Part 25 (1/2)

SKYE AND JAMIE.

The room around Skye and Jamie erupted in flames. Beneath her feet Skye could hear the startled screams of the other patrons of the inn as fire engulfed the entire building in one blinding moment.

”Where are they?” Jamie roared, his voice barely audible over the crack and whoosh of the flames.

They were trapped with no way out. Once more Estefan was calling the shots, herding them in the direction he wanted to go.

And this time he was killing innocent people. People Skye realized she couldn't save.

She grabbed hold of Jamie's arm and yanked him toward the window. Before they reached it, she lifted her other hand and exploded the gla.s.s outward. She shoved Jamie halfway through it.

”We can't jump. It's four stories down!” he shouted.

An explosion rocked the ground, and she could feel the floorboards starting to give way beneath them. Heat and smoke rushed up toward them both.

”No choice!” she screamed. She hit him low, hard enough to throw him off balance and to send him toppling through the window with a shout of terror.

She sent a spell chasing after him, which slowed him and cus.h.i.+oned his fall right as he hit the ground. His weapons bag clattered down beside him. She hoisted herself up into the window frame just as tongues of fire began to lick at her hair. With a scream she hurled herself out.

She didn't have enough time to properly cast the spell before she hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud. She tried to pull herself to her feet and realized that some of her ribs were broken.

And there was the taste of blood in her mouth. She prayed it was from a bitten cheek and not a punctured lung.

Jamie scooped down and picked her up and then ran with her into the darkness. She tried to cast spells to protect those they left behind, but she couldn't focus. Her magicks were being blocked.

Then, in her mind, she could hear Estefan laughing. But even over that horrendous sound there was a worse one, the screams of the dying as they burned to death in the old inn. She screamed, too, sharing their pain, their desperation, because she was powerless to help them.

And still Jamie ran, his arm wrapped around her broken ribs, making the pain unbearable. A root shot up from the ground and tripped Jamie. Skye went airborne and slammed into a tree with a thud before sliding down the trunk to the ground.

Fresh blood blurred her vision, and she whimpered in pain and fear.

Come out, come out, wherever you are, Estefan's voice taunted.

”Skye!”

She turned at the strangled cry from Jamie. He was sprawled on the ground, hands wrapped around his leg. Bones were jutting out through holes in his pants. The same root that had tripped him now snaked up and over him.

Magick.

The root encircled one of the broken bones extending from Jamie's shattered leg and yanked it suddenly downward.

She wouldn't have believed that the shriek of pain that followed could have come from a human if she hadn't been watching Jamie.

She lifted her hand and whispered a spell, wheezing as she did so. She could taste blood in the back of her throat. Punctured lung.

Panic flooded her, but she forced herself to finish the spell. The root released its hold on Jamie's leg bone and dropped to the ground, once more a harmless object.

One, two . . . She heard Estefan's voice in her head.

Why was Estefan counting? She dragged herself across the ground toward Jamie. She needed to heal his leg.

Three. Four.

If she could just help him, then he could escape. At least one of them would.

She sobbed in agony as she touched his leg and felt her own bones shattering as she took the injury and made it hers while mending his.

Five. Six.

Her chest contracted even more with the extra pain and trauma of Jamie's injury. She was amazed that he had lived through the attack; Estefan had nearly crushed him. How had he endured?

Her bones began to knit, but so very, very slowly. She wanted to scream, but now she was having problems just drawing breath. The cries from the inn had stopped, which probably meant that all there were dead. Despair poured through her, and she gasped at the very real psychic pain overlaying the agony of Jamie's wounds.

Seven.

The bone fragments fused, but she didn't have time to repair the muscle or nerve damage. She wouldn't be able to move.

To escape.

”Go!” she shouted to Jamie.

Jamie pushed himself to his feet, his leg nearly collapsing when he tried to put weight on it. He remained upright, though, swaying slightly as he tried to catch his balance.

”C'mon, then, Skye,” he slurred, staggering forward as he tried to bend down and extend a hand toward her. He sucked in his breath through his teeth, still in pain. ”b.u.g.g.e.r. Skye, up.”

Eight.

”Go!” she repeated. ”I can't hold him. Get out of range.”

”I b.l.o.o.d.y well won't leave you,” he ground out.

”Get free,” she ordered him. ”Then I'll come.”

Nine.

”No, I won't-”

She was out of time.

Furious with him for not listening, wild to save him, Skye summoned magickal forces and flung them at Jamie. He stumbled backward, blinked, and opened his mouth, probably to argue some more. She managed another push, her body shrieking at her to get back to the healing.