Mike and Maggie both frowned at her while Aiden inspected her more closely.
“What did you see?” Aiden asked while a look of understanding dawned on Mike’s face.
“You have a gift,” Mike stated.
“Yes,” Charlie whispered. “And you have to believe me. If we keep going, there’s going to be this explosion of fiery stakes.” She glanced at the woods. “We could be standing in front of them now.”
The others cast wary glances at the woods.
“Mom,” Dylan grumbled.
“Oh, sorry,” Charlie said and eased her grip on him again. “They killed you—” Her gaze landed on Mike. “—and some others.”
She couldn’t bring herself to say Dylan’s name. It was stupid, but she almost felt like it might make her vision come true for him if she said it, but Mike, Aiden, and Maggie all looked at her son. They must have sensed that her desperation came from more than seeing Mike and the others fall.
Mike turned to study the woods as David came to stand beside him. “And you don’t know where they are?” David inquired.
“I have no way of knowing,” Charlie answered. “There was no discerning marker in my vision but—”
Before she could finish, a fiery torrent of stakes erupted from the woods and embedded in the trees and the ground fifty feet ahead of them. No one spoke as the realization they all would have been standing there, if she hadn’t stopped them, sank in.
Then they all looked at her.
Charlie stared defiantly back at them. “You’re welcome.”
Mike grinned, and David chuckled as Maggie’s hand tightened on her arm.
“Wow, Mom, that was…awesome,” Dylan exclaimed.
“Don’t get used to it,” Charlie told him. “It’s not consistent.”
“It’s been pretty consistent in saving our asses today,” Kirha said.
“Not Clifford’s,” Charlie reminded her.
“No, but you sure saved mine.”
“We have to go,” Paige said. “The fire is getting closer.”
“What was that thing?” Kirha asked as they ran toward the stakes still smoldering in the trees.
“I’m going to find out,” Mike said, and before anyone could stop him, he ran into the woods.
If Mike had seen half his face torn away, Charlie doubted he would be so eager to discover what happened. He returned a minute later with a five-foot by five-foot catapult looking machine hanging from his hand. Whatever the device was, it had small, stake-sized holes in it and flames leaping from the sides of it.
“It was a trap,” Mike said. “Someone must have set it with the intention of waiting to cut the rope when their prey walked in front of it, but the fire severed the rope instead.”
“Delightful,” Paige muttered.
“I’m ready to be off this fucking island,” Ian said.
Chapter Forty-One
The sweat pouringdown Charlie’s body cleaved her clothes and hair to her. The heat of the spreading conflagration was becoming oppressive. Whereas she’d only seen a little smoke wafting through the trees before, now it billowed from them, and flames were devouring the underbrush only fifty feet away.
They couldn’t leave the woods to get away from it either as they were in a section of the island where the forest met the cliffs, effectively pinning them between the ocean and the fire. Their going had become impeded by the spreading fire.
Overhead, fire arced across the branches as it leapt from one tree to another. Sparks rained over them. Charlie swatted a spark away from Dylan’s neck, but it was too late, it had already left a red mark on his pale skin.
