The Serpent in the Stone

CHAPTER Eighteen

Shaking, Sara clawed at her shirt as if she could wrest the electrical charge out of her body. She still felt it, a singing power surge that raised the hairs all over her skin, the same charge that had been causing her sleeplessness and mad drive to be active. Get out. Get out of me!

She shuddered at the memory of Ian reaching for her arm and sending an electric shock through both of them. The feeling had only gotten worse, as if that near-touch had woken a sleeping demon inside her. Flintrop had used her, used her. The charge hummed along her skin. She sprang to her feet to pace her tent, feeling sick.

Violated.

They need me. They need help, she thought, panting.

Oh, God, he’ll kill Ian. With her heart in her throat, she bolted from the tent.

The moon hung uncomfortably close to its zenith. She swept the deserted moor with a desperate look and started across it toward Faith’s tent, hoping her sister and Ian would be there.

As she reached the stone wall of the ruin, someone grabbed a fistful of her shirt and hair. A hand clapped over her mouth. “Hello,” Flintrop rumbled in her ear.

She gave a muffled shriek and kicked at him. He clamped his other arm around her and pulled her close. “If you can’t see me, you can’t use your power against me, right? Powers, plural, sorry. Where’s your sister and that son of a bitch nature boy? Noticed my little electrical trick, did he? I hope it hurt like hell.”

She struggled again, but he held her harder. “I wouldn’t do that. Unlike you and your sister, I don’t have to see my victim...just touch.” He pulled at the neck of her shirt. His hand slithered inside, over the curve of her breasts, making her squirm and cry out in revulsion. Static fizzled against her skin. He dug in with his fingertips, bruising her until she yelped.

She tried wrenching her head around to get an eye on him, but his hand gripped harder against her face. How did he know about her and Faith?

As if she’d spoken aloud, Flintrop wrestled with her one-handed. He reached into his back pocket, then threw something onto the ground before her.

Faith’s missing journal.

“Your sister keeps impressive notes,” he drawled. “Cameron thought it was just another book. He was going to give it back until Thomas got hold of it and called me.”

He threaded his fingers through the leather lace hanging between her breasts, and drew the amulet out of her shirt. “Thanks for finding this for me. Looking for it had become something of a bother.” He hauled her against him, keeping out of her range of vision. His breath was hot on her ear. “If you have anything to say, you’d better do it now, because the serpent rite starts in about ten minutes.” He removed his hand from her mouth.

Frantically, Sara glanced to the sky. Was it her imagination that the moon inched higher and higher as she watched? Could she stall him? “You can’t do it,” she said. “You need four. What do you have? You? Callander?”

“Michael’s a pyrokinetic. Rivero’s got nothing, but he’s useful. I would have used Becky, but I see you’ve sent her off to the States. Stupid klutz actually thought I was beginning to see some value in her work, can you believe that? Since you’ve deprived me of her help, you’re my fourth.”

She wheezed. Struggling in his arms, she couldn’t even find the concentration to shapeshift. “Is this worth murder to you?”

He crushed her to him. “I had hoped we could do this together. Don’t you wonder what it would be like to have all that power in the palm of your hand?”

“The ley line’s unstable. Alan, don’t do this. It’ll destroy everything!”

He tightened his grip still more. “It only needs stronger blood. Gifted blood,” he whispered. “I’d rather not end it like this, Sara. I still want you.” He ground his hips into her backside.

She drew breath to scream, but a warning crackle along her back made her cut it short. How dare he threaten her! “Let me guess,” she spat. “Faith didn’t have the amulet when you seduced her, so I was next on your sick...little...list!” She punctuated her words by thrashing in his grip.

He dug his fingers into her skin. “You are not going to ruin the work my family has done all their lives.”

She looked wildly around for Ian and Faith, but the moor remained empty. Another glance at the moon confirmed it almost risen to its highest point. Stall, stall, oh God, something, anything. Think! “Your family?”

Flintrop laughed, low and chilling. “My father offered yours a share of the wealth twenty years ago. Robert wouldn’t take it.” He pulled her still closer. His lips brushed her ear, and he dropped his voice to a lover’s whisper. “I was fifteen years old when I first used my power. This is worth murder.”

White-hot rage seized her body. She shook from head to foot and split the air with a scream, kicking. “You killed my father!”

He tightened his arm around her throat. Swinging helplessly, she choked in his grip. “If I have to bleed you of every drop, I’ll do it. You sure you don’t want to be with me? No? All right, then.” He began dragging her into the excavated ruin. Strangling, she clawed at his arms. He kicked her legs out from under her and picked her up so she couldn’t use her feet for leverage. Once they reached the hearth, he set her back down.

Her spine fizzed. Electricity tingled in her nose. She held her breath, afraid to hope.

Flintrop grunted and went rigid. “Let go, or I pull the trigger, you bastard,” Ian said from behind them.

Flintrop’s grip slackened. Sara twisted away with her heart pounding. Ian stood with the point of a rifle barrel jammed in Flintrop’s back.

Flintrop leered at her.

She sprang toward him. “No! Ian, get ba—”

Flintrop spun and shoved the barrel aside just as Ian fired. The shot went wild. Electricity fizzed from his grasp, and sparks raced down the length of the gun. Ian hissed, dropped the gun, and punched him. Flintrop staggered back.

Across the moor, Michael, Callander, and Luis ran from their tents.

Hell had officially broken loose. Sara called on her telekinesis. “Faith, where’s Faith?”

Ian dodged an angry swing from Flintrop and tried to answer, but their adversaries surrounded him.

Glaring at the others, Flintrop snapped, “It’s about time you showed up! Where’s Dustin?”

“I don’t know. His tent’s empty,” Michael said.

Flintrop waved a hand at Ian. “Take care of this annoyance.” He turned on his heel and faced Sara with a malevolent smile. “Time for the show, sweetheart. Remember, you could have been on the other side of this.”

She backed up a step, searching for her sister with no luck. She retreated farther into the rough circle of the hearth, hoping to draw Flintrop away and give Ian an escape route.

Luis snatched up Ian’s gun. With a shrug at Ian, he cocked the rifle. “Sorry, amigo. Money talks.” He put the rifle to his shoulder and aimed it.

Sara tensed. No. NO! She didn’t even get the word out.

A brilliant flash appeared between them. Metal screeched.

Faith appeared between Ian and Luis, swinging Hakon’s sword and knocking the rifle upward. The gun fired into the air.

Thomas sprang toward them. Faith tossed the sword to Ian and threw a hand out. A searing white arc of flame flew from her fingertips. Thomas screeched and whirled away, covering his face. “That’s for Cameron!” Faith snarled.

Ian swung the sword at Michael, then rolled as the man threw a bolt of flame in his direction. “Damn it! Him, too?”

“I didn’t know!” shouted Faith.

Behind them, Sara took another step backward. Seeing Flintrop reach into his shirt pocket, she held out a hand to blast him with telekinesis.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” He jerked her against his body so hard it knocked the wind out of her. She caught the glint of a knife in his hand. “A shame I have to damage this skin.”

Wordless with wrath, she slapped her other hand on his chest and released her power. Whoosh. Flintrop flew backward. The knife sliced along her arm, and she cried out in pain.

Faith scrambled behind the pile of peat bricks they’d been stocking for fire fuel. She seized one and hurled it into the air. Flinging a hand out at it, she set it ablaze. “Sara! Throw it!”

Without hesitation, Sara swept her hand out and sent the peat brick racing through the air at their adversaries. The fiery missile exploded against the ruin’s south wall, and a rain of sparks lit the night sky. Another gunshot split the air. She dropped to her belly as it zipped past over her head. Her heartbeat banged around inside her chest so hard, she thought it might punch holes in her ribcage. Snap out of it! she begged herself.

Faith tossed brick after brick, lighting them as they flew into the air. Sara recovered and sent them rocketing toward Flintrop and his men, forcing them to retreat out of range.

Flintrop barked something at Luis, and tossed his knife. Luis caught it and disappeared into the darkness of the ruin. Sara sent another blazing peat brick toward Michael, who ducked behind the ruin wall and returned it with a volley of flame. We can’t keep this up, she thought frantically.

Thomas lurched in Ian’s direction. For a second, Sara caught the pale flash of Ian’s T-shirt, then lost them both in the shadows. She pushed onto her hands and knees, wincing at the pain in her arm. The amulet swung close to the bleeding gash. With a gasp, she snatched it away.

“Sara!” Faith cried again.

She looked up in time to see three fiery peat bricks falling toward her sister. She flung out a hand, sending them away toward their adversaries an instant before they burst against the ground.

She wrestled upright. An arm snaked around her throat. Choking, she dragged at the ground, but her captor—Luis—hauled her backward.

“Now! Do it!” Flintrop screamed. She looked up, gasping for air around the viselike grip on her throat, and saw Flintrop, Michael, and Thomas stagger into three of the compass positions.

And her, the fourth. No!

Luis jerked the amulet from her throat. With his arms around her, he gripped her injured arm and slashed the knife across her palm. She screamed. Faith shouted something, and then Luis slapped the amulet against her bleeding hand.

The very air tore open. Every hair on her body stood on end. The amulet blazed against her palm. Mindless with pain, she battered herself against Luis’s body. The earth roared open under her feet. Luis released her, and they plunged into the fissure.

The amulet fell from her nerveless fingers. She pounced at the torn edge of the crevasse. Peat and gravel spilled around her head as she clutched at the precipice. The sky overhead boiled with gathering storm clouds and echoed with thunder. Beside her, Luis clawed his way upward and scrambled out of the gap to disappear into the maelstrom.

“Sara!” Faith rushed toward her and threw herself down at the edge of the fissure.

“The amulet! I dropped it!” Sara clutched at her sister’s hand. She squinted into the darkness of the rift, searching in desperation, but could find nothing among the shadows.

“Give me your other hand! Please!”

Sara looked back up. In a flash of lightning, she caught Flintrop’s silhouette behind Faith, tall and confident and with a terrifying snarl on his face. His fingertips snapped with lightning of their own. Panicking, Sara lunged over her sister’s shoulder and cast a bolt of telekinesis that sent him sprawling backward.

Faith seized her other hand and leapt upward, jerking Sara out of the fissure. The ground rumbled under their feet. A line of light exploded open along the crevasse, running the entire length of the island.

Dazed with exhaustion and blood loss, Sara heard thudding footsteps and turned in time to see Michael flying at her. He raised a hand to attack.

From the side came another gunshot. She and Faith ducked in unison. Michael grunted, spun backward, and crumpled to the ground.

Ian came running into the glow cast by the ley line and skidded to a halt with his rifle, panting. A darkening bloodstain spread across the torn shoulder of his shirt. “The sword, where’s the—”

A shining arc of metal swung at his head. Sara snatched his collar, wincing at the electric burn of touching him, and yanked him down as the sword swept over their heads.

Luis swung again. Sara threw another blast of telekinesis that knocked him back just out of range. Tapped, I’m getting tapped. She turned to look for Faith, and then something crashed against her head. Everything went black.

****

Ian lunged to stop Flintrop as the man dropped his stone and reached for Sara’s body. Hardly pausing to think, Ian gripped his rifle in both hands and smashed it in Flintrop’s face. Flintrop lurched back, swearing, his nose pouring blood.

Faith cringed beside him, and even Ian could feel the echo of the ley line’s power running through his body. Gritting her teeth, Faith threw a burst of flame at Flintrop to keep him at bay. “Get the sword. I have to do the incantation.” She whirled and dove into the fissure.

The ley line roared with voices. Pain scorched through him. Ian dropped his rifle and doubled over in agony. Several feet away, Flintrop seemed to be having the same trouble. At least that took him out for now.

But not Luis.

The man charged at Ian and swung the sword again. Gasping for air, Ian just managed to duck the blow and threw himself at Luis’s midsection. They tumbled backward together. Luis struck his head on the edge of a mangled stone wall, and went slack.

Ian grabbed the sword from Luis’s hand and raced toward the fissure.

Flintrop, recovered now, leaped to stop him. Too close to swing, Ian slammed the hilt of the sword into the other man’s temple, and Flintrop collapsed.

Ian dropped at the edge of the fault and reached for Faith. “Get out of there!”

She hung on the edges of stone sticking out in the side of the crevasse, spewing a stream of unintelligible words as she reached one-handed down into the gloom. She stopped her incantation. “The amulet! I’ve almost got it!”

He cringed as the ley line screamed again. “Are you crazy?”

She stretched her fingers out with a look of desperation. The amulet dangled from a broken stone. A tremor shook the earth, and the necklace slipped farther. Her fingers swept by it, inches out of reach. She grasped again, fingers waving at empty air.

He threw the sword down and grabbed her arm in both hands. Another quake shook the ground under his feet.

The amulet plummeted from its ledge. Faith snatched it as it fell, then flung it upward. She grabbed the edge of the crevasse and braced her feet in its trench. “Smash it!” She went right back to her incantation.

He let go of her, grabbed the amulet from the air, and seized the sword from the ground. With the amulet in one hand and the sword in the other, he sprinted toward the nearest stone wall. The amulet hissed as if its engraved snake were real, and he nearly dropped it. Ian slapped the necklace down on the flat stone, spun the sword in his hand, and brought it down on the amulet with a ringing crash.

The explosion knocked him off his feet and ripped the sword from his hand. The earth trembled again. Dirt and gravel rained down on his head. He rolled to escape a slide of stone as the wall collapsed, then grappled to his feet. His breath seared his throat.

The ground convulsed underneath him. Panting, fighting to keep his balance, he searched for Sara. She remained unconscious where she had fallen. Flintrop lay several feet away. Ian ran for the edge of the fault again. “Faith?”

A mass of earth and stone had piled into the fault. He couldn’t see Sara’s sister. “Jesus. Faith!” Ian vaulted into the fissure and began flinging stones away.

“Don’t move it!” she shouted.

Ian froze, and then realized the stones had formed a perfect wedge in the fault. In a crack between two boulders, he saw Faith lying cramped at the bottom. “Hakon’s protecting me. Don’t worry about me. He’ll get me out.”

“Are you serious?”

She coughed as dirt spilled onto her. “Listen to me very carefully, Ian. You’re gifted.”

“I’m what?” The earth shuddered once more. He gripped the edge of the crevasse with his mind reeling. He had to get her out. How was he going to get her out?

“You have power,” she said. “You carry it, but you don’t use it. I need you to say the last part of the incantation. Luis opened the fault. You need to be touching him when you say it.”

“This is crazy.”

She coughed again. “You dream, yes? You know things, and you don’t know how. Ian, we don’t have time.”

Ice raced throughout his body. All the cues, dismissed before now, flooded his mind. His inexplicable pull toward Sara. The dreams of her murdered father. The way his skin prickled when he met Flintrop. “What do I have to say?”

“Just grab him and say terminatus. And Ian—get Sara out of here. She’s pregnant, and that makes her more powerful. They’ll kill her to hold the ley line open if they can.” Silver eyes blazed into his through the crack in the rubble. “Stop them.”

Pregnant. They’ll kill her.

Before he could react, the rift shook, spilling gravel onto both of them. Sizzling air stung in his nose. The atmosphere snapped and guttered. A charge burst along his spine, and the ley line flickered. He braced his feet against the sides of the trench and pitched upward with his heart thundering.

Clouds surged in the sky. The ground screeched again, and he stumbled. Pain spiked in his belly as it echoed the rending of the earth. His breath whooshed out, and he heaved for air that had gone blistering cold.

Sara struggled to her feet, close by the collapsing wall of the ruin. Swaying in the quake’s aftershocks, she lurched away from the fault and dropped to her knees.

Luis stirred and shook his head. His attention landed on Hakon’s sword, and he crawled to it. Picking it up, Luis battled to his feet and stumbled toward Sara.

Oh, Christ, no. I love her.

Ian sucked in a frigid breath, but it wasn’t enough to shout a warning. He forced himself upright and staggered toward them. Luis raised the sword to swing at her. Sara knelt gasping, unaware of the danger. Step, stagger, step...too damn slow! He forced his feet to move faster.

Racing footsteps sounded behind him. Ian glanced over his shoulder. Flintrop dove toward him, his face a livid, bloody mask of hatred.

Ian whirled to avoid his grasp, but not fast enough. Flintrop seized his right arm and unleashed his power.

Electricity fizzed though their point of contact and raced, snapping, up Ian’s arm. His world exploded into agony. He screamed and toppled, reaching even as he fell. His left hand brushed Luis’s arm. “Terminatus,” he gasped out with the last of his breath.

The shock flew, sizzling, from his fingers and into Luis, who gave an earsplitting shriek and crashed to the ground just short of Sara. The sword thumped to the earth.

Ian dropped like a stone.

****

The ground lurched. The screaming of a thousand voices rent the air in a wild surge, and then cut short. Stunned into incomprehension, Sara looked from Ian’s prone form to Flintrop, standing above him. Flintrop’s lips pulled back in a snarl of satisfaction, then he lumbered toward the collapsed wall. He hefted a stone the size of a cement block to his shoulder, then staggered back toward Ian with the gleam of bloodlust in his eyes.

Wrath swept through Sara and washed away her fog of confusion. Trembling, she thrashed to her feet, calling on everything she had left and pouring her fury into it. The shapeshift took hold in a brutal storm. Flintrop’s figure blurred as her human vision gave way to animal sight. She smelled the blood-mad reek of his scent and heard breath whistling in his throat. She opened her mouth to scream, and out came the enraged roar of a grizzly bear. She charged.

Flintrop raised the stone over Ian’s head, growling, and it began to fall.

She plowed into him and took the blow on one broad, flat shoulder, arcing over Ian’s body. Her momentum carried Flintrop backward. Snarling in his face, she hooked an enormous paw around him and scooped upward. The stone tumbled from his grasp. Flintrop sailed into the air and landed ten feet away.

Ian’s rifle lay nearby. Flintrop launched himself at it and turned it on her, then fired.

The shot missed her by inches. She galloped the few strides to him and bashed the rifle out of his hands.

He clapped a hand against the left side of her muzzle and released an electric charge. Lightning exploded inside her head. Bellowing in agony, she jerked backward and swung blindly at him with the last of her strength.

Her strike connected with a thwack, and she heard bones breaking. Flintrop’s body went slack, and he tumbled into the fault. He’s bleeding. Gifted blood.

No sooner had that thought entered her mind than the eerie voices screeched one last time. The ground rumbled, and then all was quiet.

It was over.

The scent of burnt fur stung her nostrils. A tremor ran through her body. She swayed and collapsed, losing hold of the shapeshift, then passed out.

****

When Sara came to, tearing pain settled in behind her eyes. She raised her head. Gooseflesh bloomed along her arms, and she trembled in the icy air. Her breath puffed out in steaming clouds, adding to the fog covering the ground. Her right shoulder throbbed. She didn’t have the strength to cradle it.

A dark haze hovered somewhere to her left. She shook her head, but it didn’t dissipate. She pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. Disoriented, she shuffled forward. Her hand landed on something sharp that sliced along her palm. She snatched it away with a hiss and saw fresh blood welling in a drying cut. Old blood crusted along a gash in her forearm.

A sword lay on the ground before her. She looked along its length without recognition, trying to rid her vision of the partial haze.

The mirror shine of the sword blade, edged with feathers of frost, revealed the reflection of her eyes. Her right eye showed hazel. Her left was green. She blinked, and it didn’t change to brown. She knew it should have, but couldn’t remember why. Confused, she waved a hand in front of her face from right to left. A little more than three-quarters of the way across, her hand disappeared from her line of vision, swallowed by the haze plaguing her.

She had lost part of the vision in her left eye.

Her head pounded. She shook it again, trying to come to terms with the blind spot in her vision.

Faith. Ian. Memory returned, and with it, awareness of her surroundings. Sitting back as if in a trance, she looked around.

The reddish glow of sunrise lanced through the fog, gradually unshrouding the bodies strewn like wreckage across the moor. Michael lay twisted several feet away. Luis was sprawled at the edge of the ruin.

And Ian. He lay face down, eyes closed, limbs thrown askew in the way he had fallen. Dried blood stained the shoulder of his T-shirt. She saw blackened scorch marks on his right arm where Flintrop had touched him, and more on the fingers of his left hand where he had, in turn, passed the shock through his own body to Luis. His hair fluttered in the breeze. No other movement disturbed the silence.

Choking, Sara crawled toward him and clutched at the back of his T-shirt. “Ian.” She nudged him. His body jerked with her push, then lay still again. Her throat tightened to a strangle. She shook him harder. “Ian. Ian!” He didn’t respond. Dark blood collected, glistening and sluggish, in the torn flesh of his shoulder. She bit off a moan. With her hand shaking so hard she could barely steady it, she touched two fingers to the hollow in his throat.

No charge. No pulse. His skin felt cold.

No. No no no no no. “Nooooooo!” Sara balled her fists, nails digging into her palms, heedless of the stinging wound in her hand. She turned her face upward and screamed, long, incoherent, full of rage. Her power burned through her body, humming in her ears, sizzling along her skin...

...but it wouldn’t bring him back.

She let the scream die off, its muffled echoes ringing across the foggy moor. When it faded, an awful emptiness replaced it. Tears surged up and began to flow down her cheeks. She gave a thin howl of misery and crumpled beside his body.

A hand descended on her shoulder. She flung out an arm to decimate her attacker.

Her blow never landed. “Sara, get up,” Faith murmured.

Dazed, Sara raised her head. “Faith?”

Her sister gave her arm a gentle tug. “You’ve got to get up. The ley line isn’t finished closing. Hakon says we have to go right now.”

Weary, chilled, Sara laid her head back down.

“Sara.” Faith’s voice rang through her throbbing skull, and she winced. “Get up right now. You’re pregnant.”

Shock. The return of her senses blasted her back to reality. She whimpered and curled into a ball, folding nerveless fingers over her belly.

Pregnant. The word knifed through her, and she ached. She couldn’t look at Ian’s body. He’s dead, oh God oh God oh God... She rolled and battled to her feet, groaning as her frozen muscles protested the movement. Faith wrapped a supporting arm around her, and a fresh onslaught of tears stung down Sara’s cheeks. Don’t look. Don’t look at him. Just walk. As they staggered away, she caught a flash of white from Ian’s T-shirt. Cutting off a mournful cry, she hugged her belly, and stumbled away with her sister into the fog.

She didn’t know how far they’d staggered when she saw someone approaching through the haze. She swayed, wrestling with her blind spot. “I can’t fight them, Faith. I have nothing left.”

They lurched forward, step by step, to meet whatever came.

Dustin materialized first, sweeping out of the fog in a long coat, with a knapsack and shotgun on his shoulder. He spotted Sara and her sister and shouted, “Lambertson!”

Lamb came out of the haze at a fast walk, which became a jog that overtook the younger man.

Sara turned her head to watch his approach with her good eye. He’s going to kill us, she thought, remembering Ian’s warning about Lamb’s involvement. She halted, swaying on her feet. Faith stopped beside her.

With an oath, Dustin drew to a stop several strides from where she and Faith stood. The shotgun remained on his shoulder.

Lamb reached them in another four running steps. Sara braced and raised her fists. She began sliding into unconsciousness even as a feeble rumble of defiance bubbled from her throat. Her knees buckled.

The older man caught her and swept her off her feet into his arms. The dizzying movement shook the last of her strength out of her. “Sara. Bloody hell! Dustin, radio the helicopter and get it down here. Now! Sara, darling, hold on...”

The waters of oblivion closed over her head once more.