QUINN #3
“Remember, people will still see you. But unless they know you, their attention will slip off, and they won’t notice,” she said. “It should make it easier to shift in the woods without being noticed by most people.”
“Thank you.”
“What about cameras? Does it affect them?” Quinn asked.
Amy frowned, thinking. “Not completely. But it should blur the image to make it harder to identify. Sorry, it’s the best I can do.”
“Still a big help,” Quinn replied. “Thank you.”
Dan handed her the amulets and charm she had gifted him, and she held them between her hands, closing her eyes and murmuring words Quinn didn’t catch. His nature spirits stirred, aware of the magic.
“That should be as turbo-charged as I can make them. But don’t take chances, still do your best to avoid notice and try not to be scratched or bitten by the wurm.
” Amy handed the pieces back to Dan with a smile.
“I made this for you.” She turned to Quinn, taking a black tourmaline pendant from a pocket.
“Someone who knows the connection between you two might try to get to Dan through you. You’ll need extra protection too. ”
He accepted the necklace with thanks and put it on, feeling a buzz of energy. “It feels…carbonated…to my nature spirit. Fizzy.”
Amy chuckled. “I’ve never heard it described like that before, but I like it. You’re talking about the interaction of different frequencies and powering up from the natural forces around us.”
“What about the wurm?” Quinn asked. “If it’s magical, I’m thinking that you and the Fox Institute people might pick up on it better than how we usually track normal wild animals that are out of bounds.”
“If I listen very closely, I can pick up a faint vibration that feels very old,” she said. “Not evil, but then again, if a polar bear eats you because it’s hungry, it’s not much of a relief to know it didn’t do it to be mean.”
“What can you read from the vibration?” Quinn asked. “And is it something you can teach me to sense so I can evade it when I’m out in the woods? All I pick up is that it disturbs the energy around it. But until we figure out how to get rid of the wurm, I need to keep visitors away from it.”
“Listen with your powers again and try to sense those ripples,” she told Quinn. “Can you find it?”
Quinn strained to pick out a new impression.
He wasn’t a psychic, but he did have an affinity for energy, and the wurm wasn’t thinking, it was existing.
After a few moments, he picked up something he hadn’t noticed before, like the very faint strains of a quiet instrument.
“It’s really different from regular animals and shifters and Dan.
Like I’d expect from something ancient, or a dinosaur. ”
Amy laughed. “The Tatzelwurm is older than the dinosaurs. No one knows where it came from, whether it grew out of the cosmic stew that made the world, or came from somewhere else. There aren’t many of the ancients left, which is probably good for us.
“The consensus is that the wurm and the few creatures like it don’t hate us or want to eat us. They just don’t notice we’re here, and they’re so powerful that we’re squished before they realize we were even around.”
“Like stepping on ants, by accident,” Quinn said. “The fact that we didn’t see them and didn’t mean to do it doesn’t fix being flattened.”
“Exactly,” Amy agreed with a nod.
“Has the magical community come up with a way to bind it?” Quinn asked. “Evading the wurm will only last so long.”
“We’ve been going through old records, and Jeffries is working with the witches to adapt some of the spells we’ve found.
Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of reliable information about the Tatzelwurm, compared to what we know about weres and shifters and other cryptids,” she added with a nod toward Dan.
“At a certain point, we’re going to need to give it our best shot and cross our fingers. ”
That wasn’t exactly the reassurance Quinn had hoped for, but he recognized that finding information on an ancient and secretive being would be a nearly impossible task.
“Please let me know if there’s anything I can do,” Quinn offered.
“Keep your eyes open,” Amy replied. “We suspect the wurm is moving through the caves and underground rivers, only coming out at night. People have reported animal kills, but it would also help to know where the vegetation has been flattened, like the trail a snake leaves. If we get really lucky, it might lose a scale. Those can be powerful in a spell. But be careful, they’re potent, so you don’t want to handle them without protection. ”
She took a runed box from her tote bag and slid it across the table to Quinn. “If you happen to find a scale, put it in this. There are spelled silver tongs inside, so you don’t have to touch it barehanded.”
Amy met Quinn’s gaze. “The wurm is generally protective of its parts, so if it has shed something where it could be found, that’s by accident. It will want it back. Even in the box, the wurm may still sense it. Don’t hang around. Leave right away and call me. I’ll meet you and pick it up from you.”
That’s not creepy at all, Quinn thought. “Okay. Got it. Thank you.”
“What does the scale do? Or what can you do with it?” Quinn asked, intrigued.
“It depends,” Amy said. “The lore varies. But there are a number of spells that use a tooth or a scale or some other bit of the wurm to banish it, at least for a time. Which is all we need to do. If it stays gone for a century or so, it’s someone else’s problem when it wakes up again.
I imagine that when we’re old, we’ll look back on this as an adventure, even if it doesn’t seem like it at the moment,” she said ruefully.
“Makes me wonder about all those epic stories we tell, and guess they weren’t fun at the time. ”
They shared another cup of tea and swapped light-hearted local gossip, veering away from more serious topics. Quinn wondered if the restorative feeling was due to spending time with a friend or to magic and decided it was probably a little of both.
“I’d better get going.” Amy set her cup on the table. “Magic aside, I still need to do laundry and other mundane stuff that keeps the world turning.”
“Thank you,” Quinn said as he and Dan walked her to the door. “Just let me know how we can return the favor.”
She shrugged. “That’s what friends are for. And things like the wurm and bounty hunter affect all of us. Glad to do my part. I’ll see you around.”
Quinn reached up to touch the new amulet that hung beneath his shirt. He felt a tingle of energy and knew it wasn’t imaginary.
“Talk to me,” he told Dan. “How are you feeling?”
Dan touched his own amulets, mirroring Quinn’s action.
“Better. The problem is still out there, but just knowing we’re not alone, that I’m not alone, makes a big difference.
Witches, spells, amulets, it’s all a bit much to take in, but I’m going to trust that they help.
There’s got to be a way to stop creatures like the wurm, or people would have died out long ago.
As for Harrison, we’ll have to keep our eyes open and hope the cops can stop him before he finds us.
” Dan sounded less certain about the bounty hunter than the monster, but Quinn understood.
“If you still want to come out to the woods with me tomorrow, we can do that,” Quinn promised. “I feel a little better with the new amulets. It’s the safest we’re going to get for you to shift. Unless you could somehow go to an arboretum somewhere—”
“I am not going to break into a fancy garden to shift,” Dan replied, although Quinn was pretty sure his mate knew he had been kidding. “They probably have even more security cameras. I’d end up on TV, and maybe on their next batch of tote bags!”
They both laughed, and Quinn felt some of the tension in his chest loosen. The danger hadn’t ended, but they were more protected than they had been before, and they had powerful allies.
“We’ll get through this.” Quinn pulled Dan in for a hug. “I don’t know that we’ll ever look back on this fondly, but once we get to the other side, we can start building a whole new life together.”
He pressed a kiss to Dan’s cheek. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m not letting anything or anyone get in the way of that.”