Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

  "Look, I was just following my sister, didn't mean to trespass, never owned a sword or lance in my life. Nice meeting you." She backed away, down the trail.

  {How did you get here? The Master says you must stay with him.}

  Its voice hissed in her mind, cold but curious, as the creature moved to cut her off. Scales glittered like black opals as the dragon flowed between the trees, as fast as running water, much faster than she. It looked like the slow-motion replay of a striking cobra.

  She dodged away from the trail and through the forest, stumbling over roots, branches slashing across her face. The glistening ebony snake blocked her, never touching her, never hurting her, seeming everywhere at once. Once she thought she'd spotted a gap, only to run headlong up against the scaly nose itself. Jo smelled its breath, moist and acrid, and barely dodged the forked tongue. One tip was as big as her arm. The damned beast still didn't bite her.

  {You must go back.}

  Jo leaned back against another tree, panting, the coarse bark reassuringly solid. Sweat poured down her back, and it wasn't all fear. The forest was way too hot for her to be running around in a winter coat and sweater and insulated boots.

  Sister mine, maybe I owe you this for Buddy, but I don't think I'm going to follow you into your dreams again. I thought your fantasy world was more fun than this.

  She started to dump her useless jacket, then hesitated and held it like a matador's cape. The tongue flicked out, and the dragon's head lowered as if it was puzzled. Maybe dragons didn't shed their skin, the way snakes did. She shook the jacket and then trailed it on the ground, offering it as bait.

  "¡Toro, aqui! ¡Toro! ¡Toro!"

  The beast's head was as big as a car. She flipped her jacket over one of its eyes and ran. Cloth ripped behind her. She hoped the dragon would stop to worry its prey a little, before it realized the filling of the sandwich had run off.

  Something smacked her to the ground, and the forest spun around her in a burst of green stars. She couldn't get up. A tree-trunk lay across her body--a warm tree-trunk, pulsing with life, ridged with coarse dry scales. It ended in fingers each as big as one of her hands, and those ended in claws like steel meat hooks. Eyes squeezed shut against the sudden brightness of the sun, she gently explored her ribs. Nothing was broken, and she still wasn't eaten.

  {You must go back.}

  It sure was a single-minded critter. Jo stared up into a single yellow cat-eye bigger than a dinner plate. Jurassic Park, that's what the scene was. The T. Rex looking through the car window. Only thing the scene needed was night and rain. Who was going to be eaten next?

  T. Rex didn't say. Her brain raced. How good was she at riddles? Dragons were supposed to like the riddle game. Something she'd read said so. Win the game and she went free.

  "How many Republicans does it take to change the lightbulb in the Statue of Liberty's torch?"

  The eye blinked, first some kind of transparent membrane and then the charcoal-gray lid. It looked as smooth as velvet, delicate, like the shoulder-wrap for an evening dress. She felt a crazy urge to stroke it.

  "None. They've turned off the power to save tax dollars."

  No effect. Okay, so it was a damn poor joke. Jo tried to slither out from under the dragon's paw but found she'd have to leave her pants behind. One of those claws hooked right under the waistband, cold and hard along her belly.

  "Look, you keep telling me to go back, and I'm trying to. I may be lost, but I think that's the way I came in."

  {You try to deceive me. You may change your skin and disguise your smell, but I still know you. You must return to the Master's keep. These woods are dangerous. He will be angry.}

  Maureen.

  T. Rex thought she was Maureen. Just like the slimeball in the Quick Shop, just like dozens of people they'd spoofed since Maureen reached Jo's height and grew breasts. Maureen had come this way with the dude she was kissing.

  She's at his castle. Safe. The watchdog was told to keep her safe. That's why I'm not looking at the wrong end of an after-dinner mint.

  "Okay. Okay. Just get off of me, you scaly St. Bernard. I can't get to the keep lying flat on my back."

  Weight lifted from her belly, and she scooted away from that golden eye. It watched her, suspicious. "Go the right way," the eye said. "Try to leave and things will get nasty. I could use a snack."

  The frigging animal acted more like a prison guard than a watchdog. Something smelled fishy here.

  Her hands stung. They were covered with fine lines of blood, like paper cuts--must have tangled with those scales. She found the shreds of her ski jacket and wiped the blood away, winding strips of fiber batting over the cuts like bandage gauze. The dragon still watched her like a cat with a cornered mouse.

  {The trail is clear. I must not leave our territory, or the Master will be angry.}

  The dragon blocked one direction. The keep must be in the other. Like T. Rex said, the trail was clear.

  Our territory, it had said. There were more of them? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!

  Jo's hands shook. Hot and sweaty or not, her teeth kept trying to chatter. She could only keep them still by clenching her jaw so hard it hurt. Funny thing was, she also had this urge to laugh like a hyena. If she gave into it, she'd probably never stop. Hysteria.

  So she had decided to add manic-depressive tendencies to the family portfolio? Jo groped for a tree to lean against. She was going nuts. It had been months since she last smoked pot, ten years since that stupid mistake with acid. Nothing stronger today than coffee. She couldn't blame this scene on chemicals.

  Dragons, she thought. Talking dragons.

  She unwrapped one makeshift bandage and stared at the razor-thin lines of red. Fresh blood beaded up when she flexed her hand. Did hallucinations cut people?

  But she could imagine the cuts, yes? Imagine the blood?

  She shuddered. Find Maureen, that was the priority. Find the way out of this frigging nightmare. Ask her sister for a nice calming hit of Thorazine or whatever the latest chemical tranquility was called. Hey, Sis, know any good shrinks?

  Back to "Find the Sister." She was somewhere up ahead, both the Genetic Resonance Imager and the dragon said so. The dragon also said the forest was dangerous. Jo had to catch up before something with less brain or more appetite decided this "Master" was far enough away to forget about his orders.

  Jo heaved herself up from the tree and blinked, waiting for the world to stop spinning. She shook her head and blinked again, trying to snap out of the funk. Scared was one thing, paralyzed was another. She just had to keep her eyes moving, keep her feet moving. At least she had boots on, instead of sneakers. This wasn't a sidewalk.

  Branches, brambles, tree-trunks, rocks--the forest poked and prodded at the trail, trying to reclaim it from the touch of man. Jo felt tension in it, felt an edge to either side of her, as if the trail was a wandering, wavering line through hostile territory and the bushes on either side were mined. The dragon might have left, but Jo could still feel eyes out there in the shadows. They weren't friendly.

  Paranoia?

  Just shut up and keep walking. How far was it, to this place the dragon called a keep? Her legs needed to firm up for swimsuit season, anyway. Or no-swimsuit season, if they rented the Long Lake cabin again this year. God, wouldn't having David at the lake be great: swimming nude, making love on the dock by moonlight . . . swatting mosquitoes by moonlight . . .

  She grimaced. At least that was one menace Maureen's hallucinations seemed to have left back in the Great North Woods. Jo sure didn't miss the cloud of biters that could turn a Maine forest into the seventh circle of hell--black flies, mosquitoes, moose flies, no-see-ums . . .

  Living in the middle of a lot of water had its downside.

  Lakes. Creeks. Water. Jo's mouth felt dry--maybe it was fear. This place looked clean enough, but the New York tourists caught Giardia every year, thinking the pure mountain streams and lakes in Maine were clean enough to drink. Maureen had explained it
: moose and bear and beaver don't use outhouses, see. Jo thought she was going to get a little thirsty if she didn't find Maureen and her man.

  A flash of yellow gleamed up ahead. She bit her lip and wondered what was next--a golden dragon? Maybe the Sphinx, since she'd offered to play riddles? Whatever it was, it wasn't moving.

  Maybe it was waiting. Waiting for lunch. Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly. It was right on the trail.

  Jo clenched her fists and forced herself to go on. The pain from her cut palms served as an anchor, a handhold on reality. She giggled, half-hysterically, at the unintended pun.

  Just shut up and keep walking.

  It was a coat. Maureen's stupid ski jacket, hanging on a branch stub. It proved Jo's psychic nose still worked. Maureen had come this way, got overheated just about as quickly, but didn't have an argument with the guard-dog.

  She checked the pockets. Yep, Maureen's. There was the stupid gun, stupid speed-loader with five extra rounds.

  And that was proof little Mo was happy here, walking off and leaving her gun behind. When a paranoid tells you there's no problem, you can fucking believe it.

  Jo thought about guns, thought about dragons, and sphinxes, and griffins, and all the other dreamscape animals. She shuddered with a sudden chill. A lot of characters in fairy tales ended up as lunch.

  The gun felt solidly comfortable in her hand. If she was going to pick up Maureen's delusions, maybe she should go for the whole package. Jo felt like she'd slipped through the Looking Glass, where Little Sister was sane and Cynthia Josephine Pierce was the whacko.

  She tucked the gun into her waistband. Odds were, she'd need a smart bomb or guided missile to take out that dragon, but maybe some of the other nasties didn't come with homegrown armor plate. Some of the men in legends were mean sons-of-bitches, too.

  Maybe she'd better take the jacket, too. There was no guarantee she was going to be sleeping under a roof tonight, and her sweat was starting to chill with fear.

  The trail wound on through the woods, under low hanging branches that seemed to clutch at her, past the startled tree-faces formed by old branch scars. She passed through patches of sour foulness in the leaf-mold smell.

  Probably animals.

  Does a bear shit in the woods? She shuddered. She didn't want to even start to think about bears--this damned forest already had enough teeth and claws. Gnarled fingers of wood pointed back the way she came, roots twisted under her feet and stubbed her toes, the gentle breeze pushed against her face and seemed to whisper warnings into the summer leaves.

  Maureen's trees were talking to her, the voices in her head that personified schizophrenia. "Go back," they said. "Flee, be afraid. This forest is not a place to be. Danger and death lurk here."

  Maureen's whole package, indeed. Next thing, Jo would be afraid of men. She smiled at the thought and walked on, forcing the dragon and the outrageous impossibility of where she was out of her mind. After all, warmth and green leaves and the smell of forest dirt felt as intoxicating as three stiff drinks when compared with Maine in February.

  The sound of a creek trickled through the woods, reminding her that she was thirsty. The trail crossed it through a muddy ford, and she wished she had some tracking skills, to see if Maureen had passed this way. There'd been a lot of traffic, but it was Greek to her, and over-written Greek at that. She followed the water upstream, looking for some stepping-stones to save her feet a soaking.

  She stared at the water. Crystal clear. Did she want to drink and chance the raging shits? Or hold out for some nice safe wine or beer at this "Master's" place?

  If in doubt, doubt. It was Rule One of food and water in the woods, laid down by Maureen. Jo didn't have any Halazone, and she wasn't all that thirsty yet.

  She climbed back to the trail, puffing her way up the hillside through underbrush and dead leaves. She tromped through a patch of mushrooms and squashed some purple berries, wondering if they were all poisonous and if not, where the clean-up crew had gone--all the little critters that eat stuff in the woods. She hadn't seen any birds or squirrels or deer tracks.

  Maureen was the one for wildlife and plants, the expletive deleted forester, but even Jo knew the woods shouldn't be so quiet. Hair rose along the back of her neck.

  She came out on the trail again. The way was more open now, blue sky overhead. Birds circled up there, three of them, big and dark. Vultures? Ravens?

  Swell. She'd asked for omens? Look what she got.

  Buildings lined the ridge ahead: a round stone tower, stone castle walls, and shaggy roofs of thatch tan against the sky. It had to be that "Master's" keep. It looked cold and clammy and dark, and she wondered if you could really keep an Irish rain out with a roof like that.

  Walls and towers said there were enemies, armies, sieges. Jo reminded herself again that fairy tales were dangerous places. Maybe she didn't like this world Maureen was wandering in.

  She turned back to the trail, chilled in spite of the stiff climb through the forest. She felt like it would take just about one more thing to shove her off the deep end. Dragons and vultures and too-silent forests and dark towers on the crowns of hills: adventure was something nasty happening to somebody else, far away. It wasn't fun when it started to get personal.

  And last time she checked, her knight in shining armor was in another universe. Just her luck, he was off buying guitar strings when she really needed him to slay a dragon.

  Or maybe Brian would be a better choice. This looked like his territory.

  Maybe that was where Mo found him. Wandered around in her psycho nightmares, grabbed one, and made him real. Put him in a suit of medieval armor, and he'd fit right in.

  She reminded herself to shut up and keep walking. They should have a well up there, and maybe she could ask politely for a cheeseburger and fries, hold the onions.

  And then Jo's eyes connected with her brain, overriding the mindless blither that had kept her from screaming, up 'til now.

  Those white things on posts, they weren't streetlights. They had eye-sockets. Some of them had lower jaws. Some had wisps of hair still sticking to the tops and sides.

  They were skulls.

  They were human skulls, set up on stakes like the light-globes placed along a rich man's driveway to create an inviting approach for guests. One had a raven perched on it, pecking at shreds of flesh. A dinner guest.

  Jo ran. She ran silently, except for a panting moan that was her throat tightened against vomiting. She ran downhill, off the trail, through the clawing brush and tumbling and sliding headlong through the dead leaves and moss and rolling to her feet and running again. She ran, and inside her head, she screamed.

  She hit water. She splashed into the creek, uncaring. Follow water downhill, she remembered, it always goes to civilization. Second Rule of the Woods, courtesy of Maureen. Trails could go anywhere at all, but water went downhill, to the sea. Follow water and you'd find man.

  But she didn't want to find man.

  That was man up on top of the hill. Man the headhunter, man the tyrant, man the rapist.

  Maureen's man.

  Jo held Maureen's gun in one hand and Maureen's jacket in the other and splashed her way downstream. Icy water soaked through her boots and pants, working up to her waist where it met the icy sweat working down. She shivered and thrashed on through the overhanging brush and felt knives stabbing her ribs where her lungs fought for air.

  Water hid scent, didn't it? Washed out the tracks? They wouldn't be able to use dogs to trail her. She had to keep to the water.

  She forced herself to slow down. How would Maureen deal with this? What would that paranoid cunning say? Jo shrugged her arms back into the jacket and stowed the pistol, to free her hands. It was time to get sneaky, time to worry about avoiding the dragon and all its friends.

  Thinking paranoid helped, thinking about Them following her around. Paranoia eased through the brush, instead of breaking it: broken branches were a trail, a sign pointing finge
rs along the way she went.

  Skeleton fingers.

  She was seeing skulls everywhere, rounded white domes of limestone in the moss and running water, the dark pits of eyes and nose in the rotted boles of trees, the grinning teeth in sunlight glinting off of leaves. Skulls followed her, watched her, and laughed at her panic.

  Jo's foot slipped, and she splatted on her butt. That jerked her brain back to survival. Wet moss was nearly as slick as a greased slide. She scrambled to her feet and continued downstream, along the creek-bed running smooth over bedrock coated with green goo.

  She groped for handholds, overhanging branches or protruding rocks. The makeshift bandages were long gone. She planted each foot carefully, thanking the hiking gods for the ridiculous vogue for Vibram soles on winter city boots. She grabbed another branch, easing across the stream and looking for her next foothold.

  Something bit her hand, a sliver of bark digging into the dragon-scale cuts. Jo snatched the hand back, instinctively sucking it in the monkey-fear of venom, tottered, and fell again. Her feet shot out from under her. Her wet jeans skidded across the slick rock, faster and faster.

  Where the hell had all that slope come from?

  She slid and slid and balled up with her arms around her head, fighting to keep her feet below her to catch the rocks before anything more delicate smashed into them. The water piled across her, cold as fire, and she fell into it and out of it and into it again.

  Wet darkness closed over her head.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Brian's glance flicked from treetops to dry-stone wall to emerald fields, searching for the enemies he knew were out there. He saw too much cover, too much dead ground, for comfort. You could hide an army in the folds of Fiona's rolling pastures, and he wasn't even ready to take on a squad.

  The problem with coming out between Fiona and Dougal was that it landed him squarely in the crossfire of their war. Whichever way he went, he was on the outside trying to get past their sentries.

  He scanned the neat stone walls, waist high and so perfect for hiding archers, then searched the sky for stooping griffins with their talons ready for a killing strike. Or maybe Fiona had set strangling ivy to lurk in the branches of the pasture oak overhead, ready to slither around his throat?