Highland Son (Highland Sorcery: A New Dawn) (7 page)

Alexander drew his magic along his veins, his fingertips tingled with power.

“Ut-ut.” Sheppard’s gaze flicked to Alexander’s hands, apparently seeing the misty waver distorting the air around him. Somehow Sheppard knew the telltale signs of magic being unleashed. “Think you can release your evil taint faster than Hank can exhaust a round in your friend’s here head?”

“Go,” Ethan shouted, struggling against the men holding him. “Don’t listen to him and go. Get out of here.”

As fast as a coiled snake, Sheppard pulled his blade and slammed it into Ethan’s thigh.

Alexander’s “no!” rolled over Ethan’s cry as his friend sank to his knees where the men held him up by his arms and Hank repositioned his gun’s muzzle against Ethan’s temple.

“Pull your magic back or he dies right here right now,” Sheppard ordered.

Chest heaving, Alexander let his magic recede back into his core. Features gray with pain, Ethan looked up at him and shook his head.

Alexander swallowed. “I can’t.”

“That’s right.” Sheppard yanked his knife out of Ethan’s leg and the young man cried out again, wobbling in the men’s grasp.

“Stop it!” Alexander cried. “I’ve done what you want.”

“Hold your hands out front.” Sheppard canted his head and the guy covering an unconscious Dez stepped over him with a length of rope that he quickly bound Alexander’s wrists together with. He patted him down, talking his empty pistol and pulling out the length of electrical wire he had coiled in his pocket. He gave Alexander a wary look.

Satisfied Alexander was secure, the guy reached in his pocket and pulled out a syringe.

Alexander’s eyes widened. “Wh-what’s that?” He inched back, the tall grass sweeping at the backs of his legs.

“Insurance.” Sheppard smiled. He had all the winning cards in his hands. “Don’t worry, it won’t kill you. It’s just a sedative. Mild, but fast acting. You creatures aren’t too keen on using your magic when you can’t think straight. That’s dangerous for you, right?”

Alexander didn’t answer. His heart pounded hard. Ethan’s eyes were huge. Furious. He shook his head, whispering, “No, don’t. Alexander…” Blood trickled down his leg.

The guy grabbed Alexander’s bound hands and shoved his sleeve up. The tiny prick was followed by a hot white burn moving through his arm.

“Take him back,” Sheppard ordered, calm as a crocodile waiting just beneath the river’s surface.

The guard pulled Alexander back to the backstop, lifted his arms high, and used the rest of the rope to secure him to the chain links. And he was letting him do it. But he couldn’t do otherwise, not with Dez down and defenseless, and that muzzle against Ethan’s head.

The metal of the backstop felt sticky. Turning his head to the side, he realized what he’d thought was rust was in actuality dried blood. Lots of it. He wasn’t the first person that had been brought here.

His kind. An abomination. Jewel…the fear in her eyes.
Did she know about this? What Sheppard and Hank had been doing to any magical wielders they came upon?

The man trudged back across the field to the others, leaving Alexander bound to the fence alone and vulnerable.

His vision went in and out, his focus hazy. He felt weird, his stomach started cramping. The sedative. What were they going to do now? Shoot him like a firing squad? His legs suddenly went out from under him, the tranquilizer messing with his strength, leaving him hanging by his wrists. On instinct, he clawed for his magic. It was a slippery flowing stream he couldn’t grab a hold of.

“Do the others know what you are doing?” he shouted. Suddenly it was very important that he know. Did Jewel take part in this? He had to know, dreading the answer. She couldn’t. He wouldn’t believe that of her. If he was going to die, fine, but he had to know he could believe in her.

Sheppard’s dry chuckle reached him. “Just these few. The others don’t have the stomach to do what needs to be done to ensure their own survival.”

Relief flooded through him. Along with a cold sweat and then intense prickling heat, one sensation after the other. He shivered. His head sank to his chest. It was getting harder to breathe, harder to stay awake and focused.

“L-let my f-friends go.” His words were slurred and so soft he wasn’t sure anyone heard him.

The ground began to spin. Alexander blinked. He heard Ethan screaming. That was unusual. Ethan didn’t scream like that. Not in that pitch. The chain link backstop shook, reverberating behind Alexander’s back, shaking his arms. Painstakingly, he lifted his heavy head and flinched so hard last night’s meal threatened to come up.

He started tugging at the ropes in earnest. The backstop rattled more forcefully as the Sift above him climbed down the chain links like a spider, closer and closer.

Oh he was pished. That’s what Sheppard meant. Leave monsters to the monsters. It all became crystal clear. Sheppard had fed him to the Sifts.

Chapter Five

Dez awoke to Ethan screaming, his voice hoarse with emotion. “You sonsofbitches, let him go! I’m going to rip your throats out! Let him go! Help him!”

Cheek against scratchy weeds, dirt scraped around him, the noise of a scuffle going on. Dez managed to pry his eyes open. Immediately a spike drilled through his scalp and his vision blurred. He could make out Ethan on his back in the dirt, pinned by three men, but fighting with everything he had in him. Sheppard stood there, unperturbed by the disturbance Ethan and the men were making, his focus straight ahead.

An icy chill rode down Dez’s spine.

Planting his palms, he pushed up on his hands, and his head exploded in pain, darkening his vision. He hadn’t gotten more than inches off the ground. He swayed, shaky, yet determined to get these guys off Ethan. His jaw clenched in anger at the distraught curses.

“Alexanderrrr!”

Everything stilled inside him at Ethan’s anguished cry. He jerked his gaze forward…and the world fell out from underneath him.

Alexander slumped against the tall chain link backstop, his arms stretched and bound with rope high above his head. His head that slumped forward as two Sifts fought over his torso, gouging out the young man’s stomach. Blood covered him, covered them. Their rubbery brown flesh was slick with it.

Bile rushed to his throat. Alexander, no, gods no. He couldn’t still be alive, not torn apart like that...

Ignoring the hammering in his head, Dez surged to his feet, fighting to remain conscious long enough to get those damn monsters off of his friend. He made it several feet when a body slammed into his back, taking him back to the ground.

Sheppard’s hot breath washed close to his ear. “Watch, hero. See what happens to those tainted with magic.”

A meaty fist clamped in his hair and wrenched his head back so his line of sight was directly toward the monsters. His brain sloshed inside his scalp and he blinked to right his vision.

Dez tried to shake his head out of Sheppard’s grip. His vision wavered in and out, cloudy. Ethan’s cries echoed as though across a great chasm. Everything was darkening at the edges. Dez’s ragged breathing coated the air in heavy loud strokes.

Before the world closed on him he saw Alexander again as if a mist parted around him, around the backstop. The monsters had him, oh gods the monsters had Alexander. They fought over him, what was left of him, pulling Alexander from the chain link and dragging his body off into the darkness.

Dez screamed, screamed, screamed at the darkness.

The same darkness that crept across the field and claimed him.

~~~

Dez jerked awake. Horrifying images skittered across the dark edges of his consciousness. Alexander dead. Alexander being ripped apart and…shit. Alexander…

Needles of ice dug into his scalp when he lifted his head from the freezing floor. He was lying on cracked bathroom tile, arms bound behind him. Ankles were lashed together as well. The room was cold, the chill seeping into his side from lying on the floor. Looked like a public restroom in the motel that had been left unused by the new inhabitants. If they were even once again in the motel Sheppard’s group occupied. All the urinals were missing from the wall. One of the stall’s doors hung crookedly from one hinge.

He twisted his head for a better look at his surroundings and it felt like a screw twisted straight into his forehead, momentarily blinding him. He stilled, breathing hard through his nostrils until his sight returned.

The first thing he focused on through his returning blurry vision was Ethan. His friend sat slumped beside him, hands tied behind his back around the pipes of an old sink. His thigh was roughly bandaged with a scrap of someone’s torn sleeve. Dried blood had hardened the material.

His eyes were closed, skin flushed with the onset of fever, but Ethan was at least breathing, if shallowly. That was clear from the steady rise and fall of his chest. A ragged bruise darkened the side of his face, swelling the skin around his eye. Dez stiffened, wanting to get a crack at whoever had gone at him. Maybe Ethan was a full grown twenty-something man in his own right, who’d survived worse than the Sifts—monsters weren’t always non-human—but Dez still felt responsible for him. He’d always be that scrawny kid he’d found in the sewers, facing down a hungry wolf with little better than a rock, that kid who startled so easily, jerking away whenever Dez happened to unintentionally come up behind him.

He’d been just a kid himself, only a few years older, but at that age in those circumstances, it seemed like he’d been decades older. Plain and simple, Ethan was his to protect and he’d done a piss-poor job of it, getting himself bashed on the head. Someone was going to pay.

Ethan was his family. The only family he’d had until another scrawny youth had plopped into their lives—Dez jerked, scratching the ropes around his wrists tighter. His head pounded. Alexander. Panic clawed at his chest. And he saw it all again, bright and distorted. The stale coppery taste of fear flooded his mouth.

He saw…

He saw… Alexander…his stomach…shredded to mincemeat.

He felt Sheppard’s fists in his hair, forcing him to watch…

And saw…the Sifts dead, bodies crumpled at Alexander’s feet. A young man was at the backstop, sawing a blade through the ropes, his light hair moving with each swipe of his knife. Alexander…his stomach…not…not being torn apart by slashing brown claws.

Dez blinked, his vision wavering. But he saw… What the hell had he seen?

Others were there too, at the backstop, alert, watching for more monsters, watching them from across the field, faces anxious.

And Jewel. Jewel stood facing outward toward the field and Sheppard, eyes closed in concentration, her arm stretched outward, palm up. The air wavered around them all.

And the other vision was back. Monsters fighting over Alexander’s innards as he sloughed forward.

Dez tried to shake his head in Sheppard’s grip. No, not in Sheppard’s grip. He was on the floor in a cold dirty bathroom, two opposing memories dragging through his head.

Which was real? What was he seeing? What had he seen? He’d seen Alexander die. He knew he had. Ethan’s cries echoed as though across a great chasm. Real? Part of memory? Everything was darkening at the edges. Dez’s ragged breathing coated the air in heavy loud strokes.

Before the world closed on him he saw Jewel again. And Alexander…was whole. Whole but unconscious. The light haired youth had him free and was bending him over his shoulder.

And just like that they were gone and the monsters were back in the field, pulling Alexander from the chain link and dragging his body off into the darkness.

~~~

Dez rocked his forehead against the tile, struggling to pull a breath into his labored lungs, the heaviness of the memories he’d recalled pulling him down into the floor.

He’d seen… He squinted, trying to recall exactly what he’d seen. Alexander ripped apart by the beasts, yet not… He’d seen him saved. By the girl Jewel…and others he didn’t recognize. He twisted his wrists more forcefully against the rope, pulse flaring. He didn’t know what he’d seen. What to believe.

He had to get out of here. Get Ethan out of here. Find out if Alexander was… He tamped that fear down. No, he couldn’t be. Alexander was dead. He’d seen it. The other scenario was just his shocked mind trying to protect itself from the horrible reality of it. Yet…he wasn’t one to shy away from reality, no matter how horrific. You couldn’t survive what he had that way.

What if Alexander wasn’t dead? The kid was all right. He had to be.

A breath stuttered in his chest. “Alexander’s not dead,” he whispered as though saying it out loud made it fact. “He’s not dead.” He wouldn’t allow him to be.

That settled with himself, he shifted into survival mode.

Determined to do what had to be done, Dez pushed all emotion down to the hollow of his gut and went to work. He squeezed his eyes closed and allowed himself a moment to get it under control, get his pulse rate quieted and think about what he could do, not on what he had no control over.

Right now what he could do was get himself and Ethan out of here.

They were both bound by rope. By someone who knew what he was doing by the feel and non-giving of the knots. All right. No weakening the bonds out of this one. But Ethan still had his hidden knife, gods love the guy and his adoration for all weapons shiny, large or small.

Sheppard’s men hadn’t found the thin blade Ethan hid within the outside seam of his pants. Easy reach for him, undetectable for his enemies. It was barely the size of a nail, albeit sharp as any razor. Alexander had teased him mercilessly about the smallness of the blade, but Ethan had just shrugged it off with good humor, a waggle of his dark brows and a crack about not needing to compensate for anything. For a guy like Ethan, the thinnest blade, hidden, always on him, could offer the most security. It wouldn’t do much against the flesh of a Sift, but it wasn’t any Sift that still plagued Ethan’s nightmares.

And right now, if it was still there, it would get them out of this jam.