Magic Time: Angelfire (8 page)

I was pissed. First, I tried to distract everybody by yelling and jumping up and down. They didn’t even hear me. Then I concentrated on Goldman. I walked right up in front of him, but he just stepped around me, staring at the Pied Piper like he was having some sort of religious experience.

Only force made sense at that point. I grabbed Goldman by the collar of his flea-bit buckskin coat and threw him into the bushes. He landed hard, but when he came up I had his attention.

“What was
that
? Dammit, Colleen, I need to find out where they’re going!” He clambered up and started after the parade.

I kicked his feet out from under him and brought him down again. “You’re bewitched, you idiot! The music that guy is playing is magic or something.
Don’t listen
!”

“Jeez, Colleen, of
course
it’s magic. That’s why I’m following him. That music has
power
.” He tried to rise.

“No shit.” I yanked him back. “Come on, Goldman, show some
cojones
here. Fight it. Don’t let him get to you.”

He was shaking his head.
“No, no, no, no,
no
.
You don’t get it. I’m not bewitched, Colleen—at least not the way you think. I see what he’s
doing
. What
she’s
doing. Either they’re working together, covering each other somehow, or he’s drawn her in with the rest of them.”

“What the hell are you babbling about? She, who? Who’s working together?”

“Them—the two of them. The Bluesman and the flare.”

I jerked my head up for a glance down the trail after the Pied Piper and his fans.
Shit
, I thought,
he’s hallucinating.
Doc hadn’t prepared me to deal with this. I had not clue one about how to deal with this.

I took a firm grip on his shoulders. “Look, Goldie. There is no flare. There’s just a guy with a guitar, hypnotizing people. Hypnotizing
you
. You’re seeing things.”

He blinked at me, looking confused for a few seconds while his wheels spun and whirred. Then he said, “You’re wrong, Colleen. I’m not seeing things. There
is
a flare. She’s
hovering over the guy’s head. She’s creating some kind of— of aura around him. Don’t you get it? Somehow the Source hasn’t found her—hasn’t taken her.”

He tried to move again and I tried to hold him. It wasn’t easy. Goldman is tall, built like a big, lanky cat, and is about as hard to pin down. He struggled half to his feet and dragged me about a yard while I fought to make him hear me.

“There’s no flare, Goldie! Listen to me—
there is no flare
!”

“I can see her. Why can’t you?” He twisted and pulled himself half loose. “Come with me. I’ll show you.”

“That’s part of his power,” I panted, digging in my heels. “Maybe he … he makes people see whatever they want to see—whatever will make them follow him.” Sounded good, anyway. I wondered if I dared risk concussing him with a swift kick to the head.

He stopped struggling, catching me off guard. I could hear the wheels again—
whir
,
click
,
whir
. “Now that almost makes sense,” he admitted, “except for one thing. I didn’t want to see a flare. I wanted to see
Tina
. This isn’t Tina. This is someone very different. Someone I’ve never seen before.”

“Then why can’t I see her?”

He rolled his eyes and laughed. “Why can’t penguins fly? They’re birds. Birds fly; penguins can’t fly. Does that mean penguins aren’t birds?”

Brain freeze. Goldman used my paralysis to break free. I didn’t react in time and ended up on my keester. While he ran for the trail, I was trying to drag myself out of the shrubbery.

Cursing, I lit out after him. He was faster than I expected and seemed to have a homing beacon on the blues dude. He cheated—cut corners, crashed boonies. This made him easy to track, but harder to keep up with.

By the time I caught up again, he was right back in the pack, as close to the guy as he could get, staring at the empty air over his head like there really was a flare up there. And all the while, Mr. Blues kept serenading his audience, wrap
ping his music and his voice and his words all around them, trussing them up like holiday turkeys.

I flashed on a dream I’d had last night—the one that had kept me from sleeping. I was a marionette. We were all marionettes. Off to the west, this faceless puppet master stood at the top of a dark, glittering tower with our strings in his hands and made us dance toward the sunset. In my dream I was
hungry
to go west. Awake, I knew that if we didn’t go west, we’d never find Tina, or have a hope of understanding what was happening to our world, or have a chance to undo it or fight it.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Suddenly, I was pissed again. Who was this guy and where was he taking these people? And why? What did he have to gain by hypnotizing Goldman, or that woman and her little boy, or that girl? The only answer I could think of made me even more pissed: he was a slaver. It was the only thing that made any sense.

I spent a moment swamped in a hateful, sticky confusion. I had to do something, but I didn’t know what. There were half a dozen people here; I couldn’t exactly run up and knock them all senseless. I had to cut the strings at the source. I pulled my machete, gave a wild-eyed whoop and launched myself at the Pied Piper.

It was like slamming into an electrically charged rubber wall. Something absorbed my attack, then kicked back like a mule. Fireworks went off behind my eyes. Lights flashed, chased, spun. I was spinning, too—through the air—head over heels over head.

I slammed upside down and backward into the trunk of an evergreen. Pain—bright, sharp, shattering pain—shot up and down my right side. I roared aloud and waited for a fall that never came. I was stuck to the trunk of that tree like a damned fly in sap; only it wasn’t sap that held me. My legs and feet were tangled in a network of branches, and something held me tight against the trunk.

Looking up along my right side, I bit back a whimper. A broken limb had pierced that side of my jacket from the
back and gone through the sweater and camisole underneath, knitting fabric to flesh. The shattered point stuck out through the jacket just above my waist, stained with blood.

Panic galloped from one end of my body to the other. It took me a long, crazy moment to rein it in. I was still breathing, I told myself. I hadn’t punctured a lung. I wasn’t dying; I was just stuck and hurt… and alone in a forest where feral shadows roamed.

And I
was
alone. The music was gone. Goldie’s blues guy had blown me six ways from Sunday and strolled off, singing, into the sunset.

I took a calming breath and tried to figure out which was holding more of my weight—the network of twigs or the broken branch. My money was on the branch.

I pulled my chin almost to my chest, trying to see. Pain flared, making the sparks of light behind my eyes dance and twirl. I reached up and felt along the branch stub. Maybe I could somehow wriggle out of my jacket and get free. Tilting my head back, I peered at the ground. It was a lot farther than I’d hoped. Okay, maybe I could just fall a dozen feet onto my head and break my neck.

I looked back up at the limbs and branches at my feet, hoping to see something sturdy. There was nothing within reach that would hold my weight.

I jerked my left leg. It came free in a shower of pine needles. The world tilted dangerously and my side screamed.

Whatever I did, I had to do it fast, before I passed out. I closed my eyes, took as deep a breath as I could, and grabbed the stub with both hands. I’d count to three, then I’d try to get my other leg free.

“Don’t move.” Strong hands gripped my shoulders.

I felt weak enough to weep. “Damn it, Goldman. I thought you’d gone south.”

“West, actually, but no. I heard you screaming.”

“I didn’t scream. Not out loud, at least.”

“Really? Well, then you have very loud angst.”

I opened my eyes and looked down toward the ground.

He was looking up at me through those strange redwood eyes, his hands still on my shoulders.

“I’m going to climb up onto the branch behind you there.” He pointed up toward my feet. “Then I’m going to grab your legs. I want you to try to ease yourself off that … snag. Don’t worry about falling. I won’t let you fall. I promise.”

I hated that I felt reassured. “Shit, Goldman, don’t be maudlin. Can you even climb a tree?”

“Never tried. But I figure if I can climb a steam pipe, I can climb a pine. Hold on,” he added, and disappeared from my line of sight.

There was some scratching and scuffling behind me, then I was hit by a shower of pine needles and bark. I prayed there were no loose pinecones up there. A moment later he had a tight hold on my ankles.

I dared to look up at him. All I could tell was that he had somehow woven himself into the branches behind me and wrapped his arms around my legs.

“Okay,” he grunted, “now, see if you can’t get your clothes free of that snag.”

“Problem. My clothes aren’t all that’s caught.”

He was silent for a moment, then murmured something under his breath. “What can I do, Colleen?”

“A knife,” I said. “Mine’s in my boot. Little hard to reach just now. If I cut the jacket away from the branch, might help.”

“Okay, hang on.”

The branches creaked and groaned, I felt him fumble with my boot. A moment later something hit the ground.

“Shit,” he said, then, “Sorry. I guess you’ll have to make do with mine. Reach up toward me. I’m going to slip the knife into your hand, hilt first.”

I reached. He got his knife into my palm without cutting either of us. It was smaller than mine—lighter. The handle was held together with duct tape. I prayed the tape would hold. I slipped the blade into the torn fabric at my waist and sliced.

The fabric slit so easily it caught me by surprise. I shot
downward—only a few inches. There was a muffled snap and pain shot around my rib cage. I went cold all the way to the bone. It couldn’t be a broken rib—it couldn’t.

“Colleen?”

“It’s okay,” I panted, chasing the quivering, icy feeling out of my chest with hot determination. “I just slipped.”

“I’ve got you,” he said. “I won’t let you fall. Try to get free.”

I bit my lip and started hacking at the jacket. Finally, it slit all the way to the hem and fell away from the snag. I pushed gently on the broken branch; something tugged and my side shrieked.

“Oh, shit,” Goldie said.

I didn’t want to look. I had to look.

“I can’t see,” I said. Stars danced in front of my eyes; I fought blackness.

“Don’t look. You’ve got a splinter in your side.”

I almost laughed. A splinter. How mundane. I pulled my head up so I could see. I was a mess. The good news was that I hadn’t impaled myself on the main branch, but on a shard about two fingers thick. I could see the bloodied tip angling out over my ribs. The bad news was that the other end was still attached to the branch.

“Give me the knife,” Goldie said.

“Goldman, if I give you the knife, how are you going to hold onto me?”

“Good point.” He shifted his grasp on my legs.

I shuddered as the splinter twisted in my side.

“Damn! Sorry. Okay, now give me the knife.” I felt him take careful hold of the blade. “Let go.”

I did, and gladly.

“This will no doubt hurt like hell,” he informed me. “Are you ready?”

“Jeez, Goldman—what a question. No, I’m not ready. Cut the damn thing.”

A kitchen knife is crappy for sawing wood. It took him several agonizing minutes to saw through the thing. I bit my lip, ground my teeth, growled, and panted like a dog. The splinter broke free of the tree in one final twist of agony.