by Gigi Moore
Are you ready, Thayne? Maia?
Without Mom’s pendant—
We can do this, Thayne. I know we can.
Had another dream, did you?
Something like that.
I’m game, guys.
Despite her affirmative thoughts, Cade worried about Maia’s weak response. She sounded as if she were exhausted and in pain.
What had Prentice done to her and Thayne?
I’ll be okay. Let’s do this.
“I know what you’re doing, Cade. It’s not going to work.”
Don’t listen to him, Cade. We’ve got this. Right, Maia?
Right.
Emboldened by his mother’s presence and Maia’s and Thayne’s thoughts, Cade opened his eyes to glare at Prentice.
He instantly saw the group of men standing behind him, anxious and waiting. When his gaze finally landed on Thayne and Maia sitting back to back at the lynch mob’s feet with their hands bound behind them, he felt both relief and rage.
Slowly, he became aware of the noise rising up from outside the abandoned stable, the pounding on the door, and voices raised in protest. Surprisingly, he was even able to distinguish some of the protestors—Sabrina, Hank, Luke, and Joshua among them.
It would be nice if the crowd outside was as big as the group of men inside the stable, even nicer if they gained entry and could stop what was about to happen.
Cade wasn’t hanging his hopes on the latter, though.
Damn, poor choice of words.
“Don’t count on any help from your friends outside. By the time they get in here, it’ll all be over.”
“How can you be so hateful? What did we ever do to you?”
Prentice drew back as if Cade had slapped him, and Cade pressed his slight advantage.
“You know this isn’t the way of a true Wiccan. This isn’t what you were created for.”
“How would you know?”
“I know you’re in pain. I used to be in the same kind of pain before I found—”
“What? Your true calling?” Prentice sneered, pressing his index finger firmly against Cade’s temple. That’s when a torrent of images, thoughts, and feelings washed over him, so fierce and great that he couldn’t keep everything straight.
Cade cringed at the pain but more at the injustice of Prentice’s motivations and the futility of his actions.
“Please spare me. The injustice was finding out my parents secretly funneled money to that aunt and uncle of yours for years, trying to make amends for what they did to your parents.”
“Your parents killed our parents?” Thayne rasped, and Prentice turned to him briefly before turning his scorn back on Cade.
“It was an accident! Don’t you understand that? They didn’t mean to kill your parents. It just happened.”
“Like Aunt Aura just happened?”
Cade watched as Prentice’s jaw muscles worked at Thayne’s accusation, and he knew the man was near the end of his patience, which meant he, Thayne, and Maia didn’t have much more time.
“I’m not going to belabor the point with either of you now. Your parents and aunt are dead. That’s just the way things are.”
“You bastard!” Cade cursed.
Prentice chuckled. “Whatever. I know I did what I had to do to get reparations, and you and your brother are no better than me in the grand scheme of things. You would have done the same thing in my place.”
“You’ve got another thing coming if you believe that.”
“Oh, that’s right. If you had any balls and were willing to do what needed to be done, you would have done the same thing in my place. But like my parents and your own, you’re weak, and in a minute the both of you will no longer be a thorn in my side.” Prentice turned to the group of men behind him. “That noose ready yet, Cody?”
“Sure is, Mr. Teague.”
Prentice turned back to Cade. “First I’m going to let your brother and woman watch you hang, then your brother gets a turn with the noose around his neck, and your woman gets to watch you both die, hanging side by side, before it’s her turn.”
“You sick, vindictive fuck.”
Prentice just smiled and stepped away.
Cade stared at the shadowy aura surrounding him and wondered how the man was able to stand beneath the weight of such darkness and malice.
He will not stand for long. Cade wanted to believe but didn’t have any more time to ponder his mother’s words before two men grabbed him by the arms. He violently struggled against them before someone hit him in the temple with the butt of a gun. Stars exploded before his vision, but he held on. He had to. Thayne and Maia needed him.
“You’re making this too easy, Malloy. I want you fully conscious of what’s happening to you. I want you to feel every sensation. I want you to know you’re dying.”
Dazed, Cade listened to his tormentor’s words right before someone doused him with ice-cold water. He gasped at the cold, spluttering as Prentice’s henchmen dragged him to his feet. He resisted glancing up at the rafters, from which one lone noose hung, swinging to and fro. He swallowed over the lump in his throat and concentrated on joining with Thayne and Maia in his mind, silently repeating the chant.
Unlock the desires of your heart
Release your wishes from the dark
Through land, space, time, and water
Take flight and soar my sons and daughter
Prentice’s men pulled him over to stand beside the horse poised just below the noose.
Thayne and Maia chanted with him, their psychic voices rising and synchronizing against Prentice’s psychic stab at interference.
You can’t win, Malloy. This will be over in less than a minute. “Get this done,” Prentice commanded his men.
Cade’s two keepers lifted him up onto the horse.
He closed his eyes and continued to chant, sensing the familiar red and blue cords representing his link with Thayne and Maia glowing hot and pulsing.
Someone slipped the noose around his neck and tightened it.
Oh God, this is it. I’m going to die. I’m really going to die.
At the thought, his nose started to bleed again but not from a rifle butt to the face. No, this time it bled from the force that Prentice exerted on his mind—pulling, pushing, and squeezing his brain with ruthless mental fingers.
If the rope didn’t kill him, then Prentice’s Wiccan powers would.
No, Cade! Keep chanting. Believe. Just believe like Mom said.
He took a deep breath and tried to center himself and ignore the pain, so blinding and cruel had he not been on the horse it would have driven him to his knees.
Hold on. Just hold on.
Cade did as Thayne ordered. As hopeless as the situation seemed, he continued to chant through the agony and felt the yawning space around them begin to quake.
The temperature within the stable rose precipitously, and the horse beneath him shuffled and blew rollers as if spooked.
Stop it! Stop it now!
Frantic, Prentice invaded the network now, applying pressure to the whole and not just Cade’s tendrils.
Cade’s pain spread and suffused Thayne and Maia. They all gasped from shock.
Don’t stop. Fight it. He can’t take us all down if we stay strong and keep chanting!
Cade focused on his brother’s words and kept chanting.
“Now, dammit! Do it now!”
Someone slapped the horse’s rear at Prentice’s desperate direction.
“No!” Maia cried out, and Cade glimpsed her collapse in a heap as the horse took off.
For a brief moment nothing stood between Cade and the ground except air. He felt his body drop, and the rope began to strangle him as his legs dangled.
Time slowed then completely stopped.
Cade remained suspended in air for an instant before a blinding light engulfed the room, accompanied by a sonic boom.
A profound silence followed the contained blast.
Cade felt h
imself floating through the air, held aloft by two sets of arms. He felt Prentice’s soul brush his before passing by him, heading upward. Finally the arms set him down.
He was so disoriented by the brief contact with Prentice’s essence that he didn’t open his eyes for a long time. He just lay quietly, absorbing all of the minutiae of Prentice’s life, especially the last seventy-two hours of it.
He knew where Isaiah was!
Cade opened his eyes to find himself on the ground beside Maia and Thayne. His hands were still cuffed in back of him, but that rough rope was no longer squeezing around his neck and cutting off his air.
Everything that followed seemed to happen at once.
The doors to the stable burst in with a fierce crack, and a bunch of people clambered inside behind the sheriff and his deputy.
The sheriff grabbed Cody around the biceps, and the man didn’t resist. He was too busy standing in the middle of the stable gaping up at the rafter with the rest of the lynch mob, the rafter from where Cade had been hanging. Only there was another body hanging from the noose now, that of Prentice.
Sabrina broke away from the crowd and rushed over to Cade, Thayne, and Maia. “Are you all okay?”
“It was a close call, but I think we’ll survive,” Cade said, glancing up at Prentice’s lifeless body hanging from the rope, swinging back and forth.
Sabrina followed his gaze, barely flinching. “What happened?”
Goddess was not pleased with his flouting of the Wiccan Rede. His lack of faith in its sanctity sealed his fate, nothing else.
Cade listened to the certainty in his mother’s voice but wondered if her words meant Prentice was dead or something else. It’s the latter, Cade.
He heard the smile in his mother’s voice before she continued in a more serious tone.
Do not worry yourself over the details, son. Rest assured that things happened the exact way they were supposed to happen and that Goddess has plans for all of us…including Prentice, whether he believes or not.
“Cade?” Sabrina put a hand on his shoulder, and Cade shuddered at the sudden cold that suffused his body. “What happened?”
He turned to Sabrina and gave her reassuring if grim smile. “He didn’t believe.”
Chapter 28
Cade still didn’t know how his, Maia, and Thayne’s will had overridden Prentice’s, but it had. He supposed it was as he had told Sabrina back at the stable. It was as his mother had foretold. Prentice hadn’t believed, at least not hard enough. Cade was just lucky that his, Thayne, and Maia’s faith had been strong enough to save him.
He stood several yards outside the entrance of the abandoned mine with his brother, Maia, and a concerned group of town folk, including Isaiah’s mother, who decided to ride out to the site with the sheriff and his deputy.
Cade knew his innocence still remained in question until they brought Isaiah out of that mine safe and sound.
Thayne slapped him on the back, and Cade turned to see his grin. He hadn’t thought he’d ever see his brother smile again, not after that horrifying moment in the stable.
His gaze moved from his brother’s face to his neck, from where the pendant dangled. He felt its energy from where he stood. He felt his, Maia, and Thayne’s essences combined and permeating the crystal. “You got it back.”
Thayne nodded. “It’s back where it belongs,” he said, voice choked with emotion he tried to hide. He was too overwhelmed with everything that had happened, though, to completely succeed.
Maia had no such problem showing her emotions when she joined them. She threw her arms around Cade, almost knocking him over with the force of her smaller body and strong embrace. “I thought we’d lost you,” she murmured, voice pregnant with tears.
He returned her hug, not caring who noticed, ignoring the varied looks from the sheriff, Sabrina, and Joshua, who all stood just outside the mine waiting with bated breath like everyone else who’d come to witness the spectacle.
Things had been bad for Cade, but he couldn’t imagine how horrible things had been for Maia and Thayne, forced to sit on that stable ground, bound and gagged, made to watch as Prentice gave that final command.
He closed his eyes and swallowed hard now at the memory of that noose tightening around his neck. He recalled the feel of air beneath his feet as his body plunged, the instant of suffocating pressure against his throat before he just vanished in that flash of light and Prentice appeared in the noose in his place. “I’m not going anywhere,” he rasped.
“That’s good to hear.” Maia hugged him tight then stepped back but still kept one arm around his waist.
“They’re bringing him out!” someone from the crowd shouted.
Cade’s heart sped at the sight of Jed’s deputy leading a shaky and sooty Isaiah from the depths of that mine.
Abigail broke from Jed’s embrace and rushed forward, practically knocking the deputy out of the way to pull her son into her arms and hold him to her bosom.
The deputy stopped in front of Jed. “He’s hungry, tired, and cold, but he’s going to be okay, I reckon.”
“That’s good news.” Jed nodded. “What did he say about who took him?”
The deputy looked at Cade, Thayne, and Maia before responding, obviously uncomfortable. “He says Rance Peyton is the one who took him from the road when he was on his way home. He says Cade didn’t have anything to do with kidnapping him.”
Now it was Jed’s turn to fidget beneath Maia’s and Thayne’s glares.
“I’m going to go see if Isaiah needs any medical attention,” Thayne said before breaking his stare and heading toward Abigail and her son.
“I had to be sure.” Jed looked to Cade as if for help. “You understand, don’t you?”
“You were only doing your job,” Cade drawled.
“You know, you could have said something sooner.”
“When was I supposed to do that? Between you bringing me in or the lynch mob abducting me? You think I wanted to be arrested and lynched?”
Jed cleared his throat, still switching his weight from one leg to the other.
“Besides, I didn’t know sooner.”
“How and when did you figure out what had happened to Isaiah?”
“Prentice told me before he died.”
Jed looked at him doubtfully for a moment, but Cade didn’t balk. He would go to his grave before he told the lawman or anyone else who hadn’t been there what really happened. He knew no one would believe him anyway.
“One day you’re going to have to tell me what really happened back at that stable. Strangest thing I ever did see. And no one in there is in agreement with what they saw or what actually happened.”
“The minute I figure it out, sheriff, is the minute I tell you.” Just don’t hold your breath.
Jed slapped him on the back before heading over to Abigail, Isaiah, and Thayne.
Cade watched them all for a moment before his gaze found the town mortician and a couple of other men as they retrieved Rance Peyton’s body from the side of the road. He got a brief look at the dead man’s face before the mortician covered him with a blanket from the back of his horse and wagon. It didn’t take him a long look to recognize Prentice’s handiwork.
Abigail and Isaiah made their way over to him trailing a small entourage of the deputy, Thayne, Sabrina, and Joshua. She paused for a moment before throwing her arms around his neck and holding him tight. When she pulled away from him a few seconds later, there were tears in her eyes. “Thank you,” she said.
“Don’t thank me. I’m just glad he’s okay.”
She nodded and stepped back to let Isaiah replace her.
The boy immediately flung his skinny arms around Cade’s waist, snuggling close.
Cade laughed and hunkered down to return the boy’s hug. “So how are you doing, little man?”
“I’m okay now.”
“Glad to hear it.” Cade stood and ruffled the boy’s hair, wondering how anyone could think of hurting a chi
ld like Isaiah, so sweet and generous.
He watched as Abigail led her son away.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Sabrina said.
“Me, too.”
“You’re a real hero.”
“I don’t feel like one.”
“You could have been a right ornery cuss and not shared what you knew about Isaiah. I mean, the sheriff arrested you and the townsfolk did try to kill you.”
“That wasn’t Isaiah’s fault. He didn’t have anything to do with what the sheriff and the townsfolk did to me.”
Sabrina didn’t say anything else right away, just smiled as she turned and headed toward the crowd. “I’ll see y’all back at the house. We’ve still got at least a day’s worth of work to do,” she flung over her shoulder.
Cade chuckled at her bossy parting remark as Joshua came to his side.
“Sabrina’s right, you know. You gave that boy back to his mother when you could have held a grudge and let the sheriff and me sink or swim and find him on our own.”
“Hold a grudge against an innocent boy?” Cade shook his head. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“That’s what makes you a much better man than some of these other townsfolk, who jumped the gun wanting to lynch an innocent man.”
Cade frowned as something Joshua said before suddenly clicked in his mind. “How was finding Isaiah the sheriff’s and your job?”
“Tommy was my nephew.”
Cade gaped, still not understanding Joshua’s sense of responsibility until he related what he used to do for a living, how he left the Pinkertons when his nephew first turned up missing.
He’d been disenchanted for a while with the direction the detective agency had been taking, but when he heard from his brother about Tommy, he’d come back to town, thinking to work the case undercover, on his own, and without any official support.
“My brother doesn’t even know I came back to town yet. I thought it was for the best. I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.”
Cade peered at him, realizing that Joshua knew Tommy wouldn’t be coming back to his family the way Isaiah had.
“I had a few possible suspects from the town lined up. Unfortunately, I’d been on the trail of the wrong one when Rance took Isaiah.”
