finishing the bottle, thinking furiously all the while. If he’d killed Nicholas, the odds were against her getting out of this alive. The vampire, at least, had seemed to have a little bit of reluctance to hurt Ian.
If this worm hurt her boy, he was going to die in agony. She was making very sure to retain enough of her magic, protected and shielded from the damage the gem was doing to her, for a last-ditch escape attempt.
Not attempt. A last-ditch escape
“All right. Stop dawdling,” Smithson said, lowering the gun. “You don’t need to see this gun to know I’ll use it. And I won’t even use it on you, because you’re too valuable to me, at least for now.”
He smiled and glanced at Ian. “I have heard that being shot in the kneecap is very painful. Might mess up a boy’s growth forever. What do you think about that, Ms. Witch?”
A red wave of fury pulsed through her brain, and she had to bite hard on her lip to keep from speaking the words to a spell that would maim the bastard. He had too many thugs around the place, with instructions to take her out if she tried anything. She couldn’t get to them all before they could hurt Ian, and Smithson knew it.
“I think there is no place in this world or the next that you can hide if you harm my son,” she said, slowly and carefully, in order not to scream, cry, or fly into a rage that would get them both shot. “Even if you kill me, my death curse will follow you and your sons and your sons’ sons for a thousand years of torment and pain.”
Smithson paled and clenched his jaw, but then he raised the gun again, this time pointing it at Ian’s head. “Well, then. We both have the same goal, don’t we? To get this business over with quickly so you and your son can safely leave this place, and we’ll never have to see each other again.”
One of the thugs by the door rolled his eyes behind Smithson’s back and grinned at a fellow guard. His meaning was chillingly clear to Ivy. They had instructions to kill her and her son as soon as Smithson escaped. He’d probably paid them enough to make them willing to brave a witch’s wrath.
But none of them knew she was more than a witch. She was a sorceress of the black arts, and she would not die alone.
Ian hugged her, and her inner bravado blew away like a tumbleweed in a strong wind. She didn’t care about taking them with her; she just wanted to escape with her son. She’d try again.
“Tell me again,” she said wearily. “What exactly do you think we’ll find here?”
“Rubies.” Smithson’s voice was dark with greed. “Look at this painting. The chief or medicine man or whatever, bowing to the figure with the staff. Between them, on the floor, is a pile of glowing red stones. Our pet archaeologist thought it must be a cache of rubies.”
She caught the past tense. “Thought?”
He grimaced. “He was a little too concerned with preserving our heritage, blah blah whatever. He didn’t survive the interview.”
“Torture, you mean,” Ian said hotly, rising up off the ground. “You’re a monster. That vampire was a better man than you, and he sucks blood for a living!”
Ivy grabbed Ian and pulled him back, shielding him from Smithson’s gun with her body. “Ian, stop it. He didn’t mean it; he’s just a boy. Don’t hurt him.”
But Smithson was laughing. “Sucks blood for a living. That’s a good one. Look, I have no time for this and no intention of hurting you or the kid, if you just do your job. Get up off your ass and find those rubies. Then you’re done. Simple as that.”
Ivy didn’t believe a single word out of his lying mouth, but it didn’t matter. She had no choice. She hugged Ian again and whispered “stay safe” in his ear, then stood up.
“Give me back the amethyst and point me in the direction you think most likely for those rubies. I’ll make it work this time.”
Smithson nodded to one of his guards, who held the gem in a cloth-lined wooden box. The man turned a sickly greenish-white, clearly terrified of the scary witch, but he stumbled forward, holding the box as far away from himself as his arms would extend.
She couldn’t really blame him for that. The gem had enormous power and would probably fry his eyeballs in their sockets if he touched it with his bare hands. Only she could do that.
Lucky her.
She gently lifted the amethyst, and it immediately began to glow with deep purple light, warming in her hands until it felt almost malleable, and not like stone at all. She glanced at Ian again, hoping beyond hope that what she was about to do wouldn’t kill her, but knowing that she would almost certainly die at Smithson’s hand if she didn’t try it.
She closed her eyes and centered her power in her mind, carefully building it from a flicker to a flame before aiming it at the gem and trying again to combine the resonance of her magic with that of the amethyst. The gem held an old and enormously potent magic, but most of its power was far beyond her reach. This treasure-seeking ability felt like an afterthought to her; almost like a parlor trick tossed off by a master magician simply to amuse the children. She had no idea what the true extent of its power might be, but she had a feeling that even a fraction of it would be enough to burn through her, leaving behind only the smoking husk of her body and mind, if she were foolish or unlucky enough to ever try to access it.
But she didn’t need to try this all on her own. The other attempts had felt awkward, straining. This time she would pull out her not-so-secret weapon and open herself to the vortex energy in the area. Traditionalists and so- called practitioners of New Age mumbo-jumbo claimed the vortex energy was limited to Sedona itself, but she knew better. She could access the power for hundreds of miles, especially that from Bell Rock, her totem rock.
She’d just see what the massive power of Bell Rock had to say about one ostrich egg–sized gemstone and its dangers.
Calling silently to the vortex to lend her its strength, she opened her mind to the power of the amethyst, which was now pulsing in her hand like a beating violet heart.
An image appeared in her mind; a beautiful dark-haired woman, drawn and pale, who seemed to be staring through space, time, and magic directly at Ivy. The woman fell backward, pierced by a spear of purple light. The image disappeared when the amethyst’s magic smashed into Ivy, combining with the energy from the Bell Rock vortex, and levitated her within a column of glowing purple light until her head gently bumped the ceiling. She looked around, and a slim beam of light flashed out from the column around her and illuminated a tiny drawing on the ceiling; a miniature of the design Smithson had pointed out to her below. She lifted a hand to touch it, and a stone panel slid aside—more magic—and a waterfall of sparkling red began to stream out of the hiding space in the ceiling. She tried to move out of the way, but the column of light held her fixed and nearly frozen directly in the path of the falling treasure.
All she could do was shield her head and face with her hands, and try not to cry out when the sharp edges of the stones struck her skin. She could hear Ian shouting something, but the magical light acted as a sound buffer and she couldn’t make out the words. She tried to smile reassuringly at him but a falling stone smashed into her cheek, cutting her skin, so she covered her face again, deciding she could reassure him
Long minutes later, the beam of light finally released her. She fell awkwardly to the ground, which was at least two yards beneath where her feet had been hanging, suspended, in the air. She hit the ground hard and crumpled as her ankle twisted underneath her.
This time she cried out. She couldn’t help it.
Ian rushed over and helped her up so she could limp, leaning heavily on him, across the floor to sit down near the wall farthest from the enormous pile of rubies. Dozens of small cuts and scrapes from the falling gems ached and bled all over her hands, arms, shoulders, neck, and face.
“I guess whoever hid the gems wanted anybody who found them to pay for it,” Ian said bitterly. “It was like one of those Indiana Jones traps.”
“Luckily not a rolling boulder,” she said, trying to smile. Judging from Ian’s reaction, she must have looked ghastly.
“Mom, your nose is bleeding again, plus all these cuts, and your ankle—I have to get you to a doctor.”
“If only you were old enough to drive,” she murmured, suddenly dizzy and faint. If the exhaustion or the drain of her magical powers didn’t get her, the dehydration would. Either way, she would be just as dead, and her son in
