“Are you sure that’s wise?” Zack asked. “You want to hold on to it that long?”
She nodded. “What are they going to do, steal it and break it?” She picked it up. Part of her wanted to drop the damn thing on the floor and watch it shatter. The other part of her wanted to honor the memory of the three lovers who’d given their lives to save their people.
Even if she was one of the three lovers.
She handed it to Zack. “Please keep it safe for me until we get it back to the States.”
“Do we tell people we found it?”
She smiled. “Found what?”
“I hope you have a plan,” Jan said.
“I do.”
Later that night, before heading to bed, she found Zack. “Bring the tablet,” she told him. He went back into his room. She heard him briefly speak to Kael, then he returned with the tablet.
“What are we doing?”
“Come on and I’ll show you.” She led him downstairs and outside to the garden, to the path of pavers. She pulled one up a few yards down from where they’d found the paver with the ‘V’ etched on it. She flipped it over so she could see the dirty side.
“What are you doing?” Zack said.
She knelt down, smiling as she ran her hands over the smooth stone. “Looks pretty close to the original, doesn’t it?”
He looked puzzled. “Um, well, not really. It’s larger, it’s a slightly different color, and has no writing on it.”
“Ignore the color. What if it had the same writing on it?”
He snorted. “Fine. Do you know someone handy with a chisel who can do rock forgeries?”
She grinned. “I don’t need a chisel.” She stood, grabbed the real tablet from him, and laid it on top of the other paver.
“What are you doing? Or do I even want to know?”
“Watch and learn, grasshopper. Watch and learn.” She closed her eyes and ran her hands around the edge of the tablet. This felt right. Really right.
Baba Yaga told me to follow my instincts.
She traced the edges of the tablet with her fingers, touching the stone beneath it as she moved her hands. Then she ran her fingers over the surface of the tablet, smoothing them over the etchings and envisioning the rock below taking on the same appearance.
She knew even if the cockatrice did manage to find and destroy the real tablet, it wouldn’t render the spell obsolete. It would take the spell being reversed.
And the people it had affected being not dead.
Since she had no desire to reverse the spell, and even if there was a way to resurrect the dead she wouldn’t do it, there was little to no chance of that happening. The tablet itself, however, no longer contained any power even though the cockatrice believed it did.
The power was in her, the Goddess, and in her men.
Lina, however, didn’t like to take chances. Maybe, just maybe, there was a slim chance of the cockatrice stopping their slaughter of innocent people in search of this hunk of rock if they got their hands on it. Well, on the forgery. Which they wouldn’t know was a forgery.
Lifting the original tablet, she returned it to Zack. Then she examined her handiwork. It looked nearly identical to the original. All anyone who wanted it would be interested in was if the runes and symbols matched.
She took a deep breath and let it out as the memory of the original spell returned to her mind.
Instincts.
She smiled and let her mind guide her. She placed one small extra symbol on the duplicate tablet.
May the destruction of this duplicate only serve to further solidify the original spell.
Hee hee hee.
She flipped it facedown and returned it to place in the path where the paver with the V on it had been laid. The paver with the V, she put in the place of the modified paver. To the average eye, no one would notice anything amiss.
Lina stood and brushed the dirt off her hands.
“Happy?” Zack asked.
“I will be once we stop these fuckers.”
Chapter Five
Callie, Daniel, Brodey, and Wally set out to do some investigations and run down some information on the cockatrice first thing the next morning after breakfast. They got a rental car and would join the rest of them later at the hotel in Brussels. Everyone else loaded into the rental van with their luggage and hit the road with Uncle Andel following in his car. With a stop for lunch, the drive took less than five hours.
They checked into their hotel in Brussels. Lina tried to steel herself for the meeting with the other shifter bigwigs. Many of them hadn’t made it to the Yellowstone gathering. It took them an hour to drive to the estate outside of Brussels, which made the place she’d just inherited from Bertholde look like a cheap-ass slum.
A crisply uniformed butler led them through the house to a large drawing room. There were already twelve men there, one of them who looked older than dirt. He sat, shrunken by age and dwarfed by his wheelchair, but his flinty grey eyes looked hard, cold, and fully aware.
Without any formalities, Andel started. “The cockatrice are back with a vengeance,” he said. “They’re behind the murders of several people, including our Seer, Bertholde.” The room rumbled, but silenced when he spoke again.
“They’re after the Tablet of Trammel,” he said, which started another round of grumbling.
Lina watched the old man in the wheelchair. She didn’t like him, even though he hadn’t said a word yet. When his eyes fell on her, she didn’t blink and refused to back down. Eventually, he looked away.
Her gaze narrowed. Good, you should fear me, old man.
She didn’t understand why she felt an instant dislike for him, but she damn sure wouldn’t cower before him.
After a brief retelling of the recent events, leaving out the part about them finding and relocating the Tablet, the old man spoke.
“We are in modern times,” he said with a strong voice that totally didn’t match his withered body. “The Tablet is a myth, nothing more.”
Jocko got in the man’s face. “Ye’ve seen the bloody thing yerself. And ye ain’t modern, who ye kiddin’?” He jabbed his finger at the man. “Don’t ye bloody bastards still have an outstanding blood oath against yer own kind, this many centuries later?”
“That’s none of your business!”
“Anythin’ affecting my Pack is my business, Rodolfo Abernathy!” Jocko fiercely growled. “An’ I’ll tell ye somethin’ else. Ye come sniffin’ around my Pack or my Clan, I’ll take yer bloody nose off!”
There were assorted grumbles and growls from around the room, but Jocko squared off against them. His massive form commanded attention. “I’ll tell all ye the same thing, too. I’ve lost too many good, innocent people over the years. To the cockatrice. To damn blood oaths. To sheer idiocy and greed. Ye all have, too, but apparently I’m the only one with the stones to stand up to this stupid old man. It stops here, and it stops now!”
“You do not tell me how to run my Pack,” Abernathy said.
Jocko wheeled around on him. “I will tell ye to stay outta my Pack!” He stood over the other man, his voice low and growly. “I know damn well ye had somethin’ to do with the deaths of Charles and Ellie. Ye were pissed off they helped people escape yer dirty clutches. And when I prove it, I’ll rip yer damn throat out myself!”
Andel grabbed Jocko by the arm and pulled him back, whispering to him to calm down. With Zack’s help, they got him settled in chair in the far corner. Lina decided if she was the Seer, it was time for her to nut up or shut up.