With that, the witches pulled her away and helped her toward the door.
Sarah had retrieved Dimitri’s keys from somewhere, and she was now having a conversation with several other witches in hushed tones as they rifled through the keys and selected one.
I stood there and let Bridgette’s words wash over me. Though on the face of it, they sounded like they were out of a Disney movie and were so saccharine sweet they’d give me cavities, that would be denying the power they had on me. Bridgette was categorically one of the strongest people I’d met in this magical world. And though I wasn’t the kind to be starstruck, if there were one witch I’d like to be like, it would be her. She was possessed of such singular will, such incredible strength. And her magic was frankly amazing. So if she thought I was the one person who could get them through this, that counted for something.
I’d been on the back foot ever since I’d become a witch. Blame it on the fact my first experience with magic had been when Max had tried to slice me through with a sacred knife, but I’d always felt as if I were just reacting to this situation, not creating it.
That thought brought a dull kind of smile to my mouth. It summed up the situation perfectly. Ever since I’d been thrust into this world, I’d been used by my abilities, I hadn’t used them. Whether it was through Max leaving photographs around and threatening to take me to the police station every other day, I’d always been reacting, never creating. And weirdly, if there was one thing that had summed up my life as a fake fortune teller, it was that I’d always been creating. Sure, my fortunes had technically been lies, but they’d also been carefully crafted gifts to people, telling them exactly what they wanted or needed to hear. People came to fortune tellers to get peace of mind, to be promised that love was just around the corner, that their friends and family who’d passed on were still present in spirit, and that everything was okay. Maybe my fortunes hadn’t been the truth – okay they’d definitely not been the truth – but that wasn’t the point. In saying them, I’d given people hope. I had created goodwill.
That thought sent the smallest of smiles curling my lips. I didn’t have time to enjoy it. Sarah walked over to me and offered me a tight nod. “It’s ready. We have to get out of here,” she said. She dipped her head up suddenly, and her expression changed completely. Though it had been tight with worry seconds before, I watched it shatter right in front of me as if someone had taken a brick to her face.
I felt my own cheeks pale. “What is it?” I snapped as I ignored my injuries and practically jogged over to her.
“He’s here,” she said in a harsh whisper.
There was no question who was here. I heard an almighty bang from the front of the store. It sounded as if somebody had just chucked a car through the window. The floor beneath me shook, and I was almost thrown from my feet.
“God, we have to get out of here now. Move. Everyone move,” Bridgette screamed, her voice echoing through the room.
Sarah pushed off on her sweet white heels, her skirt swinging around her legs. She threw herself at the door.
I could hear somebody pounding down the corridor behind it, and though I couldn’t see their face, I knew who it was based on that sound alone. When McCain walked, it sounded as if a mountain was shifting toward you. It wasn’t just the way his footfall echoed, it was the sense that pervaded before him like smoke before a wildfire. This sense that told you no matter where you tried to turn, no matter where you tried to run, you would never escape him.
I stood there, stock still, frozen cold with dread. There was nothing I could do as I watched Sarah fumble with the keys, one hand locked on the handle as if she were using all her strength and magic to keep it closed.
“Chi,” I heard McCain bellow from the corridor.
My heart skipped a beat as I heard him close the distance to the door.
There was an echoing thump as it sounded as if he struck both his fists against the door. It buckled inward, but it didn’t open. Sarah was intoning something under her breath, and though her voice shook and sweat dribbled down her brow, she didn’t stop. She didn’t let go of the handle, her knuckles tightening to the point of popping from her skin.
Finally, she shoved one of Dimitri’s keys into the lock and twisted. Just as she did, I heard McCain give a terrifying scream, and he struck the door once more. The wood almost splintered. Almost, because just at the right moment, the spell took hold. The door swung outward. It didn’t reveal McCain’s fearsome face. Instead, it showed a field.
“Oh my god, it worked,” Sarah said in a shaking voice as she took a step backward, slammed a sweaty hand on her dress, and sucked in breath after breath. She didn’t allow herself long to enjoy the moment. She twisted hard on her foot and started to wave at her witches.
They took Max and Bridgette between them and hurried through the door. Sarah sprinted over to me, but before she locked an arm through mine, I pushed away. “I can run,” I said.
I pushed forward, knowing I had just enough time. But that would be when I realized something.
Although the door had just opened out onto a field, that didn’t mean much. The walls of this room were still connected to the store. Max could still make it through.
The wall beside me shook with such pounding force it cracked.
“Move,” Sarah spat in my ear as she shoved her arm through mine and wrenched me toward the door.
My knee gave way as pain shot through my thigh. I screamed, but Sarah wouldn’t let me fall. She tugged me toward the door with all her might. Just in time. Because as she pushed me through, the wall to our side shattered.
I caught sight of the side of his sword blazing with magical flame. It was so bright, it almost burnt my retinas.
Then I saw his face. His angry gaze locked on me with all the power of a magnet. Before it could draw me toward him, Sarah put on a last burst of speed and shoved me in the small of my back, propelling me through the door. She jumped through behind me, slammed the door shut, kept her hand on the handle, and incanted something. Finally, she removed the key.
I watched her stagger backward through the field, her heels twisting to the side as she strode over the uneven ground. Her face was slick with sweat, her eyes were wide with fear, and her lips were locked in a line as she clearly waited to see if she’d locked the door quickly enough.
I stood by her side, incapable of moving as I waited with her. The seconds slowly ticked past until it became clear she’d done it.
She brought up a hand, slammed it over her chest, and collapsed down to her knees. She drew in breath after breath. “Oh my god. We barely got out of there by the skin of our teeth. He’s… I’ve never seen power like that,” she admitted as she turned her head up to me, her eyes still pressed open wide.
I didn’t answer. I stared at the spot where the door had disappeared, waiting several seconds until it became absolutely clear that Max wouldn’t be able to push through. Then finally I collapsed, my shoulders hunching in and my hands trembling by my sides as I forced my fingers to form fists. “How long until he finds us?” I whispered. “Surely, he’ll have transport keys of his own. Even if he doesn’t, I’m sure a spell like this won’t be outside of his abilities.”
“It’s a good point,” Sarah said as she pushed to her feet, locked a hand over my arm, and started to pull me backward. “But this isn’t any ordinary field.” She nodded toward a knot of trees 100m away.
It looked like a thick forest full of oaks and pines and birches. There were no forests around Bane City, so we must have transported a heck of a distance.
“This is no ordinary forest,” Sarah continued to explain. She kept her hand locked over my arm, and I was glad of it. For without it, I would have fallen. The injury to my thigh had turned nasty. When Sarah had grabbed me, my leg had twisted at the wrong angle, and now pain shot through my hip with every jolt.
I clenched my teeth together and breathed through them as I nodded. “What do you mean this is no ordinary forest?”
“Wait and see,” she said.
It took an agonizingly long time to travel the 100m to the tree line. The other witches were waiting there, and Bridgette cast me a nervous smile. “Got out of there by the skin of our teeth. That guy’s almost unstoppable,” she commented under her breath.
“Yeah,” I managed. “Sure as hell he isn’t going to give up. I don’t know how long we have,” I said. “This forest certainly looks as if it could offer a little protection, but without a door,” I began.
That’s when Sarah tugged me gently on the arm and pointed.
I saw a door or at least a doorway. It looked as if somebody had pulled a door frame from a house and stuck it next to a tree. It was one of the strangest things I’d ever seen, almost as if a building had been here but the rest of it had crumbled away.
I frowned and cast my gaze through the knotted trees, and I saw another door and another door and another door. I took a sudden breath. “What the hell is this place?”
“It’s an insurance policy,” Sarah said as she pulled me toward the closest door. Dimitri’s keys were still in her hand. She hooked them around her finger as she selected one and pressed it between two white fingers.
“What do you mean an insurance policy?”
“For a situation just like this, when we’re on the run and we need a place to hide. These doors can port anywhere as long as you have a set of keys this generous.” She let out a wry, mirthless chuckle. “Which we should thank Dimitri for later. Point is, we’ll be able to port back and forth through this forest of doors indefinitely. Or at least until the keys run out.” She jangled the keys once more.
“It’ll buy us some time,” I repeated in a hollow tone. “But how much time? I mean, sure, this will mean we can keep on the run, but we’ll have to face McCain eventually. If we don’t, who knows what he’ll do to Bane City,” I stuttered.
“He’s not going to pay attention to Bane City. Not yet, anyway,” Sarah said as she shot me a look. “He’s after you. He’s gonna concentrate all his energy on tracking you down. And as long as we can keep you on the run – like I said, it’ll buy us some time.”
I pressed my lips together and swallowed uncomfortably. “Yeah, you’re right, but eventually we’ll have to face him. We need a plan.”
She kept me locked in her steady gaze. “That’s why you have to figure it out.”
“Sorry?”
“You have to figure out why he wanted you specifically, what specific powers he was after. I know you think it’s a longshot, but it has to be the key. For some reason, he didn’t want you lying. Chi, for some reason, he didn’t want you developing that side of your power. I know you’re injured. I know this is a crazy, desperate situation. But you need to push your mind into this. You have to figure out what he’s really after.”
“And you have to use it against that son of a bitch,” Bridgette snapped from my side.
I swung my gaze between Bridgette and Sarah. It was becoming a habit of mine. But this time, I didn’t feel cold, frozen, or locked in with pain. Instead, it was as if I’d been traveling through a darkened tunnel and finally before me I saw a flicker of light, a glimmer of hope.
“I don’t know how much time we’ll have exactly – so hurry,” Sarah said. She selected the right key and jammed it into the lock of the door before us.
Bridgette broke free of the many witches holding her in place. She shuffled over to me, clamped a hand on my shoulder, and smiled. “If anyone can do it, it’s you.”
I didn’t say a word, just watched as the door spell took hold with a gush of sparks. I felt a rush of wind behind me and heard a popping sound like a massive mound of bubble wrap being crushed by a boulder.
“Come on,” Sarah snapped.
The witches helped Max and Bridgette through.
I lingered until Sarah nodded at me and exited through the door.
I took a step toward the open door. That would be when I heard something. It shifted along the wind, scratched at my ears as if the sound were claws snagging into my flesh.
As a whirl of terror twisted through my gut, I spun. My hair scattered around my shoulders and dashed against the torn scraps of my top.
I heard it again – a whisper on the wind.
My beating heart told me it could only have come from the lips of one man.
I took a step back until I was halfway through the door, the transport spell hooking onto me like millions of tiny invisible hands.
I heard the whisper again. I tried to jerk back, tried to finally push myself through the door.
I was too late.
McCain.
Without a word and his gaze ablaze, he powered toward me, closing the distance between us before I could jerk back.
He locked a hand around my wrist and pulled me toward him. And yet, though I saw his shoulder bulging with the effort of trying to pull me, he couldn’t yank me through the door. The transport spell that existed in the doorway had already half taken hold of my body, and I found myself trapped on the cusp, the force of the spell pulling me backward while Max pulled me toward him.
I watched his lips open and pull apart as he bared his teeth at me. “No more games,” he hissed. “Time to end this.”
“Let me go,” I screamed. “Let me go.”
“Never. I’ve waited too long, too many hundreds of years for you to come along, Chi McLane, with your ability to pull me from the past. You think I would ever give you up again?”
Though McCain was obviously using all his force to try to tug me toward him, it was just as obvious that he couldn’t. The force of the transport spell was crackling all around me, and Sarah must’ve figured out what was happening, because I suddenly felt extra magical force slam into me from behind, wrap around my middle, and start to yank me backward.
“I’m never gonna give in to you, McCain. I’d rather kill myself, and then you’ll have to wait for the next McLane seer. My cousin just had a baby girl. You can wait 20 years until she’s old enough to inherit the curse. Because you’re good at waiting, aren’t you, McCain?” Don’t ask me how I was capable of taunting the man as his grip on my wrist tightened and the force of the transport spell combined with the witches’ magic tightened from behind. I very much felt like a puppet being strung up between two points. And yet, no matter how much it hurt as the force of Max’s grip crushed my wrist, I still managed a sneering smile. “You can wait, can’t you, Max? You can wait.”
“There’ll never be another like you,” he spat, voice arcing up high in rage. The kind of rage that cannot be faked. The kind of rage that not only contorts your face but appears to contort your soul. His whole body became so stiff with anger I thought it would crush him like a boa constrictor.
The force of Max and the spell trying to pull me backward now combined until I felt as if I would be extruded like pasta.
And yet, and yet I held on. Because I had to. Max was on the line. I was on the line. Heck, Bane City was on the line. One look into McCain’s eyes, and it was damn clear he would move Heaven, Earth, and Hell to get what he wanted. And if moving them weren’t enough, he would jolly well destroy them.
“There’s nothing you’ll ever be able to do to make me tell you the future,” I said in that same singsong voice that had such a good effect on him.
As predicted, his face stiffened with such rage, it looked as if his eyeballs would pop from his head and his lips would shatter.
“Do not push me, seer. For I can make your life hell.”
“Go ahead and try,” I said as I angled my head forward, fighting against the full effects of the spell.
Whatever the witches were doing from behind me, they were doing a damn good job, and their spell was now pulling my middle with the strength of an anchor attached to a cargo ship.
And yet, at the same time, Max’s grip on my hand tightened to the point I was damn sure he would pull my wrist off.
But did I move? No.
My Max – my fairy – he’d alw
ays assumed I was a pathetic little individual who’d ran from responsibility and didn’t have the balls to stand up for herself.
I’d let myself believe that for a short while. Now I reminded myself that on the inside, I’d always had my mother’s fire.
Fire I now used to fight against the combined effects of the spell and tilt my head even farther forward until the sneer spreading across my lips was right in front of McCain’s face.
“You know, McCain, I figured it out,” I said, that singsong voice now lilting with such unstable happiness, any passing psychiatrist would have given me a lobotomy.
I watched a fresh wave of hatred and anger push through him.
It was clear McCain couldn’t control his anger. Which made it just as clear that it was my avenue in.
“I figured it out,” I sung once more.
“What? What have you figured out?” he spat, his lips now so stiff, he could barely move them.
I used the last of my strength to fight against the force from behind, to tilt my head all the way forward until my face was practically pressing up against his. I wasn’t leaning in for a kiss. Hell no. I wanted him to see the full fury blazing in my eyes. “I know why you don’t want me to lie. It’s the secret, isn’t it? The secret to destroying you. Because you can’t tell the difference between a lie and the truth,” I gambled. I had no idea if what I was saying was true. That was the point. I was testing it against his growing rage. For Max couldn’t control his emotions. Not one little bit. Which was perfect. Because whatever I threw at him, I could figure out if it were true simply based on the strength of his reaction.
And my lie worked out. For, in a moment I would never forget, McCain’s face looked as if it broke. I swear his cheeks were seconds from falling off his face, swore his brow creased with such tension, I could hear the skin almost tearing off his bones.
He bellowed with rage. It was a move you wouldn’t associate with anyone outside of a cartoon. And yet, it was definitely one of the most terrifying things I’d ever heard. One of the most powerful, too. The effect it had on this strange forest full of doorways was unmistakable. The tree behind me shook with such fury I heard branches crack from the trunk and slam against the floor. Leaves scattered around me as wind bellowed against my face, took the loose ends of my hair, and sent them scattering over my cheeks and neck.
A Lying Witch Book Four Page 6
