On the Run (Wine of the Gods Book 28)

by Pam Uphoff

  Eldon looked over at the suit and amplified his hearing.

  "I'm a believer. I believe in magic, and I cherish women of power such as yourselves."

  Falchion sighed. "How lovely. Now why don't you go back to that mistreated little waif you call a wife and cherish her?"

  "She is nothing, compared to you! You glow in my third eye, and I will have you."

  "Umm, first you offer us protection, then you want to own us." Epee yawned. "Go away before we demonstrate that Ash Witches don't need protectors."

  "Ash witches? You have an organization?" The man seated himself and leaned toward them, trying to crowd them, to intimidate. "Tell me about it."

  "Should we go help them?" Hob sidled up and looked over at the witches. The girls were right behind him.

  "Nah. Grab a chair and watch the show. If he pushes them too hard it's going to get nasty–for him."

  Baik and Fean looked at him uncertainly.

  "Really. Sit and watch, you may learn how to deal with people like me."

  They sat tentatively, but when the nervy waitress delivered a heaping plate of pancakes and sausage to him, and a pitcher of orange juice, they giggled and asked for about a quarter of the amount, please.

  "And bring some extra glasses, so they can help me with the orange juice." Eldon added. "Whoops, there we go."

  The suit reached out and grabbed Epee's wrist, then suddenly sagged back limply, blinking uncertainly. The two bodyguards jumped to help and one swung a fist in Falchion’s direction. She ducked without getting up and the overbalanced man hit the floor and started snoring. The other guard was trying to interpose his body between the witches and his boss, and pulled a gun.

  "Give me that before you hurt someone." Falchion held her hand out and he handed it to her butt first. "Thank you. Now help these gentlemen back to bed, they obviously need more sleep and then this will have all been a dream."

  The witches turned their attention back to their breakfasts, ignoring the third man's difficulties getting his boss and his partner both on their feet and moving. Eventually the three staggered out.

  "Whoa." Hob was a bit wide-eyed, and smiled nervously as the pair glanced their way.

  "She just sucked energy right out of him." Baik was frowning across the room. "How?"

  Fean shifted and blushed. "Like you showed me yesterday, right?"

  "Yep. With a little practice any skin contact can channel power back and forth under any situation, not just during, umm. And women are a hell of a lot better at it than men are. Those two? Probably don't even need contact."

  Baik eyed her friend. "I think I don't want to know how to practice that. We're an information team, not Dancers or Princesses."

  Fean nodded. "Yeah. Strictly information team stuff for me."

  "Drat." Eldon grinned at her glare. The waitress showed up with plates and glasses, and Eldon poured them all orange juice. There was a limit to even his cravings for liquid vitamin C.

  " . . . Not going to stay trapped in here for a whole week!" One of the yuppie men stomped in. "Where's that deputy? He's got a snojet, he should get us all out of here." He glared around the restaurant, but in the increasingly bright dawn light the man was clearly not there. He stalked over to the yuppies usual triple table—the wait staff hadn't bothered to take it apart last night, and sat and fidgeted, snapped at the waitress, who turned and walked away, lip quivering a bit. After a few minutes the lodge owner, an immense fat woman stomped up to the tables. "Breakfast is pancakes with or without sausage. Coffee, tea, juice or sodas. What will it be?"

  They all opted for pancakes without and the first man threw a snit over the lack of milk. He threw his napkin down and stalked over to the table where the deputy was just sitting down. "When are you leaving? We need to get out of here. When are the snow plows coming? What kind of hick backwater is this?"

  The deputy finished sitting down. "If you'd stuck your nose out the door you'd have noticed that the snow has stopped. I expect they've been clearing the roads since midnight. Right now though, all this snow on the ice—the frozen rain from the night before—is a bit hazardous. Perfect avalanche setup, you might say. So I'm not going to go haring off around the mountain just now, until the experts have taken a look at it in the daylight.

  The yuppie stomped off. His friends looked embarrassed and ignored the empty chair. Brooke sipped her coffee and pretended to not care.

  In the silence the sound of the snojet starting was loud. The deputy's chair hit the ground with a snap as he bolted for the kitchen and the back door. The engine noise faded, and the deputy's footsteps were loud as he returned. He was clearly furious as he stalked over to the long table.

  "What is that man's name."

  "He was just a bit claustrophobic, is all, Sheriff. I expect he'll be back shortly."

  "I don't care if he was in labor. This was a very bad decision on his part and he's in trouble for it. Now, his name?"

  His wife licked her lips, then jumped at the distant snap of an explosion. The windows rattled. "What was that?"

  "Hopefully not your husband doing something even stupider with my snojet." The deputy's eyes switched suddenly back to the outdoors. "Get away from the windows! Get to the front of the lodge!"

  "No time." Eldon growled, he grabbed the two closest Oners and dragged them sideways, away from the windows and under a table beside a solid wall. Fean dived under with them and the wall of snow hit the wall of glass.

  As avalanches went, it was a small one, and hadn't had the time or the clear space to build up the speed to crush the building, but once stopped it froze in place, mostly outside.

  Eldon heaved the table up on its side and they looked out at a lumpy mass of snow, ice, and broken pine boughs. The two witches surfaced across the room and promptly disappeared.

  Eldon closed his eyes and listened for the kids. They were all excited, not very scared. This side of the lodge had taken the brunt of the slide. "All right, let's find everyone else. They'll suffocate under there if we aren't quick enough." He jumped up on the surface and balanced over to the former location of the long table and the Yuppies. "Get over here, look for infra-red and dig fast." He made a scooping motion and lifted a pile of snow. The deputy was unconscious but breathing. :: Heso, grab wine and get over here! Injured women! :: He found the first of the yuppies, then the Oners got over their shock and dived in to help. They found all seven and Eldon kept going. The kitchen must have taken a direct hit as well. Heso staggered over the debris and handed him an open bottle, turned back to the still half buried yuppies with another.

  The cook was frantically trying to lift the back door off the younger of the two busboys, Eldon grabbed it and heaved both physically and magically. The boy dragged himself out, whimpering, trailing blood and the youngest of the waitresses slithered out after him on her elbows and knees. One hand was bloody.

  Eldon scanned down low for heat, and climbed over the tipped stove to dig and levitate at a ridge of snow. The fat lady was unconscious and blue. Eldon reached back and grabbed the wine and poured a bit between her lips, hauled her out and tried to find a pulse. The deputy arrived and Eldon left her to him, looking . . . "Where's the other girl? And isn't there another boy?"

  "Mic took her to her room." The cook looked frantically away from the boy.

  Eldon stepped over. "Drink this kid." He made sure the boy swallowed, then numbed his shin and grabbed above and below the break and pulled it out straight with a quick smooth movement. The wine worked best when it didn't have to move large parts around. The girl cringed when her took her hand. He numbed it. "Drink this. Just one swallow." She was too frightened to not obey, and he wadded up a towel into a ball and stretched her fingers across it, pulling shattered bones into rough alignment. Mental nudges got them closer. "Got any tape, Missus? You put a clean towel over this and you tape it all up, so her fingers stay around the ball like this."

  The fat lady was gasping and coughing, so Eldon walked back out. Everyone was on
their feet. "We need to check the rooms, the north wing may have been hit pretty good."

  The first room downstairs was empty of people, the window and wall below shoved in and leaking snow.

  "That's my room!" Fean sounded a bit hysterical.

  "Were you all in a line? Where's your boss?"

  "Ajha!" She scrambled down three doors and yanked and shoved until Eldon got his shoulder into it.

  Hob leaped to check the prone Oner, but he seemed mostly all right.

  "Knot on his forehead. What do you want to bet he jumped to the window to see what that explosion was." Eldon handed Baik the bottle. "Dribble a little in his mouth and then follow me."

  "Is this that von neumann's healing wine we've heard so much about?" Baik held it away at arm's length.

  "It's not a dead mouse. Hurry up." This wing was twice the length of theirs, eight rooms on each side. He hustled down to the last room, the most exposed, and tripped the lock and heaved. It didn't budge. Then the witches were there, and Betelgeuse reached past him to wave and throw bolts. The next heave worked much better.

  The Suit was asleep in one bed, the two bodyguards in the other. Windows broken, but the snow barely encroaching. Falchion snickered and woke them up. Something, someone, rather, started banging on the door next to them and Eldon again applied muscles and magic to get it open. Two more bodyguards, who immediately went to aid their shaky boss. They checked the rest of the rooms, and found the Suit's wife cowering in one and the rest empty . Upstairs, the wrenched frames had trapped most of the police in their rooms. Eldon contemplated leaving them locked in, but relented. He'd feel bad if the wing collapsed and they died. Anyhow the staff had taken over several rooms when the snow trapped them here. They skittered nervously past him and headed down stairs.

  "What happened?" The head policeman was eyeing him like a lion eyeing a juicy antelope.

  "Avalanche."

  "I heard an explosion."

  "That deputy's snojet, I think. I didn't realize they were prone to that sort of thing. Dangerous."

  The Park Ranger was shaking and leaned against the wall.

  "Oh, hey, yeah, don't worry about the deputy, he's downstairs. One of those yuppies took the snojet. I think he was in withdrawal or something. Must have hit a tree."

  The head cop cleared his throat. "We need a head count. My people are all okay."

  Eldon nodded. "My group's fine, but down stairs we're missing some people. That Suit's bodyguards, and like I say, the husband fellow."

  "We've checked all the rooms." Fean put in. She was toting the bottle now.

  The building creaked.

  "Let's discuss things downstairs, eh?" They all followed the cop down the stairs. The fire in the fireplace was flickering in the draft from the broken restaurant wall. The fat lady was on a couch, and the cook had her foursome herded together protectively. The boy was limping, and they all gave Eldon spooked looks.

  The Suit was lacking four men. "They roam about the outside, keeping watch."

  "Eppie, Chi? I think we'd better all move upstairs. Take the kids' furniture, and we'll shift stuff from the damaged rooms. Everyone's going to have to crowd in."

  They made faces, but nodded. Even Rior nodded agreement. They split up, with Rior heading back into the ruined wing.

  Eldon and the various cops all walked the rounds of the lodge but found no sign of the missing guards.

  When he walked back inside, Rior was passing, festooned with bubbles. Furniture, no doubt. Canny fellow that he was, he'd invited the Oners upstairs with them, and sorted the various other people out downstairs, making sure the staff got two bedrooms to share among themselves. The Feds and the Suit and his abbreviated guard contingent each had two rooms across from each other. The lady cops invited in the park ranger, and the deputy figured he should stay awake out in the main room. That left the three and a half yuppie couples with two rooms with two full beds in each. Only the new widow would get cold.

  Heso, no fool, was filling the broken window wall with snow and ice shoveled from the inside. Eldon joined him, using a bit of magic to get the snow to go where he wanted it. A quick thaw-and-freeze kept it there. They had the place draft free and the few unbroken tables and chairs set up in the cleared area before they started running out of energy.

  Jade tackled the kitchen, with the door closed so no one could see what she was doing. She came out with three large pots heaped full of snow, a metal grill they could prop up in the fireplace, and on a second trip, teabags and cups, third trip, meat, some hard rolls and plates.

  "Most of us didn't eat breakfast. And it’s well past noon. I think we should all go to bed early, with this clear sky it may get very cold tonight." Jade sounded so reasonable no one argued. The widow sniveled a bit. They ate in rotation, with the kids, including the waitresses and busboys, and the women turned the leftovers into a thick broth they finished off before they all trailed off to bed.

  Eldon pretended he didn't see the eight—nine if you counted the park ranger—cops settling up a patrol schedule.

  The kids were wiggly and obnoxious. Heso moved in with Eldon, and Rior'd packed away his library and installed the three older boys. The Oners were in Heso's room, and the other four witches and the seven little girls took up the other four rooms. They were almost indecently uncrowded, compared with down stairs. He and Heso paper-rock-scissored and Eldon took the first watch. Rior nodded his approval. "Wake me when you need to be spelled, Eldon, and I'll get Heso up in the morning."

  With the cops prowling, it behooved the Bad Guys to stay alert.

  Chapter Eight

  Monday 14 November 2015

  Dice Creek

  It was bloody friggin cold in the morning.

  Jim had been up for hours with only Norm for company when the Animals started stirring. The faint sounds of hungry babies ended quickly, then the Cats padded down stairs, and with flashing smiles went outside and returned with lots and lots of snow for the big pots. A whole cylinder of oatmeal went in one, along with several cans of fruit. One pot produced coffee and the third, tea. Heso, the Warthog, came down with three boys, all about six years old, a redhead, one with black hair, and a very pale blond. Well, the hair was blond. The skin tones were tending toward toasty.

  "So, whose kids are whose?" Norm pour more coffee and went back to slowly rotating himself in front of the flames.

  "Well, we're kind of a mixed up bunch. Some of them belong to friends of ours that aren't here. Roddie the blonde boy is Rior's and one of the toddler's is mine. Eldon hasn't got any kids of his own that he's got custody of." His mood had darkened when he spoke of friends not present, and Jim made a note to find out about possible precursor gangs that were larger and had been whittled down either by police work, rival gangs or both.

  "Course, you can pick out Falchion's girls with that red hair, and Epee's twins both have pale blonde hair." Four younger girls pelted in, laughing and happy.

  Redhead, brunette, and two very blonde. "Indeed. You seem to be missing a brunette mother."

  Heso nodded. "A pair of brunettes actually. Herrietta and Gauntlett. And some of the fathers. We've got their daughters. They haven't found us, so I guess we ought to go find them. Hopefully we can find them. May need to . . . " He shut his mouth abruptly. The Badger, Betty, walked down, one toddler in arms, and another she led by the hand until she made it down the steps and ran to Heso. "How's Daddy's big girl today?" Dark brown hair, golden brown eyes and dimples. She looked like her father. Jim felt a pang of envy.

  The girl pointed at the oatmeal.

  "Hungry, eh? That just happens to be something I can fix." He glanced at the FBI agents. "Tori is mine and Dawn's. Dina is Rior's, Roddie's little sister."

  The Red Fox, Falchion, was serving, and Jim also received a bowlful of fruity oatmeal. He wandered off to eat it, Norm followed.

  "That lot certainly seems to like, umm, violent nicknames."

  "Yeah. Or at least the women. Like being bad guys is all a
fun game." Jim peered out the windows, hoping to see something coming their way. Anything but those big clouds. White and fluffy at the top, dark at the bottom. "Did that radio survive the avalanche? I think we need a weather report."

  Norm looked at the clouds and then they headed for the office. The fat lady walked in, looking much better than anyone who'd needed CPR yesterday had any right to. She demanded to know what they were doing, and with a snort, produced the radio from a cubbyhole behind the registration desk.

  Reception was still poor, but the jist of the weather report depressingly clear. More snow, with wind. The Interstate was open at the moment, and a perky Department of Transportation person claimed that they should be able to keep it that way, as the snowfall totals should be lower than from the first storm front. The fat lady snorted. "That just leaves the matter of twenty miles to the interstate to clear. If we had needed an ambulance . . . Has anyone found any sign of the missing five? No?" She heaved a loud sigh and walked to look out the front windows at the approaching line of clouds.

  Everyone who made it out of bed observed the clouds gloomily. The widow sobbed on Martha's shoulder, getting little support from her 'friends'.

  "I was so mean to George, and now my last memory . . . and he'd been so uptight lately. I was so glad when he said we'd just go away for the weekend. I thought it would be so romantic, but he wasn't feeling well, couldn't hardly eat or sleep."

  "Oh, you need to remember more than the last little bit. How long have you known him?"

  "We met at Berkeley, but he was so busy, always studying. He is, was, a physicist. Everyone said he was brilliant. He's," She raised her head and gestured at the three men huddled together and talking. "They've been working on a new way to generate electricity. No more using nuclear power to boil water, he said. He said they could very well get the Nobel Physics Prize. I used to joke about it. 'If you don't blow up Milpitas first.' But he never laughed about it, he was always so serious."

  "Do you have family?"

  Jim had always hated that phrase. So many people were 'child free' now that it was considered an insult to imply they were 'breeders'. He eyed Martha. They weren't either of them very young. Should they . . . would she want children? Would she even consider marrying him? Oh, hell. He'd never mentioned Granddad.