seen a few ravens and buzzards. Silence, still and uncomfortable, and the sun hammering at everything without mercy.
“Slow it down,” Ivy said, eying the amulet.
“Are we there yet?” Trent said sarcastically, and Vivian groaned, pulling the blanket over her head despite the heat.
I drove past a sign about an ancient ruin, and Ivy stiffened. “Back up. Rachel! We’re close. I think they’re at the ruins!”
My heart pounded as I jerked the car to a halt so fast that Vivian hit the back of my seat, and even Trent had to catch himself. Ignoring Vivian’s snarl, I flung my arm over the back of the seat and put the car in reverse. Trent’s eyes widened as I whipped the car around, landing it between two white lines and jamming it into park. Intent, I turned the engine off and bolted out of the car, my boots scraping on the pavement as it threw up a wave of heat.
The silence hit me, and I hesitated, shocked almost.
There was nothing out here, impinging upon me the impression of magnitude. The hot wind shifting my hair had been in motion for hundreds of miles without impediment, giving it a slippery feel as it molded around me and continued on, elastic and not even recognizing me. I couldn’t see far enough, my eyes failing due to their own limitations for the first time in my existence. It was…immense.
The sun beat down, making even the shadows hot. I sent my senses out as I stood on the road to the ruins, looking out over the purples and mauves, searching for anything, every part of me taking in the feel of the air, listening for the hum of a wing and hearing only an aching emptiness. I looked for a ley line, finding a crisscrossing of faded nothing, like hints of what had once been but was now gone. Empty. Everything was empty.
My head ached from the echo, and I took in every nuance as I looked for a sign, a breath, a wing chirp. Every chip of rock, every shadow stood out in sharp relief as I searched for him, the image of the desert almost scratched on the inside of my mind and built around the faded images of ley lines that no longer existed. They whispered, hinting at a time when there was grass and trees here, and huge animals roaming, living, dying…until they vanished along with the ley lines. I wondered which had disappeared first.
Al had once told me that demons made the ley lines in their efforts to escape the ever-after, but magic was older than that. Was what I was seeing now the faded remnants of lines gone dead? Had the demons destroyed the original source of magic in their attempt to banish the elves? I squinted, closing my eyes and reaching for a breath of understanding, wrapping my awareness around an empty shell of a scratch between the present and the past, finding no energy but only the lingering idea that power had once run here, now gone, leaving only the skeleton, dry and dusty, to hint at what had been. It made me feel so damned alone.
A door slammed shut, and I turned, my last thought heavy in my heart. “Get back in the car,” I said to Trent, and Ivy slowly got out, her head bent over the amulet in her hand.
Trent looked me up and down, his expression closed. “It’s an oven in there,” he said, turning to the map on the brochure. “And besides, it’s a bunch of pixies. How bad can it be? Just go and get him. You’re a thousand times their size.” Irate, he leaned against and squinted at me in the sun. The wind playing with his wispy hair, and the heat, made him look tired. “I’ll stay here unless you scream for me. Promise,” he said sourly.
Ivy shut her door with a backward kick, the
Trent frowned at the sky, and I ran a finger between my ankle and the heel of my boot. “A clan of wild pixies kidnapped an experienced runner,” I said. “They live in the desert. What does that tell you?”
“They aren’t smart enough to move?” Trent said, and I made a noise of disgust. Ivy headed for the narrow footpath of paved asphalt, and I turned to follow. According to the plaque, archaeologists had begun to reconstruct the village site, but there were no walls higher than my knees.
Reaching my awareness out past the faint scratchings of what might once have been ley lines, I tapped the nearest real one. My eyes closed as I found hundreds of them, some as far away as the next state. The lack of water had extended my reach, much like the lack of trees expanded my sight. Having so much visual mindscape to play in was almost nauseating, and I quickly spindled a wad of ever-after energy in my head. I remained holding on to the line, knowing this was not going to be easy. I didn’t want to resort to magic. If I couldn’t convince them to let Jenks go, I wasn’t sure if I could force them to without hurting them.
The click of Vivian’s door opening was loud as I started out after Ivy, but she was only propping it open to get a cross breeze.
Yeah, there was the Vivian angle to consider, too. Anything I did was going to land in the coven’s ears. Frowning, I picked up the pace until I caught up with Ivy, my heart pounding as we went up the slight rise. The altitude was getting to me. I tried to walk softly to listen for the clatter of pixy wings, but there was only the wind.
How anything could survive out here was beyond me, much less flower-loving pixies. The only plant life I’d seen was tough and herbaceous, something that I’d never give a second glance at if I was home, but here, the tiny flowers stood out. “Trent is dumb enough to make me want to cover him in honey and toss him into the middle of them,” I said tightly as we passed down a narrow alley, slumps of rocks to either side.
Ivy didn’t look up from the amulet, too worried to notice the stark beauty around her. It felt good to be moving, even though the idea that I was a ghost walking down an abandoned alley lost to history was creepy. I didn’t like the fatigue creeping up my legs. We’d walked only twenty yards, but it felt like a mile in the heat and elevation. No wonder Jenks couldn’t fly.
The path turned, and we halted at the end of the village, looking over what was once probably the refuse dump. Below us at the bottom of a steep drop-off were figures etched into the rock, the dark surface chipped off to show the white stone underneath. Most of the glyphs were indecipherable circles and spirals, but the one with the bird holding a man in his beak was clear enough. It looked kind of Egyptian, and I wondered if demons had been here.
“Look at those cave drawings,” I said, pointing out the one with the storklike bird.
“They’re called petroglyphs.” Ivy didn’t even look at them, focused on the amulet.
“Okay, but that huge bird is eating that man,” I said, and she glanced up.
“I think it says ‘stay close to the village, or the boogie man will get you.’”
I lifted my eyes to the open spaces over the glyph, feeling like we were being watched.
“Right,” I said, not convinced. “And those little tally marks under it are what?”
She shrugged, and I hugged myself, wanting to scream for Jenks. “Where is he?” I said, stifling my urge to take the amulet from her, knowing better. Ivy felt helpless, too.
“I can’t tell.” Ivy turned in a slow circle, her expression one of the lost. “I know they’re watching us.” Pursing her lips, she whistled.
Below us in the parking lot, Trent pushed from the car. I waved him to stay, and he kicked a stone as he crossed the parking lot to crouch and feel the dirt between his fingers.
Ivy and I strained to hear something, but not even an insect broke the sound of wind on stone. I didn’t like this. If they took Jenks to ground, we’d never find them. “Jenks!” I shouted, then spun at a tiny rock falling.
“Careful…,” Ivy said, her hand on my arm, and we went forward together, following the path over a small ridge and out of sight of the parking lot.
I crept along, uncomfortable under the sun as the heat evaporated the sweat before it dampened my skin. Twenty feet ahead of us was another part of the village, the corner wall rebuilt almost to waist height. A small motion caught my attention, and I stumbled to a halt.
There atop the wall, hogtied and with his own bandanna shoved into his mouth, was Jenks. I couldn’t see his face, but his quick motions told me he was ticked, squirming with his words muffled by distance and his bandanna. His wings weren’t moving, either. A black dust sifted from him. He looked like a sacrifice, and Ivy’s words about the local gods echoed in my thoughts along with the image of that bird with a man in his beak. Maybe it was a pixy.
“Son of a bitch!” Jenks shouted, finally getting the bandanna off his mouth. “You cowardly sons of bitches!”
