by Cherry Adair
“Hola?” Sara called, her arms tight around the squirming child in her arms. “Hay alguien en casa?”
She leaped back as a small object came zooming out of the window opening and over her head, her heart knocking, praying it had been a bird and not one of the damned vampire bats in the area. The cave where they supposedly hung out was closer to this village than to the other one. She grimaced as she edged closer to the house.
“Mamá!” The excited child pointed to the left of the derelict house, into the darkness of the jungle.
“No, there isn’t—oh.” A small beam of light, possibly from a flashlight, moved between the trees. “I don’t think that’s your ma—”
With a shriek of frustration, the child finally wrenched out of Sara’s arms and landed with a little thud and a puff of dirt, taking off toward the blackness.
Sara was hard on her heels. She had never had much interaction with children, certainly not wizard children, and the little girl’s freefall just about stopped her heart.
The toddler moved fast on chubby little legs, and Sara put on a burst of speed to catch up just as she slipped into the thick undergrowth behind the small house. She reached down to grab the escapee, only to find her hands empty. The child just disappeared.
“Oh, sweetheart. Now what do I do?” Teleport to Jack or Carmelita and get help? Follow her through the shrubbery? She couldn’t even call the child’s name because she didn’t know what it was.
Teleport, Sara decided. The more eyes there were, the better chance they had of finding her. Jack could trace the child faster than she could find her in the dark. Touching the sunstone in her right ear, she cast a protective net over a hundred-square-yard area. That should contain her, wherever she was. Those baby legs couldn’t go much farther than that.
Just as she was about to shimmer to Inez’s sister’s house, Sara noticed the light again—closer and brighter this time. Was the little girl right? Was her mother out there looking for her?
Sara projected her voice toward the light. Behind the beam she could just make out a pale figure moving rapidly several hundred yards away. “Hola? Está buscando a una niña?”
No reply other than the sound of a few restless birds shifting in the branches overhead. Sara hesitated, narrowing her eyes to focus on the figure dodging between the trees as if being chased by the hounds of hell.
Definitely a woman. A naked woman. Her pale skin caught the beam of her flashlight as her arms and legs pumped furiously, her long blond hair streaming out behind her. Mouth dry, heart palpitating furiously, Sara teleported to get Jack.
“THANK YOU, JACKSON.” CARMELITA poured Jack a second cup of coffee. Several women were gathering towels and blankets for friends, leaving the two of them alone for a few moments in the small kitchen.
Jack liked Carmelita, but he was damned hungry, and while food had been offered several times, he didn’t want to deplete what already had to stretch to feed all the evacuees. It was time to go.
More urgent than hunger was the nagging feeling that Sara needed help. Foolish, really. They were in a tiny village of fewer than a hundred people, all of whom knew each other. Discreet inquiries as he worked side by side with the people had netted him the information that one wizard had died the same way Alberto had. There were no more sick people in the village.
“You are a good boy,” Carmelita told him, her plump, lined face sweet and gentle as she patted his shoulder. He could see why Sara loved this woman. Carmelita Santos was the epitome of motherhood, soft, kind, and unrelentingly maternal. “We could not have moved so many people without you and Sara helping us. Gracias, gracias por lo mucho.”
It had been a while since he’d been called a boy. Jack covered Carmelita’s work-worn hand on his shoulder with his own and gave her fingers a squeeze. “Glad to do it. Will you be all right here in this village?”
Okay, Sara. Where the hell are you? I’m not a hundred yards from where you could possibly be. Come and get me.
“Claro. Esto no es un problema. Está es mi familia.” Sitting down opposite him, Carmelita poured herself a cup of coffee, wrapping her hands around the chipped mug. “You have no family, my Sara told me.”
Dangerous ground. Jack drank his coffee, then set the cup, covered with parrots, down on the oilcloth cover on the table. “My mother died when I was six. Lupus. My father, a heart attack, when I was twenty-three.” He glanced surreptitiously at his watch.
She crossed herself. “Not a good man.” Carmelita patted his hand affectionately. “Sara did not tell me everything,” she assured him hurriedly.
“He wasn’t a particularly good father,” Jack said diplomatically. Jackson Slater Sr. had been a militant perfectionist. Unkind, to say the least, and frequently brutal. No, he hadn’t been a good father—but he’d been determined to make Jack a damn good Aequitas. Even if it meant practically killing his only son in the process.
“He was probably a good man,” Jack told her, stretching the truth like a rubber band. His father had been harsh, overbearing, and emotionally bankrupt. The only thing that his father had been good at was training him for the day that the Aequitas would be called into service.
Slater senior hadn’t wanted a geologist for a son. He’d wanted a high-ranking member of the Aequitas Archon to live through vicariously. If it had been possible, he’d’ve snatched the Slater watch off Jack’s arm and been on the front lines himself. “Or at least, he tried to be,” Jack murmured, wondering what the hell was taking Sara so long.
“He had no patience with children. I don’t think he ever wanted kids. Now my mother”—his lips smiled, but his gut wrenched—“my mother wanted to fill the house with children. But, unfortunately—or fortunately for my father—I was an only child.”
The other women came back into the kitchen before Carmelita could turn on the interrogation lights and stick bamboo shoots under Jack’s fingernails. He got to his feet, carrying his mug to the sink. “I’d better look for Sara.”
“She knows to come here,” Inez told him, taking the mug out of his hand before he could rinse it himself. “Go sit. I’ll give you some supper.”
“Thank you. Another time. Sara should’ve been here by now. I’m going to go find her and take her home.”
After hugs good-bye, which Jack tolerated with admirable patience, he went back to the town square. No Sara. He frowned. Where was she?
EVENING CHANGED TO BROAD daylight between one heartbeat and the next. “What the—” Sara stopped dead in her tracks, blinking into the unexpected brightness, and shaded her eyes with her hand.
How had she walked so deep into the forest without realizing it? She turned in a circle to orient herself. She couldn’t see the broken-down little house or the village.
The heat-released fragrances of foliage and ginger flower saturated the heavy air. Filtered sunlight streamed through the leafy canopy, catching in droplets of moisture on the leaves and blades of grass underfoot. Birds chattered in the branches, and the musical hum and buzz of the ever-present insect life made a backdrop to the quiet music of the rain forest.
A few moments ago, the air had been relatively cool, but now it was hot, humid, and still. The drenched heat pressed down on her like a wet electric blanket.
Run! a voice in her head shouted. Don’t stop!
Go. Go. Go.
Keep running!
Disoriented, Sara followed the primitive directive screaming inside her. She started to run. From whom or what, she had no idea. Where was the child? Where was the mother?
Sharp branches slashed her bare legs and snagged in her hair, yanking until her eyes watered with pain.
Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.
Something bounced on her chest. A cord. A thin leather cord. “Madre de Dios. Ayudame. Por favor. Ayudame.” Her voice sounded high-pitched, scared, young.
Run.
Faster. Oh, God, he was going to catch her. Couldn’t let him catch her.
Where was her amulet? Had he
stolen it before he cornered her? She needed her amulet. She had no protection without it. She wrapped her fingers around the empty cord as she ran.
“What amulet?” Sara panted, feeling as though she were in an alternate universe. She shouldn’t be this winded, shouldn’t be huffing and puffing like this. It was hard to pull the thick, damp air into her heaving lungs. Several gangly, long-haired spider monkeys swung hand-over-hand from branch to branch above her, their curious pink faces observing her every step like spectators to a marathon.
Run. Faster.
Iridescent birds were flushed from their hiding places as she passed through the understory, squawking in a flurry of wings as they fled.
Faster.
Her bare foot slammed down on a sharp rock. Pain radiated up her leg. She stumbled, grabbed a tree trunk to prevent herself from sprawling face-first, then righted herself and hauled ass. Sara considered herself in pretty good shape—gym shape, not jungle-running among tree trunks, head-high ferns, and leaves the size of a car shape. Heart pounding hard enough to explode, Sara ran, her breath sawing frantically from her overburdened lungs. Sweat dripped and stung her eyes.
A branch slashed across her left hip, sharp as a whip. “Ow, hell!” No sound came out, her mouth was too dry. Slapping her palm over the cut, she kept going, glancing down at the injury as her legs pumped and her bare feet flew over the ground.
She was naked.
Her lacerated skin burned from hundreds of small slices; the cut on her hip oozed a thin line of blood. Coffee-colored skin. Not her skin. More meat on her bones. Bigger breasts. No polish on her fingers or toes. Bottle-blond hair whipping around her arms and shoulders.
Not her. But her.
She was in a damn parallel universe. The question was: whose?
Magic.
Not her own.
Touching both earlobes, Sara realized that for the first time in memory she was not wearing the small sunstone studs her father had given her for her fifth birthday. Her magic could work without them, she supposed, but the crystals in her ears were used for one thing, to amp her powers when necessary. Just like Jack used that big-ass watch to amp his.
She tried to teleport, the most basic magic a wizard could perform. She stayed exactly where she was, running through the jungle for her life. Foe unknown.
Her heart hurt inside her chest as she exerted herself beyond her endurance. This was crazy. She didn’t want to be naked, and she sure as hell didn’t want to be running as if her life depended on it.
Whoever the woman was, she was running without purpose, without direction. Blindly terrified. Possibly with cause.
Sara tried to think. For the first time she heard whatever it was directly behind her. It was loud and large as it crashed through the foliage. It was perhaps a hundred feet behind her and closing in fast.
Man or beast?
The woman was petrified. Sara was pissed.
What was the plan? For her to run until she couldn’t run another step? Until her heart gave out? Then what? She’d be raped? Killed? This chase seemed like overkill. If a man was bent on rape, this seemed like a hell of a lot of work. Surely there was easier prey to be had?
If, as she suspected, it was an animal, she should probably scale a tree. Easier said than done. Because of the scarcity of sunlight in the understory, branches tended to be high up. And she wasn’t sure this was the appropriate time to learn to climb a tree.
Screw this. No more running. She stopped, her breath harsh in her ears. Panting like a freight train, she turned around. No luck in her attempt to materialize some clothing. Fine. Whoever the hell it was out there wanted her naked. She’d pretend to be fully dressed. The emperor’s new clothes.
It, he, wasn’t getting within arm’s length of her. Or this body.
The ground was littered with fallen branches and debris. She scanned her surroundings until she saw a small log, easily four feet long, crooked in the middle, but nice and solid. She bent and snatched it up, gripping one end in both hands, holding it over her shoulder like a baseball bat. It was heavy, and she gave it a couple of experimental swings. She wouldn’t have to be accurate to inflict some damage.
“Come out, asshole, whoever the hell you are.” She hoped she sounded a lot more confident than she felt. Spreading her bare feet in the spongy ground for balance, she waited. “Let’s see you.” Some of the delivery was lost because she still couldn’t quite catch her breath.
And because she was scared. Really scared.
Something crashed through the undergrowth, making her flinch. A strange, unrecognizable sound—something between a sibilant hiss and a hoarse roar—made goose bumps rise all over her body. Branches lashed and snapped overhead, causing the sunlight to ebb and flow over the area where she stood; it felt as if she were underwater. Leaves dropped around her like green butterflies.
She held her ground. But right then her conviction that she needed to bring this to a head sooner than later didn’t sound like such a good idea.
She was naked and, other than a big branch, defenseless in a rain forest filled with dangers of every kind—animals, human predators, snakes, insects, poisonous vegetation.
She needed help, and she needed it fast.
If Jack had heard her all the way in Australia when she hadn’t called him, surely he’d hear her now when they were in the same country and she was yelling his name.
“Jaaaa—” Her voice died and her eyes went wide.
OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod.
Impossible—
The snake’s upright body blocked the trees as its back end slithered to catch up, coiling behind it. At first, it looked an almost iridescent black, but as the sun’s rays struck it, Sara saw its true colors: red, blue, green, yellow. Rainbow-colored markings. Her eyes went wide, and her heart seemed to stutter to a terrified stop.
Sarulu.
The snake’s scales, each bigger across than a dinner plate, glistened in the filtered light pouring through the canopy. At first, all Sara saw was the enormous body, easily six or seven feet across, curved upright in front of her like a vast, smooth tree trunk reaching for the sky.
She took a faltering step backward, feeling the rough bark of a strangler fig tree against her naked butt. She couldn’t take her eyes off what must surely be the biggest snake known to man.
How long is it? she wondered wildly, noticing the fat mountain of coils behind its body. Two hundred feet? Three? She couldn’t see its head, but she figured it was up there somewhere. This was one hell of an anaconda.
With barely a thought at the how and what of using magic, she blasted the snake with an enormous ball of fire, ten feet across and blazing hot. She felt the vibration and blast-furnace whoosh of superheated air as it shot from her toward the snake, felt the burn all the way down her naked body.
Her eyes stung and her nostrils burned. But the damn snake just hissed and swayed. The flames didn’t appear to have any impact on it. She shot another ball of energy-charged fire at the silky body in front of her. Faster. Hotter.
The snake didn’t so much as flinch.
Using the fingertips of one hand, keeping a firm grip on her weapon with the other, Sara felt her way around the wide tree just as the triangular head curved down from twenty or thirty feet above her head. She froze as it came closer and closer.
Ssssaraaaaa. Yellow eyes the size of platters with elliptical pupils gleamed metallic gold as it ducked its head lower to look right at her.
She barely breathed when it stopped a dozen feet away. Eye to eye with the monstrous reptile, Sara screamed inside her head, Move! Move, damn it!
With a sound of flapping wet leather, the snake opened its enormous mouth, exposing needle-sharp, curved yellow teeth lining the shiny, pinkish-white interior. A spiral of red, sulfurous smoke drifted from the giant mouth to hang over the snake’s head in a diaphanous red haze.
Ssssaraaaaasaraaaaa.
Lord. It sounded as if the damn thing was calling her name. Its mouth was big
enough for a person to stand in. Sara voted not to be that person. It would swallow her whole with no problem at all. The snake was so grotesque, so pee-in-your-pants freaking huge that if it did swallow her, her carcass wouldn’t even leave a bump in its enormous body. Like the missing girls, she’d be another statistic.
Its guttural, hissing roar froze her marrow.
Move! Gogogogogo.
The snake’s three-pronged, rainbow-colored tongue lashed out, all ten feet of it, licking Sara’s bare skin from ankle to chin. Sssssssaraaaa.
Cold. Heat. Ice. Fire.
The rough bark of the fig tree pressed into her spine. She flung her head to the side as one prong of the snake’s triple-forked tongue slithered across her throat. At the same time, another prong circled her breast, teasing her nipple.
She gagged as a prong slid between her legs, her skin creeping in a vain attempt to distance herself. Do something! Anything. What, for God’s sake?
Fire was her power to call. She hadn’t even tried to use it in years. Yet those fireballs had appeared without effort, and really—how much worse could the situation possibly be?
She shot a couple of lightning bolts; the first one went wide, but the second struck right between its eyes. Its head reared back as the pure white zigzag of electricity struck, but it didn’t release its hold.
Sara went stone cold as nausea welled inside her. She knew it wasn’t sexual—it couldn’t be. But it felt like an invasion of her body.
Run.
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t think beyond blind terror.
Snap the hell out of it, Sara Jeannette Temple! she screamed in her head, eyes riveted to the golden elliptical pupils of the snake as it watched her.
The branch. She still had the heavy branch. Hit the damn thing! With a howl of rage, Sara swung the branch with all her strength. Incapable of aiming, she just put her weight behind the swing and whacked whatever she could reach as hard as she could. The hell with clothes; what she wouldn’t give right now for a nice sharp machete.
