Sacrifices

by Mercedes Lackey

  Addie snatched the keys out of her hand. “I do! Get in! We’re going back for her!”

  Spirit dove into the back seat beside Loch, and Burke flung himself into the front passenger seat. Before he even had the door closed Addie was backing up, swinging the car back around in the direction from which they’d come. In the glare of the headlights, they saw Muirin and Doc Mac running toward them. Muirin’s face was distorted with terror. Spirit couldn’t begin to imagine what it cost Muirin not just to stand up, but to run.

  And behind them came Anastus Ovcharenko.

  Then Ovcharenko stopped, and for an instant Spirit thought he was giving up. He was alone. There were no other security people in sight. Oh it’s all right; he told the others to stay behind, and now he’s going to let us go, because he really does love Muirin after all—she told herself giddily.

  Then she heard gunshots—loud even inside the car—and Doc Mac pitched forward. He staggered against Muirin as he fell to the ground. She stumbled, staggering sideways for a few steps as she fought to keep from falling—she hadn’t been shot, but she could barely keep her feet. Addie cried out in horror and sent the car forward; Spirit saw Burke open his door a crack, preparing to fling it wide and pull Muirin into the car as soon as they reached her.

  But Ovcharenko reached her first.

  He grabbed Muirin by the back of her dress, yanking her backward and off her feet.

  Muirin looked straight into Spirit’s eyes. “Go!” she screamed.

  And suddenly the night was filled with patterns, colors, flashing light, as Muirin filled the air with dazzling—blinding—illusions.

  “Floor it!” Burke shouted in Addie’s ear. She stomped down on the accelerator—heading straight for Ovcharenko—and Burke yanked the wheel sideways, making the car slew around. Addie was screaming, and Burke was shouting: Spirit couldn’t make out any words. She turned in her seat looked back.

  No— No—!

  There was another shot; it sounded like the crack of lightning, and Spirit’s heart seemed to freeze in her chest. Suddenly the illusions stopped. The night went dark again, but now there was a flare of headlights far behind them. Somebody from Security had reached one of the SUVs.

  “We have to go back!” Addie cried. The car began to slow as it swept down the driveway. There wasn’t any place to turn around here, but she was obviously planning to turn back as soon as she could. They’d reach the road in a few seconds. “We can’t leave them!”

  Spirit shook her head mutely, her throat tight with tears.

  “They’re dead,” Loch said, his voice harsh and ugly. “They’re both dead.”

  “No,” Addie sobbed. “No!”

  Ovcharenko stepped over Muirin’s body and braced himself, taking aim at their car. In the wash of headlights, Spirit saw Doc Mac drag himself to his knees.

  And suddenly, everything behind them that could possibly burn …

  Burned.

  The Xterra began to accelerate again. Spirit gulped back tears. There wasn’t time for them now. The trees and bushes in the path of Doc Mac’s last spell were burning—and she hoped Ovcharenko was too—but it wouldn’t keep the rest of Breakthrough from following them. And she was the only one who knew where they were going—she had to keep her head.

  I shouldn’t be so calm, she thought. Muirin’s dead. I saw her die. Oh Murr-cat!

  “Go through Radial,” she said, as they reached the road. “Stay off the highway. Take the farm road.”

  “One question,” Loch asked tensely. “Did Muirin know where you’re taking us?”

  “How can you think she’d have told!” Spirit demanded furiously. “She died defending us!”

  “I don’t think she would have if she had a choice,” Loch said grimly, and Spirit hiccupped on a sob. She saved our lives, over and over again, and I was never sure I could trust her, not until the end. Her eyes stung with tears as she remembered how happy Muirin had looked last night when she found out she was the first one Spirit had told about QUERCUS.

  “No,” she said dully. “She didn’t know.”

  They were still a mile from where they could make the turn into Radial when there was a flare of headlights in the rearview mirror.

  “They’re after us,” Burke said unnecessarily. A moment later someone shone a high-powered spotlight into the Xterra. Addie automatically braked, dazzled by the glare.

  “Speed up!” Burke shouted.

  “I can’t see!” Addie snarled, but she accelerated again. The front wheels slipped off the edge of the road and bumped along the shoulder. Addie yanked the wheel back the other way, and the car slewed across the road. She was driving blind. But she didn’t slow down.

  “Let me drive,” Loch said suddenly.

  “Are you crazy?” Addie demanded. “I’m doing ninety on ice and the Legions of Hell are following us! This isn’t the time to switch drivers!”

  “Maybe not,” Loch answered. “But you’re the only one here who can take somebody out at a distance, so I think you’re going to have to give me the wheel!”

  Addie’s only response was a wordless wail. Loch began climbing between the two front seats. Addie saw the turnoff into Radial just as she was passing it. She jerked the wheel sharply around. The car fishtailed wildly. Loch was thrown into the front passenger foot well.

  “Yeah, that works,” he muttered. Addie giggled jaggedly.

  Why aren’t they shooting at us? Or— Or— Or—something? Spirit huddled down in the corner of the back seat. She should have been terrified, or mourning, but she just felt numb and—weirdly—as if she wanted to yawn. What she wanted most was to close her eyes and just not be here anymore. Shock, she told herself distantly. This is what shock feels like.

  “They want us alive,” Burke said grimly. “And they probably think they have a good shot. We’re heading right toward The Fortress.”

  Spirit wrapped her arms tightly around herself. In the front seat, Burke, Addie, and Loch were doing a complicated handoff as Loch slithered into the driver’s seat and Burke deadlifted Addie out of the way. The car bumped over the new railroad tracks. They’d reached Radial.

  “Where are the lights?” Addie suddenly demanded, her voice high and panicky. “There should be streetlights!”

  We have to be in Radial by now, Spirit thought. It might be small, but it had streetlights—and The Fortress was always lit up so brightly every night the glare was visible from Oakhurst. But there was nothing but blackness outside the windows.

  “I’ve got it—I’ve got it!” Loch said. The car slewed wildly as Burke took his foot off the accelerator, and bumped up over something—curb?—and back down again. The car began to slow. Then Loch floored it, and the car leaped forward. Addie was sitting in Burke’s lap now. He wrapped his arms tightly around her waist, holding her steady.

  “I was kidnap-proofed when I was fifteen and one of the components of that was an offensive driving course,” Loch said. He went on explaining what he’d been taught, his words coming fast and sharp with nerves.

  “It’s too dark,” Addie said, and she sounded terrified.

  She’s right. Spirit took a deep breath as the realization hit her. Her chest ached as if she’d been holding her breath for far too long. She craned around and looked out the rearview window again.

  No lights. No headlights. Their pursuers might have shut off their lights—but their own headlights weren’t showing anything either. Not buildings. Not road. Nothing but darkness—not even fog, because fog should be white, and this wasn’t. It was as if the darkness itself was closing in around them. Their headlights were dim and yellowish, as if the car’s battery were dying—though it couldn’t be with the motor running—and when they faded out entirely the darkness would have them.

  “Oh god I can’t see the road,” Loch whispered suddenly, breaking off his nervous monologue. He took his foot off the gas.

  This isn’t fair, Spirit thought. They were going to die—either run into something, or be caught—and
Muirin would have died for nothing. She reached over the back of the seat with both hands. Addie clutched her left hand tightly. Burke gently took her right.

  “Spirit!” Addie yelped. “Your ring! It’s glowing! The stone is white!”

  For a moment Spirit’s only thought—as she tried to tug her hand free of Addie’s—was to get the ring off. She’d worn it to the dance because they’d all had to wear their class rings to the dance. She could see the light between Addie’s fingers, faint but clear, and it seemed to her as if it was the only light in the entire world.

  Happy New Year. It was as if someone else was speaking inside her mind, but it was her own voice. Her own thought. The New Year’s Dance, and all the lights had gone out, and everyone there had stood frozen and terrified in the darkness, as pure Fear lashed out at them as if it were a living thing. Her ring had glowed then. So had Burke’s—Addie’s—Loch’s.

  Muirin’s.

  And the Fear had come again and again, as if it was hunting for something—for someone—but they’d learned to fight back. Staying together. Taking care of each other.

  Holding hands.

  “Addie! Remember New Year’s! Remember what we did! Grab Loch!” Spirit cried. “And Burke too!”

  For a moment Spirit thought Addie was too terrified to move. Then she let go of Spirit’s hand and gripped Loch’s shoulder. Spirit took the hand Addie had released and put it on Loch’s other shoulder. Now she could see her ring clearly. The stone glowed as brightly as if it was one of those tiny LED bulbs, and it ought to frighten her—why her? why now? why was it white?—but somehow it didn’t.

  Because they were together. And they wouldn’t give up.

  Ever.

  The fear—the despair—lifted away as if she was waking up from a nightmare. And as if something—something powerful, something good—had just been waiting for her to notice it, she felt an uprush of power.

  Like it was in February, when we faced down the Shadow Knights, all of us together. Like it was at the library—we fought back then, too.

  Once again Spirit had a sense of being a conduit for something coming from outside, something using her as a gateway. It should have terrified her, this feeling she was something’s tool, but it didn’t. It felt right. And it was as if this wasn’t just power, but illumination, as if something was shining through her, shining through all of them—something bright.

  The headlights burned white again. The dark fog was gone.

  They were in Radial. Its lights weren’t out. It looked normal. The car was rolling slowly along the road; they were almost at The Fortress, and they were drifting through the gates.

  Spirit took a deep breath. “You know, I wasted two days working on that stupid history paper and I didn’t even have to,” she said loudly.

  She felt Loch startle, as if he’d just realized where he was. He hissed something under his breath and jerked the wheel away from the road to The Fortress. The gravel under the tires sprayed as he gunned the engine again.

  “There are traps in the road,” Loch said, his voice filled with awe. “I can see them. I can drive around them!” He began to slew the car left and right, avoiding traps only he could see.

  Spirit looked behind them. The Shadow Knights were at the other end of Main Street—three SUVs. They’d been hanging back—they had to have been, waiting for Loch to just drive right up to The Fortress—but the moment he turned the car away, they accelerated.

  Addie saw them too.

  “Water,” she growled, her voice deep and rough with fury. And suddenly, between them and their pursuers, everything containing liquid water in Radial burst open. Jets of water from buried water pipes ripped through earth and blacktop, showering the road around them with debris as the water geysered high into the air. The glass of storefronts sprayed outward, shattered by jets of water striking them with the force of a hail of bullets. The water reared up like a wave, like a living thing, lashing out at the Shadow Knights and turning to ice as it hurtled forward.

  “How dare they?” Addie said furiously. “How dare they?”

  “On the right,” Burke said quietly.

  Spirit saw one of the Breakthrough RVs—one of the ones built on a bus chassis—rolling through the gates of The Fortress. It was entering the roadway ahead of the ice-wave that had taken out their other pursuers, and it was gaining on the Xterra, even though the little SUV’s engine howled as Loch redlined it. Spirit could see headlights from within The Fortress shining off the side of the bus as it made the turn into the road. There were other chase vehicles following it, but they didn’t matter. The bus would reach them first.

  “I need more time,” Addie said, her voice thin and breathless with strain.

  “Oh no hurry. Take all the time you need,” Loch said tightly. “Just— This thing won’t go any faster.”

  The bus made the turn onto the road behind them and slowly started closing the distance between them. Spirit could hear the deep roar of its engine over the frantic howl of theirs.

  Closer.

  The driver of the RV beeped and flashed his headlights at them mockingly. The air horn made Spirit’s teeth vibrate; she wanted to cover her ears, but to do that would mean letting go of Loch and Burke.

  Closer.

  It was less than six feet off their back bumper now, so close the only thing Spirit could see was the dragon-and-tower logo on the front of the bus. In another minute it would hit them. The Xterra was shaking as if it was about to come completely apart.

  “Okay—yeah!” Addie shrieked.

  The ground behind them dissolved. A column of water spurted upward. It couldn’t be coming from a water pipe, Spirit thought. There was too much of it—a pillar of water as wide as the front of the bus, white with force as it sprayed out of the ground. It struck the bus just behind the front wheels, lifting it. Flipping it. The bus slid off the column of water, balanced for an instant on its back end, and fell.

  The ground shook.

  And if that had been all that happened, the four of them would still have been caught, because the nimble pursuit vehicles—two, three, six Jeeps and Humvees and one ordinary sedan—swerved around the RV and kept coming, into the spreading lake the jet of water had left behind. They drove right into it, breaking to the left and the right to avoid the crater in the middle.

  Drove into the water …

  … and sank.

  Spirit saw the headlights slowly dim as the cars drifted into the depths of the sudden Addie-created lake—it was a lake, and not just a big puddle with a pothole in the middle. The entire road had to have given way, and the water was still spreading.

  One or two of the chase cars hadn’t gone in—but they couldn’t follow, either. Spirit watched until she saw the Shadow Knights who’d been in the submerged cars reach the surface, then turned away. I hope you all catch pneumonia, she thought viciously.

  Addie laughed softly. “I apologize to everyone in McBride County for draining the water table dry and causing countywide drought for the foreseeable future.”

  “Considering the alternative, they shouldn’t mind,” Burke said seriously.

  I just hope this is the alternative, Spirit thought dazedly.

  “That’s what took so long,” Addie continued contritely. “I had to get the water here.”

  “Okay, where now?” Loch said. He didn’t slow down, even though nobody was following them now—that they could see, anyway.

  “Just keep going,” Spirit said. “We stay on this road for a while.” She looked down at her hand. The stone had gone dark again, and the sense of being a pipeline had ebbed, but it was another ten minutes—hurtling through the night with nothing chasing them—before the four of them were willing to let go of each other.

  About five minutes after that, Loch let the car slow to the actual speed limit.

  “The last thing we need is to get grabbed for speeding,” he said ruefully. “Because I don’t actually have a license. And, uh, I’m not sure what we’re going
to do when we run out of gas. The tank’s full right now, but—”

  “Don’t worry,” Spirit said, with a calm confidence that surprised her a little, “we have enough to get us where we need to go.”

  They drove in silence for a few more minutes.

  “Uh, where is that, exactly?” Burke said slowly, his voice puzzled but not suspicious. “You said you had a place for us to go, and—you know I trust you. I always will, no matter what. But you said you’d explain it to me.”

  “To us,” Addie said softly. Her voice was filled with quiet sorrow. “I just wish—” She stopped. I just wish Muirin were here to hear it too. Addie didn’t need to say the words for Spirit to hear them.

  “So do I,” Spirit said, and she heard the others murmur agreement. “Okay. I have a story to tell all of you. It’s long. And it’s incredible. But it’s all true.”

  She told them the same story she’d told Muirin less than twenty-four hours ago, and maybe someday losing Muirin—losing her friend—that way wouldn’t hurt so sharply, but for now it did. I’m so glad I told you, Spirit thought. I’m so glad you knew I trusted you. That I believed in you. That’s all you ever really wanted. From everyone.

  The other three listened to her story in silence. It wasn’t a silence of disbelief, or of doubt. It was just that the night had been so full, and the tale she told was so incredible, that nobody really knew what to say.

  A week ago we found out that the reincarnation of Mordred was going to start a nuclear war in a month and a half. Tonight we fought our way out of the school dance—and lost two good friends—and all we know about where we’re going is that it’s a mark on a map. I don’t even know what QUERCUS looks like. Or what we’re going to do next. Or how we can possibly win.

  “But I believe we can,” she said aloud. Addie looked over toward her and smiled. Shakily. Wanly. But as if she believed, too.

  * * *

  They stopped once, for just long enough to let Addie get into the back seat. Spirit dug the maps out of her dress during the stop—Addie had to unzip her so she could get at them—because it was a long way to their destination, and she’d only memorized the beginning of it.