Hunted

by P. C. Cast

Chapter Thirty-two

  The three bridled horses were waiting for us. Erin and Shaunee were already mounted on Destiny. Shaunee was "driving. " She'd taken English Hunter/Jumper classes at her private prep school before she was Marked, and so she'd proclaimed herself "an almost mediocre rider. " Aphrodite and Damien stood near Persephone and Hope. Damien looked like he might be sick at any instant.

  "I felt spirit's touch and am assuming all went well," Lenobia said as she breezed by us and began rechecking the horses' tack.

  "The wall has been broken, but I was forced to kill a Raven Mocker. I'm quite sure he'll be discovered soon," Darius said.

  "Actually, that's good. It will just give more credence to the thought that the fallen wall is how you'll try to escape," Lenobia said. She glanced at her watch. "Time to mount up. Shaunee, are you ready?"

  "I was born ready," Shaunee said.

  "All right, how about you, Erin?"

  Erin nodded. "Ditto. I'm ready. "

  "Damien?"

  He answered Lenobia, but he spoke to me, "I'm scared. "

  I hurried to his side and took his hand. "I'm scared, too. But it's a lot less scary if I remember we're together. "

  "Even if we're together on a horse?"

  I smiled. "Even if. Plus, Persephone is a perfect lady. " I took Damien's hand and pressed it against the graceful curve of my mare's neck.

  "Oooh, she's soft and warm," he said.

  "Here, I'll give you a knee up," Lenobia said, bending beside us and offering Damien the cradle her hands were making.

  With a long-suffering sigh he put his knee in her hands and tried (unsuccessfully) to stifle a very gay squeal as she boosted him up on Persephone's broad back.

  Before Lenobia helped me up she put her hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes. "Follow your heart and your instinct, and you will not go wrong. Make him flee, Priestess. "

  "I'll do my best," I said.

  "That is why I have such faith in you," she said.

  Once we were all mounted, Lenobia led us to the rollaway doors that opened into the exercise corral. Earlier Lenobia had quietly gone out and opened the outside gate to the corral. Now nothing stood between us and the world except a lot of ice, the front gates of the school, a bunch of Raven Mockers, their daddy, and a crazy-assed ex-High Priestess.

  As you can well imagine, I was pretty concerned about having a raging case of nervous diarrhea. Thankfully, I didn't have enough spare time for my body to give it much thought. Lenobia slid the doors open. She'd already extinguished the lights in this part of the stable, so that we wouldn't be silhouetted, all sitting-duck-like. We peered into the icy darkness, imagining the storm to come.

  "I'll give you just a few minutes to call the elements," Lenobia said. "The sudden increase in intensity of the storm is Anastasia's cue to begin the confusion spell on the other side of campus, and don't forget that Dragon has stationed himself at the school gate. He will cut down the Raven Mocker who is sentry there as soon as he hears hoofs approaching. Shaunee, when you're ready, set the stall on fire. When I see the flames, I'll free the rest of the horses. They already know that they are to stampede around the school grounds and create as much havoc as possible. "

  Shaunee nodded. "I got it. "

  "Then refocus flame on these horses' hoofs. " Lenobia paused and reiterated, "I mean the horse shoes on their hoofs. I'll tell Persephone when to go. All the rest of you need do is to hold on and follow her lead. " She patted my sorrel mare affectionately. Then she looked up at me, "Merry meet and merry part, and merry meet again, High Priestess," she said. Fisting her hand over her heart, she bowed to me.

  "Brightest blessings to you, Lenobia," I said. As she began to walk quickly away, I called after her, "Lenobia, please reconsider leaving here. If we don't get rid of Kalona, you and Dragon and Anastasia have K B forget t to get underground--the tunnels under the depot, the abbey, or even the basement of one of the downtown buildings. That's really the only chance you have of being safe at all. "

  Lenobia paused and looked over her shoulder at me. Her smile was serene and wise. "But, Priestess, you will succeed. " And she hurried away.

  "Jeesh, she's stubborn," Shaunee said.

  "Let's just be sure she's right," I said. "Okay, are you ready?" My friends nodded. I drew a deep breath and centered myself. We were pointed north, so I kneed Persephone to the right so that we were facing east. There was no time for flowery words or inspiring music; there was only time for action. Quickly I invoked each of the elements, feeling my nerves steady as they filled the air and created a glistening circle that bound us. When spirit swelled within me, I couldn't stop myself from laughing aloud.

  Still sounding giddy, I said, "Damien, Erin, put your elements to work!"

  I felt Damien raise his hands behind me, and watched Erin do the same. I could hear Damien whispering words to air, asking a freezing wind to swirl and blow, toss and tussle, everything around us. I knew Erin was asking something similar of water--commanding that it increase the sleet and drench the world around us.

  I braced myself to help them channel and control their elements so that we would (in theory) be moving inside a little bubble of calm in an otherwise elemental maelstrom.

  Both elements responded instantly. We looked out to see the night in front of us erupt into a storm that probably knocked Doppler 8 on its butt.

  "Okay," I yelled above the wind. "It's flame's turn. "

  Shaunee lifted her arms, tossed back her head, and like she was throwing a basketball, hurled the fire that glowed between her palms at the empty, straw-filled stall Lenobia had told her to destroy. The stall burst into angry flame.

  "Now the horses' hoofs," I cried.

  She nodded. "Help me keep it up. "

  "I will, don't worry. " Shaunee pointed down at our horse's hoofs. "Heat up their shoes!" she yelled.

  Persephone snorted. Her head bowed, and as the sawdust of the stable yard began to smoke under her feet, she pricked her ears at her hoofs.

  "Oh, man. . . We need to get out of here before their feet burn everything up," Damien said. He was clutching me so tight it was a little hard for me to breathe, but I didn't want to say anything that might cause him to topple sideways.

  I was just thinking that we really might light the sawdust on fire when I heard a huge commotion behind us that I knew must be Lenobia freeing the horses to bolt around the main grounds of the campus, as if they were utterly crazed by the stable fire. Persephone tossed her head and snorted. I felt her muscles bunch and had just enough time to squeeze hard with my thighs and yell back at Damien, "Hold on! Here we go!" And then the mare lunged out of the stables and into the raging night.

  The three horses, side by side, galloped through the co y1[E rral and out the gate Lenobia had left open. They turned hard to the left, circled around behind the main school building, and sooner than I would have imagined possible, there was steam hissing and mist rising in waves around us as heated hoofs met the ice that covered the asphalt of the parking lot.

  Behind us I could hear the screams of panicked horses and the terrible cries of the Raven Mockers. I gritted my teeth and hoped Lenobia's mares were taking out a bunch of the birdmen.

  Persephone's hoofs hissed against the slick road that led down the drive to the school.

  "Oh, Goddess! Look!" Damien cried. He pointed from over my shoulder ahead and off to the left in the line of trees that framed the lane. Dragon was there fighting three Raven Mockers. His blade was a silver blur as he lunged and parried and whirled. As we came into view, the birdmen tried to shift their attention to us, but Dragon redoubled his attack, skewering one of them instantly and causing the other two to turn, hissing, back to him.

  "Go!" he cried as we galloped past him, "And may Nyx bless you!"

  The gate was open, Dragon's doing I was sure. We surged through, turned to the right, and galloped down deserted, icy Utica Street.

&n
bsp; At the Twenty-first Street light, which was not working, we turned the horses to the right, positioned them in the middle of the street, and gave them their heads.

  Midtown Tulsa had turned into a frozen ghost of itself. If I hadn't been focused and hadn't been absolutely sure our horses were in a flat gallop down Twenty-first Street, I would have thought we were utterly lost in a strange, postapocalyptic ice world. There was nothing in the least bit familiar around me. No lights. No cars moving. No people. Cold and darkness and ice reigned. The beautiful old trees of midtown were shrouded in so much ice that many of them had literally splintered down the middle. Power lines were down, snaking across the street like lazy vipers. The horses paid no attention to them. They leaped over downed limbs and lines, their flame-heated hoofs slicing through the ice to strike sparks against the surprised pavement.

  And then, above the din of striking hoofs and the hiss of flame on ice, I heard the terrible flapping of wings and the cry of first one and then another and another Raven Mocker.

  "Darius," I yelled. "Raven Mockers!"

  He looked behind us and up, and nodded grimly. Then he did something that completely shocked me. Out of his jacket pocket he pulled a black gun. I'd never seen any of the Sons of Erebus carry modern weapons, and it looked completely out of place in his hand. He said something to Aphrodite, who was pressed against his back. She slid to the side a little, allowing him to swivel around. He lifted his arm, sighted, and squeezed off half a dozen shots. The sound was deafening in the frozen night, but not half as eerie as what followed it--the screams of wounded Raven Mockers and the thud! crash! of bodies as they fell from the sky.

  "There!" Shaunee cried, pointing in front of us and to the right. "I see flames!"

  At first I didn't see anything, and then through a stand of ice-enslaved trees I caught sight of first one and then another and another candle-flickering welcoming light. Was that it? Was that the Benedictine Abbey? Visibility was terrible, and b bGYeverything was so disorienting and dark, that I couldn't tell if it was the abbey or just one of the houses-turned-plastic surgeon offices that lined this part of the street.

  Concentrate! If it's a place of power, I should be able to feel it.

  I breathed deep and reached out with my instinct, and I felt it--the unmistakable draw that came from the combined power of spirit and earth.

  "That's it!" I yelled. "That's the abbey!"

  We yanked our horses' heads to the right and plunged off the road, through a ditch, and then up an embankment dotted with trees. The horses had to slow to dodge around fallen limbs and dead, downed power lines, and then we popped through the trees and into a clearing. Directly in front of us was a huge old oak. Its lower branches were filled with little glass cages holding cheerily burning candles. There was a carport farther behind the tree, and beyond it I could just make out the looming hulk of the brick building that was the Benedictine Abbey, or at least I could make out its windows, because there were candles lit in each one of them.

  "Okay, you guys can lay off the elements now and let things calm down. " The Twins and Damien whispered to their elements, and the madness of the storm began to quiet to a cold, cloudy night.

  "Whoa!" I called, and our obedient, loyal mares skidded to a stop just before an awe-inspiring figure clothed in a dark robe and wimple.

  "Hello, child. I heard you were coming," she said, smiling up at me.

  I slid from Persephone's back and threw myself into her arms. "Sister Mary Angela! I am so glad to see you!"

  "As I am glad to see you, too," she said. "But, child, perhaps we should put off our hellos until we've dealt with the dark creatures filling the trees behind you. "

  I spun around in time to see dozens of Raven Mockers landing in the trees. Except for the sounds of their wings they were absolutely silent, and their red eyes glowed like watching demons.

  "Well, hell!" I said.