Forged in Fire (32 page)

“I need to come out with you tonight,” I said. “I need to do a scouting mission of a different sort.”

While she got in her armor and collected her weapons, including swords and guns, I told her my theories on walkabouts.

“That’s pretty damn cool,” she said once the team had assembled in the rec room. “We’ll definitely help out.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it. Now to break the news to Skella when she gets here.”

Benny laughed. “That one’s a wild child.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” I said.

Skella took Trisha and her crew out and brought back Jonathan’s group. They were tired and cold to the bone. It had been snowing out in the mountains, and the fire they kept going just didn’t do enough to beat the cold.

Skella and I popped over to my place, where I traded my city clothes for long johns and other things I’d wear while camping out in this weather. Then I put together a box of things I’d need to infuse the tea to help me trigger walkabout, even though it would give me a headache the next day. While I could sometimes shift my sight, going full astral was not happening without some assistance. Finally, I grabbed Gram. I could go walkabout with her; I’d done it before. I wanted her with me in case something went wrong and I got sucked into the house. That was not someplace I wanted to be unarmed.

Fifty-three

B
enny and
N
ancy were out chatting with the local sheriff when I got there. He was part of Nidhogg’s in-crowd. He didn’t mind us being out there, as long as we kept him informed.

Trisha and I walked across the road to stand in front of the dome.

“It’s easy to see once you know to look,” she said, quietly. “Sometimes I can see things moving inside. Spirits and such.”

I stared into the dome. Things did move inside, and I’d fought some of them. Destroyed a bunch, but more and more flowed out here from all over. Who knew how far the spirits were traveling, drawn here like a moth to a flame?

“I’ve wondered,” Trisha said, staring into the dome, “if any of the Black Briar crew are in there. Maybe Chloe or Bob?”

Her pain was raw still, and who could blame her? She’d lost her lover and her best friend less than a year ago. It was all pretty rough.

“I don’t think so,” I said, patting her on the shoulder. “When I was in there, I got the impression that only the more malevolent spirits were drawn here. Hungry things, big and angry.”

“I’m pretty angry,” she whispered. “All this watching isn’t helping either. I want to do something.” She looked at me, her face full of desperate hope. “You know what I’m talking about. I have to protect Frick and Frack. Keep them safe. The world is full of monsters, Sarah. And it sucks being so fucking powerless.”

I put my arm across her shoulders and stood there. She leaned her head on my shoulder and we let the cold settle into us as we watched the spirits bump along inside the dome.

“I wish I was powerful,” she said.

“You are mighty,” I said, squeezing her. “Don’t kid yourself. I’ve seen you on the field. You have the fire.”

“I need magic,” she said. “Magic and might. Just to keep us safe.”

How could I argue? I totally understood.

“Tell me about this new beau,” I said.

“He’s nice,” she said, her eyes staring at the dome, unfocused. “He’s really kind to me. Listens to me, ya know?”

“That’s important,” I agreed.

“He makes me feel important,” she continued. “Like maybe I could be somebody.”

Her fear pained me. She was a strong woman, full of love and courage. “Don’t let a man be your strength,” I said. “He can be a partner, but don’t put everything in his hands. Stand on your own.”

“Yeah, well…” she turned her head, looking away from me.

“As long as he’s kind to you, doesn’t hurt you.”

She flinched when I said that.

“He doesn’t hurt you, does he?”

She stiffened and pulled away.

“I should get back to the station,” she said, turning away. She had an expression on her face I recognized from my own mirror. I’d stepped on something that was none of my business—insulted her. I should’ve known better than to pry. I know how I used to feel about my relationship with Katie. None of anyone’s damn business.

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize it was a sensitive subject. Forget I asked.”

We got back to the tents without saying another word. I felt bad I’d made her uncomfortable.

I took my time prepping the tea on their little camp stove. Getting the water to a boil was easy—the measuring and steeping had to be precise.

The tea was bitter, but I drank a full cup and lay back with Gram in her sheath across my chest.

“I’ll be out a few hours,” I said, lying back. I tried to clear my mind. What had I done, exactly, the last time I’d nearly done this without the tea? Think about flying.

“Be careful,” Trisha said as the world began to fade.

Fifty-four

T
his time it happened much faster.
T
risha sat over me, reading a book by a headlamp, and Gary was drinking a cup of coffee. I stood, leaving my body, and slipped out of the tent. Nancy and Benny were making the circuit. Trisha and Gary would go out in a couple of hours.

I rose, pushing my way out of the tent, and looked out on the crazy. The world was glazed in frost, even from this ethereal perspective. I wasn’t cold, not exactly. But the area hummed with a sort of wildness that was both distracting and energizing. If I wasn’t careful I knew I could get lost here, fade into the background noise of the region.

The ley line spasmed beneath us, feeble and thin. I could sense the residue of power, feel the earth’s impotence. The flow was blocked upstream. Somewhere under Anezka’s property, the ley line came to an unnatural blockage. Justin’s doing.

The dome Qindra kept over the property was easy to see. It throbbed with power, a trap for the unwary spirit. I had to be extra careful. It would totally suck to be drawn into the dome. I floated ahead, crossing the road, edging close, but not too close. I waited three breaths, although technically I wasn’t breathing, and moved ahead a few more feet. There was no pull, no rushing sneaker waves in the black tide that crashed against the dome. It was like a giant roach motel—spirits go in, but they don’t come out.

I could see them clearly in this state. They were horrific. Some were people, or had once been. Others were so far beyond us I no longer recognized them as anything other than hunger, anger, violence, and fear. They were the nightmares Lovecraft and his ilk drew from.

I reached over my shoulder and stroked Gram’s hilt. She slept with my body, but somehow she was with me here. How powerful did you have to be to exist in both the physical and spiritual worlds?

As I got close to the dome, the siren call grew stronger. The ley line tugged on the back of my psyche. Luckily, it was faint enough to ignore. At least for now. I skirted around the dome, keeping my distance. Somewhere to the northeast there had to be an entrance to the caverns beneath Anezka’s property. I’d visited Qindra there during my botched rescue attempt back in October. That’s how I found out about the shield and Justin’s involvement in this whole debacle.

Twice I had to stop and hold my shit together as something horrible passed close by, heading into the dome. I could sense the barrier, see it in my mind’s eye. It wasn’t a dome, exactly, more like a sphere that went down into the ground, encompassing a great deal of earth. I had a sinking feeling the caverns were inside the sphere.

I worked my way around as close to Anezka’s back bedroom as I could get without going through the dome and tried to sink into the ground. It was like pushing through oatmeal. The earth was pretty solid stuff, even in the ether.

“Pathetic,” a voice said from inside the sphere. I stopped trying to sink into the ground and flowed toward the dome. Inside was a man. Unlike most of the spirits he hadn’t given up his original form. I assumed the monsters I saw were the individual spirits taking on the form that best suited their nature—hunters and killers.

This man, or once man, stood with one hand on the dome, and his other held a bloodied axe.

“You lost, lass? Shall I show you the way home?”

He had a bowler hat on his head and a long coat covering his lean frame. There was something familiar about him. Some picture I’d seen before.

“Who are you?” I asked, careful to avoid getting too close to the dome.

“You ain’t like the rest,” he said. “I bet you’d be nice and sweet.”

I flipped him off. “Get bent, psycho.”

He laughed, beckoning to me. “Come and play, wee one.”

I drew Gram. The whole world shifted. Inside the dome the proper gentleman was a ragged corpse with meat hanging off exposed bones. At his feet lay several dismembered bodies.

“He’s going to enjoy you,” the spirit said. “He comes here and talks to us from time to time. His will be a time of renewed glory. A revelry of the best sort.”

I reached out with Gram, and she hit the wall like striking glass.

“Lucky for you,” I said, smiling sweetly. “If I could get through that shield, I’d be happy to feed you to the eaters.”

He cackled. “My kind are growing stronger, whelp. His will be done. You will suffer under his knives, and I will relish every scream.”

I turned, stalking away from him. I didn’t need his crap in my head.

“There is only one way in,” he called after me. “And when you die, I’ll be waiting for you. Waiting to play.”

Bastard. Made my skin crawl. He didn’t pursue me, and I realized he was stuck where he was. Partway around the dome I noticed other spirits stuck in place, sentries of some sort, watching the outside world. Was this something Justin did? His way of keeping watch?

I got to the back of the house without further incident. The other spirits took no interest in me. All I got from them was hunger. Always with the hunger.

As I followed the dome around to the back of the house, I could see the statues inside the dome. The metal warriors and the half-built dragon Anezka had built by hand. Too bad for her, Justin had been killing people and trapping their souls inside the statues.

Unfortunately, I had firsthand experience fighting one of them. Hard as hell to stop. They stalked the grounds, hunting.

I looked away from them, up the mountain, and drew in a breath. There, like a slash of neon, the ley line ran down from the mountains and into the ground under Anezka’s house.

It ran through Qindra’s protective sphere and through the earth. That was my path. The line was deep here, angling down. Higher up the slope of the mountain, the line rose to the surface, exposed by a recent rockslide.

As I pushed myself up the mountain, I began to feel stretched. I was moving too far from my body. That’s not at all how Doctor Strange did it in the comic books. He could travel all around the world. Of course, he was a wizard and a cartoon character. I was only a blacksmith.

I swam up to the rockslide, fighting the weakness that flooded me. I felt for the ley line. It was like dipping my fingers into an icy stream—painful but doable.

One second I was looking down from the mountainside, the next I was captured by the rushing ley energy. The current was swift—not at all like swimming in water—more like drowning in lightning. I cried out, the energy flowing around me, through me.

For one quick moment I was drowning in it, overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of power. Then, like a hammer on an anvil, I smashed against the blackened shield that blocked the line and fell to the floor of the cavern.

Not exactly graceful, but I was in.

Fifty-five

N
othing hurt.
T
hat was a bonus.
I
rose up—well, floated more than stood—and glanced around. The room was pretty big, a thirty-foot-diameter cavern with the shield floating on the north side, hovering in the ley energy, like a ping-pong ball floating above a hair dryer. The whole place glowed with the power, like using a Tesla coil as a lamp.

“Sarah?”

I spun around. Qindra’s spirit sat in the center of the room, encased in a prism of power. Her body was up in the house—in stasis. I had no idea how she fared physically. If her spirit was any indicator, we may be too late to save her.

I could see where she’d siphoned a trickle of the ley line, drawing the power to keep her alive and shielded from the eaters. That’s how she was keeping the dome intact.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “I thought Katie got you out.”

“That was weeks ago,” I said, overjoyed to see her. “I’m trying to figure out how to rescue you.”

She looked at me, her eyes flat and her face neutral. Even with the ley energy, she was failing. I’d seen better-looking ghosts. Maybe tapping that energy directly was too much for her.

“You are not trapped in the house?” she asked. I think she was confused.

“No, I’m in a tent across the road from the house. Outside the dome.”