Fall into Fire (Shamans of the Divide, Book 2)

Chapter Twenty-four

We rode slowly through the rolling hills, thick with trees.

For the first hour there was a nice trail we were following, but as the land grew a little more rugged, the trail disappeared. The horses made easy work of navigating the fallen trees and brush, but the three of us on the ATVs had to pick our ways around the obstacles.

Cody didn't slow one time for us, so Coyote had to play the middle man between horse and machine. He'd fall back far enough for the ATVs to catch sight of him and then race ahead as fast as he could manage to find Cody's direction.

The five of us rode until the sun had passed overhead and was now headed to the western sky. It was late afternoon when we came upon Coyote and Cody's horses drinking from a small creek.

"Other than that first one back outside the Whalens, we haven't crossed anymore fences," Skye asked as he pulled his helmet off. "Are we moving across private property?"

From the far side of his horse, Cody walked around and shook his head.

"This is BLM land," he said. "Covers a huge part of the acreage around here and as long as we don't run into any of their rangers, we won't have answer any questions and should be okay."

Coyote passed around granola bars and we ate those and drank our water in silence. Only the soft rush of the creek over the stones nearby made any noise at all.

"She's moving faster than I thought she would," Cody said at last.

Coyote only nodded.

"I told you," he said. "She's not your average prissy girl."

"Well that's refreshing," Cody said and took a swig of his water and made blatant eye contact with me—obviously letting me know that I was your average prissy girl.

I didn't take the bait and ignored him—maybe he was forgetting who was in high school and who had already graduated. Either way, we didn't stay long by the creek after stretching our legs and we were back on Asha's trail.

As we bounced along, my mind wandered.

Had anyone bothered to come up with a plan if we found more than Asha? We had, as far as I could count, three guns and two crossbows—but none of that would help much when Red-Woman started up her furnace and began barbecuing us where we stood. And what if she had guests? All this talk of "him" and all the promises "he" had given her made me nervous.

No, it terrified me. I'd spent a lot of time thinking about Red-Woman's him and I was pretty certain we'd be facing the baddest of the bad from across the Divide whenever he made it across.

At least, I comforted myself, we'd have a fighting chance against those demon pygmy things. If I had to guess, they were what Asha was hunting down right now as Red-Woman probably wouldn't leave much of a trail to follow with her ability to cross the Divide's threshold at will.

We were on a steep incline now and in my reverie I'd almost forgotten to pay attention. I jerked forward to grasp onto Renn and bashed the front of my helmet into the back of his.

"You okay?" He yelled as loud as he could over his right shoulder.

I gripped around his waist tighter with my right arm and used my left hand to give him a thumbs up.

Zipping through pine trees and up a gentle slope, we continued through the afternoon. Once or twice, I realized we had double backed on ourselves but I'm pretty sure that was on purpose. Cody seemed to be on to something and pushed his horse to keep up a fast pace.