Chains of Fire (21 page)

Then he pulled her out. Outfitted her with the proper passage-squirming clothes: a ski jacket with a tight-fitting hood to keep spiders from dropping into her hair or down her neck, a full-body waterproof ski outfit to keep her from getting damp, hiking boots, and insulated gloves. They worked fast, wanting to give her as much daylight as possible, not knowing where she would come out, not knowing how long she would have to hike before she found help, uncertain of any oncoming winter storms. . . .

When Samuel thought of all the things that could go wrong out there, he felt the savage in him rising.

But what good did it do to complain? This was how it had to be, and who knew if the tunnel was even passable all the way?

“If it gets tight,” he said, “come back. If you get scared, I’m right here. I’ll come for you somehow.”

“What are you going to do? Chop off your shoulders?” She patted him comfortingly. “I’ll be fine.”

He kissed her again.

She looped her arms around his shoulders, kissed him back.

He didn’t like the way she threw herself into that kiss, as if she believed they would never have a chance to kiss again.

When she pulled away, he said, “You don’t have to go.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Yes, you do.” He put his forehead to hers and started in again. “If it gets tight, come back. If—”

“Samuel.” She shook him. “I’ll be fine. We’re going to get out. Pretty soon, this whole week is going to be nothing but a nightmare.”

He didn’t quite like the sound of that. Not all of it had been a nightmare. Not for him, anyway. So he kissed her again, using his passion, one last time, to carry her away from the darkness, the bugs, the peril she faced.

Then he did the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life.

He let her go.

He watched as her silhouette, highlighted against the sunlight, squirmed along through the tunnel. Occasionally he called, “How’s it going?”

“Okay.” But her voice sounded as if she had turned her back on him.

Which was dumb, because she was moving away, so of course she would sound distant.

Once she stopped for so long, he leaned in and shouted, “What’s wrong?”

“Spiderweb.” A long pause. “I think I ate the spider.”

Now that she said that, he could see her shuddering. “A little extra protein,” he called cheerfully, and wished it were him facing this ordeal instead of her.

“You’re a jerk.”

“Everyone knows that!” he replied.

Bracing herself, she went forward, farther and farther away from him.

How long was this passage? A quarter mile? Half mile? Her ordeal seemed to go on forever.

Suddenly—she was gone. No wriggling silhouette. No distant voice.

“Isabelle!” he bellowed.

Her head popped up, and clearly, she was standing on the other side facing him. “I made it!” She wildly waved her arms.

“Where are you?” he called.

“I can see a house down below. And people. I think I came out on the other side of the highway.”

“Makes sense!”

“I’ll send someone to dig you out right away!”

“I’ll see you on the outside.”

She stood there as if undecided about . . . something.

“Go on now,” he called. “Be careful!”

“I am. I will. Bye, Samuel. Bye!” One moment she was there.

Then she was gone . . . leaving him with the irritated sense that something had just gone very wrong.

Aaron Eagle pulled the van to a stop, and the Chosen Ones peered out the front window and down the main street—the
only
street—of the town.

“This is the place.” Charisma could feel a tingle in the stones that ringed her wrists.

Holyrood hid secrets, special secrets. She didn’t know what they were, but the earth knew. She could hear its singing.

“Where are the fourteen people who live here?” John Powell was their leader, the man who had received the e-mail asking for help and made the executive decision to make the drive from New York City to this tiny hamlet deep in the Appalachians.

He didn’t have to do it. Maybe it was bad idea. But he had said,
There’s no use us sitting around worrying and grieving about Samuel and Isabelle. We’ve got to go out and do something, and this message
—he tapped the paper he’d printed out—
if it’s really from one of the Chosen who has retired . . . well, we need to respond. He asked for our help. We need to make contact.

“More to the point, where’s this Billy Pemrick character?” Caleb D’Angelo looked like what he was—a bodyguard, tough, strong, fierce, and right now tense with suspicion. “He said he’d meet us at the mayor’s office, but surely he heard us coming up that last grade.”

Everyone nodded.

There were six of them in the van: their driver, Aaron, an art thief with an impressive extra talent; John Powell, the guy with the power; Jacqueline D’Angelo, their psychic; Aleksandr Wilder, Chosen but not gifted; and Caleb, who wasn’t one of the Chosen at all, but was Jacqueline’s husband and the man they depended on to have their backs.

And Charisma Fangorn, well aware that she was out of place in this rural environment. She was out of place almost everywhere she went, no big deal, but some people really did have problems with her tats, her piercings, her pop clothing, and her black-and-yellow hair. She figured once they got to know her, they would love her.

And usually, they did.

The ones who didn’t were stupid.

“So is this a trap?” Aaron asked.

“If the Others are going to set a trap for us, it would have been easier in New York,” John said flatly.

John was nothing if not logical.

“It’s not a trap for us. But everything is not as it seems.” Jacqueline stared out the dark-tinted side windows at the forest that pressed close to the road.

“Are you having a vision?” Caleb hovered close to his wife, always ready to protect her when a prophecy seized her.

“Not exactly.” She put her hand on his arm. “But I’ve got some really strong intuition working here.”

Charisma cranked around in the seat. “It’s wonderful the way your gift keeps developing!”

“Either it’s developing or I’m wrong and we’re driving into a minefield,” Jacqueline said.

“Don’t sugarcoat it, honey; give it to us straight.” Caleb opened the panel in the floor and pulled out the firearms—cleaned, loaded, and ready. Since the Chosen Ones had first come together, Caleb had been training them in the use of firearms. Some of them were better than others, and Caleb decided who got what. He handed out pistols to everyone, rifles for him, for Aaron, for Jacqueline, for Aleksandr. Charisma had an astigmatism that made her pull to the right, and John, with his ability to project power, was more useful with his hands free.

They all wore bulletproof vests, now standard equipment for the Chosen Ones.

The trip into the Appalachians had been everything they’d expected. The freeway had become a highway, the highway had become a road, the road had gone from two-lane paved to gravel washboard, and the higher they climbed, the denser the forest, the more primitive the atmosphere, and the narrower and more winding the road. During the trip, Charisma had felt as if she’d gone from twenty-first-century New York City to colonial America—or even earlier.

“Is the town empty?” Aleksandr moved his shoulders uneasily.

“No, there are people here.” Aaron eased his foot off the brake and let the van glide forward at an idle.

“Are
you
developing a psychic gift?” Jacqueline asked.

“Better than that, I’m a thief.” Aaron’s eyes shifted from side to side, scrutinizing every bush, every window. “And if a thief doesn’t have a pretty solid sense about people watching him, he’s soon going to be dancing with Bubba at the prison prom. Or be pushing up daisies at the local cemetery.”

Holyrood was a pretty standard old mountain town. The newest building was the store, built in the forties after the war. A dozen small, square homes in various states of old age and disrepair sat back from the street. Picket fences surrounded each patch of grassy yard. The garages were set toward the backs of the long, narrow lots.

“Someone is watching us,” Aaron concluded, “and watching us really hard.”

“Yes, and there’s been gunfire,” Charisma said.

“Your stones are telling you that?” Aleksandr asked incredulously.

“Bullets are made of lead, lead comes from the earth, and . . . Yes, the stones are telling me a lot of stuff. Mostly to be careful.” Charisma glanced in the back. “So be careful.”

“Instead of the usual reckless idiots we usually are?” Aleksandr suggested.

She turned and grinned at him.

He didn’t grin back, and that startled her.

Aleksandr was the youngest member of their team, now in graduate school at NYU. When he’d first joined the Chosen Ones, he had been raw, gangly, an overgrown boy with overgrown brains. He’d been brought in because he was one of the famous Wilders, but Aleksandr had no gift. He’d been born into a loving family; magic gifts weren’t given to infants who were welcomed and loved.

Yet because of his background, everyone liked him. He was polite, he was generous, he was inventive, he didn’t have issues. He was great with the computer, which as far as Charisma was concerned was better than woo-woo. . . .

But today, he appeared to be different.

Maybe she just hadn’t really examined him for a while, but he didn’t look like a kid anymore.

He was a man, tall, broad-shouldered, serious.

It made her feel funny to stare him in the eyes. She’d always felt older because her early life had been so rocky, but they were actually close to the same age. She was almost twenty-three, so he must be twenty-four.

She faced front.

Probably he had grown up so abruptly because they had lost their friends and allies. Because with every day that passed, it looked more and more as if Samuel and Isabelle were . . . gone . . .

Charisma couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t. She would
know
if they were dead.

“Any bets that that’s the mayor’s office?” Caleb pointed at the sign on the small, square building next to the store. “Park off to the side of the garage. Um, to the right—there’s an old truck parked to the left.”

Aaron turned abruptly, changing from a leisurely drive down the street to a fast skid into the driveway and into the unoccupied spot beside the garage.

He turned off the motor and waited.

Nothing. No sound, no motion.

Twisting to face the back, he asked, “What do you think?”

“I think no one can see in the van, the Others can’t see who we are and there’s a pretty good chance they don’t want to fire on innocent people,” John said.

“Because they’re such nice folks?” Aleksandr asked sarcastically.

“Because we might be tourists, and they have instructions to keep this operation as clean as possible,” Caleb said.

“Right.” Aaron nodded. “So Charisma and I are going in. Cover us.”

Picking up his rifle and the rounds of ammo Caleb had placed beside him, he concealed them beneath his coat, then swung the door open.

Charisma did the same.

Still nothing.

They got out and walked toward the mayor’s side porch.

The back of Charisma’s neck itched with the knowledge that too many eyes were upon them.

They climbed the steps, tapped on the door.

No one answered.

“Mr. Pemrick?” Charisma called. “You sent an e-mail to John Powell asking for—”

The door flew open.

A broad-shouldered old Clint Eastwood sort of a guy grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her inside.

Aaron followed.

And a blast of buckshot followed them both.