IT WAS NEARING MIDNIGHT, the darkness illuminated by the light of stars that had appeared from behind broken cloud cover to filter down through the heavy canopy of the trees.
Panterra Qu crouched within a thick stand of brush no more than six feet from where Prue was hiding, her slender body flattened against the ground at the base of an ancient willow, stretched out between tree roots that hid her completely from view. She was covered with leaves and all but buried in the earth, a good choice for concealment from someone hunting them. Pan’s position was more vulnerable, but that was his intent. She had objected, but he had pointed out that her instincts would warn her when whatever tracked them got close and then he could employ his staff’s magic to protect himself. To signal that approach, he had tied a length of string about his finger and given her the other end. When she sensed the danger to be close enough, she would give it a yank to let him know.
But he was counting on the straw men he had built with leaves and brush stuffed inside their extra clothing to draw their stalker’s attention away from where they hid.
Wrapped in blankets and placed back against the trees at the edge of a broad clearing fronted on the far side by the shores of a lake, the straw men appeared to be the boy and girl asleep. It was good enough that it would fool almost anyone, even in daylight.
Still, Pan wasn’t taking any chances. He had his staff ready, and he was expecting to use it.
The minutes crawled by as they waited. An hour passed. Pan scanned the forest over and over, searching for movement. Prue was so still she might have been sleeping. But he knew she wasn’t. She could lie silent like that for hours; he had seen her do it. Her patience was phenomenal, the kind that defied everyone’s expectations. She told him once she had practiced it as a child when there was nothing better to do than sit and watch for birds to land in her backyard. She had been only three or four.
The yank of the string on his finger caught him by surprise, and he yanked back to let her know he was paying attention. He slipped the string from his finger and took a new position, crouched and ready. More time passed, and nothing happened. He scanned the
lakeshore and the clearing, then the edges of the trees and back again, waiting. He glanced repeatedly at Prue, wanting to speak to her, to ask her what was happening.
But it was so dark by then he could barely make out the tree roots between which she had settled herself, and he could not risk giving himself away.
He kept looking and listening, growing impatient. Their stalker still did not appear.
He had passed the point where he thought their plan had any real chance of working when Prue screamed. Her scream was high and piercing and filled with fear, and he reacted instinctively, rolling quickly to one side as he tried to bring the staff’s magic to bear. The attack came from behind, a black-garbed figure catapulting out of the darkness in a soundless rush that told him at once what had happened. Their stalker—a man, judging by his size—had figured out they had laid a trap, circled around through the meres, and come at them from behind. If not for Prue’s scream …
The flash of a knife blade in the starlight banished all other thoughts. He caught the blade on his staff just as the magic flared to life, all of it happening in seconds. He blocked the strike and the magic exploded off the staff and threw his attacker away. But the latter was back on his feet almost immediately. Abandoning his attack on Pan, he turned on Prue who was scrambling up, wanting to help, revealing herself in a way that made the boy’s heart lurch in dismay.
“Prue!” he screamed.
But the attacker was already on top of her, bearing her to the ground, knife rising and falling. Pan was running toward her, aware that he was too late to save her. But to his astonishment, she had somehow managed to roll out from beneath the attack and was back on her feet, her staff held ready. Her attacker was coming toward her once more, but she took his measure and swung her walking stick not at his head, but at his legs, taking them out from under him. He went down, thrashing wildly. Pan had summoned the magic and it flared at his fingertips and along the black length of the staff, but he could not bring it to bear when Prue and her attacker were so close together.
She seemed to sense this and dived to one side as the knife swept toward her. She went down in a hard rolling motion that took her out of reach, and Pan struck out with everything he could muster. His aim was true, and the magic hammered into their stalker with such force that it threw him twenty feet into a tree trunk where he went down in a heap and didn’t move.
Pan stood gasping in mingled shock and relief, painfully aware in the aftermath of the attack how close they had come to being killed.