Thicker Than Blood (14 page)

Rosie looked at her daughter’s angry, determined face. “I am in as well.”

“Levi?” Ezee said, meeting his twin’s eyes.

“So, to clarify this plan,” Levi said. “We’re going to run around the woods playing keep-away with unicorns, from a bunch of shifter mercenaries and a super-powerful sorcerer. Who, by the way, we can’t kill, and who totally kicked all our asses, like, seven ways from Sunday. We’re going to do this while buying time for our own sorceress, wherever she is and whatever she’s doing there, to come back with a person or weapon or cookies of death or whatever, in the hope she saves the day?”

There was silence for a moment. Alek swallowed a chuckle and took a deep breath.

“Yes,” he said.

“That about sums it up,” Ezee said.

“Fuck it, I’m in,” Levi said. “You all realize this makes Jade into Goku, right?”

“Goku?” Alek asked. He was certain this was a videogame reference or something he wasn’t getting. That feeling was familiar and strangely comforting. Things might be dire, but at least he was among friends.

“It’s a show. Where people spend a lot of time holding off bad guys waiting for the hero to power up and defeat them.” Harper did laugh now, wincing as though it hurt to do so.

“Next time, on
Running Around the Woods Beating Up Samir
!” Ezee was grinning now as well.

“We have a plan, then,” Alek said, suppressing his annoyance. He hoped they would all live long enough he that could get in on the joke. Someday.

“Yep. We keep the unicorns safe and wait for Jade,” Levi said.

“And hope she brings all seven Dragon Balls with her,” Harper added softly.

Alek rose and left the camp, shifting to tiger and moving silently into the dark woods. The druid followed him.

“I’m sorry,” he told Alek as they stood, giant and tiger, side by side. “I wasn’t sure how you’d react.”

Alek shifted to human so he could speak. “I knew,” he said. “I smelled her on you.”

“You still said nothing?”

“If you did not tell me, I assumed you had reason, and I guessed that reason was Jade being stubborn.”

“She is that.” Yosemite chuckled, the sound like dry leaves rustling in an autumn wind. “She told me that you would find out and to give you a message.”

Alek stayed silent, watching the druid’s face in the starlight.

“She said to tell you she loves you, and to trust her.”

Shifting back to tiger, Alek padded away, deeper into the woods.

Be safe, love,
he silently told the stars.
Come back to us, and we will fight, side by side.

The journey through whatever crazy magic shortcut we were taking went by without event. I felt us hit the logging road, the tires making noise again and the RV shaking as it jounced along.

The air was freezing cold as we emerged into a quiet, snow-covered copse of trees. After checking to make sure the magic dagger was securely tied by its sheath to my waist, I zipped up my hoodie over it. I wished I had thought to ask Noah for a proper winter coat. At least I couldn’t actually freeze to death.

Alma and Cora jumped out of the RV in their jaguar form, answering my earlier speculation about how they would shift. Single jaguar. I wondered how that worked, mentally. Did they share a brain when shifted? Questions for another time, if we made it through this alive and I ever saw them again. Sobering thought. I was so good at those. I’d never seen a jaguar outside of a zoo. The twin’s form was spotted, not the black kind, and their shoulder came up to my waist. They bounded off into the snow, looking back at us like an expectant puppy.

“We call them Ladies in this form,” Jaq said, walking up beside me. He looked exhausted, sweat matting his hair to his forehead, and his olive skin had a pale cast to it.

“Good to know,” I said. “You okay?”

“It was a long drive,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

“Let’s cast the spell here so we don’t have to drag this box up to the prison,” Kira said. She’d pulled on her leather jacket, but was standing with it open as she finished strapping on her arsenal. I counted three handguns and at least five knives.

“I’ll go on ahead,” Salazar said. “Make sure I’m in position when you get there.”

“How will you get in?” I asked.

“I called in a favor,” he said. “There’s a car waiting for me down the road. I have clearance to enter Custer. It won’t be a problem. Good luck. See you soon.”

Salazar walked out from under the trees and shifted into a huge golden eagle. With powerful flaps of his wings, he took off into the clear, cold air and flew away. Remembering how awesome flying had been, I envied the hell out of him. Life had been so much easier with real magic involved. It was like that song.
You don’t know what you have until it’s gone
.

“Spell?” Kira said, looking at me.

I turned and went to get my box.

“I’m going to do this on myself first,” I explained as I got out the ingredients and spread them on a tarp that Jaq had found for me from the RV. “I don’t know exactly how it is going to work.”

“How will we know if it has worked?” Kira asked.

I held up a small velvet bag. “I’ll be able to see this.”

“It’s a bag.” She looked skeptical.

“With an invisible ring in it,” I said, grinning. Thank you, Archivist. He really was the guy who had everything. “I got us covered.”

Cora and Alma, or, I guess, Ladies, bounded back over to us and sat in the snow, watching me closely with green-gold eyes.

I unrolled the scroll and set it where I could read it. Then I took a quart bowl and carefully measured out pinches of poppy seed, dried sword fern, a ball of spidersilk, and three woolen fibers from a black ram. Finally I added a drop of camphor oil. Murmuring the words of the spell, I picked up a pestle made of amber and started grinding the ingredients together.

“My friends of the shadows,” I invoked. “Of mist and of moonlight, you who are seldom seen. Be with me now.” Keeping up the litany, I divided the paste into two portion and carefully painted over my closed eyelids. I finished the last words of the spell and opened my eyes.

“Houston,” I said. “I think we have a problem.”

Where there should have been trees and snow and an RV, there was nothing. Just pale, almost grayish light.

“What do you see?” Kira said from somewhere beside me.

“Nothing,” I said. “Like, actually nothing.”

“What about this?” she asked, her voice very close now.

I turned my head toward it and saw a glowing ring floating in the air.

“Okay, I see the ring. I just can’t see anything else. At all.” Magic. It is not for beginners.

I heard Jaq laugh and then it cut off. I could imagine Kira glaring at him. The ring disappeared and I assumed she’d put it back in the bag.

“So we’ll be able to see the fence at least. And maybe these magical mines.” I could almost hear her thoughts grinding away, her tactical brain looking for ways to make this an advantage.

“Who is this we, white woman?” I muttered, my own thoughts spinning around. “I can’t cast the spell on anyone else. I didn’t exactly memorize it, and these things aren’t kind to imprecise casting. At best nothing would happen.”

“Klaatu verata necktie?” Kira said with a snort. I was glad she was amused at least.

“Yeah, kind of like that.”
Fuck my life
. I stared around at the nothingness. “I might be able to get into the RV and dispel it. It says it only works under the open sky.”

“No,” Kira said. “This is fine. I can make this work. We don’t want us blind anyway, or we won’t be able to see the entrance, or any threats coming at us. You’ll just have to guide us in, tell us where the fence is.”

She was right beside me. I felt the warmth coming off her body. It was amazing how much I noticed now that my sight was missing. I just had to channel my inner Daredevil. No problem.

“Okay,” I said, carefully rising to my feet. There wasn’t much choice. We had to go with what we had. “Um, how do I walk through the woods to the minefield? I can’t see the trees. Or the ground.”

A fuzzy head bumped against my palm and the tarp crackled as Ladies stepped up beside me.

“No worries,” Kira said, taking my hand in her own. Her skin was calloused and warm, her hand dwarfing mine. “We’ve got you.”

I don’t know how long we walked through the woods. I could smell the snow, hear it crunching under my hiking boots. Felt the wet and cold soaking into my socks. Visually, though? My world was a grey-tinged white screen. I walked with one hand clutching Kira’s arm and the other resting on the jaguar-twin’s head. It was like one of those trust exercises you have to do in school, only a lot scarier.

Three parallel, silvery lines appeared ahead of me. I was so excited to see something that it took a second for my brain to catch up.

“Stop,” I said, tugging on Kira’s arm. “I see the fence.”

“We’re not out of the woods yet, though I think I see the field ahead. How far is it?” Kira halted beside me, her voice coming from above my right shoulder.

“I’m not sure. I can’t see the ground. This is really disorienting,” I said.

I squinted, as though somehow that would help. The fence was three silver wire-looking lines. There were faint shadowed posts at intervals of about six feet, if my eyes weren’t lying to me.

“There are three wire-like lines,” I continued. “One at my knees, one at just above my waist, one probably about eye level with Kira.”

“Everyone get in a line just behind Jade,” Kira said. “I’ll walk slightly behind you as well, keep you from hitting a tree. It’s clear directly in front of you, so try to walk straight. Stop before you hit the fence, obviously.”

“Obviously,” I muttered.

Kira moved behind me, her hand gripping my elbow, her body a warm comfort at my back. I remembered what she’d said in the RV about having each other’s backs, but also trusting each other that we could do what we needed to do. They were strangers to me and I to them, but here we were. Risking. Trusting.

I guess I had taken that detour into Life-lesson-ville.

Agonizingly slowly, we made our way toward the invisible fence. Up close the wires were thick ropes of energy hanging in the air that hummed audibly and glowed bright enough to put dots in my vision. I wished for my magic, wondering what kind of spell this was and how it had been done. Even without being able to touch it magically, I could see Samir’s handiwork in this. He loved crafting shit. I shuddered and came to a stop with the fence about a foot away.

“It’s about a foot away from me,” I said. “I could touch it, but I really don’t want to.”

“We’re at the edge of the trees,” Kira said for my benefit. “There’s a big open field that rises up to a hill in the middle. Can’t really see from here, but I think the helipad is on that. Do you see anything else?”

“No, the fence is glowing pretty brightly. If there are mines, they might be under snow, or ground. I can’t see the ring when it is in the bag, for example.” I realized I probably should have thought of this before. “I can hear it though, can you? The fence is humming. Like bees.”

“No,” Kira said.

“I can’t hear it either,” Jaq said. He had come up beside me. “Jade, I want you to crouch down so you are eye level with the bottom strand. Put your hand out so that it is within in an inch or so. Hold there and I’ll see what I can do. Don’t touch it.”