When it was over, then we would have to figure out what he had done to the rest of the organization. Maybe it wasn’t going to be up to me. If John Adams participated, and if he were truly repentant, perhaps this would be on him to finish. I had to believe he wanted to do so. The more time I spent with him, the more I saw from him, the more certain I was he had changed, even if it meant he was still not trustworthy. There was a way to make him more trustworthy, but it would involve him becoming more integrated with the rest of the magical world. It was the way the rest of the magical world needed to work. By having the Dark Council and the mage council integrating, there was a unification taking place. Adding the organization to that would only accentuate it. I had to believe such a thing were possible.
I breathed in, letting myself fill with the power of this place. I didn’t detect any magic around us, which suggested that if they were here, they were masking themselves somehow.
“We have to find the missing den somehow,” I said.
“I only knew the location. I’m not able to tell you how to find it,” Charles said.
“There wouldn’t be any way to detect the power from it,” John Adams said. “When we studied the shifter dens, we weren’t able to uncover anything to help us find them. It’s only been through trial and error we have uncovered anything over the years.”
“You knew about the Iron Range pack.”
“We knew about that one, but they have done little to hide themselves over the years. And considering how powerful they are, there haven’t been many people willing to risk going to them.”
“Then where are the others?”
“As I believe they told you, they are scattered. There are some throughout the United States, and all over the rest of the world.”
And this one. Was there anything about the shifter dens I could use to find them? There had been a sense of energy around the place where we had gone to Ariel, that sense I’d felt when we had crossed the Veil, however slight it might have been. If I could reach for that power, I should be able to use it to find the den, but it would involve me searching for the protections around it.
I thought about the spells within the sentries, the trees that had acted as guardians between the rest of the forest and the den itself. If I could find something like that, I might be able to find an entrance into the den, and then I might be able to find what had happened to the shifters. Focusing on my energy, on my magic, I reached for the wand. I was going to need that power in order to search the forest around us.
“Dr. Stone?” John Adams said. “What are you doing?”
“I am looking for the power I felt when we entered the den before,” I said.
“There wasn’t any sense of power,” he said.
“There was a certain magic worked into the trees which I think helps the den straddle the power of the Veil.” I didn’t want to trigger that power. I only wanted to detect it. I held onto the wand, staring out at the lake. “Is there a ley line here?” I asked.
“Why would you think so?” John Adams asked.
“I can feel an energy in the air. It’s similar to what I feel when I’m in Minneapolis, near the Mississippi River.”
John Adams frowned, and he pressed his hand outward. I could track the direction of that power, and I didn’t know if it was something about me or something about the nature of the spell he was using which allowed me to do that, though either way, I couldn’t help but feel as if it was more than I had ever been able to do before. The nature of his power was considerable, and when it struck the lake, that energy rolled away.
“There is power here,” John Adams said softly. “It is not nearly as potent as the Mississippi, but it is power.”
“It would be why the shifters chose this place,” Charles said.
“Would they be aware of the ley lines?”
“They would be aware of the power, and in order to straddle the Veil, I suspect having power like this would be necessary,” he said.
It was strange thinking like that, and yet I had to believe what he said was right. The energy of this place would be helpful, and if there was a way for us to determine whether there was a drawing upon it, or a way that we could feel how the energy was pulled away, we might be able to understand whether or not they were using it. The more I focused on it, the more certain I was that power was out there, but it wasn’t power I was going to be able to do anything with.
It was my turn to search. I held onto the wand, and stared out the lake. If there was a ley line there, could I use that energy as well? Turning to Charles, I watched him. He was staring outward, and he had an unreadable expression on his face, though for the first time we’d been around him, I had a sense of energy. It wasn’t magic per se, but it was power, and I wondered why would feel that from him.
Vampires didn’t have any magic I was aware of, so for him to be able to use that, to have any sense of magic, suggested that whatever he was doing was powerful. For him to be calling upon anything suggested he was more connected to the magical world than he had let on.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I am merely trying to understand the nature of this place,” Charles said.
“By drawing power?”
He turned toward me. “I believe you’ve told me time and again I don’t have necessary magic.”
“Don’t you?”
He smiled at me, flashing his fangs. “Vampires don’t have magic, Dr. Stone.”
And yet, I had seen vampires using power, though they always used it through a wand or some other rune-powered artifact. In this case, I hadn’t seen any evidence of Charles using anything like that, though it didn’t mean he didn’t have it. It was possible he did have a rune placed on him, and he was drawing power I just wasn’t seeing. Having been around him for the better part of the day, I had seen the nature of his knowledge. I wondered if he would have been able to protect us from Ariel all along. Maybe we were never in any danger from her.
“Do you have any way of connecting me to the ley lines?”
“There might be something.” He leaned down, and frowned, staring at the ground. “You aren’t going to care for this.”
“Why not?”
“I’m going to need your blood.”
“Why?”
“In order for you to connect to the ley line, it’s going to have to be you within the spell.”
“Why do I get the sense this is more dangerous than what you’re letting on.”
“Because anytime you place a spell tied to your own blood, there is the potential for weakness. And in your case, seeing as how you are connected to Jean-Pierre, I worry it will weaken both of you.”
“If I’m able to draw from the ley lines, then wouldn’t it strengthen me?”
“That is also possible.”
Possible. That was what I had to take, and yet, I wondered if it would even be enough. I held up my hand, waiting for him to bite me, but rather than that, he pulled a knife from his pocket, pricking each of the fingers on my hand. He took hold of my wrist, and then traced a pattern.
I was too surprised by the pain and then the sudden movement to do anything to fight. I was even sure if I would even be able to fight, and the way he traced my hand, moving it above the ground, tracing a series of patterns, was impressive.
I could feel the energy forming within the rune. When I had been around runes that had formed before, I had never been aware of the pattern and the power within them, but for whatever reason, I was aware of this one, and I could practically feel it as it flowed within me, an energy that tingled washing through me. “Why can I feel it?”
“Because you are the one forming it,” he said.
“And if I didn’t?”
“It wouldn’t be effective.”
He continued to move my hand, and the pattern he formed was more complicated than any I had seen him make before. It was more complicated than even the one he had placed within the organization and within John Adams’s office. It was
more complicated than any rune I had seen on any of the spell coins. There was real power to it.
Energy continued to build. It left the hairs on my arm standing on end. I looked up to see John Adams watching, staring at the pattern, saying nothing. There was a question burning in his eyes, but he didn’t ask it. I wondered what he wanted to know, what questions he might ask, but even as I wondered, there was nothing I would even say or offer. And perhaps it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that we were drawing upon the necessary power here. I could feel it flowing and forming.
And then my hand stopped moving. I looked down to the pattern, trying to understand what Charles had made. The sense of magic flowed from me into the pattern, and I was able to know where it was directed. It was flowing toward the lake. Not just toward the lake, but deep, heading underground, sweeping through some unseen pathway. I barely had to think about triggering it. The energy was there, in the back of my mind, and I understood what it was going to take in order to trigger this spell. And unlike how I usually felt, this time, I understood what the spell was going to do.
Most of the time, when I was working with a new spell, I had no idea what was going to happen when I triggered it, and yet as I focused on this one, as I could feel that energy flowing through me, I was completely aware of the nature of that power, aware of how it was going to work, and the intricacies of the pattern Charles had formed. I could practically see it within my mind. It glowed, freeing my mind, and strangely, I thought I could re-create it if necessary. It connected me to the ley lines. And with that connection, all I had to do was surge power from me, and through it, I could connect to the lake in the distance.
There came a sense of power, and it bloomed somewhere around us. Glancing back, I saw John Adams holding onto a spell. “What is it?”
“I’m just preparing for when you do this,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because the moment you succeed, we will find ourselves under attack.”
“Are you so certain?”
“No, but if they know we have come looking, they will be prepared.”
I breathed out heavily, focusing my attention on the rune in front of me, the power I could see there, and in doing so, I poured out energy into it, letting the spell be triggered.
The power exploded. It was unlike anything I had used before. It was like drawing upon a wand, but it was like drawing upon something more than just a wand. It reminded me of the power I had felt when using the strange wand from the other side of the Veil, and yet in this case, the power I was drawing was different to that. It was distinct, powerful, and the more I called on that energy, the more certain I became that I could reach for even more energy if I needed to.
I sent it outward, down through the rune. As it exploded, as that power flowed out from me, it connected me to the ley lines. I drew upon that energy. It was there within me, filling me. By drawing upon it, I sent it sweeping outward. It was easy for me to control the sweeping nature of that energy. As it rolled away from me, as it swept across the landscape, through the forest, I searched for the nature of the spells I knew had to be there. If there was a hidden den here, I would find it. And in order to find it, all I needed to do was understand where the sentries were.
I swept power outward in a winding spiral all around us. And for a moment, I didn’t feel anything. But I continued to push, letting power sweep away from me, flowing around the forest.
And then it struck something. It was power. Not just power, but the sense of a rune, similar to the rune in front of me. The kind of rune which connected to something deeper, something greater.
And it was different to the sentries within the forest in the Northwoods. This was a different kind of power, and yet, it was no different. These runes were placed in a way that they were connecting to the ley lines, drawing upon that energy, letting it surge upward, connecting to power which would allow the shifters here to straddle the Veil.
Knowing where it was, I reached for John Adams and Charles, continued to draw upon the power of the ley lines, and then I transported us.
17
We now stood on the far side of the lake. The water lapped at the shore, and the moon shifted, coming from a different angle, the reflection across the lake altered, though it still had the full moon quality to it. I stared at it, wondering if there was anything I could detect from the power, though there wasn’t.
Separated from the rune which connected me to the ley lines, I was no longer able to draw nearly as much power, and yet, I was still able to feel it flow through me. It was far more than I expected to be able to call upon. As I felt that energy, I wondered if I might be able to use it more effectively.
“Why here, Dr. Stone?” John Adams asked.
“Because here is where I felt the power that marked the sentries.”
It was different on this side of the lake. Rather than a forest, there was bare rock all around us. I swept my gaze and searched for a sign of anything out here, but I didn’t come across anything. How would what I’d detected be here?
I couldn’t help but feel as if the energy I detected was actually here. There had to be something, only I had to find what it was. I drew upon the rune from the far side of the lake, where we had begun. Though it was distant, because Charles had used my blood within it, I thought it allowed me to maintain that connection in a way where I could still feel the power. I drew upon the energy of the ley lines, and swept it around us again.
Then, I felt the energy of the sentries. They were close, as I had suspected them to be. I turned toward them, noticing two boulders which created something of a wall in front of us. They were irregular, and looked as if they had been tossed down by an angry god, and I stared at the nearest of them. The surface of them was irregular and rough, and yet as I focused on it, pushing a sense of magic into it, I could feel something within that boulder. It was almost as if a rune had been formed deep within it, though I had no idea how such a thing would even be possible. As I studied the boulder, I thought I was able to understand. Someone had used power and twisted something within the rock.
It had formed a connection to the ley lines below us, and that power tied into something deep, something far below the ground, drawing energy up from a source almost unimaginable.
“This?” John Adams asked, standing behind me.
I nodded. “Can you feel it?”
“I cannot,” he said.
“Focus within the rock,” I said.
He frowned, staring at the boulder, and a sense of power built from him. It washed over me in a chill, and there was considerable energy behind it. He was drawing power, significant power, and he let it roll into the boulder.
I worried he was going to trigger something within the boulder, and of anyone who had come with us, it was John Adams I should be most concerned about knowing how to trigger the spells. Perhaps I should not have revealed to him the source of the runes.
His frown deepened. “I feel it,” he said.
“Do you feel the magic within the boulder and the way it connects to the ley lines?”
“Are you sure that’s what it does?”
Had the sentries in the Northwoods done a similar thing? Perhaps all shifter dens were the same way. It was possible they were all connected to something deeper, a great sense of power. If they were, it would explain why they were all so isolated.
“I don’t detect it,” John Adams said.
Charles stepped up, resting his hand on it. His eyes closed, and though I didn’t feel any power, I did feel something within the boulder, almost as if he were using it as a source of energy, triggering something. “There is something here.”
“And there would be something on this one,” I said, pointing to the other boulder.
They both went to the other one, and once again, John sent a sweep of magic through him, and it flowed outward, a surge of power which washed into the boulder. I didn’t feel anything triggering. That had been my concern, and yet I didn’t s
ee him and doing anything to cause a problem to the boulder.
Charles pressed his hand on the rock, taking a different approach. As before, his probing was different, certainly less powerful, but it did nothing to disrupt what was happening inside the rock. I watched Charles, wondering what he was doing and how much of this he had control over. He ignored me.
“I feel the same in this one,” he said softly.
“How are you able to do that?” John Adams asked.
“I studied with Odian,” he said.
“I wish you would stop saying that and start sharing more,” I said.
Charles just smiled at me.
If this was where Matt Gillespie and the others had come, and if this was the source of the attempt at drawing the Great Ones back across the Veil, then I would have expected to uncover something more. There was power here, and it was strong, drawn across the distance and coming from the lake and through the energy there, using the ley lines, calling for power it wouldn’t otherwise have. The only way we would find out the answer would be crossing through the boulders.
I took a step forward. Charles was there, keeping pace, concern on his face. I reached for the wand. Perhaps it was a mistake on my part to come so brazenly. I readied power, but decided the wand wasn’t what I needed. Instead, I reached for a fistful of spell coins, prepared for the possibility I might need to use them to attack.
As I stepped past the rock, between the sentries, I hesitated. There was a shimmering. It came as a tingling across my skin, reminding me of when I had crossed over the strange barrier which separated the forest from the shifter den, and as it did, I knew I was right.
And then the shimmering cleared. It was a forest, though it was a forest no more. Everything around us was like the remains of the forest. There were tall stumps, and husks of trees, and the air had a stench within it. And yet, there was something else within this space. It reminded me of when I had been on the other side of the Veil.
I looked around, and came across a small cluster of flowers. They were flowers which didn’t belong on this side of the Veil. As we neared, a plume of green pollen burst forward.
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