Destined to Fall (An Angel Falls Book 5) Page 20

  I rein my newly acquired horse around to face the thieves.

  As soon as Steven sees me, he dismounts and places his body in front of his friends.

  “Go back where you came from and leave us alone!”

  Dominic scrapes himself off the ground and rises to stand with his friend.

  Steven says, “Go, Dominic. He’s here because of me.”

  “No, man. We’re together in this,” Dominic says, and he tries to step up to Steven’s side, but nearly falls down again. He hops on one foot. He’s injured, but I can’t tell if it’s his ankle, knee, or leg. The arm in the sling has to be hurting something fierce as well.

  Steven readies an arrow onto his bow.

  “Do you think an arrow is going to do anything to me?”

  “I’m willing to find out.”

  “Walk away now, Steven. It’s over.”

  “Dominic, get out of here,” he says again. “Take my fucking horse, dude. You can’t even stand.”

  “No,” Dominic says, and crumples to the ground with a yelp.

  “You’re pissing me off. Go! I’ll find you,” Steven says.

  Dominic glances between us then moves to the stirrups of the horse standing behind Steven. Between his shot arm and his newly injured leg, I don’t know how he’s able to drag his sorry ass into the saddle, but he manages. Dominic guides the horse past the trees and out of sight.

  Steven braces his bow against his body and reaches into his pocket. He pulls out his lighter and flicks the thumbwheel. The flame becomes a beacon, silently commanding my full attention. In the glow of the firelight, I see his hand quiver as he brings it to the tip of his arrow.

  It had escaped me till now, but I can clearly see the end of the arrow is wrapped with cloth.

  “We’re out of here and if you or anyone tries to follow us,” he pauses his threat to touch the flame to the end of the arrow. “I’ll burn this entire desert to ashes.”

  “You know why I’m here, Steven. It’s not that simple.”

  His bow is in position, but his entire body trembles, and I’m afraid he’s going to let it fly by accident. I calculate my chances of disarming Steven and extinguishing the fire before he can do something stupid.

  “You’re the Devil, aren’t you?” He begins to back away. His voice is ragged with nerves as he says, “My stepmother always told me that evil was guiding me.”

  I shake my head at him, denying his accusation, but also with sadness. “Not even close.”

  “How can I believe you? The Devil lies.”

  “Think for yourself, Steven,” I say, feeling overwhelmed and exasperated. “Do you want to hurt yourself or someone else with this insane plan?”

  “I’m ending this right now. Tell your friends this night is over.”

  “I can tell them without the threat of that.” I point at his weapon.

  “I don’t believe you anymore.”

  “Please, put it out before one of us gets hurt. I promise, they won’t follow you or Dominic.”

  “Your promises don’t mean shit to me.”

  He’s far enough back that I only see the outline of his body behind the flickering orange glow.

  “I make no promises!” White Wolf cries as he gallops straight toward my client.

  Steven’s knee jerk reaction is obvious. His trigger finger is guided by his heightened fear and is all too willing to let loose.

  I move with a speed I believed was only imaginary. Letting go of my physical body, moving to the bow, and pulling enough energy to myself to redirect the arrow takes one millisecond too long.

  The shot goes wild and with little force behind it. The arrow misses White Wolf and his horse but lands in the brush.

  My sense of responsibility and duty pulls me in two directions at once. I see the long bludgeoning weapon in White Wolf’s hand as he raises it to strike my client. I’m also acutely aware of the small fire starting to burn in the brush.

  Steven cowers and tries to run, but White Wolf is riding fast. Fully in my body once again, I rise just in time to block Steven from the blow of a brutal wood handle.

  White Wolf’s battle cry pierces the heart of the desert and rips through my core. My arm would have probably shattered, but spirits aren’t broken like bodies are. Steven scrambles away as White Wolf lopes passed us. We stare in each other’s eyes and know the mistake is my own for putting myself in harm’s way. I’m not hurt, but I couldn’t let Steven take such a vicious hit.

  “Let this end, Wolf! Let him go. There’s a fire!” I yell and run after Steven.

  I want this to end. I want Steven to have a chance at getting out of here. He’s a decent person who needs to turn his life around.

  White Wolf notices the glow of the small fire behind us. Another horse and rider are heading toward the flames. Forgetting Steven, I’m next to Juliana and Vannah a second later. Vannah backs away from the burning brush and Juliana jumps off. I catch her as she stumbles and trips over a rock. She whimpers in my arms, but breaks free of my grasp and begins kicking and throwing dirt on the fire. We have mere seconds to figure out if we can control this fire or not.

  “You stay on this side and I’ll work on the other,” I say, as my mind attempts to put order to the chaos before us.

  White Wolf rides up behind us and dismounts. The two horses, Vannah and his mare, snort and prance, but stay close.

  White Wolf says, “We want a fire line on the east side.”

  “Start digging!” I say.

  The fire devours dry grass and the summer’s crispy vegetation like a glutton. It’s nighttime, the sky is overcast, and the breeze is almost nonexistent. All these elements should be on our side, but it’s as if the fire has its own desire and what it wants most is to be fed.

  “It’s not helping,” Jules cries as she scoops the sandy soil with bare hands. She alternates throwing and kicking the dirt onto the fire, but her efforts are so miniscule I start to feel her hopelessness. White wolf uses his hatchet to chop at the ground and create a line. Then he uses his boot to scrape and clear a firebreak.

  The sagebrush and scraggly ground cover’s determination to burn is stronger than our will to stop it. Heat rises into our face. A breeze picks up and swirls the small flames. Like tickling a child, the fire giggles, squirms, and reaches for more fuel. Smoke circles around our group and Juliana coughs.

  Frantic to stop the spreading fire, I do everything I can to help White Wolf with the fire line. I’m able to move four times faster than Juliana and Wolf, but a higher power must be controlling this event. A shift in the breeze lifts a burning ember into the air. It floats on the draft and lands in a dead shrub.

  “Stomp it out!” Juliana screams.

  I’m already on top of it when a crackle and a snap from the center of the fire sends a shower of sparks onto Juliana and a swag of grass near her hiking boots.

  She smacks at her clothes to extinguish the glowing sparks. The grass alights. White Wolf runs to her aid and begins hacking the ground around the new flare up. Juliana begins to cough in earnest from the increase of smoke and I realize they’ve been breathing it in for too long already.

  Burning grass crawls eastward over the ground and White Wolf and I move with it. As we extinguish, creeping fingers of heat reach in every other direction. I stomp out one branch of fire as another dips over the edge of a ditch. The ditches and arroyos are usually rocky and sandy and I let myself believe for a brief moment that the arroyo will make a sufficient fire break. It’s false hope and faulty assumption when I realize the fire is headed toward a group of scrub oaks. The burning grass meets the dry tinder of the leaf mulch beneath the oaks and I know we have to get out here.

  “Come on!” I yell and back track to Juliana.

  Tears stream down her face, either from the smoke or fear. I’m not sure which, but her tears flood my heart. Juliana doesn’t struggle as I take her arm and lead her to Vannah. She wipes dirt stained fists over her eyes.

  “I’ve seen this in my v
ision. It’s going to be bad,” she says.

  White Wolf rushes past us, places his boot in the stirrup, and swings his leg over the saddle of his mare.

  “We’re going back to the truck right now,” I say.

  “There are three horses out there. I have to get them or they’ll die,” she says.

  I grit my teeth and refrain from yelling at her to get out of here. “I’ll find the horses. They can’t be too far.”

  Behind us, a flare up in one of the scrub oaks lights the sky. As if Vannah concurs with finding the other horses, she bellows a long, rumbling whinny into the night. An answering neigh calls back to us. Juliana coughs hard into her elbow in an attempt to filter some of the smoke.

  “They’re right over there somewhere.” She points across the night landscape.

  Unfortunately, the neighing came out of the east. The same direction the fire is headed.

  “You don’t understand. I have to be with them,” she says.

  “I will help by traveling with them. I can make the horses come to us,” White Wolf says.

  “Good idea.” She nods to White Wolf, but I’m not sure what he means.

  “If we’re committing suicide tonight, let’s do it quick,” I say.

  The fire mostly spreads north and east and is moving uphill. The flames crawl south along the shallow arroyo. We turn to the southeast and I leave Juliana and White Wolf behind to locate the three missing horses. We have to assume Dominic is on the fourth horse and he’s relatively safe. There’s no telling where Steven is, but maybe he’s with the horses.

  I’m relieved beyond words to find the horses have stayed together. However, Steven isn’t with them. Dealing with one nightmare at a time is all I’m capable of. One of the horses keeps nudging the other two and appears to block the horses from moving uphill. I form my body so I can retie their dragging ropes and ride them back to the trailer before the entire slope is covered in flames.

  When I near one of the horses, it shies away from me and won’t let me touch it. The horse who keeps pawing the ground and blocking the other two runs up to me and stops. I grab its bridle, but the horse lowers his head and stares into my eyes. White Wolf’s black eyes send a clear message of his intent and I understand his statement about traveling with the horses and making them come with us. He snorts and turns back to the other two who have now made an arc around us and are trotting up the hill.

  Repositioning, I try another tactic and work with White Wolf to herd the horses down the hill. Juliana promised she wouldn’t follow me up here and would wait at the base of the slope outside the grove of pines trees. In literally the spur of the moment, our goal was to get the horses to channel down to where she would wait and then all of us make a straight run to the truck.

  I appear out of nowhere waving my arms and screaming at the lead horse. White Wolf, inside the body of a chestnut colored horse, blocks the other horse and then all three begin heading south and west.

  I follow above in my spirit form, flying over their heads to keep an eye on their direction. What I couldn’t calculate ahead of time is a standing dead pine tree bursting into flames as we approach. The horses stampede through billowing smoke, but when they see the flare up from the dead tree, they veer into the ditch rather than head west. Panic intensifies as they near the hot spots, but their momentum keeps them barreling forward, straight into the fire zone.

  With the cool temperatures of night, the higher flames are only as tall as the shrubs and grass, except for the dead pine tree. A crying whinny slashes the night from Vannah and I look for her through the layers of smoke. One of the runners calls back to her and even to my untrained ears its whinny is anguished and full of fear.

  Through the wafting screen of smoke, I see the horses move closer to the fire. I’m about to turn them around and send them back up the hill for their own safety when I notice Juliana readying herself for an act of recklessness.

  “They’re almost here,” she calls out.

  “Where’s White Wolf?”

  “His body is over there.” She gestures to the west. “His spirit is inside a horse — I hope.”

  The outline of a horse and rider stands a dozen yards away from the spreading fire. I refocus on Juliana.

  “It’s too rocky for them to run over the hillside at night. They’ll break their legs,” she says.

  Her and Vannah pace in front of a line of smoldering brush and grass. The smoke blows away from them and allows her a closer proximity than I’m comfortable with. The determination in the stiffness of her spine and the grim expression on her face is powerful and wild.

  “I want to turn the horses around and send them north and then west. They got spooked when that damned tree lit up.”

  “I understand what you’re saying, but you have to trust me right now.”

  “Whatever you’re about to do, just let it go.”

  “I can’t!” she says. She turns Vannah around and starts trotting along the line of fire again.

  “Fine!” I yell. “How can I help?”

  She doesn’t shrivel back, but the look she throws my way tells me that yelling in anger isn’t the best thing I can do in this already tense situation.

  “Ride one out. You won’t burn, will you?”

  “Of course, I won’t.”

  She’s breathing hard and Vannah shivers with agitation. Juliana stares right into me and says, “I love you, Nathaniel! Darn it! Now, follow me and keep the horses close together. Give them your energy. It’ll help.” Her eyes flash as she takes one last look at me before kicking Vannah’s side and jumping straight over a burning bush.

  “Blasted woman!”

  Chapter Seventeen: The Female Species

  Juliana

  Trust and willpower fight an epic battle inside my manic driven mind. The pounding of my heart equals the pounding of Vannah’s hooves. Nathaniel’s nearby, but I can no longer hear him or feel his roiling temper at the risk I’m taking.

  Relying on Star’s magic is a leap of faith like I’ve never experienced before. How strong is the magic? Is it strong enough to keep oxygen in our lungs and protect four horses from being burned? The drive to keep moving forward through smoke and creeping fingers of flames is fed by my visions. If I didn’t have those images, there’s no way I would attempt this rescue.

  The horses are so close to the safety of the untouched desert, and yet they have to cross through burning plants to reach it. The hill is too steep and rocky, the ditch drops off and becomes too deep too quickly. The path west is their best option and the direction of the truck.

  They’re getting closer. The sounds of trampling brush, tumbling of stones beneath their hooves, and creak of leather multiplies like echoes upon echoes on ears tuned to only one channel. Without slowing Vannah, I prepare the vial of lilac petals.

  “Keep us safe, girl,” I tell my horse.

  In my mind, I know what I want to do. The images play like watching the reflection of a movie in a mirror. It’s confusing as to which one is reality and which one is the reflection, but ultimately, I know it’s the same image. I send the mental pictures to Vannah. She’s so in tune with me that I have to trust she’s picking up my intentions clearly.

  We run toward the horse in front. It’s startled to see us coming from the opposite direction and veers slightly. The darker chestnut horse in the rear notices me and lunges to the forefront, helping correct the straying horse. White Wolf must be inside the horse at the rear, and his assertiveness gives me the seconds I need to turn around and catch back up.

  “Closer!” I direct Vannah.

  As soon as I’m within arm’s reach to the blue roan filly, I throw lilac petals over her back. I immediately cast another handful at White Wolf. The sweet fragrance overpowers my other senses as it surrounds the horses and trails back to me. Vannah races to catch up with the front horse. Nathaniel is now astride its back. The horse isn’t responding to Nathaniel as well as I hoped it would. His energy usually calms and soothes, but i
t appears to have no effect. The animal is out of control as it runs straight into the fire. Nathaniel was never in my visions and I wonder if I’ve ruined everything by asking him to ride.

  I whimper as the horse enters a hot zone unprotected.

  “Slow him down!” I yell.

  Nathaniel’s hands work the reins but his horse doesn’t notice. Galloping as fast as we can, we still have too large a gap for me to throw the petals over him. The dried flowers are being crushed in my fist as I lie flat against her neck, urging Vannah to somehow close the distance between us. We’re not going to make it, I realize. Nathaniel and his horse are going to run through flames and over the smoldering ground without protection.

  This is the part of my vision that’s lost or blank inside my mind. A flare up in the brush ahead of Nathaniel makes his horse slow down and curve to the left to avoid the rising flames. I throw the petals at Nathaniel and the horse. A wall of spirit vines covered with bunches of lilac blooms springs up around them. The scent of lilac overpowers the smoke and tempers my panic. The horse jumps over a glowing hot line of blazing shrubs. Vannah follows on their tail and we sail over orange and black embers. The crystal vial slips from my hand and disappears as I hang onto my horse.

  Aware of the two others close behind us, a flash of triumph and relief floods my system. I glance back in time to see White Wolf, still in horse form, and the filly run up to his physical body. As we gallop across the desert to the truck, White Wolf awakens from his sleep state and slides out of the saddle. He grabs a hold of the other horses. I turn back around knowing the three horses and White Wolf are okay.

  From the saddle, Nathaniel reaches out a hand as I ride up to him. I take his hand in mine and marvel at the ever-present warmth of him. No words are needed. We saved the horses together. We’re all safe.

  “Where’s my father? How did the fire start?” Chris asks as we approach the truck.

  He looks battered, but he’s on his feet. I duck my head and ride Vannah straight into the trailer. After dismounting, I find Chris and squeeze him in a quick hug. He winces and I realize he’s hurt. “White Wolf is right behind us,” I say.