Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

  Back to square one. She didn't even have enough breath to do a decent job of cussing.

  She also didn't have a clue about what she'd just done. That dreamlike sense of flying couldn't have been real. But it had saved her ass again. She reminded herself to quit asking questions. She might not like the answers.

  Something tangled with her left hand. The fucking bush. She still had her latest portable handhold, about four feet of scrub, dripping wet and bleeding clear red sap from its mangled roots. No wonder she couldn't swim worth a damn.

  It was probably poison ivy. She didn't know what that looked like, but it would just fit right in. She tossed it on the remains of her fire and glared at it. Traitor bastard plant.

  Water sizzled from the coals of her fire, and the bush sparked into flame. She blinked at the apparition. It shouldn't burn. It was green and soaking wet. It steamed and spat and smoked like a smoldering rag-pile, but it burned. Maybe it was her hatred burning.

  She crouched over its heat, stripped off Maureen's jacket, and gave three cheers for modern synthetics. If it had been goose down, it would have cost twice as much and turned into a sodden worthless mess when it got soaked. Polyester fiber didn't absorb water, and it had held enough air to act as a lifejacket when she first fell into the sinkhole, hurt and stunned.

  She wrung out the water in streaming sheets, stripped off her sweater and did the same, then the boots and socks, then the pants. Shivering, she danced naked around the fire to warm up, cussing the world in general.

  "You would be the sister."

  Her head jerked up with shock at the voice. A thin shadow moved against the sky and her first thought was, I'm saved!

  Her second thought was, That's a man's voice. She blushed and grabbed her pants and shoved legs into cold wet denim. Yecch. Ditto for the clammy top. At least her embarrassment would help to steam the water out. Literal em-bare-ass-ment, she giggled to herself. Soaking wet, her sheer underwear gave about as much cover as Saran wrap. Well, a free show was a cheap enough price for a rope out of this hole.

  Minimally decent, she looked up again. All she could see was a silhouette, dark against the afternoon sky, hands casually in its pockets. Watching.

  Her ears burned again. "Do you have a rope?"

  She sat on a rock and squeezed water from each sock, again, before putting them on, and then squished her feet into the sodden boots. The silence hung a little too long for comfort.

  "Oh, I could probably conjure one up. I think my sister left me that much power."

  The shadow didn't move. Jo felt the hair on the back of her neck start to prickle. What the hell was wrong with the schmuck? This smelled like one of Maureen's paranoid psycho daydreams, enemies all around.

  "Look, I fell in here and can't get out. I'd really like some help."

  "It looked to me like you were doing fine: a little flying, burning wet wood with a glance, that sort of thing. Why don't you witch your way out?"

  "Left my broom back at the gingerbread house," she muttered. Then she raised her voice again. "A rope would be a lot easier."

  The shadow shrugged, and a coiled snake flipped down, splashing in tangles across the water and rock. She stared down at salvation, lying at her feet. Jo relaxed for an instant before she realized something was wrong.

  Both ends of the rope had come down. Bastard had thrown the whole thing. Hadn't held on to one end, hadn't tied it off or looped it around a tree or anything.

  Her teeth chattered for an instant, and it wasn't just the wet clothing. First dragons, then Skull Alley, finally Norman Bates with a rope: this version of Never-Never Land really sucked. It really was one of Maureen's nightmares.

  "Why don't you want to help me?" Her voice came out like a whimper. She couldn't help it.

  The shadow shook its head and laughed. "Around here, help is never free. Nothing is ever free. What's in it for me? What are you going to give me, in return?"

  Men, she thought. Ninety percent of them think with their balls. Like Momma always said, they only want one thing. 'Course, a lot of women think with their gonads, too. I've been known to do that.

  It depended on what he looked like. She was past her fertile days for another month, and she'd promised herself an orgasm at the top of the climb. If he was ugly or smelled bad, she had Maureen's gun.

  "What do you want?" she yelled up.

  A bitter laugh drifted down. "My sister's head."

  Jeezum!

  Norman Bates, indeed. Jo shuddered. Fairy tales were like that, she remembered, the real ones that Disney hadn't tidied up for the kiddies. Blood and irrational hate and rape and incest and extremely dysfunctional families.

  "I've got nothing against your sister!"

  "Oh, don't you?" He chuckled. "Fiona's the one who lured Maureen here and gave her to Dougal for a brood-mare; she's the one who wove a spell to bed brother Brian and gave your handsome young David as a blood sacrifice to the land. I'd think you'd have plenty against darling Fiona. More than enough to help me."

  Her blood froze. "David! What's he doing here?"

  "Dying, my beautiful drowned rat. Dying, inch by inch, as the strangling python of thorns sucks his blood, his breath, his very soul out of his body and spreads them through the land. Dougal wanted to bring springtime back to his corner of the Summer Country, so Fiona gave him an innocent to kill."

  "Oh, God," she gasped. She collapsed on the wet rocks, face in her hands. "David." The worst of it was, she knew that bastard was telling the truth. She could feel it through the rocks.

  And then rage took her. Steam rose from her jeans and sweater as her chill vanished. If Fiona could drag David into this, she damn well could drag David back out again. This mocking shadow could have his sister's head, just as long as Jo could ask the bitch a few questions first, perhaps with the emphasis of twisting her guts out of her belly and strangling her with them.

  "Get me out of here," she snarled.

  The laugh floated down again, harsh as fingernails on a chalkboard. "Maybe I don't want to. Dougal has Maureen to gloat over, naked and starving in his deepest, darkest dungeon. Darling Fiona holds Brian in the palm of her hand, or perhaps between her thighs would be a better choice of words. All I have is you. Maybe I'll leave you down there and watch you die."

  "I'll help you kill your sister."

  "Ah, can you now? I wonder. Do you have the power? If I have to help you out, how much use can you be to me?"

  {Jo, don't trust him!}

  David's voice whispered in her head, bringing all the threads of her anger and suspicion and fear together.

  That slim shadow, where had she . . .

  "I saw you! You were kissing Maureen in front of the store!"

  The shadow bowed.

  "You bastard, you helped your sister do all this!"

  He bowed again. "I've decided to change sides, my dear. My bitch twin stabbed me in the back once too often." He paused and chuckled. "The question is, are you strong enough to be worth the trouble? Prove yourself by getting out of there, and we'll be allies."

  Cold clarity flooded through her. Maureen's gun nestled comfortably in her hands. "If I don't need you, the real question is, will I let you live?"

  Mocking laughter floated out of the silhouette. "I can't help you kill Fiona if you shoot me. Besides, that thing won't work. This is a land of magic, not of chemistry and physics. Go ahead and try."

  She hadn't drawn the gun, hadn't consciously unzipped the pocket and reached in and pulled it out and aimed it. Just, suddenly it was there, steady in both hands, sights notched on the heart of the shadow overhead.

  "Then," she snarled, "think of this as magic. Instead of gunpowder, these bullets hold rage and hate and are capped with the poison of betrayal. This isn't a gun, it is the Spirit of Death. Your death."

  She squeezed the trigger, smoothly, steadily, just like against the black man-shapes on the target range.

  The gun bucked soundlessly in her hand. She brought the sights back in time
to see the shadow stagger, and squeezed again, and the sights jumped away again with the same recoil she had felt practicing on the range, silently.

  The rim of the sinkhole hung there, empty against the glare of the sky, and she lowered the gun. Mechanically, she flipped the cylinder open and dumped two empty cartridges into her hand. They stank of rotting meat instead of the sweet headachy perfume of burned gunpowder. She slid two fresh rounds out of the speed-loader and into the cylinder, and snapped it shut.

  A slight rustling overhead brought the gun back up. Jo squinted the sights against a lump on the sinkhole rim and found an arm dangling over the edge, out of the light and into shadow where she could see details. The fingers slowly clenched into a fist and then relaxed.

  The gun burned like cold fire in her hands. She stared at one palm and then the other. Red prints matched the line of the metal on her flesh, the frame between the wooden grips across her palms and fingers, a negative and reversed Smith & Wesson logo printed on one thumb. The marks ached like frostbite.

  She felt empty, as if the rage had burned through her and hollowed out her guts. She'd killed a man. What had it gained her? She was still down in this frigging hole! David and Maureen and Brian were still in deadly danger.

  That man up there might have been a Grade A Bastard, but he was still the only person who knew where she was. Why didn't she just shoot herself, instead?

  "Rope," she reminded herself, aloud. "Now I have a rope." What could she do with rope that she couldn't do before? It was time to quit weeping like a baby and pull her head out of her stupid ass. She stowed the pistol and re-zipped its pocket, and sat down to study the rocks and trees overhead.

  More Maureen-thoughts crossed her mind. It was too damn bad that bastard didn't fall into the sinkhole when he died, the paranoid voice whispered. I could have eaten him.

  {Jo.}

  David's voice touched her mind again. The shock of it dulled her ears, and she ignored the faint rustle as the hanging hand clenched and relaxed again.

  Chapter Twenty

  The teal arrowed in from green marshlands and across the pasture, wings blurred by its speed. High above, a shadow paused and dropped like an avenging angel. Fast as the duck flew, the falcon dove faster. The teal sensed death reaching out with icy fingers, and it dodged frantically for the trees and safety.

  Shelter was too far away. The falcon swerved as though drawn to the duck by magnetism, flipped her talons forward, and struck with the force of a rifle bullet. Feathers exploded from the teal. Its body tumbled into the loose unmistakable cartwheel of death, and the killing scream of the peregrine split the air.

  Dougal closed his eyes and replayed the scene, a hard, predatory smile full of teeth turning his face into a cousin of the falcon's mask. The stoop, the kill--they were beautiful. The peregrine met all his hopes and dreams, and more. His heart pounded with her excitement and blood-lust, the fierce exultation of her power and deadly speed. He licked his lips and let his mind feast on her flight again.

  She didn't even land on her kill but circled back to his fist to land with incredible delicacy. Those talons could drive straight through his gauntlet and into the flesh beneath if she tried, but she barely gripped him. He could probably fly her from his naked fist.

  "Ah, you are so lovely, my dear," he whispered. His free hand offered her a chicken wing to tear, the blood and meat and destruction her pounding heat demanded. Her eyes gleamed with predatory fire as if she thanked him for the chance to kill. They were partners.

  The bird's power and nature married to his own will, that was what turned falconry into something sexual. When the peregrine killed for him, he trembled just short of orgasm. Now, he relaxed into the afterglow as he carried his feathered assassin across the soft grass and looked down on the crumpled body of the duck.

  Common teal, male, he named it automatically, one of the smallest ducks. It was such a prosaic name for such a handsome bird, with its mahogany head and soft green mask sweeping back from the eye, with its green wing patches glowing iridescent against gray and brown flight feathers in the afternoon sun. The falcon had broken his neck, swift beauty brought down by swifter beauty.

  Dougal soothed the peregrine with his fingers, caressing her lovely chest. As always, he thought out loud when alone with his falcon, the sound of his voice helping to maintain the spell of her manning.

  "Yes, my pretty one. You are such a deadly beauty, just like my darling Maureen. She is almost ready to come to my fist, come to my bed, my feathered assassin. Soon I will fly her against Fiona, against Sean, against my other enemies in the Summer Country. The truce is over. She will leave my wrist and fly free and strike the prey I choose for her and then return willingly, to me, as you return."

  The falcon preened on his wrist, cleaning duck down and a scrap of skin from her talons. The chicken wing had vanished into shreds.

  Such beauty. Such power. His. As Maureen would soon be his.

  He sensed it. The girl fought on, longer than he had thought possible, but she weakened. Her need to save her sister, that would push her over the edge, that would be the final straw. That had been nothing but chance, chance he wove into his plan when it floated by. Without it, he would still have succeeded. Success was only a matter of time and will.

  "Time and will, my lovely one." He smoothed the feathers of her crown, and she rubbed against his finger sensually, like a cat. "Even the humans understand it. Boot camp, brainwashing, tough love: call it what you will. I take the person apart and reassemble the pieces the way I want them fitted. Sooner or later, the subject does what I want, says what I want, truly thinks what I want her to think. Sooner or later she comes to obedience. And then I reward her."

  Because he was who he was, time compressed for him. What took humans tiresome weeks, he achieved in days. His own peculiar skills added the special touch, the little nudge which pushed the creature beyond obedience into love. Maureen teetered at that edge. He felt it, clearly. Soon she would become his newest, deadliest falcon.

  One of his serfs approached, and the peregrine swiveled her head, cocking it first one way and then the other as if considering the man as prey. The Old One smiled at the sight. A man was far too large for his falcon to eat, but she could actually kill him with a lucky strike of her talons. And she would try, for her Master.

  "Take the duck to the kitchen. Tell them to hang it until it is well aged and then roast it with apples and cloves. My bride will still be hungry when it's ready. She will want such dainty snacks." His face hardened, again. "Remind the cooks: tender and juicy. If they keep overcooking game, I will roast one of them for dinner."

  The man bowed silently, knowing better than to laugh; it wasn't a joke. He added the teal to his game-bag. Two hares, a pheasant, and a duck: not a bad afternoon. Dougal had been delighted when the peregrine showed she would take hares. Birds were her natural prey. She would eat well, back at the mews, and sleep.

  "Yes, my love. You will eat well, but not as well as you might wish." The falcon's eyes relaxed, lulled by the sound of his voice and the power of his Blood behind it. He didn't need to hood her.

  "Yes, my precious killer. Just like Maureen, I must keep you sharp. A well-fed hunter is a lazy hunter. If you fed on that teal, you would gorge yourself, and I could not hunt you again tomorrow. Just like Maureen, you must always want that little something more which only I can give you."

  Her eyelids drooped, and she dozed on his wrist, bathing in the joy of killing and the calm warmth of his presence. Food, and sleep, and the fierce exultation of deadly flight: these were her world.

  He gave them to her. She had forgotten that he had first taken them away. He was her god.

  Soon Maureen would see him the same way. Then he could use her to attack those keeps of renegade slaves and the traitors of the Blood who sheltered them, carve the human cancer from the belly of the Summer Country. Then he could quit twitching every time Fiona looked up from her cottage and her nasty little games.

&
nbsp; He frowned and shook his head. Balance Maureen against the loss of the dragon, and he still came out ahead. However, he would have preferred not to pay so high a price for her, no matter how great her power and beauty.

  The dragon, too, had been beautiful.

  Dougal turned and took one last glance over the fields, breathed deep of the rotting marshes. Again he spoke to the falcon, and himself. "Those are Fiona's fields you flew, my darling. In human terms, you and I were poaching her preserves. Our truth is a little deeper than that, isn't it, more like a reconnaissance? Testing an enemy's defenses? I'm sure she felt my footsteps on her grass, knows each time we probe and where. It's all part of the game we play."

  Fiona being who she was, he needed to check the edges on a regular basis, see what plants she might have sent creeping along as advance scouts of an invasion. The marsh was one way he fought back, wild land conquering her pasture. In Scots terms, they were border lairds, never truly controlling any ground their troops did not stand on with weapons bared.

  One of his troops materialized out of the brush, licking his paws. Blood spotted Shadow's nose and cheeks, and the fastidious cat groomed it out of his charcoal fur. Dougal saw a rabbit in the leopard's thoughts, and Sean creeping through the forest, and Maureen's sister by a pool. He thought about setting the cat to hunt down one or both of them, and shook his head. He never discarded tools before their usefulness was done.

  Instead, he told the cat to prowl, and started the climb back to his keep. I need more guards, he thought. Losing the dragon leaves a hole in my defenses. Shadow should stay in the keep, with me.

  Perhaps Liu Chen would discuss the cost of importing another worm from the Celestial Temple. Chinese myth holds such exquisitely dangerous animals. No one else would have exactly what I need, the hunger and the cunning and the beauty.

  Or maybe the dead dragon's mate would succeed with that clutch of eggs. Only time would tell.

  He climbed through the tangled, dangerous wildness of his forest, testing his eyes and ears and Blood against the defenses he'd set. Finally, grassland opened out around his keep--the open hilltop that provided a clear view of anyone approaching, a clear shot at anyone approaching.