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I stood where I was and fought to keep from throttling him. He had spared Takata only because he had found a way to hurt me worse. "Can we go now?" I said, hating him.
Minias nodded, and Trent stepped back. The elf set the i
The rising and falling bands of power were making me ill. Minias smiled from behind the two different arcs of reality as if he didn't care that he was going to be trapped in a small circle for thirteen hours until the rising sun freed him. Trent's words must have pleased him to no end.
I picked up my satchel and stood ready. My eyes flicked from Ivy to my mom, and my heart pounded. It was going to be over one way or the other really soon. Afterward, Trent and I were going to chat.
"Be careful," my mother said, and I nodded, gripping the straps of my bag tighter.
And then Trent tapped a line and said a word of Latin.
The breath was pushed out of my lungs, and I felt myself fall. The curse seemed to shred me into thoughts held together by my soul. A tingling washed through me, and my lungs rebounded, filling with a harsh gritty air.
I gasped, my hands and knees slamming into the grass-covered ground and my hat falling off. Beside me I could hear Trent retching.
Stumbling to my feet, I swallowed the last of my nausea and looked past my blowing curls to the red-stained sky and long grass. I wanted to give Trent a swift kick for putting my future kids on the demon's radar, but figured I could wait until I knew I had a future.
"Welcome to the homeland, Trent," I muttered, praying we all got back to where we belonged before sunup.
Twenty-six
Shaky, I fumbled with the satchel's zipper to find the map and orient myself. It was cold, and I pulled my hat lower as the acidic wind pushed the hair from my face and I sca
Trent wiped his mouth with a hankie he then hid under a rock. His eyes were black in the red light, and I could tell he didn't like the wind pushing on him. He didn't look cold, though. The man never got cold, which was starting to tick me off.
Squinting, I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and focused on the map. The air stank, and the scent of burnt amber caught deep in my throat. Trent coughed, quickly stifling it. David's duster shifted about my heels, and I was glad I had it, wanting something between me and the greasy-feeling air. It was dark, but the clouds reflecting the glow from the broken, distant city gave everything a sick look, like the light in a photographer's darkroom.
Arms wrapped around my stomach, I followed Trent's gaze to the twisted vegetation, trying to decide if the red-sheened rocks hiding in the grass were tombstones. Amid the trees was a large, shattered slump of crumbling stone. With a lot of imagination, it could have been the kneeling angel.
Trent looked down at the faint tink of metal at his feet. Bending for a closer look, he thumbed a penlight on. It glowed a sickly red, and I cringed at the revealing light, then leaned so our heads almost touched for a better look. In the scuffed grass was a tiny bell, black with tarnish. It wasn't solid, but made of decorative loops that brought to mind a Celtic knot. Trent's hand reached, and in a wash of adrenaline, I gave him a shove.
"What in hell are you doing?" I all but hissed as he glared at me, and I wished I had hit him hard enough to knock him on his butt. "Don't you ever watch TV? If there is a pretty sparkly thing on the ground, leave it alone! If you pick it up, you're going to release the monster, or fall through a trapdoor, or something. And what is it with the light? You want to tell every demon this side of the ley lines where we are? God! I should have taken Ivy!"
A surprised look replaced Trent's anger. "You can see the light?" he said, and I snatched it from him and clicked it off.
"Duh!" I exclaimed in a whisper.
He yanked it back. "It's a wavelength that humans can't see. I didn't know that witches could."
Slightly mollified, I backed down. "Well, I can. Don't use it." I stood and watched in disbelief as he flicked his light on and belligerently picked up the bell. It tinkled faintly, and after knocking the dirt from it, he jingled it again. I could not believe this. Putting a hand on my hip, I glared at the red glow hovering over the broken city miles away. The pure sound was muffled, and he tucked it in a little belt pouch.
"Freaking tourist," I muttered, then, louder, said, "If you've got your souvenir, let's go." I nervously stepped to the more certain dark of a twisted tree. It had no leaves, and it looked dead, the cold, gritty wind having scoured all life from it.
Instead of following, Trent pulled a paper from his back pocket. The penlight came on again, and he shone it on a map. A red glow reflected up on his face, and furious, I snatched the light away again.
"Are you trying to get caught?" I whispered. "If I can see it, and you can see it, what makes you think a demon can't?"
Trent's silhouette grew aggressive, but when the distinctive rustle of something small pushing through grass at a run rose over the soughing of wind in the trees, he closed his mouth.
"You had to ring the bell, didn't you?" I asked, pulling him into the shadow with me. "You had to ring the damn bell." I shivered in David's borrowed coat, and he shook his head in disdain.
"Relax," he said over the rustling of the closing map. "Don't let the wind spook you."
But I couldn't relax. The moon wouldn't rise until almost midnight, but the ugly glow in the sky made everything look like a first-quarter moon was shining. I stared at the heaviest glow, deciding that was north. The memory of Ceri's map swam up, and I turned a little to the east. "That way," I said as I tucked his light in my pocket. "We can look at the map when we find some broken buildings to hide the glare behind."
Trent tucked the map into his pocket and shrugged his pack over his shoulders. I nervously shifted my bag to my other arm, and we started out, glad to be finally moving if only to warm up. Grass hid the low spots, and I stumbled three times before we'd gone thirty feet.
"How good is your night vision?" Trent asked when we found a reasonably level swath that ran exactly east to west.
"Okay." I wished I had brought my gloves, and I hid my hands in my sleeves.
Trent still didn't look cold as he stood before me, his cap making his outline radically different. "Can you run?"
I licked my lips, thinking of the uneven footing. I wanted to say "Better than you," but quashing my irritation, I said, "Not without breaking something."
The red haze from the clouds lit his slight frown. "Then we walk until the moon rises."
He turned his back on me and started off at a fast pace. I jumped to keep up. "Then we walk until the moon rises," I mocked under my breath, thinking that Mr. Elf had no idea of the situation. Wait until he saw his first surface demon. Then he'd put his little scrawny elf ass behind mine where it belonged. Until then, he could find the dips in the grass and snap his freaking ankle.
The wind was a constant push, and my ears ached with it. My head slowly bowed until I had to force myself to look up and past the ever-moving shadow of Trent's back. He kept a constant motion just above my comfortable pace as he ghosted forward with a minimal amount of movement through the waist-high grass and past the occasional tree. Slowly I started to warm up, and watching him, I started questioning my decision to wear David's long leather duster. My legs were protected from the dry ache of the gritty wind, but it set up an u