  “No,” Lina and Elain said together.

  “Why not?”

  Lina looked at Elain. “You first.”

  “Because you’d have no weapons, and like you said, we’re stronger together.”

  “Oh,” Lina said. “I was going to say I was afraid of Micah and Jim kicking our asses for letting her do it, but that works, too.”

  “The other point being,” Elain continued, “that I’m having a hard time following them, and I know what I’m looking for. It’d be too easy for you to get separated from us. We’re strongest together.”

  “Okay,” Mai said. “Fine. Got it.”

  On they trudged, as fast as they could with the muddy ground, uneven terrain, and Elain’s reduced speed and agility.

  “Don’t suppose you have water in those packs, do you?” Lina asked them.

  “Crap,” Elain muttered. She was already in a foul mood because she’d had to stop and pee several times along the way, and not just because of the logistics of doing it in the woods.

  She hated like hell to leave that kind of a scent trail the cockatrice might be able to use against her later on. An instinctive aversion she knew was her inner Alpha piping up.

  “How much farther?” Lina asked. “Surely everyone else made it there by now? Maybe we’ll get there and the party will be over.”

  “Or they didn’t,” Mai darkly said.

  “Less than an hour,” Elain told them. “As long as we keep up this pace.

  Following the trail, at least, had gotten easier. The abductors were sticking to the ground pretty continuously now. Even Mai could find the trail most of the time.

  Elain knew they must be getting closer to the rock pile. She was so tired she almost missed it. She grabbed Lina and Mai and pulled them down to the ground. Just ahead of them, they heard a woman’s voice.

  “Remember,” Lina whispered. “Feel it. Don’t think it.”

  Elain had her gun in her hand. “They’ll be feeling something.”

/>   Because Elain wouldn’t relinquish the gun, Lina had to be in the middle, Elain and Mai to either side and holding her hands. Elain felt the return of the wasabi-in-her-veins feeling of the magick building within the three of them, the same sensation she’d felt in Yellowstone, and with the house at the meth lab.

  “Let’s go,” Lina muttered.

  As they stepped forward, they could see the two men standing on top of the rock pile, their backs to the women. In front of them, Lacey, on her knees and bound with duct tape, and another woman standing over her.

  “Aliah,” Elain muttered.

  “That the bitch?” Lina asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool.” They let Lina set the pace as they crept forward through the trees.

  Lina started muttering. “Goddess Above, Goddess Below. Around those rocks set winds to blow.”

  From out of nowhere, a violent tempest built and swirled. The woman let out a cry as several things she’d had next to her on top of the rock pile were blown off.

  One of the men had turned, and now he spotted them.

  Before Elain could bring the gun up, Mai raised her free hand. “Lightning blue, lightning true. Lightning bolt right into you!”

  Out of the clear sky, a silent column of blue flame shot down, vaporizing the man where he stood.

  “Nice shot!” Lina said.

  The other man jumped down from the rock pile before he took off running in the opposite direction.

  Elain raised the gun, firing and hitting him square in the back. He dropped.

  Lina looked at her with a scowl.

  “Hey, it worked, didn’t it?”

  Aliah screamed at them. “You are not going to fuck this up for me!” She raised her hand. That was when they spotted the knife.

  All at the same time, Elain raised the gun and fired, Mai pointed her hand at the woman, and Lina screamed, “Go to hell, bitch!”

  None of them could tell if it was the bullet, the lightning bolt, or the black cloud that enveloped the woman that did the trick, but by the time the three of them made it to the base of the rock pile, Lacey was alone on top of it.