“What the hell?” Eli asked.
“Circle,” she said.
“Got it.” Eli stamped out the last of the hot ash, silent, effective. He placed the shotgun on the ground outside the stones, stepped back out, and grabbed up a bedroll, his handgun, and knives.
As he worked, she dropped to her knees again, one hand on the ring of stones. Felt on her necklace for a piece of green marble shaped like a pig.
Eli scooped up the silver box. Stepped back inside the circle.
From the direction of the pool, but much closer to the campsite, a flame appeared through the trees. A torch. A ball of fire. It rose with awhoosh, a blazing conflagration. A dead tree exploded with flame. It shot up to the heavens.
“Oh, that’s not good,” Liz said.
“Do you have a portablehedge of thorns?”
“Yes. But it won’t keep out air. Or temperature changes.”
Eli discovered another thing he was afraid of: roasting to death.
She pressed the stone to bring up thehedge of thornsworking, a protective barrier. The sparks were all out. He placed everything on the dirt and reached for the shotgun and his backpack. “No!” she shouted.
The magic shot eight feet high and closed on top like a knotted balloon. It went a foot deep into the earth and stopped. Eli cursed again, with vulgar ingenuity that might have made her laugh if she hadn’t been so terrified.
Her newly charged amulets were enough to make a stronghedge of thorns, but the power stored in them wasn’t enough to keep ahedgeup until morning, not against a demon. She needed to have charged a boulder for days to have enough stored power to protect against a demon all night. She needed a full coven. Or a priest. She had nothing. Worse, the firepit rocks were nestled on the ground a long way from the ley line. She needed that ley line. She wiped her hand across her head wound and wiped her blood onto the rocks. Thehedgeglowed brighter but until she saw what form the demon had taken, she didn’t know if it would be enough. She touched her head. The blood there was drying and would already leave a scar. Damn vanity.
“I need a knife,” she said.
Eli clicked on his flashlight. In the beam, she saw him open theshort-bladed folding knife he had used to cut her pocket. He placed it hilt first into her palm.
Liz pricked her finger, too deeply, too long. She cursed. The blade wassharp.
Eli half yanked up her wrist and demanded, “How much blood do you need? A body full?”
“I opened ahedge of thorns. Protection from the demon. But we need more power, and fast.” She yanked against his grip and snarled, “Let me work.” He let her go.
On her knees, she crawled around the outer circle of stones, rearranging them, pulling all the inner circle of stones into the outer ring, wedging them in place, making certain they all touched one another. She wiped her blood on each rock to strengthen the working. She had planned both circles of rocks when she created the firepit. Just in case she needed something. But she hadn’t planned for a demon. Especially a fire demon wrapped in mud. If that kind of demonic entity even existed. “Son of a witch,” she muttered, her heart pounding.
Liz looked at the center of the inner circle. There was something like burned mud in there.
Eli–Captain America—carried all the things that went bang and was always ready with a weapon. She carried around less mundane weapons and was prepared for... Okay. Not equipped forthis. But she had made certain that all the rocks in the circle were touching.
When she looked back at him, Eli was holding his handgun in one hand and a vamp-killer blade in the other. Staring at the shotgun and their backpacks only feet away. “Drop thehedge. I need my weapons,” he said.
“If I drop it, it’ll come back up at lesser power. If you fire that gun or cut with that knife, thehedge of thornsworking goes down.”
In the light from his flash, his body looked taut, tense, ready for anything. And it was so useless. No weapon he had would even scratch a demon.
“I don’t see anything,” he said, his voice now a whisper. “Except a sparkle here and there from thehedge. Where’s the demon?”
“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.”
