Daughter of the Spellcaster (26 page)

“Oh, honey, these things happen in their own time. You know that. Shall I call your mother for you?”

Lena wanted nothing more than her mother right then. But the memory of that pendant hit her and she shook her head. She would call her mom later. “Molly, you have to get me out of here. You need to call your husband and have him take me to a hospital. Please, Molly. People are after me. After my baby. Please, please, you have to help me.”

Molly’s expression went from friendly worry to downright astonishment, and her comforting smile vanished. “
Of course
I’ll help you! All right, all right now, it’s all gonna be fine. I’m gonna call Larry right now. And Doc—”

“No.” Lena bit her lip. “No. Just the sheriff. No one else. Please, Molly.”

“All right. Okay. If that’s what you want.” She was clearly confused, but at least she didn’t argue. “Let’s get you into some dry clothes before you catch your death. How far apart are the pains, honey?”

* * *

A half hour later Lena was dressed in a warm flannel nightgown, pink with yellow flowers. It had buttons up the front, big, round, plastic ones, and it was fuzzy and soft and comforting. Over it she wore an equally snuggly plush robe, cream-colored, and on her feet, cushy pink slipper-socks infused with aloe, according to the package. Everything was brand-new. Molly had brought them to her one by one, all wrapped in pink-and-blue giftwrap with tiny rattles and baby booties all over it, and the most beautiful ribbons and bows on top.

Lena had been a little perplexed until Molly explained that they’d already been intended for her. There was to have been a surprise baby shower for her that night. But given the situation, Molly had decided that the “little mommy” should have the things now.

There were more gifts, too, from other people. Baby things, wrapped in far smaller packages, but Molly said Lena would have to wait until later for those, as she led her to the biggest, most comfy-looking chair in the living room and eased her into it. “I called Larry, while you were changing,” she said. “He’s on his way. With the roads as bad as they are, there’ve been accidents and such, but he’s not far out. And as soon as he gets here, we’re gonna bundle you into the Explorer and we’ll be off to the hospital.”

“I don’t know if there’s time,” Lena whispered between bouts of pain and pressure. “Maybe we should go now. He can meet us there.” She refused to consider how the ghost or demon or whatever it was might try to stop her from getting beyond its reach. She couldn’t think about that. Not now. This had to work. She had to get away.

Molly smiled down at her. “It’s still a good ten minutes between contractions, sweets. First babies tend to take a while, but even without that, ten minutes apart means you’ve got lots of time. Besides, he’ll be here in fifteen. That’s only one more pain, maybe two. Does everything fit all right?”

Lena lowered her eyes in sheer gratitude. “Everything’s perfect. I can’t remember ever feeling more warm and cozy. Thank you, Molly. Thank you so much.”

“Oh, it’s nothing. I’m just glad you came to me.” Molly smiled. “How lucky am I to be right by your side during this blessed event, hmm? Why, I never expected such an honor.
I
should be the one thanking
you
.” She headed to the kitchen, summoned by the whistle of a teakettle. “Be right back. By the time we finish our tea, Larry will be here and ready to rush us to the hospital—which is, I’ll remind you, only a half hour away. Twenty minutes with lights and sirens. And I think the ice is melting enough to let us go pretty fast.” Lena heard the water pouring, the clattering of spoons against china cups. Then Molly was back and handing her prettiest china teacup and saucer, delicate white porcelain with gold trim and a pink rose on its face.

“These are gorgeous.”

“Aren’t they? They were my grandmother’s. Sip, now. It’s hot.” She took her own cup and saucer, and sat in a chair opposite Lena.

Lena sipped the tea. It was sweet and strong, and just what she needed to warm up her insides to match her outside. She watched the clock, though, jumpy and knowing she would be nervous until she was safely ensconced in the maternity ward. Another contraction started to tighten around her middle. She felt it in time to take one more drink of the soothing tea, then put the cup down on the end table before it gripped her fully.

Molly came to her, bending down to hold her hand. “Five more minutes, honey. Larry will be here in five more minutes. You’ll be fine. I promise.”

She smoothed the hair away from Lena’s forehead, and Lena squeezed her eyes tight and let the pain move through her like a wave, stronger, stronger, peaking, then easing back. As she relaxed again, her eyes still closed, she felt the teacup being held to her lips and took a long, grateful drink. So good.

As Molly took the cup away, Lena opened her eyes and sent the woman a grateful smile. “Five more minutes?” she asked.

Molly nodded. “Mmm-hmm. Now, finish your tea. It’s my own blend.”

“It’s so good I might want another. You have to give my mom the recipe. It’s very soothing,” Lena said as Molly handed her the cup again.

“I’m just going to clear the kitchen while you drink, all right, hon?” Molly said.

Lena nodded and drained the cup as Molly headed toward the kitchen.

Water ran, dishes clattered. Aching, tired, even dizzy now, Lena suddenly realized she desperately needed to use the bathroom. The downstairs bathroom was right across the hall. Molly was busy in the kitchen, but surely she could manage such a short distance on her own. She’d made it
here,
after all.

She got out of the chair without difficulty and into the bathroom, peed—as she had to do at least once per hour at this stage of her pregnancy—and was washing her hands when she glanced up into the mirror over the sink and noticed the odd dark streaks on the inside of the closed shower curtain behind her.

A shiver went up her spine. One of those shivers she just knew better than to ignore. Something was wrong. She reached to turn off the faucet and missed. Her vision doubled, tripled, then righted itself again. And that dizziness was back in a rush, making her sway a little. She had to grab the edge of the sink to keep from falling. She held herself up, cranked off the water and turned slowly around.

The shower curtain was streaked with what looked like a handprint that had smeared something dark in its wake. And there was a smell, a smell that part of her mind recognized and the rest refused to acknowledge.

She grabbed hold of the shower curtain and, clenching her jaw, yanked it open.

Sheriff Larry Dunbar lay in the bathtub, the entire front of his uniform soaked in blood. His eyes were wide open. But they were never going to see anything again. He was dead. Shot in the chest, she thought.

She had to get out of here. She had to pretend she hadn’t seen, pretend she knew nothing, distract Molly somehow and then sneak out the door. She was on her own. Again.

Trembling now, she gripped the knob and pulled the door open.

Molly stood there waiting for her, a quartz crystal dangling from a chain around her neck. It must have been tucked under her blouse before.

“Oh, honey, I wish you hadn’t seen that.”

Lena tried to slam the door shut again, but a big hand loomed into view to keep it open. Molly stepped out of the way. “Did I mention your ride is here?”

Ryan. His face was expressionless, his eyes glassy and empty.

Lena’s head was swimming, and she realized much too late that Molly must have put something into that tea. No wonder it had been so soothing. Her knees buckled, and Ryan reacted quickly, grabbing her shoulders to keep her from hitting the floor.

“My...my bag,” she whispered. “The baby’s things...”

He scooped her up into his arms, carrying her through Molly’s house, past the chair where she’d been sitting, grabbing her backpack on the way. “Meet us at the house,” he told Molly in a monotone that didn’t sound anything like him. And then he kicked open the front door and carried Lena out to that awful black truck.

Her vision blurred, she saw the black cat crouching near the woodpile and hissing as they passed. Then it spun and ran flat out away from them.

18

L
ena was groggy but not unconscious. Whatever they’d used to drug her hadn’t been strong enough to knock her out. She figured they needed her conscious so she could give birth.

They were going to take her baby. And then they were going to kill her.

She fought for coherence, clutched at the console to pull herself up from her boneless slump in the passenger seat. “Ryan, please don’t take me back there.”

“I have to.”

“Ryan, listen to me. This isn’t you. You’re under some kind of—some kind of mind control. Possession or something.”

He stared straight ahead and kept on driving.

“Ryan, they’re going to take our baby!”

Awareness flickered in his eyes. It was brief, but she saw it.

“You’re still in there, aren’t you? I have to reach you, have to get to you. Ryan, dammit, I know you can hear me. Listen to me. Fight this thing, Ryan. Fight with everything you have! Don’t let them take our daughter.”

He turned the truck into the driveway, drove right up to the front door, shut it off, got out. Lena wrenched her door open, trying to get out, intending to run even though she knew she wouldn’t get far. But Ryan was there before she even got both feet on the ground, picking her up in his strong arms.

“Ryan, you loved me before. In that other lifetime. You remember, I know you do. You dreamed it, just like I did. You were racing across the desert to get to me, to
save
me.”

“You died,” he said.

“I know I did. I know. And I’m sorry, Ryan. I died and left you behind, even though you loved me so much. I died and left you just like your mother did. Just like your father did. And I’m sorry, Ryan, I’m so sorry I did that to you. I didn’t want to.”

“I couldn’t get to you in time.”

“I know. But this time you can, Ryan.”

He blinked. She saw it and pressed on. He would hear her, he would come back to her, she knew he would. He had to, and she had to believe in him. Perfect love, perfect trust. What else could that message have meant?

“Don’t you see, Ryan? That’s why we’ve been given another chance. This time you
can
save me. This time it can all come out right for us. Don’t you see?”

His eyes were brimming. Yes, she was reaching him. She knew she was. He kicked open the front door, carried her through and up the stairs. The house was silent. That sent yet another frisson of fear up Lena’s spine. “Mom?” She looked around as best she could, her head heavy, her vision distorted and out of focus. “Mom, where are you?”

No answer. They were at the top of the stairs now, heading down the hall, and she balled up her fist and swung it at Ryan’s head with all the strength she had left. Her knuckles connected with his skull. “Snap out of it, damn you! What the hell have you done to my mother?”

He blinked at her.

“Please, Ryan, tell me you didn’t kill her like Sheriff Dunbar, did you?”

He blinked. “Dunbar?”

“Larry Dunbar. The sheriff. You said you liked him. You trusted him. He was in the bathtub at Molly’s. Someone put a bullet in his chest. He’s dead, Ryan.”

“Dead.”

“Murdered. By the same people who want to take our baby. Who want to murder
me
. The people you’re helping right now. Where is my mother, Ryan?”

He frowned as he carried her through her own bedroom door to the bed, then dropped her down onto the mattress. She scrambled to get up, lunging after him as he dropped her backpack on the floor, walked out and closed the door in her face. Seconds later she heard power tools at work on the other side.

He was putting a lock on the outside of her door. She knew it, knew there was no stopping him, but she pounded on the wood anyway. “Dammit, Ryan, where is my mother?”

No response. She collapsed against the door, giving in to the rush of despair. Tears flowing, she turned around. She needed her bed, just for a minute. Another contraction was coming on. That was when she spotted her mom. Selma was slumped in a chair by the bedroom window, her mouth slightly open, her eyes closed.

“Mom?”

The contraction came on strong, and Lena gripped the bedpost, hugged herself with her other arm, panted and prayed for the pain to pass. It seemed to last longer than the one before. When it eased, breathless, she shuffled over to her mother, fell to her knees in front of her and touched her face. “Mom?”

She was warm. Lena searched for a pulse and gasped in relief when she felt one, then saw the rise and fall of her mother’s chest as she breathed. She was alive, thank the Goddess. They’d probably drugged
her,
too.

Again. There was no longer any doubt in Lena’s mind that her mother had been drugged that first night with something that had localized amnesia as one of the side effects. Rohypnol, the famous date-rape drug known as a roofie, or something like it. Ryan had been right about that.

Ryan. Her eyes burned with tears. She needed him to come back to himself. Back to her. “Back to us,” she said, hands on her belly.

Damn, what was she going to do? She turned, scanning the room for an answer. The phone sat there on the nightstand, and she went to it, even knowing it was probably hopeless.

No dial tone. The phone was dead.

Her cell!

She snatched her backpack off the floor and dug for her phone, but instead she encountered the familiar shape of her enchanted chalice.

Keep the chalice with you at all times. It’s your only hope.

Blinking as she recalled the words of her sister, she took out the chalice and, moving as quickly as she could, given what was happening to her, she tucked it under the pillows on her bed, edging it underneath, plumping them over it.

Then she went back for her cell phone.

The door opened, and Ryan caught her red-handed, on her knees and digging through the bag. Without a word he bent and grabbed it by one strap, then left the room again, taking it with him. Lena curled up on the floor and cried.

* * *

The door opened again and Nurse Eloise Sheldrake came in, old-fashioned uniform, hat and all. She smiled as she bent over Lena, who was still lying on the floor sobbing. The nurse’s eyes were dead. Like the eyes of a shark. Emotionless marbles. Just like Ryan’s. “There now, you shouldn’t be down there. Let’s get you into bed.” Her hands closed on Lena’s shoulders.

“Don’t touch me!” Lena jerked away from the nurse’s grasp.

The woman stood up, hands going to her hips. “Then get into bed yourself. We’re not going to have you giving birth to the Master’s new body on a dirty floor.”

“Get out of my room. You can’t—”

“Dr. Cartwright? Molly? A little help in here,” Nurse Sheldrake called.

Molly and Doc Cartwright appeared in the doorway, their eyes just as dead, just as lifeless. They wore smiles that were sick, frightening, like the plastic grin of a mannequin, and came at Lena, reaching.

She screamed, pleaded, scooted awkwardly away from them, but they closed in around her, and their ice-cold hands clasped and clawed. It was like being mauled by corpses. They picked her up and wrestled her into the bed. A contraction wrapped its iron band around her. Lena twisted onto her side, turning her back to them, hugging the pillows and her chalice beneath them, and burying her face to hide her pain.

When the contraction passed and she dared to sit up a little and look around the room again, Bahru was there, too, smiling down at her. But his eyes were not his own. Not just dead, like the others. Someone else was looking out at her through his eyes. She felt the presence of the house ghost but didn’t see him, and then she knew—he was inside Bahru. He was perhaps, somehow, inside
all
of them.

She gathered her power, reminding herself that she was a witch and he a disobedient spirit. “I banished you from this house! Get out. Get out now.”

“I’m afraid that won’t work. We made your mother take down the wards and open the protective circle,” said “Bahru” softly. “We told her we would kill you if she didn’t.”

“Did you tell her you were going to kill me either way?”

She saw her mother’s body twitch, knew she must have heard, must be coming around. Luckily she was behind the others, who were all surrounding the bed and looking down at Lena. All but Ryan, who was Goddess only knew where.

“Get out of my room,” Lena said, sitting up slowly, calling up the magic from deep inside her. “By the power of Brigit, Goddess of the Forge, whose sacred day this is, I command you! I banish you! Get. Out. Of. My. Room!”

She waved a hand as she spoke, and her bedroom door flung itself open. They all started moving toward it, walking slowly, as if against their will.

Keep pushing, it’s working,
Lena thought.

“By the power of three times three, by witch’s rage, I banish thee!” She repeated the charm as they moved closer and then closer to the door, and then she repeated it again. Another contraction was coming, but she held strong. They shuffled into the hallway. “Be gone!” she said, giving a final push, and the door slammed in their expressionless faces. She pointed her finger, engaging the lock.

“G-good,” her mother whispered. “That was...really good.”

Lena’s gaze shot toward her mother. Her head was up, but she was clearly weak. Puffy-eyed. “Mom!”

“Cast...” Selma panted for breath. “Circle.”

Lena’s entire body was tightening with another contraction, but she lifted a hand, projecting power through it. “I conjure thee, oh circle of protection.
Unh
.” She bent double. “Goddess, I need help.”

“I conjure thee,” Selma said softly, and when Lena could lift her head, she saw her mother’s hand outstretched, her arm quivering, finger pointing. She lifted her own hand to match.

“We conjure thee, oh mighty circle...” Together they managed to cast a circle, and Lena kept adding layers to make it stronger.

“I’ll try to hold it. Call for help, honey.” Selma was rising from the chair, clinging to it with one hand, holding her arm out with the other.

“The phones are dead. They took my cell—”

“Use the chalice, then. Tap into its power. Quick, now, before they come back.”

Nodding, the contraction easing, Lena yanked the cup from beneath her pillows, stared into it, tried to relax her vision, her tension, but it wasn’t easy with a murderous horde outside. “Lilia, I need you. Lilia, please...”

The chalice emitted a swirl of light, and Lena was instantly sucked inside.

* * *

She was in the past again, standing on the cliff, high above the desert. The scorching winds whipped her raven hair and the sheer white fabric that was knotted at her hips. Around her breasts, another scrap of white. Her feet were bare. She had been stripped of jewelry. Her back burned, and she knew she had been whipped. Scourged.

She gazed out across the desert, and she saw him, her prince. He was galloping toward her on a mighty white horse, sending a tail of sand in his wake, and yet still so far away.

“He won’t make it in time, my sister,” said Lilia.

Lena turned and looked into her sister’s eyes. Jet eyes, hair like her own, features more delicate, the smallest of noses and a cupid’s bow mouth. “He has to,” she whispered. Looking down at her flat, bare abdomen, she went on. “I carry his child.”

“I know. But take heart. All is not lost.”

“How can it not be, if we’re about to die?” Lena started sobbing. Lilia rocked into her with her shoulder, almost tipping her over the edge.

Soldiers laughed as she gaped at her sister.

“Look behind us. While your love races to your rescue, mine prepares to meet a fate worse than death.”

Twisting her head around, Lena saw him: Demetrius, once the king’s most beloved soldier, bound and being forced to watch them die. He lifted his gaze, looked right into her eyes, and she saw his heart there. His tortured, tormented, anguished heart. He was a good man. And she knew, somehow, that he had fought to save the three of them. Sisters. Witches. In his rage over their death sentence, he had murdered the very king he served, a man who had been his friend. “It’s cruel,” Lena whispered. “He acted out of love.”

“The fat high priest plans to strip my love of his soul,” Lilia said, her voice breaking on the final words.

“And imprison him in an underworld realm for all eternity,” another woman said. Lena’s other sister. Indira. “But we have a plan.”

“Yes, you must not forget the plan,” Lilia said. “You will live again. Over and over, for as long as it takes, the two of you will return, always witches, always powerful—”

“Always with the same names, so we can more easily find each other,” Indira said.

“And you, Lilia? What about you?” Lena asked.

“I will remain between the worlds, awaiting the right time to call you into action. To save my beloved. To right the wrongs done here this day. To restore you to your own true loves, robbed from you...and your child, the child you carry, Magdalena. She, too, will return to you. But only if we keep our vow and break the curse.”

Lena swallowed hard. “I remember now. When we die and our souls leave our bodies...we will not—cannot—cross over.”

Lilia nodded as Indira picked up the tale. “We must linger here, find the pieces of Demetrius’s soul and steal them from the high priest. In magical tools we will embed them, bind them to us, and then hide them away on the astral plane, waiting to be restored to him one day.”

“I understand,” Lena said. And she frowned, because she was...remembering...the future. As she stood on that cliff, things that had not happened yet filtered into her mind like memories. “Indira’s tool was the amulet.”

“Yes,” said Indira. “I’ve returned that to him. And in doing so, I freed him from the Underworld. He entered through the portal.”

“My turn is next, then. And I’m to—” Lena felt her eyes widen, and the child within her kicked, though it was far too young. “I’m to return the second piece of his soul and restore Demetrius to human form. I’m to give him...a body?”

“Yes,” Lilia said. “You see? You
do
remember.”

“But he wants my baby for his body! He wants my baby! He wants—”