“Where were the bodies found?” Grey asked the question that had been hovering on the tip of my tongue.
While the newspaper had reported the deaths, it hadn’t given an exact location for either the burial chamber or the bodies.
Antony went to a map on the wall and pointed to an area almost adjacent to Stonehenge.
“At the entrance to the burial find,” he said. “Until the inquests are heard, they’ve had to shutter all excavations at the site itself.”
At least that was something in our favour. With no more excavation work being done, we were guaranteed that the site would be as untouched as when the creature escaped. That meant Grey would find it easier to study the original spell used to trap it.
Grey gave me a look that said as much. I barely paid attention as he thanked Antony for his time and work, my gaze dragging back to the body on the table.
“Who was this?” I asked, studying the face. The mouth was twisted into an expression of what I thought looked like horror, although the body being mummified made it almost impossible to discern any true expression. The lack of lividity in the skin had caused the tissue to shrink back from the lips.
But I’d also been attacked by the creature, and I knew the pain it caused. By all accounts, its attack on me had been hasty and unplanned. Whatever had happened to this victim had taken longer, the suffering more pronounced and prolonged.
“Amelia White,” Antony said, reading from the file in his hands. “She was sixteen, went missing while walking home from the bus stop.”
I clenched my hands into fists as I stared down at the lifeless body. I would kill this thing. I would kill it and hope that small gesture would be enough to bring Amelia and the other dead some peace.
It would never really be enough, of course. Killing the creature wouldn’t bring them back, and it wouldn’t take away the families’ pain. But I could at least hope that the knowledge that their loved ones’ killer was dead would bring them some solace.
I didn’t truly imagine it would, but I could always hope.
Chapter 29
I parked in the visitors’ car park next to Stonehenge. We were only a short walk from both the iconic stone circle and the burial site where the creature had been released. I killed the engine and slid from behind the wheel soundlessly. The silence around me brought me no peace. Where were the birds? The small rodents that should have been rustling in the scrub?
The wind slapped into me, and I braced myself against the sudden onslaught as it whistled through the grass. Even with the sudden squally gusts, the place was far too quiet, and I closed my eyes, allowing my senses to travel out and across the ground, searching…
There was nothing. The entire area felt dead. The first fingers of fear tickled along the base of my neck.
Grey’s SUV pulled in beside me, the tyres crunching on the rough surface of the road. I watched the two men, their faces animated. Despite being unable to hear them, I knew they were arguing. I tried to read Grey’s face, but the minute he saw me watching, his expression smoothed out. Only the slight thinning of his lips let me know that he was still pissed.
Alex’s door swung open and he hopped out. He landed next to me, his boots hitting the dirt with a thud.
“You made good time,” he said, sounding cheerful enough, but there was a tightness around his eyes and his smile never made it past his lips. “I didn’t think that rust bucket could move so fast.” He gestured to my Land Rover, and I stuck out my tongue as I glared at him.
“This bad boy can handle any terrain,” I said. “Yours is all flash and no knickers.”
At that, Alex started to laugh, the sound bouncing and echoing in the wind before it was thrown back at us.
Grey chose that moment to walk toward us, his dark eyes sliding over Alex before coming to rest on my face.
“What’s so funny?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Alex quipped back before I could even open my mouth. His answer only seemed to irritate Grey further, and I wondered for a moment if they were actually going to end up beating the ever-living crap out of each other.
Grey released a long breath before he turned away and gazed out at the fields surrounding us. The tension that had stretched out between the two men only moments before faded. I pulled out a map I’d dug from my glovebox and flipped it open, studying the area carefully.
“We can follow the path up along here,” I said, pointing away from the henge.
Grey nodded but didn’t turn to look at me, and I couldn’t tell if he was actually listening.
Alex lifted the SUV’s hatch to reveal a large backpack. He tugged it free and slung it easily over his shoulders, though I noticed that his movements were a little stiff. I had to wonder if he had completely healed after the creature’s attack.
That was for him to decide; I had no intention of interrogating him as to whether he felt up to facing the monster so soon after it had bested him. Pushing the thoughts aside, I cleared my mind, checking the extra blades I had strapped to my body.
I slid the whip a little further down my arm so it was closer to my hand if I needed it. Not that I really believed it would work against the wraith. Without a body, our weapons were useless.
“So what happens if we find the thing?” I asked, keeping my eyes focused on the task of checking and rechecking my weapons. Even if they were useless against the wight, the simple actions gave my hands something to focus on, keeping my fear at bay.
“Then we trap it back inside its burial chamber,” Grey said. “If we can.”
“And if we can’t?”
Grey sighed and gave me a withering look. “Then we find another way to trap it.”
“Would that be before or after it kills us all?” Alex asked, and I could tell from his tone that he was needling Grey. Was this what they’d been fighting about?
“Alex is of the belief that we should do more research and try to find a way to kill the creature,” Grey said, managing to sound both bored and weary, as though Alex were an irritating child who kept asking stupid questions.
I could definitely see Grey’s point.
“I thought you said there wasn’t a way to kill it?” I checked the karambit blade strapped to my thigh, tightening the strap until it dug into my flesh. It was better to be a little uncomfortable than for the strap to slip and slide around while I was in motion.
“There isn’t,” Grey said.
“There might be,” Alex corrected him.
“Can one of you please make up your goddamned mind?” I glared at them both.
“There isn’t a way to kill it.” Grey glared at Alex before returning his attention to me. “Alex just believes we should involve the rest of Division 6 in this.”
I could feel Alex’s eyes practically boring holes into me. Why did he want to involve Division 6? In all the cases I’d worked with Grey in the past, not once had we done that, unless armed response was required or multiple civilians were at risk. Everything else, whenever possible, we took care of ourselves. As far as I was concerned, this was no different. But Alex seemed to have a different opinion, and that worried me.
“We should get going,” I said, choosing to ignore Alex, at least until I could corner him and ask him just what the hell was going on.
I glanced up at the darkening sky and shivered. Night was coming in fast, and once it did, the creature would have one more advantage against us. If we didn’t move, and soon, then we would lose all element of surprise. If that happened, I didn’t fancy our odds.
It was a short trek through the scrub to the burial site. The closer we got, the more I could feel the creature’s pull. Its scent was everywhere, and that alone was enough to set my nerves to jangling.
“Can you feel that?” Grey whispered, barely audible above the wind whistling around us.
Rather than answer, I gave a short nod. My skin crawled with the creature’s power, but it felt different this time. Was the difference somehow connected to the spell that had been
used to trap it?
We reached the edge of the barriers that had been set up around the site. I paused on the edge of the dig, staring down into the churned-up mud. It didn’t look like much; sections of the area had been cordoned off into smaller grids, with pegs and string blocking out the sections. The ground was made up of varying levels, as though whoever had been doing the digging couldn’t decide just how deep they wanted to go.
Or perhaps this was how an archaeological dig was supposed to look. I’d never been to one; playing in the mud whilst digging up bones and bits of pottery that was often younger than I was didn’t hold much appeal.
At the top end of the deep pit, a couple of large, mud-covered rocks were embedded in the ground. The topmost rock had been lifted aside, and from where we stood I could just make out the darkness that seemed to disappear down into the earth itself.
The burial site.
I hopped down into the trench and started toward the entrance as Grey’s hand wrapped around my upper arm. He jerked me to a halt and I whirled on him, anger spreading through my veins as I stared up into his face.
He pointed to something on the ground just ahead of me, then pulled me backwards a couple of paces. I stared at the spot where I’d been about to put my foot. The ground looked normal enough, and I gave Grey a questioning glance.
He nodded toward the ground once more, and this time I stared at it with my senses in full flow. The mud was a sticky orange and clung to my boots, caking into them, making each step harder. Even before they’d found the burial site, I knew for a fact that nothing would have grown above it. Fertile soil was dark and rich, while this looked sickly and wrong, but that wasn’t what Grey wanted me to see. Above the orange mud sat a silken web, the threads so thin as to be almost invisible to the naked eye. Not until I used my magic could I see the web for what it was.
Magic.
“What is it?” I whispered, so that only Grey could hear me.
“Remnants of the ritual used to trap the creature,” Grey said, but it was the way he said ‘remnants’ that worried me most.
“That’s good, though, right?” I glanced back at the sparkling web. It appeared to be broken, sinking out of sight only to reappear a few feet closer to the cave entrance. “That means it’s still there, still active?”
Grey shook his head and stared at the silken silver strands. “It really doesn’t,” he said. “It’s been broken. I don’t know if the creature destroyed it or if the excavations disrupted whatever was used to set the web in the first place. Whatever it was, the spell has been destroyed.”
“You could recreate it, though,” Alex said, moving up beside us. “You’re a druid, so don’t you know how to bind the thing back together?”
“Maybe if we find what originally set the spell in the ground we could use that to…”
Grey cut me off. “It’s been destroyed.”
“How can you tell?” Alex asked. Although it sounded like he was questioning Grey’s abilities, I saw nothing but genuine curiosity in his eyes.
“Because I can feel it. They sacrificed five people here to seal the goddamn thing inside the structure, and I’m betting that the roots you can see sticking out of the ground over there belonged to a white poplar tree.” He pointed to some dirt-covered roots that stuck up from the ground like skeletal fingers.
“They dug the tree up before the excavations started, and that destroyed the spell and the magic. That’s what released the creature…”
“But…” Alex started to say, but Grey turned on him.
“I’ve told you already, it takes a sacrifice, and I’m not willing to murder five humans on the off chance it might work.” The anguish in Grey’s voice caught me off guard. I hadn’t realised just how badly affected he was by the situation.
“We’ll find another way,” I said, but Grey shook his head.
“This creature feeds on life, Jenna. The only way to stop it is with blood magic and death.”
A scream ripped the air around us, turning the blood in my veins to ice. I knew that voice. I knew that scream.
It came again, the sound filled with terror and pain, and without thinking, I started to run, my karambit already in my hand as I dived over the top of the webbed magic embedded in the dirt. My brain tried to warn me that it could be a trap, but instinctually I knew it wasn’t. The scream had been real, and I wasn’t going to fail Tracey again.
I was through the door of the burial chamber before either man could catch up to me. The floor sloped away beneath me, and I misjudged my step, tumbling down the incline that led into the earth.
I loosened my body, tucking in my head to protect myself as I moved with the fall, turning it into a controlled roll. I reached the bottom and dug my booted feet into the dirt, halting my forward momentum as my eyes adjusted to the candlelit gloom.
There was a large stone altar on the opposite side of the room. The stone was covered in runic symbols and other Celtic designs that I didn’t recognise. The stone itself called to me, as though the power within me wanted, needed, me to get closer to the altar.
The creature stood on top of the stone altar, crouched over Tracey’s prone body. It leaned down toward her, and her scream choked off as the wraith’s mouth met hers. The shadow creature’s clawed hands dug into her shoulders as it lifted her up, drawing her into a lover’s embrace.
Her hands spasmed, falling away to her sides as the air in the room grew thinner. The sconces on the walls flickered, the flames growing dimmer as the creature started to feed.
I threw myself across the space toward it, hopping onto the stone altar and drawing my karambit along where I hoped its neck was. The creature released Tracey and let out an ear-splitting howl, the sound echoing round and round in the confined space, and I realised my blade was covered in something thick and black.
This is new, I thought, remembering the first time I’d managed to stab the creature. There had been no blood then, just a slight residue on the blade.
Did that mean the creature was becoming more real?
The creature slammed into me, throwing me backwards across the chamber so that I crashed into the wall near the entrance. Lights danced in my vision, and the wraith was upon me before I could get back onto my feet.
Its clawed fingers dug into my arms as it lowered its face toward me. This time I saw more than just shadows and two blue eyes peering out at me; now, the creature actually had a face. It was wreathed in shadows, but as it moved closer its face became clearer.
It drew in a deep breath, the blue glow of its eyes brightening.
“You smell like life, innocence, and something else… What is it?” The creature’s voice seemed to fill my head. I tried to shake free of its grip, but it held me still, my eyes caught in its gaze. I could feel it sifting through my head, but no matter how hard I tried to block it out, I was helpless against its mental assault.
Music filled my head, a melody I couldn’t quite pinpoint. It called to me, bringing with it warmth and joy.
“You’re home,” it whispered, and the creature’s raspy voice was enough to pull me out of whatever mind control it was attempting to exert over me. Bringing my hands together over the grip of the karambit, I turned it so that the curved blade faced upward toward the creature.
I attempted to stab the wraith, but its shadowy hand gripped my wrist, slamming my hand back onto the rocks with enough force to shatter bone. Power flooded my veins, and I managed to keep my grip on the knife.
The wraith howled again and thrust its free hand against my chest. One minute its palm was against my skin, and the next, I could feel the bony tips of its fingers caressing my heart.
The creature’s mouth slammed down over mine as it started to feed, and I was only vaguely aware of the metallic tang of blood in my mouth. Something burned against my skin, and a bright blue glow grew, almost blinding me with its intensity. The creature screamed and ripped away from me, and when I glanced down I could see that the glowing object was the neckl
ace Adrian had given to me.
My heartbeat slowed, and I spotted Alex at the creature’s shoulder. His voice was muffled, but I saw his silver blade catch the glow from the flame. Its wickedly sharp edge glinted in the gloom before the sconces guttered and we were plunged into darkness.
The wraith screamed, and I was suddenly free of its hold.
The rough stone rocks of the wall near the entrance scraped against my skin as I slid down to the compacted dirt. I couldn’t see anything, but I heard the muffled sounds of a struggle just ahead of me.
Staggering to my feet, I tried to call out, but there wasn’t enough air in my lungs to form words. Light flared in the centre of the room, and I caught sight of Grey standing next to Tracey. I watched as his mouth moved, but his words were garbled and I couldn’t make sense of them.
I focused in on the creature in the middle of the room. It had Alex in its embrace, and he struggled against its grip as it fed from him. The more it fed, the more real the wraith became, and I staggered to my feet, my blade clutched in my injured hand.
My injuries would heal, and I’d certainly had worse. But I’d felt the creature’s desire to finish whatever dark ritual it had begun all those years ago, before it had been trapped here. I couldn’t let it leave. It had to be stopped.
The creature’s hunger was imprinted on my mind as I crossed the dirt floor to where it was struggling with Alex.
I drew the blade up as the wraith released Alex and whirled on me. I struck, the knife slicing down toward the creature’s shadowed face. I felt my blade bite home as power slammed into me, sending me backwards into the stone wall once more.
My head struck the rocks, and darkness closed in on me. I fought against it, but I couldn’t stop from slipping into unconsciousness. My failure to slay the creature was compounded by the knowledge that it would get away, and its next victim’s blood would be on my hands.
Chapter 30
Cast in Stone Page 23
