“That, or the Guild has been alerted to us taking off, and they’re preparing for us to show up here.”
Another good point.
“Stop there, Emery. Penny.” Roger held up a fist, holding his phone to his ear with the other hand.
“This will be a wonderful chance to see how they work in animal form.” Vlad unbuttoned his coat jacket as he caught up with us. Apparently he’d be going in our group.
I did not miss Cahal stepping closer to me. He didn’t trust Vlad.
“I’ve always wondered how they communicate with all those teeth.” Vlad gave me a flawless smile, his face speckled with moonlight.
“Like you can talk,” I said, and immediately regretted it when his smile spread. That smile wasn’t rainbows and flowers.
Another set of shivers crawled up my spine.
I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear as the night moved. Shapes emerged from the shadows to my right to form a loose horde behind us, vampires all, in their monster forms, with long, sharp claws and gaping, fang-filled mouths. More shapes moved through the new night, slipping out from beneath bushes or around trees, barely making a sound.
The shivers zipping up my spine were starting to get frustrating. Still holding Emery’s hand, because it kept me from jumping around like a lunatic and making a fool of myself, I flipped up the flap of the compartment holding Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky and brushed my fingertips across its surface. It was there, all right, happy to ride along.
Understanding punched me in the face.
This stone had always liked danger. It was happiest getting a ride with the most dangerous person in the group, largely because (I suspected) that person would likely draw the most fire and fury from enemies. It usually let out a pulse of power before a big attack, but once it was actually in battle, it just chugged along, waiting for the user to draw from it.
“It’s started,” I said, heart ricocheting around my ribcage. “It’s already started. The battle has begun.”
Emery turned to me, but shadows draped his face and hid his expression. “I don’t see any magic. The shifters and vampires would smell people if they were close.”
I bit my lip, starting forward. Feeling the rightness of doing so. Feeling the pull to get moving. “It’s just…”
When Emery didn’t move with me, I loosened my hand to let go of him. He immediately followed me, his trust hopefully not misplaced.
Cahal wasn’t far away, shadowing us. A moment later, I heard movement behind us. A backward glance revealed Vlad had changed into a white, swampy monster, his shifted form relaying his age and power. He was leading the rest of the vampires down with us.
The shifters hesitated, looking up the slope, probably for Roger’s sign to go. My phone vibrated in my utility belt.
“It’s a text from Reagan,” I whispered, clicking off the screen. “She’s tired of the slow approach. She’s going to speed things up.”
“You girls are…” Emery shook his head, and I just barely saw his grin. “Pairing you together was either sheer brilliance or the worst idea in history.”
“Judging by how we work together during the bounty hunter gigs, I’d say the latter…”
31
A hundred feet or so down the hill, following animal trails, the shifters finally caught up to us, Roger in animal form and in the lead. No magic had marred our path, not even a tiny tripwire. I was about to comment on it when Cahal took two fast but somehow unhurried steps to my side and put his hand out, stopping me.
“Wh—”
He put his finger to his lips, cutting me off. Vlad crept closer, coming to a stop just behind Emery.
A twig snapped. Bushes rustled. Darkness draped across the wild landscape, creating deep pockets of shadow where anyone could be hiding.
Seek.
Destroy.
A colorful gleam of magic rained down from the sky, glittering as it filtered through the trees and sprinkled the ground. Three small strands of magic illuminated on the ground way down the path, probably tripwires with such little power that the strands were normally invisible to the eye, even for naturals.
Would I have felt those before running through them?
The searching spell dissipated, and the ensuing silence stretched through the thick trees.
“How’d you—”
Cahal slapped his hand across my mouth. He put his other hand, two fingers out, in front of his eyes, before turning it around and pointing just off to the right. He opened and closed his fist, held up a couple more fingers, and stared at me like his charades meant something.
Emery glanced over his shoulder at Vlad. Vlad nodded, not so attractive anymore, before turning and looking at another vampire.
The chain of command was in motion, and off shot the vampire who’d apparently been chosen as our lookout, eerily silent as she darted quickly through the brush and bushes. She disappeared out of sight before Cahal stepped back into the shadows.
Emery tugged me forward.
Everyone in this crew was very good at sneaking around, not to mention working together. I needed to up my game in the magic department so I wasn’t dead weight.
A moment later, the lookout vampire loped back to us, falling in line easily. I hadn’t even heard a scuffle. She handed off a cell phone that she must’ve taken off the Guild sentry. Vlad handed it up and Emery put it into his back pocket.
Closing my eyes, I soaked in our surroundings as Emery led me along, feeling the calm flow of nature and the perfect balance of Emery and me. The magic possibly stolen by accident from the goblin beat within my chest, pure and powerful. Slowly I let in the magic around me, the heady, spicy power of the vampires, the deep earthiness of the shifters, and the slightly acidic yet strangely flowery essence of the druid. I funneled and weaved everything together, storing it in the collection of elements I always amassed above me when in pressurized situations.
When I opened my eyes, I saw a tiny strand of magic ten feet in front of us.
“Thanks,” Emery whispered, the faint words riding his breath. He sent a counter-spell to easily knock out the spell in our path.
“What?”
“Organizing all of those elements for easy use.”
I shrugged. If I’d realized he’d be able to feel it, too, I might have felt too much pressure to mess with it.
The second tripwire down, I felt a strange pulse to our left. Slowing, I closed my eyes again, much better at magical identification when I wasn’t distracted by sight.
The feeling was so small and slight, but I narrowed my focus on it…
Movement behind me. A shifter shot off through the trees, and I recognized the big black wolf, Devon.
It wasn’t a person I’d felt, though. It was…something else. A flare, maybe?
“Do you feel that?” I asked Emery as we moved forward.
“No. What?”
“A mile,” came a raspy voice, barely able to articulate the words. It had come from one of the vampires.
I nodded. It fit the feeling I’d picked up. “Yes, it’s a magical mile marker. Huh. Why would they need a mile marker?”
“To coordinate their efforts, probably. Or”—Emery shot magic above us, unraveling a draping spell with the same searching intent that we’d encountered earlier—“to guide the sentries.”
“Spellsh get den-sher now,” Vlad said, his words wet and slurred. Clearly, talking through the distorted mouth and all those fangs got easier with age (or with practice), but it still wasn’t perfect. “Dead-ly.”
He was right. Powerful and more tightly woven spells glittered around us. Nothing surprising or challenging, though. Nothing we couldn’t handle. It was like they were waving us in. Keeping away the non-magical riffraff, but inviting their kind closer.
“Why?” I asked, countering a tattletale spell. Another trap intended to lop off a foot. Still another, this one a badly executed booby trap capable of shooting magical spears.
“What?” Emery whispered, putting his hand out to stop my forward progress. Cahal stopped moving toward me. He didn’t need to look back at Vlad or the shifters this time. One of each took off—one to the right, the other to the left—equally silent.
“They must know our power,” I said, “but they’re not doing too much to keep us out.” Someone grunted to our right, followed by a quick shaking of the bushes. A mage lookout had been taken down.