Legacy & Spellbound (42 page)

Maybe Kari wasn't as exciting as Holly, but she sure as hell was more loyal. She'd stayed in the coven even though it had meant risking her life, and had offered her apartment as the place to hold Circle until
things got too dicey. She hadn't signed up for any of that, but she'd stayed on board when the others needed her. All she had wanted to do was go to grad school, be Jeraud Deveraux's lover, and learn a few bits and pieces of his magical tradition.

How was I to know his family was into Black Magic?

It was as if she were being punished for having ambition. Wanting to learn about things that would stretch her limits; needing to explore beyond the mundane world… .

You knew,
she told herself harshly.
You knew about his family. Somewhere deep down, you accepted how bad they were.

No …

And you always felt guilty about your relationship with him. He's so much younger than you. You were using him, because it was always a bargain between you and him—pleasure for magic.

Hey, not a bad trade for either of us, and he was old enough to know what he was doing …

… and then you fell in love with him, for real.

Tears welled.

Now Holly's gone completely dark. If I don't stop her and Michael Deveraux, they'll kill us all.

The car suddenly hydroplaned; she felt the water lift the wheels from the road and rush it forward. It
teetered and threatened to carom in a circle, and she cried out, swerving, riding the current until, miraculously, the wheels found the road again.

She had ignored dozens of warnings on TV. A number of people died in New Mexico's flash floods every year, many of them while driving. It appeared that everyone else had stayed home; she could see no other lights in the darkness, though for a time, strange, fiery plumes had bellowed from the tops of concrete towers way off in the distance, as if from some kind of refinery.

There they are again,
she thought, squinting through the windshield. Then she gasped.

They weren't like the plumes she'd seen before. These three towered much higher in the sky, and they glowed with the radiant blue of magical energy.

As she watched, they flickered, vanished, and reappeared again, more brightly this time.

They're closer,
she realized.

They went out again, reappeared again.

And closer.

She stopped the car.

The three plumes rushed into being about ten feet away from her car, illuminating the black highway, casting the interior of the vehicle in blue light.

“Oh, God,” she whispered. Her breath caught in her throat.

Then the flames extinguished. Before she had time to react, fire banks erupted on either side of the car, at ground level, their blue fire geysering past her line of sight and piercing the rain-soaked heavens.

Kari screamed aloud, inadvertently jerking the steering wheel to the left and pushing her foot down on the gas. She kept screaming as she headed straight for the wall of blue flame, pulling her hands off the wheel and raising them above her face. She shut her eyes tightly, screaming for all she was worth.

Then the car began to hydroplane again; or at least that was the sensation she felt. She dropped her hands back onto the wheel and opened her eyes.

Although still pelted by the rain, her Honda was now entirely surrounded by the blue glow. As the individual flames whipped and undulated, she had a clear view of blackness outside her window; she craned her neck and looked down.

Tinted a dull yellow, a thin stretch of highway was visible, and beyond it, the twinkling lights of a town.

Oh, my God, I'm flying,
she thought, throwing herself away from the window. She whimpered and stared out the front window, then the other side. Without realizing what she was doing, she raised her feet off the floor.

Huddling behind the wheel, she murmured a
protection spell. The car dipped, and she shrieked. Then it righted itself and kept going.

As the flames separated, she saw again the pinpoint lights of the town through the driver's side window. The car was gliding away from them, and toward the vast expanses of the uninhabited desert.

What if it drops me? What if I land in the desert and the car gets swept down an arroyo, and I drown?

“Goddess, help me,” she murmured, clenching her hands as one did in Christian prayer. She felt no reply, no comfort. She never had. She wasn't certain there was a Goddess. She didn't know who made the Coven's spells work. Or who answered the summons of the Deveraux. She had begun her exploration of magic as a folklorist, and she was aware that, despite popular assumption, the religious varieties of Wicca, paganism, shamanism, and other magic-using traditions employed slightly different interpretations of their supreme deities. One witch's Goddess was not necessarily the same as another's.

On impulse she reached forward and turned on the radio. The noise of the heavy rains had made it nearly impossible to listen to the faint signals she had managed to pick up.

There was nothing, not even static.

She pushed the horn. It, too, was dead.

“Help!” she shouted. “I'm sorry!”

And she
was
sorry. She felt a flood of guilt and remorse, although for what, precisely, she wasn't certain. But she knew deep in her soul that leaving the coven and trying to find Michael Deveraux had been wrong, no matter what her reasoning had been.

No matter what lies I told myself. And now I'm going to pay. Now he's found me and he's going to kill me, because that's what he is, an evil killer, and … and … what the hell was I thinking?

Batted by the rain, the car glided along. Kari began to cry—huge, heavy sobs that forced her stomach to contract. Bile rushed up into the back of her throat, making it burn; when she tried to swallow it down, she found she couldn't. She sat with her teeth clenched, crying harder and harder, until she was wailing like a crazy person.

Next she heard herself reciting the Lord's Prayer by rote, without a thought as to the words and what they meant. It was simply a reflex from childhood, and although once she realized what she was doing she listened carefully to the words, she found no comfort.

All the gods and Goddesses have left me,
she thought bitterly.
These are demons I have to face alone.

Literally.

She had no idea how long she floated along,
buoyed by the magical glow, but she gradually grew exhausted from all the crying, and her head began to bob forward. Fuzzy images drifted across her closed eyelids—happier times with Jer, holding hands and smiling at each other; getting slick and dizzy in the sweat lodge. Kialish and Eddie were there, and now they were both dead… .

Oh, God! I'm so tired of all the dying! I'm so scared!

Then she heard the screech of birds and opened her eyes. She caught her breath and swallowed hard, balling her hands into fists in her lap, then gripping the steering wheel—as if doing so made any sense at all.

Surrounding the car, their bodies sheened with moonlight, dozens of falcons flew on either side of the car. One ticked its head in her direction; its eyes glowed bloodred, and it opened and shut its beak like an automaton. She shrank back, blinking at it. It continued to stare at her, then shut its beak and straightened its head.

Next, she heard a strange sound that she took to be her own heartbeat, a rhythmic
whum-whum, whum-whum.
She listened, pressing her palm against her chest. The two sounds were out of sync. Her heart was beating much faster, and she realized the sound was coming from outside of herself.

She stared at the vast flying field of birds.
It's their
wings,
she realized, terrified. The birds were soaring in unison, each one's wings undulating up and down, up and down, in the rain; as she stared, a picture formed in her head of galley slaves chained to tiny benches below the decks of a great barque, raising and lowering massive oars to the steady beat of the oar master.

Whum-whum, whum-whum …
and then the sound slowed and blurred; she felt her head fall back against the seat. Though her eyes remained open, she no longer saw birds and night sky and the moonlight. Her field of vision shimmered; colors ran like rain on a chalk painting, and then a new place burst into her reality; and a new … or very old … time.

A very old time.

France, the 13th Century

“Allons-y!”
cried the splendid man on horseback. It was the heir of the House of Deveraux, Jean, and this was the Great Hunt that would provision his wedding feast. He was to be married this very night to Isabeau of Cahors, daughter of the Deverauxs' witchly rival in the region.

And then he will think of me no longer,
Karienne thought dismally. She rode her horse astride like a man, at a discreet distance. Though most in the Hunt retinue knew her to be his mistress, they also knew
that she was being cast aside. He must save his manly virtues for the marriage bed, and get a child on Isabeau as soon as possible. It was the unspoken bargain between the families.

As always, Jean was astonishingly handsome. His ermine-tipped cloak fanned over his saddle and the cropped tail of his warhorse. The rider raised his left gauntlet into the air, and the magnificent falcon, Fantasme, which had been perched there, hurled himself into the golden sky and flew toward the dense thicket just ahead.

A cheer rose from the hunters, mixing with the steady rhythm of the drummers who walked ahead.
Whum-whum-whum,
their measures bold and merciless.
Catch and kill, catch and kill …
For the moment, they sought birds, and hares, and bucks.

But soon they would begin to flush out the serfs who would be sacrificed to the Horned God this very night.

Whum … whum …

Karienne lifted her chin and sternly denied tears from welling in her eyes.

I have pride. I am still beautiful.

But had I the chance, I would kill that bitch of the Cahors, and magick him into taking me to wife …

Had I the chance …

Had I the chance …

Whum-whum … whum …

With a sharp gasp, Kari opened her eyes and raised her head off the back of the seat.

Whoa, was that a dream? It was so real. Did I actually go back in time? Was I … was some part of me actually Jean's mistress? Because, in a very weird way, that would make sense given what's been going on with all of us these days… .

She had no time to consider it further. The car tipped downward, floating at an angle toward the ground. The birds' wings continued to flap steadily, and the car was surrounded with the same blue glow as before.

Frightened, she put her foot on the break, then realized how silly that was, and took it back off. She forced her breathing to slow down—she had begun to hyperventilate—and whispered to herself, “Karienne.”

With that, the rain stopped abruptly, as if someone had turned off a faucet. One moment the sky was clashing with the storm, the next … peace.

The metal of the car
ticked-ticked-ticked
as the engine cooled down. Kari caught her breath again, and slowly exhaled. Her heart was throbbing in her chest; she could hear it roaring in her ears.

The car continued to descend. To her right, a soft yellow light glowed through the darkness, and she
made out the low-slung angles of a New Mexican– style adobe building. A path wound its way toward the structure. Otherwise, the landscape was barren.

As she gazed at the building, she saw over its silhouette the gauzy images of trees and lush under-growth. It was the forest of her dream.

The wings of the birds echoed the drumbeats of the Hunt.

Slowly, one by one, the birds began to fade, and then disappear. The forest vanished as well. Soon, only the car and she remained in the sky, and the dimly lit building below.

It appeared to be the front entrance to a house. The ends of large logs extended from either side of the entrance, and there were three steps leading up to a front door, which appeared to be made of wood.

It's got to be Michael's house,
she thought.
He's brought me to him.

She made no sound, only stared hard at the door, bracing herself for it to open. On impulse she made sure all her car doors were locked—they were—and then she smiled grimly at how ridiculous that was. The futility of it. Whoever was behind that door had made her car
fly,
for heaven's sake.

Her unhappy smile had not yet faded when the lock on her door unclicked by itself.

Then it swung open.

“No way,” she murmured. She didn't touch it, didn't move. Her heartbeat grew even more rapid, and she began to breathe so shallowly that she began to get dizzy.

The door remained as it was, insistent that she get out.

Fresh tears welled in her eyes, and her face prick-led with fear. A dizzying wave washed over her; she hadn't realized how exhausted she was from fighting the storm, and she had no reserves to deal with her terror.

After a few more seconds, she tried to move, but she remained strapped in place. She still had on her seat belt. It took a supreme act of will to unfasten it, her shaking fingers pressing uselessly until she grimaced and pulled herself together, jabbing it so hard, she broke her nail. The belt slithered back into the retractor like a serpent.

The lights on the porch glowed. A cold wind whipped sand against her thigh, and Kari finally stirred. As if leaping from the car, she swung her left leg out, found her footing on loose gravel, and scooted the rest of the way out of the car.

Unsteadily, she straightened up. Her gaze fixed on the house, she shut her door and made her way around
the front of the car, her hand extended as if she were admonishing it not to turn itself on and run her down.

Then the rain started again, drenching her from head to toe. She cried out and shielded her head. In the frigid torrent, she felt her makeup sluice down her face, all in one piece, as if it had been a mask.