Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

  "Damn you, David! This is even worse than sitting on the bottom and waiting to starve!"

  Her fingers brushed coiled rope and then gripped it so hard her knuckles cracked. What did she think it was, a goddamn fashion statement?

  Jo whacked herself on the forehead. Sometimes she was just fucking stupid. Time to play cowgirl. She made sure of her footing and then shrugged the rope off her shoulder. Three tries at a slipknot for a noose persuaded her that Scouts and sailors had different kinds of fingers than she did. Anything she tied that slipped did it much too enthusiastically to trust with her life.

  Finally, she just shook out a loop of doubled rope. Swinging it around her head, she heaved it at a likely-looking nub of rock and saw it land about ten feet to the left.

  "Some cowgirl you make," she muttered. "How the hell do you throw a snake?"

  Swing again, miss again. This time, the rope splatted down about fifteen feet to the other side. She retrieved it, fingers slimy from the green goo the rope picked up in its slither.

  "It's okay," she muttered. "Take your time. We aren't going anywhere."

  Leaning up against the rock lip cramped her movements. "It would be real nice," she added, "to just step back a pace and be able to get my shoulder and hips into the throw."

  She looked down and scratched that idea. There were a lot of rocks between her and the water. Sharp rocks. How the hell did she ever miss those things the first time?

  Swing, throw, miss. Swing, throw, miss. Swing, throw, hit! The rope draped over a lump of rock, and she twitched gently on the two lines leading from her hand. The damn thing lay doubled, the woven sheath construction too limp, too pliable, to form a nice wide loop like a good cow-rope noose. The rope curved and her pull dragged it off the nubbin again and it slithered back into the wet grease.

  Swing, throw, miss. Swing, throw, miss. Swing, throw, hit, slither. Swing, throw, hit, slither.

  Jo gritted her teeth. Son-of-a-bitch rope was damn well going to land on that nub of rock and it was damn well going to loop over it and it was damn well going to catch and hold. If she could make wet green wood burn with a glare, she damn well could breathe a little stiffness into a rope.

  She narrowed her eyes and hefted the doubled climbing rope again. Anger seemed to trigger whatever it was she did, and she was seriously working on getting angry, right now.

  She swung the rope again, threw it, controlled her glare. The noose floated out into a beautiful curve, the two threads separating into the prettiest loop she'd ever seen. They settled like a pearl necklace around the nubbin of rock, and she pulled tight against it, feeling the strength of her anchor in the deep thrum of taut springy rope.

  Heat boiled in her belly and flushed strength into her arms. She pulled herself up and over the final lip and slid, hand over hand, through the slimy algae and up the funnel of rock until her knuckles bumped the rough bark of tree-roots. Gently, one hand at a time, she shifted from the rope to firm rock and still more distant holds. She brought her knees onto grit instead of grease and finally gathered her feet under her body to stand, hugging a dry cedar as if the spiraling bark was her lover's body.

  "David, I'm out," she whispered.

  {. . . .}

  No words. She barely imagined the faintest hint of exhausted thought, buried under the long slow dreams of trees and the bright darting quicksilver of whatever squirrels used for brains. David had scattered again, now that she was safe.

  Jo slumped against the tree, exhausted and hungry, her legs so shaky she slid down the bark and thumped her butt on a lumpy root. Some food would be nice, right now, she thought. Double cheeseburger with fries. A half-gallon of Ben and Jerry's finest. Flaming kebabs down at The Riverside, with a pitcher of dark ale and a basketful of garlic bread.

  Useless thoughts. She ran through her list of assets: one revolver with eight remaining bullets and some kind of a hex she could overcome if she got mad enough, one Bic lighter maybe half-full, one Swiss army knife, one yellow ski jacket covered with green slime, the clothes she stood up in. To hell with the rope: that thing was heavy. Besides, from now on she was damn well going to watch where she put her feet.

  She had to find David. Whatever was happening to him, she had to find him and stop it.

  {. . . dragon . . .} barely rose above the background noise of forest life. She remembered the great obsidian snake with its cryptic references to a Master.

  She could follow water back the way she came. The stream crossed the trail, and the trail led back to the dragon.

  If that Master was behind David's problems, the scumbag had better watch out. She had just gained one additional asset: a belief in magic and a faint but growing sense of how to control her powers. Somebody's ass was about to get fried, and she didn't think it was hers.

  Damn Maureen!

  * * *

  Sean followed her touch on the forest gently, gently, in his head. He didn't dare to think of moving until she was well out of sight and hearing. One more bullet and he was dead.

  He coughed quietly, the jerking muscles rousing knife-sharp pains in his chest and side. Something lumpy scratched at his throat and he coughed again, spitting out blood. Bitch. She'd blown a hole in his lung and another in his liver. That was bad enough, but her curse really had put venom on the bullets.

  "I wish you joy of each other," he muttered, remembering his jesting words to Dougal and Maureen. Mixing the two quests, Fiona for Brian and Dougal for Maureen, began to look like a mistake similar to letting a pyromaniac loose in a fireworks factory. Sean had thought he'd find an ally against his damned half-brother, and look what he got, instead.

  The older one, Jo, was further away now. Sean allowed himself to curl around the stabbing pain in his gut. He'd just stood there in shock after the first bullet slammed into him. Then the second tore through his belly and out his back. Only instinct dropped him out of the line of fire and froze him into faked death, before she’d witched a third.

  Witch blood. The genes of Old Ones and humans mixed unpredictably. Besides the sterility thing, Power skipped and surfaced in chaotic variations. Even untrained, this redheaded witch was dangerous--nearly as dangerous as Fiona.

  He coughed again and spat out a deformed lump of copper and lead. The poison and his instinctive antidote had tarnished the bright red metal jacket to the green of a weathered statue.

  Sean needed to follow the woman, follow her carefully. The Power of the Summer Country would pull her back to Brian and her sister. He could use her for revenge, use her against Fiona and Brian before he passed his pain back to the bitch with added interest. She was far enough away now that he dared to move.

  He forced himself to his hands and knees. Healing tissue screamed at him, and he panted for air. Racking coughs cleared more blood and torn tissue from his lung.

  He reminded himself to just move very carefully. All his energy must concentrate on healing. He was in no condition to challenge the bitch right now. After she’d fought Dougal and maybe Fiona, she'd be weaker. And besides, he couldn't leave the forest until Fiona released him.

  That would give him time to plan.

  Something else detached itself from the shadows and followed the woman--Dougal's mutated black leopard. It was about as big as a lioness.

  Lovely. Now he had to hide from that, as well. Sean squandered some of his precious hoard of Power on masking the scent of his blood.

  The cat stalked Jo for about a dozen yards. Then it shied away from her trail and looked for safer game.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Maureen played chess against Brian. The position seemed surreal, like her life since Liam and the ice-storm alley. This pattern of pieces hadn't grown from any normal opening and development, but she made the best of what her dream offered to her. At least the rules for moving remained the same.

  She'd schemed and even sacrificed her queen to force a passed pawn and advance it to the seventh rank, protected by a rook. Brian ignored the threat because he had his own
attack and the potential queen was blocked from direct view of his king.

  He picked up his own queen and moved it three squares along the black diagonal. "Mate in one move," he said, with Dougal's voice.

  She looked up. It was Dougal on the other side of the board, not Brian. She hadn't noticed the switch. His sly smile implied a double meaning to the threat.

  She glared at him with her teeth bared. Chess was not a game. Chess was war. Chess was domination. Chess was a battle of wills in which your opponent must be destroyed--not just defeated, but destroyed.

  Chess was life.

  She ignored Dougal as she looked over the position, noting his forces that backed her king into a corner and the single bishop's move that would force the checkmate. Queening her pawn would be useless. None of her other pieces could intervene, could even move to a point to interpose their bodies in sacrifice. Dougal was sure of his win.

  She smiled, and advanced her pawn. Dougal shook his head and reached for the replacement queen.

  "Knight," she said. He blinked. "Check."

  The knight reached out with his crooked move, the only move that could fly over another piece, and attacked Dougal's king. The king retreated one space. Dougal's threatened mate still hung over the board.

  She advanced another pawn, the single-space and diagonal threat of the weakest piece on the board. "Check."

  If he moved his king further, to capture the undefended pawn, he'd be even more exposed. She could draw with perpetual check. Instead, he captured with his queen, dividing his forces and removing the checkmate threat. Maureen could cover her king now, and battle on.

  Instead, she moved her bishop along the white diagonal. "Check, and mate."

  Dougal's queen sat on his only escape square.

  Her dream faded back into the stone walls, taking the inlaid marble board and the ivory chessmen with it and leaving cold, damp loneliness behind.

  Those were her favorite strategies, the feints and the unexpected moves, the misdirection. Offer her enemy a goal juicy enough to tantalize and make it just one move further off than her own attack would take. Sacrifice, even her most valuable pieces. Then strike for the throat, with a force so weak it was easy to overlook.

  Too bad life wasn't a fucking chess game.

  * * *

  "Damn Jo!" Maureen's voice was a weak mutter, barely audible even to herself.

  "Damn Jo and Brian and David, damn them all for following me, for making such a simple thing so complicated!"

  Maureen sat on her thin mattress on her iron bunk in her cold stone cell and stared at her hands. They were skeletal and dirty, with a translucent pallor under the grime as if she didn't have enough blood to spare to turn them pink. They trembled with cold and with exhaustion.

  Padric never gave her enough food. Dougal invited her to feasts, but Padric starved her. She muttered to herself about the "good cop, bad cop" routine, but that part of her brain was shutting down. Right now, she didn't fucking care where the food came from, just as long as it came.

  Her eyes blurred. She suddenly saw twenty fingers instead of ten. Her head sank to her chest, and she jerked back with a grimace and rapid blinks to clear her sight. Her eye-sockets felt as if they were filled with gravel.

  Now each finger was ringed with a thin halo of purple light. At least there were only ten of them.

  Her skin itched as if things crawled on her, either the layers of her own sweat and the filth of the cell or bedbugs and lice. More likely, it was just the lack of sleep and food fucking with her brain, twitching her skin's nerves with another kind of hallucination. Or maybe it was the DT's, the snakes and bugs of alcoholic withdrawal. Padric wouldn't give her a goddamn drink.

  Dougal offered her fine wine.

  She didn't think it was lice. Dougal wouldn't want extra wildlife in his bed. He wouldn't want her in his bed without a bath. God knows she stank. Since she'd thrown that wine at Dougal, Padric hadn't even given her a bucket of ice water for washing. Not what you'd call a dream date, by any means.

  Her head sank down and jerked back again. She stumbled to her feet and forced herself to balance against the swirling of the walls and floor, the black dots swimming across her sight.

  She thought it was low blood pressure. Brain not getting enough oxygen. Not just balance, not just eyes--screwed up her thinking as well. Logic went to hell, went to sleep, even if she couldn't.

  "Can't go to sleep," she muttered. "Not sleep-time."

  If she closed her eyes Padric would be there in an instant, always that bastard Padric. He was just outside the spy-hole, watching, she could hear his breathing. Close her eyes, and the fucker would hang her up by her wrists again, drench her with icy water, beat the soles of her feet with his goddamn rubber hose, take her clothes away so she was too goddamn cold to sleep.

  But she could beat them. She was strong enough. The problem was Brian and Jo and David. Hold out and David dies, Jo dies, Brian lives on for years as a brainless slave. Not fair.

  Fucking liar Dougal. All she had was his word. Everyone else could be safely home in bed. Everyone else could be pigging out on greasy pizza washed down with pitchers of beer. They'd abandoned her, the bastards. They didn't care.

  Not their fault. Fiona caused this. Sean caused this, the traitor bastard. Dougal promised he'd help her get revenge, help her save Jo and David and Brian. Dougal promised he'd help her learn how to use her powers, the Power in her genes. Dougal told her that she could wash her hands in Sean's blood. All she had to do was sleep with him, bear his children.

  She'd see him in hell first, take him on a guided tour.

  "Give in, you get a bed," she mumbled, under her breath. "Give in, you get food. Give in, you get warm, you get clean clothes, you get a bath. So what if your bed includes a man? Men have slept with women ever since sex was invented.

  "Sleep. Right now, you'd sell your soul for a good night's sleep. What's this big thing against selling your goddamn body?"

  Nothing was going to happen to her that hadn't happened before. She'd survived. Saga of Woman: she survived.

  Dougal wasn't all that bad. She'd never sleep with Padric. Padric was an animal, while Dougal was a gentleman. Dougal never hit her, never chained her naked in her filth, never took food right out of her hands because she'd done something wrong. That was Padric. Always Padric.

  Good cop, bad cop, whispered the dying voice in the back of her head.

  All she remembered of Dougal was him beating Padric with a whip. The finest meal of her life. Clean clothes.

  So what if she'd prefer Brian? One man was much like another, a bunch of muscles fronting for some sperm. They were all pricks, when you came down to it. Jo sure didn't pay much attention to the differences.

  Dougal was an Old One, and he chose her, chose her out of a million women. She was special. It wasn't his fault Liam screwed up when he came to talk to her. If things had gone the way Dougal had planned, she would have come here as a princess rather than a prisoner.

  When Liam screwed up, she got tangled in Fiona's plan for Brian. All this nasty shit was Fiona and Sean, not Dougal.

  He wasn't all that ugly. Hell, walk through the mall sometime and look at people. Really look at people. They aren't actors, they aren't models. Beauty was a crock of shit, an airbrush fantasy. Even centerfolds got retouched to perfection.

  Her knees wobbled underneath her, and she slumped back on the bunk. A corner of the iron frame dug into her leg, and the pain served as a last anchor to reality.

  Somewhere, out of the last depths of her soul, she dredged up the strength to pry her eyes open and glare at the peephole in the door. The eyes on the other side blinked and vanished.

  * * *

  "Go 'way." Maureen couldn't even find the will-power to shake her head or open her eyes.

  Something lifted her. Seconds passed before the pain in her scalp made sense. The bastard was hauling her up by her hair. Fingers clamped her earlobe in a vise and squeezed until tears ran out under he
r eyelids. The pain shifted to her breast, her left nipple. She still couldn't care.

  "If you're that sound asleep," a deep voice growled, "I can do whatever I want with you. You'll never tell."

  She bounced against the rough stone wall and slithered down to sitting. Hands fumbled with her snaps and buttons, her zippers, tugged at her pants, forced her bare legs apart, groped between them.

  Her mind flashed across the years, thrown by that touch, those hands. Buddy Johnson was back. He'd never really left. She whimpered in the darkness behind her eyelids.

  The door clanged again, and she heard a scuffle and curses followed by blows like a boxer pounding on a side of beef. Gentle hands wiped the tears from her cheeks.

  She pried her eyes open. It was Dougal. Buddy Johnson cringed in the corner, fresh blood flowing from his nose. His hair seemed longer than she remembered.

  Dougal helped her with buttons and zippers and snaps, not even wincing at the touch of her filthy, greasy clothing, her filthy, greasy body. He helped her to her feet. He picked her up as if she weighed nothing, carrying her like a child in his arms. His face hovered just above hers.

  "Maureen, I've got to save you from all this. Come away with me. Be the mistress of my keep and bear my children."

  He'd draped her arms around his neck. She left them there. "Yes."

  His hands tightened around her body, gently, protectively. One of them pressed lightly on her left breast, the one Buddy had pinched, and warmth flowed from him to soothe the ache. She snuggled closer to the warmth and power.

  Her glance drifted across Buddy, still cringing in his corner. He'd lost weight since she'd seen him last. Tears stained his face--tears that looked more like loss and sorrow than pain. Dougal carried her out of the cell and kicked the door shut behind them, locking Buddy in, locking him out of her life. Savage glee flooded through her.