Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

  She drew power from it, calming her breathing. "In fact, why don't you just black out for a while. What you don't see, you can't testify to."

  She closed her own eyes and felt for the healing and strength of this spring, sister to her own Woman's Spring. No matter that the Pratts had lived here for a dozen generations, men claiming to rule and possess the land. All springs were female — giving, nurturing. Springs were the earth goddess suckling life.

  The touch eased her pain. That didn't matter. Pain wasn't the problem. She needed strength, she needed air, but most of all she needed that damned brujo to show up before she passed out. She yanked on the power like a bell-pull, summoning the Lord of Hell to a reckoning at his front gate.

  Sirens yodeled in the distance, growing closer. Her practiced ear separated out sheriff's cars, State Patrol, and ambulance by their different cries. The volunteer fire department seemed to be slow off the mark. Middle of the day, all the guys would be at work.

  A rattle of shots broke through the sirens, sounding like machine guns carrying on a South American political debate. Kate would know what they were. She could tell caliber and usually barrel length by the sound.

  "Ah, Señora, finally you come to call."

  Alice blinked. He was there, across the pool, short and thin and brown, her enemy.

  He bowed to her — a formal, European bow with a flourished hand. "Perhaps I have been lacking in courtesy. Should I have announced myself as a visiting member of the asociación — the guild, you would call it?"

  The brujo looked far younger than his years. But then, she should have expected that. He glanced at Kate, a measuring look that seemed to weigh her wounds and vitality like a grocer pricing a sack of potatoes. Then he turned back to Alice.

  "I believe the inglés would say that you are poaching. That bird is mine. But I can afford to be generous. Death drinks well this morning, and you may taste the flavor of this one. You appear to have need."

  A low growl snapped her attention back to Kate. Her friend knelt on the granite ledge, hand groping for her pistol. "You goddamn leech! You used me!"

  The big Colt boomed, shaking the air. Kate fought the recoil, dropped her sights back into place, and the gun roared again. The brujo shook his head. Alice saw splinters explode from a pine directly behind him. That .44 Mag would drop a moose, but he ignored it.

  She nodded understanding. "Don't waste your powder. He isn't where you're aiming." Alice glanced up at the sky, at the brightness glowing near the zenith. The fog was lifting. "Wind of the west, hear me. Wind of the west, aid me."

  The glow brightened as the west wind brought drier air and elbowed the fog aside. She searched the ground for shadows, seeking one that moved, seeking one shaped like a man. She pulled one of the dueling pistols from her satchel.

  She faced her enemy, finally, with a weapon in her hands. "I would prefer 'Señorita.' The distinction is important to me."

  She found her target, brought the pistol to full cock, aimed as coolly as any duelist ever had, and pulled the trigger. Smoke blasted across the spring, sulfurous black-powder smoke like the banked clouds that used to hide the horrors of war.

  The smoke drifted sideways in the breeze, slowly clearing. The brujo stood at one end of the pool, staring shocked at a hole in the ground in the center of his shadow. The paired silver and wooden balls nailed him in place.

  She dropped her pistol and pulled its twin out of the beaded satchel. She notched the sights on his chest, cocked the hammer, and pulled the trigger. Again, the gun leaped in her hand. Again, white smoke hid her target.

  The west wind thinned the smoke and banished it, revealing the brujo lying still on the edge of the pool. Alice dropped the second pistol and let her hand shake for a moment, fighting back the black spots that danced across her sight. She couldn't let them win.

  "Thank God, you've killed him!" Kate sounded weaker, somewhere out there beyond the smoke and fog.

  "Not yet." Alice shook off the thickening fog inside her own head.

  She crawled along the pool's edge, past Kate lying like a corpse. That looked too real for comfort, but Alice couldn't spare the strength. She had a job to do. They could sing their dying duet later.

  Damn, wrong opera.

  Alice dipped water from the spring, splashing her face. The coolness helped, but she felt it vanish in the fire of her shoulder. The Woman's Spring might have done better, but she had to fight on her enemy's own ground.

  She wiped her hand before touching his wrist. He felt cold, like a toe-tagged corpse in the hospital morgue for autopsy. No. Like a frog, cold-blooded but alive. Remember what he is.

  She made her hand colder. Simple thermodynamics. Heat flows from an object with more energy to one with less. Damn sure I've got less energy than anything else around here. Let's get some serious energy flow going, dammit.

 

  Her hand froze to his skin. Numbness crept up her wrist and forearm as her life drained down through them. Too late, she remembered that he must have done this a hundred times. She had done it only five. Four animals, including Dixie. One human, a bone-cancer patient in drug-resistant pain who had begged her for release, the Hippocratic oath be damned. Besides, she was just a RN.

 

  Chapter Thirty

  Caroline slipped back through the hidden door, pulling the tape off the latch. She did her best to move like that damned mouse Alice was so fond of mentioning, holding the lock and releasing it with the gentlest possible touch to avoid a click. Cats could hear mice rustling in the wall three rooms away.

  She set the deadbolt behind her. Someone had keys, of course, but there was no need for her to make it easy. She counted her way back down the doors, finding the one that should hide the girls. Light switch outside, flipped "off."

  She leaned her forehead against cold stone, calming her thoughts and trying to think her actions out in advance. She whispered, half to herself and half to those remembered voices, "I'm learning, dammit!"

  The door was locked, of course. She shuffled around in five pockets, finally found Gary's picks, and went to work. Picking the lock took forever, with the torque slipping in her sweaty fingers and her hands shaking with waste adrenaline from the shootout. Each time she gained a pin, she'd goof and lose it.

  She finally noticed that the door opened out, exposing the bolt to her between the frame and lock, and she pulled her Swiss army knife from the bottomless pocket of gadgets. She dug the point into the latch bolt, shifted it an eighth of an inch, pulled the door tight to hold her gain, moved the blade over, released pressure, and gained another fraction. The fourth step moved the bolt past the striker plate, and the door lurched towards her. Crude, but results counted more than elegance.

  She switched the light on and opened the door. An empty room yawned at her efforts, bare rock with the scars of quarryman's tools.

  A sigh came out of the emptiness, like her own lungs daring to breathe after the gunmen closed that workshop door. Caroline echoed it, relief washing through her.

  "Okay, girls, the cavalry's here! Time to bug out!"

  A section of stone wall moved, then another. Ellen plastered herself against Caroline's waist, while Peggy hugged her thigh on the opposite side. Both faces felt damp through her clothing. The girls shook with fear and relief.

  "No time for that. We've got to move!"

  She hustled them towards the stairs and their brother. She hoped he'd kept his focus, and the way was clear.

  "I'm learning, dammit!"

  Both girls twisted around to stare at her.

  "Sorry, I wasn't talking to you."

  They gave her twinned "You're weird!" looks.

  *~*~*

  Daniel stared at the manual and the security console in front of him, trying to force his mind to concentrate. He ached all over — a dull, diffuse
throbbing from dozens of kicks and punches. His tongue kept playing with a loose tooth on the left upper side of his jaw. It was a minor thing compared to arms and legs with less strength than over-boiled spaghetti, but it kept distracting him.

  Where had he lost that healthy sense of fear? Nothing seemed important anymore, nothing except sleep. He felt like an observer in his own skull. That had helped him to survive the past few days, the horror of Peggy and Ellen in the hands of those monsters. Now they had a chance to escape and he felt the same disconnection from his soul. He watched his hands flipping switches without any conscious decision, without plan or direction.

  Gary had gone to the outer cave to try and start the smuggler's boat. Caroline Haskell searched for Ellen and Peggy somewhere up in the tunnels. Masked gunmen roamed the grounds overhead, and the Pratt house smoked and flamed. Alarms clanged around him. All of that should be vital to him. He didn't care.

  One screen showed Alice Haskell and Kate Rowley collapsed next to a small pool — the lesbian Odd Couple, Mutt and Jeff. The brujo appeared, Tupash, and Alice shot him. That should have flooded Daniel with emotion, pure joy or release or some suitably vindictive glee, but he felt nothing. Feeling had been burned out of him, leaving foggy weakness as its ash.

  Alice crawled across the screen and grabbed one wrist of the corpse. Static streaked the monitor, all of the monitors, and lights dimmed for a few seconds. Then the emergency circuits kicked in and the picture cleared. Now the monitor showed Alice and Kate lying still like corpses laid out for a wake, but even that left him untouched. He saw no sign of the Peruvian.

  Daniel's eyes moved on, like they were remote cameras on a cable suspended two miles beneath the sea sending images to a dispassionate observer. Pratts and Latinos in the tunnels, Monitor 2 — he shut and locked doors in front of them, aware in a distant fashion that he should be terrified of locking his daughters on the wrong side, on the side with the rapists and murderers. The caves had been set up as a shelter, a bunker, to hold a retreat. His console held master control. But Tom Pratt would have override codes. He could pass each door. Daniel only slowed them down.

  Now each camera went blank as the first scouts appeared. They knew they had intruders in the cave. Daniel started killing light circuits in retaliation. Delaying tactics, nothing more.

  Gary appeared in the doorway, panting, his face a study in frustration. "Damn boat has an interlock. Needs a plug-in circuit block to talk to the ignition computer. No way I can start it."

  Cool, dispassionate, the shadow-Daniel weighed threats and options. "Disable it."

  "I cut the battery leads and tossed them overboard. Followed up with a handful of sparkplug wires and the distributor rotor. Don't know what spares they have handy."

  "Good." Gary seemed at least a foot taller and broader than Daniel remembered him. He knew what he was doing. The past weeks had built him up, strengthened him, at the same time that they had broken Daniel down. He'd left a boy behind in the house that long-distant afternoon. Now he saw a man. A Morgan. "Where are Ellie and Mouse? Where's Caroline?"

  Gary glanced from his father to the rear wall of the room and back. He shook his head. "Quit playing games, girls. Dad needs to know where you are."

  A section of granite faded into three crouching bodies. The room fuzzed around Daniel, and he blinked his eyes to clear them. By the time his head quit spinning, he was sandwiched between his daughters.

  Ellen pulled back a few inches. "Daddy, you stink!"

  She wouldn't notice that if the brujo's threats had become actions. Warmth flooded into Daniel, starting to melt the ice. With the thaw came fear. "I'll take a bath when we're home and safe, little witch. We've got to get out of here."

  Speaking of witches . . . Daniel looked from Caroline Haskell to Gary and back again. He sighed, noting Ben's face stamped on both of them, mixed with features of their different mothers. No, they couldn't have kept that secret from the boy. Sooner or later, even the girls would start asking difficult questions.

  Sooner, if they ever met Ben.

  Daniel flipped another switch and heard the answering rumble of the sea gate opening. He'd worry about explaining family secrets later — if they ever had a later. He stood up. The room spun around him, black dots swimming across his eyes.

  "Dad?"

  Gary's face floated in front of Daniel. "Dad? We've got to move! I hear people up in the tunnels."

  "Weak. Haven't been eating. Won't let me sleep." Daniel blinked until the world firmed up around him. "I'll be okay. Just dizzy from standing up too fast."

  Gary hustled them all out of the security room, hesitating over the master power switch. He left it on, muttering about magnetic locks that failed "open," in "safe" mode. Then he locked the door and snapped the key off in the lock. More delaying tactics, Daniel thought. The boy has grown.

  Daniel's emotions prickled and tingled, like a foot coming awake after sitting too long in the wrong position. Something was bothering Gary, besides the current danger. Daniel saw him glance to the side as they retreated down the ramp to the float. A body lay there, crumpled, face up.

  Daniel paused. He recognized the face. He reached out to Gary, touching him gently on the shoulder to hold him while the girls went ahead.

  "You killed him. That bothers you."

  Gary winced agreement.

  "You've done the world a favor, son. He's the one who was going to get Peggy and Ellen. Rape, torture, and murder. You're old enough to know that some people aren't really human beings. They're rabid dogs on two legs. Killing them can be the simplest solution."

  "But I didn't mean to do it."

  "He's dead. You're alive. What would happen next if it was the other way around? That's the only choice he would have given you."

  "But I didn't mean to do it."

  "You're repeating yourself. Think back to the dojo, boy. They taught you to survive. Fights don't give you time to think. Something happens, you act. He's dead, you're alive. I like it that way."

  Gary nodded, then shook his head, eyes squeezed shut. That problem wasn't going to go away with a few soothing words. Then Daniel remembered the tale the monitors had told. Maybe Alice could help. If she survived. The Haskell Witches had been practical psychotherapists for centuries. She understood about rabid dogs.

  He pushed his son down the ramp, away from the corpse. Son? They'd sort that out when they didn't have a bunch of armed men at their backs. Still, with all he knew, Gary had called him "Dad." That helped feed the growing thaw inside.

  Caroline stood above her kayak, feet planted on the float, coveting that speedboat. "You're sure you can't get it started?"

  Gary shook his head, decisive. "Nope. Not today. Give me a couple of days' preparation, we could work out a bypass."

  She pulled a pack of matches from a pants pocket. "Okay, where's the gas tank?" Then she spotted the filler cap beside the low deckhouse and homed in on it like a guided missile.

  Gary grabbed her wrist. "Don't." She stopped and glared at him.

  He glared back. "Think ahead. You've got to load the girls into the kayak, get into it yourself, and paddle out of here. Meanwhile, that boat blows up. Fills the cave with toxic smoke, dumps burning gas on the water. Dad and I have to change and swim out through all that. Think ahead, dammit!"

  She froze, blinked, and muttered something to herself. Then she took a deep breath and shuddered. "Hey, I'm working on it."

  He smiled and released her wrist. "You're not the only one. We knew there'd be a boat. I should have brought some kind of fuse or timer. Five minutes' delay and you could have all the fireworks your little heart desires."

  It looked like the next generation of the Haskell Witches was going to be . . . entertaining. When viewed from a safe distance, that is. Like maybe across the Canadian border. May you live in interesting times. Daniel offered a silent prayer that Alice would live to a ripe old age.

  They handed Ellen and Peggy down into the front cockpit of the kayak, and then G
ary steadied it while Caroline climbed into the rear. She pushed off and turned to the sea gate with a little wave.

  Gary was already peeling off his clothes and stuffing them into the waterproof backpack. Daniel started to unbutton his own shirt, wondering why his fingers trembled so much. The float rocked under him. Funny, he didn't see any waves. Then he sat down, hard.

  "Dad?"

  Gary's voice echoed strangely, as if he was off inside a pipe somewhere. Daniel tried to concentrate on shirt buttons, but couldn't remember why they were so urgent.

  Then someone's fingers worked at his buttons, opened zippers, tugged sleeves and trouser legs. Daniel felt blackness washing over him. He'd looked for that so hard, in the past days. Now it came when he didn't want it.

  "Change, Dad. Change and swim."

  He tried. He felt for the fire in his bones and muscles. The ashes were cold.

  Then he felt hands again, pulling cloth over his flesh, layer after layer, more than they had taken off. He tried to help, feeble moves that probably interfered.

  "You've got to hold on to the harness. Here. Put your arm through the pack."

  "I can't change!" It should have been a cry of anguish, but it came out as a mumble.

  "That's okay. I'll tow you out."

  Something dragged him across the float, herky-jerky tugs and then a drop into icy water. He came up sputtering for air. He opened his eyes. The rock ceiling moved above, and he felt a powerful body warm beside him. Shouts echoed around the cave, and then shots. Water splashed close by, and Daniel barely thought to hold his breath before the sea closed over him. Cold and darkness pulled him under.

  *~*~*

  "Come on dammit! Lift!"

  Daniel felt like a lump of clay. Soft, cold, slimy wet, he let hands mold him and move him. A hard edge dragged across his back and hip. He thumped down from it onto more hardness that moved. He tried to reach out, to grab something to steady his rolling body. His arm flopped around, dull and slow and uncooperative.

  "Cold." He could barely mumble.