Was that the result of having been telepathic for years, as a vampire? Or just another one of Brina’s quirks?
“We should get going,” Rikai said, staring at the mouth of the path with frustration. After the second time Jay had repacked her bag, she had taken half the items out to accommodate her ritual paraphernalia.
Jay glanced down at the clunky watchlike GPS thing he never would have touched if he had been spending his own money or wandering familiar forests. Xeke had given the device coordinates based on Brina’s best guess as she’d looked at a series of maps, and it currently claimed that their destination was about thirty-five miles to the northeast. With fair weather, good trails, and experienced hikers, that distance could easily be traveled in a couple days, but Jay doubted they would have any of those luxuries.
They didn’t even have a straight path to their destination. Instead, they headed first to the base of the original Midnight, from which Brina believed it was only a short journey to Shantel territory—assuming that her estimate of Midnight’s location was correct, that they could find Midnight without getting trapped in its magical gravity well, and that the magic in the Shantel land didn’t throw them back out.
Rikai believed that the Shantel power would draw them in, because Jay and Brina were now bonded to it, but even she admitted that was just a theory.
Yes, if all went well, they should be able to confront a homicidal immortal very soon.
CHAPTER 22
JAY BECAME INCREASINGLY grateful for Brina’s odd conversational style as they began their hike. The more out of breath Brina became, the more she communicated in mental images instead of speaking aloud, and the clearer it became why she was an artist. A simple s’mores granola bar triggered a deep, meditative analysis of the various tastes and textures.
Her mental energy gave him hope. Her joy at the way the sun sparkled on the snow made the impressions he received from Rikai and Xeke easier to bear.
The comfort Xeke had experienced as a result of Rikai’s work was now fading, and was being replaced by hunger and restlessness. Her rewiring made it possible for him to keep control, but he couldn’t ignore the spicy heat of the witch’s blood, or the coppery tang of Brina’s human blood, or even the syrupy sweet lure of Rikai’s blood—though the last would be poison to him.
Rikai was still shielding her mind, but Jay suspected she was keeping pace with the rest of them out of sheer stubbornness. The only thought she let slip through to him was that she considered Brina’s presence a boon because she could be used as a human sacrifice. She expected him to be reasonable if it came to that.
Jay chose not to comment.
Unlike the woods behind Xeke’s and Kendra’s homes, this forest was vast, teeming with the life one would expect in untouched wilderness. As the group moved farther away from human civilization, Lynx pointed out territorial markers left behind by cougars, bobcats, and other lynxes. He caught a snowshoe rabbit, and lorded it over the rest of them that he had hot, fresh meat while they settled in for a night of dried, packaged foods.
The tent was snug with the four of them, even though Rikai sat cross-legged in a trance instead of sleeping, and Jay had decided that it would take less energy to keep people warm with his power than it would to lug bulky subzero sleeping bags.
That logic had seemed sound, right up until the moment when he had Xeke spooned against his back, Brina snuggled against his chest, and Lynx keeping his feet warm. He had been worried that Brina’s ladylike manners might make her balk at the sleeping arrangements, but she accepted them as part of the ongoing quest.
Jay was the one who had some qualms, mostly about the vampire nuzzling at his neck and not-so-idly recalling their first conversation.
Was it was safer to give a little blood and risk being weaker in the morning, or to leave the vampire hungry?
“Fire is bound in blood, but earth is bound in flesh,” Rikai said, making Jay jump. “I can’t entirely block the blood-hunger, because that comes from Leona’s seeking power, but all he needs to be able to sustain himself is to be able to touch you, as he is now.” That was … unsettling. Rikai added, “He should not be able to draw enough power from you to be a danger, but I will keep watch just in case.”
A restless night led into an even longer day in which their off-trail hike became increasingly challenging. Jay’s irritation only grew as his foot skidded on an ice-slicked rock and he fell into a winter-stripped thornbush.
As he extracted himself, he felt a burst of triumph from Brina. Throwing herself down to look more closely at the bush, she exclaimed, “Look!”
She frowned up at them all when they failed to respond, and then touched a reddish bulb growing at the end of one branch. “Rose hips,” she said, as if that should have been sufficient explanation.
“Are you craving tea?” Rikai snapped. Rose hips were the fruit left behind after a rose’s blooms fell.
Brina stood up and announced, with what sounded like genuine disappointment, “It took Rhok nearly a century to breed a rose that blooms so dark it appears black to human eyes, and you look at it like it’s a dead bush.”
“It isn’t blooming at the moment,” Xeke pointed out.
“And it hasn’t been eaten,” Jay replied as he examined the bush more closely. Long-stemmed formal roses generally couldn’t survive in darkly canopied forests. This one not only had, but the rose’s fruit hadn’t been touched by any of the numerous animals who should have enjoyed it as a delicious snack.
“Silver’s line is the one known for black roses,” Xeke said.
“When Silver’s line took over after Midnight’s fall, they made the symbol their own,” Brina replied. “I know this place. See these stones, here, and here?” It took a great deal of imagination to see anything more than random rocks strewn amidst trees and brush, but Brina recognized something, and through her Jay could see the plaza that had once been in that place.
“This was a freeblood market,” Brina said, one gloved hand lingering on a stone with faint vestiges of etched letters, its message long lost to lichen and moss. “All the shapeshifter nations traded their best goods here. We should be less than a day from Midnight proper.” With a slight pout, she added, “There used to be a road.”
“Well, there’s no road now,” Jay replied, more sharply than he’d intended. He glanced down at the stupid GPS, which informed him that they had overshot their destination … suggesting that the coordinates they were using hadn’t been correct in the first place.
“Let’s try that path,” Xeke suggested, pointing.
“That’s a deer trail,” Rikai replied.
Jay turned toward the unremarkable break in the woods. He wouldn’t have noticed it if the vampire hadn’t pointed it out first, and it still didn’t seem a likely prospect. It wasn’t even going in the right direction.
Lynx gave him a mental poke, saying,
Pondering that insight, Jay stepped closer, and realized the path was wider than he had first thought. The closer he moved to it, the more he realized his eyes were playing tricks on him. This
“I think we’ve found your road,” Jay said to Brina. “Xeke, I’m going to need you to tell me if you see forks … or anything dangerous, come to think of it. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you saw this and I didn’t.”
“Where—” Rikai paused, closed her eyes, and tilted her head as if listening. At last she said, “The spells here are old but still powerful. And very discreet, designed not to be noticed even by a witch.”
