I frowned and tried not to think about it, though his vote of confidence went a long away.
“Just tell me where, and I’ll go on over to Umaira’s and let’er know.” He didn’t say, “Umara.” He said, “Umaira.”
Once I was able to stabilize my insides by holding my stomach and pursing my lips, I finally managed to say, “I’ll be by Lake Johnson tonight, over on the hilly part of the bike route.”
Carter nodded and started to shut the door to his bedroom, but Rebekah stopped him.
Stephanie couldn’t hear them, so I gestured to my obelisk to let her know that Carter and Rebekah were talking.
Rebekah continued,
he said.
he grumbled.
How Rebekah could get to the heart of Carter was beyond me. All I got were the teeth.
she said.
he rasped.
Rebekah sighed.
Carter tightened up, letting the partly eaten hand fall to his side.
Rebekah said,
He said it more firmly this time.
I interjected.
This time I managed to get past his teeth and straight to his predatory eyes. “Lady’s talkin’,” he said aloud, so harshly in fact that Stephanie gave me a look like my life was in danger, probably because it was. he asked Rebekah.
Rebekah said,
Carter made a menacing growl, and I could feel myself about to decant and take flight, though I held it back. His teeth ground together in the most bone-chilling scrapes.
Rebekah said,
I put my hand up to calm Carter, not liking Rebekah’s idea, not one bit. The best kind of predator to be around was a predator with a full stomach, which unfortunately for Carter’s victims, ended up working out to my favor. I lived with the guy, and when he was hungry, he had a habit of…opening up the fridge and pulling out the first thing he laid eyes on. Only, he didn’t eat refrigerated foods, and so the first thing he usually laid eyes on was me. Fortunately, he never acted on it.
Then again, to protest at this juncture wasn’t the best idea either. I mean, Carter had just given me the look of death, which I always took to mean that my infractions were numbered, and I just never knew where that imaginary line was drawn, so in the interest of self-preservation, I stayed away from it.
Rebekah asked.
he growled, and even though Rebekah was the one who asked the question, I somehow felt that the animosity was directed at me.
I hate this guy.
he said finally. The half-eaten hand dropped to the floor, and the door shut behind him.
CHAPTER
TEN
Nighttime came without incident, and Carter had left a few hours ago to tell Umara where to set up the snare points along the bike trail at Lake Johnson not far from us. Stephanie and I chose to fly via falcon form to the location, figuring we could get there faster that way.
Once we landed, we found ourselves in the midst of the dark and humid forest, trails of moonlight leaking through the cracks between the trees. The pathway was matted-down dirt mostly, besides a few roots that hooked onto the trail. And though the road was probably a quarter mile away, we couldn’t hear or see any cars this late in the evening.
Stephanie stood in the center of the trail, hands behind her back, her Semblance displaying jean shorts and a white shirt like the actual outfit she’d worn before. I’d crossed my arms over my chest, looking around. Carter and Umara were already here, but neither of them were in sight.
“You sure this’ll work?” Stephanie asked, now seeming a little nervous.
“Umara stands by these lasers for taking down Shamans,” I said. “You’ve got the ankh right?”
She patted her right leg.
The last thing we needed was for Stephanie to leave the ankh somewhere and have Zakhar just go and find it, because the truth was that we weren’t sure how far-reaching his connections really were. Maybe he could have known where she would might have put the ankh, and if he found it, then this whole snare point would have been for nothing.
“How many lasers did Umara set up?” she asked.
“No idea. All I know is that they’re out here, and that Umara is efficient. That’s good enough for me.”
“And you’re sure Zakhar’s coming?”
I shook my head. “Hopeful, not sure. But if he wants his ankh bad enough, he’d be searching high and low to get it. I’ll bet he’s checking everywhere that I frequent, going around in circles like a hamster until he finds me.”
Stephanie just frowned.
We sat across from each other on the edge of the trail for a couple of hours, and even I was beginning to doubt myself. But we’d already been out here this long, how much could it hurt to wait a little longer?
“You see that?” Stephanie craned her neck up.
I shook my head, though she probably didn’t notice, since she was focused down the trail. Decanters couldn’t use partial creature abilities like Druids could. If Stephanie needed a bear strike, she could have just shifted her hand into a bear paw and slapped the skin off of somebody’s face. Not Decanters. We needed to have the full form in order to use the creature’s attributes.
Not that Stephanie could actually shift into a bear form. She was a Druid Healer, so her shapeshifting was limited to just a few creatures, nothing ferocious. Just a crow and a few other inconsequential forms. Right now, she was probably using a falcon’s vision.
“Down there,” she whispered, pointing. “Looks like a shadow.”
“Yeah…I see it.”
“You think it’s him?”
Cautiously, I stood up, backing off the trail. “Not sure yet.” Though I trusted Umara’s lasers, I couldn’t stop those blasted nervous jitters from making my hands tremble. And it wasn’t like I was afraid. Well, maybe just a little. Especially after what Zakhar did to me and my apartment a few days ago. I didn’t want another episode of that.
“I think that’s him.” Stephanie scampered to my side of the trail, crouching beside a tree.
I asked her.
“Alright, Stephanie. Get ready,” I said. “When the lasers go off, we charge him and separate the pieces of his body.”
“Got it.”
Rebekah said.
I said.
The shadow eased along
the trail, hands by its side, until a thin man in his twenties with a black hair and an extensive brow ambled into view. When he was nearly ten or so feet away, he paused.
“Why’s he stopping?” Stephanie whispered in my ear.
I shook my head.
“You sure it’s him?”
I whispered back to her, “It’s him all right.”
“Shouldn’t the lasers be going off?”
“Not yet. Another two feet or so.”
My heart was about to rip out of my ribs, it was thumping so hard. But I was ready to decant once those lasers triggered. “C’mon…c’mon,” I mumbled. “What are you waiting for?”
Zakhar scratched his eyebrow with his pinky and frowned, the moonlight shadowing his expression. Without taking another step forward, he turned and started back the way he’d come.
“He’s leaving,” Stephanie said. “What now, what now?”
“I don’t know. Let me think.” I watched him continue away from us. I couldn’t just let him get away. “Wait here. Don’t move.”
I rustled off the edge of the trail, intentionally cracking twigs and crushing dead leaves. “Zakhar? What are you doing here? Did you follow me?” I made sure to stand right underneath the lasers.
The man turned slowly upon hearing my voice. “Mr. Lyle. I presumed that you had left the city after what happened between the two of us when we last spoke.” He was already making his way back to me.
That whole bit about me leaving town was a farce, and he knew it. He hadn’t suspected any such thing, which was exactly why he was on this trail with me. “I was just out getting in a nightly walk. But you still didn’t answer my question. Did you follow me out here?”
“How could I follow you?” he shrugged. “I did not even know that you were here. For all I know, you followed me. After all, it is you who called after me, not the other way around.”
“Either way,” I said. “What are you doing out here?”
“Ohhhh, nothing. Something. Everything.” He smiled, coming to a halt not two feet away from the snare point.
Just take the bait already. Then it came to me. He’s stalling. He’s talking to me to figure out what I’m up to. “Doesn’t matter,” I said, turning and walking away. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to finish up my walk so I can get back home.”
I started down the trail, only to hear him call after me. “A gentleman does not walk away from an engaging conversation, Mr. Lyle.”
I just snorted. So this was how he did it. He got people talking, and just like that, he made connection after connection after connection. Though it unnerved me to know what Zakhar had figured out from our brief exchange. Still, I had to just keep on walking.
“Wait,” he called out.
Hesitantly, I turned.
“The girl,” he said, “Stephanie, the one who has my ankh, I know she is out here with you, Mr. Lyle. Tell me where she is, and this can all be over.”
That was a lie. It didn’t matter where Stephanie was, since he couldn’t go after her himself. He just wanted me to keep talking so that he could extract more details from me. I just gave an emphatic shrug.
He took a couple of steps forward.
“C’mon, c’mon,” I muttered. “Just one more step.”
“I know she is out here. You do not have to pretend otherwise.”
I just stood my ground, waiting to see what he would do.
From a distance, I could see his brow lower. “Do not toy with me!”
The unexpected shout made me shimmer on the inside, and I could see that my refusal to engage was really biting into him. My fists balled up by my side, and I kept my eyes on him, monitoring the snare point. “C’mon…”
“Did you hear what I—” He took two steps forward, and instantly the night sparked with red light that blossomed out from the snare point.
Seven red beams streamed at Zakhar from all different angles, screaming with a shrill. The dirt scorched beneath his feet, and twigs and roots burst into flames from the sheer heat of the beams. But the real payoff was watching Zakhar burn.
His body froze in place as the beams seared every part of him, from head to foot. Skin melted off in sheets, and bones crumpled to ashes. His mouth was opened as if he were crying out, but with the hiss of the beams and probably the singeing of his vocal cords, no sound came out.
Charred and ashy bones lay in a sizzling pile once the beams shut off, and I shouted, “Stephanie, now!”
Instantly, my nose protruded out. My spine twisted and hunched me over. Bones popped and snapped into and out of place. Teeth became fangs. Stubble became whiskers, and my skin spawned black tiger stripes throughout my orange fur. My feet and hands became paws, and I could feel the claws escaping from my knuckles.
Swiftly, I dashed up the trail and took a femur in my jaws. Just before clearing the snare point, I saw that Stephanie had shifted to crow form and snagged a line of charred vertebrae. I didn’t know how far I had to run to get away, so I figured the best thing to do was to just devour the femur. Then there would be no chance that Zakhar might bring himself together again.
About fifty feet from the trail, I lay on my belly, paws forward, gnawing at the femur with my back teeth, licking the bone with my flat tongue. It was gross, I know, but something about being in tiger form actually made the bone rather tasty. Granted, I was nothing like Carter by any means. Besides, this was to keep Zakhar from resurrecting himself, not because I just enjoyed the occasional human leg bone.
Once I managed to crack the hull of the femur, the blackened taste of burned marrow filled my mouth. I licked at the marrow a few times, then went for another bite, but something was off. The charred flavor was missing. What I tasted was blood-sweet.
Carefully, I examined the marrow, noticing that it wasn’t blackened at all, but that it was dark red and…fresh. Oh, no.
My eyes cut over to the snare point, and without any warning, the bone zipped from my grasp. I sprang to my feet, pawing at it, only nicking the base of the femur with a claw and sending it spinning off to the side, though still swirling straight for the snare point.
Not good. Not good, not good, not good.
With all the tiger fury I had within me, I raced towards the snare point, kicking up grass and stones, only to see that the vertebrae Stephanie had flown off with had wormed its way back into place as the spine. Ashen bones spiraled up from the ground, joining together piece by piece, tiny electric sparks snapping them into place.
It was straight out of Ezekiel, watching these bones come together. Foot bones connected to leg bones and leg bones connected to thighbones. Two quick tiger swipes at the bones ended up sending me flying backwards after a blast of electricity cracked through me, forcing me back to human form.
I lay on my side, watching in awe as the skeleton stood upright, as tendons twirled around white bones and as cartilage stringed from joints. Organs bloomed inside of the ribs, and skin sheeted over his frame. Black hair sprouted from his brow or chuted from his head and chin as stubble.
“A snare, Mr. Lyle?” Zakhar said, voice drenched in Belarusian menace. “Tacky, tacky, tacky.”
Automatically, the seven lasers triggered again, firing beams straight at him. Only this time, his hand made seven rapid movements catching the beams in his left hand before they ever touched his body! He hefted the beams up to shoulder height as if lifting a twenty-pound stone. The beams that had aimed for his legs veered upwards parabolicly, and the ones aimed at his head veered downwards with the same arc.
A ball of red sparked in his hand, and with a grunt, he threw it forward. The beams reversed, shooting back into the each of the lasers, and seven explosions erupted all around. “It appears that you have studied Shamans, Mr. Lyle, but I am sorry to say, that your studies have proven incomplete. Shamans cannot die. The earth belongs to us, and we belong to her.”
He sucked in a breath. Sparks skipped at his feet, then blue lightning trailed around his legs up to his knees and to his chest,
channeling into his palms. “Last time you got away. I will not make the same mistake twice.”
Zakhar clapped his hands together, and thunder erupted, rumbling through the woods and getting caught in my chest. A blast of electricity cracked from his hands, bursting into the ground. I managed to scramble out of the way before the blast hit me, and was already flying overhead in eagle form, about to escape, until I saw that he’d caught Stephanie by the throat with his right hand.
Rebekah said.
I screeched hard then plummeted down with all my weight, beak first. The beak tore into Zakhar’s back, and I made sure to dig my talons deep into his skin before rearing up and hovering overhead. Zakhar cried out, letting Stephanie go, firing bolts of lightning wildly into the air. Limbs sparked and ripped from branches, and tree trunks caught ablaze.
I spilled out of the eagle form and into a cheetah, landing on my feet, mauling at Zakhar before he caught his balance. The flesh on his leg opened up, but healed almost instantly. I staggered back and growled, exposing my fangs.
“You chose the wrong side, Mr. Lyle.” Zakhar’s entire body burst into flames, lighting up the woods as black smoke roiled from his body.
Slicing a hand through the air, he slung balls of fire at me one after the other. Being in cheetah form, I made quick cuts from left to right, dodging the flames as they puffed into the dirt, then I scampered up a tree, eyeing the blazing Zakhar from a branch above.
Solid footsteps barreled down the trail, and like a wrecking ball, Carter jammed a shoulder into the blazing Zakhar. Zakhar flew back some thirty feet, leaving a trail of embers arcing in the air. Like flicking a match on gasoline, however, Carter’s body caught on fire, since vampires and flames did not go well together.
He went spinning into a cursing fit, patting at the fires and stomping his feet.
“Here you go,” Stephanie said, dashing over to him. She held out a hand, and water began to trickle from her fingertips, slowly at first, but then erupting out like a fire hydrant. Her blue tattoos sparkled as the intricate lattice came alive.
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