So this is like a test, Fiji told herself. I can do this. She could see Eggleston’s foot very clearly, in its cowboy boot. She concentrated on the boot. She imagined it getting hot. Suddenly she realized the left foot was the one that needed to get hot; if the right one caught on fire, the truck might crash with her helpless inside it. Idiot, she scolded herself, and rubbed her cheek against her shoulder to wipe off a tear. Shoshanna Whitlock had been easy; she hadn’t been expecting any resistance and she’d been standing still.
This separates the witches from the wannabes, Fiji thought, and she focused on the heel of the boot. She made it hot. She thought of heat, of fire, and she sent it all into the boot. She didn’t let herself blink, and she held herself still, and she was glad that the big man at the wheel did not seem to want to talk to her. In the movies, villains always wanted to explain themselves. It was her luck to have been captured by a villain who wasn’t of the chatty variety.
His left foot stirred. He rubbed it across the floor mat. “What bit me?” he muttered. Instantly changing her tactic, Fiji imagined a big snake, though she wasn’t educated enough about snakes to make it a particular pattern. She figured with the gathering darkness that Eggleston couldn’t see down by his boot very clearly, and in this she was right. He could see the coiled shape and feel the intense heat she generated in his heel, and that was enough to make him yelp, swerve violently onto the shoulder of the road, throw the truck into park, and leap out.
Here she had a choice—if the snake flowed out after him, would he run? Or should she “keep” it in the truck with her? When he drew a gun, Fiji’s choice was made for her. She didn’t want him firing into the truck. So out the snake went, slithering right for her abductor. The man made a sound that combined fear and incredulity, and he shot at the imaginary snake.
Fiji congratulated herself and began thinking of ways to keep him out of the truck, but she wasn’t able to come up with anything good while her abductor was frantically searching the ground to find the corpse of the illusory serpent. This was made nearly impossible by the pouring rain and the dark sky. Lemuel will be rising soon, she thought, and though some of the feelings she’d had for Lemuel lately had not been kindly, she looked forward to seeing him now with a passionate longing.
She tried to build an illusory wall between the man and the truck while he was still searching for the snake, but she was too uncomfortable with her wrists strained behind her, and too upset, to concentrate properly. I should have made the snake bite him, she thought. Perhaps he would have been upset enough to manifest the symptoms of snakebite. Perhaps the “venom” would have killed him.
Fiji’s wall did not manifest successfully. All too soon, her abductor became convinced that he’d either wounded the snake or frightened it off. He holstered the gun, and after a few more seconds of looking around—during which she prayed someone was making progress in tracking her—he pulled her up onto the seat and buckled her in. He went around to his side and climbed in, and the truck lurched back onto the road.
“You’re lucky that ole snake didn’t bite you,” he told her. “I got no idea how the damn thing got in here.”
I don’t feel too lucky right now, she thought, leaning forward as far as the seat belt would permit to relieve the pressure on her arms. She began to focus on his boot again. She thought of heat. She wanted him to become convinced he’d been bitten, somehow, and was just now feeling the full effect. She doubted his cowboy boots would even permit fangs to penetrate, but maybe he wouldn’t believe that. In a second, he moved his left foot restlessly.
“Ole snake,” he said, trying not to sound anxious. “Don’t worry, lady, you’re going to be okay.”
She didn’t answer. She was too busy staring at his foot.
“Goddamn,” he muttered. “That hurts.”
Yay! She was doing the right thing. Mildred would be proud of her.
And then his heel began smoking and burst into tiny flames.
He yelled and the truck left the road. This was maybe more success than she’d planned on, because they careened down into a slight ditch and jolted up the rise on the other side, smacking into a barbed-wire fence. She did not let the accident break her focus this time, and the flames grew hotter. He threw the pickup into park and ejected himself from the cab of the truck again. Out in the downpour, he began stamping around on his foot. Because he’d panicked, he didn’t rip off the boot but stomped down into a puddle to extinguish the flame. It worked just as well, and she almost shrieked in frustration when her work again came to nothing but a delaying tactic.
Plus, this time he figured it out. “You did this,” he said, and he wasn’t screaming at her and he didn’t sound angry with her, which somehow made his voice all the more frightening. She thought her brain was going to pop with the effort she was making to shrink back against the seat of the pickup, imagine some way to protect herself, and rub the edge of the duct tape against the seat belt. Since he’d only slapped it on and her face had been wet, she succeeded in removing enough of it to allow her to speak.
“Why did you take me? I haven’t done a thing to you.”
“Blame your friend Bobo. He’s got something I want. He killed two of my soldiers. He got two others arrested. He burned down our meeting place. And he murdered a woman who was part of my movement. Lisa tells me you’re real close to him. Maybe you’ve taken Aubrey’s place. So I’ve taken someone of his, until he steps up to answer for his crimes.”
“Oh, bullshit. None of that is true. He doesn’t have this cache of arms, he didn’t kill your so-called soldiers, and your buddies deserved to be arrested. He thought the sun shone out of Aubrey’s ass. He did not harm any of those people, and he doesn’t have any of that stuff.”
“But my soldiers disappeared after I sent them to talk to him.”
“You mean, after you sent them into his own place of business to beat him up. Be man enough to say it.” She could not twist her head enough to see him well, but she hoped she was shaming him. Being diplomatic would be wiser, but she was mightily pissed off.
“Why not? He’s got what I need, what I want. He’s not part of the cause. He should give up the arms that were so important to his grandfather, a real patriot. Those guns were meant for people willing to fight to sustain our liberty. Don’t you know how close we are to Armageddon here? Don’t you understand how fast we’ll go under? The Mexicans will drown us. The tide will come across the border, and that’ll be all she wrote. Unless we’re armed and ready.”