The trucks were useful cover. They parked one at the far end of the bridge and another farther up the road to the west, just before the road dipped down. With lookouts in each, there would be plenty of time to warn the group working at the dolmen of any visitors coming from the road. They plainly weren’t worried about anyone crossing the road in between the trucks since that stretch was visible between the two vehicles. The only blind spots would be on our side of the river, but it appeared they were counting on the water itself to hold off intruders. The mages were conspicuous in their black robes as they headed to the dolmen. Papa Purlis’s guys spread out to create a perimeter near the trucks and patrol the field near the standing stones. I counted fourteen of them, all armed with compact weapons of some kind—shotguns or rifles, I wasn’t sure—and there would be a few more in the trucks.
“It looks like they’ve heard about Carlos and are writing us off,” Quinton said. “They aren’t putting out many sentries I can see. Anything magical?”
I peered into the Grey, but aside from a growing network of lines over the dolmen, there was nothing new. “No. They’re probably shorthanded without Griffin, but if, as you said, they’ve written us off, they won’t be too worried about redundancy.”
“Or spares.” Quinton returned to staring at the standing stones through the binoculars. “It’s frustrating that the graveled part is on the opposite side of the stones. It appears Rui’s decided the Devil’s Pool is the place to do the job, but I can’t see what’s going on there with the stones blocking a big part of the view.”
“It’s more important to know where they are than what they’re doing until nightfall. Carlos thought they’d have to wait until after dark to raise the dragon—which looks likely—so I think we can make our way closer once the sun goes down without a lot of risk, so long as we know where all of your father’s guards are.”
“We’ve got a few more hours. Do you want to sleep for a while and I’ll keep watch? We can swap in an hour or two—you’ll be a better observer than I once the sun starts heading down.”
We agreed to the schedule and I curled up to nap, sleeping poorly with more dreams of blood and death. Quinton woke me as the sky turned orange and I took over, peering through the Grey to keep track of the living bodies down below. I was grateful that none of the bone mages were undead, since their smaller, darker auras would have been harder to spot in the growing darkness.
I could see a spinning circle of silvery fog around the dolmen and thought Rui had probably created an alarm system, in effect, by posting the ghosts from any remaining Lenoir boxes to watch. They would be a problem only in bringing our presence to Purlis and Rui’s attention, but by then we’d be so close, the element of surprise wouldn’t be much anyway. I looked at the other sentries and lookouts, trying to map a path down to the stones without alerting anyone. Without Carlos, I’d have to be right at the edge of the casting circle to have any effect on the spell. I studied the landscape of my preferred route, looking for potential problems like tree stumps or sudden hollows in the ground.
As it grew darker and the sky was turning purple, the stars beginning to shine while they waited for the moon, I switched my attention to the dolmen, watching the slow building of the casting circle and the assembly of the bones within it. Since they were parts of the spell that would become the Hell Dragon’s skeleton, the bones gleamed through the Grey, leaving soft threads of ivory with streaks of blood red and ink black hanging in the silvery mist world. They were beautiful in spite of their dire purpose as was the strange chanting of the Kostní Mágové. I recalled Rui’s bone flute that I was carrying in my pocket, the bone, smooth and pale, carved with red runes that molded the tones that would come from it. I wondered whether I was going to have to use it since we didn’t have Carlos with us and whether it would be better to take that risk and use it soon, rather than gambling on getting close without Carlos to back us up. Just how close would I have to get to make it work . . . ?
I sank a little deeper into the Grey, holding the bone flute in my hand. The world seemed to leap and tremble in shades of silver and gunmetal as if the planes of the normal and the paranormal fluttered here like sheets of cellophane in unearthly breezes, with almost no Grey fringe in between. The longer I stared, the more obvious it became: The Grey really was only the thinnest curtain here. And on the other side of it lay the true, deep paranormal—the realm of things that should never escape into the world of mortals, things I had only glimpsed and with which I wanted no closer association. Whatever Rui’s mages were doing with their lines and their chanting, it was thinning the Grey. If they could tear the barriers between the worlds open, I didn’t know what manner of horror would pour into the normal plane.
“Oh shit,” I whispered, rolling over to wake Quinton. “It’s not a nexus—it’s a portal.”
Quinton woke instantly. “What?”
“We missed it, Carlos and I. That’s not just a nexus. It’s a door. The Grey is thin here—there’s barely space between this world and the next. Whatever they’re doing right now, it’s pushing the Grey aside and tearing a hole in the barriers. If that nexus actually lies in the paranormal, it’s not as weak as we thought and once they’ve made their hole, it’s not just power that will come through. Carlos thought something was waiting there—he almost told me something just before he . . .” I had to shut my eyes for a moment to banish the choking memory. “Just before he died. He started to turn back, said he had a better plan. . . . I can’t possibly exert enough control from here if that opens up. We need to risk using this,” I said, holding up the flute, “before they’re done preparing, or we’ll have to move a lot closer—and I mean breathing close.”
He blinked at me for a second or two. “Well . . . I guess we needed to get closer anyway. When’s the best time to go get captured?”
“Captured?”
“Yeah, whatever I can do to create maximum disruption, at this point, is what I need to do. You need to get as close as you can if you’re going to use that thing, so I need to pull them away and buy you the chance. How many of the people down there are bone mages? Or mages of any kind?”
“Six—one is Rui and one’s the dreamspinner. We know the kid is weak, so there’re only four to worry about aside from the Big Bad.”
Quinton nodded. “All right. Can you pinpoint my father? Assuming he’s here at all.”
“Yes. I know his aura. He’s down by the Devil’s Pool. I’d guess he plans to test his control of the drache as soon as possible.”
“Probably wants a good look at what he’s paid for, first. It’s so convenient of them to gather close together. This is one time I wish I had a rifle.”
“Are you any good with one?” I’d seen him handle rifles before, but I’d only seen him fire my automatic and a shotgun and that had been in close quarters. This was more like four hundred yards.
“Passable, but I’d settle right now for any mess I could cause from a distance. This small-caliber pistol won’t do much from here but make noise,” he added, patting the gun that lay on the ground nearby.
“Sort of the same problem with the flute.”
At the center of the Devil’s Pool, someone lit a fire. The flames jumped up initially and cast shadows into the falling night, then died back down to something more like a moderate campfire.
“Looks like gasoline,” Quinton said. “Flares up quick, but burns fast, too. I wonder how much of it they’ve got. . . .”
“Does it matter?”
“It could. I’d feel bad for the farmer, but I could do a lot of damage and wreak a lot of havoc with a couple of cans of gas, especially around these dry grasses and trees. Even more if I also had some rags and some matches. Gasoline makes a pretty impressive explosion if you know how to make it go ‘boom’ in the first place, and then there’re little fires all over the place afterward.”