“I don’t know. I’m guessing I banged my head somehow.” She touchedher head and Eli turned her to see. “Either that or I was underwater for thirty minutes or so.”
Eli’s arms tightened around her, a fast hug, or maybe shock. Her coughing started again, now sounding wet, like pneumonia, and he bent her forward over his left thigh, hitting her back with his open palm in upward thrusts, as if to dislodge something in her airway. Her cough worsened. Long racking sounds. She coughed up water. A lot of water. And something gross. Out of nowhere, she vomited. He seemed to be expecting that and slapped her back with enough force to help her expel the water and gunk from her stomach and lungs. The coughing fit went on too long, and when there was a short break in the coughing, Eli somehow found the three purple healing stones on her necklace and placed all three between her lips.
That helped dramatically. When she could breathe again, he butt-walked them and the sleeping bags away from the gross pool of mucoid muddy water and rolled her back into his lap. He wiped her face. Her shivers went from shaking to bone rattling. Her amulets blazed hot again. She pulled her pocket away, and when Eli realized that the silver box was scorching the fabric, he opened a short-bladed folding knife and cut the pocket out. The box and the burned cloth landed with a hollow thump on the ground.
The instant it landed, the flames in the firepit roared high.
Eli cradled her and rolled them in a half-backward somersault, away from the firepit, his arms and legs cushioning her, the sleeping bags flying. He folded her up in the bags again and grabbed an expandable plastic water container. Tossed its contents on the flames. They blazed higher. Steam rose. “What was that?”
“Opposing magic systems. The elements exploded when they collided.”
Liz touched the blue-and-green beads on her necklace and cast aseeingworking. The flames were dark with something odd, something she hadn’t seen before. She pulled up a sleeve and looked at her arms. The blood-curse was sooty black beneath her skin, tracing up along her magic.
Beneath her butt, the earth rocked.
“Earthquake,” Eli said. “Or mudslide.” The flames from their fire ignited the leaves twenty feet overhead.
Something was wrong. The smell of brimstone filled the clearing.
The horrible feeling Liz had been carrying for months intensified, a buzzing vibration that brought on a bout of nausea. Her flesh went gray and bruised-looking in herseeingworking; the blood-curse taint darkened. Her neck burned as the amulet necklace went hot again. All her protections activated at once. A memory came at her, like being hit with a club. “It’s not an earthquake,” she whispered. “It’s not a mudslide. It’s a... a fire demon.”
Eli
The logs on the fire erupted again. Heat and magic blasted out. Eli ducked. Cradling Lizzie. Fire hit him. He threw himself away from her, rolling as his shirt flamed and smoked. Instantly, he was on his feet in a crouch. Weapons in hand. Shotgun and vamp-killer.
The fire went out. In the pit, in the leaves overhead. Utter darkness descended. The smell from the fire smelled odd. Brimstone. Very softly he said, “Fuck. Me.”
The pain was like all first-degree burns. Hurt like a mother, but ignorable. He made a fist, stretched. Everything worked. It hadn’t burned deep like thermite and it wasn’t exothermic like sodium. He’d live.
He quartered the campsite. Wished he’d brought some lenses. FLIR would be handy right now. When he was sure there was no immediate threat, he went back to Lizzie and squatted on the ground beside her. “Can we outrun it? What will it take to kill it? Talk to me.”
Liz
“Hang on.” Liz blinked against her human vision of fire-bleached retinas. All she had for the moment was theseeingworking. With it, she spotted a muddy blast of energy, brown and orange and gray as death, approaching from upstream. From the pool.
She had never seen energies exactly like this, yet she recognized what it was in the sooty ocher of her flesh. She had no memory of it, but she knew she’d just fought the approaching energies, those demonic magics, somehow. And... underwater. In the pool. Either she’d won that battle or she’d gotten away. She needed to remember how, because however she got away might save them now.
A flash of memory returned as the brimstone smoke of the firepit burned her nose. A green glow. A glimpse of darkness. A struggle. There had been a small cave at the pool, behind and underneath the narrow falls. This thing, this demon... had it been in the cave? Had it tried to take her over? She remembered a struggle, a breathless, desperate struggle.
Later she’d coughed and vomited it out. That meant she had fought this approaching demon off, but somehow it had caused her to forget. Maybe the gunk up her nose had contained aforget-meworking? Or the head injury. She touched her head again. It was swollen, it hurt to the touch, and a trickle of fresh blood was running down her forehead.
And...
There had been a ley line. The demon had been bound into the ley line. That was the only thing that made sense.
She touched her head again, fingering the gash on top of the goose-egg lump. She had bled from her knuckles. This thing wasn’t a blood demon. It didn’t fit any of the old grimoires or the old tales, but all demons could track through blood. And this one was coming.
“Lizzie,” Eli demanded.
“Demon,” she said again. The word brought on a coughing fit. “Your weapons won’t touch it.”
Eli pulled his cell. Said into it, “Alex. Demon. Exfil if possible to my GPS. Backup if not. Roger that.” To Liz he asked, “Where?”
“Close. Coming.”
Eli circled the campsite. His shotgun ready to fire. “How long?”
“No time.” Liz made it to her knees. Eli pulled her upright. She grabbed Eli’s wrist and the well-charged battery stone. She stumbled across the firepit stones, inside the circle.
