“Yes,” Liz said.
“About the time of Christ, when all demon lore started,” he pushed. “But that religion hadn’t reached these shores.”
“No. It hadn’t. I’m not sure that demons care about geography or religion. Maybe that was the time when all evil was unleashed on this continent. There were a lot of upheavals, even over here, around that time.” She looked back at the demon. The flames of its energies were orange and a sick olive color. And the spot where the bone pressed was draining herhedgefaster than she thought possible. They were well and truly trapped.
“So instead of crosses and arcane religious symbols,” Eli said, “this demon was bound in vines and the bones of a human for two millennia.”
“Somehow the demon used my bathing in the pool to get free.” Had her blood-curse taint helped free it? She applied pressure to the wound on her finger, which started it bleeding again. She touched each stone in the firepit with the finger, strengthening thehedge. When she was done, Eli tossed a roll of one-inch gauze and a similar-sized roll of sticky tape into her lap. When she looked up, he was still holding the weapons. Magician. Captain America.
Liz had a bad feeling about this situation. “I was sent here by Golda,” she said.
Eli spoke into his cell. “What do you have on Golda?”
Liz remembered the Wi-Fi he’d set up in the trees on the hill, which was great, but they’d need cell chargers. When her finger was wrapped, she went through her essentials and pulled out the cell chargers and cords. Offered one to Eli and plugged in her own.
“Got it.” He dropped the cell from his face. “Liz, Golda died three days ago in Suffolk, England.”
“Glamours that make you look like someone else are illegal,” she said. And instantly knew how stupid that sounded. “Never mind.” She called Molly. When the connection went through, she started talking instantly. “I’m in a stone firepit circle with Eli. A demon is pressing against myhedge. It was bound in pre-Columbian copper, hidden in a cave behind a waterfall. It looked as if a recent earthquake or maybe just the action of water on the stone caused a cave-in, and when I took a bath in the pool, I saw the cave and went inside. The pool and the cave are directly over a ley line, which makes me think the ley line was used as a power source to bind the demon and the rocks that held it. So it’s possible I, a blood-curse-marked stone witch, accidentally released it when I took a look-see.”
Molly cussed, witch-style. “Son of a witch on a stick. Does it have a physical form?”
Liz told her what they could see in human sight and in aseeingworking. She added what little they knew or surmised. “Ideas?”
“I’ll research and get back,” Molly said.
“Gotta go, bro.” Eli ended his call and said to Liz, “Rescue party on the way, dropping in via helicopter. Brute woke up and selected the backup.Per Alex, the werewolf is in charge. And there’s a grindylow attached to his back.”
“Brute? Why did Brute...? Oh. Werewolf,” Liz whispered. Brute was a werewolf stuck in wolf form by contact with an angel. The wolf had a complicated and bloody history. He lived at the inn with Yellowrock and Eli, one of the only werewolves on the planet not guarded over by a grindylow executioner twenty-four-seven. If the angel-touched werewolf was coming, with a grindy, then they might actually have angel backup.
But.
The presence of a grindylow meant other problems. A grindy meant another werewolf was close to them. A werewolf left over from the last attacks months ago. Eli had said he was armed for werewolf, just in case. “Son of a witch,” she whispered. “How long before they get here?”
“Gut feeling? We have two to four hours before they get in the air, find an LZ, land, and then hike in to us.”
“LZ?” she asked.
“Landing zone.”
Liz searched around and spotted the silver box; she almost touched it before the sensation of heat registered. Using the sleeping bag edge to protect her hands, Liz plucked open the box. The crystal inside was glowing red. “Whatever fake-Golda attached a charm to, it’s heading this way too. Fast. What if there never was a dog? What if Golda sent us to chase a werewolf? And I stumbled on the demon.”
“Coincidence isn’t likely. If there’s a were in the area with a demon and a ley line, it was part of the plan.”
Eli called Alex. “Ask Brute if a werewolf is in the vicinity.”
A tinny voice said, “Brute nodded yes.”
“How does he know?” Liz asked.
“He just knows,” Eli said.
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 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 into 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 the 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 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 ley line and when it found human form, it located your not-Golda.”
