Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

  He'd lost weight, his arms shriveled and fingers knobby with bones. A tray of food lay by the chair, apparently untouched. They hadn't been starving him; he'd just stopped eating.

  The room stank — no vents, unwashed bodies and vomit and a chemical toilet in one corner. Gary swallowed and stepped in front of his father's gaze. No reaction. Dad was still breathing. Gary knelt down and touched one of the bruised hands. It was warm.

  "Dad?"

  Those eyes didn't move, didn't focus. "They've got Ellie and Mouse."

  Gary winced again. "No. Caroline's getting them out, right now. We're here to get you all out of here."

  "I killed the Dragon. I can't give them the Dragon to save Ellie and Mouse."

  The pendant warmed against Gary's chest, under the Polartec and the Kevlar vest. He reached in and pulled it out, to dangle glowing in front of his father's eyes.

  "The Dragon lives, Dad. I gave my first Tear to Caroline. I can give this one to you and get another. We just have to get you home."

  The dead eyes woke slightly, focusing on the crimson Tear. "Don't let him take that. Then you'll die, too. Peggy and Ellen and Gary and Daniel and Maria. All dead." He paused. "Who's Caroline?"

  "Caroline Haskell, Aunt Alice's niece. She's helping me get all of you out of here."

  Now his father squinted, as if trying to force thoughts through fog. "Caroline Haskell? How could she have a Tear? She's a Witch. The Dragon speaks only to Morgans."

  "She's Ben's daughter, Dad. She's a Morgan. She's my sister." Then Gary froze at the words that had slipped out. Of all the stupid . . .

  But the faintest ghost of a smile slipped across his father's face. "Caroline Haskell . . . Ben's daughter. That sly old dog."

  Maybe Dad hadn't caught the second part of that idiot speech. Gary could breathe again. He stood up and lifted his father out of the chair. "I changed, Dad. I swam in and changed back and switched the security off. Caroline is finding Ellen and Peggy. Let's get out of here." Keep the sentences short and simple and leave the genetic grenades out of it.

  Gary tucked himself under his father's arm and eased him across the room. Close up, he smelled even worse, like week-old roadkill with vomit sauce. The corridor was still clear and quiet. Gary took a deep breath, trying to wash the prison stink out of his nose and throat. Stale mildew and damp rock were an improvement.

 

  Caroline didn't answer. He froze, searching his mind for her fire. That space stayed hollow. She wasn't dead; he'd have felt that. She was hiding, even from him. About damned time!

  He shut and locked the door behind them, hoping that might slow any checkups and give a minute or two more for the escape. They hobbled down the hall together and into the security room, where he settled his father in the second chair. It sat close in under the camera, where the monitor couldn't see his face. The top of one head looks pretty much like another.

  "You know these systems better than I do. Here's the manual. They're in a lockdown now, with a fire outside and some crazy stuff on the grounds. See if you can figure out a way to get us out without anybody noticing."

  His father stared down at the manual and started turning pages. Gary mouthed a silent prayer and headed back down the hall. He didn't think the old man was in any condition to change and swim out. They needed that damned speedboat. Then he'd go for the girls if Caroline wasn't back.

  *~*~*

  Caroline slipped through another door and taped the latch. On the Eighth Day, God created duct tape to patch the fuck-ups She'd made rushing through the first six to meet deadline. Famous contractor's saying, attributed to Kate Rowley. Caroline had to get out there to help Aunt Alice and Aunt Kate.

  She dropped the roll back into her pocket. Pegboard covered the outside of this door, with hooks and junk hanging on it. She scanned around, getting her bearings. No windows, bare fluorescent tubes overhead. Shelves of coffee cans and jars full of springs, hinges, bolts, nails, three racks of storm windows draped with ten years' worth of dust and peeling paint, bench strewn with the guts of a stripped-down chainsaw — she'd stepped into some kind of basement storeroom or workshop. That entire wall was pegboard — the old hidden-door trick.

  Not her problem. Her problem was outside, Aunt Alice and Aunt Kate bleeding on a gravel path. She stepped over to the door leading out, listening for a second and then jerking it open into a corridor that led both ways. She flipped a mental coin and headed right.

  A man stepped out of an intersecting hallway. He started to say something, grunted with surprise, and lifted a gun. She fired, fired twice just like Aunt Kate had taught them for self-defense. The shots echoed like dynamite blasts in the tight hallway.

  The instant froze around her. She saw the damned bullets hit, dent his jacket on the side of his chest, stop, and drop to the floor. She saw his gun rising and turning towards her. She saw the muzzle strobe orange, with sparks that lit the dim hallway. She dove for the floor and fired again, aiming for his head. He fell back around the corner. Chips of wood and plaster stung her cheek, and something thumped her chest and shoulder.

  Jesus Christ and his brother Harry!

  She wormed her way back to the workshop door and slipped inside. Hands shaking, she brushed her hair out of her eyes and then stared at the gun she still held. It looked pitiful all of a sudden, a useless toy. The smell of burned powder almost made her puke. She stuck one finger through a hole in her shirt, rubbing it over the Kevlar underneath, feeling the beginnings of a bruise on her left breast. Her teeth were chattering.

  "Mice at a cat show." The voice was Aunt Alice, in her head. That man had been one of the cats. Now Caroline knew the difference.

  The hallway door creaked, a gentle touch on the knob. She froze against the pegboard, crouching, gun raised. Pegboard — pegboard and hooks and rubber drive belts and a grease gun, she thought. Wrenches and rubber mallets and a spool of bulk saw chain. Nobody here but just us tools.

  The door banged open, framing two men. One low, one high, they scanned the room from corner to corner, guns held squared and ready underneath cold eyes. If they saw a target, it was dead.

  Tools. Pegboard and tools. Brown pegboard with darker oil-stains like overgrown amoebas. The first two wrenches are greasy. Sloppy. The whole room needs a cleanup. Send somebody back later, after things cool down.

  The top man tapped his partner on the head and they vanished from the door. A hand pulled it shut, and she heard the click of a key. Lock down the rooms that have been checked, move on.

  She could breathe again. Her heart pounded and she thought she'd puke. Apparently it was that last detail, the greasy wrenches, that had made her illusion work. Just like a good story, was what Aunt Alice said. Make the person see what you want him to see.

  "What the hell are you doing out here?"

  Caroline froze. Nothing moved. The voice was Aunt Alice, and Caroline was back in the parlor of the House.

  "Where are the kids?"

  The workroom was still empty. Then reality dumped a load of bricks on her foot.

  "Your job is to protect the girls, not play nurse to a dumb old woman."

  She'd done it again.

  She'd left Peggy and Ellen alone in the parlor, and those thugs got in and grabbed the girls. She'd left Gary because she saw Alice hurt, and forgot about the girls again. He'd tried to remind her. Several times.

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit!

  You're not here to kick ass, you're not here to provide backup for Aunt Alice, you're not here to convince your goddamn half-brother that you're a sexy woman, shithead! You're here to rescue a couple of terrified children!

  Caroline Haskell blows it again.

  The question echoed back from her earliest memories, in a dozen exasperated voices: "Caroline Haskell, when are you going to learn to think before you act?"

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Alice cracked one eye open, squinting around for dangerous feet. Then she risked turning her head, to check both ways. It
seemed clear. She inched her knees under her belly and squatted, doing her damnedest to avoid moving her left shoulder. It wasn't hurting yet, and she'd really like to hold on to that condition for as long as possible.

  She shook her head, trying to clear her ears. Damn, that pistol was loud. You got used to practicing with ear protection, you forgot . . .

  I never realized she hated me. Kate and I were blind! Even though we never actually did anything, everyone in town thought we were lovers. And that included Jackie's so-called "friends."

  Kids can be so cruel. They probably made life hell for her. She hated me. Most likely hated both of us. So she could see me. Hate and love create ties stronger than the magic. Kate could see me because she loved me, and Jackie could see me because of her hate.

  Kate.

  This was the picture she'd seen in the tourmaline crystal, Kate lying face down on the gravel path. Typical goddamned oracle, she thought. Show you a picture without telling you why. I thought I had to keep her away . . .

  Alice groped around her for the cool taste of the Pratts' spring. She drew on its power to shuffle, two knees and one hand, over to Kate's side. She settled down with her useless left hand flopped in her lap, and checked the vital signs. Breathing: shallow. Skin: cool. Pulse: weak and fast. No obvious bleeding, but Alice sure as hell didn't have the strength to turn that big ox over.

  If one of those slugs had hit an artery or vein, there'd probably be enough blood to spread beyond her body. Diagnosis: unknown gunshot wounds, immediate danger of clinical shock. Stabilize the patient and wait for transport.

  Well, she knew some treatments for shock that had never shown up in the Merck Manual. Transport was a different matter; cops wouldn't let the ambulance crew enter an active firefight.

  Alice drew power from the spring and fed it through her right hand, giving warmth. Thirty feet, forty feet away from the actual pool, the thread of the earth's magic felt weak and uncertain. She measured her own reserves against her need, and fed some of the strength of her beadwork into the body beneath her hand.

  Crumppp!

  Alice jerked and then shook her head. Just another gas-tank exploding. "Fully involved," that was the fireman's term. The garage was doomed. More gunshots boomed in the forest, none close. She pulled her attention back to Kate and healing.

  She paused and shook her head, ignoring the twinges waking up in her back. "My God, girl. You took a frigging boat to get here? If that ain't love, I don't know what is."

  Then she started humming, the music that served as a focus and flow for her healing magic. Words came to her, drawn out of love and memory.

  "The water is wide, I can't get over,

  "Neither do I have wings to fly,

  Kate stirred under her hand, grunted with pain, and rolled onto one side. She opened her eyes and blinked through tears, staring up at Alice. "She's dead, Lys. I tried and tried to reach her, to talk to her, but she's dead." So the tears weren't just for pain.

  Then her eyes widened with memory. "Alice?" Somehow she dredged up a grimace of a smile. "Old Scarecrow Collins is going to get a hell of a shock when he dies. If God goes around sending lesbian witches out to fetch the dying into heaven, that preacher-man is going to have to reset his brain."

  "It'll be good for his soul. But the only place I'm taking you is Downeast General."

  "Didn't know the ambulance corps hired ghosts."

  "To quote Caroline's favorite author, 'I aten't dead.'" Alice could see Kate's wounds now, and sighed with relief. Right hip and left shoulder — both were places where Kate had plenty of muscle and bone to absorb the damage. Bleeding, yes, but not enough to mean anything serious by itself. The main question was, did she want to live?

  Kate shook her head. "She shot you. Three times. I saw her stand over you and put a bullet in the back of your skull. Even Jackie isn't that bad a shot. Wasn't." She squeezed her eyes shut with a grimace, either pain or memory.

  "You spoiled her aim. That last shot, I just wasn't where she thought I was. Damn near busted my eardrum, though."

  "She's dead, Alice. She ran away, she shot both of us, and now she's dead. What am I going to do now?"

  "You're going to cry, and then you're going to go on living. You're going to be a rock, same as you always are. If you don't do that 'living' part, the House is going to be really pissed. Between one thing and another, we've added considerable to your work list over the last week."

  "You going to live, too? I know she didn't miss all three times."

  Alice winced as her shoulder agreed. "I've got a 9mm hole in my left infraspinatus muscle and scapula. Thoracic cavity is okay, and it didn't penetrate far enough to hit either of the subclavians. In other words, I'll live. I won't be using my left arm for a while. Neither will you. You want any more medical gobbledygook?"

  Actually, she was lying a bit about the thoracic cavity. Kate wasn't on the "need to know" list for that one.

  Whump!

  Another car blowing up. Shame about that, she thought. Tom Pratt had some damned fine antiques stored in that carriage house.

  Her mind was wandering. That funeral pyre for the Rolls and its sisters might satisfy Ron Pelletier. Alice had her own agenda. Tom Pratt still owed her, big time. Attacking the House? The damn fool knew better. She sat and hummed to herself, back to Wagner and the Twilight of the Gods. Fire . . . Dum da dum, da da dum . . . Wotan lifted his hands, and the magic flames sprang up around Brünnhilde.

  Sparks blossomed upward from the carriage house — dry flakes of the roof caught in an updraft. Cedar shingles, she thought. Almost as flammable as gasoline. But they're wet from all this fog and drizzle.

  She could see the main house from here, the dormers and hips and curves of the roof. They'd built good, wide overhangs to protect that fake half-timbering, just like in Merry Old England. The roof under that dormer, the sheltered triangle where one roof rose up to meet another, the pale gray of weathered cedar was much lighter there, drier . . . .

  "Wind of the west, hear my cry. Wind of the east, come to my aid. I call to you. By the Spring and the House, I call to you."

  She formed a swirl of the warring winds, to suck fire from the garage roof. Orange sparks rose and spiraled in the black smoke of the burning, then flakes, then whole shingles and then brands from the purlins and stringers underneath. Dum da dum, da da dum . . .

  Flames, more flames, yet more flames, rising from Siegfried's pyre to ignite the world and spread to Asgard and Valhalla. The coals danced in the winds, following her will across the driveway. They scattered, they fell in firework cascades, but more of them drove on to lodge steaming in the damp cedar shakes of the main house roof. Golden sparks spilled across the roof and under the dormer eaves. They caught in the dry space waiting there. They spread, grew into flickers, became fire. The fire fed upon itself and the wind. It climbed the slope, following heat, following fuel, following her anger up into the triangle between the high roof and the low. Steam rolled and bled out of the cedar. Flames climbed the dormer eave and entered hungry into the attic.

  Dum da dum, da da dum, dum dum da dum, da dum, da da dum! . . . Gods above and below, old Wagner sure knew how to ring down the curtain.

  Kate stirred under her hand. "Dry rot. They have dry rot in the beams. Dry rot and carpenter ants, and they never did a frigging thing about them. Serves the damn fools right."

  Trust Kate Rowley to measure a man's character by how he cared for his house.

  Alice sagged as the fire released her, drained. Her shoulder burned as if one of those coals had landed on her back. Spots danced in front of her eyes.

  Had she drawn enough power from the Pratts' spring? She couldn't move, couldn't leave Kate alone with her grief, couldn't damn well walk anyway more than a couple of paces max. She had to get that brujo's attention, pull him away from whatever Caroline and Gary were up to. She hadn't come out here just to burn Tom Pratt's house down around his ears.

  Coughs racked her, stabbing red-hot iron thro
ugh her shoulder. She gagged on something and spat it out. Blood. Red foamy blood on the pink gravel. So much for that little fib about your lung.

  Kate stared at the gob of blood. "Liar." She paused, looking around for something. "That spring over there anything like yours? Will it help?"

  Alice blinked. "Might. Who told you about springs?"

  "Granny Rowley. Haskells aren't the only ones who remember the old ways." Kate grunted and picked up her pistol from the gravel, tucking it into her belt instead of the shoulder holster shiny with her own blood. She forced herself to her knees and then stood, swaying like an oak half cut through. She reached down and grabbed Alice under her right armpit, lifting her to her feet.

  Jee-zum! Shot twice and she still can pick me up like a rag doll! What's it like to be that damned tough?

  More coughs spasmed through Alice's body, wiping out any thought. When her eyes cleared again, she was sitting by a small pool, exquisitely landscaped with cattails and rhodora, with natural ledge outcrops serving as benches backed by the blueberries and juniper that grew away from the wet. Kate lay full length on the stone, panting, her face pale. Maybe the big lug isn't that tough, after all. Just desperate. Welcome to the club.

  Kate blinked and shook her head, as if answering Alice's thoughts. She winced and shifted her weight, trying to favor both her right hip and left shoulder at the same time. "That's Ol' Kate in a nutshell, ain't it? Always a day late and a dollar short?"

  "If you hadn't been there a few minutes back, I'd probably be dead. Now hush up. I've still got work to do." Alice reached for her satchel, to set it close by her right hand. The move lit a blaze of pain across her back, and she gasped. The pool shimmered in her eyes, turning to quicksilver.