61
Run? I practically fly, fueled by the bracing lightness of pure fear. Greasy resin dripping from the trees smears the forest floor like an oil slick, and my high heels slip and slide. I half-fall to my knees, cursing, and Kovac yanks me up by my elbow. We plunge straight into a patch of brambles. Thorns as thick and sharp as a predator’s claws slash my legs from knee to ankle.
“Damn it, Jack!”
“Save your breath. Let’s go!”
Hunting horns wail and wail. The sounds of chimeras crashing through the woods, of people screaming and weeping close in right behind us.
I pull free of the brambles, but now saplings whip me in the face, and I shield my eyes with my hand. I think of the day that Papa died, of the day in Tilden Park as if those two days of death have led me by a fateful hand to this night. To these dark woods.
Abruptly no one and nothing crashes through the underbrush behind us. Except for a wind stirring the trees and the splat of resin dripping, utter silence falls over the woods. No wailing hunting horns, no people screaming and weeping
For an unwise moment, my heart lifts.
Kovac ducks behind a tree trunk and pulls me beside him. We crouch, gasping for breath, half-concealed behind a branch so heavy with resin that it dips to the forest floor.
The scratches on my legs sting in an unnatural septic way as if the bramble thorns are poisonous. No doubt they are, but that’s not the worst of it. My tattoo throbs, sending a confusion of images into my mind’s eye, and a silky baritone chants garbled invective inside my head. I press my hands over my ears, but it’s no use. Alastor is speaking through my tattoo.
Darkness shrouds the wood, a darkness so complete, for a fearful moment I wonder if I’ve gone blind. Then Professor Bonwitch whispers in my memory: A little boost to help you see more clearly in Avichi.
I press the base of my throat and a beam of blue light bursts from my fifth chakram. My vishudha, Bonwitch called that whorl of energy. My mind’s eye clears like a miracle and then the vision of my physical eyes. I can see only too clearly each twisted branch, each oily drop of resin, the cruel lattice of the underbrush. Muddy moonlight shifts through the canopy.
“Are we spared?” I whisper.
“Don’t count on it,” Kovac whispers back. “Alastor wants to give us a sporting chance, that’s all. What kicks would the sicko get if he kills us without a decent chase?”
“Let’s not give him those kicks, shall we?”
“I’m with you, my lady magician.” He peers out at the gloom. “Can you see anything with Professor B’s boost?”
“I can see everything.”
“Great, because I can’t see a damn thing.” A drop of resin splatters on his cheek, and he wipes it away, frowning with disgust. “How about the star and the obelisk?”
“No, the canopy is too thick, but there’s a little clearing to our left where I may be able to get my bearings.” Now a blob of resin drips on my knuckles and slides like a noxious snail, leaving a trail of cold, dark slime. I shake it off.
“All right. Here’s the plan. We wait till the hunters pass us by. Double back to the big clearing. If we find any people who’ve escaped the Hunt, we take them with us.” He pats his trouser pockets with the evidence bags. “Once we process this and submit our statements, securing a supernatural arrest warrant with all the necessary spells and invocations will be a slam-dunk. I’ll bring in a crack demon-catching team, arrest Alastor, and rescue survivors.”
“If there are any survivors.”
“Yeah, if there are any. Let’s move to that little clearing. See any demons?”
“No, nothi–”
I gasp at the gouge of pain in my shoulder, whip around and jump back. Alastor’s chimera pecks me with its vicious raven’s beak. The woods come alive with chimeras trotting through the underbrush, the mounted demons herding before them a huddle of humanity.
The flea-circus ringmaster leads the way, his pouchy face flushed scarlet, his arms flailing. Shafts of demon arrows bob in his back, the poisoned tips lodged deep in his flesh.
“Hey hey, ho ho,” the ringmaster shouts in a hoarse voice. “Let’s move it, people, let’s go!”
The demons yawn, disdainful, bored with their pitiful prey. When the dancer darts forward, seeking escape, Bayemon impales her with his spear, lifts her wriggling on the spear tip, and slams her back in the huddle. She stumbles on, near death, but weirdly animated by the demonic double poisons.
Alastor smirks down at me, a twin-tipped arrow nocked on his bowstring. He cocks his head, as if assessing which part of my anatomy will make the most pleasing target. Breasts or butt?
I hate being reduced to a collection of body parts. Terror threatens to send me fleeing, but three things conspire to root me to the spot–my rage at Alastor’s arrogance, the demons’ bored expressions, and Kovac’s observation about sporting chances. Make that four things–my fellow human beings screaming and weeping, impaled by demon spears and arrows.
Prey and hunting party pass us by, a ghastly tableau vanishing in the gloom.
I glare up at Alastor. “You may kill my physical body, but you’ll never own me. You’ll never steal my power. Or steal my soul.” I press my hand of power to my Eye and my Cross. “So I, Abby Teller, student and magician, do declare.”
So there. The power of my amulets crackles all around me. Enough power to shield me, at least for the moment.
The demon lowers his longbow. “Run.”
“To hell with you.” I kick the toe of my high heel in the chimera’s fetlock and the dead beast skitters back.
“Sadly, I am already there.” Alastor unnocks the arrow and waves his hand magnanimously. “Go, Mistress. Go with your mortal man. I recommend that way.” He points over my left shoulder.
Another demonic trick? I glance at Kovac.
“What do you think, Jack? Which way?”
“I think we should go that way.”
Kovac takes my hand, and I swear I see Alastor flinch. Does my choice of a mere mortal man over the glorious Prince Alastor grieve him? My tattoo throbs, and my heart clenches with fierce longing for the demon. No! I don’t want him!
Kovac and I back away and now the sapling branches slap my shoulders. I stumble on a tree root bulging out of the forest floor, and Kovac steadies me. Then his boot heel catches on a root, and he stumbles, groaning, a guttural sound that shoots fear through my heart. The scar on his cheek gleams, a hard white keloidal line. Not good.
Alastor holds my gaze as we go, his much-too-beautiful face an impassive mask. He jerks the chimera around and trots off after the hunting party. Gloom swallows him.
Silence falls over the woods again.
We cross to the little clearing and I glance up through the thinning canopy. Can I glimpse the star and the obelisk? Yes! But the guideposts appear in a completely different direction from where I expected them to be.
Caution needles me. I believed we were moving away from the big clearing more or less in a straight line or certainly in the same general direction, but we weren’t. We’ve veered wildly.
“I see them,” I whisper, “but not where I expected them to be.” How long will Bonwitch’s boost to my vishudha last? “Jack, you need to keep better track of our direction. We’ve zigged and zagged.”
“Will do,” he says, breathing in labored gasps.
We clasp hands and set off again, making good progress. Suddenly the ground gives way beneath my feet and I tumble headlong, arms and legs cart-wheeling down the slope of a steep little gully, a slash of shadows I hadn’t noticed, not even with my clarified vision.
With a shout, Kovac plunges down the slope beside me. We roll and careen, landing breathless on a bank of cold mud reeking of sulfur.
I sit up, stunned and very, very vexed, then struggle to my feet. The spikes of my high heels sink in the rank muck, and I pull them loose, spike by spike, pitching my weight onto the balls of my feet. My dancer’s legs tower around Kovac as he lies beneath me, a crumpled dark figure clutching his knees.
“Sor-ree! Didn’t see it, I swear.” I hold out my hand to help him up.
“I can get up on my own,” he grumbles in his mule-headed way and waves my hand away. Slowly he straightens his knees and stretches out his legs, groaning.
“Spare me your Lone Ranger impersonation and give me your damn hand.”
He seizes my wrist, nearly yanking me down on top of him. Thanks to my lightning-quick reflex of bracing myself against his weight, he pulls himself to his feet, using me as a fulcrum.
“Wow, for a skinny guy, you feel like a ton of bricks.”
“It’s all muscle.”
“Lucky for you, I’m all muscle, too.”
“My lady magician, you’re all magic.”
He brushes muck and twigs off his translucent shirt, then gestures at the opposite slope. “After you.” He cups his hands, lacing his fingers at my knees. “Get your Cinderella slipper in there, and I’ll give you a leg-up.” He glances up, assessing the slope. “It’s not so high. Bet I can boost you right over the top.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll climb up after you.”
I examine the slope, which is thickly overgrown with more of those diabolical brambles, the shiny thorns gleaming like claws. A bramble whips out, hissing, and a thorn slashes my hand. I suck the wound and spit, the way you’re supposed to suck the venom out of a snake bite.
“Jack, you can’t climb up through those brambles. I won’t let you.”
“I’ll manage.”
“No.”
I search along the mud bank and retrieve a fallen tree branch sturdy enough to beat our way to the top. I hold the branch close to Kovac’s face for his inspection. “What do you think? You give me that leg-up, halfway. I’ll kick in a foothold, beat the brambles back, pull you up, and–”
“You’re going to pull me up?”
“You don’t think I can?”
“I think you can do just about anything you set your mind to, Abby, but like you said, I’m a ton of bricks.”
“Bricks are good. I love bricks.” It’s a plan. Not a great plan, but we’re running out of time for great plans. Alastor will be back, the only question is when. “Let’s give it a try. It’s not Mount Everest, right?”
He cups his hands again. “Going up?”
I step onto his laced fingers, he braces me with a hand on the back of my thigh, and I arch over the brambles, beating the hissing thorns to a slimy stinking pulp. I glimpse a rocky little ledge, hop-jump onto it, and seize a thatch of stringy weeds, steadying myself.
I reach down and tap the branch against the slope so Kovac can find it in the gloom. “Grab hold. I’m ready for you.”
“No, toss me the branch. I’ll beat back more brambles and use them to climb up. The ones you crushed are just lying here. They look like they’re dead.”
“I don’t know, Jack.”
“Toss me the branch, Abby. Just do it.”
I toss the branch and listen to the crunch and weird little screams as Kovac beats the brambles to a pulp. He scrabbles up the slope, cursing under his breath when he seizes something sharp. Quickly–more quickly than I would have thought possible–he pulls himself onto the ledge with a swift, liquid movement.
Kovac stands beside me, pulsing with power.
“Whoa. I’m impressed, Jack.”
“Did I ever mention I possess a power or two?”
“I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”
He graciously presents me with the branch and cups his hands at my knees. “Let’s do it again.”
I step onto his laced fingers, and he boosts me up. I beat the brambles till my shoulders ache, claw my way to the top, and slide on my stomach over the muddy edge.
“I’m there,” I call and reach the branch down to him. “Need a hand?”
“Nope, I’m good.” With that same liquid movement, Kovac spryly scales the slope and stands beside me with a smug grin.
The exercise of his spry magic looks effortless, but I can tell that it isn’t. His taut face and even more labored breathing tell of a physical toll. His scar gleams whiter–not a good sign at all. I peer up at the canopy, praying for a gap in the foliage. And there they are, the tip of the obelisk and the fiducial star.
“Oh, no.”
“We’ve zigged and zagged?”
“It looks like we’ve turned around completely.” I rub the nape of my sore neck. “I hate this! Everything shifting and changing. How could it happen?”
“Abby, we’re in a hell. Zigzagging happens.” He takes my shoulders, sending me the strength of his power, a blast of heat and vitality. Which I do appreciate. But he needs his own strength more than I do. “Are we any closer?”
“I think so.”
“Then it’s all right. Let’s go that way.”
A deeper, darker silence surrounds us, as thick and palpable as a physical presence. The thickness of unnatural fear.
********
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