Grave Ransom Read online

  After slamming the trunk harder than my little car deserved, she moved around the left, as if she were headed to the driver’s-side door. I all but dashed to the door, sliding behind the wheel before she had time to protest. It was my car. I was driving.

  Briar grumbled under her breath as she climbed into the passenger seat. “Just so you know, I’m a horrible passenger.”

  She wasn’t lying. Briar had opinions on everything from my speed—five over was still too slow—to which way would be the fastest route, and she seemed to feel obligated to share every one of these opinions. Or maybe she was trying to annoy me into letting her drive.

  I stared straight ahead, not speaking as I followed the roads out of town. I pulled into the parking lot of the gas station where I’d turned around yesterday. Putting the car in park, I focused on the charm around my wrist. The distant pull of Remy’s body was still distinct, tugging back toward the center of the city. No other trail appeared. Well, it had been a long shot anyway.

  I shook my head, looking over at Briar, and she sighed. Then she leaned forward against the dash to peer hard through the windshield.

  “So this is as far as you went yesterday?” she asked. At my nod, she said, “Well, nothing unusual here. We’ll definitely have to go farther out. Any more specifics about direction?”

  I tried to remember. The trail had been pulling deeper into the wilds. The road ahead of us was probably going close to the direction, but as soon as it curved . . . I glanced at the map in my GPS. There were very few roads past this point, but this one would take us into the wilds for a few miles before it turned to feed into the highway leading out of town.

  I put the car in drive and Briar sank back into her seat. We drove in silence for several minutes. The forest grew denser as we drove, the trees encroaching on the shoulder of the road, as if the wilds were waiting in anticipation to reclaim the territory the street had cut from them.

  “Slow down,” Briar said, leaning forward to peer over the dash again. “There is a turnoff ahead. Take it.”

  I slowed, then stopped, not turning. “You mean that barely car-sized gap in the trees that is unpaved and overgrown?” I shook my head, shooting a dubious glare at the path, which wasn’t defined enough to earn the name “dirt road.” “This is not an off-roading vehicle.”

  “Drive it or hike it, Craft, but we are checking it out. There are fresh tire tracks going in that direction.”

  I narrowed my eyes, trying to force them to pick out the details of the tracks under the gloom of the forest canopy. I could make out the lighter dirt in the tire ruts, but a new or old trail? That was beyond me.

  With a sigh, I turned the wheel and crept the car toward the dirt path.

  “Okay, but if we get stuck, you’re pushing,” I grumbled under my breath.

  Briar only smiled, her eyes scanning the forest as we slowly bumped and rolled down the dirt path. A few times the steering felt like it slipped a little in the sand, and the tree roots cutting across the path made my teeth knock together as my car rolled over them, but we didn’t get stuck. The path narrowed, the trees growing so close I could have reached out a hand and brushed the bark.

  “This is going to suck if we have to reverse out of here.”

  “Then let’s hope there is a turnaround,” Briar said right before we turned a shallow corner to discover an ancient-looking oak growing in the middle of the path. She sighed as I slammed on the brakes. “But of course, no. You’re right, this is going to suck, but park first. I want to check out the area.”

  I did, frowning at the tree. “Where did the car go?”

  Briar had been in the process of climbing out of the passenger seat, but at my words, she turned back to me. “What?”

  “The path we followed. It’s an overgrown mess, but the ruts we followed were mostly dirt and sand. That doesn’t happen from a single car turning off the road once or even twice. This path has been used quite a bit, but why?”

  “You’re smarter than you look, Craft,” Briar said, slamming the door as she stalked toward the tree. She circled it, glancing at the tire tracks that stopped in front of it and then at the forest closing in behind the large oak. “It’s possible this is nothing more than a favorite hangout spot for some local teenagers. A place where they know that law enforcement or parents are unlikely to stumble over them doing something less than acceptable. Or—”

  “The tree isn’t real,” I said, and Briar nodded.

  “Also a possibility.”

  “No, I mean the tree isn’t real,” I said again, and Briar’s head shot up, her gaze fixing on me.

  I almost laughed. Being in the close confines of the car with Briar and her arsenal of spells, my ability to sense magic had gotten overloaded, desensitized. Now that she was farther away, my magic sense was starting to pick up individual spells again. Kind of like being in a room with a scented candle for a long time. Your nose gives out eventually, but if a breeze cuts through the room, stirring the air and momentarily displacing the scent, suddenly you become aware of the candle again. Briar had given me a little distance, and while I could still feel the maelstrom of spells surrounding her, as well as emanating from her stuff in my car trunk, there was also a distinct swell of magic encircling the tree.

  “The tree is an illusion.” A good one. The spell coalescing around the tree was tight and powerful.

  Briar reached out, and her hand passed right through the bark. I’d half expected the illusion to be solid—I’d been around an awful lot of glamour recently—but this wasn’t fae magic. This was a witch illusion spell, which meant there was no substance, just illusion.

  Every witch could reach the magical plane and draw down the raw Aetheric energy stored there, but typically it took time, concentration, and a ritual. It was also typically only the witch’s psyche that reached across, as he or she all but lost contact with his or her mortal body. It was possible to drag someone else’s spell to the other plane, so that its magic could be studied and examined, even by nonsensitives, but again, it took time and ritual.

  My planeweaving magic let me bypass all of that. I cracked my shields and the Aetheric plane snapped into focus around me, overlaying the mortal plane. Convenient at times, but also very dangerous. I examined the swirls of magic twining through the illusion. They were red and orange, twisted together with care and finesse. It was probably the most delicately spun spell I’d ever seen, and I’d examined a lot of magic. The red and orange threads spread beyond the tree, coating the trail and surrounding area as well, cloaking them in illusion. The entire spell was tied to a small focus at the base of the tree.

  I closed my shields, cutting off the overlaid images of the different planes of reality. Looking was easy enough, as long as I didn’t do it too long, but if I tried to interact with them, I risked dragging them all into mortal reality. We didn’t need that. I stepped forward and, using my ability to sense magic to guide me, plunged my hand into the illusionary tree. The buzz of the tightly woven spell tingled along my skin, but there were no aggressive magics woven into the illusion, and in a matter of moments, my fingers closed on something hard that all but radiated magic. I pulled it up, out of the dirt, and the illusionary oak vanished, as did several smaller trees behind it and a large amount of fake undergrowth that had hidden several yards of the path.

  Briar whistled. “Not bad, Craft.”

  I shrugged, examining the object in my hand. It was little more than a stick wrapped with vines and a few pieces of cloth. What looked like a small ceramic cup had been buried to the rim in the ground, and that was what I’d plucked the spelled stick from. I set it gingerly back into the cup, and the illusion sprang up around us again. Removing it made the illusion vanish as if I’d unplugged a battery.

  “Nice,” I said, genuinely impressed. “Whoever made this was very skilled. It probably needs to be recharged every so often, but otherwise, it’s
completely self-sustaining.”

  “They also want to hide something. Let’s check it out,” Briar said, climbing back into the car.

  We drove for several minutes, the forest seeming to close tighter around us, until sunlight suddenly broke through the canopy and we pulled into a clearing. I stopped the car, giving my eyes a chance to adjust, and Briar took the opportunity to hop out of the vehicle again. She prowled around the clearing while I blinked in the bright light. The sun was high above us now. Between the time it took us to travel to the northeastern part of town and then this excursion into the wilds, we’d been out here awhile and morning was creeping toward noon.

  I climbed out of the car slowly, watching Briar prowl around the clearing. After the thick cover of the woods, the clearing seemed too open, too exposed. It also looked really empty. The only things of any note in the entire clearing were the multiple tire tracks where vehicles had turned around. Someone used this road and clearing a lot. But why?

  “Do you sense anything?” Briar asked, looking up from where she was examining tire tracks. “No one hides an unimportant clearing behind an illusion that strong.”

  I reached out with my senses, searching for magic. But it wasn’t magic I found.

  It was the chill of the grave that reached back.

  I shivered, the grave essence calling to me, reaching icy claws through my sweater to prickle along my flesh. I lifted a hand, pointing in the direction I felt. “Something is dead in that direction.” I let the smallest amount of the chill into my mind, so that I got a better sense of what manner of corpse was calling to me. “It’s not human.” I frowned. “I’m not even sure it’s mammalian.” Which was odd. While I could interact with the grave essence of other creatures, usually only mammals called to me, and only humanoids typically called this strongly.

  Briar’s lips pursed in thought. “Any reason to believe it’s connected to this case?”

  I shrugged. “No, but it’s close and big. Really, really big. Actually, no. I mean yes, there is a big dead thing, but there are other dead things near it.” Lots of dead things together? Never a good sign or natural, unless I was feeling something’s den where it took its kills.

  Briar turned in the direction I’d indicated and studied the woods on that side of the clearing. “I see the buzzards circling,” she said, pointing above the tree line. “Well, we are here. Might as well check it out.”

  Several fae I’d talked to had mentioned that legends were waking in the wilds, and not all of those legendary creatures were nice. Wandering through a wild forest in search of dead things sounded like a bad idea to me, particularly when whatever had killed several very large animals all in one place could still be close by.

  The thought must have been clear on my face.

  “Do you have a weapon, Craft?”

  I pulled the enchanted dagger I carried in my boot. It was fae-wrought and could cut through almost anything, and just touching the hilt let me feel the dagger’s excitement about the possibility of being used. It was a good dagger, but it was small, and definitely not my top choice for fending off a large animal.

  Briar frowned at the dagger and grumbled something under her breath about the idiocy of bringing a noncombatant civilian, then she said, “Stay behind me, Craft, and stay close.”

  Then she crossed the clearing and marched into the wild woods.

  Chapter 14

  You don’t really notice the sounds of the woods until they stop. Distant birdsong, the buzz and chittering of insects, and the rhythmic sound of frogs had all blended into the backdrop of the forest as I followed Briar through the underbrush. But as the grave essence reaching for me thickened, growing more insistent as we drew closer to the source, an eerie silence fell around us.

  Then a loud roar boomed through the trees.

  Briar and I both froze. I didn’t see her draw it—or where she drew it from—but Briar’s crossbow was suddenly in her hand and up, swinging slowly side to side as she scanned the forest. Nothing moved. Not even the breeze in the leaves.

  “Still think this was a good idea?” I hissed under my breath.

  “Yes,” she said, her whisper flat, determined. “How close are we to the corpses?”

  “Close. Only fifty or so yards in front of us.”

  She nodded, starting forward again, but she moved slower than she had before, and she didn’t lower her crossbow. I followed, my palm sweating where I gripped my dagger. I wanted to wipe my hand on my pants, but I didn’t want to release the dagger long enough to do it.

  We’d found the footpath we were following as soon as we’d left the clearing. Someone had traveled this way frequently. The clearing we’d left had clearly been the parking lot; whatever was ahead of us was the real attraction. I wasn’t looking forward to discovering what that might be.

  As we crept around trees and over underbrush, it became obvious we were approaching another clearing. Occasional growls issued from somewhere in the bright sunlight beyond the tree line, the sound of more than one very large thing moving around.

  “Stop,” I whispered, grabbing Briar’s shoulder.

  She half turned, lifting an eyebrow, but she stopped. I closed my eyes, trying to sift through all the different magics assaulting my senses. The grave essence was banging on my shields now, like a visitor who wouldn’t leave but kept pounding on the door. The magics buzzing around Briar were a constant drone as well, but there was something else. Something new.

  “The clearing is warded,” I said in a hushed whisper.

  “Keeping people out?” Briar asked.

  I frowned. I could feel the ward, but there was too much assaulting my senses. I couldn’t isolate it enough to dissect what it did. Which meant I needed to get farther from Briar . . . and closer to whatever was growling in the clearing.

  I really didn’t want to do that.

  “Well?” Briar asked, sounding impatient.

  “I’m not sure yet,” I said between clenched teeth. “I’m having trouble separating it from all the magic you’re carrying.”

  The smile she flashed me had a lot of teeth but wasn’t exactly friendly. “Then you stay here and work on it. I’ll run my own tests.”

  She pulled several charms as well as a spellchecker wand out of her pockets and crept forward. The farther she crept away, the easier it became to distinguish the signatures of her magics from the ward surrounding the clearing. I could have cracked my shields and looked at the actual magic, but with all the grave essence pouring out of the clearing, I didn’t want to give it a single chink in my shields to try to bust through. It didn’t help that my own wyrd ability was battering the inside of the shields, just as anxious to get out as the grave was to get in. So I focused on my ability to sense magic, feeling out the ward.

  Wards were specialized magic. Recognizing that something was warded was easy, but figuring out exactly what a ward was designed to do . . . That was much trickier. Most spells were easy to distinguish, kind of like a rose is instantly identifiable and very different from a daisy. But wards were individual while also being only a slight variation from one to another. Figuring out exactly what a ward would do when tripped was about as simple as searching for one particular daisy in an acre of daisies. I was a decent sensitive, but I wasn’t that good.

  “It will definitely warn whoever cast it when someone crosses the perimeter,” I said, creeping up to where Briar crouched just outside the edge of the ward. “But I don’t think crossing it will trigger any aggressive magical attacks.” At least not by the ward. We still didn’t know exactly what was beyond it. Through the brush I could make out several very large shapes moving in the clearing, but we couldn’t get close enough to get a good look without crossing the ward.

  Briar nodded, gazing down at the tools in her palm. “I’m picking up a lot of magic, but nothing is popping as malicious.” She pocketed the charms. “So I gue
ss it’s time to go in there.”

  I blinked at her. “Did you not hear when I said the person who cast the ward will definitely know when we cross it? Because that part of the spell I can clearly sense.”

  “Which is perfect. I don’t have to hunt someone who comes to me.” Briar flashed another one of those toothy but not pleasant smiles, and then lifting her crossbow, she stepped into the ward.

  I felt the sizzle of magic as the ward reacted to her presence, but whatever else the ward did, it didn’t stop her from creeping forward to the edge of the clearing. I stared after her, unsure what to do. Briar made up my mind for me.

  “Craft, get over here,” she hissed in a loud whisper without ever turning away from whatever was in the clearing.

  I sighed, tightened my grip on the dagger, and stepped into the ward. Briar hadn’t even paused as she passed through it, but the magic in it tugged at me, forming not a solid wall, but certainly resistance that I had to push through. It felt like when I passed through a cemetery gate, which raised the question, was the ward meant to keep dead things inside, or soul collectors out?

  I was neither. As a planeweaver, I was a nexus in which the planes merged, including the land of the dead and the crystal-like plane the collectors inhabited, so I could feel the resistance of the wards, but they didn’t stop me. The sick feeling twisting in my gut squeezed tighter, though.

  It took several moments for my eyes to adjust to the light, and once they did, I almost wished they hadn’t. The clearing wasn’t that large, only about the size of an Olympic swimming pool, but the creatures inside made it look even smaller.

  There were four—no, five—creatures milling about the clearing. All were different sizes, different species. Most I couldn’t have named. All were dead.

  The largest was slightly bigger than a horse, and shaped similarly except that instead of hooves he had leathery splayed toes with massive talons at the ends of his legs and scales instead of fur. He also had two large buzzards sitting on his back, dipping their beaks into a massive wound in his side through which I could clearly see white rib bone. The creature whipped its head around, gnashing at the buzzards with needle-pointed teeth. They fluttered their wings, backing away, but the second the creature turned, the bolder vulture dipped his head into the wound again, dragging out a long gray string of intestines. I looked away, my gorge rising.