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A vast herb garden stretched on both sides of us; flowers and grasses were separated in rows, bordered by a dense evergreen hedge in the distance. Basil, yarrow, mint, brilliant red poppies, yellow cornflower, fuzzy bush clover, white umbrellas of elderberry…They never needed to leave the premises to look for wild plants. Most covens used the same herbs in their rituals. Very convenient when the herbs grew right by the gathering place.
My memory claimed that there was a big grassy lawn somewhere here, but beyond the herbal field rose trees, massive dogwoods and oaks tinseled with Spanish moss. The trees looked entirely too old to have grown naturally. I couldn’t recall how I knew the lawn had been there, but I remembered it. And the fountains. Many water jets shooting from the ground.
And a woman. A very tall woman who laughed a lot. Her face was a fuzzy blur in my memory.
Derek wrinkled his nose. I glanced at him.
“Animal,” he said. “Odd.”
“What kind?”
“Not sure.”
The trees parted before us, revealing a hill sitting in the middle of a large clearing. More of a kurgan, actually, rising straight up out of the herbs, like a cap of a colossal mushroom. Kudzu and grasses blanketed the hill in a green shroud, but at the very top the bedrock broke through: smooth, polished dark gray marble, tinted with swirls of malachite and flecked with gold.
If I had a marble dome that pretty, I doubt I’d let it get overgrown like that.
The Medusa impersonator circled the hill and stopped. We stopped, too. Ghastek sent the vamp up onto the hill and it perched among the kudzu like some gaunt ghoul.
Derek sneezed.
“Bless you.”
He sneezed again, pulled a canteen from his belt and washed his nostrils out.
The guide waited. We stood with her. A light breeze rippled through the tree branches. Birds sang. The sun, highly amused by our presence, did its best to barbecue us.
The vampire sprang straight into the air and landed ten feet behind us. Derek snarled. And sneezed again.
A deep rumble shook the ground. I backed away.
The grassy soil fell away in heavy slabs. The hill quaked and crept up, higher,higher . A colossal brown head emerged from underneath the kudzu, the flesh hanging from it in wrinkled folds. Two eyes stared at me, black and shining like two giant chunks of anthracite.
A tortoise.