Chewy threw him a rough salute and settled his shotgun into his shoulder. Eli glanced at Lizzie. If she could reach through the ground to a boulder, then of them all, she was most likely to survive.If. Something oddly painful and confusing twisted through him, but it wasn’t something he could focus on right now. He needed to be in position.
Eli grabbed his pack, which was no longer well balanced and had clearly been upended and stuffed again, and ran up the angled tree. There were batches of tattered leaves that might conceal him, but still allow him a good firing angle. He settled himself and sipped from a bottle of water. Shoulda peed before he got into place. Too late now.
Brute appeared near the edge of the woods. He and the grindylow walked slowly around the crest of the hill, the werewolf taking in everything. Seeming satisfied, they melted into the woods.
He prepared himself for a long wait and instant action.
Liz
This wasthe worst kind of soil for a stone witch to work through. It was neither sand nor rock nor clay, but a strange mixture of all that, just like a creekbank, a shoreline that appeared out of nowhere, hundreds of feet above the river so far below. But Brute had said there were boulders ahead, so she pushed her power along the hill line, just under the surface, around roots, through a curve of rocks the size of basketballs, shaped like ovals and oversized peanuts. Water shaped rock. Weird to find at the top of a hill line. But she took the energy stored in them by Mother Nature and used it to push through. She was maybe a hundred yards further when she finally hit stone—a big slab of granite on top of another slab, both angling deeper into the earth. Power flooded into her. Just as suddenly the ground changed and she was beyond the strange soil mixture and into more typical Appalachian soil, rich and full of nutrients and life and death. And… death magic.
Liz recoiled, back to the angled slabs, and hovered there. Remembering the dead bird with the sliced throat. She hadn’t had time to put that together. The Dwayyo had air magic and also death magic. It—she—had sacrificed the lifeforce of animals and humans to her magic. What was she trying to do?
She perched her power on the granite slabs and let the memories of the earth and the magic wash through her. Darkness, sludge, a heavy energy, sad, destructive, desperate, and…Ahhh. Disorganized, as if the Dwayyo was untrained and working by feel instead of with established rules and with the mathematics that went into every magical working of any competency.
Except for the normal leakage of power that always took place over time, the magic was contained in one area, away from the boulders she sensed just ahead. She dipped her power along the angled stones, deeper into the earth, and followed the contours to the stone heart of the mountain. It reached down thousands of feet, and then steeply up into weathered, rounded points that rose in the air. So much power here. Raw. Like razors on her flesh, hot pokers into her magic. She drew it in, knowing it was too much to hold for long.
“Lizzie?” The voice came from far away. On the surface. Eli. It was Eli. “Lizzie, Brute says the Dwayyo’s coming back.”
Without opening her eyes, Liz pulled a hand from the dirt and thumbed a stone on her necklace. All the circles she had drawn lit with power, so much power it hummed as it passed through her, using her body as a conduit that filled and activated the interconnected workings.
Wards sprang up. She felt them sizzle and snap. Eyes still closed, she smiled. “Hey Eli,” she said softly, knowing the former army Ranger would hear her. “Remember how I shaped a ward around us, with your gun barrel outside it? Tell Chewy to stay low, keep his shotgun barrel where it is in relation to the stone that’s six inches from his feet. He can fire. Limited range, and still have protection. But if he pulls the barrel to him, inside the small stone I put there, it’ll reset the ward. If he fires after it resets, he’ll have no protection at all. Firing after that will break it entirely.”
“I like your girl, Hoss. You gonna put a ring on her finger?”
The grunted non-reply came from above her, in the trees and her smile went wider. “You think I’d want him?” she asked Chewy, her eyes still closed. “Talking’s like pulling teeth. Sharing’s all one-sided. He’s grumpy and closed in and annoying. And God help us if he doesn’t get his coffee.”
“I’m not annoying.”
Liz chuckled. “I see you only disagree with one of my estimations.”
“But I’m great in bed.”
“Too much information, Hoss.”
“No, Chewy. He’s right. That’s why I keep him around. For his body.”
In the tree, Eli made a soft snorting sound, maybe laughter.
“I’ll tell you all his secrets, Miz Liz, if you fix me up with some a these amulets that take the pain away. Holy shit. Better than H.” He laughed drunkenly. “Not that I ever did heroin. But this shit is the bomb.”
“Secrets on top of our previous bargain? Done.”
“Hoss, you are in serious trouble, cause I know all your secrets.”
Eli said nothing. Liz laughed.
Brute growled, the vibration making the air itself move.
She opened her eyes. “Which way, Brute?”
The white wolf was staring behind them. The growl grew louder and deeper.
And the Dwayyo dropped into the clearing. Right on top of the ward holding its babies.
Liz touched the final stone at her knees and the prison ward blazed with power. The creature was trapped. It gathered its young to it. It howled and growled and yodeled, lifted its weird shaped snout and sang like a wolf.
Liz blew out a breath. “Thank God.”
