T. Laine and I had stopped, so I closed my eyes, seeking ahead. “The cave moves around the crest of the hill and down to a second water table, where a stream exits the mountain and falls to the valley. There’s a dead body ahead to the right. And…something vile.” I dropped my voice. “Blood. Welshgwyllgi. Alive. And it isn’t a kid. It’s…It takes up a lot of space. It’s huge.”
“So we have two vamps and probably an adult devil dog between us and the unit, and we’re between them and the door.”
“Ahead. If the vampires attack, get me some blood. Even if it’s just a drop.” I felt the shock run through Lainie. She forgot my gifts could drain vampires. “I don’t know about devil dogs,” I said. “I don’t know if I can use their blood down here or not. It could be too similar to my own.”
“Where are the arcenciels?” she asked.
I probed deeper. “Two levels below. They’re…I don’t know. They’re all in one place.”
“Can you feel Soul?”
“No. She must still be in crystal.”
“Or dead or never here.”
“Or that,” I acknowledged.
“In which case the arcenciels set us up.”
There was nothing to say to that. We continued deeper into the cave. The floor descended, the angles changing. We moved around broken boulders where a cave-in had brought down part of the ceiling.
The cave turned more to the right, winding into the mountain. Stalactites and stalagmites began to appear, mere bumps on the floor and ceiling. A tributary cave opened to our right.
“Wait.” I stopped and closed my eyes.
We were moving around the hill and down. The cave that branched off to the right canted down hard and fast. A pit. There was water at the bottom. Not a lot of water, but an underground stream running across the pit’s floor, before disappearing again into a crack of the rock wall.
“This way.” I led us into the wider tunnel.
The slab of rock above us angled away and the roof was growing higher. Echoes resounded, indistinct voices.
A low vibration seemed to move through the walls but wasn’t sound, not exactly. More a microvibration. A microtremor. Air moved through the cave system, the earth breathing.
We turned sharply and found the way ahead partially blocked by a cave-in. The largest boulder was bigger than my car. Even the smaller ones would crush a human flat.
A faint drumming began, the sound almost a counterpoint to the vibration.
“Vampires moving fast, right toward us,” I said.
T. Laine grabbed my jacket and dragged me to the side, not touching my skin.
The floor shifted angles. Rocks moved beneath my feet. I gagged as my perspective changed.
Lainie shoved me to the cave floor.
I caught myself on stone. My knuckles scraped, abraded. My blood brushed the stone. My gift reached for the land, reached for Soulwood. Reached for power.
I fellfellfell through, into the deeps. Into the earth. Layers upon layers of stone and rock and gravel and water tables. Sand,clay, sources of magic there and there and there, magic all around and beneath me. I clutched at the stone, nails scrabbling. My hands pulsed as the roots inside of me sprouted leaves and tiny vines, pressing against the stone, searching for a place to take root and grow.No. No.I pulled back on the energies.Not here. No sun. No life.
I pulled my mind and energies back, fighting to control the roots moving inside me. My hands aching, my belly hard and gnarled like the roots of a tree. But they stopped moving, stoppedwanting. When I had them under my control, I turned my attention up, to the surface. Roots, so many roots. The sensation of life all above me, of magic all around me. Witch magic. I pulled my attention in, close to where I sat. Close to where Lainie stood.
“Shhh,” T. Laine whispered.
I explored the energies she had opened over us. I had been around her long enough to recognize anobfuscationworking over us, to keep us from being noticed. It was a foot from my hands. Closer to our skin, a shield called ahedge of thornsworking, and aseeingworking, all at once. If any of the three beings coming our way saw us through theobfuscation, they would get hurt trying to get to us. But eventually something would get through. The feel of undeath pounded closer. Two vampires raced past in little pops of sound.
They were escaping. Neither was bleeding. My magic was useless to drain them without blood. And then they were gone, out, into the dark of night.
Thething, the stench of wrongness, the adultgwyllgiI had detected earlier, was standing six feet away. It was sniffing the air. Without opening my eyes, I saw the shape of it, half-human-shaped, half-dog-shaped, and the magic of it, foul and bloody and without pity. Dog of War. Dog of Darkness. Ancient Welsh terror unleashed upon the Earth. When I opened my eyes, he had a human face with a dog nose. I knew him. Balthazar Jenkins, cousin to Boaz Jenkins, one of the men who had actively tried to bring the churchmen to devil dog shape.
