Mind Games (34 page)

“No one knows you’re here,” Rick hissed into my ear when we came into view of the funeral pyre they’d prepared for me and Bethany. “No one’s coming to save you. Bethany’s house is on fire even as we speak, and you can bet everyone will be preoccupied with that.”

“Why would I need someone to save me?” I asked loudly enough for all the men to hear. “Don’t you believe I’m a witch?”

“Is that a confession?” Pastor Roberts asked.

“Disappointed?” I asked. “You wanted to beat it out of me, maybe? Or press stones on my back until I told you the moon is made of blue cheese? Or maybe you want to toss me in the pool to see if I float?”
Pastor Roberts stalked up to me and slapped me, hard, across the face. The sting of it shook my entire body. I had to bite my tongue to keep from crying out, but I didn’t make a peep of protest.

“Cassie,” Bethany said in barely a whisper. “Don’t taunt them. They’ll kill you.”

“They plan to kill me anyway,” I said. “Don’t you? You’ve already tried and convicted me. This is just the execution.”

“Tie them to the stake,” Pastor Roberts said. He turned his back to me, blissfully unaware that he’d just solved half my problem – how to get into the fire before my flame resistance potion wore off. I had no idea how long it would last, but the sooner I put it to use, the better.

That only left the other half of my problem – saving Bethany. They hadn’t frisked me to find the two vials of flame resistance currently warming my breasts. But if the men tied my hands, I couldn’t get the vials out to pass to Bethany. The question was, should I try to make a mad dash to pass it to her now, or try to taunt them into leaving me unbound at the stake so I could do it then?

I turned to Bethany for inspiration. Her eyes were full of tears, her entire body trembling, but she looked me in the eyes with a sort of helpless resignation. No one held her arms as they did mine, apparently not finding her as threatening as they found me. Rick held a gun on her, and that seemed to be keeping her in line.

I looked her in the eyes, trying to communicate without words for her to be on alert. She frowned, but I had no way of knowing if she understood my silent message. I couldn’t wait to find out, either.

I made my move. With a sharp downward slash of my hands, I freed them from the slackened grasp of the man who held them, lulled into a false sense of security by my complacence and calm. I didn’t feel calm anymore. Bethany was only a few feet away, but they stretched like miles in my mind as my feet made a mad dash for my target.

I jogged regularly to stay in shape, but I almost never sprinted. I wasn’t all that fast, which made the element of surprise vital for what I had in mind. I reached inside my low-cut shirt to yank one of the potion vials out. I almost dropped it, but I managed to grasp it just as I swept past Bethany, nearly knocking her over.

She wasn’t my target, or so I hoped the others would believe. I slapped the vial into her hand, not pausing to see if she had grabbed it before I moved past her to tackle Pastor Mueller to the ground.

Angie’s father had not expected to become the object of attack. He toppled backwards onto the ground with a heavy thud, and his head crashed against the grassy earth. I pulled my arm back, made a fist, and smashed it against his nose. It broke with a satisfying crunch.

That was all the time I had. Three men pulled me off the pastor, kicking me in the shins until I went down, and then kicking me in the stomach and ribs.

I didn’t restrain my cries of pain this time. I cried to distract them from watching Bethany, who I desperately hoped had received the potion and understood what to do with it. And I cried to release the pain. Their kicks were brutal. Relentless. They brought tears to my eyes and bile to my throat.

When I felt two of my ribs crack, I thought I had pushed them too far. That they would kill me before I ever made it to the pyre.
Stupid move
, I chided myself,
the potion is only good for fire
. But I had needed to pass the potion to Bethany somehow.

Breathing was difficult now, almost as difficult as thinking. Then one of the men kicked me in the head.

I blacked out.

* * *

When I came to I felt like hell. My head throbbed. My chest almost burned where my ribs had cracked or broken. I might have picked up a few new injuries while I was unconscious, too.

My hands and arms were bound to the stake set in the middle of the pyre. I felt Bethany backed up against me, though I couldn’t see her.

“She’s awake,” someone said.

Apparently, they had been waiting for me to regain consciousness. They couldn’t burn me without letting me feel the pain, now could they?

I already felt pain. Every place on my body that had received a kick felt sore and my chest still burned where my ribs had cracked. My head hurt now, too. Throbbed, more like it.

I found my quiet place, trying to push aside the pain. I needed my wits now more than ever.

How much time had passed? I searched the night sky, but it was a new moon, meaning I could tell nothing from its position in the sky. It could have been minutes or hours, for all I knew. If the latter, I would die in this pyre. If the former, I still might. It all depended upon how well I had brewed that potion.

The scent of gasoline assaulted my nose; the wood was drenched in it. The second someone threw a match onto the logs at my feet, I would have my answer.

Did I want them to hurry up, or delay? If my time was up anyway, I wanted as much as possible. My heart began beating faster in response, trying to beat a lifetime’s worth of blood in its few remaining seconds.

Pastor Roberts held a box of matches in his hand. “Would you like to beg God for forgiveness before you die? You still have time.”

Did I? I licked dry lips with a raspy tongue that felt like glue.

Pastor Roberts struck a match at the same time he arched an eyebrow at me.

“Light me up,” I said. “If I’m a witch, you can’t burn me.”

“Stop!” someone shouted. It was a high, feminine voice that came from the direction of the resort. I knew it. It belonged to Angie.

What the hell?
I wanted to tell her to leave, but I was also curious what she thought she was doing.

“I’ve called the police. They’re on their way.” She held up a cell phone, as if to prove the point.

The six men stood as still as statues. All but Angie’s father, whose face turned white.

“Angela Marie,” he said. “What have you done?”

“What I should have done in the first place,” she said.

“She’s lying,” Rick said, although he didn’t sound like he believed it.

“String her up with the others,” Pastor Roberts said.

Pastor Mueller whirled on him. “No! She’s my daughter.”

“She betrayed us.”

“And I told you not to involve her in this,” Pastor Mueller replied.

“I couldn’t pass up the chance to get a Scot! They’ll know we can beat them now.”

Their argument barely registered to me. I had eyes only for Angie, who looked small and forlorn in the dim orange glow of the porch light. She had just turned her back on her family and friends, and she knew it. The truth pooled in her eyes, and fell in droplets down her cheeks.

“If you’re going to kill me,” I said loudly enough to be heard over the argument, “you’d better do it now. I think I hear sirens.”

I didn’t. It was a lie. But the sheriff could be a good ten or fifteen minutes away and I suddenly didn’t want to wait that long to test the potion. I didn’t delude myself into thinking they wouldn’t still throw the match. It was just a matter of when. And of how many of us were tied to the stake.

Pastor Mueller seemed to realize that last point as well, because he snatched the box of matches from his colleague. He struck one and tossed it onto the gasoline-soaked logs before anyone had a chance to add his daughter to the inferno.

I closed my eyes and held my breath. Off in the distance, I thought, I might actually have heard the sound of sirens. Or maybe that was some strange near-death flash of hope. Someone had helped save me from nearly every other scrape I’d gotten myself into, but this time, I stood on my own.

The flames were painfully hot. They licked at my feet, my legs, my arms, my head… engulfing me in heat. I smelled gasoline and burning pine.

The potion hadn’t worked, I thought. I was going to die.

I opened my eyes, finding myself surrounded by flames. I couldn’t see for the fire, which was greedily gobbling up every fuel source in sight. My clothes were burning. And the rope binding me to the stake.

It wasn’t quite as painful as I would have expected. Yes, it was hot. I wanted to flee, but it felt more like the moment of warning when you get too close to a fire. Except the moment stretched on and on, never wavering.

Then, suddenly, the ropes fell away. I fled the fire, looking back just long enough to see Bethany also twisting free of her bonds.

Then I turned to the white-faced men who had tried to burn me alive. At least two of them had guns, Rick and one other, but they had them holstered. Unprepared.

Good. Then they wouldn’t see what was coming until it burned them. I was hot. I was fire itself. I remembered how hot Nicolas had been when he’d emerged from Sarah’s house, and a smile twisted my face. Did the dear pastor, who had gotten burned on that occasion, remember?

It didn’t matter. I went for the men with guns first, scorching them with my radiant heat until they fell to the ground. Then I knocked the guns away from them.

I turned to the other four, but they weren’t waiting around for the same treatment. They fled into the lodge. I started to follow but I became aware of the loud scream of sirens, not approaching from a distance, but very nearby.

Backup had arrived.

* * *

The next few minutes were pure bedlam. Deputies stormed the house to arrest the four men who had fled inside, but they weren’t the only ones to arrive at the scene. Several carloads of parishioners had come in on their heels and were putting up a fight. They didn’t notice me at first, naked as the day I was born save for a layer of soot. I made my way toward Pastor Roberts, who was being led outside by two deputies. His face remained ashen, and when his eyes fixed on me, everyone else stopped to stare as well. Silence began to fall in waves as people noticed me standing there, alive.

I didn’t have to raise my voice. “Perhaps God didn’t want me dead.”

The pastor spluttered. “You’ve used magic to save yourself.”

“Magic couldn’t save your wife when you sentenced her to burn.” I didn’t know if the pastor had started the fire or not, but I no longer cared. Whoever had struck the match, the dear pastor had, in fact, done the sentencing.

Even the deputies went still. Everyone seemed to be holding their breaths.

“She chose her own fate,” Pastor Roberts protested weakly. “She couldn’t banish the devil, so she purified her soul by sacrificing her body.”

“And you helped her.”

“Of course. I’m a man of God.”

The crowd wasn’t silent anymore. Murmurs and gasps rippled through their ranks. When the deputies began herding the pastor toward the car, his former allies let them pass.

Sheriff Adams came right up to me and held out his jacket, averting his eyes while I donned the oversized garment, which fell to mid-thigh on me.

“That was a stupid thing to do,” he said.

“Yeah.”

He turned to look at me, a smile lighting up his face. “But amazing.”

I smiled, broadly.

Sheriff Adams lifted his eyes to something behind me. “I believe your boyfriends have come to fight over which one gets to save you.”

Whirling, I saw Matthew Blair and Evan Blackwood approaching, staring daggers at one another. But they were too late. I didn’t need them.

I didn’t need them. Either one of them.

“Your hair,” Matthew said when he reached me, raising his hand as if to touch my scalp.

I backed up. “Will grow back.”

“Of course,” he said. “Let me take you home.”

Evan opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off. “I don’t need you.”

Matthew grinned, but I wiped it off his face in the next moment. “I don’t need you, either.”

Freedom. I felt, in that moment, the most incredible sense of freedom. I’d never felt so powerful or so capable in my entire life. I’d done this. No one else but me. I could have died, but I hadn’t, and now it felt as if I were waking from a dream.

Exactly as if I were waking from a dream. I stared at Matthew for a long time, trying to decide when the dream had begun, but not quite able to place its origin. For a startling, melodramatic moment, I wanted to think that I’d been dreaming my entire life, but I knew that wasn’t true.

“Cassie,” Matthew said, his voice silky, “you’re in shock. Let me help.”

I shook my head and backed up a step. As I did, the engagement ring grew hot. Grasping it firmly with my other hand, I yanked at it, but it wouldn’t budge.

Evan smiled. “That’s right, Cassie, fight it. You know it’s happening. Now fight it.”