The Serpent in the Stone

CHAPTER Ten

Sara pushed the empty beer bottle onto the table to join its fellows. The bottle’s lines blurred and swam in the lantern glow. How many drinks had she had since the helicopter had brought the police to investigate? They’d determined it an “accident,” which was complete crap. That scaffold was rock solid. Her crew made sure of it every morning. She reached into the cooler at her foot for another beer, counting the chirps of a night insect outside her tent.

“Hey,” came a hushed voice from the doorway.

Sitting in the chair facing away from the door, she couldn’t see her tormentor. “Go away.” She heard the person enter the tent in spite of her warning. “I said go away. Let me get drunk in peace.”

The figure rounded the edge of the table. She recognized Ian from the corner of her eye and glanced up.

She must have looked as wretched as she felt, because his expression went from concerned to alarmed. His gaze fell on the throng of empty bottles. “You didn’t show up at the inlet, so I came to see if you were all right.”

Sara took a healthy swallow of her new beer. “Yessss. I am all right. I’m walking around... Sitting around. Talking. Breathing. Drinking.” She saluted him with her bottle. “Drinking quite a bit, actually. And planning to do more drinking.” She took another gulp and pursed her lips around the bite of the alcohol as it went down. Still not dulled enough.

Ian pulled the other chair around and sat beside her. “I saw a chopper today. What happened down here?”

She curled her lip. “What happened is, I’m the one who insisted we brace the fault and stay here. What happened is, twenty-three-year-old Cameron Leone got crushed under a scaffold, and it’s my fault he’s dead. What happened is, no one has let me get quietly drunk since six o’clock this evening, and it’s beginning to piss me off. That’s what happened today.” She tipped the bottle up again, drained its contents in one long swallow, then slammed it down onto the table. “Between Lamb, and Faith, and Flintrop, I don’t know why the hell I’m even here. I should find a way to open that damn ley line and walk right in. Maybe they’ll give Cameron back in trade.”

Ian stood, pushed the cooler away with the heel of his boot, and reached for her hands. “Come on, don’t do this.”

She lurched to her feet and flung his hands off. “Damn it, just go away! I don’t want anybody here! I swear to God, I’ll throw you clear back to your ca—”

“I’d like to see you try. You’re plastered.” He shot a look at the procession of empty bottles on the table.

Sara tried to hold his angry blue stare and couldn’t. She took one unsteady step forward, pushing at him. “Just. Go. Away.”

“Like hell I will. I’m not going to let you do this to yourself.”

“Who’s letting me? I’m a grown woman,” she snapped, turning away toward her cot. “I wish someone would tell Lamb that. Everyone seems to know what’s best for me, and to hell with what I think.”

“What are you talking about?”

She pivoted back toward him. The room swayed. She managed to keep her feet and muster another dark look. “I’ve been given an ultimatum to stay away from you until the dig is finished.”

“Or what? They’ll send you to your room without dinner?”

She thumped him in the chest. “You see my point, here. Pass me another beer.”

He propped a boot on the cooler’s lid and crossed his arms. “I don’t think so.”

“Don’t be a jerk, Ian.”

“I’m not. Give up on the beer for tonight. You’re not getting it.”

She threw her hands in the air and stumbled toward her cot, then dropped onto it like a stone. “Another a*shole who knows what’s best for me.”

“Drinking yourself stupid is a better idea?”

Sara looked up at him. His figure blurred around the edges. Tears. No tears. Stop it. She screwed her eyes shut and pulled her knees up, hugging them and hunching on the cot’s edge. “Please go away?” she begged into her arms.

The cot sank as he sat beside her. “Absolutely not,” came his soft murmur.

She couldn’t hold it in anymore. A long, broken wail tore from the center of her being. She covered her head with her arms and curled into a tighter ball, trying to disappear into herself. Tears flooded forth in a torrent that shredded her from the inside out.

His arm came around her back with a gentle tug. She gave up all pretense of hiding her anguish, shifted, and threw herself at him to sob into his shoulder. He held her tight while she went to pieces in his arms. Her heart unraveled. She couldn’t stop it. She shook with terror at the force of emotion pouring through her. This—oh, God, this was why she never let her guard down.

Ian laid his cheek against the top of her head and stroked her hair, saying nothing as she wept.

The last vestiges of her self-control caved in on top of her. Guilt crashed down with it. She cried so hard her ribs hurt. She cowered against his body, clutching in desperation at his jacket, but the pain sought her out and laid her open. With no escape, she surrendered and let the tears come until none were left to cry.

Seconds, minutes, hours later—she had no idea—exhaustion crept up on her. Her eyes burned with salt and dryness. Her head ached. An empty hollow sat in the pit of her stomach where all the feeling had been. Still trembling, she pulled away from him and scrubbed at the tearstains on her cheeks.

He reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a bandanna. He shook a puff of chalk dust out of it and offered it to her.

She took it and wiped the tears away. “I haven’t cried like that in twenty years.” Her voice sounded hoarse, nothing like her own. “Not since—”

“—your father died,” he finished quietly. “I remember.” He propped up the pillows on her cot, then slid backward to sit upright against them. Without a word, he reached for her.

She went, and rested her back against his chest. His arms came around her again. Warm. Safe.

“You stayed late after school for something. I was there for baseball practice. I saw you crying in an empty classroom, but I didn’t know why,” he told her. “I wanted to do something. I should have.”

She wiped at her face once more with his bandanna, then huddled on her side against him, gazing at the off-white canvas of the tent wall. “You just did.”

****

Ian roused later to the sound of footsteps outside. The lantern had guttered out. Wide-awake in an instant, he squinted into the darkness. The footsteps paused in front of Sara’s tent. He groped one-handed along the bedside table, but it held only the extinguished lantern. He searched along the bedside. His hand landed on a spare tent pole. Easing out from under Sara, he picked up the pole, then moved soundlessly to the tent door.

A sliver of starlight appeared as someone unzipped the door. A shadowy figure slipped into the tent.

Ian sprang forward and jammed the end of the tent pole into the intruder’s gut. His victim wheezed and hunched over. He spun the pole around and swept the person’s feet out with it. His adversary landed with a thud and another wheeze, and Ian brought his boot down on the figure’s chest. There was a strangled grunt. Ian poised the tent pole to strike again if necessary.

“What’s going on?” came Sara’s panicky voice. Ian heard her fumble behind him, then the crash of the lantern falling to the floor. The tent flooded with flashlight.

Squinting against the sudden illumination, he looked down. The redheaded woman lay pinned under his boot with an expression of shock.

Sara lurched off the cot. “Becky. Oh, my God. Ian, let her up.”

Ian took his boot away. The redhead heaved for air and rubbed at her chest. She struggled to her feet. He stepped back and planted the end of the pole in the floor with a suspicious glare. “What are you doing here?”

Sara took the woman’s hand and tugged her to a seat. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, more or less. I came to see if you were okay.” Becky rubbed her stomach with a rueful moan. Her gaze darted around Sara’s tent.

“I will be.” Sara caught Ian’s eye and he pasted a deadpan expression on his face. Apologize! she mouthed.

He didn’t. Something in Becky’s posture set the back of his neck prickling. He moved a little closer to Sara.

Sara laid her hand on Becky’s. “I’m sorry about that.”

“What’s he doing here?” the redhead asked. “I thought Lamb told us to stay away from him.”

“He saw the helicopter go over today, and came down to see if something was wrong,” explained Sara.

Ian held the woman’s gaze without so much as a twitch. She gave him a stare that said How could you? as plain as words.

Glancing back and forth between them, Sara blushed even in the flashlight glow. “Becky, I’ll be fine tonight. Why don’t I come see you in the morning and make sure you’re still okay?”

The woman marshaled up a smile and rose from the chair. “Right. Sorry I woke you.” With hunched shoulders, she fled the tent.

Guilty as hell, he thought, anger coursing through him.

Sara fisted her hands on her hips. “What was that all about?”

He tossed the pole tent corner with a clatter. “Why don’t you ask her what she’s doing sneaking into your tent in the middle of the night, instead of announcing herself like anybody else?”

“What, Becky? The poor girl wouldn’t know how to sneak, Ian. She’s got no poker face.”

“You didn’t happen to see her checking out your stuff a minute ago?” He waved a hand around the tent’s interior.

Sara’s hand flew to the necklace at her throat. The blush in her cheeks drained fast. “You don’t think she was after—”

He strode toward her and laid his hands on her shoulders, when all he really wanted was to crush her against him. “I think it enough to worry about the same thing happening again. Enough to wonder if she isn’t the only one who knows about the amulet. Please, come stay with me.”

If possible, she went whiter. “I can’t stay with you. I can’t leave Faith. I have to go check on her. Right now.” She broke away from him with panic screaming from every line of her posture.

He stalled her with a hand on her arm. “After, then. Just for tonight. Sara, if they can’t steal it, they’re going to try to kill you for it. Get rid of it. Something. Please. I’ll take it.”

“No!”

“Sara—”

She shook her head and hurried out the tent door. Ian cursed under his breath and followed.

Before they could reach Faith’s tent, Lambertson intercepted them, striding forward with Flintrop, Michael McGrath, and Luis Rivero close behind. Their expressions, hostile even in starlight, gave them all the appearance of a lynch mob. Becky was nowhere to be seen.

“Waverly!” Lamb shouted.

Ian stopped. Sara came to a halt beside him, dancing with agitation and looking in the direction of Faith’s tent.

Lambertson reached out and seized the front of Ian’s jacket. The older man shook it, surprising Ian with his strength. “What in hell do you mean by attacking one of our crew?”

Sara rushed forward, separating them. “Lamb, not now. Becky’s fine. It wasn’t Ian’s fault.”

The man rounded on her. Ian saw her shrink back in astonishment at his fury. “Don’t cross me on this. I run this dig, and I want him gone. If I have to have him arrested for assault, I will do so. Alan, get him out of here.”

Flintrop stepped around Lambertson, seething. “I’d like nothing better.”

Ian glanced at Sara, who shot him a worried look. He stood his ground, unwilling to leave her.

Flintrop advanced until he stood nose to nose with Ian. “Don’t give me an excuse to pummel you. I haven’t liked you since day one, Waverly.”

Ian’s attention snapped to Flintrop’s leering face. Hostility churned under his skin. “While we’re on the subject, the feeling is mutual.”

Flintrop showed his teeth. “If you so much as set a foot down here for the rest of the summer, I’ll have you landed in prison by any means I can use.”

Ian bristled, but stayed put.

Flintrop lowered his voice to a hiss only Ian would hear. “What’s the matter? Don’t like being shooed away from her?”

In the same venomous tone, Ian said, “You aren’t worth my time, Flintrop, and you’ll never be worth hers.” He turned and walked away, forcing himself not to look back at Sara as he went.

****

Sara unzipped her sister’s tent flap and ducked in with her heartbeat thumping. “Faith!”

Her sister jerked in her seat. “What!” She whirled around and relaxed when she saw Sara. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

Sara’s brow furrowed. “You didn’t hear me unzip the door?”

“No. Zip it back up.”

Sara did, then took a seat beside her, only beginning to relax now that she saw her sister in one piece. She swept the table with a glance. On it sat the skull and belt buckle from the fault. “What are you doing?”

“I was in a divining trance. I didn’t think I was going to have company in the middle of the night.” She favored Sara with a worried look. “Are you okay?”

“I will be. We have to talk.”

“That’s an understatement,” said Faith. “You first.”

Sara took a breath and plunged in. “Ian came down and stayed part of the night.” Leaning forward, she dropped her tone to a whisper. “Faith, he caught Becky sneaking into my tent. I think she tried to steal the amulet.”

Faith opened her mouth in what was sure to be an anxious tirade.

“She didn’t get it,” Sara interrupted, “but Lamb just came out with a couple of the guys saying Ian attacked her. Ian went back to his camp, but I’m worried. I think the three of us should leave. I don’t know if we can trust anybody right now.”

“We can’t. I told you I read these...”

Sara cast a suspicious look at the skull resting on her sister’s table. Reading artifacts had always been a risky business for Faith. Reading human bones was categorically dangerous. “Faith...”

“After what happened today, I’d just as soon learn everything I can about this dig site, as fast as I can learn it. That scaffold didn’t stay down by itself today.”

Sara frowned. “Are you saying someone was pushing down on it? Like, with telekinesis?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. I saw Flintrop and some of the others put it back up like it weighed nothing. Someone was holding it down in the first place. And that’s not all.” She picked up the skull and put it into Sara’s hands. “Say hello to Hakon Ivarsson.”

“Hakon?”

“Our druid-killer from the vision was a Viking, and not just any Viking. Sara, I’ve had dreams about him since I was a kid. Just flashes, mostly, but I think he wants me to do something. Help him. He’s the ghost I’ve been sensing since we got here, even without my power.”

Sara eased the skull back onto the table as if it were radioactive.

“I’ve spent all night trying to communicate with him,” Faith added. “Something’s keeping him from talking to me. I can only catch bits and pieces. He’s here right now.”

“Did he bring up the amulet?” Sara cast a suspicious look around as if the ghost would appear from thin air, though she knew better.

“I haven’t used Old Norse since college. I’m trying. He said something about the moon, the next full moon. He mentioned a sword, but I can’t make out what.” Faith sighed. “We have to stay on Hvitmar until I figure this out.”

“The next full moon isn’t for three weeks. If Becky knows about the amulet, others must know. If whoever wants it is like us and can use the amulet—if someone today pushed that scaffold down on Cameron—we are all in serious trouble,” Sara said.

“I don’t like it any better than you do. I don’t make the rules. At this point, I don’t even know the rules.”

Biting her lip, Sara thought of Ian’s father. “I—I think I’d better tell you something.” In halting words, feeling guilty for betraying Ian’s confidence, she related his father’s murder to Faith.

When she finished, her sister sat still as a marble obelisk. Sara watched her go through the same succession of emotions that she’d had. Shock. Horror. A twisted sense of kinship that there were others out there with proven supernatural abilities...and the worry that not all of them might be good souls.

Finally, Faith pursed her lips and picked up the belt buckle from her table. “I trust Hakon. I think he may be able to help us. I’m going to keep trying to speak to him.”

“Alone?”

“We haven’t got time to argue about it, have we? Besides, he won’t hurt me. I don’t know why I know that, but I know that.” Sara gave a doubtful murmur, but Faith cut her off. “He won’t leave tonight. If anyone comes, he’ll warn me.”

Sara paced the tent, realizing Ian had been right in his warning. “If Becky tried stealing the amulet tonight, what’s to stop her from sneaking into my tent again over three weeks? Your tent?” She felt the color leave her cheeks. “Ian’s tent.”

Faith’s gaze went sharp and alert. “Out the back.”

Worried now, Sara launched herself at the back wall of the tent and pulled up the stakes that pinned the canvas to the tent floor. With a last look at Faith, she slipped out.

She shapeshifted into the wolf and ran full-tilt up the slope of the island. As she came within sight of his camp, she slowed to a trot and then a cautious walk, approaching it from the back.

Ian’s scent drifted toward her on the cool air. She pricked her ears forward and sniffed again, but no hint of other company reached her. She rounded the corner of the tent. Lantern light glowed from within.

When she reached the door, she released her hold on the shapeshift. The shape of the tent blurred, then took on the more indistinct lines of human night vision, and the change completed. “Ian?”

“Come in.”

She did so, and found him sitting on his cot cleaning a rifle. Sara pulled up a chair and sank into it with her heart thumping. “You should leave.”

He lowered the rifle to his lap. “Are you kidding?”

“Take the boat tonight and go to Unst. Call a ferry, I don’t care. You don’t have to stay here. This isn’t your problem.”

“Let me tell you why it is my problem. I’ve had recurring nightmares since I got here about something happening to you, about how I’m supposed to protect you from God knows what or who, and they’re only getting worse. You know who I see in these damned nightmares, who tells me this stuff? Your father.”

She blanched. Her mouth fell open, and she struggled for something to say. Nothing came.

Ian went back to cleaning his rifle. “He died in an office, right? There was a wooden desk, and a brass lamp, and a big silver picture frame on the bookshelf with your family in it? Leather books? Stuff in display cases? An old map of Shetland on the wall?”

His words hit her like a spray of bullets. She cringed in the chair. “Stop, stop! How are you seeing all this?”

“Tell me again how it isn’t my problem.”

She hugged herself and whispered, “He never comes to me or Faith.”

“I guess I’m just lucky.”

Wounded, she stared at him.

Regret flashed across his features. “Sara, you don’t want to see him. Not like this.” He looked back down, wiping the small parts of the rifle and piecing them back together. “Anyway, I’m not leaving. Not unless you do. Don’t ask me why he picked me, because I don’t know.”

“We can’t leave. Faith and I found something out about this amulet. It’s connected somehow with a druid ceremony that manipulated the ley lines. The order that used it... We think they were like us.”

Ian looked up. “Like you? With the floating objects and shapeshifting?”

“Yes. Except this druid order, if they really were a druid order, was able to control the ley lines and use their power. Faith said it would be like having possession of an atomic bomb.”

“And you want me to leave without you?”

“We found a skull at the dig, from a Viking who killed one of the druids.” Her body screamed for motion. She lunged upright to pace back and forth. “Faith read the skull, and she found his ghost, and he wants us to stay here. Something about the next full moon and a sword, and he’s guarding her, and I came up here to see you because I’m worried that something is going to happen to you—”

Ian set his rifle aside and stood up. He caught her in his arms. “Now you know how I feel. Don’t you think I’d go out of my mind with worry if I left?”

She shook her head violently. “I don’t want you staying here because of some dream—”

“It’s not just about that! Are you blind? I—”

She gaped. Had he just meant to say...?

Ian looked away, but not before she saw the torment in his eyes. He circled like an angry wolf, twice around the tent, then he gripped her shoulders and gave her an angry shake. “I’ve wanted you almost from the minute you got here, and I can’t even explain why. Then I find out what you are, and I have no idea what I’m doing, feeling the way I am, because my father was killed by one of you—” He broke off and lunged away, raking both hands through his hair.

Old pain tore through her, suddenly fresh again. “Freaks? Is that what you were going to say?”

He glanced back, then away, hunching his shoulders. “I didn’t mean...”

“No, you did!” She shot across the tent to stare him down toe-to-toe. “Say it. Get it out. I want to hear you say it!”

He gave her a desperate look. “You have no idea what this is like. I was ten years old, and I saw my father murdered, by a man who—who could—”

“Do what I do? Telekinesis? Shapeshifting? Mind-reading?” She flung the words at him, seething when he flinched. “Do I look like a murderer, Ian? Does having this power make me a monster?” She shuddered. “I didn’t ask for it.”

He sighed explosively. “Jesus, Sara. You don’t... I can’t...” He turned his back on her. “I’ve been making myself crazy ever since I got here, knowing what you are.”

“Then why did you come? You can’t stand what I am unless it helps you with your goddamned research, is that it? Is that all this was? You’re using me? And to think I came up here to warn you.” She wheeled toward the tent door.

He spun back and caught her by the wrist. Writhing with ferocity, she tried yanking it away, but he held fast.

His expression shifted; she saw him fighting with himself. The pulse pounded in his throat. “Don’t go.”