“Anything else you’ve been keeping to yourself?”
My nose scrunched. “Um … I never slept with Zak. He implied I did, but he was just being a prick.”
“When isn’t he a prick?” Aaron muttered, then settled back in his seat, his hold on the steering wheel relaxing. “You should get some sleep. I’ll wake you up when we reach Seattle, and we can switch.”
“Sure.” I reclined my seat by a few degrees. “Aaron?”
“Yeah?”
A tear slipped down my cheek, leaving a cold trail. “I’m really, really sorry. I should’ve trusted you from the start.”
The rush of tires over asphalt filled the quiet between us. Miserable and aching inside, I shuffled my limbs, trying to get comfortable.
“It might be better that you didn’t tell me,” Aaron whispered. “Kai and I promised Ezra … No matter what you’d said, I’m not sure we would’ve waited.”
I stared at him, my chest tight, then closed my eyes, knowing it would be a long time before my thoughts calmed enough for me to sleep.
“I don’t get motion sickness,” I told Aaron as I pressed the brakes and guided the SUV through a turn, the tires roaring over the packed gravel-and-dirt track. “But this is the windiest road I’ve ever driven on, and I think I’m getting motion sickness.”
Clutching the handhold on his door, Aaron kept his unblinking stare on the road. “You could slow down. That would help.”
“We’re already going so slow,” I grumbled, following another tight bend. “We’ve been driving on this crap road for, what, forty minutes? Fifty? How much farther?”
“A few more miles. But Tori, there’s snow on the road and you should really go a bit slower.”
“This little dusting? Aaron, I grew up in Ontario. I know how to drive in the snow.”
He pressed his lips together so hard they turned white. Bet he wished he was driving. Grinning, I kept the SUV’s speed steady.
Aaron had taken the first three hours of the drive, and in Seattle, we’d switched so he could get some sleep. Seattle to the Oregon border had been a breezy two-hour drive down a straight highway, but then it had gotten unpleasant.
Don’t get me wrong, the Oregon Coast Range was beautiful. Thick forest covered the low slopes, and the winding roads followed wide, snaking rivers bordered with white snow. But therein lay the problem: winding roads.
Our progress had slowed, and by the time the morning sun had lit the mountains, Aaron’s GPS had directed us from a two-lane highway to a wide single-lane road with no center line and a lot of potholes. No sooner had I complained about the shit road conditions than the asphalt had transformed into dirt. And maybe it was just me, but the road seemed to worsen the farther we drove.
It was truly the middle of nowhere. Aside from the occasional house right off the nonexistent shoulder, I hadn’t seen a single town or village. Not even one of those teeny hamlets with twelve houses and a general store. If I were going to hide a collection of brainwashed mythics and underage demon mages, yeah, this would be a great spot. Frankly, I was surprised the Keys of Solomon had ever found it.
“All right,” Aaron muttered, shuffling through printouts of routes and maps I’d prepared yesterday. “Which one of these … Here’s the map for Enright, but—”
“But we’re not going to Enright.” Which Google Maps didn’t know how to reach by vehicle anyway. “You want the directions from the Wheelie Wanderer blog.”
Enright wasn’t really a town. It’d been one once, but now it was just a stretch of abandoned train tracks and rusting equipment. Our destination was a nearby private property.
Aaron found the instructions to access Enright—provided by dirt-biking enthusiasts—as well as the information I’d dug up, with a little help from Darius, on the property where the demon mages had been found. I slowed the vehicle as we began searching for the turnoff.
Guess how excited I was when we finally found the turn and it put us on an even narrower, dirtier road?
I clutched the steering wheel as the vehicle bounced over the uneven ground. Luckily, the weather had been mild lately. Though a few inches of snow lingered in the sheltered forests, the roads bore only a thin layer that didn’t obscure its borders.
“Who,” I growled as we bounced, “would want—to live—here?”
“People who don’t want to be found,” Aaron replied grimly.
We followed what I assumed was a logging road past a clear-cut patch of forest, then turned onto another track that wound along the side of a mountain. We descended into a valley, and our view of the peaks disappeared as winter-bare trees hemmed in the road, so close that the occasional branch slapped the SUV.
It took another fifteen minutes to find the correct driveway, obscured by overgrown trees. The road, winding into the forest, was little more than two strips of dirt where tires had packed down the earth.
“This is it,” I muttered. “Let’s do this.”
I turned onto the track—and discovered the true and bone-shaking meaning of “bumpy.”
The wheels dipping and suspension rocking, I steered along the road at a crawl. I couldn’t tell if it had been maintained since the “extermination,” but at least it was clear of debris. Fallen branches and tree trunks lined the sides, but nothing blocked our route.
We bounced along for almost ten minutes, rounded a bend, and there it was.
Ezra’s former home. The twisted prison he and his parents hadn’t realized they’d fallen into. The scene of a massacre where sixty-eight people had died, including the summoner who’d doomed Ezra.
I shifted the SUV into park, cut the engine, and threw my door open. Cold air rushed into the vehicle as I jumped out into an undisturbed inch of snow. Despite being deep in the mountains, the temperature hovered just above freezing—not bad for late January.
Before its destruction, the commune had covered the gentle slope of a mountain in several tiers, with a large building at the base and several rows of housing beyond it. A dilapidated fence encircled an overgrown field to the west, and near the ridge at the top, one more structure had stood, but I couldn’t guess its purpose.
All the buildings were rubble now.
I studied the community center at the bottom of the slope, trying to imagine what it had looked like. I tried to imagine adolescent Ezra standing in this same spot when he’d first arrived with his parents seventeen years ago. I tried to imagine the Keys of Solomon storming through, armed and eager to do battle with rare demon mages—the ultimate trophy kill.
The SUV’s hatch slammed shut, making me jump. I turned to find Aaron zipping his coat over his protective vest. Sharpie, in its black case, was slung over his shoulder.
“We’re out in the sticks,” I reminded him. “I don’t think you need your sword.”
“No sense in taking chances.”
Okay, sure. I could get on board with paranoia. Exaggerating my gestures, I pointed the key fob at the SUV and pressed the lock button. The vehicle emitted a short beep as its alarm engaged.
Rolling his eyes, he held out my combat belt. I automatically reached for it, but as my hand closed around the leather, my throat constricted painfully.
The belt, which had once been loaded with all my artifacts, held only alchemy supplies—my paintball gun, an extra magazine of sleeping potions, and a handful of alchemy bombs. With such limited magic, would I be of any use as Aaron’s back up?
Shoving down my doubts, I took the belt and peeked in the back pouch. Hoshi, in orb form, was nestled in the leather, probably dreaming sylph dreams—or avoiding the cold. Who knew, but at least I could count on her help.
Buckling the belt on, I straightened my shoulders, took a deep breath, and started forward. “Let’s do this.”
We approached the community hall first. Three of the four walls were in various stages of “crumbling to dust,” and the ceiling had caved in. A small forest sprouted from the rubble, the saplings patiently waiting for spring.
“
They probably had gardens and livestock,” Aaron mused, leaning over a broken wall to peer toward the back end of the hall. “Communes like this try to be self-sufficient.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “They wouldn’t want to draw attention with massive grocery orders. Besides, who’d want to make the drive out of here more than once a month?”
We poked around in the ruins for a few minutes, then I shook my head. “Eterran said the rituals were treated like performances. Based on that, I think our destination is there.”
I pointed up the slope to the ruins at the top, and Aaron nodded.
Together, we traipsed up the wide path through the center of the community, our breaths puffing white. Cold, sorrowful weight gathered in my chest with each step, and I steeled my emotions against the sights.
Two children’s bicycles had been abandoned in front of a house, tires deflated and chains rusted. Gardening tools lay in the dirt, long handles snapped. A quad with its front crushed, as though it’d run into something, sat between two houses with a helmet beside it, a dead weed poking through the broken visor.
Signs of lives cut short were everywhere, belongings forgotten and homes empty. One day, the people here had been living in relative peace. Twenty-four hours later, the Keys of Solomon had killed them all.
“These families weren’t criminals,” I said, my voice quiet but the words harsh in my throat. “They were victims. How could the Keys slaughter them and get away with it?”
“I don’t know.” He stepped over a two-foot-deep rut in the earth. “But it doesn’t look like the demon mages went quietly to their deaths.”
He gestured toward another fissure splitting the ground, and I studied my surroundings again. The damage had weathered, the years softening it, but now that I was searching for the signs, I could see deep tears in the soil and rubble thrown twenty, thirty, even fifty feet from the demolished structures.
Ezra alone had blown apart a building. What would it have been like to face ten demon mages working together to protect their home?
Aaron and I continued up the slope to the rubble at the top. Huge chunks of stone lay all around a wide, empty circle made of flat concrete. Untouched snow blanketed the floor, which hadn’t suffered damage despite the rest of the structure being reduced to crumbled rock.
I kicked at a short, cylindrical stump at the circle’s edge. “What was this?”
Crouching, Aaron brushed snow off the top of the stump, revealing broken concrete. “I think … these were pillars. This was a temple, sort of like the ancient temples in Rome.”
I rubbed my cold hands together. “I guess this is the ritual location, then. The hidden room is underneath this, according to Eterran.”
In unison, Aaron and I peered around.
“Well,” he muttered, “this might be difficult.”
“There’s got to be a way in that doesn’t involve digging.” I walked onto the flat, round floor. “Maybe if I step in the right spot, I can trigger a door.”
“Or a booby trap.”
Wishing Eterran had given me better instructions, I wandered across the disc-like platform. Was this where Ezra had been turned into a demon mage at fourteen?
“Tori … look.”
He was pointing at my footprints in the snow. Where my boots had uncovered the floor, dark lines crossed the stone. Using one foot, I swept a larger patch of snow aside, then squatted to touch one of the black markings.
“Silver,” I realized. “It’s tarnished silver inlay.”
I started back toward Aaron, tapping on the pouch at the small of my back. With a rush of pale light, Hoshi uncoiled from the pouch. Her eyes glowed with pink radiance as she swirled around me, sniffing at the crisp mountain air.
“Hoshi, could we get a little wind?” I waved at the snow-covered floor. “Can you blow this clean?”
Her fan-like wings snapped open and closed. Rising above me, she flicked her long tail back and forth.
A breeze stirred my hair—then a tornado-like gust blasted across the stone circle. The snow billowed upward, and as the wind died, it fluttered back to the ground twenty yards away.
Aaron stepped up beside me, and we studied the newly uncovered temple floor. The silver inlay marked three fifteen-foot-wide circles set in a triangle, each one adorned with spiraling lines, geometric shapes, and hundreds of runes. Some I vaguely recognized from glimpses of Arcana, while others were spiky, twisted, and oddly disturbing.
“The circles aren’t quite the same,” Aaron observed, voice hushed. “But they look a lot like summoning circles.”
“They seem completely untouched. Why is this the only place that isn’t damaged?”
“I don’t know, but leaving this intact can’t be a good idea. It—”
Beep beep beep!
Aaron and I whirled around as the noise reverberated through the valley. At the bottom of the hill, the SUV’s alarm blared, its lights flashing. Even from our high vantage point, I could see no sign of whatever had triggered the alarm.
I fumbled the keys out of my pocket and hit a button. As the vehicle went silent, I flicked a glance at Aaron.
Without a word, we both broke into a jog. Hoshi trailed after us as we ran down to level ground, adding another set of footprints to the snow. Ten feet from the SUV, I stopped. Aaron slid to a halt beside me.
“Uh.” I blinked a few times. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
Our SUV, which I distinctly remembered parking on a totally normal, flat patch of ground, was now sitting in a shallow grave. A perfect rectangle of earth had sunk two feet, taking our vehicle with it.
Swearing, Aaron swung Sharpie’s long black case off his shoulder and grabbed the zipper.
“Aaron?” I began. “What—”
The earth trembled, and the ground in front of me erupted.
Chapter Seven
A wall of earth shot upward, spraying me with dirt. I recoiled, arms shielding my face. The ground heaved as a tearing sound deafened me.
“Tori!” Aaron yelled.
I spun unsteadily and saw three more walls of dirt rising around us to form a prison.
With no time to get his sword out of its case, Aaron shoved the weapon into my hands and leaped at a wall as it surged past his head. He caught the top, heaved himself over it, and disappeared on the other side.
“Quick!” he called. “Throw me—”
A crack of breaking rock interrupted him, and he swore.
“Shit shit shit!” I panted, slinging the sword over my shoulder. I ran at the ten-foot wall and sprang upward. I grabbed the dirt top, but it crumbled under my fingers before I could pull myself up.
With a silvery flash, Hoshi appeared behind me. She grabbed my coat and hauled up, her tail lashing. I scrambled over and dropped, landing on my feet—only for the earth to shudder under me. A few yards away, Aaron yelped as the ground threw him.
Yeah, the ground. It threw him. I didn’t know how else to describe the way it’d heaved under his feet like a bucking horse.
“Aaron!” I yanked Sharpie from its case and flung it toward him. As he shoved back to his feet, he caught it out of the air and ripped the blade from its sheath.
“Lie flat, Tori,” he ordered as fire burst across his hands and ran up the steel. “Now!”
I dove for the ground as Aaron’s face tightened with concentration. He whipped his blade in a wide, horizontal arc and a sheet of red-hot fire swept out in an expanding ring at waist height. It whooshed over me and blasted across the nearby buildings. The quaking earth stilled.
Aaron grinned fiercely. “Got you, you bastard.”
As he leaped over the cracked ground, I shoved up. “Got who?”
“The terramage!” he yelled, charging toward the crumbling community hall. “They’re over here!”
Terramage? I glanced at the fun new hole our SUV was parked in. An earth mage. That made sense—but I sure as hell didn’t like it.
Unholstering my paintball gun, I sprinted after Aaron as
he vaulted over a broken wall and into the building ruins. Not being an athletic machine like him, I slowed before doing a one-handed hop over the rubble. As I landed on the gritty floor inside, the ground heaved again—but now I could see the source of the mini earthquakes.
Inside the derelict building, our adversary waited for us. Nearly six and a half feet tall with powerful shoulders, their breadth enhanced by his sturdy leather jacket, the man held a wooden quarterstaff with steel-tipped ends. His tanned complexion stood out against the snow-dusted wall behind him, his dark brown hair shaved on the sides with a messy fauxhawk on top.
Fire burst across Aaron’s forearms as he swung Sharpie, sending a wave of flame at the terramage. The man smacked the butt of his staff into the ground, and a thin sheet of soil shot upward, forming a wall in front of him.
Aaron’s fire burst against it, and the wall crumbled as the terramage whirled his staff with easy grace. He swung the end around and pointed it at Aaron, thirty feet of empty space and scorched saplings between them.
The ground under Aaron’s feet shattered. As he staggered, the terramage flipped his staff in another swift, deliberate motion. The butt end hit the earth.
A four-inch-wide column of concrete and clay burst out of the dirt in front of Aaron. It shot upward and slammed into the pit of his stomach, lifting him a few inches off the ground.
He crashed down on his back, eyes bulging, unable to breathe.
“Shit!” I gasped again. I was saying that way too much.
The terramage’s eyes snapped to me, and that staff began to spin again. I didn’t wait to see what earthly terror he was about to inflict. I sprang forward, dodging saplings.
The quarterstaff swung to point at me. The ground in my path burst into ankle-breaking fissures. With a shriek, I leaped over them, landed on an unbroken patch, and jumped again with flailing arms.
“Asshole!” I yelled furiously. “Hoshi, smack that piece of shit in the head!”
The terramage braced, eyes darting as he searched for whoever “Hoshi” was.
The sylph appeared above him. She spun in a tight, violent circle and whipped her tail into the side of his skull with a loud thwack. As he thrust his staff up to knock her out of the air, I leveled my gun at him and pulled the trigger.
Lost Talismans and a Tequila (The Guild Codex: Spellbound Book 7) Page 6
