Liz’s stomach tumbled into her gut. Demons were uber powerful, but they were stupid. They wanted a human to inhabit, but they couldn’t cross ahedge of thornswithout a lot of time and a big fight. Werewolves on the other hand... With the exception of a very few packs, most were like rabid humans. They could think. They could plan. They could hunt.
“How many?” Eli asked. He cursed foully. Eli ended the call and stared out in to the dark. That wasn’t good.
Grindylows were the enforcers of the were-community. They looked like cute neon green kittens until they went into fighting mode. Liz had never seen it, but they were supposed to have steel claws. Like, five-inch blades, four of them at ends of each paw when they executed a were-creature who tried to spread the were-taint. If a were-creature got out of line, they showed up and killed it. But so far as Liz knew, they killed it after the fact, after it bit a human and transmitted the disease that caused humans to wake up furry on the moon and kill their friends and family.
“The werewolf probably scented the demon energies during the last full moon,” Eli said to Liz, toneless, clipped. Even in the dark, she could see that his face had gone totally emotionless, an expression she’d never seen before. It was, maybe the true Eli, the warrior. “Maybe it got some power or ability from the leyline and when it found human form, it located your not-Golda.”
“Or maybe the werewolfisGolda,” Liz whispered. “A witch bitten by a werewolf.”
“The females go into heat and never regain sanity,” Eli said. “Jane saw it happen more than once.” He hesitated, staring at the silver box. “It was bad.”
The silver box blazed red, burning. Using the bedroll, she snapped the top over it and dropped it to the ground. It was energy, even if it was bad energy. If she got desperate, she could try to draw its power into her amulets. “Golda didn’t look insane,” Liz said, “but then I’ve never seen a female werewolf, and I wasn’t with Golda for long. However, if we’re wrong about Golda being a were, then maybe the werewolf, when it was in human form, told Golda about the leyline and the demon energies. And maybe what Golda wanted all along was… What? To free the demon?” Liz frowned and then surprise shivered through her. “Golda wanted me to free the demon, let it take me over in vengeance for something, so she could have the leyline free and clear.”
“I heard you tell Molly that you may have accidently freed the demon. How did your magic free it?”
“Cia and I were accidently contaminated with a blood-curse while fighting a Big Bad Ugly. We still carry the taint in our skin, and any curse is like bait to a demon.” She took a slow breath before admitting to the next part. “Worse, we tangled with a demon once. We accidently trapped it in a circle and managed to bind it back where it came from, but it took everything we had. And it wasn’t much more than a green sprite of evil. This one…” She shook her head. “This one is bigger. Way more powerful.”
Eli cursed succinctly. Liz figured that summed it up perfectly.
The point above her where the hedge was under attack by the bone, went a pale gray. She unwrapped her cut finger and squeezed. It hurt. A lot. Pain shocked through her from the tiny injury, telling her that squeezing and scraping the wound on the rocks had bruised it badly. The wound broke open and her blood flowed. She leaned in and began to smear it across the rocks. “Check behind me,” her breath gave out. She hadn’t admitted even to herself that with the amulets and the battery stone empty, she was expending her own energy on the hedge. And they had been at this less than an hour.
“Lizzie?” he asked.
She cleared her throat and strengthened her voice. “Make sure the rocks are all touching each other,” she said. “No gaps.”
“Got it.” He let go her hand and bent in the small space. He adjusted two rocks for a better connection. The weakness in her hands and her spine eased as the energies flowed more smoothly and thehedgestrengthened.
But the demon leaned in harder, pressing on that one single point.
The pain returned to her hands and this time ran up from her fingers, wrists, arms, and into her shoulders. Down her spine. Up into her skull. A soft sound of pain escaped her lips. She was panting. Her heart thundered. The ache of power loss pulled her own life-energy out of her and into thehedge.
It had been years since she prayed, but now, in desperation, she said a prayer. Nothing happened. “Blade.” She held out her hand for the knife Eli had taken back. Without argument, he placed it in her right hand. She cut her left fingers again, two this time. She smeared the blood, too much blood, onto the rocks. She had cut too deep, severing a tiny artery, but when the blood pulsed out onto the rocks, thehedgestrengthened. Eli knelt beside her when she was done and reapplied gauze, wrapping the fingers tightly, and held it, applying pressure. “Captain America?” she whispered.
He laughed, short and hard, his eyes moving from her fingers to the point of contact with the demon bone. “Not Captain America,” he said.
“I had hoped we’d sleep together tonight,” Liz said.
“Just to be clear, in case you didn’t notice, we’re under attack by a mud demon and you’re telling me, in the middle of said demon attack, that you were hoping we’d have sex. Sex. Not sleeping while I listened to you snore.”
“I do not snore.”
“Sure you do. One night you spent at the inn, I was on in-house patrol. I heard you through your bedroom door. Sort of a soft snorting blowing.”
She blushed, her face going hot. “Just to be clear, I was talking about sex and you changed it to snoring.”
He grinned at her outrage and embarrassment. “I find your snores adorable.” He let go of her fingers, stood, and ran a weapons’ check. He looked longingly at the shotgun outside the firepit, out of reach. “So how do we hold off a demon and a werewolf?” he asked, sounding almost casual. And not even hinting that they might lose this battle. Warrior to the bone.
“Blood,” she said, her panting easing. “And—” She stopped, remembering when thehedge of thornsopened. The energies had only penetrated the soil by about eight inches. The hedge was designed to go several feet underground. “I can try to recharge my amulets via long distance. These in the firepit are already drained.” She stopped to breathe, though it didn’t really help. “But the rocks at the waterfall were like the tips of icebergs, big buried boulders sitting on the leyline. I don’t know if they’re close enough to siphon from, but I need to try. And since I left some blood in the cave, I might have a way to tie me, here, to the stones and the leyline.” She looked up at him and said, “You hold me upright, make sure I don’t fall through thehedge, and I’ll see if I can transfer some of the leyline energy to my amulets, or to the circle stones here.” One part of her mind was already working through the geometry and the methodology of such a transfer. Even if it worked, it was going to suck.
One of Eli’s arms went around her. The other was holding that handgun. Which he still couldn’t fire unless thehedgewent down. Bullets wouldn’t hurt a demon but might hurt a werewolf if it was loaded with the right ammo. “Silver composite rounds?” she asked.
“One mag. The other is standard, but once the werewolf— or werewolves—are down, the standard rounds will take it out. That?” he inclined his head to the demon, “I need to know what will hurt it.”
Liz peeled off the makeshift bandage. “Let’s try this.” She made a fist and relaxed it; made another. The wound opened again. Liz flung her blood at thehedgein front of the demon. Droplets scattered across the defensive working.
The demon reacted with a sharp jerk. Pulled away. It growled, a sound like sucking mud.
Liz said, “Okay. Good to know. Blood works. A demon bound since the time of Christ? Beats me. Holy water? Silver? Salt from the Dead Sea? You got a silver cross?”
