Cast in Stone

by Bilinda Sheehan

  "It almost sounded as though you didn't have a heartbeat," he said, without a trace of emotion. "I'm pretty sure the barista in there thought I was mad when I slammed the money down on the counter and ran out like all the hounds of hell were chasing me." A wry smile twisted his lips before he raised the paper cup and gulped down a mouthful of his own coffee. If it was anything like mine, then it was blisteringly hot, and yet he didn’t show a flicker of reaction.

  "Why would you do that?" I asked, sitting up a little straighter.

  "Your heartbeat spiked, and then it just suddenly stopped.” He stared down into the cup before returning his gaze to mine. “Or at least from that distance it sounded as though it had stopped. It wasn't until I got into the car here I realised it was still beating." I could sense that Grey was telling me the truth. I’d actually managed to freak him out. It had been a long time since that little trick had that kind of effect. And knowing I’d managed to unnerve Mister Cool, Calm, and Collected gave me a sort of twisted satisfaction.

  "Wait a minute," I said, turning to face him a little more fully. "You're telling me you could hear my heart from in there?” I jabbed my finger toward the coffee shop. I’d never known him to have those kinds of abilities.

  Grey watched me from the corner of his eye before swallowing another mouthful of coffee with a shrug. "You've got your talents, I've got mine." Then he reached inside his jacket and drew out the car keys.

  He dropped them into the centre console before pressing the ignition button. The car roared to life around us, and I felt my tension seeping away as the warmth from the heated seats soaked into my bones.

  “Coffee okay?” he asked, breaking the silence.

  “You didn’t forget how I like it,” I said, taking another warming sip.

  “I never forgot, Jenna,” he said, and his words held a weight that caught me off guard. I glanced over at him, but his attention was fixed on the road. Clearly, he’d decided the conversation was over.

  "You ready to go?" he asked, setting his cup into the holder alongside the keys.

  Nodding, I leaned back in the seat again and pretended to close my eyes, all the while watching him from beneath my lashes.

  I longed to ask him just what he’d meant, but if I did, he’d know I cared enough to ask. And that was a complication I didn’t need.

  Chapter 13

  We passed the rest of the journey in silence. I spent most of my time staring out the window at the countryside whipping past. The warmth of my seat only served to make me drowsier, and it was a struggle to keep my eyes open.

  "Jenna, we're here," Grey said, gently shaking me awake with his hand on my shoulder. I jerked upright with a start, his hand the only thing stopping me from slamming my face into the windscreen.

  "Where are we?" I peered out at the surrounding countryside and saw nothing but fields on either side of us. But to our left was the gentle fluttering of crime scene tape, telling me Grey hadn't been lying.

  “Up past Salisbury,” he said, deliberately vague.

  The sun had sunk into the horizon, but the lingering tendrils of light illuminated the sky with streaks of red and gold as we climbed out of the car. The colours, which reminded me of a summer evening, were misleading, and the wind was bitter in such a wide-open space, biting at my cheeks as I followed Grey across the uneven terrain. He raised the fluttering tape, allowing me to duck beneath it first.

  "I thought there'd be others here?" I asked curiously, drinking in the abandoned scene. There were footprints everywhere, and thanks to the rain-soft earth mud stuck to my boots with each step.

  "They left half an hour ago," he said, pulling a pair of forensic gloves from the pocket of his jacket. He handed me a pair before pulling on his own.

  "And the body?" I drew the gloves on my hands. They were far too large, but they'd serve their purpose.

  "Sent to the coroner. There'll be an autopsy to determine the cause of death. Despite visible injuries, it wasn't clear which one actually killed the victim."

  "You keep saying things like ‘victim’ and ‘body’; it's so cold and impersonal, I don't know how you do it. To me, each and every one was a person with a name, a family, at the very least someone out there who loved them.”

  "That's a luxury I can't afford to have," he said. "If I allow my emotions to get in the way, then I'm not going to solve the case, and not solving the case means the killer is never brought to justice. That's just not something I can have on my conscience." He strode ahead before pausing and turning back to face me. "And just so we're clear, not everyone has someone who loves them. Not everyone has someone waiting for them to come home. Some of us are alone, and we like to keep it that way."

  I let him go; he seemed pretty determined, and I didn't see the point in correcting him. Yet something in his voice told me he wasn't being entirely honest. Whether he was lying only to me or to himself too, I couldn't quite figure out.

  “At least tell me if the victim was male or female?” I called out to him.

  “Come and look at the scene, tell me what you see, and then I’ll tell you what I know.” It didn’t seem like a particularly fair trade, but I couldn’t do much to change his mind. At the end of the day, it was his crime scene. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was keeping information from me because he believed I had something to do with the murders. That perhaps I was responsible …

  We reached the edge of a small stone circle. Most of the standing stones had fallen over, but one or two remained upright, helping me to imagine what it must have looked like when it was first constructed. The grass had mostly worn away, probably due to tourist foot traffic. But if that was true, the crime scene was extremely exposed and high-risk. The killer could have been disturbed at any moment.

  The centre was now dominated by a large white forensics tent, its sides flapping and rustling in the wind that swept over the cliff edge behind the stone circle. Despite how exposed it was, I knew it was the perfect place for a sacrifice.

  I could feel it in my bones.

  I dropped to my knees and pressed my fingers into the earth. Magic pulsed faintly beneath the surface, and I could tell it was an ancient power. And this wasn't the first time I'd felt it.

  "How far are we from Stonehenge?" I asked, closing my eyes to sense the power beneath me. I reached out toward it with my own power, and it rolled beneath my fingers like a giant cat stretching out its body. I could almost imagine it pressing up through the earth, reaching toward me, but there was some sort of barrier between us that had nothing to do with the earth itself.

  I was surprised that it was reaching out to me. The power that flowed in my veins could never rival such wild magic, earth magic, the power of Mother Nature herself, yet something in it recognised me.

  "About three miles, why?" I could feel his gaze on me; clearly Grey did not feel the same as me about the power flowing beneath our feet. Or maybe, and this was a far more interesting thought, he didn't feel it the same way I did. I'd never met a preternatural being who couldn't sense magic.

  "You don't feel that?" I asked, opening my eyes to stare up at him.

  "Feel what?" His expression was neutral and unreadable.

  "There's magic here," I said, pushing up onto my feet. "I'm guessing it comes from Stonehenge. Although I can't be sure that this place doesn't have its own source of magic. I’ve heard that this area of England has a huge confluence of magic."

  "Who told you that?"

  "Does it matter?” I quipped back, irritation colouring my tone. “And anyway, who's to say I don't just know it?”

  “Was that the reason you moved here after…” He trailed off.

  “After I left the Division.” I finished his sentence, deliberately leaving out the part where I’d killed Kypherous. It wasn’t that he didn’t know; I just didn’t feel like bringing it up.

  “Yeah.”

  “No, I just liked the area.” It wasn’t entirely a lie, but something else had drawn me here, and now I had a
feeling it had something to do with the wild magic coursing through the earth.

  He smiled at me, but clearly something I'd said had caught his attention, because I could tell he was assessing me to see just what else I knew.

  "You're really not going to tell me, are you?" he said lightly.

  "Nope," I said, taking a step forward.

  Drawing a deep breath, I crossed the stone barrier, my booted feet sinking into the mud. I expected to feel the magic spike, maybe even overwhelm me. The magic of the circles was renowned; they were places of intense power, and all manner of preternatural creatures was drawn to them. Kypherous had once described them as portals capable of replenishing the power of even the weakest creature.

  What I didn’t expect was the nothingness. I closed my eyes against the sudden loss of magic, my breath catching in the back of my throat as I searched for the power I’d felt just outside the stone barrier. But there was nothing.

  “What’s wrong?” Grey asked. I turned to see he was still standing outside the circle.

  “It’s gone,” I said, my voice sounding odd to my ears.

  “What’s gone?” He peered past me to the forensics tent. The sound of the plastic walls flapping in the wind seemed louder in here, as though the magic outside the circle had muffled it.

  “Step inside and you’ll find out,” I said, gesturing to him impatiently. He remained rooted firmly where he was, and even had the gall to fold his arms across his chest like I was the one being utterly unreasonable.

  “Just tell me.”

  It hit me then. He was afraid. I hadn’t seen it before, but without the power of the earth to distract me I could finally see him clearly. His denial of the power that coursed beneath our feet was simply a coping mechanism. He could feel the wild magic of the earth; he was, after all, a druid whose power came from the earth itself. His denial was simply his way of ensuring the magic didn’t overwhelm him.

  “You haven’t entered the circle, have you?” I asked.

  “What? Are you crazy? Of course I have, it’s my crime scene.”

  “Don’t lie, Grey. You were never capable of keeping the truth from me in the past, so why would now be any different?” He glared at me but didn’t deny it. “You’re afraid of what the stone circle’s power might do to you, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know if spending time away from the Division has caused you to go soft, Jenna, but I’m not afraid of a bunch of old standing stones,” he said, waving his arms toward the stones that stood sentry over the circle.

  “Then come inside.” I could have told him it was safe, that the magic that should have existed within the circle was gone, but a twisted part of me wanted to see him suffer a little. Plus, there was one thing I truly detested, and that was a liar. Seeing him sweat a little was no harm.

  “No, we’re here so you can read the scene. So can you just get on with it…” It was a pathetic excuse, and the look in his eyes said he knew it.

  “What are you really afraid of?” I asked, moving toward the centre of the circle.

  Grey sighed, and I heard him move away from the circle’s edge, each step catching in the mud. “Fine, if you must know… no, I haven’t been in the circle.”

  “That wasn’t so hard to admit, now was it?”

  “You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?” he barked, the frustration in his voice palpable.

  “Honestly, no,” I said, moving closer to the forensics tent. The metallic tang of old blood hung on the air, overlaid with the much fresher scent of death and fear. I wasn’t sure what awaited me inside the tent. Grey had said they’d removed the body, but I wasn’t naïve enough to believe that was the only horror to witness. Places where death magic was performed were usually filled with potent magic and scarred by a power so malicious and evil that even the earth bore its echoes while ghosts and other spirits relived the horror over and over. I’d expected to find all of that here, but the nothingness frightened me more than anything else. Power like that didn’t just disappear, so where the hell was it?

  “Tell me what you feel, Jenna,” Grey called to me, his voice carrying across the wind.

  “Nothing. I feel nothing.” I came to a halt outside the zipped-up tent door.

  “Stop playing. I brought you here so you could help us identify the creature responsible for this. I don’t know anyone else with the ability to sense magical signatures the way you can, and now you’re trying to tell me you don’t sense anything at all.”

  “There’s nothing here,” I insisted. “No magic, no power in the earth, no scar, no echoes, no signature…” A shiver ran down my spine. I’d never known anything that could do this.

  Closing my eyes, I was once more transported back to the woods. The glowing blue eyes of the creature that had attacked me hovered over me, and I felt its shadowy weight pressing me into the damp, rotting leaves, sensed its desire to suck the life right out of me. It wanted me, desired everything I was, including my soul. I felt it devouring me piece by piece, and it would have succeeded had my power not saved me.

  “Jenna.” Grey’s voice cut through the memory. His strong hands were on my shoulders as he shook me gently. My eyes snapped open, and I stared up into his face. His dark eyes were a mask of pain and fear, and I unconsciously allowed myself to sink into his hold. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had simply held me.

  Grey’s arms tightened around me, and I pressed my face against his chest, drawing in the clean, fresh scent of his skin. In that moment, I wanted desperately to rip open his jacket and shirt so I could press my skin to his.

  “You don’t need to be afraid,” he said, and I could feel his lips against my hair. I wanted so badly to believe him, yet I knew it wasn’t true. There was plenty to fear, including the creature we were hunting. And hanging around here in his arms wasn’t going to bring me any closer to catching it.

  I planted my hands firmly against his chest and pushed, and Grey released me instantly. He didn’t try to cling to me, or force me to accept the comfort he was offering, and when I looked up into his eyes I saw no reproach.

  “What made you risk it?” I asked, rolling back my shoulders in an attempt to regain control.

  “Risk what?”

  “Crossing the circle. You seemed pretty adamant you weren’t going to.” I took a shaky step away from him.

  He sighed and shook his head, a rueful smile crossing his lips. “You really don’t give up, do you?”

  “I thought you already knew this about me?”

  “I think maybe I’d tried to block out your stubbornness.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. At least I was beginning to feel more like myself again; the horrible sensation of the creature sucking the life out of me was slowly dissipating. At least when Kypherous attempted to kill me it was abrupt—pain, and then nothing but black. The creature had been different. I’d felt my life draining away, and I’d been completely helpless to stop it. If that’s what it was doing to its victims… I shuddered. It wasn’t an end I’d have chosen for my worst enemy, let alone a bunch of innocents.

  “I’m a druid… well, at least I used to be,” he said. “And the henges were places of great power for my kind, but I chose a different life. I haven’t entered one since I walked away from the darker side of my magic.”

  “When you say darker, you mean…”

  “Sacrifice. Not all used sacrifice to fuel their magic, but my family did. It fuelled our power and made us a force to be reckoned with.”

  “You mean human sacrifice,” I said.

  “Sometimes animals worked too, but the sacrifice of a human life is special.”

  I studied him carefully, listening as he spoke of his past with what sounded almost like longing.

  “What made you stop? It has to have weakened you…”

  “Let’s just say there are some lines that should never be crossed.” A cloud crossed his expression, and for a moment my breath caught in the back of my throat. Right now, I saw darkness in
Grey that I’d never witnessed before; he was always so careful to keep his past to himself, so why was he telling me the truth now? What had changed?

  “What keeps you from crossing the circles now?”

  “My abilities are directly connected to the magic that flows through the earth. What you could feel outside the circle was just a fraction of the power that should have been inside it.” He turned away from me and stared off toward the darkened sky. “It’s not something I like to admit, but I’m weak enough now that the magic flowing inside the circle could corrupt me.”

  I stared at him in shock. I would never describe Grey as weak. He was the strongest preternatural I knew, and I could still remember the thrill of fear I’d felt the first day I met him. His power was settled around him like a gun metal-coloured mantle. Wherever he went, the power was with him, and when he used his abilities his signature was tinged with green bolts of lightning.

  He turned back to face me with a sheepish grin. “Well say something! You’re the first one I’ve admitted that to, and your silence doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.”

  “Sorry, it’s just that I would never consider you to be weak. So to hear you say that about yourself makes it seem a little silly.”

  “It’s why I didn’t believe you when you said you felt nothing. I know you can sense magic, and the henges are normally overflowing with power.”

  “I think I know why there’s nothing in this one,” I said, staring down at the churned-up mud. I’d initially thought the foot traffic, the forensics, the police officers, and, of course, the Division 6 agents who had trampled around had created the mess underfoot. But while it had rained, not enough had fallen to turn the area into soup.

  “I’ve never felt so much nothingness before,” Grey said, crouching down and holding his hand above the ground.

  “The creature that attacked me tried to suck the life out of me,” I said, deliberately leaving out how it had succeeded.

  Grey’s attention snapped back to me, his dark eyes searching my face as though he could see through me. As though he knew I was holding back at least some of the truth.