Sorceress Awakening (2 page)

The shortest among the group, the man who
had first waved at Lillian, stepped toward her. Dressed in a well-tailored
business suit, his appearance spoke of money, yet his shaggy, gray-peppered
brown hair was at odds with his otherwise trim appearance. Other than that, he
would have been an unmemorable fellow—from a distance.

Up close, she could detect the lie.

Hostility radiated off him in waves.

“You may call me Alexander.” The short man
smiled, but the cold glint in his eyes canceled out any friendliness which
might have been there. “My associates will not harm you if you come with us. I
have a few questions for you.” He gestured for his people to give her room. All
but two of them moved.

The remaining two, a woman with dark hair
similar to Lillian’s own and a big man with a six o’clock shadow, turned their
unblinking gazes to the shorter man. Alexander narrowed his eyes and said something
too low for Lillian to hear.

The man in need of a shave backed off, but
the woman showed her reluctance by the way she changed her stance without
giving ground to Alexander’s command. She turned her feral eyes upon Lillian
and tilted her head to sniff at the air.

Too frigging weird. Time to leave. “I don’t
know who you are, but I think there’s been a misunderstanding. Perhaps I can
help you find your way back to the road.” Lillian rushed the words together in
her hurry. “The gardens can be confusing.”

“I assure you, there has been no mistake. I
can smell your power.”

I can smell your power?

With luck she could ditch them in the maze.

A breeze picked up and whipped her hair
into her face. While she’d fought to clear her vision, she realized she’d missed
something. The others looked past her, deeper into the maze, in the direction
the breeze had come. The woman with dark hair and feral eyes backed away with a
hiss.

First singly, and then in twos and threes,
the others retreated from the green cedar walls. Lillian didn’t know what was
hiding in the maze, but it couldn’t be much worse than this group of menacing strangers.
Even if they hadn’t blocked her path back to the house, instinct demanded she
run into the concealing greenery.

She bolted into the maze’s entrance and ran
as if monsters out of her darkest nightmare were giving chase. The first branch
of the maze loomed in front of her. She darted to the right. Two more sharp
turns and she was well into the complex maze.

The others hunted her, crashing through the
narrow rows. By the sounds of snapping branches and swearing, someone was
trying to go through the walls instead of around them.

She was nearly halfway to the center before
the noise of pursuit started to fade. If fate was kind, her pursuers were now
hopelessly lost. Her slight advantage would only last until she emerged on the
other side, but it might be enough to escape into the forest. And the
lengthening shadows of dusk would give her an advantage in her home forest. If
she got that far.

When she emerged in the center of the maze,
she ran past the first ring of stones. She was under the shadow of her redwood by
the time a figure raced from another opening. She froze behind the tree. The
man didn’t see her and ran toward the path leading out of the maze.

Damn, he’d be ahead of her now. She hugged
the tree trunk while she caught her breath. This wasn’t going well.
Think,
think, think.

A movement at the east entrance betrayed
another man a moment before he walked into the clearing. He sniffed at the air
as he jogged up to the first ring of stones. His eyes locked on her tree. A
smile slowly spread across his face.

He reached the first stone and rested his
hand on it. With a yowl, he jerked back. Smoke rose up from the stone like
grease dripping onto the coals of a barbecue. While
that
was an unusual
sight, she didn’t have time to dwell on it.

Survival first, weird shit later.

More strangers appeared, spit out by the
maze. No one else tried to enter the perimeter of the waist-high ring of
stones, even though there was plenty of room between each stone to pass without
touching them. A tense silence engulfed the clearing.

Alexander entered last, unhurried. With his
head tilted to one side, he looked from her to the redwood and back again.

“I’d thought the ones with strength like
yours had gone extinct centuries ago,” he said, as if his words explained
everything. After another half dozen steps, he stopped outside the ring of
stones. He frowned at them a moment. “Not that it matters. It’s your magic I
want. You have two choices: surrender your magic, or swear allegiance to serve
my lords.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,
but that handy circle of stones seems to keep you away. Unless you plan on
camping out here for the next few days, I think you better move on.” She didn’t
believe for a minute they’d actually do what she advised, and she doubted
telling them to screw-off would have much of an effect, but maybe if she kept
them talking she’d eventually wake up from this nightmare.

He smiled, a charming curve of lips, then
he tilted his head in the direction of the house and his merriment vanished.
“That’s a grand house, and these gardens, they’re rather large for just you to
take care of. If I wait, I imagine your family will come home soon. Your husband
and children, perhaps?” His expression took on a faraway look as if he were
thinking about something else. “Or am I wrong? You have the ageless look of all
dryads, but perhaps you’re actually very young, newly come to your powers. Is
that why I’ve never sensed you? No matter. I’m sure you have loved ones and
they’ll be along shortly.”

Lillian couldn’t hide in the shadow of the
tree forever. As he’d said, her family would return home and be captured by
these freaks. Clearly, Alexander wanted something from her. Her magic, he’d
said. She didn’t know what he was smoking, but she wasn’t buying. Even seeing
the stone smoke when the other man touched it could have been a trick. However,
that didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous.

“I am patient up to a point,” Alexander
said. “If you make me go through these stones to get you, my patience will run
out before I reach you. Your choice.”

She shook her head. He frowned and his
eyebrows scrunched together. Without another word, he focused on the stone
standing nearest to him and began a chant low in his throat. Placing one hand
upon its surface, he grimaced as power arced, its blue light lancing out from
one stone to the next in line. Unseen until now, a dome of energy encircled her
and her tree.

“This can’t be happening,” she whispered.

But it was.

Whatever the small man was doing weakened
the dome. Where before the dome had appeared a solid blue, its coloration was
now patchy and frayed. A fissure formed along the base of the stone he touched,
the finest of cracks. She didn’t want to know what would happen when it gave
way.

Behind Alexander, a disturbance in the
ranks distracted her and she missed the exact moment the stone shattered.
Shards flew in all directions, damaging the other stones and cutting down meadow
grasses and prairie flowers like a sickle. Agony bloomed to life along her hip.
More along her waist.

She should have been safe hiding behind the
tree’s trunk, yet some of the stone shrapnel must have hit her. Blood, hot and
sticky, dampened her t-shirt and the waist of her jeans. Seconds later, the
burning sensation turned numb. A deep cold started to throb in her side, as if
her life was being sucked away by the wound.

She stumbled over a root and slammed her
shoulder on one of the redwood’s ground-sweeping branches. Teetering against
it, she gathered herself, then ducked under the branch to see what was going
on. Instinct guided her eyes up the tree. Two thin, blade-like fragments of
stone were embedded in the side of the tree’s trunk.

Pink liquid dripped off the fragments and
dropped onto the ground below. More ran down the trunk. Astonished, she touched
the liquid. It was slick like sap, but smelt coppery.

Tree sap mixed with blood?

Another rivulet flowed down the trunk and
coated her fingers.

Her legs grew rubbery. Numbness crept up
from the wounds, seeping through her blood and across her thoughts. Screams and
snarls interrupted the numbness. Had some of the other creatures been caught by
the exploding stones?

“Your life blood is watering the dirt and
leaf litter. Such a waste of magic,” Alexander mused.

What? Can’t I bleed to death in peace?
Lillian twisted toward Alexander and winced as pain stabbed through
her hip. The little man stood a few feet away, admiring the tree, his head
tilted to look up at its top, thirty-five feet above his head. He walked around
its circumference, studying it from different angles.

Resting against the tree took some of the
weight off her injured leg. She eased one hand above her head. Sliding her
fingers along the bark, she sought the rivulets of liquid and used them to
guide her to the first stone fragment. Her fingers closed on a cold, sharp
object. She clawed at it with her nails, dragging it from the wood.

Agony burned in her hip. She embraced the
pain. It was better than the cold sucking sensation of having her life leeched
out of her injury. Her fingers worked at the second piece of stone as Alexander
finished skirting the tree and came to face her.

With a grunt, she freed the second shard
and flung it with all her strength. Sap-blood flew in a splattering arc.

Her aim was true and the blood-coated stone
collided with Alexander. He screamed in agony, a tone of glass-shattering
quality. She winced. Hopefully such an unholy sound signaled a mortal injury.

The fragment was embedded in his neck where
an artery should have been. The stone smoked and hissed. Other drops of her
tree’s blood had eaten away at his skin, like she’d tossed acid upon him. A
human would have hit the ground, dead by now. She didn’t know what he was, but
he wasn’t human.

The creature collapsed to his knees but
continued to smile at her. Oh, he was in pain. She could see it in his pinched
expression: the white skin, drawn tight across his face, the slight grayish hue
of his complexion. But it was the sharp fangs when he hissed at her which gave
him away. A vampire? Impossible. There was no such thing. Yet what else could
he be?

Another blonde male and a muscular female
joined Alexander. While they were seeing to his wounds, Lillian took a step
forward. Her sight blurred strangely and she swayed. Instead of the carnage of
the glade, an image of Lillian’s grandmother stood before her, eyes closed and
face serene.

Gran’s hands moved in a precise, intricate
pattern as she chanted low in her throat. There was a soft-edged quality about
her. She looked faded, like an unfocused old picture. That’s when she knew her
grandmother wasn’t really there.

“Lillian, get to the gargoyle,” her
grandmother barked out the sharp command, her voice echoing as if from a long way
away, but she still heard the underlying fear. “Use your blood. Wake him.
You’re stronger than the Riven.”

Lillian shook her head, trying to clear her
vision. She slumped against the tree. A low-hanging branch offered support. She
wanted to believe she was hearing her grandmother’s voice. Obeying her commands
sounded like a good idea. Lillian gauged the distance from her tree to the
gargoyle’s statue: a few feet, ten maybe, fifteen at the most.

Ten feet or ten miles, it didn’t really
matter. She doubted she could walk more than two steps before she fell on her
face. But her grandmother needed her to get to the gargoyle statue. Maybe it
was another kind of protection like the stone circle had been.

Could it be so simple? Could killing these
creatures be as easy as getting to the statue and triggering some protection?

She needed to try. She was already dead.
She was losing too much blood to live, but perhaps she could still protect her
family.

Gathering her will, she straightened and
held the second stone fragment like a knife. Doggedly, she lurched toward the
statue. The ground seemed more uneven than she remembered. She tripped over a
stone, and fell to her knees.

As she forced herself back up, she saw
someone in her path: a blurry blob with a cloud of dark hair around it. The
strange, feral woman she’d first noticed outside the maze stood between Lillian
and her goal. Anger stirred to life.

How dare these monsters come into her home
and threaten to kill her and her family.

A sense of something powerful and old
flowed through her body, guiding her movements. She surged to her feet, the
stone fragment held low against her good thigh. Lillian darted forward, the
land around her a blur. Her opponent was moving far too slowly. One more step,
and then she snapped her arm up and forward, burying the stone shard in the
woman’s stomach. Her opponent’s mouth fell open, and she gasped in shock.

Growling, the woman clawed at the stone
fragment. Lillian sidestepped her enemy. Three steps from her destination, a
heavy weight slammed into her and claws ripped into her back.