Hunter Hunted

by Arthur, Keri

  “I’m not a damn invalid,” Ashworth grouched. “And I’m quite capable of going to the toilet by myself. Besides, even if it does turn out that you can track the heretic through his energy, I’d suggest no one actually attempts to do so until the new HIC witch gets here tomorrow afternoon.”

  “What time is he coming in?”

  “About four, I think. I believe a councilor is heading down to the airport to pick him up, and they’ll drop him off here so we can update him. If you and Eli are successful tonight, we can head out tomorrow evening.”

  “Will it be safe to hunt him at night?” I asked. “Don’t their powers increase with darkness?”

  Ashworth snorted. “I’m betting you didn’t get that nonsense from a book.”

  “Well, no—”

  “Dark witches are no better served by night than the rest of us,” he continued. “They simply use the moon’s power, the same as we do.”

  And the moon was once again moving to full, and that meant her power—and his access to it—was rising. I tried to ignore the trepidation that rose with that thought and said, “Eli, do you want me to come pick you up?”

  “Sure.” He gave me their new address then said, “It’ll take me twenty minutes to get everything ready.”

  “I’ll meet you out the front, then.” I hung up and then silently said, Belle, were you listening in?

  No, I was too busy dancing. What’s up?

  Nothing. I’m just letting you know that I found a possible means of tracking down the dark witch, and I’m about to accompany Eli back to Abby Jones’s place so we can see if it’ll work.

  Who the hell is Eli?

  Ashworth’s partner and a recently retired RWA witch. Ashworth’s taken a shitload of painkillers and isn’t up to it.

  You want me there with you?

  No. I just didn’t want you to be concerned if you came home and I’m not here. Especially given you wouldn’t be getting any contentment signals suggesting I was with Aiden.

  Her mental chuckle rolled down the line. Already knew that wasn’t going to happen. The frustrated vibes, they are strong in you.

  With good reason.

  Indeed. She paused. Shout if you need anything

  I’m with Eli so I should be all right.

  Let’s hope they’re not famous last words.

  Amen to that.

  I headed down to the reading room, threw on every charm and ward against darker magics that we currently had, and then stocked the backpack. Eli would undoubtedly bring everything he’d need for whatever spell he created to follow the dark witch’s energy, but I wasn’t about to follow him into that house without some means of creating my own spells should it be necessary.

  Once I’d grabbed my purse and the car keys, I headed out the back and jumped into the wagon. It didn’t take long to drive across to the other side of Castle Rock; Eli walked down the front steps just as I pulled up. He was a tall, well-built, and very handsome man who looked to be in his late sixties. His thick salt-and-pepper hair was neatly cut and his eyes were bright blue.

  He opened the door and leaned down. “Lizzie, I take it?”

  “There’s no other red-haired, green-eyed witch in this reservation,” I replied cheerfully, and held out my hand once he’d climbed in. “Pleased to meet you, Eli. How’s Ashworth?”

  “Sleeping the sleep of the drugged to the eyeballs.”

  “I’m sorry to drag you away—”

  “Forget about it.” His smile flashed. “Ira would have had my nuts if I’d let you do this alone. He rather likes you, I’m afraid.”

  I grinned. “And that’s a bad thing because?”

  “Because he has this habit of getting involved in the lives of those he truly likes—and there’s not many of them, let me tell you.”

  I raised an eyebrow as I pulled back onto the road and drove toward Argyle. “How involved are we talking about?”

  “As in, he’s very free with advice and likes to keep in regular contact.”

  I chuckled softly. “That I can handle. I used to get the same thing from my granddad when he was alive—and Ashworth very much reminds me of him.”

  “And here I was thinking they broke the mold when they made Ira,” Eli said, amused.

  “They might have—my granddad was much older. He died when I was fourteen.”

  I could feel Eli’s gaze on me but I kept mine on the road.

  “Sounds like you miss him,” he said, “and yet from the little Ira has told me, I was under the impression you didn’t get along with your family.”

  “I don’t. Granddad was the one exception.” And while he wasn’t exactly my champion, had he been around when Cat had been murdered, I suspected events would not have escalated as far and as fast as they had. He certainly would have prevented Clayton from getting involved.

  Dread slipped through me, and I had to deliberately unclench my grip on the steering wheel.

  If Eli noticed, he didn’t say anything.

  It took us just over half an hour to get to Abby Jones’s place in Argyle. The gravel road that led to her house was dark, and there was little in the way of lights coming from the other houses along the street. Which, considering the late hour, wasn’t really that surprising.

  I pulled up in the driveway just short of the blue-and-white tape that had been strung up between the fence and the front door, then stopped the engine and killed the headlights. The night seemed to close in, thick and heavy.

  “I’m gathering,” Eli said, tone dry, “that since there’s no ranger here to meet us that you haven’t actually told them about this little venture.”

  “No.” I climbed out of the car. The chill air raced around me, holding just the slightest hint of power. The wild magic was here, but I sensed no warning in her presence. “They’re busy dealing with the death of one of the men behind the skinning murders and interviewing the second. But if the notes are right and we can track the heretic down through his energy, I’ll let them know straight away. They’ll want to be involved when you make the attempt tomorrow.”

  He raised an eyebrow as we walked toward the front door. “And I’m sure they’re going to be totally all right with us invading a crime scene like this.”

  I grinned as I ducked under the tape. “Aiden sort of expects this behavior from me.”

  Eli grunted and tested the front door. Unsurprisingly, it was locked. Energy stirred and the handle sparkled briefly. He gripped the handle again and pushed it open.

  “That’s a very handy spell.” I followed him through the door. “I might need you to teach me that one.”

  He glanced around, eyebrow raised. “How can you have a book on dark witches but not one on a spell as basic as opening a door?”

  I shrugged. “Belle inherited the books, so it’s a case of making do with what’s there.”

  His magic stirred, a brief but warm swirl of power. He immediately swung left and headed through the living room toward the hallway. I followed, but my gaze went unerringly to the spot where Abby had found her death. Though her body was no longer there, the bloody stains remained, as did the lingering sense of desperation and agony. This house would need a thorough cleansing if the next occupants were to live here in any sort of happiness.

  I rubbed my arms as the deeper darkness of the hallway closed around us. The odd sense of uneasiness I’d felt the first time I was here intensified, crawling across my senses like a swarm of bees. I had no doubt it was that foulness Eli was following, given he’d never been here and had as little idea of the layout of the place as me.

  He walked into a bedroom at the far end of the house. I stopped in the doorway, my skin jumping and tingling. I swore softly and flexed my fingers; sparks swarmed around them, thick and angry.

  Eli’s glance was sharp. “You can feel that?”

  “You say that like I shouldn’t be able to.”

  “Only because it’s very faint and I wouldn’t have thought—”

  “It’s not faint to
me,” I cut in. “It feels like I’m being stung by a thousand bees.”

  His gaze narrowed as he studied me for a few minutes. “There is an odd energy around you—it’s not the remnants of the heretic’s output, however, but rather something far more intangible.”

  I hesitated. “I did feel the wild magic outside. Maybe it’s still hanging around.”

  “It would appear so,” he said. “It would also appear that it’s enhancing your ability to sense the emotions in this room.”

  “Well, I’m sure the wild magic would rather not have a heretic witch get hold of its wellspring.”

  “The problem with that statement is the fact that the wild magic has no sentience.”

  “Except that, for whatever reason, it apparently does in this reservation.”

  He grunted, his expression unconvinced. “I can see why Ira suddenly wants to move here. This reservation is something of a conundrum.”

  I blinked. “He what?”

  Eli grinned. “Yeah, just imagine, he could come in and chat to you about the wild magic and your relationship with it every single day.”

  “Neither of us are that interesting,” I muttered, and shoved a hand through my hair. “Does the fact you’re not getting much of a feel for the heretic’s energy mean you won’t be able to create a spell to track him down?”

  “Perhaps.” He hesitated. “I suspect that my chances of success would increase greatly if I have your assistance.”

  I frowned. “While I can trace people through psychometry—and I really don’t want to try that with this bastard—I have no idea how to do it through magic—”

  “You don’t have to. You just have to be inside the protection circle with me,” he said. “I’ll form a light connection with you, and use that to contain the heretic’s energy.”

  “You’re telepathic?” I asked, suddenly uneasy. While I doubted he’d in any way raid my thoughts, a strong enough telepath could pick up things I’d rather keep hidden.

  Although he would have to get past Belle first. Thanks to the light connection that was always active between us—the only time she was truly shut off from my thoughts was when she was in her bedroom—she’d feel any such intrusion and retaliate in an instant. And I’d back her against almost any other telepath out there.

  He waved a hand dismissively. “Only marginally—”

  “Define marginally.”

  He smiled. “I can catch the occasional unguarded surface thought but little more than that. But you have nothing to fear, my dear, because I doubt even the Royal Australian Mint is as secure as your mind.”

  I grinned. “There are benefits to having a friend who is a strong telepath.”

  “Apparently so, but it does make me wonder just what you’re afraid of revealing.”

  “Certainly nothing you should be worried about.”

  He raised an eyebrow, but all he said was, “At any rate, I won’t be connecting with your mind, but rather drawing on the force of your energy—”

  “Like a psychic vampire does? I’m not sure that’s a much better option.”

  “I won’t be consuming your energy as they do, but simply connecting with it so that I can see the remnants of the heretic’s output as clearly as you do. It’ll enable me to gather it and then use it to form the basis of a tracking spell.” His smile flashed. “It’s more a brief meshing, nothing else.”

  “Any side effects? Possible problems?”

  He hesitated. “If the wild magic is responsible for the depth of your awareness of the heretic’s output here, then it might well interfere with my ability to perform the spell.”

  I frowned. “Why?”

  “Because there are few witches who walk away from contact with the wild magic unscathed. How you’re interacting with it without any sort of blowback is one of the many things that has intrigued Ira.”

  “I wouldn’t call what I do interacting.” Not for the most part, anyway. “And in this case, I certainly haven’t made a deliberate attempt to connect with it. It’s just here.”

  And given the fact I couldn’t feel Katie’s presence within it, that perhaps meant the energy here came from the main wellspring rather than the one Katie and Gabe were now protecting.

  “It’s not only here, but clinging to you like a second skin and enhancing your senses,” he said, and then held up a hand to cut off any reply I might have made. “But right now, the ‘why’ doesn’t matter. Let’s just get this spell done so I can get back to my man.”

  “Sounds good to me—what do you want me to do?”

  “Help me clear some floor space.”

  I stepped into the room and helped shove the bed and the dressing table to one side. He ordered me to sit down in the middle of the cleared area then grabbed his spell stones—which were green amber, a favorite amongst those witches who could actually afford to buy the hard to find, larger stones—and began placing them on the carpet.

  Once a large enough circle had been completed, he sat cross-legged in front of me and opened his backpack. “I’ll construct a protection circle and then begin the spell that’ll draw in and contain a portion of the dark energy within this room.”

  He pulled out what looked to be one of those plastic pods small kids’ toys often came in.

  “What’s that for?” I asked.

  “Said energy containment—we don’t need that much for the spell to work.” He paused. “If it works, that is. I’ve never tried anything like this before.”

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “For the moment, nothing.”

  He handed me a garland of assorted herbs, placed a similar one around his neck, and then began raising the protection circle. The rhythm of his magic flowed around me, a powerful force that burned across my skin in a very different way to the heretic’s energy. I narrowed my eyes, watching the way he constructed the protective layers, fascinated with how he wove the various deterrents and inhibitors through each thread to make every level that much stronger. It oddly felt like I was back at school, watching my spell master at work, trying to remember everything I was seeing, everything he was doing. Both Belle and I had been in the system long enough to learn the basics, and we’d certainly honed our skills in the years since we’d left Canberra, but watching Eli construct this protective circle made me realize just how far we still had to go.

  The air shimmered briefly as he tied off the spell and then activated it.

  “Okay, now I just need you to touch my hands, and we’ll get the gathering spell underway.”

  He held his hands out, palms up. After I lightly placed mine on his, he uttered another incantation—yet another spell that was unfamiliar to me. Magic once again stirred around me, a force that briefly touched the outer level of my aura, making a bridge between my energy output and his at the point where our hands touched. The wild magic immediately ran down my arms and flowed around our joined hands, a brief swirl of power that glimmered brightly in the darkness of the room.

  He sucked in a deep breath. “Fuck, that’s strong.”

  My gaze jumped to his. “Are you okay?”

  He nodded and licked his lips. “The wild magic itself is not flowing into me; it’s simply meshing with my energy at our connection point.”

  “In the same way as our auras are connected?”

  He nodded. “Which in itself suggests the wild magic is very much a part of your DNA, though how that can be possible I have no idea.”

  “That’s not possible, and we both know it.” I might have drawn the wild magic into me to fight a vampire and survived the experience with little more than silver-ringed eyes, but it hadn’t lingered. Hadn’t become a part of me—of that, I was sure. “Will its presence affect your ability to spell?”

  “No. I can feel its force but it’s not impacting me.”

  “Which is no different to how it’s affecting me.” I could see the disbelief in his eyes, but he didn’t give it voice. “Can you also feel the dark witch’s energy?”

&n
bsp; He nodded. “The spell shouldn’t take too long, but I’ll need you to ensure the connection between us doesn’t break.”

  “That, I can do.”

  He nodded and then took a deep breath, centering his energy before he began the spell. Again, his magic stirred around me but this time, I concentrated on keeping our connection, on the bright flow of energy that was once again encircled across our hands, and the thin slivers of darkness that were being pulled from it. Then the plastic pod rose from the floor and hovered several inches above our hands. The thin filaments of darkness twisted and heaved, as if fighting the commands being placed on them. They were nevertheless forced together until they were little more than a small sphere of churning evil, and then thrust into one half of the pod. The other half snapped closed over it, and the threads of Eli’s magic wove around it, quickly sealing it.

  As the pod dropped into his lap, he tied the ends of the spell around it and then severed the connection between us. As the wild magic retreated up my arm, he took a deep breath and pulled his fingers from mine. His aura was dark with weariness and his eyes bloodshot.

  “Damn, that took more out of me than I thought.”

  Because of the wild magic, I suspected. “But it was at least successful.”

  He nodded, pulled a silk glove out of his backpack, and then carefully picked up the pod. The dark filaments locked inside roiled and heaved, still fighting the magic that now contained them.

  “Will it be hard to create a spell using that energy?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “While the energy in this room will probably fade within the next twelve hours—unless, of course, he comes back—this compacted mass should last for another twenty-four to forty-eight beyond that.”

  “Which at least gives you some recovery time before you have to activate the next part of the spell.”

  He nodded again and then took another deep breath before deactivating his protection circle. He wrapped the pod in a silk bag, placed it carefully into his pack, and pushed to his feet. I rose with him, one hand lightly cupping his elbow to steady him.

  His smile flashed, but its wattage was far below what it should have been. Once he’d gathered his spell stones, we headed out.