Chapter Twenty

In the end, we lucked out. As we drove down the two-lane county road, Eliza suddenly slammed on the brakes and came to a stop on the gravel shoulder.

“Got one,” she said with narrowed eyes. “One of the Eclipsers from the woods near the reservoir. Not the blond one, the other one.”

“Mr. Average? Where is he?”

“Not close, but between here and the fire.”

I stared in that direction. From the road, we couldn’t see any flames, just dark smoke billowing up from the back side of the wooded peak a good distance from the road. Newt and Tony pulled off the road behind us.

Eliza and I got out of the car as they approached.

“Okay,” said Eliza. “Tony, call darkness for you and Newt. I’ll cover Julie. You two get behind the Salamander on the peak side. Julie and I will hang toward the left flank. If that rocky bluff there,” she pointed, “is twelve o’clock, he’s at the eleven, probably half a mile in.”

I took a bearing and nodded. Eliza went through the plan and assigned tasks, while the rest of us listened attentively. With no debate, we moved.

****

I stood with my gun ready, wreathed in Eliza’s darkness. En route from the road to our current position, I realized Newt wasn’t by my side to siphon heat away from a fire attack. I fought away the resultant terror and banished the image of Sheila’s charred flesh dancing behind my eyes. I would be just fine.

Eliza led in wolf form, ears cocked and muscles taut with anticipation. We both focused on the Salamander thirty feet in front of us. Eliza’s Were senses had been right, of course. He was the one I’d called Mr. Average: clean cut, dark hair, middle-aged, and nondescript. We were at least a hundred feet from the true blaze and Mr. Average was in the process of burning a wide swath of trees. He walked quickly and touched each trunk, leaving gouts of fire snaking up into the branches in his wake. I frowned: he was probably creating a new hot spot for the fire to jump containment. Hopefully, his actions proved he couldn’t call fire without a physical link. The Salamander paused for a moment to watch a plane circle the area before it moved farther toward the fire line and dumped a load of…something. Some fire-fighting chemical, I guessed, because it wasn’t water. From the serious look on Mr. Average’s face, he calculated how quickly he ought to move on to another area.

Suddenly, fire blossomed on Mr. Average’s far side: not called by him, but purple flames called by Newt. Mr. Average whirled with a shout I barely heard over the roar of the fire.

The signal!

I moved in quickly, darting between trees. Eliza became a blur of speed as her buff-colored body hurtled through the brush to close on the Eclipser. Right before she reached him, she disappeared into a writhing mass of shadow and then emerged in human form to crash into the Salamander. I trained my gun on the two of them.

Newt and Tony emerged from the shadows. Purple flames wreathed Newt’s hands and Tony’s dark wolf form drew my gaze like a black hole, like barely covered danger. I pulled my gaze away from him to watch Eliza and the Salamander.

I held my breath, finger on the trigger, Newt and Tony equally ready to spring.

Eliza rolled off the Eclipser and rose to her knees. One of her hands firmly grasped Mr. Average’s forearm.

“Okay,” she said, her voice strained. “Got him.”

We all approached the strange pair: Eliza with body taut and sweat on her brow, the Salamander lying on the ground and blinking.

He hiccupped and waved a hand at us. “Joining the party! Join the party! Come on in.” The Salamander started to giggle. “No dogs allowed, though, sorry.”

Newt walked right up to the man and stood there with dark flames still dancing in his hands. For once, no trace of humor etched his face.

“What’s your name?” Newt asked.

“What’s in a name? Smells so sweet. Should have known.” The man gave a lopsided smile and hummed for a minute before saying, “Name of the rose, rosemary, sage, thyme.”

I kept my gun trained on the man, just in case. He seemed pretty crazy, though.

“How many Eclipsers are here?” Newt tried again.

“Here, there, everywhere a quack, quack.”

“How many?”

The man started picking his nose with complete absorption.

Newt gave an irritated sigh. “So this is what happens when you Weres call on the moon to make someone insane?”

Tony said, “One of Eliza’s strongest skills: making people crazy. Sometimes, she doesn’t even need to call the moon.”

I shot a glance at him. Was that a joke? Tony, joking? Judging from the smile that quirked his lips, yes. Eliza grimaced in return, but otherwise remained focused on the Salamander.

“I’m glad he’s not trying to burn us to a crisp,” I said. “But I’m not sure we’ll get anything useful out of him in this state.”

Newt tried again. “How many Eclipsers are here?”

The man started humming again. This time I recognized it as “One Little, Two Little, Three Little Indians”—though they probably called it something else these days? Was that a disrespectful song? Dammit, I wrenched my mind back on task.

“Do you think that means there are ten? Ten Eclipsers?” I said.

“Could mean anything. Or nothing at all, which is most likely.” Newt ran his hand through his hair and tugged in irritation, which caused even more spikes.

I took a step closer to the Eclipser with my gun still aimed at his chest. The man gave me a loopy smile.

“Hey, I know you,” he said.

“Eliza, can you back off slightly on the crazy stuff for just a minute? Without him attacking us?” I asked.

“I’ll try.”

“What’s your target tomorrow? Where will you set fires, if we don’t give you Carson?” I tried to keep my voice friendly.

A moment of clarity passed over the man’s face like a cloud moved. “Dog-lover,” he said and tried to spit at me. He furrowed his brow.

Newt yelled, “Watch out!”

Eliza gritted her teeth and pressed both hands to the man’s arm. I saw the exact moment when her powers prevailed, because the Eclipser’s head lolled to one side. The pine needles near his hands smoked; Newt scuffed the area clear.

Tony said, “This is not useful. We might as well kill him.”

A shiver ran up my spine from his voice.

“Dammit,” said Newt and took several steps away as if to clear his head.

“Okay, so when he’s insane, he makes no sense. When Eliza releases him, he tries to kill us.” Somehow, cataloguing the obvious helped me. “Newt could imprison him with fire, but that wouldn’t necessarily make him talk, either. Plus, we don’t know exactly how strong he is, so we should avoid a fight if possible.”

Newt started to speak, but I cut him off to continue. “Yes, I’m sure you could take him, Newt, especially with the rest of us for backup. But we won’t learn anything that way.”

“So.” Obviously, the Salamander wouldn’t shake off Eliza’s called-insanity, because Mr. Average babbled animatedly to a large pine cone. I lowered my gun and alternated rubbing each hand on my jeans to dry the sweat off my palms. “We resort to normal human methods of investigation.”

“What do you mean?” asked Newt.

“Here.” I held out my gun, grip first, and Tony took it from me. Then I knelt by the Eclipser and went through his pockets. I tossed his wallet to Newt, who caught it smoothly. Mr. Average’s other pocket was pay dirt: his cell phone.

I checked the contact list first. Many unknown names, half of them probably non-Eclipser friends and completely irrelevant to the current situation. Too bad he hadn’t added some code to everyone’s contact information, “Eclps” or “bad guy” would have been helpful. I looked at the call record and saw multiple recent calls to Paula Davidson, Tim Wheaton, Johnny Browne, and “Mary.”

“His name is Mr. Average,” said Newt, with the wallet thumbed open.

“What?” I said. Even Tony did a double take.

“Just kidding.” Newt grinned. “His name is Mike Hollis and he’s from Grover Beach, California. I wonder if that’s near the suspected Eclipser headquarters.”

“Do you know any of these names?” I rattled off a bunch of contacts from the recent call log.

Newt shook his head. “No, but someone might. We’ll run them past the master.”

“Okay.”

I clicked through the cell phone menu again and went to his text messages. He seemed to be a compulsive delete-er—anyone who looked through my texts would have found things from months ago, but Mike Hollis only had two texts in his inbox, which seemed completely bizarre. The most recent from Paula Davidson: Unless other news, ASH @ 7. Team is M, R, Ts. The other text was sent yesterday by Mary and read: Billy home and fine, call tonight? Love you!

Mary must be his wife. I looked down at Mike Hollis, who seemed happy enough under the veil of insanity. What were we going to do with him? I didn’t like the idea of killing anybody, but somehow knowing he had a family made me feel even worse.

“Anything?” asked Newt.

“Maybe.” I read them the text from Paula Davidson.

“Ash? Like Ashland? The town?”

“It’s capitalized. Capital A, capital S, capital H.” After a minute, I shrugged. “I don’t know; maybe it does just mean Ashland.”

“This Paula Davidson must be involved,” Newt said.

“She could be our Ma’at.” I looked at the phone, and after a second’s hesitation, pocketed it.

Tony growled and darkness dropped over him. Newt’s body stiffened with a jerk and he swung wildly to look through the trees in the direction of Roxy Ann Peak, toward the fire.

“What?” I asked.

“Salamanders. Three of them.” Newt’s eyes started to gleam—literally—as he gathered power.

I couldn’t see Tony; didn’t know if he’d already sprung into the woods in pursuit of our enemies.

Shit.

“Tony,” I said, through clenched teeth. “My gun. You have my gun.”

For a brief moment, I thought I’d be left once more with no real weapon in the midst of a paranormal fight. The air beside me roiled and Tony appeared.

“Here,” he said, holding out my gun. When I reached for it, he brought his other hand up to cover mine, his skin hot against me. “Be safe.”

I nodded, not trusting my voice, and pulled away from him.

“Newt, I’ll circle them and attack from the rear, while you have them distracted from this side.” Tony looked around our position, then frowned as he caught sight of Eliza, teeth bared in concentration on our captive ’Mander. “Give me back that gun for a second,” he said and held out his hand peremptorily.

After a moment of reluctance, I handed it over, upon which Tony walked over to where Eliza held Mike Hollis insane. Tony raised the gun high and brought it smashing down on Mike’s head. Mike collapsed to the ground unconscious.

“Dammit, about time,” snapped Eliza and jumped to her feet. She rubbed sweat from her brow and rolled her shoulders. “Tony, circle to the rear as you said. Remember you don’t have one of Sheila’s bracelets and the rest of us do. Julie and Newt, attack from this direction. I’ll take the flank. One long bark followed by two short means fall back to the cars. Got it?”

I grabbed my gun back from Tony before he changed into a wolf and forgot again. I checked over the pistol: five shots left and one clip in my pocket. That would have to be enough. When I looked up again, Tony and Eliza had both slipped away.

Even now, excitement underlay the grim look on Newt’s face.

“Three coming from that direction,” he said, pointing. “Two men and a woman; no one we know. They may be close enough to call fire soon.”

“Strong?”

“Hard to say. Hopefully, not too strong.”

I found cover behind a nearby tree and took a stance, holding my gun steady with both hands. Newt would take care of the fire; I’d shoot anything I saw. That was all the plan I needed.

With a roar that made me jump and sent my heart into rapid pounding, flames leapt up at Newt’s feet—regular fire, not flesh-searing purple. It guttered with a small gesture from Newt. I risked a short glance at our Salamander and saw his eyes narrowed in concentration as he scanned the tree-laden slope in front of us. I grounded myself on the tree trunk and took a deep breath to force the trembling out of my muscles.

I heard a wild crash and glimpsed a blur of motion through a tangle of blackberry bushes. Our wolves in action? Then purple fire erupted where Newt had stood—blindingly bright. I cursed. He’d be okay. He could handle it, I told myself. There was nothing I could do about fire. He was okay. I scanned frantically for the Salamanders.

Then—that patch of sunlight, had that been there before? Was that—?

I shot. The recoil jolted me and caused my head to pulse, stabbing pain radiating from behind my ear where the tree hit me. Relax, I told myself and huffed a breath. I forced my muscles to loosen, took aim, and fired again. The sunlight flickered and I saw a figure in its midst. I aimed at the torso and shot again. The Salamander jerked and then searing light streamed into the spot, so bright my eyes teared and I had to blink. The white-hot light consolidated into a stream of fire that arced toward me and deepened in color as it came—white to red, then flickers of blue and indigo.

The beautiful brilliance of the colors, of the fire itself, nearly paralyzed me and only at the last minute did I yell something—who knows what—with the full realization that purple flesh-searing fire hurtled at me. I flung myself to the side, hit the ground hard, and rolled into a nearby Manzanita shrub. Pain blossomed in my leg. I looked down in horror to see my jeans burning near the ankle. I smashed my leg into the ground and tried to rub out the flames, even as they tried to climb and devour me. I somehow fumbled off my jacket and beat at the fire, even as the flames disappeared with a slight popping noise.

Panting, I looked up and saw Newt.

“You okay?” He asked in a terse voice. “Jules?”

“Yes.”

Before the word cleared my lips, he whirled and disappeared into a shaft of light that streaked through the trees. Indigo flames blossomed in a swath twenty feet from us, but then as quickly tamped down. Smoke lay heavy in the air. My leg hurt, but I couldn’t stop to feel it. My head swam with dizziness, but I pushed it aside. A confusion of light, flames, noise: I blinked my stinging eyes and forced panic to the side while I scanned the brightest spots. There. I took a breath, exhaled, and pulled the trigger.

The sunlight winked out as the Salamander I glimpsed spun around and fell heavily to the ground, exactly the way people do in movies. I needed a moment—needed the world to stop, the way it does in film sometimes, to stop and pan to me as I realized the enormity of what just happened. I killed someone. Again. Instead, a heavy body tackled me and drove me to the ground, pushed the air out of my lungs. My gun went off and spun from my hand. The world darkened for a moment and I swam back to myself to see Mike Hollis’s face inches from my own, his body holding me down. His hands clamped around my throat and I struggled to breathe past the crushing pressure.

“Where is the baby?” He ground out the words through gritted teeth.

My mouth opened and closed, not because I would tell him, but because I gasped for air. My hands scrabbled weakly at his wrists, trying to pull him off me. No use. Gun, where was my gun? I felt on the ground.

“Tell me! Where is he?”

I tried to throw him off me, but couldn’t, no matter how hard I thrashed. My hand closed on something. Not the gun. A rock? I tried to pick it up, but it stuck to the earth. I pried and tugged, all the while flailing with my other arm and hitting Hollis around the head and shoulders. He cursed and used one hand to pin my right arm above my head, as he kept his other hand around my neck. I sucked in a breath as he squeezed tighter.

“Tell me!” He lifted my head up and thumped it back to the ground. Waves of pain flashed through my skull. The world grew black and fuzzy around the edges. All I saw was his face; all I felt was the damned rock, embedded in the baked Oregon soil.

“Tell me!” Suddenly, fire danced in front of me, called by him and held there as a threat. I made a whining noise as I tried to scrabble away but couldn’t. I tried to nod, tried to show with my eyes that I’d tell him, if only he’d let me talk. His hand loosened a fraction and I sucked in a long gulp of air.

“Where is he?”

I panted and choked out the words. “He—is—he―”

The rock loosened. I fumbled it into my hand and threw all my strength into my arm as I smashed into Hollis’s head. He grunted and lost hold of me with the impact, and I flung myself over and hit him again and again and again while I screamed in fury.

When I finally stopped, I was covered in his blood and his head—

I dropped the rock, dragged myself off his body, and threw up. My throat was so raw and swollen I could barely vomit; the retching made my skull pulse like it might explode; all I could see was the man’s broken, bloody face.

“Julie!” Newt. I became dimly aware he’d been calling my name for a while; he was yelling and running toward me.

“We’ve got to go!”

What?

As I watched, Newt spun around and picked fire out of the air: purple fire streaming toward the two of us. He grabbed it and winced as it touched him. The flames faded very slowly. Newt panted heavily by the time the fire disappeared and sweat streamed down his face.

“Back to the cars! We’ve got to get out of here!”

I tried to stand up and staggered. Newt moved to catch me, but a whirring mass of dark fur rushed near my face and Tony grabbed me as I collapsed. The world swooshed dizzily as he swung me into his arms and held me close to his chest, as if I weighed nothing at all. I heard Tony command, “Guard the rear!” as he set off quickly through the woods. Everything bounced: a confused play of light and shapes, which made me shut my eyes in the hope I wouldn’t vomit again.

Tony said, “You’re going to be okay. Julie! Hang on.”

I felt the words as a deep rumble against me as much as I heard them, and I allowed myself to be comforted by his voice.