He hated to break up the buddy system they had going, but looking at the alternatives, that might be the best bet, short term.
“Stay here a bit,” he said, dropping his pack and detaching the daypack to secure around his waist. He repositioned the thigh rig for ease of movement, left the vamp-killer behind, pulled the machete for left hand use, and positioned the shotgun on its tactical sling with an extended mag of standard ammo. Nothing beat the Origin-12 semi-automatic shotgun for these conditions. He texted her Chewy’s number and said, “I’ll scout ahead and see if I can find an animal trail to widen.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.” She sat down and leaned back against the backpack and bedrolls. “I’ll just take a nap, right here.” She closed her eyes and sighed.
He studied her for a moment, her eyes closed, not breathing quite so hard, and a slight smile on her face. Yeah. She looked good. She looked healthy. And she smelled like vanilla and stone.
God help him. He did not need another red-head in his life. “If for some reason I don’t come back, or you hear a lot of gunfire, open a ward over yourself and call the number on the text you just got. Chewy’ll find you and get you out.”
She opened one eye, rolled a little to her side, and scooted her bottom against the dirt to sit up and remove her backpack all at once. “And why would there be gunfire or why would you not come back?”
“You’re the one with a sense of evil and a bad feeling. I’m just prepping for your worst case scenario.”
She waved a hand in the air and said, “Everything feels fine now. These hills are full of magical hotspots. I’ll set a short termhedge of thornsto be safe. Go whack some weeds, Captain America. I need a nap.”
Without another word, he crouched and entered the laurel grove. Within seconds she was lost to sight. It was another world under here, the ground oddly powdery dry, with micro-runnels of erosion everywhere. When it rained, the laurel leaves and the plants’ natural shape acted like overlapping umbrellas, directing the rain down onto the roots, but also blocked the sun, which meant little to no undergrowth, just the twisted limbs. He whacked a path toward a likely spot, about a hundred feet away. Hot, sweaty, miserable work. But he found an animal trail, just as he had expected. He explored down and down and then climbed back to Lizzie. There was one section where she might need a belaying rope, just in case, but overall, it wasn’t a terrible descent.
Liz
The laurel thicketwas torturous simply because she couldn’t stand upright much, and her thighs and back were not in shape for the crouched posture Eli seemed to find so easy. The belay rope down had given her sense of security, and the one time she did slip, her walking stick stopped her downward progression before the rope did, which increased her confidence a lot.
They reached the holler with the little runnel of water faster than expected, and since it was mostly downhill, and since the day had cooled off as the sun dropped behind the ridges, Liz was a lot less sweaty, and a lot more comfortable. Eli picked out a flat space for camping, strung their food in a tree so bears couldn’t get it, and disappeared upstream into the brush for a “little recon,” as he put it, his shotgun at the ready. His last words to her were, “If I don’t come back—”
“Stop,” she interrupted, this time holding up a hand. “I know. If you disappear or I hear gunfire, call Chewy, open a ward, and sit tight until the helpless little woman can be saved. Got it. Now go do your recon before I throw a rock at you and it explodes.”
“You have exploding rocks?”
“Not with me but I know how to make ’em. Meanwhile,” she hefted a small stone in mock threat, “this stone witch has really good aim. So stop hovering.”
“I don’t hover,” Eli said with a grin. He turned and slid into the trees.
“Yes, you do,” Liz muttered to herself. She studied the campsite and spotted a half-buried ring of stones with about a ten foot diameter, maybe the remains of a firepit seating area. Or maybe a witch circle. She walked to the stones and touched one. No latent magic was present, just normal ambient magic in the stones. The stones were worn and smoothed; it had been campfire seating, but it had been ages, maybe a century, since it had been used even for that. She scuffed debris away and discovered that with a little work there was a depression in the center for the ancient firepit. Using a little mixed-tool on Eli’s pack that was part small shovel, she dug a narrow circular trench around the small depression, carried smaller weather worn and broken rocks to line the trench. She was sweating again, but voila, she had a multi-use firepit. She made sure the rocks were all touching in both rings, not that she expected to need two witch circles, but one never knew, and Liz was always prepared. She wedged smaller rocks into the crevices between the larger rocks and placed her hands on the largest stone, testing the circles for power connection. Her magic slide around both rings and back to her. Perfect.
She gathered firewood and arranged a campfire, kindling piled properly, ready to ignite. She then cleared all the brush in the camping area away to contain any sparks from the fire and tossed the bedrolls to the side. Before Eli got back, she relieved herself in the bushes. But she really,reallyneeded a bath.
When Eli returned, he was wearing a fresh T-shirt and his buzz cut looked suspiciously damp. He eyeballed the campsite, gave it a scant nod, and said, “There’s a pool of water upstream about fifty yards. Deep as sin, cold enough to puck—make you feel better.”
She grinned at his word choice alteration and asked, “Bath deep?”
“No bottom I felt. Clean and cold. I scouted around and it seems safe enough, if you can open a ward over the pool.”
A bath would be perfect. She tossed him his gloves with a casual, “Can do. Thanks.”
“Shout ‘A-Okay,’ when you get there.”
“A-Okay. I can do that.” She grabbed her travel bag and battery stone and headed upstream. Liz reached the small trickle of water splashing over mossy rocks; a tree canopy high overhead cut out the heat. The temps dropped dramatically, and a cool mist filled the air. Using her walking stick, Liz began to trudge upstream. Which was uphill. Of course. Everything seemed to be uphill or vertically downhill today. Her thighs were burning, and her calves were like rocks.
Oddly, her lungs felt better than they had in a long while, but if Eli had to carry her out of the gorge because her leg muscles locked up, things were going to get dicey. Water splashed louder ahead, and she pulled herself up on a tree, climbing up its roots as if they were stairs. She edged around it to see a narrow, crystal clear, bouncing, ten foot falls splashing into a pool. “Oh my stars and stones,” she murmured.
The pool was a good twelve feet oval with mossy-green covered rocks everywhere, ferns leaning over the pool, and roots trailing into it. She carefully made her way around the next tree to a small, flat place, one surrounded by bracken and overarching laurel, and with damp scuffs in the dirt made by Eli’s boots. She plopped onto the ground and just breathed as the effect of the day’s hiking and this last little climb leached away in the clean air. It was shadowy beneath the laurel, chilled and wet; droplets fell on her face and hands. She sighed in something close to peace. She shouted, “I’m A-Okay! Opening a ward now!”
“Good!” Eli shouted back. He sounded a lot closer than she expected, as if he had followed her to make sure she made it. A now-familiar warmth filled her.Interested. And camping overnight. And…Oh yeah.
Her breathing eased out completely and she lay a hand on a half-buried rock. There was power in the stone, a lot of power. She pulled her hand back, trying to figure out why there was so much power here. It was way more stored energy than should be in the stones, as if someone used this place as a power sink. Except she was absolutely certain no one had been here in a very long time. There was no indication that power had been tapped and siphoned from the site in decades. Maybe centuries. Maybe ever…
That meant that a previously unknown leyline might run beneath the ground here. Except that was impossible. There were no unmarked leylines in this area, all of them having been mapped by witches over the centuries, and, before the Europeans came, by tribal shamans and medicine-men and women of power. But thisfeltlike leyline power. More importantly, it felt like untapped, unused leyline power.
Liz took off her necklace and placed it and the battery stone on a powerful, flat rock. She set the amulets to draw energy through the stone in a slow trickle. She removed the crystal from its silver box, checked to see where the dog was, and placed it to recharge too. Carefully, because she was afraid of energy backlash, she drew only on the stones she was attuned to, and opened an old fashioned, protective ward around the pool. It was wider than her usual ward, but the rocks accommodated the simple working easily. She shouted to Eli, “Ward is set.”
