The Problem with Promises (13 page)

He looked up.

Cordelia—the only wolf I’ve known to see magic—saw my rope of magic coil out into space. “Catch it,” she muttered. Trowbridge grimaced, and swiped blindly for it.

My serpent fell short. I needed more—another few feet at least—but there was no
more.
We were at the end of every cliché known to man. At the bottom of the well. At the end of the tether.

Out of rope, out of hope.

Goddess, if only I had more magic, I’d … I looked up at the ward. Yes. I raised my arm and the long coil of light streaming from my fingers hooked upward. Delicate as a serpent’s tongue, it licked at the inside of the dome.

My Fae sparked, shooting out infinitesimally small stars of brilliant green. The coven’s magic slid into me, through my magic, through my hands, into my bloodstream. It fought its way up my arm and almost stopped my heart.

I rose up on my knees. Hope can make you stupid. I didn’t slow down. Even as my Fae was bracing for impact, I ran headfirst and headstrong, right into the nearly invisible ward. Sparks flew, as fire bright as a hard rock struck upon a ready flint, and the web that the witches had spun revealed itself, a blazing net of glinting evil encompassing the pond, the ridges, even Casperella’s sad burial ground.

In response, the bite on my arm flared, hot and tight. Painful, but not as unsettling as touching that dome of foul magic. On contact with that, my body registered all kinds of insults. The ward’s shield felt both solid and tacky to me—like the bottom of a filthy sink covered by a slippery ooze. Its essence slimed my skin. My hand, my cheek, the side of my chin.

But worse? It connected to them. Suddenly, I could see the coven. Sitting in a darkened room. Wearing normal clothing, in a normal living room. Mouths silently chanting. I blinked, and blinked again, trying to exorcise the haunting image of them.

My vision darkened. I saw darkness, and something—someone—whose presence filled me with the type of terror that stops your breath.

And then it—or he—was gone.

Then I saw Natasha and Elizabeth in their car, driving on a two-lane highway. Natasha sat behind the wheel, her mouth pulled down in worry. The younger witch’s elbow rested on the door. Her thumb beat a restless tattoo against the filter end of the glowing cigarette she held pinched between her fingers.

They have sold parts of their soul to something as liquid and awful as hot melted tar. And it is watching them. It will always watch them. It will wait until they pass into the eternal darkness, and it will be there, waiting to greet them.

Revulsion swept over me. Whining, I shrank from it, my good hand automatically going to shield Merry from its contamination.

“It’s foul,” I cried. “It’s…”

Evil, but I could not say that word out loud, for fear the soul that was darker than tar would hear it. It was inside me. The shadow of the beast and the magic of these foul women was inside me. No white magic this. No good intent formed this witchcraft. This was dark. Like a fruit, once sweet, that had been crushed into a pulp and then held in a dark jar until its rancid juice fermented.

Goddess. Use it fast and get it gone.

I cast again, and this time, the magic stretched. Trowbridge flailed to catch. He pulled it to him—the power that was the magic portion of us stretching, stretching. Cordelia’s face contorted in pain as it wound itself around both of them and tightened. Eyes narrowed, Trowbridge threaded his arm around it, as if it was a lifeline, not a cursed thing.

Lift,
I told my magic.

Sudden, intense pain from wrist to shoulder.

Heave.

Hands flamed. They were too heavy. Too big a burden.

Try harder.

I closed my eyes and concentrated, willing myself back into communion with my Fae.
We are sisters. We are one.
Fae-me stiffened, flexed, stiffened, then she lifted them, a few feet, and carried them a few more.
Too heavy. Too much.
She faltered, slipped, and grazed the water.

Trowbridge and Cordelia went into the pond up to their waists. My Fae screamed inside me, feeling the faint traces of iron still left in that once-fouled pond.

Don’t break. Don’t splinter.

“Mine,” growled my Were.

“Ours,” I moaned to my sisters. Three strong we fought to lift them from that contaminated soup of slick lily pads and iron-tainted water. It shouldn’t have been so difficult. We had them, as they had us. Surely it should be as easy as belaying them upward. But the mechanics were so very wrong. We were above them, on our knees, stretched to the limit. Weres don’t weigh the same as humans; their bones are loaded with their own heavy version of magic, a requirement of their monthly need to break, and grow, and reconstruct each month while obeying the moon’s call.

My half-breed status made me featherlight compared to their combined poundage. I needed more magic, or more weight, or more strength. Because the shield was sealing and the beast would take that which was mine.

Sweat rolled down into my eyes, making them sting. If I could get to the tree behind me, I’d be able to loop my magic around its trunk and that would take the brunt of their weight. But I’d need to back up eight feet if not more. It might as well be a hundred and eighty feet. As it was taking everything I had to hold them steady.

“Trowbridge, I can’t lift you.” My voice was strained and shrill. “Can you climb up it?”

A savage tug on my rope of magic. My arms were being pulled from their sockets. Horribly, slowly. Like being on a rack, except there was no rack, no one standing beside me, turning the wheel. The only thing that was rescuing them was me.

Me.

Gasp-inducing agony. Panting, I leaned back on my heels, trying to counterbalance. The bed of pine needles beneath me was soft with age. The knees of my jeans skidded on them. And I heard another series of splashes.

This time, my Fae didn’t even scream when she grazed the water.

“Give up, give up,” I could hear her plead. Another hard tug on my magic, and then the pressure eased.

“It’s too slick,” he called. “It’s no good, Hedi.”

Like hell it’s no good.

My wolf swelled again inside me, reaching out for her sisters. She welded her strength to ours, and we joined. Three strong, my spine felt stronger—not in danger of breaking in two. Now completely whole—in balance with all three of the mes of me: wolf-me, Fae-me, mortal-me—my arm was roped with muscle. My courage a bucket without a bottom.

Impervious to pain.

Unwilling to heed reason.

Three strong.

Teeth clenched, we shuffled backward on our knees, gaining two feet, then two more. “You hold on, damn you, Trowbridge. I am pulling you out.” The line of magic jerked as Trowbridge readjusted his grip on her. Our Fae sister was so thin. Vibrating with the strain.
You will not splinter.
A shuffle, a squeeze of muscle, and pure pigheaded pissiness.

“That’s it, Tink!” yelled Trowbridge. “Keep going.”

Yes. Back we went. Soon we lost sight of them though we could hear them—water churned in their wake as we dragged them through the pond.

A fieldstone bit into our kneecap as we reverse crawled through the remains of Casperella’s prison walls.
Go faster. Hurry.
Ass first, right arm extended as if we were trying to perform some impossible yoga position, we kept going.

I’m burning. I’m burning. My fingers are on fire.

Keep going.

My heels hit something soft. A quick glance over my shoulder. A thing—a body. We navigated around what was left of Gerry. Hardly breathing. Shoulder screaming. As fast as we could.

Back, back. Before the ward seals.

We reached the tree. Did a lunge sideways. Our magic looped around its sturdy trunk, and immediately, some of the spine-shattering strain eased. Reverse progress became marginally easier. Heart pumping like an athlete’s, we kept going, now in a diagonal line, our magic rasping against the fissured bark with every foot we gained.

Don’t think. Keep moving.

Past four tombstones for four dead babies and a hole torn in the soil where once there had been a marker for a fifth. Over the rails of a broken picket fence. Right up to the tree that Casperella was waiting by. We did a circle around her and the tree for good measure. Why? We weren’t sure. Put it down to instinct. But as we passed her, Casperella touched the scaled serpent of our magic.

And this time, she did not steal. Hands sprouted from her torso, white-ghostly, strong. They wrapped around the battered coil of magic and pulled with us.

Ghost help. Yes.

Now it was child’s play. We were the four-girl-strong version of Gumby.

We didn’t stop our backward locomotion until our heels hit the first pack member’s double-wide monument, then we experienced a sudden release of a near unbearable weight, as if someone had clipped the belaying line.

Let them be safe.

With that thought, my long rope of magic shattered. Silently and invisibly. Fairy lights glittered in the low light of a gray morning. The air around us smelled faintly acrid. I opened my mouth, and felt all those little bits of magic slide down my throat.

My wolf gave one single whine, and then padded over to comfort her sister-Fae.

Go ahead. You guys rest while I roll into a ball and commune with the pain radiating from my hand.
Merry—ever the St. John’s ambulance–trained rescue amulet—began her descent, ziplining along the links of her Fae gold chain, heading for the square of skin above my heart, but I caught her with my other hand. The paw that absolutely wasn’t smoking and smelling like hamburger just set down on the grill. Feeling nauseous, I forced out one word. “No.”

Nausea roiled, acidic and bitter, as I rolled over. Flat on my back, I stared up into the sky. The moon was gone. The stars had faded. The world was as gray as the owl watching me from the oak tree.

Do owls fall into the category of carrion birds?

“Fuck off,” I told the bird, before I forced myself upright. The tombstones around me seemed to spin, and that detached, shit-I’m-going-to-faint feeling momentarily swamped me. To keep myself in the here and now, I bit the inside of my lip. Hard. I refused to faint, pass out, or swoon. There’s got to be a limit on how many times a girl can do that before she’s labeled as weak.

I am not weak. And I’m beginning to be very label conscious.

“Trowbridge?”

“I’m helping Cordelia. We’ll be up in a moment.”

So, I sat back on my butt and chewed on the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood, while I allowed the smooth, slick marble of William Culley’s monument to support a spine that felt remarkably spineless. A time-out period. Where I wouldn’t pass out. Where I could sit, hunched over, my good hand cradling my bad wrist as I waited for the payback pain to stop hammering.

“Natasha took my Tear, Merry. And they tried to trap Trowbridge.” My amulet slowly crawled up the Matterhorn of my right boob and found a comfortable summit perch. A yellow light flashed out a question. Blip, blip, blip. Was healing required?

“I’m good,” I rasped. “It’s moving off.”

That was a big-assed lie, but we let it stand between us.

Gerry’s body lay in a long trail of blood. “Who the hell sent bikers for me?” I asked my amulet in a shaky voice. “Bikers. Why bikers?”

My hand was a throbbing source of misery. By all the glory of all the Faes in Merenwyn and Threall, it hurt. Feeling curiously faint, I rested my head back on the cool marble. Air whistled through my teeth as I fought to bring my breath under control. I studied the inscription on the opposing monument (“Kerry Butcher, Beloved and Cherished”) until two legs came into my field of vision. With a harsh exclamation, Trowbridge knelt beside me. My gaze roamed restlessly over him, cataloging every insult to his body. He was dripping wet, the beauty of his chiseled jaw somewhat marred by a thick streak of mud.

“You are a crazy, crazy, girl.” For all his tenderness, a current of suppressed violence stung my nostrils.

Trowbridge is concerned.
I rolled my eyes toward his. “I’m mad at you.”

“You’re always mad at me.”

“Boss!” Harry yelled.

“In the old part of the cemetery,” Trowbridge called. “Check out the bodies on your way over here. I want to know who did this.”

“Bikers,” I said, carefully breathing through my mouth. Fae Stars, I wanted to puke. “Someone sent bikers to kidnap me. Why humans? That’s just low.”

Casperella drifted over to us, the hem of her gown brushing against the grass. She’d absorbed some of the magic in the air and now I could see her hair—long, dark, beautiful. Also the details of her face, delicate features, with a softly curved chin.

“You’re such a thief, Casperella,” I mumbled. My mouth felt rusty. So dry that my tongue was thick and fat. Like some dried-up cow tongue inside my mouth. Leathery. Reluctant to crisply form the sound of an
s.

Trowbridge’s long fingers teased a strand of my hair off my wet face and tucked it gently behind my pointed ear.
I must be crying. Strange I don’t feel sad. Just beginning to hurt real bad.
His thumb stroked my jaw. “You keep getting beat up, Tink.”

“I know,” I said peevishly.

His face hardened as he swiveled to stare at the pond. “The Sisters set us up. They must have called Whitlock right after they spoke to me.”

A pair of cowboy boots strode into my line of vision.
Harry.
He cleared his throat. “You don’t look so good, Little Miss,” Harry said.

I don’t feel so good.
I’d kept my hand tucked into my chest, but now it burned so badly, promising that this payback session would be an utter bitch. If it looked as horrible as it felt … I took a quick peek and wished I hadn’t.

“Jesus wept,” said Harry.

Oh. Fae. Stars.
My flesh was as red as a skinned rabbit ready for the pot. Fat blisters distorted my knuckle. The palm was worse—a bevy of blisters had met at my lifeline fork for a gang bang and the resulting single bubble was damn near obscene.