Five: Out of the Pit (Five #2) (46 page)

The memories came crashing down like the bricks of a demolished building. The pit. The fighting. Joe. Halli…

I struggled to sit up. “Halli. It took her.”

Upon closer inspection, I saw where tears had made small rivulets down his dirt and ash-streaked face. I had nothing left inside that could stop the first sob from erupting from my chest. Johnathan held me close as a million more sobs wracked my bruised and beaten body.

Alec and Seth, feet dragging, came to where we were and dropped to the ground. Alec, with just enough softness to keep from being harsh, said, “That’s enough, Paige. We aren’t doing Halli any good sitting here crying. Get up. We have work to do.”

“Did you find anything?” Johnathan asked, as he hugged me tighter to his chest.

“Nothing.” The disgust in his voice turned to despair as he picked up a rock and threw it. “Not a damn thing. I have no idea what took her.”

“Come on guys,” Seth said. “We’re sitting targets here. Let’s get Joe and get inside the refuge.”

I wiped the tears from my face and stood without help. Tears threatened again as we stood over Joe’s eviscerated body, but I refused to let them fall. Johnathan lifted his limp body by the shoulders, Alec and Seth each lifted a leg, and they carried him to the elephant refuge.

I opened my
sight
and immediately saw the entrance, hidden around the
trunk
of the largest elephant-shaped rock. The inside of the refuge was a huge cavern. There were enough supplies there to outfit an army. We left Joe’s body near the entrance, covered with a blanket.

Further back into the cavern, we forced ourselves to eat and drink. Then we slept. None of us could have stayed awake to keep watch. It just wasn’t possible. So we slept like the dead. With the dead—Joe inside with us, and countless others surrounding where the pit had been. The humans, who had come to seek their fortunes by dealing with Demons. The Demons, who had died for Brone’s fight. They were all just pawns in Brone’s evil game.

I awoke first, untangling myself from Johnathan’s arms then stumbling to the entrance—there was no way to tell the time of day from within the refuge. The gray light of dawn crept in. We needed to move before the devastation beyond the refuge was discovered.

“Boys, wake up,” I said.

They slowly awakened and sat up, rubbing eyes, stretching, yawning.

“What do we do now?” Seth asked, looking up at me.

I looked over my shoulder at Joe’s lifeless body. “We honor our fallen teacher. Then we find Halli.”

t any other time, when my mind wasn’t trashed and my heart broken, I would have found it bizarre that the refuge had clothes in our exact sizes. But, mind focused on the tasks ahead, I changed out of the stiff, black pants and shirt—stiff from the blood of my friends and the ichor of our enemies. I poured a gallon of icy water over my head and cleaned up as best I could under the circumstances. All while the boys were huddled at the entrance, backs to me.

Four new backpacks, full of supplies and hundred dollar bills, lined the wall. I sat, tying my combat boots. I strapped the dagger, in its sheath, to my leg and stood.

I looked back to the backpacks; anger boiled up in my chest.

Four. There should be Five. There should always be Five. I ripped my pack off the dirt floor.

“You guys ready?”

Solemn nods from the boys. They shuffled over and picked up their packs, settling the straps over their shoulders.

“You got Joe, Alec?” Johnathan asked.

Alec’s face was set, lips tight and thin as he looked at the body wrapped in a blanket, the empty shell that had been our mentor and one of the Five before us. Alec nodded and knelt beside Joe, grasping his arm.

We portalled to our first home in Moab, the boulder cave. We carried Joe’s body into the cave, into the main cavern where we’d built fires to keep warm. I arranged his limbs, arms crossed on his chest, then wrapped the edges of the blanket tight around him so only his head was free of it.

Standing above him seemed wrong, so I knelt back down beside him. Johnathan went down on one knee beside me, then Seth and Alec followed suit. Johnathan placed his arm around my shoulders.

“You speak,” I said to him in a choked whisper.

Johnathan nodded and bit his top lip while he thought. He cleared his throat of the thick mucus that had formed there. “Well, Old Man, we started out a little rocky, you and I. I can’t even begin to imagine, nor do I want to, what it must have been like to be the last of your Five. You handled it with a brave face and hidden sorrow.

“In the little time you had with us, you taught us well. Even in the throes of death, you taught us—and we survived because of that training. The sadness we feel at your death is selfish. We’re sad for us… for our loss… the loss of a great friend we’d come to love.” Johnathan took an unsteady breath. “You died well, Warrior. Now, go. Go and be with the others. Go and be with Mia.” His last words were just a whisper.

We bowed our heads in silent tribute.

We piled wood around Joe’s body and lit it. We left it to burn inside the boulder cave while we took care of the men we’d entrapped in the circle of rocks not far from there.

They begged us for mercy. They didn’t deserve it.

We made quick work of them, without saying a word. We bound them with magic, drew a pentagram, and sent them to be with those they chose to summon and set loose on the innocents of this world.

The stench of burned flesh met us back at the boulders. Man-made fire would only burn so much of a human body. We let it burn as much as it could before finishing the job with the much hotter fire of our magic.

We gathered Joe’s ashes—along with much of the dirt beneath them—and placed them in an empty two liter Dr. Pepper bottle. It was his favorite drink—we figured he’d be pleased with our choice of urns.

None of us had ever been to Mt. St. Helen’s, so we portalled as close as we could to a place we’d all been, then we jumped into the boxcar of a passing train that took us most of the rest of the way. We stood silent, staring at the still scarred terrain. We hiked to the top of the now dormant volcano. As we stood at the edge of the refuge where Joe’s Mia had died—Brone’s handiwork—Seth removed the Dr. Pepper bottle from his pack and handed it to me. No words were needed as I opened the lid and scattered Joe’s ashes there, hoping some of his ashes landed where Mia’s were.

The light breeze carried the ashes into the trees.

I replaced the lid on the now empty bottle and put it in my backpack.

“Paige.”

I looked up at Johnathan with eyebrows raised before I realized it had been a girl’s voice, and the sound had come from inside my head.

Johnathan opened his mouth to say something, but I gave him the hand—the universal sign of shut up. He raised an eyebrow, but closed his mouth.

“Halli?” I sent, hoping I wasn’t going crazy.

“Paige.” It was definitely Halli’s voice I heard in my head that time.

“Where are you?” I sent, my heart pounding faster.

“Dragon…”

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