“And you have to use it against that son of a bitch,” Bridgette snapped from my side.
I swung my gaze between Bridgette and Sarah. It was becoming a habit of mine. But this time, I didn’t feel cold, frozen, or locked in with pain. Instead, it was as if I’d been traveling through a darkened tunnel and finally before me I saw a flicker of light, a glimmer of hope.
“I don’t know how much time we’ll have exactly – so hurry,” Sarah said. She selected the right key and jammed it into the lock of the door before us.
Bridgette broke free of the many witches holding her in place. She shuffled over to me, clamped a hand on my shoulder, and smiled. “If anyone can do it, it’s you.”
I didn’t say a word, just watched as the door spell took hold with a gush of sparks. I felt a rush of wind behind me and heard a popping sound like a massive mound of bubble wrap being crushed by a boulder.
“Come on,” Sarah snapped.
The witches helped Max and Bridgette through.
I lingered until Sarah nodded at me and exited through the door.
I took a step toward the open door. That would be when I heard something. It shifted along the wind, scratched at my ears as if the sound were claws snagging into my flesh.
As a whirl of terror twisted through my gut, I spun. My hair scattered around my shoulders and dashed against the torn scraps of my top.
I heard it again – a whisper on the wind.
My beating heart told me it could only have come from the lips of one man.
I took a step back until I was halfway through the door, the transport spell hooking onto me like millions of tiny invisible hands.
I heard the whisper again. I tried to jerk back, tried to finally push myself through the door.
I was too late.
McCain.
Without a word and his gaze ablaze, he powered toward me, closing the distance between us before I could jerk back.
He locked a hand around my wrist and pulled me toward him. And yet, though I saw his shoulder bulging with the effort of trying to pull me, he couldn’t yank me through the door. The transport spell that existed in the doorway had already half taken hold of my body, and I found myself trapped on the cusp, the force of the spell pulling me backward while Max pulled me toward him.
I watched his lips open and pull apart as he bared his teeth at me. “No more games,” he hissed. “Time to end this.”
“Let me go,” I screamed. “Let me go.”
“Never. I’ve waited too long, too many hundreds of years for you to come along, Chi McLane, with your ability to pull me from the past. You think I would ever give you up again?”
Though McCain was obviously using all his force to try to tug me toward him, it was just as obvious that he couldn’t. The force of the transport spell was crackling all around me, and Sarah must’ve figured out what was happening, because I suddenly felt extra magical force slam into me from behind, wrap around my middle, and start to yank me backward.
“I’m never gonna give in to you, McCain. I’d rather kill myself, and then you’ll have to wait for the next McLane seer. My cousin just had a baby girl. You can wait 20 years until she’s old enough to inherit the curse. Because you’re good at waiting, aren’t you, McCain?” Don’t ask me how I was capable of taunting the man as his grip on my wrist tightened and the force of the transport spell combined with the witches’ magic tightened from behind. I very much felt like a puppet being strung up between two points. And yet, no matter how much it hurt as the force of Max’s grip crushed my wrist, I still managed a sneering smile. “You can wait, can’t you, Max? You can wait.”
“There’ll never be another like you,” he spat, voice arcing up high in rage. The kind of rage that cannot be faked. The kind of rage that not only contorts your face but appears to contort your soul. His whole body became so stiff with anger I thought it would crush him like a boa constrictor.
The force of Max and the spell trying to pull me backward now combined until I felt as if I would be extruded like pasta.
And yet, and yet I held on. Because I had to. Max was on the line. I was on the line. Heck, Bane City was on the line. One look into McCain’s eyes, and it was damn clear he would move Heaven, Earth, and Hell to get what he wanted. And if moving them weren’t enough, he would jolly well destroy them.
“There’s nothing you’ll ever be able to do to make me tell you the future,” I said in that same singsong voice that had such a good effect on him.
As predicted, his face stiffened with such rage, it looked as if his eyeballs would pop from his head and his lips would shatter.
“Do not push me, seer. For I can make your life hell.”
“Go ahead and try,” I said as I angled my head forward, fighting against the full effects of the spell.
Whatever the witches were doing from behind me, they were doing a damn good job, and their spell was now pulling my middle with the strength of an anchor attached
