Chapter 23
Jena breathed a sigh of relief as the Jeep finally broke free of the pedestrian traffic strangling the town and pulled onto the state road.
It wouldn’t be long now. She took a calming breath, her knee jiggling as they crossed the first ward and went over the tracks.
A sense of urgency washed over her, her anxiety ticking up with the node’s plaintive cry into her psyche.
He’s here, he’s here, HE’S HERE…
Ugh. What the heck had happened to having until moonrise? Jena put a hand to her stomach, the baked potato abruptly not sitting very well. The energy plucking at her felt wrong, like it’d been tainted somehow, and the acrid flavor of sin coated the back of her throat.
Felix put a hand on her knee. “You’re vibrating. That’s usually not a good sign. You okay?”
She nodded, forcing a smile as Liam pulled to the side of the road, and Kelsey squeezed out. Jena avoided Felix’s eyes, watching the were lope across the field toward the Eastside’s compound. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”
“Seriously? You know it’s perfectly acceptable to be losing your shit, right? I mean, I’m losing my shit. Like, on a scale of one to ten, I’m at ‘tell me that was not the finale to GoT’ levels. How about you, Chase?” Felix asked as Liam got back on the road.
“Country chic.” He passed his robe back, nicely folded as opposed to the stained wad of stupidly expensive fabric Kelsey had left.
Jena snorted. “Country chic?”
“Yeah. That white, chippy worn crap puts me through the roof.” He reached up like he was going to adjust his hat and frowned, dropping his hand to rub his chest. “How about you, Liam?”
“Big ass spoilers on shitty cars.” He flicked the wipers on, the mist officially a light drizzle.
“See?” Felix said. “Everyone’s freaking out.”
Yeah, that didn’t make her feel much better. Neither did the odd shifting hues outside the window. She hadn’t been sure at first, but the closer they got to the ruins, the more vibrant everything—
The Jeep swerved, and Liam swore, trying to keep it on the pavement. “Did you see that?” He swallowed heavily, wide-eyed. “A fucking satyr just bolted across the road.”
“Are you sure?” Felix asked, paling at his nod.
Jena didn’t blame him. Satyrs weren’t considered lesser fae and, as a general rule, didn’t do well on this side of the veil.
For one to be over here, a constraint on the node had to have broken, and wild magic from the sidhe realm was officially bleeding over into this one.
“Yeah, I saw it, too,” Chase said. He winced, his hand at his chest again.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“No,” he rumbled, fur sprouting over his knuckles. “I think Malcom’s using the ring on me. I’m all fucking tingly, and my wolf is going batshit.”
She swore. “Can we go any faster?”
Liam floored it.
Ten more minutes…I’m coming, I’m coming…she thought at the node.
It didn’t reply, and that was somehow worse than it talking to her.
By the time they pulled up to where the gates had stood, the forest had morphed into a weird Technicolor version of itself.
Everything was too vibrant, resonating at a pitch at the edge of Jena’s hearing.
She pinched the bridge of her nose as she got out of the Jeep and stumbled.
Ugh. The dimensions of everything were wrong, the autumn foliage crystalline and every grain of sand beneath her feet in high definition.
No wonder people couldn’t survive where there was a node. Even the precursor to it was awful.
Chase steadied her, the strain on his face evident.
Jena’s brows furrowed. “Are you—”
“I’m fine,” he snapped, scrubbing a hand over his chest. “Sorry. It’s like I have something under my skin, pulling me that way.” He nodded down the drive then turned to Liam as Felix joined them. “You heading back?”
The were killed the engine. “No. I don’t feel good about leaving you guys stranded out here. Place looks like one too many buttons of peyote.” He shook his head, a hand at his temple. “Feels like it, too.”
“It’s definitely a bad trip,” Felix muttered, toeing what was left of the gates. They’d been ripped from the stone posts at either side of the drive, and one of them had been dragged a good hundred feet before it’d fallen into the bracken.
If that was a reflection of the ward’s condition…Jena closed her eyes, reaching out with her power—
Sin, sin, sin, sin…
Her knees buckled, and the potato threatened to make a reappearance.
The ward was still there, but an ugly ruddy brown hole pulsed where it’d been breached.
Magic fizzled around the ragged space, unable to fill the void.
Jena shivered. The only thing that left a stain like that was the dark side of the art, and with the amount of sin lighting up her mind’s eye…
She choked back a sob, not wanting to see anymore. God, why did she have to—Ugh. What she wanted didn’t matter, and feeling guilty about not doing something sooner wasn’t going to fix this—but owning her power would go a long way toward that end.
Whether she wanted to admit it or not, the stupid node and what was in that garden were her responsibility.
And if this ward had been breached, the rest of them were in danger of falling—if they hadn’t already—which wouldn’t just take away the node’s constraints.
It would open the way for Malcom’s unseelie mound and release what was left of her father.
And the town wouldn’t survive either one.
She couldn’t let that happen. It was time to adult, damn it. Jena stepped past where the gate had stood, sin raising her hackles. She pulled the container of salt from her bag with trembling fingers. Shit, big girl panties, Jena. You got this.
“You want us in or out?” Felix asked.
“That depends,” she said, her voice surprisingly calm. “I’m sealing the circle. If you’re in, you’re in. If you’re not…” She blew out a long breath. “I don’t blame you.”
Felix rolled his eyes and joined her. “Please. You know you’re my ride or die.”
“And I already told you that you’re not doing this without me,” Chase growled, doing the same.
“Ditto,” Liam pulled a knapsack from the back of the Jeep and grinned as he stepped past the posts. “Kelsey’s gonna be sooo pissed she missed this.”
Jena snorted. She didn’t doubt it, his sister’s taste was suspect at best. “You might want to give me some room.”
If this worked anything like it had the last time she’d channeled the node’s power, it wasn’t going to be subtle, and she wouldn’t need extraneous spell components other than a focus.
She trailed a line of salt across the drive, linking the two ends of the stone wall encircling the property, and pulled a tumbled piece of onyx from her spellbag.
She began an incantation, and a sluggish pulse answered her call instead of the bright flash she’d expected.
Her brow furrowed at the node’s lack of response, and she knelt at the center of the drive, rubbing the stone with her thumb.
Her vision fuzzed as she inspected the damage.
Why wouldn’t it—sin. The node’s power was weighed down by sin, damn it.
That hole, the ruddy pulse…Malcom hadn’t just breeched the ward, he’d used the dark side of the art to force the magic from its natural path and make its flow erratic.
The taint needed to go.
She gritted her teeth and opened herself up to that side of her power.
Oh God—It hadn’t just been Malcom. A torrent of darkness poured into her along with the too vivid details of Wallace Montgomery’s murder at his wife’s hands.
Jena’s breath caught, fighting not to focus on the images staining her psyche, the dark arts and depravity…
Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit—Chase’s mom had done that?
! No. Later. Jena panted, struggling to calm down. She could freak out about it later—
Chase’s hand settled against the small of her back, and she leaned against it, drawing on his strength.
You’re not alone, now, focus, Jena. Her breath slowly evened out.
Right. She needed to cleanse the karma and use it to make sure the node’s tainted energies didn’t spread any farther than they already had.
Jena took a deep breath and pulled the sin through herself, whimpering at the influx of evil.
She gagged, graveyard midden and rot flooding her mouth and nose, bile rising at the corruption sloughing off into the aether around her in a dark mist. She forced her leaden tongue to speak an incantation, the words passing through her lips like treacle.
Her vision grayed, and she fell forward, slamming the bit of onyx to the ground.
Power erupted in a wave, shooting up and outward, flooding past the original bounds of the ward and doubling back upon itself, sealing the breech with a flash of brilliant violet power and encompassing the tor.
Words to vow spoken, the blood of thy veins to bind. Seven stones to witness thy oath. Our service for thine…before the moon rises, the circle must complete…
I’m trying… she thought back at it, muzzy.
The node murmured and hissed, urging her on, to hurry…he’s here…
Chase’s arms were around her as her own gave out, and he picked her up, holding her against him. “You gonna let me carry you this time?”
Jena nodded, her lids drooping, totally spent. The faint scent of bergamot swept over her. “Just for…just for a little while…he’s here, Chase…”
Chase frowned as Jena’s head lolled against his shoulder, the rain coming down harder than it had before.
He stared at the long crystalline droplets falling like shooting stars around them, that tugging in his chest driving him apeshit.
Christ, this was getting weird. He cradled Jena against him and turned to the others.
Liam sucked a breath through his teeth, his gaze fixed on the violet boundary streaming across the drive and through the woods at either side of them. He reached out to the swirling opalescence, the small hairs on his arms rising as he got within a few feet of it.