The yeti howled.
An answering call came from the very next cage.
The creature imprisoned at the end of the row was a female yeti. The free yeti’s sister, so the phoenix had implied. Certainly, the free yeti gripped the bars of the cage with the frustration of someone emotionally connected to the one inside.
The female yeti was shorter and slighter, her fur cut or pulled out in patches, her blue eyes dull and the claws missing from her fingers and toes.
“I can get her out,” Seth said to the yeti.
It turned its head to stare at him.
The female did the same.
The yeti grabbed the dead wizard and held him up, scooping up the wizard’s blood with a finger.
Seth shook his head. “I don’t need his blood. I’ll use null-space to negate the spells that keep this cage closed along with the remaining three pens and two tanks.” He’d seen sea serpents in one and wasn’t sure how to go about freeing them. The tank itself might be needed to transport them safely. “But I can’t hold the lockdown spell on the house when I do so. Nor can either of you use magic till everyone is free or you’ll cancel the null-space.”
The yeti nodded.
Seth considered its desperation. “The wizards in the house will break free while we’re doing this, so be prepared to fight our way out of the barn.”
The yeti dropped the dead wizard and gripped the door to its sister’s cage. The message was clear: get on with it.
Seth activated null-space, feeling the wizards in the house break his lockdown spell the instant he did so.
The yeti yanked open the door to his sister’s cage, and the female yeti staggered out. For a minute they embraced while Seth moved swiftly to open the remaining cages. Then all three of them, plus the newly freed peryton, kitsune and caladrius all surged out of the lab and up the stairs.
Running out of the lab, Seth noted that Josh’s body was gone. He halted. Earlier, he hadn’t checked whether the barrier wizard was dead, just assumed that either the fall down the stairs or the wild hail of bullets had finished him off. But if his body was gone, that raised the question of his survival. The freed fantastical creatures were intent on escape. The roars and howls of battle revealed that they fought the hunters released from the house. Stopping for revenge against Josh, whom they wouldn’t have recognized since he’d never physically been present in the lab, seemed unlikely.
There was no blood trail from the stairs to a place of hiding under a desk or such like. But there was a blood trail up the stairs. So Josh lived, and it seemed that he’d made his way up the stairs while Seth was freeing the captives.
Outside, the chaos of magic crisscrossing from the fantastical creatures and the wizards who hunted them indicated that the wizards were reluctant to use gunfire and to shoot to kill. To do so would be to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. These creatures were the hunters’ profit via bleeding, cutting, and harvesting them for sale on the magical community’s black market.
But if they were forced to it, the hunters would kill their former captives. And they wouldn’t hesitate to kill him.
In fact, Seth was probably their main target. He was the wizard who’d taken out their defenses—with the help of the yeti.
The yeti had run from the barn while Seth had searched for Josh. Now it ran toward a wizard standing within a circle of protection.
Between using null-space and holding the lockdown spell, Seth’s magic was nearly exhausted. Physically, too, he was tired. The sprint through the woods to reach Vanessa at the lodge, followed by fleeing with her up the mountain ahead of the wildfire, was all effort that he had to pay the price for. Adrenaline and luck could only get you so far. He didn’t bother calculating the odds of his survival.
He raised his gun and fired.
Chapter 10
One minute Seth had been with Vanessa in the secluded mountain plateau, and the next he was gone, translocated presumably by the phoenix’s magic. The great bird, shimmering in gold and pure white was still awe-inspiring at six feet tall, even if no longer overwhelming. Its latest form, that of a raven helped to mitigate the impact of its presence. Ravens didn’t inspire fear. Vanessa sat on a rock. The run up the mountain, racing wildfire, after the shock of Andrew’s death and Josh’s spell, had caught up with her. She was worried for Seth, but she could worry sitting down.
Vanessa stared at the phoenix.
It looked back at her with a raven’s head tilt of curiosity, but a far greater and older intelligence showed in its gleaming eyes. Then it looked to the north east, as if it saw beyond the mountains and the smoke, through the darkness, viewing things Vanessa could never imagine. She’d been dismissed.
“You know this isn’t the first time I’ve been held hostage. Or even the second,” she added, thinking of Josh.
The phoenix looked back at her. It was a creature of fire and magic.
Vanessa hooked her knees up, hugging them as she rested her chin on them. It was cool in the mountains and while the phoenix might light the night, it wasn’t warming it. Then again, the fine shivers running through her could be due to fear for Seth and herself as much as a response to the cold. She laughed, and it emerged from her raspy throat as a croak. “Would you believe I came to the mountains looking for you. Oh, not you, specifically. I heard there might be phoenixes in the San Juan Mountains. They’re near here.” She was rambling from tiredness and worry.
“I hoped to find one of your feathers. Stupid, huh? Look at you. You’re not even really here. Physically, here, I mean. You’re spirit or fire or something.”
The phoenix in its glowing white raven form hopped a step nearer to her. “I have a corporeal body as well as this form. But why would you want a phoenix feather? Would you trade it? You have no magical ability to use the feather yourself.”
Phoenix feathers were like the samples of fur, feathers, blood and bone that the wizards at the Hunters Lab stole from their captured fantastical creatures. Phoenix feathers could power, or amplify the power of, spells and charms.
Vanessa tipped her head in negation. “I don’t want to do magic. I have friends who can, and I grew out of envying them by the time I was fourteen. No, I came to the mountains chasing happiness.” Her voice was husky and slow. She was reciting an old dream. “There’s a legend that when you burn a phoenix feather, for as long as the flame burns, you’ll know happiness.”
The phoenix shimmered, a ripple of gold washing over it. The change in color reflected across the plateau.
“Is Seth safe?” Vanessa asked.
The phoenix stared toward the north east. “Yes.”
“He’s strong.” Vanessa straightened, letting her legs touch the ground again. The rock was a hard seat. She stood and stretched her sore muscles. She felt weak and useless. “He makes his own fate.”
“We all do, child. Consciously or not, successfully or not. Each choice, every action, forms who we are.” The phoenix regarded her for a long moment. “I didn’t think anyone remembered the legend of the charcoal burner and the feather of happiness.”
“In the story I read, the hero was a woodcutter. It was in a book of fairytales, an old book by one of the Grimm brothers’ contemporaries. It was a tale from the Carpathian Mountains.”
The phoenix bobbed its head. If a raven could look thoughtful, this giant white one did. “I have cousins there, still.”
Vanessa thrust her hands in her pockets. She was cold and nervous and looked toward the north east, as if she could pierce space and time in the way the phoenix did. “The woodcutter found the phoenix feather in a clearing in the woods. It smelled of rare spices.” As the plateau here and now swirled with cinnamon and sandalwood, nutmeg, pepper and frankincense. “He brought the feather home and showed it to his wife. Friends visited and sniffed the feather. Then the feather was placed in a special tin to be kept as a treasure. The family was poor and their lives a struggle. One day, their young son got the tin open and took the feather out. He waved i
t around, spicing the air with exotic scents, till his father came in and saw him. The boy was frightened because he knew he shouldn’t have the treasured feather out. In his shock at his father’s sudden appearance and knowing his own guilt, he released the feather. It floated on a current of air, drifting toward the fireplace. The woodcutter lunged to save the feather, and as he grasped the quill of it, the tip caught the flames.”
“The feather burned for two weeks,” the phoenix took up the story. “And in that time the man was unbelievably happy. He didn’t punish his son for playing with the feather. The man existed in a happiness so remarkable that people came from miles around, the lord of the manor, priests and monks, even a bishop, to see the man and the feather that he’d stuck in the remains of a melted candle and which burned with rainbow fire.”
Vanessa looked at the phoenix’s glowing incorporeal body. “Is it true? Do your feathers grant happiness?”
“Why do you chase a guarantee of happiness?” the phoenix asked. “You are young, you seem healthy, and you have a bond to Seth.”
Vanessa hunched her shoulders. “I’ve been scared since the first time I was held hostage. It’s not physical fear or even fear for my life. I’ve been scared of fear itself, that I’ll become someone afraid and suspicious of people. That I’ll lock myself away.” She tapped her chest. “In here.”
It was difficult to explain just how important the thought of the feather of happiness had become to her. Before her kidnapping, she’d taken happiness for granted. Now, she wanted to be that person again; someone who trusted in the goodness of life. The phoenix feather had come to embody that wish for her.
The phoenix shimmered again, and this time, a white feather drifted from it.
The feather floated toward Vanessa and she caught it bemusedly.
“It is yours, child.”
Vanessa’s hand shook as she raised the feather, longer than her forearm, to her nose and inhaled a scent of pine needles and ginger. “Why?”
“Because the truth beneath your story shamed me.”
“I don’t understand.” The feather was white with a gold edge. It reflected the glow of the phoenix. I hold a phoenix feather. Happiness. Her heart ached with hope and, yes, with happiness.
“You pointed out that I am holding you hostage here, and that in denying you freedom, I am no better than the men who captured the yeti and other creatures, holding them to control their power; as I hold you to control Seth.”
Vanessa wrenched her gaze from the feather. “What of Seth?” There’d been an odd note in the phoenix’s voice. It was almost as if the phoenix mourned. “What has happened to him?”
“See.” At the phoenix’s word, a vision appeared in the air above the plateau. Seth stood in the darkness of scraggly woodland, the yeti beside him and Josh over the yeti’s shoulder. Intense concentration showed in Seth’s shadowed face and stance. Then he gripped the yeti’s shoulder and the creature ran forward. “Seth destabilized the ward around the Hunters Lab. Now my friend breaks it. This has already happened.”
The vision changed. Seth was somewhere brightly lit. There were cages. A man opened their doors while Seth guarded them. But Seth’s expression…he was alert and focused, obviously prepared to be attacked and willing to defend himself. However, his face was different. Emotionless.
“He used null-space to destabilize the ward,” Vanessa said.
“It was what I, for all my power, couldn’t do. Now, the vision shows us events as they’re happening.”
A creature Vanessa had no name for leapt from its cage, evaded the yeti’s grab, and tore out the throat of the man who’d been opening the cage doors—and hunching in fear of Seth while doing so. The vision was silent. Vanessa couldn’t determine what Seth said or the decision he made, but she watched his face and the way he moved as the last of the creatures were freed and the vision followed him out of the vast room, hesitated in a laboratory, then tracked Seth upstairs and into a big storage space. Seth ran unhesitatingly through the space and out a door into a battle of fantastical creatures and men.
Gunfire suddenly cut through the vision, revealed by the punch of dirt or strike of sparks as bullets hit dirt or metal, and by the fantastical creatures’ recoil.
“Seth!” Vanessa cried.
But Seth’s expression didn’t change at the intrusion of mundane weaponry. He merely fired his own handgun, crouching low and running along the wall of a floodlit shed. In the chaos of the impossible battle, he moved with lethal purpose. His focus was obvious. The yeti was attacking empty air an arm’s span from a man who stood apparently weaponless, which meant that the man was a wizard and he kept the yeti at bay via magic.
Nor did bullets penetrate the man’s personal ward.
That Seth couldn’t bring it down with null-space revealed how exhausted he was. And if he couldn’t activate null-space, what of his other magic?
“Seth’s task is done.” Vanessa turned urgently to the phoenix. “He has freed the caged creatures. Bring him back, the way you swooshed him out of here. You can’t leave him, there! Please.”
A man materialized out of the shadows and struck at Seth.
Seth spun and blocked the knife, stabbing up from hip height with his left hand.
Vanessa covered her mouth, holding in a scream. She hadn’t seen the knife in Seth’s non-gun hand. It re-emerged from the man’s stomach covered in blood.
The man who would have killed Seth fell instead at his feet—and Seth stepped over him.
“Please,” Vanessa begged the phoenix. “Return him to me.”
“You have the feather, child. You hold happiness in your hands. It could burn for days—or years.” The phoenix sounded absent, and although it didn’t appear to move, no matter how Vanessa staggered forward pleading, it was always just in front of her, just out of reach.
Meantime, the vision showed the yeti breaking the personal ward that kept it from the wizard; only to go reeling back in a shower of sparks and smoke as its clawed hand swiped at the man.
Seth shot in the direction of the wizard, then flung the gun away.
Out of ammunition. Out of magic. Seth would die.
“I don’t want the damn feather.” Vanessa threw it at the phoenix. The feather darted through the phoenix’s incorporeal body and into the vision. “I want Seth.”
Power sucked at Vanessa. The phoenix’s words followed her into the translocation. “Then have him.”
One instant Seth was falling back from the magical cyclone the wizard across the yard had summoned. The next moment a powerful translocation spell interrupted it.
Vanessa tumbled into the middle of the floodlit yard of the compound. She fell onto her knees on the bloody ground.
Suddenly escaping with the yeti—the phoenix’s friend—so that he could trade it for Vanessa’s safety was no longer a viable strategy. Vanessa was here. For her to be safe, he had to make it so.
Before the hunters’ wizard could cast a new spell, Seth threw his knife. End over end it spun and struck the wizard. At such a distance it shouldn’t have been possible—perhaps some other entity guided his throw—but the knife pierced the wizard’s right eye, and he fell back, dead.
Seth grabbed Vanessa’s arm.
She was shaky and disoriented, but they had no time for her to get her legs under her. He forced her to run, putting his body between her and the battle; aware that the fighting was lessening.
The fantastical creatures vanished, not so much into the woods as away. The phoenix had to be translocating them. The female yeti vanished as Seth watched. The other yeti howled a song of victory and returned to Seth.
Vanessa gasped as the yeti’s bloodstained hand gripped Seth’s shoulder.
The yeti nodded once, and vanished.
If the phoenix had returned Vanessa to him, Seth had to assume they were on their own. The mission the phoenix had assigned him—to free the fantastical creatures—was complete, but the mission that underlay it for him, that of keeping Va
nessa safe, was in jeopardy. Before anything else, he wanted the safety of the woods for them; somewhere to hide Vanessa while he assessed the compound and determined who, if any among the hunters, had survived. Then they would steal a car. They needed to be away from here before reinforcements arrived.
A hand gripped his ankle.
He kicked out before looking. Then recognized Josh.
“Help me.” The barrier wizard forced the words between blood-stained lips.
The ahuizotl leapt from the roof of the shed to land on Josh’s back.
The wizard flattened from his pained crawl to lie panting on the ground.
Seth picked up the ahuizotl by the scruff of its neck. The creature chittered its teeth, canine teeth flashing in the harsh floodlighting of the compound. Blood stained its drool. The creature slathered.
Around them, the battle ceased. The hunters were all dead, their bodies torn in deaths perhaps more merciful than the tortured captivity in which they’d held their killers. The few fantastical creatures that remained stared at Seth as he stood with the ahuizotl in one hand and Vanessa’s hand clasped in the other. He looked at Vanessa.
Her eyes were wide and her face pale. She looked sick. “I know Josh doesn’t deserve mercy.”
The ahuizotl screamed, a cry of rage.
Vanessa shivered.
In response, Seth tightened his hold on the ahuizotl. The creature went silent.
“The yeti.” Vanessa paused and wet her lips. Her gaze scanned the compound.
Seth looked, but didn’t see any danger. They still had to hurry. But he waited.
“The yeti left Josh alive. The phoenix said his fate would be at the hands of his allies. Not you, Seth. Don’t take this death on you.”
“What would you have me do? The ahuizotl considers Josh prey.”
She scanned the compound again. The ranch house was broken. The roof had shaken apart from the force of his lockdown spell and the wizards’ attempts to break it. Windows were shattered, whether from the hunters trying to exit or the fantastical creatures to enter, it wasn’t clear. Doors were ripped off their hinges. She looked at the vehicles. “We could lock Josh in a car? Take him with us?”
Fire Fall (Old School Book 4) Page 15
