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I was about to turn and try to make some sort of desperate stand against Grimes and Hazel when I spotted a wide opening in the trees up ahead. I'd long ago lost track of where I was on the mountain, but maybe I'd managed to stumble onto some sort of forest service access road.
There might even be an ATV nearby that I could flag down or hotwire, if it came to that - As I burst out of the trees, I immediately had to put on the brakes. The opening before me wasn't a road. It was a cliff.
I skidded to a stop just in time to keep myself from plunging over the edge. I stared down, and I remembered something important from Fletcher's maps that I'd forgotten: the river flowed through Bone Mountain.
The Aneirin River twisted and turned through Ashland and the Appalachian Mountains that ran around and through the city. I didn't know if this was the river itself or one of the many mountain streams that fed into it. Although stream was a bit of an understatement, given that the water was at least thirty feet wide and white and frothy with rapids.
Oh, yes, I remembered seeing the river on Fletcher's maps of the mountain. I just had no idea that I was this close to it - and no idea how to get across it.
Because this wasn't any old ridge that I was standing on top of; it was a bona fide cliff, with a sheer, vertical, three-hundred-foot drop to the water below. Not exactly your usual summer swan dive. Still, I might have considered it if I hadn't been so low on my magic. But I couldn't risk it. Not now. I'd have to find some other way off the mountain - Crack!
While I'd been gaping at the rapids below, Grimes and Hazel had closed the distance between us. The first shot clipped the back of my left shoulder and spun me all the way around.
Crack! Crack!
The next two bullets thunked into the front of my vest, making me stagger back.
One of my feet slipped off the rocks, and I had to windmill my arms back and forth to keep from teetering the rest of the way over the side. Finally, I managed to catch my balance and stumble away from the edge, although I probably shouldn't have bothered, since Grimes and Hazel slowly approached me. He was still holding his rifle, while yet another ball of elemental Fire flickered in her hand. There was no way I could get a shot off with my own rifle without both of them unloading on me first.
"Well, well, well," Grimes crowed in a triumphant voice. "It looks like we've cornered us a pesky little varmint. "
Instead of responding, I glanced over my shoulder at the rocks and rapids in the canyon below.
"Oh, now, don't be like that, Ms. Blanco," Grimes said, picking up on my train of thought. "We hunted you down fair and square. The least you can do is come on back to camp with us and hold up your end of the bargain. "
"Why?" I snarled. "So I can be raped, tortured, and murdered?"
"Of course," Hazel chimed in. "That's your punishment for all the bad things that you've done. Besides, you jump, you die. Simple as that. "
"I go back with you, I die anyway," I countered.
Grimes shrugged. "Not right away. Who knows? You might be able to escape . . . eventually. "
It was probably the same line he used whenever he cornered someone in the woods like this.
Oh, come on back to camp,
I could just hear him saying in that soft, syrupy, twangy drawl of his.
It's better than dying out here in the middle of the woods. Who knows? You just might live through this, after all.
But it was nothing but a damn, dirty lie. It had been a lie for all the people before me, and it would be for me too. Because Grimes and Hazel didn't have any intention of letting me live. No, I'd entertain them and their boys for a few days - if that long - and then they'd dispose of me in the pit, along with all the others.
"Besides," Grimes continued, thinking that I was wavering, "I'm starting to take a shine to you, Ms. Blanco.
You're strong, just like you said Sophia was. And I do so admire the strong. "
He didn't admire strong people; he wanted to break them to make himself feel stronger. That's what he had tried to do to Sophia all those years ago: break her spirit, break her strength, break her will to live, to survive all the horrors that he had visited upon her. But he hadn't broken Sophia, and he wasn't going to break me either.
"come on, now," he said, his voice taking on a soft, cooing note. "If you come back with us quietly, I'll keep you for myself. None of my men will touch you. I promise you that. "
Hazel's mouth gaped open for a moment before her whole face tightened with rage and jealousy. The Fire flickering in her hand coalesced into a ball of molten lava that oozed out between her fingers and splattered onto the rocks at her feet, causing the stone to shriek in agony.
But Grimes didn't notice. He only had eyes for me.
After a moment, he licked his lips, like his men had done back at camp, and his gaze flicked up and down my body.
No doubt the bastard was thinking about how I'd look in a pretty white dress with my hair in a sweet little braid.
