“It’s that way,” she pointed. “It crawled up from the pool. It’s here.”
Chapter Seven
Eli
The bushes moved.Eli angled his flash into the area. Smoke blossomed up from the leaves before vanishing in wisps. A… thing… walked into the clearing. It was six feet tall, bipedal with short-stocky legs, and built like the Michelin Tire Man, except it had at least three arms like tree trunks and no head. Bones stuck out everywhere, presumably human bones, with a fully articulated hand in the center of its chest, a femur poking up at the shoulder, and rib bones pressing outward where its liver would have been if it had been human. It had no eyes, no visible ears or nose. No mouth. Other than bones, it seemed composed of mud, sticks, and leaves it had picked up on its way here. The wood and greenery was smoking and curling in the heat. The thing stopped, as if letting them look.
Eli’s flash settled on the only color on the thing—a flash of red near the hand bones. “Blood, Shaped like a fist.” He dropped his flash to Lizzie’s hands and the torn skin of her knuckles. “You did that. Good punch.”
Lizzie’s face underwent a dozen emotions. She said, “There’s a cave beneath the falls. And a skeleton, partially mummified. We… We fought. I think that, when I socked him, I used all the stone power in the cave. It didn’t stop him. It didn’t even slow him down. He covered my face, my nose and mouth, with mud so I couldn’t breathe.”
“How did you get away?” Eli murmured.
The memory came clear. “I touched a boulder that’s connected to a leyline. The demon let me go, and I fell into the pool. Most of the mud washed away. The rest I gagged up on the ground.”
“According to the Book of Enoch, demons are the souls of the children of fallen angels. Why’s it made of mud?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the demon spirit is bound up in the bones? When the skeleton fell into the mud it may have been able to incorporate that into its body?” Lizzie shivered, shaking her head.
The demon walked forward. Not a shamble, not a stride, more as if its legs were different lengths, giving it an uneven stagger. Right up to the hedge of thorns. Eli held down his hand, wanting to see what Liz saw. Without looking, she took his hand. Her fingers were icy.
In the seeing working, the mud thing was blazing with power, orange and a sick green, and pulsating pockets of pitch black. The bones glowed an oily black too. The mud demon leaned close to the hedge, only inches away from Eli’s face. His fingers twitched toward his weapon. Counterproductive. But the urge was hard to ignore.
The demon had no eyes, but Eli knew the thing was looking at him, seeing him, all of him, every failure, every mistake, every bad decision. The sense of wrong, of danger, of evil washed over him. Eli had never seen anything like this, never felt anything like this. Fight or flight were at war in him and he struggled to keep his breath steady and his heartrate low.
Eli looked down at the witch. In her own working, she glowed a soft red, like heated stones. The energies in her necklace were burning fast and hot against her skin. She lifted her free hand and adjusted them so they rested on her jacket. He looked back at the thing he had no weapons to fight.
The… mud and bone demon was a good enough description. The mud and bone demon lifted one of its arms, which ended in a flattened off stump the size and shape of a dinner plate. It placed the stump against the hedge, and it flamed bright red as it fought the unique, dark energies. The thing pushed against the hedge and instead of being burned, the mud bubbled a little, but was otherwise unharmed by the energies. That shouldn’t be possible. The thing pulled the round, plate-shaped limb away. A long thin bone pressed forward, protruding from the limb’s center. It was splintered on the end, maybe part of a broken arm bone—the skinny bone of the lower arm. The demon tapped with it on the hedge, as if it was tapping on a door. Sparks flew from the point of contact.
Eli could feel the heat of the thing, but the demon didn’t seem to notice its own temperature or its effect on its surroundings.
The demon leaned in with that one shattered bone, pressing against thehedgewith the splintered point like a long, filthy fingernail. The point of contact blazed with scarlet light, and instantly began to dim slightly, as if energy was being siphoned away.
In her own working, Eli saw Lizzie’s necklace go cold as all the stored energy was sapped away.
Liz picked up the battery stone and placed it in her lap, took the necklace off and coiled it on top. Even he could tell it wasn’t going to be enough. She pressed her bleeding finger onto the firepit rock closest.
LIZ
Hazy memories slid through her fast and solidified into a surety: heat and wood and stone and icy cold. She had fought it so hard. So very hard. Her amulets had been on the bank of the pool, far away, resting on a rock. She had fallen through the waterfall and into the water, which had washed the mud away, the only thing that had saved her. She should have died. Washing away some of its mud, the demon had reached into the water and pulled her back to the cave. It had been trying to possess her at the same time it was trying to hold a physical form together. Its attention and energies were divided. She fought it. It tried again to enter her, possess her, through her mouth and nose.
She had socked it with a bare fist, hit it with the raw power of the stones, hit it with everything she could draw from the cave itself. That… that had worked. It fell apart. But she had landed wrong and banged her head. Fallen into the pool again.
If she hadn’t hit her head, if she had stayed and fought, pulling on the leyline, she might have kept it from reknitting its mud body back together.
Using that raw power, she had gotten away. But she hadn’t won. The demon had found its shape again and… it wanted someone to possess.
It had followed her blood trail down the hill. Her only weapons were her amulets and the freaking firepit rocks. And the blood she had just smeared on them. That brought another memory: the blood she had shed in the water-drenched cave. Even small smears of blood had allowed the demon to track her. But the blood here and there alsomightgive her a fighting chance. Her blood here and there might make the difference.
“I think I can share what I’m seeing with you.” She took his hand.
As she did, another thought occurred. Her amulets had been lying on the rock at the pool to recharge. The flat rock surface that had looked so small and innocuous, had been the upper surface of a boulder that had traveled deep underground. That boulder had been touching the leyline far below the pool. As a stone witch, her amulets had instantly attached themselves to the rock-friendly leyline and filled themselves with power to the burning point. The cave was part of the boulder system. There was a connection between the boulder and her amulets and her blood. She might be able to reach the boulder and, through her amulets, draw directly from the raw power of the leyline.
Liz expanded theseeingfor him.
Eli
He snarled and cursed,looked longingly at his shotgun. And his backpack. Which was filled with the water. He calculated how long they would have to wait for backup. If they didn’t cook first, they’d be thirsty, but they wouldn’t die of dehydration. He holstered his weapon and turned off the tactical flashlight. “So what do you suggest?” he asked, voice calm.
