Taken (8 page)

She ran as fast as she could with her heart in her throat and her vision blurred by tears. A leaf-filled hole grabbed her right foot. She lost her balance and fell sideways, wrenching her ankle.
 

~***~

Channie didn’t know how long she’d been sitting on the ground, her throbbing ankle propped on a fallen log, when Hunter found her.
 
But it had to have been at least two hours. She’d spent the first ten minutes calling for Josh, but either he’d already left, or he was ignoring her. Either way, she felt betrayed and royally pissed.
 

“Hey, girl, what you doing sitting in the dirt?”

She wasn’t in the mood to deal with Hunter right now, but she needed his help. “I fell and sprained my ankle.”

He glanced at her foot — obviously not concerned — then leaned over and ducked his chin to peer into her eyes. “Why are you so mad?”

“Quit reading my energy.”

He sat down beside her, but kept a respectable six inch space between their shoulders. “Where’s City Boy?”

Channie swallowed her tears before they reached her eyes but couldn’t force any words past the lump in her throat. She pressed her lips together and shook her head.

“You two have a spat?”

She nodded.

“Come on. I’ll walk you home.” Hunter stood up and helped Channie to her feet. He frowned when she held her right foot off the ground. “Do you want me to carry you?”

“I can walk, if you help me.”

Hunter bent his knees and draped her arm over his shoulders. “He’s probably sitting by the fire pit, waiting for you.”

Channie’s traitorous heart leapt at the thought then fell back to her stomach. “He took his keys.”

“I swung by to cast another misdirection spell on the cedar grove on my way over here. His bike’s gone, but his vehicle’s still there. He ain’t gone too far.”

“You might be surprised.”
 

Josh couldn’t get away from that damn shack fast enough. He stomped down the trail to the grove of cedar trees that hid his car. The sight of the crumpled metal infuriated him. He’d been upset the first time he saw it, after the blizzard — more like devastated — but he’d hidden his dismay. He didn’t want Channie to feel guilty. A surge of blood heated his neck and face. Why was he always so careful to protect her feelings? She sure as hell didn’t care about his.

He grabbed his helmet and shoes out of the back seat and geared up then leaned against the side of the car and loosened the red knob holding the front-mount brace in position. He unlatched the strap over the rear tire, grabbed his bike by the frame and gasped when a sharp pain shot across the front of his leg. He wrestled his bike to the ground and leaned it against the car before letting go.
 

A jagged piece of metal from the crumpled rear quarter panel had sliced a six inch gash through his jeans and across his thigh.
 

It wasn’t too deep, he’d had worse, but it hurt like hell and it needed stitches. He held the edges of the cut together and swore. He wished he knew how to heal cuts the way Channie had healed the back of his head.

A flash of pain — more intense than the initial injury — made him cry out and let go of his leg.
 

A thick, pink scar crawled across his thigh like a worm, sealing the wound. It was tender when he first touched it, but even that sensation faded away as he traced it from beginning to end.

“Whoa. Wait till Channie sees this.” He turned towards the shack, but before he took a step, her words echoed in his mind.
“Well, I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
 

She’d made him feel like some kind of selfish pig that had purposely used her body to satisfy his own needs without caring about hers. He’d tried to make it last but there was just no way. It wasn’t like he couldn’t do it again. But when he tried, Channie shoved him off her as if his touch disgusted her.
 

What did she expect after an entire month without sex? He’d known from the start that Wisdom’s stupid plan wasn’t going to work, but Channie refused to even talk about it.

That’s what it always came down to — whatever Channie wanted. She’d knocked his entire life off course.
 
All those years of training every day and racing every single weekend … wasted. All those injuries and surgeries and excruciating physical therapy … It was all for nothing.
 

He should be meeting with his coach and sponsors, planning the next step of his career, focusing on the Olympics.

Instead, he was stuck out here in the middle of nowhere,
married,
and doing his best to figure out how to use magic so he could protect Channie. He was still committed to that goal, and to her, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t take one lousy afternoon off and do something he wanted for a change.

He wiped the dried bird poop off the bike’s saddle, then pressed on the cross bar to test the tires. The rims hit the ground. He swore again and gave the bike a shove then spun around and kicked his car.
 

Josh took a couple of deep breaths then leaned over to pick up his bike. If his sponsors had seen the way he’d thrown it to the ground, they’d all have massive heart attacks, or aneurysms or both. Sponsors … ha. He didn’t have sponsors anymore. Channie had taken care of that. Why couldn’t she have waited until after Grands to run away?

He still couldn’t get over the fact that he’d come in dead last in his first moto. In his whole career, every time he’d been the last off the track, he’d left on a stretcher. And even then, it had never been his fault. The last time was two years ago. Some idiot on the outside lane had tried to pass him on the first turn and bumped his rear tire. The next thing he knew, he was tumbling down the track like a rag doll in a washing
 
machine.

That’s how he felt right now. His entire life was a disaster. He was headed for a deadly collision at break-neck speed and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it except ride it out and hope the landing didn’t kill him. But standing around feeling sorry for himself wasn’t going to help anything.
 

The electric pump was in Dad’s car. The floor pump was in the back of Mom’s 4-Runner. But Josh had a mini-pump in his tool-kit. It wasn’t very efficient, but it worked and the physical exertion helped calm him.
 

He locked his car and shoved the keys in his front right pocket, then reconsidered and tossed them on the driver’s seat, leaving the car unlocked. If he fell, he didn’t want to get stabbed by a damn key.

Time to ride.

Josh felt better immediately, but he needed to find the zone — that place where his body, mind and bike became one with the earth beneath his tires. But the magic roiling in his gut, his
power-well
— what a stupid name — was distracting. He pumped his legs harder, but the zone escaped him.

When Mom told him she and Dad were splitting up, he’d ridden all the way to Longmont before he found the zone, but he did find it. He just hoped he’d have the stamina to find it today.

He’d ridden for about two hours when he came across a well worn path. This was no game trail. “Alright!” It was a mountain bike course with wooden ramps, dirt berms and all sorts of natural and manmade obstacles. Josh wasn’t a mountain biker, but BMX skills translated well to the sport and it was just the sort of challenge he needed.

He gave it everything he had and pushed his body beyond the limits of good sense to reach the top of the trail. It opened into a mountain meadow the size of Mile High Stadium.
 

January wasn’t exactly tourist season, so Josh was stunned to find someone had pitched a tent and built a campfire in the middle of the clearing. Two horses, tied to a tree stump, lifted their heads and stared at him. Strands of dried grass stuck out of the sides of their mouths like whiskers. The hair on the back of Josh’s neck stood on end as he hit the brakes.

His shield snapped into place before he even realized there was another mage nearby. When the curse hit him, it knocked him over, bike and all, but it also ricocheted off his shield.

Someone screamed. Josh hoped it was the mage that had cursed him. It wasn’t.

The man was on Josh before he could click his feet out of his clips. He pinned him to the ground and pressed a knife against his throat.

“If you so much as twitch, I’ll slit your throat. And if you try to curse either of us, the other’ll shoot ya. Got it?”

Josh nodded.

“Now, lower your shield or die.”

Josh dropped his shield.
 

A blast of power, like a hammer to the brain, knocked him out cold.

When he came to, Josh was tied up and propped against a tree stump in front of the fire. Two men were arguing. He recognized the mage that had attacked him and assumed the other guy was the one that had been hit by his deflected curse. He shut his eyes and pretended he was still unconscious.

“He might be one of them Kerns.”
 

“He’s dressed too rich to be from around here. That hard-hat he’s wearin’ is worth more than everything you own. He ain’t no Kerns.”

“He might know something about ‘em. We have to at least interrogate him.”

“If anyone does any interrogating, it’ll be me. The less you know about him the better. I don’t want you to let something slip when we get back. If the Queen finds out we caught a stray mage and didn’t haul his ass back to Kentucky so she can interrogate him, she’ll kill us both.”

“Then we should take him back.”

“And leave our post? If the Queen cain’t get no useful information out of him, she’ll kill us for dereliction of duty. Either way, we’re screwed. We have to kill him.”

Josh focused on controlling his breathing, but he couldn’t do anything about the trembling.

One of the men said, “Hey, he’s awake.”

Josh opened his eyes.

A thin man in dirty jeans, broken down cowboy boots and a scraggly red beard studied him from across the fire. He scratched the hair under his chin then spit a stream of brown fluid into the fire. Chewing tobacco. Gross.

The man said, “Good morning, sunshine. Who might you be and just what’re you doin’ in this neck of the woods?”
So much for not interrogating him.

Energy pulsed in Josh’s power-well, but before he could even try to curse him, someone hit him from behind. Not hard enough to knock him out again, but hard enough to turn his vision grey around the edges. Waves of nausea vied with pain for his attention.
 

The tobacco spitting man said, “None of that, or I’ll just have to let Jimmy here have his revenge. He ain’t too happy with you for cursing him.”

“I didn’t curse anybody. All I did was raise my shield. It’s not my fault he’s too stupid to shield himself during a fight.” Josh’s head pounded with every beat of his racing heart. What was he thinking? Insulting these men when he was at their mercy? Talk about stupid.
 

The man threw back his head and laughed. “Jimmy? Shield hisself? That’s a good one.”

“Shut up, Ryder.”

Ryder spit another stream of tobacco juice, hitting Jimmy in the chest.
 

Jimmy scrambled to his feet, calling Ryder all sorts of nasty and creative names, but he didn’t do anything about the insult except wipe the nasty stuff off his coat with a dirty red bandanna.

“Jimmy here ain’t much of a mage. But he’s a damn good tracker and a helluva good shot with a pistol. Lucky for him, his tracking ability manifested at an early age or his momma would’ve put him in a gunny sack and drowned him like a sick dog.”

“You shut up about my momma. You don’t know nothin’.”

“I know she don’t want you hangin’ around reminding folks of her weak bloodlines while she’s trying to marry off your ugly sisters.”

Josh wouldn’t have minded if Jimmy and Ryder dueled it out, but he didn’t want to get caught in a crossfire of magic and bullets.

He said, “Look, I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot. Why don’t you untie me and we can start over?”
 

“What clan you belong to boy? And what’s your name?”

“I belong to the Smith clan. My name’s Jet.”

“What’s your power-name?”

“Jet is my power-name. It’s why I’m so fast. And that’s why I’m here. I’m practicing for a race.”

The man’s eyebrows shot up. “A race. What sort of race?”
 

His enthusiasm reminded Josh of Channie’s father’s and gave him an idea. “Have you ever raced against a man on a bike? How fast are those horses?”
 

Jimmy said, “Oh no you don’t. Either we kill him, or we take him back to Kentucky.”

Ryder said, “Go get my horse.”

“What are you gonna do iffen he gits away. We already ruffed him up. I don’t want to start no feud with the Smith Clan.”

“There ain’t no Smith clan. And even if there were, he ain’t gonna git away. Ain’t no way some kid on a bicycle is gonna outrun me on a horse. This won’t be much of a challenge, but we been stuck out here for months without so much as a whiff of any of them damned Kerns. I’m bored.”

Josh could barely conceal his relief. But it was short lived. All they had to do was backtrack and it would lead them straight to Channie. His trail was so obvious, even the misdirection spells wouldn’t stop them. Wisdom had warned him about this very thing. Why hadn’t he listened?

Jimmy said, “I ain’t in the mood to go chasing no damn monkey-on-a-bike all over the damn mountain.”

“So don’t go.”

“Let’s just kill him now and be done with it. I wanna take a nap.”

“Fine. Take a nap. But I’m gonna have me a little fun. I ain’t never chased nobody on a bicycle.”

Josh turned to Ryder and said, “If you’re bored, why not make it more interesting and give me a ten minute lead.”

He grinned but Jimmy said, “Five minutes. That’s all you get.”

Josh swallowed and nodded. He seemed to be doing a lot of that.

Jimmy’s foul breath burned Josh’s nose as he leaned over to untie him. “No funny business. Or I’ll skin you alive then hang your hide out to dry.”