“Me. I’m going. You are staying here with my car and making sure it doesn’t get stolen.”
“Stolen. Right.” His shoulders slumped.
“I mean it, Max. Please?” I softened my tone and gave him my best desperate female gaze.
“Okay,” he muttered.
I followed the medallion’s pull into the trees, shoving my way through the undergrowth. It was goddamned dark in here. I used more magic, feeding it into my talisman until the D20 glowed enough that I could see a few feet ahead. The ferns and weeds grew fewer as I moved into the more mature forest away from the road, but I was still moving too slowly. My lungs hurt and my leg muscles burned as I half stumbled, half ran through the dark woods.
This wasn’t working. At this rate, I’d get there about dawn if they were really deep into the wilderness. There might have been an access road or old logging path that provided a better way, but my tracking spell wasn’t Google Maps. It could only tell me direction, not the best route by car.
How long had it been since Alek and company stormed out of my store? Two hours? Three? Maybe they’d won and were on their way back to rub in my face how I’d missed all the action.
“Stop talking yourself out of doing shit,” I said aloud as I stopped moving for a moment and leaned against a tree. I wasn’t sure about lovely, but the woods were dark and deep, Robert Frost had gotten that part right. I guess two of three ain’t bad. Wind rustled in the branches high over my head as I gasped in the cool, damp air.
Wolf materialized beside me and cocked her head at me.
“You going to help?” I asked her, not expecting an answer.
She bent low and twisted her head toward her back.
“Guess that’s a yes,” I said, smiling at her. “Thank you.” I jumped up onto her back, digging my free hand into her thick, warm fur and clinging with my sore legs. I hadn’t ridden on Wolf’s back since she dragged us both bleeding and half dead out of the burning rubble where my family had chosen death and where I’d made my second and most disastrous stand against Samir.
This ride was a lot more fun. She sprang forward, gliding just over the ground in large, smooth bounds. I kept my grip on her fur and on the medallion, holding the tracking spell as best I could, but she seemed to know where to go. We soared through the woods, covering miles in a rush. I finally gave up on the spell and used that hand to grip my braid, keeping my head down as branches whipped by and threatened to tear off all my hair. Long hair can be a bitch.
After an eternity that wasn’t long enough, Wolf slowed and dropped into a crouch. As my ears adjusted to the sudden lack of movement and wind, I heard chanting coming from up ahead. I blinked tears from my eyes and peered into the darkness. There seemed to be more light in front of us than a full moon on a clear night could account for.
Wolf crept forward until she reached the edge of a giant clearing where the trees stopped abruptly and the land sloped downward. In the moonlight I saw a field at the bottom of the hill. Tiki torches were set in a loose ring, providing enough light to make out what was going on.
There were no triumphant friends or even a raging battle. As far as I could tell, my side had already pretty much lost whatever fight had happened.
Within the ring of light were two circles drawn with what I guessed was loose chalk. The smaller circle held a huge white tiger. Alek, I guessed. He was caught within a holding spell, I assumed, since he should have been able to just step out of the thing but instead was turning and growling as though he were caught in an iron cage.
The second, larger circle contained Bernie Barnes in a ridiculous black hooded robe with silver runes sewn onto it. He knelt over a reddish brown dog. No, not a dog. A coyote. Ezee. He was chanting in Sanskrit, the words much less relevant than the twisting shadow lines of power swirling like ghosts above him.#p#分页标题#e#
For a moment I didn’t see Harper or Levi. Maybe Max had been wrong. I scanned the ground inside the ring of torches and two dark shapes on the edge caught my eye. A fox and a wolverine, red and fawn fur bright against the dark grass. I couldn’t tell from here if they were alive, but they definitely weren’t conscious.
Rage swelled in me, white hot, and with it came more of my magic. I fed my frustration into it, and gathered power in my hands.
“All right, Wolf,” I whispered to my companion, “the plan is we charge down there and wreck that motherfucker’s night.”
I couldn’t kill him since we needed him to undo his spells, but I could make him hurt. Make him regret ever even thinking about using magic. I could show him what a real goddamn mage could do.