The demon stopped and slid another limb along the ground until it picked up the thing that Eli had tossed. It was a small chip of bone. The chip disappeared, pulled into the mud demon’s body. Ignoring the human, the vamp, and the dead werewolf bodies, the demon returned to thehedge. It pressed the original bone fragment into the protective energies. At the point of contact, thehedgewas again brown. The edge of the moon was just below the tip of the hills. It would drop behind them soon. Cia would lose all her power in an instant.
Liz bent her head to the bag. She could feel the power in the copper and bone through the padded waterproof bag. This was dangerous. If she miscalculated, the demon might be able to use this magic to attack Cia. The copper was cold, cold, cold, burning cold. So were the bones. How had Eli touched the fragment he had tossed? His fingers had to be in bad shape.
“How did you know that throwing a piece of bone at it would work?” Cia asked Eli.
“You said it might attack me when I brought back a piece of the bone. So I brought five and gave it one. Basic logic.” He started coughing. To combat it he breathed deeper. Hard to do when your lungs are spasming. Liz knew.
“You gonna be okay?” Cia asked. “Because I need to help my twin and you look and sound like you’re dying.”
“I’ve been gassed before. I’ll recover. Besides, I was only in the cave for three and a half minutes. Your twin was likely in there a lot longer.”
Cia eyed her and sighed sadly. “She never has taken good care of herself.”
On the ground, one of the werewolves twitched. Eli whirled and fired the shotgun. Which hadn’t even been in his hands until that moment. “Captain America,” Liz murmured. “Okay. I’m trying to remember what the original binding of the skeleton looked like,” she continued. “How much holy water do we have?”
“I have two in my pack,” Eli said.
“I have one more on my belt and three in my pack,” Jane said from the edge of the trees. Lincoln, standing beside her, looked back and forth between them, faint alarm on his face. Jane tossed the bottles of holy water to Eli, one by one, and he caught them, tucking them into the crook of his arm.
“This isn’t enough to wash all the demon’s mud away,” Liz said, “but maybe there’s enough to weaken it. Can you put all the water into one container?” she asked Eli. “Then when I say so, throw it or squirt it on the demon? All of it? At one time?”
“Can do,” Eli said. He knelt and opened his pack, removing a silicone baggie. Methodically, he poured all the bottles of holy water into the baggie and zipped it closed.
“Just be so kind as to aim away from me when you throw that shit,” Shaddock said. “Begging your pardon, ladies.”
Eli gave the vampire his battle smile, a tiny quirk of his lips. “Will do, fanghead.”
Liz removed all her bandages and studied her hands and wrists. They were in bad shape. She needed stitches to close some of the cuts. But sheneeded blood to make this work. She inspected higher and discovered that she was still bleeding from one cut on her lower left arm. That would do. “Okay. I’m going back into the magic of the cave and see if I can begin the rebinding.” Liz closed her eyes.
Once more she sent magic zinging through the earth, so much faster this time, an old route through the ground. Into the cave. And right up to the skull. “Hello, you little bastard,” she said aloud to the skull. “Did you fight the possession? Or did the power seduce you?” As it would try to seduce her if she failed. And honestly, if she failed, she would want the magical power. That was the nature of all power, to always want more, no matter the cost.
“Dang,” she murmured, opening her eyes on the surface, while still holding on to theseeingworking in the cave, the place of binding. “I need some plant material.”
Cia picked up some leaves and twigs and placed them in Liz’s lap with the bag. “You can thank Jane’s crazy run through the hills for these. I’m lucky to be alive.”
Liz smiled. “Do you remember the Irish Gaelic for ‘Must remain in place’?”
“Of course.”
“Okay. Sit at north.”
Cia tilted her head, finding the position of the moon in her witch gifts. She slid around to the side. Liz lifted her now-powerless amulet necklace and opened the clasp. She let all the depleted stones slide off to trickle onto the ground between her knees. She added the battery stone, which was also nearly drained.
“Put all your moonstones into the pile.”
“All?” Cia sounded horrified.
“All.”
“You screw this up and bust my moonstones, and we are gonna have a long chat,Lizzie.”
“I screw this up...” She hesitated, her damaged fingers on the bag. “I screw this up and you need to get Eli to put a silver bullet in my brain. Because if I screw it up, the demon will drop that mud body and be inside me.”
“Well,hell,” her twin said.
“Pretty much. And you will not let me kill you or leave this place with that thing in me.”
“Then you bind that twice-bedamned thing and we’ll get it back into the cave.”
