Cast in Stone

by Bilinda Sheehan

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Grey said, his eyes widening as he took in the sight.

  Kneeling next to the young woman, I wrapped my arms around her and attempted to lift her from the mess on the floor. But despite looking as though she hadn’t slept in days, she fought my hold like a wild animal. Our fight drew a ragged scream from her that froze the blood in my veins, but still she fought me.

  I lifted her from the floor, and Triskel moved to intercept me.

  “Oh no, you can’t stop them from doing their jobs,” she said, wringing her hands as she moved from one foot to the other like a small child.

  “She’s hurting herself. I can’t just leave her like this,” I said, holding the struggling woman.

  Although the waitress didn’t weigh much, she fought me as though her life depended on her ability to get everything off the floor fast enough, and that worried me. It certainly wasn’t normal.

  “Grey, can you do something about the spell?” I gritted my teeth as the young woman clawed at my hands, which were still banded around her waist. She kicked and lashed, throwing her head back, and I narrowly avoided having her head-butt me. Another scream tore from her lips, and the others in the kitchen cried out as though they too felt her agony.

  “Come on, this shit isn’t normal,” I said, dragging the young woman toward the door that led to the back of the pub.

  “You can’t take them outside,” Triskel said, sounding even more panicked.

  I hesitated. “Why can’t I take her outside, Triskel?”

  “The spell, I told you, it’s getting out of control…” She knotted her hands into the front of her pink T-shirt.

  “And what?” Grey moved beside the uncomfortable fae.

  “It makes them worse.” When she lifted her face, I could see fresh tears glittering in her eyes.

  “You tried to take one outside, didn’t you?” Grey asked, his voice oddly cold.

  Triskel nodded and tried to speak, but no words came out. A sick feeling twisted in my stomach. I didn’t want to know what had happened to the unfortunate soul she’d tried to take outside.

  “Where…?” I asked, unable to form the words to complete the question, but Triskel seemed to understand just fine.

  She pointed to a door to my right. I released the waitress, and she fell to her knees, crawling across the kitchen floor with unnatural speed. The moment she reached the mess, she began scrabbling around in it once more, gathering up the bits and pieces of broken items and heaping them onto the tray.

  I watched as she tried to get up, but her legs failed her and she flopped on the floor again. Had fighting with me weakened her to the point where she now couldn’t even stand? Guilt slammed into me. By trying to help, I’d made the situation that much worse.

  Grey bent over and lifted the tray from the young woman, then carried it to the counter and set it down. When he returned, the waitress was still struggling to get back onto her feet, but Grey’s act had quieted at least some of the desperation that seemed to flow through her.

  “What’s her name?” He didn’t look at Triskel when he spoke, and I could feel his anger.

  “Mandy,” the fae said, her eyes wide as she watched Grey.

  I watched as he reached down and cupped Mandy’s chin between his index finger and thumb, tilting her head back until she was forced to stare up into his dark eyes. For a moment she seemed to fight against him, but Grey blew gently on her face, quieting her instantly.

  “Mandy, it’s time for a break,” he said. His voice was gentle, but there was no denying the undercurrent of magic.

  She struggled again, but Grey never released her. “Mandy, I said it’s time for a break. You don’t want to make Siobhan mad, do you?”

  As though all the life had fled from her body, Mandy slumped forward into Grey’s arms. He caught her, gently scooping her from the floor and into his arms. He carried her out of the kitchen, and I watched through the doors as he laid her in our booth.

  Grey returned a moment later, but I was already moving toward the door Triskel had indicated earlier. I didn’t really want to know what had happened to the poor, unfortunate soul. I had a pretty good idea that whatever I would find would probably follow me in my nightmares in the weeks to come.

  The big metal door was freezing, and I knew without having to open it that it was a walk-in cooler.

  Great.

  A cooler wasn’t exactly where you stored people who were still alive.

  The door initially resisted when I pulled on the handle, so I gave it an extra tug. It gave way with a hiss as cold air spread out toward me and into the kitchen. I sensed more than saw Grey behind me, the warmth of his power settling around me like a fur coat, and I resisted the urge to lie back against him.

  The light inside the cooler was a cold blue, giving the contents an eerie glow. My breath formed little clouds in front of my face as I stepped inside and batted away the rubber separators that hung in the doorway.

  Everything inside the cooler was completely frozen, and ice particles sparkled across the surface of the boxes and slabs of meat.

  I came to a halt and Grey stepped into me, his body pressed to mine as he stared over my shoulder. I knew the moment he saw the body at the back of the freezer because he stiffened.

  The man, or at least what was left of him, lay on his side. I couldn’t tell how old he might have been, his face was too badly distorted, but judging by his torn jeans and the converse trainers he wore, I was guessing twenties at the very oldest.

  His face was a mask of blood and other thicker fluids that had frozen in place, giving him a ghoulish appearance. From where I stood, he looked as though his head had imploded, the skull crumpling in on itself. The rest of his body was much the same, and in my exhausted mind I couldn’t help but think the body looked a lot like a half-empty tube of toothpaste that had been violently squeezed in the centre.

  I let out a low whistle, words failing me as I stared at the remains. The spell that had done this was clearly powerful, but why would Siobhan do this to her staff? And if she’d known she was leaving, then why not remove the spell first?

  From everything Triskel and Grey had told me about Siobhan, I found it hard to believe that she would deliberately allow something like this to happen. Maybe she hadn’t known she would be gone for so long, that she’d left in such a hurry she had forgotten to disarm the spell.

  Of course, there were also two other possibilities, but I was pretty sure neither Triskel nor Grey would be open to them.

  “Siobhan would never have wanted her spell to do this,” Grey whispered to me, leaning down so his warm breath fanned against my ear.

  “Then why use it at all? She had to know that an outcome like this was possible,” I said, gesturing to the body. “The spell was too dangerous.”

  “She wouldn’t hurt a human. She was one of the good guys, Jenna. I have to believe that she didn’t know this could happen.”

  From where I was standing, his answer sounded moronic. By all accounts, Siobhan was a powerful fae. Her using magic that she didn’t understand just didn’t sit right with me and my knowledge of what the fae were like. But Grey obviously cared about her, and so it made a little more sense that he was burying his head in the sand.

  “Look, I didn’t know her, but…”

  Grey cut me off. “You’re right, you didn’t know her, so you have no idea what you’re talking about.” His anger caused his power to lash out at me.

  It stung against my skin, but I shrugged it off as I followed him out of the cooler and back into the humid kitchen air.

  “I get that you’re worried, but don’t you dare take this out on me,” I said, barely keeping my own temper in check.

  “I need to get the spell under control, or at least disrupt it enough that we can get the staff somewhere safe before they all end up like that guy in there,” Grey said, seeming to ignore me.

  “Grey, I mean it. This is not my doing. I am not the enemy.”

  He didn�
�t answer me, but he gave me a curt nod, which was the best I could hope for. That had always been Grey’s way. He had always found it nearly impossible to admit when he was wrong. And while he’d mellowed a little in the years since we’d worked together, deep down he was the same hot-head I’d fallen for.

  I always did have a thing for the unattainable bad boys.

  Chapter 21

  Locking the staff into the kitchen with us sounded easier than it really was. Grey had gone to the SUV to grab some last bits and pieces he needed to craft a workaround to Siobhan’s spell, leaving me and Triskel to round up the staff.

  “I’m sorry to ruin your dining experience this evening, ladies and gents,” I said, addressing the pub, “but we’re closed for the rest of the night.”

  The patrons grumbled as they downed the last of their drinks and began heading for the doors. One last group remained at their table, determined to finish their food.

  With an exasperated sigh, I crossed the floor as the sound of smashing plates and glasses drifted to my ears. The longer Triskel kept the staff locked in the kitchen, the more agitated they were getting. We could only hope they wouldn’t turn violent.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again, addressing the group of diners still at their table. “I really do need you to leave.”

  “We bought and paid for this meal,” one of the men said, jabbing his fork in my direction. “Now why don’t you run along and comp us a bottle of wine for the inconvenience of hurrying us to finish.”

  His arrogance floored me, and I curled my fingers into fists. I had no idea how people could work in the food industry, especially when dealing with this kind of crap. Plastering a smile on my face, I leaned down toward the table, getting into the asshole’s face.

  “I’m not comping you anything,” I said, keeping my smile firmly in place. “If you don’t get out now, you’ll find yourself in the hospital awaiting a little procedure to remove your head from your ass.”

  Shock twisted his features as the others gathered around the table gasped. There were protests, things like, “You can’t speak to us like that,” and “Just who do you think you are?” but I ignored them, keeping my gaze firmly fixed on the man in front of me.

  “Move,” I said, letting power flood into my eyes. A slow hiss slid from between my lips.

  He didn’t need to be told twice. His chair scraped back on the hardwood floor so fast it toppled over, the sound echoing inside the nearly empty space. He pulled out his wallet and flung several wadded-up notes onto the table.

  Whatever he’d seen reflected in my eyes had clearly frightened him enough to send him running for the hills. The rest of his group rushed to catch up with him as he practically ran for the doors.

  Grey made his way inside, sidestepping the last group with a look of surprise. He turned to me with a grin, but it died as soon as he saw my eyes.

  “Please tell me you didn’t use your magic on them.”

  “Of course not. Do you think I’m a fool? I just let a little trickle into my eyes.” I folded my arms over my chest as I eyed the pile of items in his arms. “You get everything you need?”

  “Yeah, I can grab a couple of herbs from the kitchen,” he said, sounding distracted.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know if this will even work,” he said. “I have no idea what kind of spell this is, so it’s all guess work, and trying to disrupt a working spell with nothing but guesswork is a pretty bad idea.”

  “Leaving those people to die of exhaustion or explode if they try to leave is a worse idea,” I countered, unable to erase the mental image of the dead man in the freezer.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  He still didn’t sound happy, and I couldn’t really blame him. So many things could go wrong, but not trying to help was so much worse. These people would die if we didn’t stop the spell, that much I was certain of.

  “We don’t have anything to lose,” I said.

  “What if I kill them all?”

  I shook my head. “You won’t. You’re good at what you do, Grey.”

  “I’m not as strong as I should be, Jenna, I told you that.”

  I knew what he meant—blood magic, like the kind that came from human sacrifice, made everything so much stronger, but there was no reason he wasn’t capable of performing what seemed to me like a simple working without resorting to human sacrifice.

  “You can do this,” I said, sounding more confident than I felt. The little voice in the back of my head was only too happy to pipe up, whispering, What if he can’t? What if he fails?

  I just had to believe he wouldn’t. Belief and blind faith were hard, Goddess knew, but there were days when I really hated magic. Give me a troll whose ass I could kick any day of the week, and I was a happy little gorgon.

  Grey removed his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves, revealing the sharp-edged lines of the vine tattoos that crawled up his arms. I’d only ever seen them when we trained together, and Grey had gotten nervous every time I asked him about the vivid designs.

  I stared at the tattoos, wondering just how far up his arms they extended. I wanted to cross the floor to him and push his shirt off his body, then trace the lines with my fingers.

  I snapped out of my thoughts. What the hell was it about those bloody tattoos that made me go all gaga every time I saw them? I turned and tore my gaze away from him to push aside the distraction and refocus.

  The first time I’d seen those tattoos, Grey had gotten the drop on me, and I’d ended up with a mild concussion. The memory didn’t sit well with me.

  As though he could read my thoughts, he glanced up at me, a sly smile curving his lips. He lifted a silver athame from the box of tricks he’d carried in from the car. I watched as he popped the lid off the tub of salt he’d borrowed from the kitchen and began walking a circle of power, salt trailing along the ground behind him.

  Grey’s lips moved soundlessly, and I heard the unmistakable rustle of magic slowly spreading through the room.

  “Hold out your hand,” he said, pausing directly in front of me from his position inside the circle.

  “Why?” I couldn’t keep the hostile curiosity from my voice. When someone asked for my hand during spell work, it nearly always ended with me bleeding, and I had a feeling that this time would be no different.

  “Don’t be such a baby,” he said, then sighed and gave me a pointed look. “Fine, I need the blood of those of us unaffected by the magic. We don’t need this spell screwing us up.”

  I nodded and bit my lip, keeping my thoughts to myself. What he really meant was, if this spell went wrong, the only ones affected by it would be the unfortunate members of the staff. We would walk away unscathed, or at least untouched by the magic.

  I thrust my hand toward him and reluctantly uncurled my fingers, my palm facing upwards. Twisting the knife over in his hand, he sliced along the flat of my palm with the wickedly sharp silver blade. I sucked my breath in with a sharp hiss of pain. The wound itself wasn’t particularly painful, but the silver of the blade combined with the magic in the air increased the sting.

  Grey held a small black ceramic bowl beneath my hand to catch my blood as it spilled from my cupped palm. Clenching my fist, I squeezed out the last of my blood, and when he nodded, I withdrew my arm.

  He moved over to Triskel, who didn’t hesitate when he held the knife out toward her. When the blade bit into her skin, she let out a small yelp, her violet blood spilling quickly into the bowl before mixing with mine.

  Grey moved back to the centre of the circle he’d created and set the bowl on the floor. Without a word, he cut his own hand, slicing into the flesh deep enough that any normal human would have needed stitches. The metallic tang of his blood tainted the air as he let it trickle into the dish. When he was done, he dipped the blade into the bowl and gave the contents a hasty stir before sprinkling droplets of blood around the salt circle.

  “You sure that’s just to keep us out of the working?” I
asked. I’d seen enough magic in my time to know that what he’d told me about our spilled blood being used to keep us out of harm’s way wasn’t strictly true. He had gathered enough blood to both keep us free of the magic and use the power contained within it to strengthen the spell.

  Grey shook his head wordlessly, which was all the answer I needed.

  He reached back into the box of tricks and pulled a withered twig from the depths. I opened my mouth to ask him what it was, but the words froze on my lips as he dipped the twig into the bowl of blood. Between one breath and the next, the twig sprouted leaves and then began growing longer and thicker until it resembled a black staff.

  “Shit,” I whispered.

  Grey didn’t look at me as he gripped the staff and reached down into the bowl. He covered his hand in blood and smeared it down over his face. In the poor light, the blood looked black against his ashen face.

  He slammed the butt of the staff into the floor and walked the circle backwards. It wasn’t until he drew level with me once more that I noticed the colour of his eyes. Usually they were dark enough to appear almost black, but with his power riding him, they were now the colour of liquid silver. The whites in his eyes were gone, having been completely swallowed by the sparkling silver that seemed to be lit from within. Staring into his eyes, I had the sudden urge to cross the circle and join my magic to his.

  His power called to me, promising me power, vengeance against those who had hurt me. I only had to join with him, to give myself, body and soul, up to the power that crackled along the edges of Grey’s body.

  Lightning flared in his eyes, a beautifully brilliant white spark of power that drew me in further. My gorgon nature woke within me, sliding free of the place in the pit of my body where it lay curled. I felt the viper’s strike as it bit down on my mind, and I jolted awake. I stumbled back from the edge of the circle, scattering tiny granules of salt in my wake.

  Had I lost my mind? The only thing that had kept me from crossing the circle had been the other half of my power. I’d always imagined my power to be a viper’s nest—it certainly felt like that as it lay coiled and poised for action inside me. Add to that the viper I had tattooed across my back… Kypherous always said it was a physical manifestation of my true nature, and if I wanted to, I could call it to me.