Vayl and I shared a moment so intense it could’ve doubled as a hug, except we didn’t even touch.
“Do you know what to do with this information?” I asked her.
“Absolutely.” She took off her belt and laid it on the ground. Yup, now I could sense her. Witchy Woman, sang the silver-blue flare at the core of my brain. She nodded toward the cairn. “I just need you to distract them while I gather the remaining ingredients. I assume you still have the harness?”
A moment of panic as my mind went blank. Where the hell did I throw that dirty remnant of Jack’s old life after we got back to Floraidh’s place? Oh, yeah! “It’s in the van. I threw it in there before the tour group went into Tearlach for its final ghost viewing. I was afraid it was going to fall out of my jacket at the wrong time and then I’d have to come up with some lame explanation nobody would believe.”
“I’ll get it for you,” Albert said.
“You’ll stay here!” I ordered. It didn’t matter. Viv had already left the shelter of the woods. We watched her creep toward the van, which was standing about ten yards from the middle cairn, its right side toward us, its front tires hub deep in grass and mud. Broken glass glittered in the combined lantern and moonlight, both from the front window and the shattered headlights.
I thought, I wrecked another vehicle. Shit! Pete’s going to kick my ass from here to next Friday. Unless this mission comes out amazingly well. I crossed my fingers.
Viv froze as a heart-squeezing scream flew out of the cairn. Jack lunged forward, snapping the leash at its swivels. I started to run after him, but Vayl put a hand on my arm. “Not in,” he said as he nodded at the rim of the cairn. “Up.”
I glanced at Iona. “Go,” she whispered. “We can get the ƒ€e can gerest of what I need.” She nodded to Viv, who’d forced herself to move on. “When I’m ready, you’ll know.”
Leaving Albert holding the broken leash, Vayl and I ran the short distance to the cairn. When we reached the entry Vayl took my hand and together we jumped to the top of the wall that rimmed it. The stones were surprisingly firm underfoot as we followed them along the edge of the passage to where they formed a central pit. We’d started at a crouch, but by the time we reached the inner circle we were crawling, our heads barely clearing the stones before us as we peered into the burial chamber.
The fire Samos danced around didn’t look exceptional. Until you realized its source wasn’t a pile of kindling, but the contents of the bowl I’d found in Floraidh’s oven, with the container itself acting as the fire pit. Jack stood beside Cole, both of them almost underneath our noses. Our third had draped his arm around the malamute in a gesture of protection that went straight to my gut and twisted.
As Samos began to chant, Vayl tapped me on the shoulder and made a few gestures I couldn’t mistake. I sent him my Are you sure? look. When he nodded, I shrugged. I didn’t think it was going to work, but it was worth a try.
I stood. Drew Grief and aimed it at Samos’s head.
Boom!
He staggered sideways, the hole just above his ear trickling a line of blood down his jaw. The other side of his head should’ve blown all over the stones beside him. It didn’t. Something protected him, counteracting the force of the bullet, healing the wound almost as soon as it occurred.
I shot him again. Filled his head with steel, and when that was gone switched to bolts. Before I’d finished he’d flattened his chest against the far wall of the cairn, shuddering with every hit. But taking them. Not falling. Definitely not dying.
Vayl had been busy as well. He’d risen to his feet beside me, calling down such a vicious blizzard inside the cairn that Cole and Jack began to disappear under a drift of snow. Thank God Cole had some resistance to Vayl’s powers or he’d have been an icicle within minutes. And no way would Jack freeze to death under that pile of fur.
While Samos’s lips turned blue, I holstered Grief and moved to my next-best choice, the Scidairan weapon that had saved my hide during the previous battle. I weighed it in my hand, wound up and threw it, burying the axe head in his back. He reared up, screaming in pain as it hit.
Spinning, he pointed to me with fingers that had transformed into Floraidh’s pink-nailed claws. “Ildacante!” they screamed. The smell of Scidair’s rot filled my nostrils as the rocks beneath my feet began to shake. Vayl’s arms waved as he, too, fought for balance.
Earthquake? My eyes sought Cole and Jack, hoping they’d had enough sense to take cover. Yup, they were motoring toward the entrance, but Samos blocked their exit. Cole grabbed him. They began to struggle.
Then something imprisoned my ankle. I sucked in a breath. Looked down. A bony hand had reached out of its burial mound, wrapped around my living skin and begun to pull.
“Skeletons, Vƒ€>“Skeletayl!” I yelled. “Get out!”
I jerked my leg free, but Samos and Floraidh had animated an entire host of the dead, and at least five of them had clamped their icy fingers on to my other ankle now. It wasn’t just that they’d gotten a good grip. The rocks were still moving. Falling out from under my feet. The hands, more and more of them as the seconds ticked by, were pulling me down to join them.
“Vayl!” I looked over at him, horrified to see that he was also knee deep in the cairn. Oh my God, oh my God, they’re burying us alive!
“Jasmine, do not panic. Take my hand.”
“Are you kidding me? We’re going to be underneath soon! The rocks will be over our heads! We won’t be able to move, or breathe, or—”
“Jasmine.” So soothing, that voice. Such calm in the face of certain crushing suffocation. How did he do that? “Hold my hand.”
Vayl leaned forward. Reached out. I focused on his hand as if it were a lifeline. Which it wasn’t. He was going down, down, down too. Never mind that. Just wrap your fingers around his. It’ll be a good thing. Then maybe you won’t feel those other fingers, on your thighs now, pulling, bruising, ripping into your skin . . .
I couldn’t quite reach. Part of my mind saw the irony. Like it had always been with him, he remained just out of my grasp. On the edge of an embrace but never anyone I could grip on to.
“You fucker!” I raged, realizing I wasn’t yelling just at him. “I’m about to die for good here! Would you just reach out and grab on?”
A huge rumble, like the rocks themselves had split open and the support beneath my feet disappeared. I felt myself fall, the lights of Clava Cairns winking out as the stones rolled over my head. My hand, waving its last goodbye to open air, prepared to follow me down into the crushing weight of the abyss.
And then it was pinned in Vayl’s grasp. Cirilai, pressed between my fingers, sliced into them until they bled. And that ignited something within the ring. Some power his ancestors had imbued it with that shot into and through me, making me feel as if I could fly. And I knew Vayl felt the same, because he existed at the other end of Cirilai’s line, pulsing with its magic as if it had given him a second heart.
The dead, so eager for us to join them, gave an unearthly scream as they sensed our joining. And they scrabbled away, sliding between the stones, escaping our combined heat. We sent it out in a wave so violent the rocks burst into fragments mere inches from our faces, as if a rain of mortars had fallen on our exact location.
We weren’t injured, not even scratched. Cirilai had us covered. Cole and Jack had escaped the worst of the carnage. But Samos lay on the ground, broken, covered in blood. And I suddenly understood the terrible aftermath of a stoning.
Still holding hands, Vayl and I picked our way out of the rubble, all that remained of the wall we’d been buried in. Even Scidair’s fire had gone out. But Samos hung on, red bubbles popping out of his mouth as he labored to breathe. His face kept reshaping itself, a weird collage of features that was never quite himself or Floraidh.