Steam (Legends Saga Book 3) (24 page)

Chapter 27

Preen

The street which the coven popped into the middle of could’ve been Salem. It had the same plank board homes, sparse store fronts, and cobble stone streets. The main difference rested to the east of them, where fishing vessels bobbed in the surf off a small pier.

The moment earth solidified beneath their feet, the coven withdrew from Preen. Alexandrian and Freeya huddled together, Margot protectively pulling Tituba behind her. Despite their fear of the darkness that claimed their sister, Preen appeared perfectly at ease.

“We’re here! We did it!” she tittered, an easy smile beaming across her face. “Although I’m not entirely sure where or when
here
is.”

“We made it to Roanoke,” Tituba explained, her gut hissing with a fatal warning. “While their time is the same as ours, it will not stay that way for long. We have formed a bubble of sorts around the town. Soon the residents will learn that none can enter and none can leave. Time will move differently, though how much so I cannot say. For the foreseeable future we are all … trapped here.”

That declaration resonated through the coven with the finality of a coffin lid slamming shut on the lives they had known.

“You make it sound so dire!” Preen chortled, oddly lighthearted for someone that had just simultaneously suffered a gut-wrenching betrayal
and
had her child ripped away from her. “We have our freedom! Come! Let us explore!”

Her scorching touch encircled Freeya’s wrist, charring and blistering the flesh. Still, Freeya did not fight it. Beseeching her sisters with pleading eyes, she let Preen drag her along with a girlish giggle. Swallowing down their own anxiety, the coven fell into step behind them. Her body taut with tension, Alexandrian prepared to launch herself between Freeya and Preen if
any
harm came to her love.

Roanoke surrounded them as they ventured farther in. Giggling children darted across the street. An old couple, seated in rocking chairs, held hands and swayed on their front porch. A father held up his infant son, peppering his rosy cheek with kisses, while the mother gazed upon the pair lovingly. The coven jerked and flinched at each new scene of merriment as one would react to canon fire, unsure of which strike would obliterate the structure of their fleeting peace.

Preen stopped short. Titling her head, cascading waves of chestnut hair fell over her shoulder, her face a lovely mask of serenity. “That’s odd. I didn’t even notice them.”

Margot hung back, seeing a warning others could not.

Blinded from this context clue by her own desire to prove the darkness had not claimed one of her own, Tituba cautiously pressed on, “And their happiness, it doesn’t upset you?”

Her gaze scouring the landscape, Preen’s voice dropped to a wistful murmur. “I see them all—every jovial, smiling face—and I feel nothing ...” Her head turned to her earth sisters, one blink morphing her irises from warm cognac to a deep blood red. “
Except hungry
.”

Chapter 28

Ireland

Dry dust puffed around Ireland’s boots, the portal having spat them all out into a world of harsh silence. No birds sang. No children played. No crickets chirped. The result was the spine-tingling serenade of death. The space reeked of a sorrow and despair their animal cohorts seemed to have an adverse reaction to. Regen pawed at the ground, his mighty head flipping. The pit bull paced the edge of the portal whimpering her discontent.

“
Shh, shh
,” Ireland soothed, laying a gentle palm to the stallion’s muzzle. “I don’t like this any more than you do.”

“We don’t have much time,” Malachi muttered, his jaw clenched tight. Without waiting to see if the others followed, he started for the town that swelled on the horizon.

“
Ireland
?” a cold, clammy hand seized her arm, spinning her around.

Finding herself staring into a face the gray pallor of death, a gasp escaped Ireland’s cobalt lips.

Turning his free hand over in front of his haunted, ashen eyes, Rip studied the scrapes and cuts of his flesh that cracked and oozed with brown sludge. “
What am I
?”

Malachi glanced back, yet his gaze never settled; always moving, always watchful. “We almost exhausted our cattle supply and the succubus was running short on witches. She cast a spell that allows nothing to die here,” holding up his arm, Malachi pushed his sleeve back to reveal an angry looking scar running across his wrist, “even if they want to.”

“Just when you think that guy’s back story can’t get any sadder,” Ireland muttered under her breath. Climbing astride Regen, she offered Rip a hand up and did her best not to cringe at the touch of his rotting flesh.

The pit bull pup yipped her protest of their departure, but refused to budge from the lifeline of escape offered by the portal. Fear that she would bolt back through and leave them all trapped nagged at the back of Ireland’s mind. Suddenly, insisting the pup stay behind with the others seemed like far more critical point. Unable to change that now, Ireland nudged Regen on.

Once, when Ireland was twelve, her parents took her on a trip to Arizona where they visited Tombstone, the site of the shoot-out at the OK Corral. If the preservation society there decided to forego maintenance and allow time and the elements to do their very worst, the result would be this pseudo Roanoke. Building and homes rotted to skeletal structures. Brown, knee-high grass blanketed the ground in a woven quilt of dead blades. In a pen of broken and mangled boards stood a team of pigs that were little more than corpses, rutting listlessly through the long dried muck. Flies swarmed them, feasting on any exposed cavities were their decomposing flesh hung open. Fenced in beside them were lumbering hunks of bovine flesh that had once been cows. Their fur had fallen out in clumps, their teeth worn to blackened gums. Still they bowed their heads and dutifully chomped the overgrown grass, bits of it mixing with spit and bubbling over their lips as they gummed at it.

“Animatronic
Pet Cemetery
.” Ireland forced down the bile rising up the back of her throat. “This is all the proof I need that Stephen King should never open a theme park.”

“Uh … Ireland?” Rip’s rancid breath assaulted the side of her face, adding further to her desire to heave. “Surely you’ve noticed we’re being watched?”

Tearing her gaze from the horrific petting zoo, Ireland scoped out every window, eyed every door. If there was a hole in the walls of any sort, vacant eyes peered back at them from it. Not with alarm, but pity for yet another lost soul.

“I know the job you feel you need to do here, and I respect it. Even so,” Rip pivoted his upper body, as if his stiffening spine denied him further movement, “this place is far worse than we anticipated. My limbs are lead, and I worry I can be of no real use to you. This upsets me more than you can possibly know.”

Ireland’s weapons vibrated from each hip, on alert with her growing unease. “I watched you die. Trust me, I’m very familiar with that feeling. But I am picking up on the same vibe from this place. Let’s do a quick sweep, grab who we can, and get the hell out of here.”

The town’s heavy hush was suddenly shattered by the loud bang of splintering wood, Malachi’s boot having connected with the bolted door of two-story home that looked far from structurally sound. Shrapnel and dust settled to the ground around him as he grabbed the door frame and leaned inside.

“
Du-ude
!” Ireland hissed through her teeth. “A little stealth, please? Some of us are still angling to get out of here alive!”

Malachi peered back at her, his face an unreadable mask. “They all knew the
second
we arrived.” Swiveling back, his hollered declaration reverberated off the walls, “Those longing for freedom, follow the Hessian! Listen closely to her every command or be cut down as a hindrance!”

Ireland’s lip curled into a downward C. “No subtle disclaimer there. It’s safe to say I won’t be making any new friends on this little jaunt.”

Movement could be detected within the shell of a home: shuffling, scuffling, dragging steps. Malachi stepped back to allow passages of the rail thin bodies that lumbered out as if each movement pained them. The cluster of men and women, their cheeks hollow and eyes sunken cavities of despair, emerged dressed in modest, tattered clothes of yesteryear. Their hesitant gazes continuously flicked back to Malachi, seeking reassurance they should trust this newcomer.

Ireland’s heart bled for them … until their hungry eyes sharpened on Regen with looks that could only be described as ravenous. Sensing the carnivorous pheromones sizzling in the air with the threat of a feeding frenzy, Regan shifted on his feet, anxiously dancing beneath her.

Protective instinct closed her hand around her sword’s hilt, letting it hiss to freedom. Purposely she let her voice do that fun little trick that made her sound like Satan’s little sister. “I’m here to help you, and I
will
. However, if any of you try to make a snack out of my horse, I’ll cut your jaw off and wear it as a tiara.
M’kay
?”

The crowd at least had the good sense to look aghast at the suggestion. Wise thinking since her slicing arm was itching for release.

“Get them to the portal, I’ll round up more people,” Malachi barked, and darted off to another home across the street.

Yanking Regen’s head around, Ireland cued him forward, Rip’s grip tightened around her waist. “Follow me. If you have a speed above mosey, now would be the time to implement it.”

Noah

Doing his best to ignore the pacing father of science fiction beside him, Noah watched Ireland’s approach through the warped and waving portal threshold. Her body swayed and bobbed with each of Regen’s strides. With her sword resting on her thigh, she kept a vigilant watch on the shells of human life dragging along behind her. Even in her Hessian form, the power behind her beauty took his breath away. The second this was over, he would gather her in his arms … and exhale.

Beside him Wells anxiously wrung his hands and made yet another snarky comment about Ireland’s need to hurry.
One more
. Noah was prepared to grant him one more comment like that, then he would thwart further negativity with a punch to the throat. It would be an unavoidable—albeit secretly rewarding—situation. On the upside, Peyton had finally stopped chanting in Latin. Ridley groaning and rolling to his side had distracted her by awakening her maternal instincts. Crouching beside him, she cradled his head in her lap and helped him get a sip of water.

All of their chatter faded to irritating background buzz the closer Ireland came. Focusing all his attention on her, Noah formed a protective bubble around her in his mind that he had no real means to enforce. It was maddening to be the supernaturally challenged one in this band of misfit freaks. From beneath the shadows of her hood, her glowing amber stare locked with his. There he saw his future. His definitive destiny.

Ireland’s cobalt lips—that always tasted of cotton-candy lip gloss—moved in explanation to the wayward souls that they needed to wait right where they were. He and Wells would wave them over when everyone was close enough to the portal to ensure they could all make it through before it closed. Disclaimer delivered, the warming rays of Ireland’s attention returned to Noah once more. With two fingers she pointed from her eyes, to his, to the crowd.

Anxiously rubbing a hand over the back of his neck, he gave a brief nod of understanding and mouthed, “Be safe.”

She volleyed back an arrogant shrug that clearly read, “
I’m a badass monster, what could happen?”
Then, tugging Regen’s head around, they galloped off once again.

One trip turned into two. Then another still.

The crowd before him grew, as did his own unease. Their eagerness to cross over to safety causing a restless shift that Noah feared could quickly turn into a mob mentality. Lucky for them, Regen’s pit bull pal showed her teeth and snapped at any stragglers that ventured too close to the portal entrance. It was as if she understood the science behind it and thrust herself into the role of its adamant enforcer.

Minutes ticked by without Ireland’s silhouette cresting over the horizon on her third, and hopefully final, trip. The cold, unforgiving fear that twined around Noah’s heart, squeezing hard enough to make his lungs ache, told him one thing with absolute certainty—she was taking too long this time. On the other side of that plasmatic doorway,
something
was preventing her return.