Witching Moon (22 page)

Pain shot through her head. The same kind of pain she'd felt just before Adam had snatched her out of the way of the pickup truck.

SARA'S HEART LEAPED
into her throat as a car shot straight toward her out of the darkness, its lights off, and she knew it wasn't some driver losing control. Last time the witches had been playing game with her. But this was no game. This was for real. They were trying to kill her. Fear might have paralyzed her. But anger and determination were stronger. She was damned if she was going to let herself get run off the road along a deserted stretch of highway. She wasn't going to have a fatal accident here. She was going to see Adam again. She had to see Adam again!

Without conscious thought, her mind called out to him, even as she yanked the wheel to the right.

Luckily she had already slowed her speed. Still she whizzed along the shoulder, bumping over potholes, grazing tree trunks, hearing metal tear off of poor old Miss Hester as she pressed on the brake. She threw up her arm to shield her face as the car bashed into a tree branch, then lurched to a halt against the trunk of another tree.

The impact sent her flying forward. Then the seat belt caught and pulled her back again.

She sat behind the wheel, dazed, struggling to drag in a full breath, thankful that nothing worse had happened. Looking over her shoulder, she tried to find the car that had come out of the darkness and crossed the double yellow line, barreling toward her. But it was gone.

With a shaking hand, she unbuckled the seat belt and leaned back against the headrest, trying to bring her emotions under control. Miss Hester's engine had stopped, and she doubted it would start again. And even if it would, driving would probably not be such a great idea.

The danger was over. It should be over. But it didn't feel that way. Through the windshield, she peered into the darkness. Too bad she didn't have a cell phone, because she was alone on this deserted stretch of rural highway, and there was no one to help her.

But she was pretty sure she was only a quarter of a mile from Nature's Refuge. That would be an easy walk.

Her fingers closed around the door handle, but some deeply felt instinct kept her from getting out of the car.

Out in the darkness, she felt eyes were watching her. And she knew who they were.

The bad witches. The ones who wanted to hurt her, and she didn't even know why.

Her chest tightened with apprehension, and she reached to snap the door locks shut. But how much protection would that be?

Oh God, Adam. Adam, help me,
her mind screamed—although she didn't know where he was or what he could do.

But he had pulled her out of the street the first time the witches had attacked her. And she clung to that memory, clung even harder as another terrible pain arrowed into her head.

They
were doing it. She felt them, even though she could see nothing as she stared into the darkness. Mist rose from the surface of the road now. It spread beyond the blacktop, obliterating underbrush and tree trunks, turning the landscape into a strange, forbidding place. A place of terror and black magic where anything could happen.

Through the car windows, she strained to see into the darkness and caught a flicker of movement, forms gliding through the trees. People. Like apparitions in a horror movie.

They were coming toward her slowly, slowly, ghosts moving through a graveyard, the horror movie effect magnified by their black-hooded cloaks. But it wasn't their physical bodies that threatened her.

Ahead of them, they were sending a wave of pain that filled her brain, swamped her senses.

Her hands clenched. The pressure inside her skull was too much. She was going to die. Right here in the car along this fog-shrouded stretch of road. And everybody would think that the auto accident had killed her.

That thought brought a wave of anger pounding through her. Those bastards! They had made her crash. But they weren't going to kill her.

She roused herself. Leaning forward, she sent back her own wave of energy, instinctively fighting the pack of witches with their own paranormal weapon. She saw them pause, saw their hooded heads turn toward one another. One woman raised a hand toward her face.

Sara had momentarily stopped them. But her feeble weapon wasn't enough. The coven started moving forward again, and Sara felt an invisible noose was closing around her neck, choking off her breath.

She struggled to send another energy burst. And she managed some kind of power surge. But it was like trying to put out a forest fire with a garden hose.

She was still choking, still gasping. Still on the verge of passing out, when suddenly the pressure lifted. She struggled for breath, sitting forward and peering out of the windshield, trying to figure out what had happened.

Through the fog she saw a gray shape charging at the black-hooded figures. An animal. She saw it leap on one and then another, knocking them down, sending high-pitched screams through the group as they flailed at the marauder with their arms and kicked at it with their legs.

The animal looked like a large dog. Or a wolf.

And in that moment of recognition, she knew she had seen that wolf before. In a daydream. A daydream that had overtaken her after she had arrived in Wayland. She'd been standing at the kitchen sink. And her mind had gone back in time. She'd stepped into her mother's life. She knew that now.

But it hadn't just been her mother. The wolf had been there, too. Warning her of danger.

She was pulled back to the present by the screams of the witches echoing through the night as they scattered into the swamp. She watched the wolf chase one of the men, nipping at his legs, almost knocking him to the ground.

The coven was in full flight. Probably the wolf could have killed at least one of them.

Instead he turned and raced back toward the car. He reached her door, standing with the mist swirling around him, staring up at her through the window. And she would have sworn that he was begging her to tell him she was all right.

She should have been terrified. He had savagely attacked the people who had come to hurt her. But she felt a kind of awesome calm settle over her. In her heightened state of awareness—her witch's state of awareness—she knew who he was.

It made no sense. But she knew the wolf was Adam, and that he had come in response to her call for help, come to her with no regard to what might befall him.

Last night, the reverse had happened. She had known he was in danger. And she had been terrified. Then she had seen the sheriff's boots and called out a warning. But she hadn't seen Adam. Now she knew why. He had been a gray wolf in the darkness, and her mind had rejected that vision.

Tonight it was impossible to turn away from the knowledge of the wolf. Man and animal were the same. She was staring down at him through the glass when flashing lights in the rearview mirror suddenly captured her attention.

A police car. The wolf saw it, too.

He waited for a few more seconds, then turned and dashed away, disappearing into the fog. And she was left sitting in the car, breathing hard, trying to deal with the unthinkable.

Paul Delacorte stepped out of the police car and came toward her car, shining his light through her window.

She raised her hand to shield her face, and he directed the beam away from her.

“Dr. Weston? Are you all right?”

She opened the door. “Yes. I…I had an accident.”

“Are you all right?” he repeated.

“I'm all right,” she assured him, trying to keep her voice steady.

“Please get out of the car.”

She did, wanting him to know that she hadn't been driving under the influence. As he shined the light on her, she started shivering.

He moved the beam away from her and inspected the damage. “What happened? Did you fall asleep?”

“No.”

He played the beam around the bottom of the car, then at the trees along the side of the road, then onto the blacktop.

“Did you swerve to avoid an animal?”

“No.”

He made a more thorough inspection of the area, then came back to her.

“I always call for an ambulance. But it looks like you don't need one.”

“No, I don't.”

She waited while he spoke into the microphone clipped to his collar, canceling the emergency vehicle.

She was debating what else to say to him, when more headlights cut through the night.

A surge of fear shot through her. She was sure Delacorte caught her contorted features. Then he turned toward the newcomer pulling up in back of the police car.

It couldn't be the witches coming back, she told herself. Not now. Not when the sheriff was here. But logic had nothing to do with the sudden chattering of her teeth.

She cringed against the car, then breathed out a small sigh as she saw who it was—Adam, looking disheveled, as though he'd just thrown on his clothing.

A feeling of unreality seized her as she stared at him. He had been here only a few minutes earlier. He had come to her rescue. But the last time she had seen him, he had been a wolf.

She fought off a jolt of hysterical laughter. If she thought he had been a wolf, she had another reason to doubt her own sanity. Yet she knew it was true.

He ran across the road, his eyes fixed on her, yet he stopped a few yards away, and she knew that he was hesitant to approach her, now that she'd seen the wolf in action. Then another thought struck her. She hadn't said anything to him. He didn't even know for sure if she had recognized him.

Yet she felt unspoken messages passing between them.

A sane person would be afraid to get near him now. But she wasn't frightened of him. Really, she was more afraid of herself.

“Adam.” She raised her hand toward him, and he closed the distance between them, taking her in his arms.

“Are you all right?” he asked, and she felt the question rumbling deep in his chest.

“Yes.”

“Thank God.” He pulled her tightly to him, and she leaned into his warmth. He was here. He had come to her again. Even when he didn't know if she was going to run screaming from him.

His hands stroked up and down her back, and she knew he must feel the fine tremors of her body.

Behind her Delacorte was speaking. “I was trying to find out what happened.”

She turned to face the sheriff, letting Adam hold her against his body. “I…I…” She stopped and started again. “A car was coming toward me. I swerved off the road to avoid it.”

The lawman looked around. “I don't see another car.”

“It managed to keep from hitting me. I guess…” She stopped, wondering what to say.

Adam filled in the gap. “What I think is that the witches were lying in wait for her. They forced her off the road. Then they came to finish her off.”

Her head swung toward him. Then to Delacorte. Then back.

 

FALCON
gripped the arms of the easy chair.

“What the fuck are you doing? Trying to burn my skin off?”

“I'm trying to disinfect this bite,” Willow answered as she dabbed antiseptic on his mangled flesh. “You don't want to end up in the hospital, do you?”

Falcon gritted his teeth as she slopped more of the stuff on the places where sharp teeth had punctured his skin. He had a bunch of deep bites on his legs.

So did the rest of the clan. They were gathered in the living room of the house where a big plastic sheet hung between them and the construction mess.

Until a few days ago, the addition had still been open. Now he was profoundly glad that the house was secure and that the wolf or dog or whatever it had been couldn't get in.

“What was that thing?” Razorback asked, echoing his thoughts.

“I don't know. But it was something strange,” Starflower answered.

“It was a dog gone mad,” Razorback said.

“And it came streaking out of the night and started tearing at us just when Sara Weston needed help,” Starflower said. “Don't you think that's a little convenient for her?”

“What are you saying?” Falcon demanded.

“Maybe she's the kind of witch who has a familiar. In fairy tales, it's a cat. But maybe she's got a damn wolf.”

“Oh yeah, right,” Razorback said, trying to sound sarcastic and not quite pulling it off.

“If it's true, it's another reason we have to get rid of her. Because next time, that wolf of hers could rip us to pieces.”

 

“WHY
would the witches be after her?” Delacorte asked Adam in a slow, careful voice.

Adam watched Sara drag in a breath. He thought she was going to speak, but she evidently changed her mind and closed her mouth. He pulled her closer and filled the silence by saying, “I think they're afraid of her.”

“Why?”