Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

Bumps and bangs vibrated through the surface under him. Deck, he thought. Stink of old herring gurry and oil and gasoline. An engine sputtered, coughed, and growled to life, vibrating the planking under him. The pitching changed and heeled over, to surge at a new pace. He recognized the big V8 sound with the straight exhaust. Boats have personalities. No two are exactly alike. He was aboard the Maria.

  Static squawked, followed by Gary's voice. "Five out. Repeat, five out."

  Another burst of radio static, then: "Roger." It was Ben's voice, brief but jubilant. The radio fell silent.

  Fingers fumbled at the layers of clothing over his chest. Wet cloth dragged away and was replaced by dry fleece. He felt warmth against his skin, a hand laid right over his heart. Heat flowed into his core. Strength came with it, and a will to live. He opened his eyes.

  Caroline Haskell stared down at him, that haunting face that blended Ben's and Elaine's features. The gray light seemed to wash color from her skin. She pulled her hand back and sagged with exhaustion.

  "Okay. You'll live." She reached to one side and brought back a large thermos. She poured steaming coffee into the cap and held it to his lips. It tasted like nectar, a familiar and pleasant memory; Dan swallowed, swallowed again, and drained the cup, feeling the warmth washing down into his stomach and out through his blood. She poured another cup and swigged it herself, watching him.

  The aftertaste . . . "Jamaica Blue Mountain? Where the hell did you get that?"

  "Aunt Alice has friends. And I'm not going to ask how you recognized it, because it probably involves a felony."

  She stood up, bracing her free hand on the deckhouse wall and swaying as if her knees felt as weak as his did. Must have worn herself out, sprinting for Maria and hauling him over the side. Looked strong for a girl, though — shoulders and arms thicker than a lot of men's. Good six inches taller than Lainie, too.

  Daniel summoned his own strength to look around. The kayak lay lengthwise on the deck, rolling with the boat. Ellen and Mouse had tucked themselves into corners of the deckhouse, huddled out of the wind. They weren't dressed for a day on the water.

  Caroline noticed his glance, shook herself, and knelt down to pull more fleece blankets out of a pack at her feet. She staggered again, moving across the surging deck, and sagged back against the wall after tucking warmth around the girls. She looked drained, the far end of a bad day.

  A rueful smile crossed her face when she noticed his stare. "Healing takes energy. Aunt Alice is a lot better at it than I am."

  Her glance shifted to the open back of the deckhouse. Then she stiffened and turned to Gary at the wheel. "Oh, shit! I thought you disabled that thing."

  Daniel forced himself to hands and knees, to look out over the transom. The Pratts' speedboat showed dark against the pink cliffs, bow-on and a white bone of spray in her teeth. Thick black smoke shot with orange boiled up from the top of the cliff above it. Hounds of hell coming straight from the source. They must have had spare parts and tools right on board, and people who knew what they were doing. Made sense, for a drug-runner. You wouldn't want to call the Coast Guard for help if something broke.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The cold flowed up Alice's arm, past the elbow and into her biceps. It even cooled the flame of her wounded back. She knew that when it touched her heart, she would die. Then he would take Kate. And later Caroline, and the girls, and the rest of the Morgans, and gain the Egg of the Dawn. The Dragon's Eye. That such power should be held by such a man . . .

 

  The rock seemed to shake under her, vibrating from the scream. A vise clamped around her hips, soft but unyielding, and it seemed as if the whole Stonefort peninsula was chained to it as an anchor, holding her against the tide. Warmth flowed back into her from that chain, the warmth of life and of the earth, and pulsed out through her hand as fire. Her back blazed again, agony like she had been crucified to the house burning behind her, and she forced the pain and heat down through her arm and palm into the wrist she held. The dead flesh warmed and sizzled and ignited.

 

  Silence fell, and waited, and the world went on.

  Alice gasped and stirred, feeling rock gritty against her cheek. She moved parts of herself, from the corners in, testing to see that everything was there. Fingers, toes, hands, feet, arms, legs: all present and accounted for. She felt as if the entire cast of Riverdance had tap-danced their finale on her back. On the other hand, that was an improvement.

  She opened her eyes. Those worked, too. The pool looked pretty much as it did before. The garage still blazed, a skeleton of blackened ribs with glowing metal where its heart and lungs should be. Smoke poured from the attic and second floor of the house, above a yard curiously empty of people. She hoped they weren't all trying to sneak out the back door, right into Caroline's lap.

  Speaking of laps . . . something still clamped her hips in that soft vise. She looked down. Kate lay there, the anchor that had pulled Alice back from death and then poured the energy of the whole peninsula into the brujo. That was the essence of Stonefort — even rock-solid straight-ahead numb-as-a-hake Kate touched the power of the land that had shaped her.

  And it was Kate who had come up with that final jiu-jitsu move. The bastard wants power, we'll give him Power.

  Cornered, with teeth bared, anyone could be a Witch. Even Kate Rowley. The brujo hadn't realized that.

  She remembered the curse she had called down. "May their own weapons destroy them. May the fires of the land and the waters of the sea devour them." She hadn't expected the result to be quite this literal.

  Everything is magic. Everyone touches magic. Most people just don't see it, even when it bashes them between the eyes. Don't, or won't. The world is magic. Took Aunt Jean ten years to drum that into your head.

  Alice checked pulse and breathing. Her love still lived. The bleeding had slowed. Alice untangled herself from Kate and looked around.

  The brujo had vanished into ash. She found and pocketed the silver pistol balls, scuffed and blackened. Maybe Caroline would need them someday. She slipped her pistols back into the satchel and wormed her way out of the vest and leggings without asking too much of her abused shoulder. She studied the hole in the back of the vest for a few moments, comparing it to all the other patches that the doeskin had acquired through the centuries. She hadn't done that badly, after all. Just another repair job, and another dark stain in the soft leather. The beadwork already had drunk most of the blood.

  She blinked as the trees started wavering around her. She coughed and spat out another gob of frothy pink. Even Kate's surge of power couldn't heal everything. Alice squatted down again, tucking her head between her knees until the world consented to stand still. Then she packed the regalia away and fumbled her way back to Kate's side.

  Radio — Kate always carried a radio, when she was away from the truck. Alice poked around under the POLICE jacket, finding the handheld. She switched it on, and the radio spurted all the chaos of the siege that waited out beyond the trees. She hadn't heard any shots for a while.

  One way she knew, to get medics into a war zone. She pulled up Kate's car number from memory, and the ten-codes memorized for ambulance work. She waited for a gap in the noise and then chanted her words of power. "Five-seven-seven to Sunrise dispatch. Ten seventy-four. Repeat, ten seventy-four. Officer down. Repeat, officer down." The radio sat silent, as if it had been stunned by her words. Then it spat a burst of static. "Five-seven-seven, this is tactical control. What's your location?"

  She heard orders shouted in the background, the stuttering of other radio channels. They'd set up some kind of command post out on the road.

  "Behind Tom Pratt's garage. Two casualties."

  "Kate, you damned fool! What the hell are you doing in there?" The voice broke off, then resumed. "We'll have men there in a couple of minutes. Tactical out."

  And they would be there. Cops never abandoned one of their own. Alice settled down by Kate's side, b
ack to feeding gentle warmth through her hand.

  "Kate, you there?"

  "Maybe."

  "I called you. You came over from the island. We met out here to talk to Jackie. She shot us. That's all we know."

  "Got it." She lay there for a moment. "Need to get Keith Bauer's boat back out there. Can you call John Lambert?"

  "Depends who's on the ambulance. I'll try."

  Kate was crying again, quiet tears dripping like the mist from the trees overhead. "Lys, I can't go back to the trailer. Anytime I look at it, every room, I'll think of her. Damn place even smells of her. I couldn't stand it."

  Alice sighed. Apparently a mother's love really was unconditional. "Plenty of room at the House. That's what it's for." She felt Kate relax, accepting the oblique answer to her unasked question.

  "Lys, I love you."

  A different kind of warmth flooded through Alice, settling in her belly. "I guess the boat ride kinda told me that."

  *~*~*

  Gary rammed the throttle forward. The big Chevy V8 responded with a roar, digging the stern deeper into the water. Then he grabbed the mike again. "We've got company. Plan B. Plan B."

  "Roger." Ben's voice again, grim this time. "Can't see you yet. Fog."

  Gary dropped the mike, letting it dangle on its cord. He stared over the stern, measuring distances and relative speed. Caroline grabbed on to one of the ribs of the deckhouse roof, bracing against the bounce of the swells. She grinned for an instant, apparently immune to seasickness.

  "Hey, I didn't know lobster boats could go this fast!"

  Gary glanced back to her. "Dad won the Fourth of July races last year. Faster your boat goes, the more traps you can pull in a day. Then there's the macho factor. Bigger engine, bigger . . ." he paused, apparently remembering Ellen and Peggy huddled in their corners, ". . . muscles."

  He was measuring the distance again, wrinkling his nose at the rate of change. "Problem is, they have a planing hull and twin V8s. You got any weather-magic tucked away in your bag of tricks?"

  "Why? You want more fog?"

  "No. They've got radar. We need clearing, especially off towards Morgan Point."

  She blinked twice, trying to figure out what that meant. Daniel had a glimmer, but he kept his mouth shut. Gary had the conn. He'd explain if he thought it was necessary.

  Instead, she closed her eyes and started chanting, soft muscular language that flowed out into the air around them and seemed to wrap fingers into the tendrils of fog. The sky brightened, and the pale spots of blue to the west started to deepen. Daniel felt a breeze on his left cheek, the one towards the land.

  She stopped, took a deep breath, and sat down suddenly, panting as if she'd run a mile in record time. Some of the words had been close to meaning something, but Daniel couldn't make it out. "That wasn't Naskeag."

  She flashed another of her one-sided smiles. "Nope. Hopi sun chant. Hey, you guys wanted dry, didn't you?"

  Daniel did his own calculation of time-over-distance, based on his understanding of what "Plan B" meant. He didn't like the results. He turned back to Caroline. "Can you shoot a rifle?"

  Now her grin spread full-face. "University rifle team."

  Somehow, he'd thought she could. "Go down into the cuddy. Locker on the right side, rear, you'll find the boat gun. Thirty-round magazines, solid-jacket rounds for sharks. We're going to need some time."

  She moved, sure and cat-like across the bouncing deck. Daniel turned his attention to his daughters. "You get down there, too. Lie down below waterline." That was the best he could do. Gary nodded, the Captain approving his First Mate's actions. The boy had grown so much . . . .

  Then Caroline was back, kneeling at the transom, checking and loading the rifle. "Hey, I didn't know they made these things in stainless steel." Then she did a double-take. "Selective fire?"

  Daniel could almost see the cartoon question-marks floating around her head. He ignored them. She was settling down, kneeling, rifle cradled gently and rising-falling with the surge of the deck. Water spouted close by, and then something thunked into fiberglass along the starboard side. Shots rattled across the water from the speedboat, but she held fire. Good idea — he guessed the range at nearly 300 yards.

  "Aim for the windscreen," Gary ordered. "Try and startle the helm, make him shear off."

  She nodded. The rifle boomed — once, twice, a third time, single shots with the deliberation of a slow-fire target match. Daniel had expected her to go with full-auto instead. The speedboat slewed sideways with a rooster tail of spray, and Maria pulled away a little.

  Then they came on again, boring straight in to cut the range. Caroline shook her head, fiddled with the rifle, and blasted out neat three-shot bursts like a combat vet. Daniel saw water spouting on either side of the speedboat, bracketing it. One or two rounds of each burst must be hitting home. More bullets hit Maria, shattering side windows of the deckhouse and knocking splinters from the fiberglass of the gunwale. Caroline jerked and then shook out her shirt as if ridding herself of a wasp. A spent bullet clattered to the deck. Must have been hot.

  Daniel searched ahead, picking the dark stub of Morgan's Castle out of the mist. He tried to guess the range. Twenty miles from Pratts' Neck to Morgan Point by land around the bay, a little over six miles by water. They'd made a couple of miles good before they spotted the speedboat. How much more, since?

  That recoilless rifle had a maximum range of about 8000 yards. Effective range, less than half that . . .

  He caught a flash from the top of the tower. Daniel gnawed on his thumb knuckle, hoping Ben knew what the hell he was doing. He'd always been murder on the eiders, often got a double with one shot. Still, aiming for a moving target, when each shell had to fly for miles . . .

  Metal hissed over his head, and water fountained up between the boats, but off to the right. The explosion boomed back to them, mixing with the flat bang of the distant gun. Echoes rolled across the water.

  The speedboat kept coming. So much for warning shots.

  Daniel had started counting when the first shell landed. Right at "One thousand five," he spotted a second flash. He gnawed at that knuckle until another shell whistled overhead and water spouted beyond the black speedboat and to the left. Shot and shell-burst again echoed from the cliffs.

  To make that rate of fire, Ben must have been practicing for days. The gun was supposed to have a crew, not one man loading, aiming, firing, spotting the fall, and adjusting aim. One round short, one round long . . . Daniel crossed his fingers and prayed. The speedboat held its course, narrowing the distance, trying to get too close for Ben to chance another shot.

  "One thousand ten, one thousand eleven, one thousand twelve . . ."

  Caroline fired again — a long burst that ended in the click of the bolt locking open. She grabbed for another magazine. Then the speedboat shattered in flame. A second blast shook the wreck, blossoming into a black mushroom laced with orange and red. Must be the gas tank, he thought. Bright white flashes burst and sparkled against the smoke, a string of secondary explosions, and thunder pealed back from the cliffs like the drum-roll finale of a July Fourth show.

  "Jee-zum . . ." Gary stood at the wheel, staring back as the fire spread across the water and blazing streaks rained from the sky. The speedboat had vanished.

  "Holy Mary Mother of God," Caroline whispered. "And I wanted to toss a match into that?"

  Daniel took a deep breath and let it out, slowly. "Hell of a bit of luck. That kind of show, nobody's going to go looking for funny noises from Morgan's Castle. Just echoes, that's all they were." And nobody in Stonefort would mention a second boat. Not even the Pratts. Not to outsiders.

  He studied the smoke and dying flames. He hadn't seen a third flash from the tower, or heard another shell in the air. Caroline would have needed God's own luck to touch off that show with a rifle bullet. And the Pratts obviously had some really nasty stuff on board. Maybe they'd been worried about hijackers? Anyway, it looked like someone h
ad just done a first-class job of shooting himself in the foot.

  Gary throttled the engine down to a murmur and headed the bow out to sea. The thunder of war died away to the screams of outraged gulls. The cliffs faded back into mist, hiding Maria's white hull from the hundreds of startled eyes on land. He glanced at his watch and then at Daniel. "How long 'til the Coast Guard gets here?"

  "An hour for the rescue chopper, minimum." It would have been ten or fifteen minutes, before budget cuts pulled all helicopter operations back to Rockland.

  Ellen poked her head out of the cuddy, looking around at Caroline unloading the rifle, at Gary relaxing by the wheel. She climbed up on deck, followed by Mouse.

  Everybody safe. Not "Everybody dies."

  Daniel sagged back against the gunwale, tired but finally allowing himself to believe in life. He caught Gary's eye. "Head for the home mooring. This tide, there's a ledge you can use as a dock."

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Gary followed Caroline from room to room through the Morgan house, tapping on a small drum that looked about a hundred years older than God. She chanted to his beat, slow words in Naskeag and Latin and Welsh and English, mostly names. The rest probably were titles — the ones he could translate were. And as she chanted, a braided rope of sweetgrass smoldered in her right hand. She waved it gently or wafted the smoke into each corner of each room using a turkey wing as a fan.

  "Smudging," she called it. Blessing or purifying or guarding or exorcising, he wasn't quite sure which. Maybe it was all of them at once. Every second or third room, something ran cold fingers across the back of his neck or shifted one wisp of pungent smoke at right angles to the rest, caressing an old chair or a piece of Mom's antique glass like a familiar friend.

  The drum fit perfectly between his left hand and his hip, a hollow carved into the body and a wrap of sharkskin that defeated the sweat slicking his wrist. The whole thing, maple body and rough sharkskin and rawhide ties and head, was stained nearly black with the grease of centuries of hands, the soot of centuries of fires. It had seemed light when he first picked it up. Now it felt like it was made of lead.