26. Emma
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
emma
South and East, Toward Wolf Moon Cave
After the Beaver Moon
Abrick of dread sat in the back of my throat. No matter how often I swallowed, it wouldn’t disappear. I rummaged in the back seat next to the snoring Jasper and retrieved a water bottle. A long drink of H2O didn’t get rid of the rock either. Great.
The day had dawned red, pockmarked with angry clouds from the night before. The sunrise didn’t give me the same joy it usually did. No thoughts of a fresh slate, no thoughts of the magnificent wonders the day might bring…
To the south, at least for a while, there were still roads, and Dr. Wise drove them like a woman who’d been pointed south in her heart since the afternoon she’d found the cut marks.
“You doing okay?” I asked. “Want me to drive a little while?”
Jasper snorted in the back seat but went back to sleep.
“No.” She kept both hands on the steering wheel of the Subaru, her glasses down her nose, the razored pages laid out on the dashboard in plastic sleeves like a map to a country that had been carefully erased. “I’ve got the coordinates in my phone.”
Each mile we drove, the landscape changed, sinking toward sea level.
More than that, though, the land seemed to grow older, but I couldn’t tell if it was real or imagined.
Maybe we were slipping into another plane, or maybe I was seeing through multimorph eyes, identifying the landscape from previous iterations of the emergence.
Perhaps I was the one slipping into another plane of existence, an alternate reality that occupied the same space but a different time.
Whatever it was, it went on for hours, and it was fucking surreal.
Jasper woke up and stared out the windows without speaking.
Gas stations had grown sparse. Then power lines disappeared as the pavement turned to gravel, until Dr. Wise eased the Subaru onto a dirt logging trail that gave out entirely.
With a grimace, she killed the engine. “This is as far as this car goes,” she said, “which is farther than I thought I’d make it.”
“We go on foot. You didn’t even get to use your power-up,” I quipped with a weak grin, trying to lighten the mood.
“I can’t go much farther if the pages are right about the difficulty of the climb. May use it yet.” She said it without a shred of self-pity, calmly narrating the end of her own usefulness. “I’ll navigate you to the mouth. After that it’s up to you, Emma. It was always going to be you.”
“Aye, it’s always been up to her,” Jasper added. He squeezed my shoulder. “Did ye sleep at all on the drive, lass?”
“Not really. Too wired.”
“As I suspected,” he said. “What’s fer carryin’, Doc? I’ll carry hers.”
The three of us climbed out of the vehicle into country that had stopped pretending to belong to this century. At least for me. Dr. Wise pointed out bags, and Jasper loaded them onto his back and shoulders. He only allowed me to take the small one.
Quietly, we began the hike to the cave.
The distance had diluted my bond with Logan, but the barrier didn’t falter. I’d built it too well. Now there wasn’t even the sense of a wall to press my hand against. Just distance. Just the trace of where he’d been. I hadn’t realized I would miss the wall.
“I’ve never worked out the magic of not perspiring,” Dr. Wise commented, more than an hour later, wiping sweat from her upper lip.
I frowned. “Don’t think I’ve ever noticed not sweating. I’ve seen Logan sweaty often enough.” Mostly when I made him hot and bothered. But I didn’t add that aloud.
“It’s a skill all shifters seem to eventually exhibit at will.” Her glasses flashed my way. “At will, dear. Your mate chooses to glisten.”
I barked a laugh, the first one since we’d left Six-Mile.
“Ma, are we there yet?” Jasper mimicked a whining child. His grin split his face.
“Almost there,” Dr. Wise answered.
“Ye’ve been, haven’t ye?” Jasper asked her.
“Many years ago.”
“How ’bout ye, lass?” he asked me.
“Once.”
Wolf Moon Cave.
I’d stood inside its mouth, when the war was small enough that all I needed from the dark was the linking relic.
Marcus had guided me then, and he’d been the one to make his way to the back of the cave while I had protected us from shadow-mage attack.
We’d taken the linking relic out of that cave, the cube of stone that had turned to a crystal prism when it was in use.
Funny how our relics sometimes shifted, too.
“How deep will we go?” Jasper asked.
“The real trove is underneath,” Dr. Wise answered. “The best things are often kept in basements. Much like the Louvre.”
“There’s a chance the deeper portions might be flooded,” I said. “This far south… The depth of the water table is a consideration.”
“Aye, ’tis true,” Jasper said. “At least I am a fox who knows how to swim.”
Soon, we reached Dr. Wise’s coordinates. An old oak still stood over the cave’s mouth, vast, half-dead, and hung with moss.
Jasper studied the length of it and then looked at me with something that wasn’t a joke anywhere on his face. “Is this what ye recall from last time?”
I shrugged and waved at the tree. “Don’t remember the oak, but it’s a magic cave, and Acheron’s trotting around Louisiana like he owns the place, changing shit everywhere, so how the fuck do I know?”
“We might also be at a different entrance,” Dr. Wise interjected.
Jasper’s freckles stood out in the stark light, and he doubled over laughing. “Ye know a lot of things, lass, but mayhap ye should have napped in the car.”
I squinted and eyed the fox shifter. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Ye might be a bit cranky.”
“More like nearly tired to death of Acheron. Ready to see him die.” I turned to Dr. Wise. “Do you know anything about the oak? Is it included in the whole foretold prophecy bullshit?”
Dr. Wise adjusted her glasses and studied the ground. “I don’t believe the oak is involved in any of the prophecies. You don’t recall if it was here or important the last time you visited this cave?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then we proceed as though it’s not important to the mission,” Dr. Wise said. “Though, I may rest beneath it as you explore the cave.” She crossed to its base, dropped her attaché case on the ground, and leaned against the trunk. Sweat clung to her, and she peeled her clothes away from her skin.
“Do either of you get to go in with me?” I asked.
Dr. Wise shook her head. “Neither of us. We’re not integral to whatever you need to accomplish down there.”
I sighed. “Last time we were here, I had to hold a shield over the entrance to keep the shadow mages from chasing us in. It’s weird that we haven’t had anyone follow up. Isn’t it?” I hate I left Logan behind. No way of knowing what’s going on back in Six-Mile.
“Don’t go borrowin’ trouble. We’ll mind the entrance and keep ye safe,” Jasper said. He tugged his beard, and he lowered his voice. “Ye did the right thing, lass, leavin’ him. It’s the cruelest thing I’ve watched anybody do for love. Ye couldn’t bring him here.”
“I know.”
The way only opens to me… It might be true, but it didn’t mean I had to like it, and I was beginning to feel like the vision was full of poo. Had it been real at all?
Stopping at the edge of the cave, I peered in. At least the inside hadn’t seemed to change all that much. I turned back to the others and crossed to Dr. Wise and dropped my bag beside her. “I think it’s the same place as last time. At least on the inside.”
“That’s a mercy.” She took both my hands between hers. Her skin felt papery, but her strong grip belied her age. Up close, behind the glare on the glass of her spectacles, her eyes were youthfully fierce. Wrinkles fanned out from the outer edges.
“Listen to me because I won’t be able to say it down there,” she said.
“The pages never recorded the cost. I told you that. What I didn’t tell you is why, and I think I finally understand it.
It wasn’t that the price was too terrible to record.
It’s that the price is different every time.
” She took a deep breath, released it slowly, and handed me a flashlight.
“Whatever they show you down there, whatever they tell you it has to cost, remember that it’s an invitation to try something new. Hear me.”
“I hear you.” I hoped I could instinct my way through this mess.
Jasper joined us under the tree. After Dr. Wise released my hands, he took one of them and pressed something small and cold into my palm. When I opened my hand, it was the brass bell. No, a second one, twin to the one he’d given Logan in the Void. He tied it around my wrist.
“Can’t follow ye in,” he said, “but foxes hear their own bells across a battlefield, and I’ve decided a battlefield can be as wide as I say it is.
” His throat worked. “Ye ring that with purpose if ye have a need, and I’ll move heaven and earth to get down there.
Ye’re not walkin’ out of that dark to an empty field.
We’ll be here, waitin’. Ye know I’ll be here the whole time, lass. ”
“As will I,” Dr. Wise added.
I hugged him and embraced Dr. Wise.
“Give ’em hell,” Jasper rasped.
“What he said,” Dr. Wise agreed. She smiled and settled on the ground with a pen and a journal she’d pulled from her bag. “That’s as much goodbye as I intend to record.”
Jasper guffawed.
Without another word, I squared my shoulders and turned to face the mouth of Wolf Moon Cave.
Last time, Marcus had dragged the linking relic to the front of the cavern, and I’d never been farther than the entrance.
The mages had made sure of that. Maybe that had been the point of their interference.
If I had gone deeper, I might have discovered what I needed to defeat Acheron completely.