I looked at Vayl. “I should’ve known better. My dog sucks at trailing. The last time we were home I accidentally dropped a hot dog on the floor while I was cooking supper one night. And despite the fact that he ëe fks was sitting beside me at the time I still had to show him where it landed.”
“At least Albert is in place,” Vayl replied. “They cannot drive Cole anywhere without us knowing it.”
Jack yelped and jumped back, all four of his paws clearing the ground at the same time as the section of floor that held the table suddenly lifted and slid three feet to the left.
As we watched the cleverly hidden trapdoor reveal a steep set of stairs, Vayl put a hand on my shoulder. “I suppose you know what this means?”
I leaned over and gave Jack a vigorous rubdown. “That my dog is better than a trained bloodhound?”
“No. That you are a terrible cook.”
I shot him a dirty look, but it missed. Because he’d already hit the stairs running. “Come on, boy,” I told my canine hero. “We’ll bide our time on the cook comment. Delayed revenge is always the sweetest.”
We followed Vayl down the stairs, taking a dangerous pace considering the lack of light and their narrow, winding path. At one point Jack stopped. Sniffed. Demanded that I sniff too. Or, if I was going to be crass about it, at least bend over and take a good look. More blood. They must’ve dropped him here.
We moved on, seeing no evidence of another exit by the time we’d reached what we thought should be the first floor.
“These stairs must end in the basement,” Vayl said.
“Makes sense,” I replied.
As we continued downward Albert’s voice broke the rhythm of my heightened breathing. “I hear an engine,” he said. “But nothing’s moving out front. It sounds like it’s coming from the barn.”
“Can you check it out without being seen?” asked Vayl.
Insulted huff. “Maybe someday I’ll teach you a thing or two about recon, ya baby.”
Ha! If only Albert knew how old Vayl really was! Um, never mind.
We finally reached the basement. Typical clutter you’d expect in a B and B storeroom. Broken bed. Shelves packed with paint cans. A freezer full of wrapped meat and frostbitten veggies. A dehumidifier humming away in the middle of the room. Also the guts of the building, which meant we had to bow our heads or be concussed by large pipes that led to the furnace and smaller ones that rushed water from its outer source up to every faucet in the place. Jack found the stairs that led up to a plank door, which stood open, witness to the Scidairans’ rush.
Vayl took my hand, not out of a sense of shared adventure or romance, but because he was getting ready to run and didn’t want me to slow him down. As we strode toward the exit I asked, “Will Jack be able to keep up with us?” I could run pretty fast now that I’d shared blood with a Were. But Vayl could practically fly.
He glanced down at the malamute panting happily at my heels. “He should. If not, let him go. He will find us.”
Vayl trotted up the stairëed hees. They led us into the herb garden. We could hear the engine now. “Sounds like an ATV,” I said.
“It’s a Honda Big Red,” said Albert. “You’ve seen those? They’re like mini Jeeps with two seats up front, a roll bar, and a small bed in back to haul things with.”
“I get the picture,” I said. “Where are you?”
“I’m by the barn, looking in through a crack in the outer wall. Four women inside that I can see. Dormal and Floraidh on the Big Red, the other two opening the back door for them. You’d better hustle. They’re backing out right now.”
We ran. “Do you see Cole?” asked Vayl.
“I’ve got the wrong angle. There’s definitely something in the bed of that thing, but it’s hard to tell what from here.”
As the distance closed between us and the barn, the Scidairans suddenly came into view. They’d turned the Big Red toward the path we’d taken to get to Tearlach during our Ghost-Walk. Hard to tell where they were headed. The cemetery? Clava Cairns? The castle and its plane-hopping doorway? Who cared? We didn’t intend to let them get to the tree line.
I realized I needed a hand free to work my weapon, so I dropped Jack’s leash, which had become taut enough as we ran that I realized he couldn’t keep up with us anyway. I pulled Grief, estimating the first moment I could fire and hope to hit my target. The part of me that hadn’t yet folded down into assassin mode noted Cole’s legs, clothed in ripped jeans and his favorite red high-tops, dangling over the edge of the vehicle’s bed, and realized he would be so pissed if he was conscious. In fact, he’d probably be saying something like, “This is just my luck. I couldn’t get nabbed by some high-class level of criminal who wears bling and rides in limos. No. I have to be kidnapped by the cast of Bewitched.”
Speaking of bling, was that glitter I saw reflecting from Floraidh’s neck Humphrey’s forgotten creation? I was thinking so. But before I could figure out how to make that vulnerability work for us, I hit a brick wall and landed flat on my ass. At which point Jack trotted up to me and sniffed my forehead as if to say, “See what you get for leaving me behind?”
I looked up. Whatever I’d hit had no visible boundaries. All I could see, with every one of my senses maxed out, was a slight bend in the horizon, as if I were viewing it from a telescope. And, of course, now that I wasn’t zeroed in on Cole I could smell the spell that had flung me down.
Vayl hadn’t been dumped, but he had been stunned. He stood a couple of arms’ lengths to one side of me, hands on his knees, slowly shaking his head.
I turned back to search for the cause of our blockage. There, at the corner of the barn. The other two women Albert had mentioned. I recognized one as the girl we’d seen manning the Tearlach table at GhostCon. The other was a fiftyish spinster with a forgettable face who must’ve decided taking care of her mother as she slowly faded from life wasn’t quite as fulfilling as she’d anticipated. So why not bow down to an evil sorceress on the side?
They wore long indigo dresses that clung like spiderwebs as they moved their hands through motions that reminded me eerily of the Raisers who’d inadvertently caused me a shitload of trë shs touble already. These motions, however, demanded where the Raisers pleaded. Their fingers jabbed, their fists punched, the sides of their hands sliced through the air as if to cut through the fabric of the planet itself. And the Raisers had steered wide of introducing sacrifice into their act. I couldn’t tell what had once animated the lump bleeding on the ground between Floraidh’s rear guard, but I suddenly felt like the most irresponsible pet owner ever, bringing Jack into a situation where animals his size ended up lying limp and lifeless so that wicked shitbricks could progress.
He didn’t seem too happy about the deal either. His ears laid back as he caught the scent of the carcass. Or maybe it was the Scidairan chant that put him off. It did sound like it had been written by someone who enjoyed the noise of whiny two-year-olds.
I shivered, realizing that the wintry lifting of Vayl’s powers was only part of the reason. I’m over my head this time, I thought. These women are going to fry us like moths in a bug zapper and there’s not a damn thing we can do to stop them. Still, I struggled to my feet. Better to die upright than flat on your tush, that’s what Granny May always used to say. Though why she’d ever had cause to develop that philosophy I had no idea. Too bad she wasn’t here to pour more pearls of wisdom into my empty brain. It could’ve used some bright ideas right about now.
As if he could read my mind Vayl murmured, “These cannot be full coven members. Floraidh will need those for whatever she has planned for Cole. These are novices, Jasmine. We can beat them.”