Occam glanced at me. Accepted a handful of wood disks from T. Laine. Leaped into the dark, and raced in front of them, disappearing.
“Kent and Ingram at our six,” LaFleur said. “Check out the star on the map. If it’s clear, follow. If you reach a fork, stay put. We can smell our way out. You can’t.” He disappeared into the dark after the wolf, my cat-man, Rettell on his six.
“That is so not fair,” T. Laine said. From her expression I hada feeling she was calculating a working to follow scent. Or maybe she already had one. Together we stepped inside and walked gingerly through the broken glass, seeing ancient tomatoes, peppers, what might have once been green beans, all brushed to the sides of the small room with piles of dried beans and mice droppings everywhere.
The frugal part of me ached for the lost foodstuffs, but the law officer in me proceeded into the cave. It was much larger than it had appeared from the view of the doorway, leading off along the hill and around a bend. The star had to be to the side of the root cellar’s intact left wall. We turned to face the false wall. It was wood set into the solid stone of the small cave.
“The ley line is probably there.” I pointed at and through the rock. “In the same place as the star on the map.”
T. Laine activated anotherilluminationamulet and moved to the left. She cast theseeingworking—it was more complex than usual. I could see what she saw, tangled twisted energies of a ley line.
I touched the wall and pulled my hand back. “That cave is much bigger than I realized and it’s filled with water, just inches away on the other side of this wall. If we do anything wrong, the pressure of the water might break through into here.”
“How much water?”
“A lot.” I thought back to the read of the land. The old, dried-out well had once sunk into the water-filled cave. The water table had dropped over the years, and the well was dry, but the water just below the well was still there. “A human can be pulled under by a two-foot-high wall of water if it’s flowing fast and hard enough. A pressure change at the star energies might knock down the whole wall.”
“And we’d drown,” T. Laine said. “In a few feet of water. The cave slopes down. The rest of the unit would be trapped and drown too,” she added. “Gotcha. Let’s go.”
“Walk slowly,” I said, “and I can keep in touch with the land as we move.”
“Copy that.”
I let my thoughts drop, connecting through my boots and into the cave floor beneath me. The contact was precarious at first because I had to lift each foot with each step, losing contact. I swiveled in place, facing the rest of the cave where UnitEighteen and Rettell had gone. A wave of vertigo washed through me. I reached up to touch the slanted wall that formed the ceiling, and found both my balance and a third contact point with the land. I reached out with my plant-woman senses and traced the contours of the cave. It moved deeper into the hill, some parts steep, some with broken roof rock blocking passages.
From the blackness of the cave, a scream rose, an ululation of agony. It was the scream of a vampire at true-death. I secured my flash and drew my weapon, triple-checked that the magazine was loaded with silver-lead composite rounds. To my side T. Laine touched her necklace, the moonstones hidden beneath her shirt. A tint of energy blossomed.
“Protectionworking,” she informed me. “Not worth much againstgwyllgior vampires, but it might slow them down. A little. Maybe.”
“I love your confidence,” I murmured.
T. Laine made a snorting sound. “Country Hick Chick, you’re picking up some city snark.”
“Townie snark.” I probed the stone beneath my boots and fingertips, sweeping my mind into the darkness, seeking the sound of the vampire dying, and my friends. “Unit Eighteen are all alive and uninjured. No one is bleeding,” I said. “They have staked some vampires, all in a pile, too close together to read the number. Devil dogs are there too. Some unmoving but full of fear. Can you feel the moon rise even underground?” I asked the moon witch.
“Always. The moon pulls on the Earth, on its seas, on the crust of the planet where we live. As soon as it’s above the horizon, my personal power to draw from the reflected sunlight and from the direct attraction between Earth and moon will increase, but my access to the power of the tidal forces is uniform.” She seemed to connect my question to the information I had just provided. “Now tell me why you ask?”
“Two vampires and at least one devil dog are still free. And awake. And moving our way. I have a feeling we’ll need all our power.”
“You’re just full of good news. And I hate caves, by the way. And not being connected to comms.”
“Let’s go, but slow. I need to maintain a connection betweenmy body and the cave.” With careful slow steps, I continued, one foot or hand always on the stone. I got used to reaching ahead with each step, and pushed my boundaries, but that meant staying focused. I holstered my weapon. “Can I try something?”
“Nothing kinky,” T. Laine muttered. “I don’t swing to plants.”
I blew out a silent laugh. “Can I put a hand on your shoulder and see if I can find the earth through your magic?”
T. Laine stopped dead. “That’s a circle. Sharing power.” Her voice went strident and penetrating, echoing through the cave. “That’s a freaking damnedcircle.”
I met her eyes, which were wide in the darkness. “Oh. I didn’t know. My sisters and I can meld and share each other’s power.”
“You can share raw power? Without drawing a circle?”
“Ummm. Maybe? On Soulwood land.” We hadn’t tried it anywhere else. And I remembered Tandy talking about energy and power and how all energy and matter was the same thing. Could we use Soulwood power, plant-woman power,yinehimagics, away from the land, as a team? “Try?” I asked.
“Hell yeah, we’ll try it, but not here, in this place, where we could be attacked while our attention is elsewhere.”
“Oh.”
