“Avery?” A young man’s voice called.
Avery gave a sigh of relief. “Peter,” he called. “I’m here.”
The male witch from Canada came into view, his dirty blonde hair a mess, his bright eyes searching. He waved when he saw Avery, and picked up his pace over the moist ground. “Thought I’d come and keep you company,” he said. “Plus—who’d want to miss a portal, right?”
“Definitely,” Avery agreed. “But, at the moment they’re running late.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Peter said.
They stood awkwardly for a moment, as if the air might split that very second to prove him right.
“So,” Peter said when the silence became almost weird, “I heard a rumor that you dated an evil enchanter for a bit.”
Avery’s face flushed. “Uh… yeah. It didn’t work out.”
“Because of the whole evil enchanter thing?” Peter asked.
“No,” Avery said. “He… snored. Really bad. So. We broke up.”
Peter stared for just a second before they both started laughing softly. It sounded louder than that in the quiet woods.
“You’re funny,” Peter said. “It’s refreshing. Everyone back there is all… doom and gloom.”
“To be fair there is an apocalypse scheduled,” Avery pointed out.
Peter shrugged. “All the more reason to enjoy the time we have left.”
It was a sobering moment that followed.
“So, ah… how’s your magic coming along?” Avery asked. “Now that you’re here? Lots of people are finding their gifts getting stronger.”
“It’s true,” Peter said. He held his hand open, palm up, and after a moment and a whisper of magic, a barely visible rose seemed to be laying on his hand, opalescent red and glass green. “I can’t make them solid yet. Or, at any rate, make them seem solid.”
“Illusion?” Avery asked, marveling at the detail.
Peter nodded. “Before I came here I could alter existing things in small ways, and at close range. I’m a sculptor, so… I found a good use for it.”
“Fascinating,” Avery breathed. “Illusion is a rare gift, isn’t it?”
“Where I’m from,” Peter agreed. “But one of my ancestors came over from Italy where it’s more common. Or, used to be, I suppose.”
“That’s brilliant,” Avery said, just as Peter let the rose fade from existence. “Beautiful.”
“Thank you,” Peter said. “So… how much longer, do you think, before…?”
“Could be any moment,” Avery muttered. He checked his watch again.
“Ah.” Peter kicked at a leaf. “So… probably not a good idea to get too… distracted.”
It took Avery a moment. When he got it, his cheeks flushed. “Oh. Uh… I… there’s no telling, so…”
Peter chuckled softly, and then bit his lip. “Calm down. I was joking. Mostly. But perhaps sometime before the apocalypse we could… have one last date? Just in case.”
“Sure,” Avery said, mystified just a bit. His stomach fluttered slightly, as if the world weren’t in danger of ending and there was, somehow, an open road stretching before him, inviting him to walk casually down the smooth cobbles for a stroll in the sun. “I’d like that. Plus, there may not be many places left to eat afterward, so…”
Peter chuckled again, and took a step toward Avery, his intention clear on his face. Avery braced himself emotionally for the kiss.
The air nearby gave off a sudden sharp whine that quickly became pitched too high to hear, and the scent of ozone flooded the forest.
“I think that’s them,” Avery breathed, disappointed and relieved at the same time. “Hold that thought?”
“I shall,” Peter agreed. They jogged away from the origin of the smell, and from a distance Avery could see a patch of air beginning to warp, sensing as if space itself were twisting slowly, the light getting lost on it’s way through.
A pinpoint empty space appeared at the center of the lens, and slowly expanded. When it was about a foot in diameter, Avery could see a face on the other side of it. A thrill of ecstatic wonder shot through him, and he laughed spontaneously, cheering the man on the other side, and then his comrades as he saw that there was more than one wizard at work, all of them with a familiar mix of grim determination and triumph that Avery himself had experienced when doing something he’d previously believed impossible.
“Catch it!” One of the men barked through the opening. “Needs and anchor. Fifth parallel… seventh degree. Just ease it into the local field! Carefully!”
Avery sprang forward, wand out, and searched the emerging pattern for the chords the foreign wizard was talking about. He found it, and gave it a gentle, probing touch with his own magic. He matched the resonance after just a moment more, and then drew it down, blending it into the local magical field.
The lens stabilized gradually, and then the hole in the world opened more quickly, until it was the size of a wide, tall doorway, perfectly rectangular.
“Stones first,” one of the wizards said.
Several young women came through, carrying two stones each. Two… four… six… eight… ten…
Something went wrong. The local field shook violently, and the rectangle shrank down instantly to the size of a small window, just as the last witch was beginning to rush through it. Someone behind her managed to jerk her back—leaving a sliver of her coat and a puff of down drifting to the wet earth below the window, neatly sliced.
“Throw them,” the wizard ordered. “Quickly!”
“Peter,” Aiden gasped, the effort of sustaining the anchor almost a physical strain, “help them pass the stones through. Be careful, the edges are… sharp.”
“What happened?” Peter asked.
“The Breach,” Avery said, fairly certain that’s what had happened. “Might be an attack from Faerie. We’ll find out later, we need those stones!”
Peter ran to the shrinking window and very carefully, very slowly reached part of the way through it to accept one of the last two stones. He passed it to a waiting witch, and then reached for the last one.
“It’s on my end,” Avery called to the people on the other side of the portal. “Send more power through and I can compensate, the chord is about to lose cohesion.”
He heard complaining, but a moment later magic flooded along the chord of magic he was desperately trying to keep together, and he sent his own to meet it, blending the two currents as he did. It was like trying to keep his footing on a rocking boat, jogged by violent waves. He just had to balance, keep his center low, and compensate for every change.
The window widened by degrees, and Peter was able to get the last stone across. He danced back from the portal when he had it. “We’re clear,” he said.
“Not yet,” Avery muttered. “I can get you all through, we just have to get it lower and wider. To the ground, an inch below, a couple of feet high, you can crawl through.”
They lowered the portal until the lower lip was below the earth, and then Avery spun out supports on his end to keep it in place. It was a calculated guess, but if it disrupted the portal it would only strand the others on the far side.
It didn’t, however. The edges of the portal became rounded, and Avery layered the tangent chords into one another, shifting their resonance to a wider harmony until they began to hum with stable, strong energy—proving, he noted to himself, that he’d been right all along and that Leander was too cautious at times—and the portal stabilized. The effort of keeping it open lessened.
The last of the witches crawled through, avoiding the deadly edges, and she was followed by two men, possibly wizards. The final three, who were all supporting the portal, stayed where they were.
“Come through,” Avery called. “I can hold it.”
“Nyet,” one of the wizards said, “all three must hold.”
“I’ve got it,” Avery assured them. “Trust me. Come through, we need everyone we can get! It’s starting!”
&
nbsp; There was some argument and cussing on the other end—in perhaps two or three different languages—but at length one of the wizards practically dove through the opening.
He checked himself when he stood, making sure that all his limbs were intact. Then he looked at Avery, and at the portal. “Chernobolg’s balls,” the heavyset wizard muttered. He squinted. “How is that stable?”
“It’s like inflating a balloon,” Avery said, just a little bit smug. “The pressure supports the structure.”
“Hunh,” the wizard grunted. “Come through. Portal will hold.”
After a moment, two more wizards emerged—one of them old enough to be Avery’s grandfather, with a weathered face and long, bony fingers; the other wild looking, with dread-locked hair and a thick, wiry beard. Both checked themselves just as the first had.
The moment they were through, Avery eased the anchors loose. All three of the portal wizards jumped in to help, the three of them carefully easing the window closed.
“Clear,” the Russian wizard announced, looking through the V of his first and middle fingers with one eye at where the portal had been. “No residual anomaly. Congratulations, comrades! We have successfully made first portal in five centuries.”
“Four,” the thin wizard corrected. He had a nasally French accent. “Francois Coulier portaled from Paris to Naples.”
“And portaled himself into a stone wall,” the rugged wizard pointed out, laughing. He had some kind of middle eastern accent, Avery thought. “That does not count, my friend. If we had used his framework for coordinate resolution we would have ended up—”
“Congratulations all around,” Avery said quickly, clapping loudly, twice. “I hate to interrupt, but we have about twelve miles to travel, and I believe the end of the world may have started, so…”
All faces turned toward him, paled.
And then, they ran.
Chapter 37
Piper staggered outside the tour office as something terribly wrong shook her. She couldn’t place what it was, but it seemed somehow fundamental—as if her sense of reality had suddenly and drastically changed but she wasn’t sure which sense was malfunctioning.
The field of lights in her mind became diffused, as if there was a new dirty lens over her gift.
“Piper?” Gavin caught her from behind, and she realized she’d been about to fall down. “What’s wrong?”
“Caves,” Piper whispered. She took a long, steadying breath and let him help her regain her balance. “Something’s wrong.”
She rushed into the tour office and quickly found that she wasn’t the only one who had felt a change. All throughout the place, people were chattering and panicked. Once they saw her, the questions came faster than she could keep track of them. But most of them were to the same tune: What was wrong with the world?
Bailey? Piper shouted mentally, but got no response.
She turned to Gavin. “You have to get those without working magic away from the Caves. Take them… I don’t know, just east. Okay?”
Gavin started to protest, but looked at the forlorn mass of people crammed into the space. Many of them were children, some as young as Riley. “Alright,” he said quietly. He kissed her. “Just… come back to me. Please.”
“I love you,” Piper told him. She couldn’t promise anything else.
She turned to the people gathered. “Listen to me! I need anyone with working magic, defensive or offensive, to gather at the back entrance of the office. Everyone else, and anyone too young and untrained, follow my husband, Gavin.”
“He doesn’t have magic,” someone in the crowd, a man, said. “He’ll take us to the hunters.”
“No, he won’t,” Piper assured them. “Please, you have to trust me. Whatever is happening is coming from the Caves. We don't have time to argue about this, and we need those who aren’t… who can’t fight to be out of harms way.”
She expected that to start a needless panic, but instead people began to talk among themselves. Children were hugged, and kissed, and passed to temporary caretakers. Slowly, two groups formed—one at the back of the building, and one at the front.
“Piper,” Gavin said, reaching for her hand. He stared at her, maybe conscious of the fact that she hadn’t promised to return. “You don’t have the kind of magic for this, do you?”
She put her hand on his. “I love you. But I have to stand by Bailey. She needs me. I… can’t explain it. I can feel her, Gavin. She’s going to go critical. She needs her friends to make sure she remembers who she is.”
He blinked away tears, and nodded, and then pulled her into a fierce, crushing hug. “I’ll see you after,” he whispered into her ear.
“Go,” Piper told him.
He left, and his charges flowed after him through the front doors of the tour office.
Right. The plan. It was time.
She faced the remaining thirty or so practitioners—witches, wizards, and even a couple of shamans—and kept her voice even and loud when she spoke. Just imagine they’re a bunch of toddlers, she told herself, and hoped none of them was a mind reader.
“Alright,” she said, “ward the office like fort knox. Those of you with defensive abilities, hold this office. Underground, to either side, and above, as high as you can go. Those of you with offensive power, come with me. We’re going to the Caves, and creating a corridor between the entrance and this building.” It had been Leander and Bailey’s strategy—assuming that Bailey could use the Caves themselves to funnel anything that got past the front line into the corridor.
She desperately hoped that turned out to be true. If not…
Well, she couldn’t think about that. She couldn’t be paralyzed with fear. If she let that happen, she may not see Gavin or her children again.
I’m not going to leave them behind, she told herself.
“Let’s go,” she said, and led half the assembled crew through the back door and down the slope—toward the source of the cracks that seemed to be spreading through the world, just at the corner of her eye.
Chapter 38
Bailey found the entrance of the Caves shielded with some magic she’d never sensed before, but which had the vaguest hint of Peitr in it. The rest was something… extra planer; foreign to this world but not Faerie.
“Demonic,” Leander said, his hands arranged into a triangle that he peered through, moving it around to get a look at the whole shield. “But stable. It will shatter with enough force.”
“Good,” Bailey muttered. She opened the floodgates of primal magic inside, and stretched her hand up, as though gripping a hammer. In a way, she did—she envisioned her magic gathering into the shape of a giant sledgehammer, and then brought it down full force against the shield that barred their way.
The dispersal of magic was violent, and made Bailey’s stomach sick as it passed through them and dissipated. From deep inside the Cave she felt a surge of surprise, followed quickly by killing rage. And something else—mortal terror. There were three minds there—one working quickly, rushing through metered, measured thoughts of a ritual. The other two were quiet, sedated.
“Xavier and Lauren are still alive,” Bailey told her parents. “When we get in there, take them out of the Caves. Piper should be assembling whoever can fight at the tour office already. Frances, Aiden—”
“I’m coming with you,” Aiden told her.
Bailey looked at him, and wanted to stop time for just ten seconds to tell him that she loved him and that she wished they could have a future; that she didn’t want him to grieve for her too long.
But there wasn’t time. “I need you and Frances to gather the stones. Everyone will know to bring them here, but not everyone will be able to come inside safely.”
“I should be defending you in there,” Aiden said.
Bailey sighed, and touched his face. “I don’t need you to defend me,” she said. “I need you to trust me, and… and obey me.”
Aiden opened his mouth, but closed it and looked
away. He nodded. “I understand. Good hunting.”
She hoped there would be no hunting involved.
They made it to the third Cave before anything barred their path again. It was something made of darkness and ice, and it emerged from the roof of the Cavern soundlessly. It was Chloe that felt it, as Bailey’s attention was riveted on the three minds ahead and the sickening disturbance that was mounting near them.
“Bailey!” Chloe shouted, and then Bailey stumbled forward sharply as her mother shoved her.
It landed between them, radiating biting cold and occluding the light of Bailey and Leander’s illumination spells, the darkness seething around the creature and swallowing even the magical light.
Bailey brought her magic to bear, but Leander, somehow, beat her to it. She felt lines of power spring into existence around the creature, and then the discharge when it slammed itself against it’s sudden prison. He let loose a shriek like grinding ice and steel.
“I have it,” he said. “Go on, I can banish it; it’ll just take another moment.”
Chloe pulled at Bailey’s arm when Bailey hesitated to leave him. “Come on,” she said, “he knows what he’s doing. We need to get the Clearys.”
She was right, so Bailey turned and left her father there, proceeding through the Caves with greater caution, pressing her magic out ahead of them to sense any disturbances or changes.
Other than some boundary wards that were clearly meant more to alert Peitr to their approach than to keep them away, there were no other obstacles. Strange lights radiated around the last corner, an unnatural color that offended the eye. Worse, Bailey could feel a spider-webbing of cracks in the very fabric of reality, spreading out from a spot in the seventh Cave as they widened.
They came around the corner and saw why.
There was something lizard like beginning to claw its way into this world through the far wall, precisely where the crones had opened the door to Faerie months ago. The thing wouldn’t fit in the Cave if just it’s massive claws and snout were any indication. A sulfurous smell radiated from the opening.
Witching for a Miracle (The Witchy Women of Coven Grove Book 7) Page 16
