“Go for it. Don’t let any of them touch your skin.”
“Roger that.”
Liz watched as he carefully lifted and placed each bone into the backpack, making certain that nothing would shift and touch his skin as he worked. When he had all the longer bones and the fragments from the muddy earth, Liz added the small shards from her bandages, and dropped in the copper link. The magic binding clicked into place with an audible sound and an internal vibration she felt in her blood-cursed flesh and deep into her bones. “Now we put it back,” she said.
Eli zipped the backpack closed, pulled off the gloves, tucked them into a pocket, and lifted the backpack straps by one hand. After testing whether it would hurt him, he tossed the backpack over his shoulder and slung the shotgun forward. He held out his other hand to her and, careful of her injuries, helped her to her feet.
She was unsteady from blood loss and had to pee so bad it hurt to walk, but she took his hand and let him lead her out of the bloody, muddy firepit back up the hill to the pool. It was a miserable traipse. Her legs ached. Her feet hurt. She stank like a sewer filled with rotting corpses and she was freezing. But Eli’s hand was warm and dependable. His touch steadied her. “Shotgun?” she managed to ask through a voice that was rough with misery and overuse.
“Just in case of more werewolves.” he said. “Oh, Fanghead,” he called to Lincoln over his shoulder. “The grindy left a werewolf corpse by the pool. It’s all yours.”
Lincoln said drily, “Your kindness is boundless.”
“Think nothing of it.”
They made their slow, precarious way up the hill, upstream. The others, Cia, Shaddock, Brute, Jane, who looked weak as well water in human form, filed behind them, some of them stumbling in the dark. It took an age, but the pool and waterfall finally came into view. Eli asked, “In the pool or around the side?”
“Much as I would love a good wash right now, I don’t want to risk getting the bones wet.”
“Copy that. Side it is. It’s slippery.” He started out and Liz stopped him.
“Maybe I should go first. Just in case.”
Eli took a single step back and waited.
Holding on to the tree, avoiding the dead body, Liz climbed up the rocks, and roots and eased around the tree. Carefully, holding onto stones and trees, her hands aching with each grip, she worked her way across the rock and under the waterfall. Which was icy and glorious for the two seconds it took to get one foot inside and take a sniff.
The gasses were still here, but not nearly as dense as before she pulled all the energies into one spot and wrapped them around every bit of stone in here. She could breathe. Holding on to a rock that was now covered with dead moss, she extended a hand back out. Eli placed the backpack straps into her hand and she swiveled her body, bringing it inside, protecting it from the waterfall with her body. Again, washing off some of the mud in her hair was the best thing ever.
Eli followed her, shotgun in his hands.
When they were both inside the cave, Cia came in, muttering about mud and expensive boots and jeans and her hair and how she would never smell good again. If Cia was griping, then things were probably going to be okay. Cia placed a moonstone on a low, broken rock and activated a light working. Bright as a candle, it lit the cave. She said, “Oh, looky. A skull, a murder weapon, and everything. Perfect for a Halloween haunted house. I’ll have to remember this.”
Eli swept the room with his eyes, drew a vamp-killer, and faced back out toward the falls. Guard duty.
The twins discussed whether they had to open the backpack and decided they didn’t. Holding onto each other for balance, they dropped the backpack on the copper chain, near the skull. “Take north,” Liz said. Her sister moved around the pit and sat. Based on her position, Liz took east. They didn’t have to cast a circle, not with the leyline all around them.
“Son of a witch,” Cia swore, and shivered. “This feels good.”
“Too good. Don’t get drunk.”
Cia put back her muddy head and breathed in the power.
“Cia,” Liz warned.
“I know, I know.” She sounded disgusted. “Let’s finish this.”
“On three, we say the binding, three times,” Liz said.
“It’s gonna hurt,” Cia said.
“Probably. One, two, three.”
Together they said, “Ní mór fós i bhfeidhm,”
The bones in the filthy backpack rattled. The skull shook and rolled over, landing against the backpack. The leyline blazed with power, wrapping itself around the backpack and the bones. The copper chain clinked and rattled and slipped around the backpack. Around the skull.
“Ní mór fós i bhfeidhm,” they said.
