The Serpent in the Stone

CHAPTER Seventeen

Later that afternoon, Ian helped the crew clear the remainder of the ruin. The closer it got to completion, the edgier he got. Every now and then, he stood up to look in the direction of Sara’s tent. Everything in him ached to go over there and see her, if only to be sure she was safe.

As safe as could be, anyway. He’d told Faith all he could recall of the serpent ceremony. Telling it had been easy enough; the nightmare hovered on the edge of his thoughts every waking minute. He remembered the vision of Aesa’s death, and stared across the dig at Faith with a troubled frown. How could he just stand around and let her guinea pig herself on the ley line? What if it didn’t work?

What if it did?

He looked toward Sara’s tent again. His worries flooded back to him with teeth-grinding intensity. The reopening of the ley lines required a sacrifice of gifted blood, and Callander—it had to be Callander—was already bent on murder to accomplish that. Ian stole a look toward the man, wondering how Sara and Faith had stood working beside him for three weeks, knowing what he was and what he intended to try. Did he suspect anything of Faith or Sara’s gifts? Would he try to kill them?

Ian didn’t give a damn. It absolutely wasn’t going to happen.

“All right, Ian?” asked Luis.

He shook himself out of it. “Yeah, fine.”

“Good, ’cause you’ve been staring into space for the past fifteen minutes.”

With a rueful look, Ian turned back to the peat bricks he and Luis had been stacking beside the ruin’s outer wall. He could have been working on his own project...at least, wrapping it up. But the later it got, the less he wanted to leave Sara and her sister to whatever was coming.

The sun lowered in the sky. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck, along with an increasing sense of dread. He could almost hear a clock ticking under the lonely whoosh of wind and clink of tools.

At last, Flintrop’s voice boomed across the moor. “Pack it up, guys. This dig is done!”

Ian’s stomach wrenched the moment Flintrop said it. He doubled over in surprise and clamped an arm against his belly. His knees buckled. He wheezed, feeling like he’d been kicked in the gut.

Luis said something, and then Faith was there, pulling Ian onto his feet. “Get up,” she said in an insistent whisper. “Get up.” She waved Luis off. “He’s fine. Just give him some breathing room.”

Ian struggled to regain his breath. “What the f—”

Flintrop’s hand descended onto his shoulder, and a canteen loomed into his field of vision. “Easy, Waverly. Take a drink.”

Ian grabbed the canteen and downed a mouthful of water large enough to make him choke.

“Out of here. Come on,” Faith said, tugging on his sleeve.

He dropped the canteen and staggered along with her, away from the dig. The screaming in his head faded. He clenched his teeth and gripped his belly again. “It’s...f*cking...alive.”

“I know.” She rushed him toward her tent with worry in her eyes. “I can feel it. What I want to know is, why can you?”

“You’re the expert.”

Once they were inside her tent, she pushed him into a seat. Sweating, he braced his elbows on the table and cradled his head, half expecting it to split apart. He took a few breaths, and the stitch in his midsection eased. “Is that what it always feels like?”

“More or less. Now do you see why we have to do something?”

He said nothing for several minutes, panting through nerve-jangling surges. He gritted his teeth against a final wave of pain. “Sara.”

“I’ll go check on her. You stay put.”

Ian lurched to his feet anyway, fully intending to go to her himself.

****

Blood. Oh, God, the blood.

Waves of it crashed against Sara. She struggled to breathe, but she was drowning in it. Her chest burned. She thrashed against the gory tide. Every time she tried to call out, the surging waves forced her back under. Help!

A hand descended onto her forehead. She came awake with a scream.

Flintrop snatched his hand away. “I just came in to check on you. How are you feeling?”

Sara sat up and cast a look around her tent. The dig. Shetland. Panic seized her. “Is it finished?”

Flintrop chuckled. “Yes.”

She tried getting out of bed, but he sat on the cot, pushing her back down. “Sara, you’ve worked hard on this project, harder than I’ve ever seen you work. No one appreciates the magnitude of that more than me, you know that. But you’re really running yourself into the ground.”

“I’m all right now. I feel better.” She rubbed her eyes. “I had the most horrible dream.”

“About what?”

She ran her fingers through her hair. “Blood. God, it was awful,” she murmured, more to herself than to Flintrop. She thought about the countless druid sacrifices that had been done to open the ley lines, and shuddered.

Flintrop raised a hand to her face. She felt the gesture and looked up at him, but the nightmare still held her attention. “You’re going to be fine.”

She didn’t feel fine. Nausea was still doing the backstroke in her belly.

The door flap swept back, and there stood Ian. He froze when he saw Flintrop with his hand on her cheek. His expression turned icy. “Is this why I haven’t seen you in half a week?”

Sara came into the present. “What? I don’t even—”

Flintrop released her and stood up. “There’s nothing going on here. She just woke up.”

Ian moved into the tent. Sara noticed her sister hovering outside the doorway. Ian stepped back and left just enough room for Flintrop to leave. “Bygones, huh? Don’t let me stop you from not being here.”

By the set of his shoulders, Flintrop was about to say something nasty. Sara shifted and swung her legs over the edge of the cot. “Alan, don’t.”

Both Ian and Flintrop stared at her.

“He wasn’t doing anything wrong,” she said.

Ian stiffened. The two gave each other a long look, then Flintrop left the tent.

Faith hurried inside and sat down on the cot. “We found the ceremonial bowl that they used for sacrifices.”

“Just give me a second,” Sara murmured. She ran her fingers through her hair, trying to order her still-scattered, still-agitated thoughts, then shoved the blankets aside.

“Sara.” Faith laid a hand on her knee, and Sara looked up. “We need you. Are you well enough for this?”

Sara felt for the amulet hidden inside her shirt. “I’ll have to be. What do we need to do?”

“I read the bowl.”

Sara gripped her sister by the shirt. “You did what?”

Faith pushed her hands away. “I’m fine. I’m here, aren’t I? There are some incantations. We know they needed blood to open the ley line, and we’ll need blood to close it. And—”

“And what?” Sara prompted.

Faith shot a glance at Ian before adding, “I’m going to use my blood.”

“The hell you are!” snapped Sara.

“Hakon said gifted blood can close the ley line,” her sister said.

Ian stepped forward. “Faith, I said we’ll find another way. This isn’t it.”

Sara turned on him. “You knew she was going to try this? When were you going to tell me?” she demanded.

He bristled and came forward another few steps. Every hair on the back of her neck stood on end in response. “If you want to talk about telling people things,” he said, “why don’t we start with Golden Boy out there?”

Her skin prickled as though a mass of ants were crawling down her spine. Surprised, she backed toward the door.

“We haven’t got time for this.” Faith stood up and planted herself between them. “Ian, I need you to help me reconstruct the map from your dream. I need to know exactly where everyone stood. Think you can help me with that?”

“Why didn’t we do it earlier?” he shot back, still glaring at Sara.

“Just help me. The more prepared we are, the better. Sara, the amulet?”

Sara touched the leather lace at her throat, then nodded.

“All right. I have the sword,” added Faith. “Let’s hope that’s enough.”

Sara backed out of the tent before either of them said anything further.

****

Ian sat beside the campfire with Faith, who picked at the last of her dinner. He cast a suspicious glance at the twilight sky. The moon rode ever higher, full and yellow as ancient bones. Everyone around the fire went about their business as if it were a typical night.

He pulled his journal from his coat pocket, then flipped it open, angling it toward the fire to see it better. The first several pages overflowed with birding notes and sketches. He flipped ahead and came upon a shadowy silhouette of Sara as she’d looked the night they’d made love at the inlet, with her hair blowing around her shoulders and the curves of her body outlined by the moonlit water.

Even on paper, she made him crazy to touch her.

Tonight, she had flopped down as far from him as possible, still furious at him for not telling her of Faith’s ridiculous plan for shutting down the ley line.

Worse, she sat beside Flintrop. Ian wanted to jump across the fire and pummel the son of a bitch just for looking at her. He saw Flintrop brush her knee, and all but growled. She didn’t seem to notice. What the hell was wrong with her? She hated him...so she said.

Ian set his jaw and turned to a fresh page, then started sketching a rough outline of the ruin.

Faith leaned toward him, whispering, “Where was the one with the bowl?”

He turned his attention back to the page long enough to put a star at the correct position, then looked back across the camp. Since waking up, Sara had avoided coming any closer to him than shouting distance, but Flintrop seemed to have an all-access pass.

Bastard.

Michael and Callander went by behind them. Ian closed the book and set it down beside him. “What else do we need?”

“Nothing, I hope,” Faith answered. “I’ve done everything I can think of. Now, all we can do is wait.”

Wait. For a death sentence.

Flintrop’s laughter brought Ian’s gaze back across the fire. He and Sara had stood up. Flintrop’s arm curled around her back, and he made a sweeping gesture in the direction of the ruin. She smiled at something he said, and then caught Ian looking. Ian held her stare. Her expression went flat, as though she were looking at a stranger, and then she looked away. Flintrop touched her arm, and she headed away from the fire to her tent.

Flintrop’s gaze slid away from her to Ian...and he smiled.

A white-hot surge of fury hijacked Ian’s senses, and before he knew it, he was on his feet.

“What are you doing?” Faith demanded.

“Settling this,” he snapped, marching toward Sara’s tent.

She’d already disappeared inside. Ian crossed the moor at a fast walk and burst into the tent with his blood boiling.

Sara shot up from her cot, knocking a stack of books off her table in the process. They thumped to the floor by her feet.

“What the hell was that all about back there?” he demanded.

She scowled, then bent and piled the fallen books into her arms. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bullshit, you don’t. He’s all over you!”

She met his glare with an expression of outrage. “Are you out of your mind?” She stood and shoved the books back onto the table so hard that they knocked over a bottle of water. She didn’t bother to catch it. It bounced onto the floor to create a spreading puddle in the tent corner.

“Why don’t you tell me how, all of a sudden, he’s able to have his hands on you whenever he feels like it, and you won’t let me near you?”

“You think I’m sleeping with Flintrop? After what we...? How dare you!”

Oh, he dared, all right. His temper blazed again as though she’d poured gasoline on it. He crossed the tent in two steps and reached for her arm.

She shrieked in pain before his fingers even landed. The air flared in a blue arc and snapped with static. Ian hissed and snatched his stinging hand back. He stared in disbelief at his fingers, and then at her. The taste of copper filled his mouth.

Sara clutched her arm, panting. Her eyes, fear-wide and liquid hazel, raked him from head to foot and back again.

Ian flexed his numbed hand. The electric smell in the air prickled in his nose. “What the hell was that?”

She didn’t answer. He hated the distrustful way she watched him. Contrite, he stepped toward her again, reaching out. “Sara...”

She sprang backward like a spooked deer, still gripping her arm close to her body. “Get out,” she whispered, trembling.

She might as well have screamed it. Ian backed away with his mind spinning. Was it me? Christ. It wasn’t her. He turned on his heel and strode out of the tent.

Finding the camp empty, he crossed the dig and barreled into Faith’s tent.

She spun out of her chair at his entrance, looking ready to pummel him flat. “Jesus, Ian. Are you trying to scare me?” She must have noticed the worried look on his face a moment later, because she stood and reached for his arm. “Are you—”

He sidestepped her grasp, flinging his hands in the air. “Don’t touch me!”

“What?”

“I just shocked Sara. I don’t know what happened. I went to touch her arm and zap, like I hugged a frigging transformer. It wasn’t her, I know it wasn’t. Her eyes didn’t change.” He thrust his smarting right hand under her nose, palm up.

She examined the angry red marks already developing across his fingers. So did he. His throbbing fingertips felt like he’d grabbed a hot pan barehanded.

Faith turned and went to her first-aid kit. Rather than letting her hand the burn pack to him, he motioned for her to drop it on her camp table.

She paused, frowning. He watched her eyes change from blue to silver. She swept his figure once over, angling her head like a quizzical cat. Her mouth opened and snapped shut again.

Ian began to feel like an experiment. He was on the point of telling her to hurry up and figure out what was wrong with him when she reached out and grabbed his hand.

Nothing happened.

“The shock wasn’t you.” She handed him the burn pack.

“If it’s not me, then what the hell is it? She looked like I was going to attack her.”

“Is she okay?” asked Faith.

“Yeah, if you count scared as okay!”

Faith went to her trunk and rummaged through a pile of sweaters to get to a case at the bottom. She pulled it out and withdrew the handheld device within. “Come on.”

They returned to Sara’s tent to find her trying to put the mess on her camp table back into order. Ian hung back in the doorway, shoving a hand in his pocket. He dug the fingernails of his other hand into the burn pack.

Faith went forward without hesitation. Sara retreated before the advance. “Relax,” Faith said, and flipped open the thing in her hand.

Sara frowned at it. “What on earth do you need an electrometer for?”

“I’m finding out what’s going on. The electrical readings around here have been bouncing all over the scale, and I think we’ve found out why.”

“Me?” Sara spluttered. “Since when can I shock people?”

“Ian said it wasn’t you.” When Sara shot him a leery glance, Faith added, “It wasn’t him, either. You can stop eyeing him like he’s going to bite you.”

Sara’s gaze sought his at last. “I’m sorry.”

He looked away with a hostile shrug. The mental picture of Flintrop touching her, brushing against her, and flaunting his nearness to her played over in his head. He itched to hit something, and crushed the burn pack in his fist. The plastic pack protested under the squeeze. He wished it were Flintrop’s neck.

Faith moved closer to Sara. Ian turned his attention back to the matter at hand. Looking dissatisfied with the results from her electrical gadget, Faith studied her sister with those creepy silver eyes. She reached a hand out and passed it across the air between them.

He saw Faith jump in surprise, but she didn’t seem hurt, and he didn’t hear or smell the static fizz from before.

Faith’s brows shot up. Shaking her head, she took her sister by the arm.

Ian tensed for her yelp of pain. Sara recoiled, but nothing seemed to happen. Faith pursed her lips and beckoned Ian forward. He obliged.

The air hissed, and he froze in place.

“Whoa, back off!” Faith dodged in front of him.

He took a careful step backward, and then another. The prickling sensation in his skin faded.

Faith flapped an impatient hand in the air. “All right, just hold it. It’s neither one of you by yourselves. It’s both of you together.” She divided a brooding look between them. “Oh, holy shit.”

“What?” echoed Ian and Sara.

“Sara, didn’t you say Becky had burn marks on her cheek and arm? Finger marks?”

“Are you saying I did it?”

“Of course not!” Faith jerked her chin at Ian. “You’re electrically charged—both of you—just enough so you can’t touch each other. If what’s going on here is what I think it is, we just bought ourselves a whole bunch more problems. This looks like electrokinesis.”

Sara went ghastly white. Her legs buckled, and she collapsed onto her cot. “Flintrop.”

The name sent a wave of ice roiling through Ian’s veins. He flung the burn pack down. “What did he do to you? I’ll f*cking kill him!”

“Wait, just wait!” Faith snapped. “Sara, how do you know it’s him?”

Sara touched a hand to her lips. She avoided his gaze. “He tried to kiss me. I’d be working at the dig, too, and he’d walk past and put a hand on my arm or something. He was building up a charge. Ian, did he touch you today?”

With his blood sizzling, Ian remembered Flintrop’s conciliatory handshake. The friendly clap on Ian’s shoulder when Flintrop offered him the canteen. “Son of a bitch.”

Sara hunched her shoulders. “Who else would want us not to touch each other?”

“Ian, you’d better sit down. There’s more to it,” said Faith, looking grave.

Ian shook his head. “No. He’s a goddamn walking dead man.”

Faith rounded on him. “Don’t you dare leave this tent,” she ordered. “If he touches you, he could kill you!”

He drew up short with fury snarling through his body. “Would one of you please explain this?”

“Electrokinesis is the ability to throw an electrical charge. If you have it, you can touch something and put a charge on it.” Faith gave them both a meaningful stare. “Or someone, apparently.”

“His eyes don’t change,” Ian pointed out. “All day today, the bastard’s eyes were still blue.”

The girls looked up, dismay evident in their expressions. “He wears contacts,” they said together.

Faith pitched the electrometer onto the table. “Damn it, how did I not see it? First, we think we’re the only ones. Now Callander, and Becky, and Flintrop, too.”

“Faith, he’s trying to rebuild the druid order,” Sara blurted. “He’s bringing them together to help open the ley line.”

Faith rubbed a hand across her face. “Ian, your dream about the ceremony. There were four of them. Four druids. That means there has to be at least four now, to reopen the ley line.”

Sara frowned at him. “When did you dream the serpent ceremony?”

“Do you hear me?” Faith interrupted. “Four! Callander, Flintrop, and two others. There are more. Sara, we can’t stop them all.”

Ian turned toward the tent door. “I’ll take care of one of them.”

“Damn it, Ian!” Faith snapped, rushing out of the tent after him.