Huntress, Black Dawn, Witchlight (26 page)

“I see.” The void in Maggie’s stomach had become a yawning chasm. “But—”

“If he let you go, it was so he could come back and hunt you,” Jeanne said flatly. “I’m telling you, he’s
bad.
It was three years ago that the old king died and Delos took over, okay? And it was three years ago that they started bringing new slaves in. Not just grabbing people off the mountain if they got too close, but actually going down and kidnapping girls off the streets. That’s why I’m
here.
That’s why P.J.’s here.”

Beside Maggie, P.J. shivered. Maggie put an arm around her and felt the slight body shaking against hers. She gulped, her other hand clenching into a fist. “Hey, kiddo. You’ve been really brave so far, so just hang on, okay? Things are going to work out.”

She could feel Jeanne’s sarcastic eyes on her from beyond Cady, daring her to explain exactly
how
things were going to work out. She ignored them.

“Was it the same for you, Cady?” she asked. She was glad to get off the subject of Delos, and she was remembering the strange thing Cady had said last night.
I was coming here for a reason….

“No. They got me on the mountain.” But the way Cady spoke alarmed Maggie. It was slowly and with obvious effort, the voice of someone who had to use all their strength just to concentrate.

Maggie forgot all about Delos and the slave trade and put a
hand to Cady’s forehead. “Oh, God,” she said. “You’re burning up. You’re totally on fire.”

Cady blinked slowly. “Yes—it’s the poison,” she said in a foggy voice. “They injected me with something when they caught me—but I had a bad reaction to it. My system can’t take it.”

Adrenaline flicked through Maggie. “And you’re getting worse.” When Cady nodded reluctantly, she said, “Right. Then there’s no choice. We have to get to the castle because that’s where the healing women are, right? If anybody can help, they can, right?”

“Wait a minute,” Jeanne said. “We can’t go down to the castle. We’d be walking right into their arms. And we can’t get out of the valley. I found the pass before, but that was by accident. I couldn’t find it again—”

“I could,” Maggie said. When Jeanne stared at her, she said, “Never mind how. I just can. But going that way means climbing down a mountain on the other side and Cady can’t make it. And I don’t think she’ll make it if we leave her alone here and go look for help.”

Jeanne’s narrow green eyes were on her again, and Maggie knew what they were saying.
So we’ve got to give up on her. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
But Maggie bulldozed on in determination. “
You
can take P.J. to the pass—I can tell you how to get there—and I’ll take Cady to the castle. How about that? If you can tell me how to get to
it.
”

“It stinks,” Jeanne said flatly. “Even if you make it to the castle with her hanging on you, you won’t know how to get in. And if you
do
get in, you’ll be committing suicide—”

She broke off, and everyone started. For an instant Maggie didn’t understand why—all she knew was that she had a sudden feeling of alarm and alertness. Then she realized that Cady had turned suddenly toward the door. It was the quick, instinctive gesture of a cat who has heard something dangerous, and it triggered fear in the girls who were learning to live by their own instincts.

And now that Maggie sat frozen, she could hear it, too, faraway but distinct. The sound of people calling, yelling back and forth. And another sound, one that she’d only heard in movies, but that she recognized instantly. Hounds baying.

“It’s them,” Jeanne whispered into the dead silence of the shack. “I told you. They’re hunting us.”

“With
dogs
?” Maggie said, shock tingling through her body.

“It’s all over,” Jeanne said. “We’re dead.”

“N
o, we’re not!” Maggie said. She kicked the heavy cover off and jumped up, grabbing Cady’s arm. “Come on!”

“Where?” Jeanne said.

“The castle,” Maggie said. “But we’ve got to stick together.” She grabbed P.J.’s arm with her other hand.

“The castle?”

Maggie pinned Jeanne with a look. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. They’ll be expecting us to try to find the pass, right? They’ll find us if we stay here. The only place they
won’t
expect us to go is the castle.”

“You,” Jeanne said, “are completely crazy—”

“Come on!”

“But you just might be right.” Jeanne grabbed Cady from the other side as Maggie started for the door.

“You stay right behind us,” Maggie hissed at P.J.

The landscape in front of her looked different than it had last night. The mist formed a silver net over the trees, and although there was no sun, the clouds had a cool pearly glow.

It was beautiful. Still alien, still disquieting, but beautiful.

And in the valley below was a castle.

Maggie stopped involuntarily as she caught sight of it. It rose out of the mist like an island, black and shiny and solid. With towers at the edges. And a wall around it with a sawtoothed top, just like the castles in pictures.

It looks so real, Maggie thought stupidly.

“Don’t stand there! What are you waiting for?” Jeanne snapped, dragging at Cady.

Maggie tore her eyes away and made her legs work. They headed at a good pace straight for the thickest trees below the shack.

“If it’s dogs, we should try to find a stream or something, right?” she said to Jeanne. “To cut off our scent.”

“I know a stream,” Jeanne said, speaking in short bursts as they made their way through dew-wet ferns and saxifrages. “I lived out here a while the first time I escaped. When I was looking for the pass. But they’re not just dogs.”

Maggie helped Cady scramble over the tentaclelike roots of a hemlock tree. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means they’re shapeshifters, like Bern and Gavin. So they don’t just track us by scent. They also feel our life energy.”

Maggie thought about Bern turning his face this way and that, saying,
“Do you sense anything?”
And Gavin saying,
“No. I can’t feel them at all.”

“Great,” Maggie muttered. She glanced back and saw P.J. following doggedly, her face taut with concentration.

It was a strange sort of chase. Maggie and her group were trying to keep as quiet as possible, which was made easier by the dampness of the rainforest around them. Although there were four of them moving at once, the only sound from close up was the soft pant of quick breathing and the occasional short gasp of direction from Jeanne.

They slipped and plunged and stumbled between the huge dark trunks that stood like columns in the mist. Cedar boughs drooped from above, making it twilight where Maggie was trying to pick her way around moss-covered logs. There was a cool green smell like incense everywhere.

But however still the world was around them, there was always the sound of the hounds baying in the distance. Always behind them, always getting closer.

They crossed an icy, knee-deep stream, but Maggie didn’t have much hope that it would throw the pursuit off. Cady began to lag seriously after that. She seemed dazed and only semiconscious, following instructions as if she were sleepwalking, and only answering questions with a fuzzy murmur. Maggie was worried about P.J., too. They were all weak with hunger and shaky with stress.

But it wasn’t until they were almost at the castle that the hunt caught up with them.

They had somehow finished the long, demanding trek down the mountain. Maggie was burning with pride for P.J. and Cady. And then, all at once, the baying of the hounds came, terribly close and getting louder fast.

At the same moment, Jeanne stopped and cursed, staring ahead.

“What?” Maggie was panting heavily. “You see them?”

Jeanne pointed. “I see the
road.
I’m an idiot. They’re coming right down it, much faster than we can go through the underbrush. I didn’t realize we were headed for it.”

P.J. leaned against Maggie, her slight chest heaving, her plaid baseball hat askew.

“What are we going to do?” she said. “Are they going to catch us?”

“No!” Maggie set her jaw grimly. “We’ll have to go back fast—”

At that moment, faintly but distinctly, Cady said, “The tree.”

Her eyes were half shut, her head was bowed, and she still looked as if she were in a trance. But for some reason Maggie felt she ought to listen to her.

“Hey, wait—look at this.” They were standing at the foot of a huge Douglas fir. Its lowest branches were much too high to climb in the regular way, but a maple had fallen against
it and remained wedged, branches interlocked with the giant, forming a steep but climbable ramp. “We can go up.”

“You’re
crazy,
” Jeanne said again. “We can’t possibly hide here; they’re going to go right by us. And besides, how does she even
know
there’s a tree here?”

Maggie looked at Arcadia. It was a good question, but Cady wasn’t answering. She seemed to be in a trance again.

“I don’t know. But we can’t just stand around and wait for them to come.” The truth was that her instincts were all standing up and screaming at her, and they said to trust. “Let’s try it, okay? Come on, P.J., can you climb that tree?”

Four minutes later they were all up. We’re hiding in a Christmas tree, Maggie thought as she looked out between sprays of flat aromatic needles. From this height she could see the road, which was just two wheel tracks with grass growing down the middle.

Just then the hunt arrived.

The dogs came first, dogs as big as Jake the Great Dane, but leaner. Maggie could see their ribs clearly defined under their short, dusty tan coats. Right behind them were people on horses.

Sylvia was at the front of the group.

She was wearing what looked like a gown split for riding, in a cool shade of glacier green. Trotting beside her stirrup was Gavin, the blond slave trader who’d chased Maggie and Cady yesterday and had run to tattle when Delos killed Bern with the blue fire.

Yeah, they’re buddy-buddy all right, Maggie thought. But she didn’t have time to dwell on it. Coming up fast behind Sylvia were two other people who each gave her a jolt, and she didn’t know which shock was worse.

One was Delos. He was riding a beautiful horse, so dark brown it was almost black, but with reddish highlights. He sat straight and easy in the saddle, looking every inch the elegant young prince. The only discordant note was the heavy brace on his left arm.

Maggie stared at him, her heart numb.

He
was
after them. It was just as Jeanne had said. He was hunting them down with dogs. And he’d probably told Sylvia that he hadn’t really killed two of the slaves.

Almost inaudibly, Jeanne breathed, “You see?”

Maggie couldn’t look at her.

Then she saw another rider below and froze in bewilderment.

It was Delos’s father.

He looked exactly the way he had in Delos’s memories. A tall man, with blood-red hair and a cold, handsome face. Maggie couldn’t see his eyes at this distance, but she knew that they were a fierce and brilliant yellow.

The old king. But he was
dead.
Maggie was too agitated to be cautious.

“Who is that? The red-haired man,” she murmured urgently to Jeanne.

Jeanne answered almost without a sound. “Hunter Redfern.”

“It’s not the king?”

Jeanne shook her head minutely. Then, when Maggie kept staring at her, she breathed. “He’s Delos’s great-grandfather. He just came. I’ll tell you about it later.”

Maggie nodded. And the next instant it was swept out of her head as P.J.’s hand clutched at her and she felt a wave of adrenaline.

The party below was stopping.

The hounds turned and circled first, forming a hesitant clump not twenty feet down the road. When the people pulled up their horses they were almost directly below Maggie’s tree.

“What is it?” the tall man said, the one Jeanne had called Hunter Redfern.

And then one of the hounds changed. Maggie caught the movement out of the corner of her eye and looked quickly, or she would have missed it.

The lean, wiry animal reared up, like a dog trying to look over a fence. But when it reached its full height it didn’t wobble or go back down. It steadied, and its entire dusty-tan body rippled.

Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, its shoulders went back and its arms thickened. Its spine straightened and it seemed to gain more height. Its tail pulled in and disappeared. And its hound face melted and re-formed, the ears and muzzle shrinking, the chin growing. In maybe
twenty seconds the dog had become a boy, a boy who still wore patches of tan fur here and there, but definitely human-looking.

And he’s got pants on, Maggie thought distractedly, even though her heart was pounding in her throat. I wonder how they manage that?

The boy turned his head toward the riders. Maggie could see the ribs in his bare chest move with his breathing.

“Something’s wrong here,” he said. “I can’t follow their life force anymore.”

Hunter Redfern looked around. “Are they blocking it?”

Gavin spoke up from beside Sylvia’s stirrup. “Bern said they were blocking it yesterday.”

“Isn’t that impossible?” Delos’s cool voice came from the very back of the group, where he was expertly holding his nervous, dancing horse in check. “If they’re only humans?”

Hunter didn’t move or blink an eye, but Maggie saw a glance pass between Sylvia and Gavin. She herself twisted her head slightly, just enough to look at the other girls in the tree.

She wanted to see if Jeanne understood what they were talking about, but it was Cady who caught her eye. Cady’s eyes were shut, her head leaning against the dark furrowed trunk of the tree. Her lips were moving, although Maggie couldn’t hear any sound.

And Jeanne was watching her with narrowed eyes and an expression of grim suspicion.

“Human vermin are full of surprises,” Hunter Redfern was saying easily down below. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll get them eventually.”

“They may be heading for the castle,” Sylvia said. “We’d better put extra guards at the gate.”

Maggie noticed how Delos stiffened at that.

And so did Hunter Redfern, even though he was looking the other way. He said calmly, “What do you think of that, Prince Delos?”

Delos didn’t move for an instant. Then he said, “Yes. Do it.” But he said it to a lean, bearded man beside him, who bowed his head in a quick jerk.

And he did something that made Maggie’s heart go cold.

He looked up at her.

The other people in his party, including the hounds, were looking up and down the road, or sideways into the forest at their own level. Delos was the only one who’d been sitting quietly, looking straight ahead. But now he tilted his chin and turned an expressionless face toward the cluster of branches where Maggie was sitting.

And met her gaze directly.

She saw the blaze of his yellow eyes, even at this distance. He was looking coolly and steadily—at her.

Maggie jerked back and barely caught herself from falling. Her heart was pounding so hard it was choking her. But she didn’t seem to be able to do anything but cling to her branch.

We’re dead, she thought dizzily, pinned into immobility by those golden eyes. He’s stronger than the rest of them; he’s a Wild Power. And he could sense us all along.

Now all they have to do is surround the tree. We can try to fight—but we don’t have weapons. They’ll beat us in no time….

Go away.
The voice gave her a new shock. It was clear and unemotional—and it was in Maggie’s head.

Delos?
she thought, staring into that burning gaze.
You can—?

His expression didn’t change.
I told you before, but you wouldn’t listen. What do I have to do to make you understand?

Maggie’s heart picked up more speed.
Delos, listen to me. I don’t want—

I’m warning you,
he said, and his mental voice was like ice.
Don’t come to the castle. If you do, I won’t protect you again.

Maggie felt cold to her bones, too numb to even form words to answer him.

I mean it,
he said.
Stay away from the castle if you want to stay alive.

Then he turned away and Maggie felt the contact between them broken off cleanly. Where his presence had been she could feel emptiness.

“Let’s go,” he said in a short, hard voice, and spurred his horse forward.

And then they were all moving, heading on down the path,
leaving Maggie trying to keep her trembling from shaking the tree.

When the last horse was out of sight, P.J. let out her breath, sagging. “I thought they had us,” she whispered.

Maggie swallowed. “Me, too. But Cady was right. They went on by.” She turned. “Just what was that stuff about us blocking them?”

Cady was still leaning her head against the tree trunk, and her eyes were still closed. But she seemed almost asleep now—and her lips weren’t moving.

Jeanne’s eyes followed Maggie’s. They were still narrowed, and her mouth was still tight with something like grim humor. But she didn’t say anything. After a moment she quirked an eyebrow and shrugged minutely. “Who knows?”

You
know, Maggie thought. At least more than you’re telling me. But there was something else bothering her, so she said, “Okay, then, what about that guy who looks like Delos’s father? Hunter Redfern.”

“He’s a bigwig in the Night World,” Jeanne said. “Maybe the biggest. It was his son who founded this place back in the fourteen hundreds.”

Maggie blinked. “In the
whats
?”

Jeanne’s eyes glowed briefly, sardonically. “In the fourteen hundreds,” she said with exaggerated patience. “They’re vampires, all right? Actually, they’re lamia, which is the kind of
vampire that can have kids, but that’s not the point. The point is they’re immortal, except for accidents.”