Lost in Mist and Shadow: A Between the Worlds Novel (26 page)

“No,” he said, staring out the window and frowning. “We have called for a high adept to come and see what must be done to repair the damaged area and unravel the strange energy that has been created, but it will be several more months, at best, before she will arrive.”

“Then I think I need to go. Before I couldn’t because the panic attacks, the anxiety was all so bad, even thinking about it would have me on the floor crying, but it feels less intense now. It’s still a scary thought but it’s not so overwhelmingly impossible,” she said with more confidence than she felt.

“Allie you should not rush out immediately after such a healing and put yourself in a situation that will trigger the things we are working to heal,” he said. “Give yourself time to recover.”

“I know you are right Bryn, truly I do. But somehow, and I can’t explain how, but somehow I feel like this is important. Maybe it’s synchronicity but Syndra coming to me, telling me to go to the ritual site, finding out there is more than one girl missing, someone trying to scare me or harass me. It shouldn’t all be connected but somehow it feels like it is, and I have to trust my intuition on this. There’s a connection between the things that are going on, I just can’t see what it is yet. But I can go and try to help Syn, try to figure out why she’s stuck the way she is, and maybe that will let me see the bigger pattern,” shehadn’t meant to make such a long speech out of it and she looked dow
n
when she was done, lacing her fingers together, feeling foolish. She knew that she should stay and rest, but she had to prove to everyone – especially herself – that she wasn’t afraid. If she could only act brave enough, maybe she would feel it inside as well, and stop fearing everything.

“Are you absolutely certain?” Brynneth asked.

“Yes, I am,” she said. “I don’t know whether Syndra’s really visiting me in my dreams or whether it’s just my subconscious trying to tell me something. But it doesn’t matter, because either way I need to go out there. I need to see where she died, and see for myself what is going on.”

He looked thoughtful. “Jess was insistent that you be involved in finding the missing girl. Now it seems you have uncovered that it is more than one girl we need to find. You are dreaming that your dead friend is telling you to visit the site of the murders. Do you believe that the girls have been killed?”

Allie paled, “I don’t want to think that. It would mean.…no, I don’t want there to be any connection like
that.
But there’s something going on here. Something I don’t understand. I think if I go out to the site I can get some answers.”

He nodded, “Then I will go with you and we will see together what is to be seen out there.”

*******************************

Ferinyth paced the length of the motel room waiting impatiently for Salarius to return with food. He was tired of this drab place and tired of sitting around doing nothing. Only his fear of failing a second time gave him pause.

How did they find her so quickly after that inept human took her for us?
he thought again, his mind turning the problem over and over. Everything had been going perfectly that night, and then without warning the Elven Guard had arrived and ruined it all.
If anyone had seen her being kidnapped they would have rescued her sooner. And there is no possibility that we were followed. So how did they find her? Daeriun said that she had used magic from the book
…

He shook his head slightly, picking up a half empty wine bottle and swigging directly from it.
There is no way that such a weak, whimpering bint as that mixed-blooded bitch could have summoned any magic stronger than Dae’s. Dae was a powerful mage – even the spineless Bright court Guard could not defeat him in direct combat. Certainly no mere girl could have done anything significant
. Ferinyth took another long drink, dismissing the possibility. Thinking of the girl though reminded him of his current frustration. He wanted to show his father that a single failure meant nothing and that he could succeed when it mattered.
I will show him my worth
, he thought grimly
, and when they are done with the girl I will teach her what her place really is
.

He smiled, remembering the sound of her screaming.

********************************

The ride out to the site of the rituals passed in silence. They had gotten a later start than Allie wanted because Brynneth had insisted that she eat something before they did anything else, and then she’d had to tell Jason that she was going out with Bryn. And then waste time explaining why she didn’t need Jason to come along too. Although it probably wouldn’t have mattered to have Jason go with them, she would feel ridiculous dragging him out to walk around a field for nothing and she wasn’t sure it was fair to make him visit the place their mutual friend had died. So in the end she had convinced him she would be safe enough with Brynneth and Bryn had said he would bring her straight out there and back, reassuring Jason that she wasn’t going to talk him into any other side trips.

As he drove Allie distracted herself by looking around the Guard vehicle; while she’d ridden in them several times at that point she’d always been in the backseat. Today riding with Brynneth she was in the front passenger’s seat. The novelty was enough to keep her from thinking too much about where they were going, until they turned down the last road with the familiar fence and field stretched along the side.

Brynneth pulled the car over onto the grassy shoulder, next to the old wooden fence. The vehicle was still as much on the narrow road as off, but there was almost no traffic out here and Allie doubted it would be a problem. She got out and carefully climbed the fence, making sure to step down with her good foot. The last thing she wanted was to twist her bad ankle a few feet from the car and end this before she get any answers.

“Let me walk ahead of you,” Brynneth said.

She turned to argue and saw that he had magically changed from his uniform to armor and drawn his sword. “Is that necessary?”

“Caution does no harm, and this place has an uncanny feel.”

Resigned, she stopped and waited for him to move ahead. The light of the late afternoon sun glinted on the metal of his armor as they moved deeper into the trees. Allie had never been this close to the site before; when she had found it in March, she had only just gotten into the field when Jess had stopped her and made her go back. Moving through the woods now, feeling the increasing energy as they approached the place where eight girls had been sacrificed, and her friend had been killed, was almost surreal.

Without warning the trees opened up into a wide clearing. In the center a waist high boulder formed a natural altar, and Allie knew immediately that this was the place. The air was so charged with magical energy her skin tingled and broke out in goose flesh. After a moment she realized that it wasn’t just the amount of energy that was making her feel so strange; the energy was subtly wrong. She could not have put into words what exactly was wrong with it, but her subconscious immediately recognized the flavors of death and pain that colored it, energy that she had known well as a child but had long put behind her.

Brynneth stopped at the outer edge of the clearing. She edged forward until she was standing next to him. Her voice was a whisper, hushed by an atavistic respect, “Do you feel that?”

“Of course,” he said, his own voice offended.

“No, I don’t mean the energy, I mean…there’s something…doesn’t it feel, I don’t know, fresh to you? Fresher than it should if it’s six weeks old?” she shook her head slightly not sure if she was making any sense. The place was uncanny, but the energy didn’t feel old like she thought it should, and that frightened her.

Brynneth looked uncertain. He took a hesitant step forward and then began edging sideways around the clearing. After a moment Allie followed him. Slowly the two circled the space, the energy flowing and rippling in the clearing. There was no barrier or ward here but the energy itself held them back, creating a faint sensation of resistance which neither the elf nor half-elf wanted to push into. Allie wondered if this alone was what might be keeping Syndra’s spirit out.

They had worked their way more than halfway around the space when Allie stopped abruptly. Brynneth stopped a few steps later. “What is it?”

“There’s something…I can feel something…familiar… oh no,” she closed her eyes, shaking her head slightly trying to deny it, but the air was thick with the same emotional trace she had gotten caught up in at the scene of Jenny’s disappearance. “Oh, shit.”

“What? Aliaine speak! Tell me what is going on,” the normally unshakable healer was glancing around into the shadowed woods, sword at the ready, eyes white rimmed and frightened.

Allie worked to speak as the energetic trace wrapped around her and tried to pull her into the trees north of where they were standing, away from the open ritual space, “I found a, sort of, an emotional trace. Like a track or trail. I’ve felt this before, when Jess, Mariniessa and I went to the place the missing girl was last seen. It’s the same person, the same emotional signature.”

Brynneth swore, words she had not heard since she was a child, and she covered her mouth with her hand in shock. He was the last person she would ever have expected that particular phrase to come out of. “Is it fresh? Is the person still here?”

Allie considered that, not sure how to judge the age of the emotions hanging in the air and still fighting not to be overwhelmed by them the way she had been at the other location. “I’m not positive, but not fresh, not someone who is here now, I don’t think. Older than that. But it’s hard…they pull at me, wanting me to follow them…”

“Where? Which direction?”

Mutely she pointed towards the area she was being drawn to. He reached for his cellphone slowly and carefully, balancing his sword in his other hand. Almost at the same moment she became aware of Jess reaching out to her. She opened up to him immediately, needing the reassurance and anchoring he provided. His voice in her mind was full of worry “
My love what is wrong
?”

“
Ahhh, don’t be too angry but I’m out at the site of the ritual murders, not alone though Brynneth is with me, and I found the same emotional trace here we found where Jenny disappeared
,” she thought back, and then hurried on as she felt his emotions swing into anger and fear in equal measure “
Bryn is on his cell now, calling it in I think, and no one else is out here but us. But someone has been out here recently, and whoever it is, it’s the same person who took Jenny
.”

“
Are you certain? Absolutely certain
?” he asked, and she knew he meant was she certain about being alone as much as certain about the connection to Jenny.

“
Yes. Absolutely. Jess – there’s something very wrong going on out here. I can’t explain it, but you need to get out here,”
she took a step forward and then another, feeling the energy shift as she moved away from the altar and towards an emotional whirlpool. Like the other one, but this time she recognized it before she was sucked into it.

“
I am on my way. Tell Brynneth
,” his voice now was grim and Allie sighed, hoping he wouldn’t be too angry with her for all of this.

“Brynneth”, she said quietly, seeing that he was off his phone, “Jess is on the way.”

He looked startled and then smiled at her reassuringly, “Ah, I had forgotten that you could reach him immediately. There are perhaps some advantages to your spellbond that are worth considering.”

She smiled back, her face tight and tense. “What should we do now?”

He hesitated, looking behind them and then ahead, “You are certain that whoever left this emotional trail is no longer here?”

“Jess asked me the same thing,” she sighed, “and I told him yes. I am fairly sure we are alone.”

He nodded slightly, the barest jerk of his head. “Then we will continue forward and see where your trail goes. At any sign of danger or indication that we are not alone, we will immediately retreat though, do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said. She had assumed that he would want to head back to the car and wait for back-up, and a large part of her would rather do that, but she didn’t question his decision. She had no idea how old he was but she trusted his experience and training.

She moved forward along the lines of the emotions she was picking up on, ignoring the way they made her stomach turn. This time she wasn’t completely overwhelmed so it was a little bit easier, but still she could feel the currents of the trace, like a rip tide, trying to overwhelm her. A dozen yards from the open area she stopped, breathing hard with the effort of not losing herself. “Bryn, would it totally mess up your military precision if I put my hand on your side?”

He tilted his head to the side, regarding her intently, “as long as I have one hand free I am confident in my ability to defend you, barring the presence of a significant threat.”

“Significant threat?”

“A dragon for example.”

She could feel her eyes getting wide at that thought. Trust an elf to think of something like that when answering a basic question. “Let’s hope there aren’t any dragons wandering around. So can I put my hand on your side, or back?”

“You should probably lead the way, bad form as that is for my ‘military precision’,” he replied enjoying teasing her over her choice of words. “May I ask why you need to do this?”