Bloodring (33 page)

I had taken time to research incantations for emotional calm and found two that claimed to provide protection from the passion of anger and the passion of jealousy. I had instilled two aventurine donuts with the incantations and now wore them in my bra. While not intended to stop or control lust, passion was passion, and they seemed to be working pretty well. Even when the cop sat a horse like he'd been born in the saddle, butt gripped tight against the cantle, thighs wrapping around the fork, boots solid in the stirrups. I wasn't ignoring him totally, but I wasn't jumping his bones in public, so things weren't too bad.

Ciana—who couldn't be left alone, not with a daywalker, spawn, and a blood-demon loose—rode pillion behind Audric on his Clydesdale. The palomino, like my Friesian, had been bred to work. Clyde had been stable bound too long and was raring to go, bringing excited squeals from Ciana each time he fought the bit. Audric, dressed in black denim from head to toe, and fully armed, gave the horse more rein than usual, laughing happily when Ciana shrieked. We might get lucky and find Darkness to fight. Audric was psyched.

Rupert, goaded with liberal amounts of ridicule into accompanying us, sat on a small mule. He was glum but still made a fashion statement in fuchsia from head to toe, including his boots. I was dressed in dark green, the layers calculated to permit me to wear all my blades, amulets, and charged stones, along with a generous handful of the amethyst to use like a divining rod. I had secured all my stones in waterproof bags in case of a second accidental drenching. The walking stick went into a loop near my thigh, a shovel beside it in case we got lucky and had to dig.

The ground was nearly free of snow, and according to local radio, the ice cap was beginning to melt. Overhead, a plane flew a grid north and south, checking it for stability. Melt ran in sheets. If the temps didn't turn cold soon, it wouldn't be long until something bad happened. Going up on the Trine would be fatal if the cap shifted and created an avalanche. We'd be buried. Of course, the town would be inundated a half minute later, so either way our danger quotient was high. Either way, we'd be dead.

Everyone in the group except Ciana knew I was a mage, so I didn't have to pretend. I opened a massive blended scan, managing to stay on Homer's broad back and not toss my cookies when the vertigo hit. Knowing what to look for, I spotted the lightning and sparkles that had attracted my attention during my virtual trip into the Power's domain. The amethyst in my pockets throbbed in time with the pulsing energies. If the stone had been alive, I'd have said it was excited. Dropping the scan, I urged Homer to the head of the row. “I'll take point. Take our backs, Thadd?” When he raised a thumb, I slapped Homer's withers with the reins and let him have his head. Straight uphill.

The ride was fast, wet, and exhilarating. Opening my mage-senses on the careening ride caused my control over my neomage attributes to slip, and by the time we were five hundred feet higher than the town, I was glowing faintly. Audric, who frowned at my lack of restraint, kept Ciana's attention on things to the sides so she wouldn't notice.

By late afternoon, when we reached the place that had drawn my attention, we were all mud caked and tired, and some of us were ornery. A snow-covered, oval glen on the mountainside was marked with runnels of snowmelt and animal tracks, grass peeking through. The land to the east fell away in a long gulley, and the trench was running with a waterfall full of debris. To the west was a mound of broken rock overgrown with hibernating trumpet vines, honeysuckle, and ferns. It was an idyllic spot, and boulders protruding from the earth glowed with a soft resonating power. I rode Homer across the glen to the tall mound, composed of overgrown, shattered granite. It had to be a remnant of the battle on the Trine.

I damped my neomage attributes and tossed the reins to the ground, sliding after them, taking the shovel and the walking stick, one in each hand. Homer looked down at me and snorted into my hair. “Thanks,” I said. “I really needed a head full of horse snot.” Taking me at my word, he nuzzled my shoulder until I gave him a sugar cube from a pocket. Hearing the others reach the glen, their horses neighing softly, the people talking, I left Homer munching spring grass, tucked the walking stick into a loop on my belt, and climbed the mound. It glowed more richly on the far side. A strong pulse answered from my pocket. I was pretty sure I'd found the motherstone.

Brushing snow, ice, and detritus away, I positioned the shovel and put my back into digging. The soil wasn't tightly packed, but it was heavy with snowmelt and fracturing ice. I felt the activity in my bruised back, biceps, and thighs. I knew the instant Thadd joined me. He put his shovel on the north side of the mound, as far from me as he could get and still be digging in the same piece of real estate. Audric joined us with his own shovel. Rupert, complaining about saddle blisters, pulled Ciana to a pile of rock and watched.

I uncovered the first cracked fragment of amethyst, a shard about the size of Homer's foot, traced with a fine network of shattered, high-grade quartz. It was damaged, and when I looked at it with mage-vision, its rhythm seemed offbeat from the glow that pulsed from the earth. But it still contained power, oddly undiminished by being exposed on all four sides to soil and groundwater. I set it gently aside, knowing it might crumble into pieces if I handled it roughly. Audric placed a brittle shard beside mine.

As he set it down, a rumble sounded. We all turned our eyes uphill and froze. A loud crack, like cannon shot, echoed through the nearby peaks; a groan followed it, tortured, as if the earth itself were in pain, the worrisome signs of avalanche. But they faded, and silence settled in. Slowly, we returned to the backbreaking work. From the corner of my eye, I saw Rupert climb from his perch and lift something from a crack in the rocks, but my attention was snagged by a shard, this one a perfect crystal.

We began to uncover amethyst in every scoop, picking the smaller pieces out of a shovelful of soil, drawing larger ones out by hand. This was not a typical stone formation, but loose and jumbled together. Whatever it was, it wasn't a mine.

An hour later, I took a water bottle and a fist-sized hunk of rock and walked to the top of the mound. Out of sight, I marked a small circle in the soil and sat on a dry boulder in the center of it. I'd be drunker than ten monkeys attempting to scry here, but I hadn't forgotten Lucas or my promise to Ciana to try to get him back.

Putting the new stone, freshly dug from the ground, in front of me, I set a tiny shard coated with Lucas' blood on top and drew on the amethyst, chanting softly, “Show me Lucas. Show me Lucas. Show me Lucas. Show me Lucas.” My heart rate slowed, as did my breathing. I felt a sensation of falling swiftly, then, with a jerk like a prisoner at the end of a hangman's rope, I stopped.

I was hovering above Lucas in his cell. He was emaciated, sinewy, as if hunger had stripped away fatty tissue, leaving well-developed muscle. His beard was long, his eyes closed, but he still breathed. Again, I smelled old blood and gangrene, and saw a place on his neck where something had fed.

He didn't have long. We had to find him soon. I knew from personal experience that once spawn started to feed, dinner died. I used my newfound ability for a blended scan to pinpoint Lucas' whereabouts. He was deep inside the left peak of the Trine. The smell of limestone came to me, indicating that the entrance to the pit was nearby. But Lucas was far, far underground. And he was still in the claw of a Power.

I opened the charmed circle. I was useless to help my ex-husband. Dismay welled up in me and, sighing, I stood, surprised at how steady I felt. I had used the amethyst power, but I wasn't drunk. I paused, considering why.

Hairs along my arms lifted in warning.

T
he shot was so close that the round whizzed right by my ear. I dropped into a crouch and leapt. The sound of the rifle came an instant later.

“Gun!” Thadd shouted. “Get down!”

“No kidding,” I shouted back, ducking behind a tree. More softly, surprised, I added, “It went through my hair.” Shock sizzled through me. I fell against the tree, breath rasping.

Four more shots sounded. One plunked into the tree that hid me. Another landed near my foot. Fear went through me like a missile exploding. I rolled, somersaulting behind a rock. A small gulley running with snowmelt trickled beside it and I landed in the bottom hard, jarring my bones, splashing in the runnel.

Silence as the snowmelt permeated my clothes and drenched my flesh. I didn't feel the cold. A soft alarm sounded in the back of my mind at the anomaly—my body wasn't reacting as it should. I couldn't stop to think about that now.

“Where are they?” Audric shouted.

“Uphill and to the right,” Rupert said, his voice shaky.

Two more rifle shots sounded, neither landing near me. I guessed there were at least two assailants, one firing at me, one at the others. Only humans used guns. Darkness didn't depend on such puny weapons.

No one had claimed the site, so why were humans attacking us? The ground hadn't been disturbed. Not in decades. A barrage exploded from uphill. I heard the horses scream and the sound of hooves as they stampeded. Two gunshots sounded, closer—Thadd returning fire with a handgun.
Sweet seraph.
Ciana was in the line of fire. Shock blossomed into a white-hot anger. Someone, some
human,
was endangering her.

I rolled mage-fast through the mud and sheeting water until I was behind the bole of a mountain maple. Two shots followed, plowing into the soil behind me. I hadn't tried to activate an amulet through plastic before, but with wet, shaking hands, I couldn't open the bag. One thumb and forefinger squeezing the white onyx fish, I called its incantation up from memory. I had made the amulet when I thought scripture was used for all incantations, and I edited it on the fly. If the amended conjure didn't kill me, it might work to protect us.

Breathless with terror, I said, “For my soul takes refuge . . . in the shadow of thy moving wings . . . with the shield of faith . . . able to quench all the fiery darts.” It wasn't scripture-perfect, but with the amethyst to back me, it should do in a pinch. I thumbed the fish, and the shield snapped into place with a shockwave of might that left me reeling. In mage-sight the shield looked like a big bubble layered over with purple feathers. I touched it and the feathers gave around my finger without breaking, like a balloon. The shield was markedly larger than any I had ever produced. Drawing on energy from the amethyst, I might be able to shield us all.

I stepped into the side of the shield and it moved with me, fluttering like a wing. Adrenaline pumping, I leapt ahead and over the hillock, down the side of the mound. The shield kept pace with me, enclosing and releasing trees, rocks, and the ground beneath my feet. Gunshots sounded above me; the rounds landed behind me in soft spats of sound. Battle lust welled up in me, fueled by fear and too much power. As I ran, I chanted. “My soul takes refuge in the shadow of thy moving wings.”

I tumbled down the mound toward Rupert, Ciana, and Audric, taking cover behind a boulder. Audric's eyes widened as he spotted me. A rifle shot sounded an instant after something struck the shield.

“Close your eyes!” I yelled, running toward the pile of rocks. There was a blast of lavender light as the shield absorbed the cairn and two humans inside. Ciana screamed at the sensation of it closing over her and rolled to the ground. A bigger detonation rocked the clearing as the shield closed over Audric. He was knocked to his back on the wet ground. Ciana slapped at her body as if ants were crawling all over her. “Make it stop!”

Audric's eyes traced the shield over his head. Tiny lightning bolts of power raced through it, visible to mage-sight. “What have you done?” he breathed.

It was an accusation. He should have been thanking me. “Saved us all,” I snarled, wanting to hit him, wanting to draw blood. I controlled the urge with effort and turned my back on him. “Thadd! Can you get over here? I've activated a shield.”

“I see it. Will it take me?”

A human couldn't see . . . no. Thadd knew he was kylen. He had taken off the ring once, enough to begin the process of mutation. He was probably going to see a lot of things. “Yes, it'll hold,” I said. Combat readiness and bloodlust had overtaken fear. They thrummed through me, twin flames. I drew two small throwing blades, wanting to fight, but my enemy was too cowardly to face me. Too
human
to fight face-to-face, might to might.

With each breath I smelled cordite from the gunshots, the stink of human panic, the smell of kylen like caramel and brown sugar. The peppery scent of ginger was growing stronger. With each blink of my eyes, I saw the landscape in rich shades of purple and green and opulent tints of stone. Far uphill, behind a rock outcropping, I saw black and red, a sinuous cloud of Darkness—human and half-breed. My entire body clenched.

Battle rage spiked in Audric. Swords overhead, he roared with the need to race uphill and draw blood.

“Shut up, Audric,” I growled. Faster than human sight, I ripped off my outer shirt and gathered up all the bigger pieces of the amethyst we had unearthed, wrapping them in the T-shirt and tying the arms into a sling. In an instant, the power of the stone melded to my body.

Ciana had stopped screaming, her face now cradled against Audric's chest. Thadd ducked and ran to us, blasting into the shield. Light sparked and forked like lightning across the shield. “Let's go,” I said. “Downhill, back toward town.”

“What about the horses?” Thadd asked.

“Took off. I smelled blood,” I said. Homer was hit. Rage ripped through me. I threw back my head and screamed my fury. The sound echoed across the mountainside.
They hurt my Homer.
I gasped, drawing in drafts of air across my tortured throat. “We'll have to walk back,” I said, my damaged vocal cords making the words grate.