The Serpent in the Stone

CHAPTER Seven

Faith sprang awake and sat bolt upright in her cot. A pair of books slid off her chest and plopped on the floor of the tent. She shook her head, trying to clear the fog and decipher what had disturbed her.

The air fizzed with a prickling charge that danced along her skin. Fine hairs along her arms stood on end.

A ghost. She felt it clear as day, urgent, almost frantic. She threw aside the covers and stood up. “You,” she whispered, realizing it was the same ghost who’d been trying to contact her since her arrival at Hvitmar. “What is it? Show me.”

Barefoot, she followed the current toward the tent door. The moment she stepped outside, it felt as if someone had jammed an ice pick into her gut. She gasped and doubled over in agony.

The island was breathing.

Faith sank to her knees with a moan, holding her belly, fighting against the currents of energy in the air. The ghost hovered near, now on one side, then on the other. She sensed it moving, but couldn’t concentrate.

An icy chill settled on her shoulder. She gasped again and jerked away from the contact, her skin crawling. She’d communicated with dozens of ghosts in her thirty years, but never had one touched her. Her shoulder stung with the sensation of frostbite. She sucked in a breath and struggled to her feet.

Vibrating with impatience, the spirit drove her to the dig site. She approached the markers at the edge of the ruin, terrified to go on, but dreading the ghost’s touch. The very air trembled around her. She stopped, heaving for breath. “I don’t want to do this.”

The spirit impelled her forward. The air heated behind her with its urgency. Shrinking away from it, Faith stepped toward the first marker.

Buzzing roared in her ears. A lighting bolt of pain ripped through her body. Her breath whooshed out and she crumpled to the ground. Disjointed voices screamed around her. Nausea twisted in her gut.

The ghost touched her shoulder again. Its chill anchored her senses. For a moment, the touch became a single point of stillness in the maelstrom around her. It wants...help.

The other voices screeched again, and the storm of energy swallowed her connection with the ghost. Faith cried out, but could not move. The world spun and went black.

****

A shout tore Sara from her sleep.

Faith.

Sara sprang out of bed and bolted from her tent, ready to annihilate someone with telekinesis. Seeing her sister sprawled on the ground, she rushed forward. “Faith!”

“Sara, no!”

She had a split second to register Ian’s shout before he tackled her. His arm snaked around her midsection, and he hauled her back from the dig.

“What are you doing? Let go!” she shrieked, thrashing in his grip. She tried to shapeshift, but he threw his other arm around her and crushed her against him. She wheezed, distracted, unable to force the change.

Ian’s heartbeat pounded against her back, and his breath churned in her ear. He reached up to her throat, clawing at the neckline of her tank top. She squirmed, but couldn’t break his hold. Grasping the leather lace of her amulet, he jerked, and it broke loose. He released her and staggered back.

Freed, Sara charged toward her sister, then dropped to the ground beside her. “Faith. Faith!”

Dustin and Thomas skidded to a halt before her tent. Dustin drew a rifle on Ian. “Get back!”

Ian stood his ground, clutching his ribs and panting. The amulet swung from his fingers. He eyed the rifle, then looked back toward Sara, his posture rigid.

Dustin cocked the rifle, then trained it again on Ian’s figure. “God damn it, I’ll shoot!”

Sara turned back to Faith, shaking her shoulder with no effect. Near panic, she tried again with the same result. “Faith. Come on, please, wake up!”

Thomas moved toward her. “Sara.”

She spun to her feet and lunged without thinking, reactive, just able to stop her power from surfacing. Thomas caught her. “Get off me!” She struggled, but he grabbed her and held on until she gave up fighting him. Ian’s expression remained unreadable in the near-darkness. Sara wrestled away from Thomas to crouch beside Faith’s body again, stricken.

Clearly calmer than any of them, Thomas bent over Faith, checking her for wounds. He glanced back over his shoulder. “Dustin, put the gun down.”

“The hell I will! What did you do to Faith, you son of a bitch?”

Sara divided a desperate look among Faith’s body, Dustin, and Ian. There was no time, no time for this!

Still catching his breath, Ian crossed his arms and hid the amulet in the crook of his elbow. “I didn’t touch her.”

Thomas gathered Faith into his arms and stood up. “Dustin, I said put the gun down.”

Dustin watched Ian as if daring him to move, then lowered the rifle.

Thomas carried Faith to Sara’s tent. Sara hurried after him, shaking, then burst into the tent right on his heels. Her patience snapped. “Put her on my cot and get out.”

“Excuse me?”

“Out,” she demanded. “Put her down and go.” Squirming with anxiety, she kept her gaze on her sister, looking for injuries, illness, anything, and found nothing. Sara’s entire body screamed for privacy. Whatever had done this to her sister wasn’t physical. I can’t lose you.

Thomas lowered Faith’s body to the cot. “She needs help.”

“I’ve got this. She’ll be all right. Take Dustin with you.”

Thomas gave her a skeptical stare, then backed out of the tent. Outside, she heard him tell Dustin to leave with him.

“What about him?” Dustin asked.

“Go home, Waverly,” came Thomas’s frosty voice. She heard footsteps moving away.

As soon as they faded out of earshot, Sara sat beside her sister. “Come on, you fool,” she murmured, laying a hand on her sister’s forehead. “Did you try to astral project? I swear to God, if I lose you, I’ll get you back, and then kill you.” She lifted one of her sister’s closed eyelids. Faith’s eyes were blue, but unfocused and glassy.

The longer Faith remained in a trance or a state of astral projection, the harder it would be to awaken her. Precious seconds ticked by as Sara tried everything she knew. Applying ice, shaking Faith, holding her hand...none of it worked. After endless minutes, Sara dropped into a chair beside the cot and put her face in her hands. Her mind raced in a million different directions. What now? Panic twisted through her.

“Sara.”

She bristled and blinked away tears. Ian stood in the tent doorway. She shot to her feet, irate. “What do you want?”

Entering the tent, he uncrossed his arms. The amulet dangled, spinning, from his grip.

She took it, examining the broken leather lace. “Why did you do that?”

“Don’t go out tonight. Not wearing that.”

“Why not?” She pressed a hand to Faith’s shoulder again, but her sister didn’t respond. Sara stomped her fears back. She needed a clear head. Faith needed her to have a clear head.

Ian flung a hand up. “Just don’t leave your tent. I don’t know.” He sat in the other chair at the table and frowned. “I’ve been having these nightmares. You had that thing around your neck, and you walked into this light, this—”

“Ley line,” came a hoarse whisper.

Relief washed through Sara, and she spun around to the cot. “Oh, thank God.”

Faith wedged an elbow underneath herself and propped upright. Her features tightened with pain. She clapped a hand over her belly.

Sara helped her to a sitting position. “What happened to you? Are you all right?”

“Minus a few years of my life, maybe. There’s a ley line at the dig...running from the dig site, straight down the island. Ian’s tent is sitting right on it.” Faith reached toward the cooler in the corner of Sara’s tent. “Water.”

Sara stood up, pawed in her cooler for a bottle of mineral water, then handed it over. She moved to her tent door. From the corner of her eye, she saw Ian shift to the edge of his chair as if to stop her. Nothing disturbed the stillness outside. “I don’t see or feel a thing out there.”

Faith drank down half the bottle of water before she spoke again. “You can’t. Take my word for it, it’s there.” She took her hand away from her belly and sucked in a breath as if to regain her focus.

Sara turned around. “I thought ley lines didn’t exist.”

Faith laughed without humor and took another drink. “So did I, until just now.”

“What in God’s name is a ley line?” Ian broke in.

“A band of energy,” Faith explained. “They connect ancient sites all over the earth, like an invisible spiderweb.”

A wary disbelief crossed his face. “If you can’t see or feel it, how did you know it was there?”

“She just knows,” said Sara. Faith gave her a quick, surprised look, and Sara stared back, agitation crawling like ants along her spine. Did Faith really mean to confess her abilities to Ian? She gave a minute sigh, leaving the decision to her sister.

Faith turned back to Ian. “I’m psychic. I can sense things other people can’t.” She finished off the water, then set the empty bottle on Sara’s nightstand.

Ian fixed her with a mutinous look. Sara wondered if this new development would send him packing to Unst after all, and a curious ache settled in her belly. At last, he crossed his arms and asked, “What’s this line for?”

Faith leaned forward and cradled her stomach. “I’m not sure, exactly. All I know is what I’ve read and heard. No one seems to be able to agree whether the lines were there first, or if they popped up when all the old sites were built. Churches, stone circles, castles. The lines seem to connect them. I’ve heard that ghosts use them as some kind of metaphysical highway.” To Sara, she added, “There are dozens of them on this thing. One touched me.”

Sara gaped. Her skin crawled with an imagined chill.

“I don’t know how it happened,” Faith added. “It’s the same one who’s been trying to reach me since we got here. It was angry, upset, something. It pushed me into the ley line. My skin—God, it was like a swarm of wasps. I had the ghost for a second, but then all these voices started roaring in my head—and then I passed out.” She hugged herself as though warding off the remembered sensations.

Sara toyed with the amulet in her hands, thinking of Ian’s earlier warning about wearing it and crossing into the ley line. “We’ve been here all this time, walking back and forth over this whole island, and there was nothing there. Why now?”

Faith pushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. “Beltane? The equinox was today. Who knows? Maybe they only open at certain times, or when you do certain things.”

Ian seemed to absorb that for a moment. “What about my tent?”

Sara stared at him in surprise. No demand for explanations about ghosts? No protest that the possibility was insane?

“You might want to move it,” said Faith. “Supposedly, being on a ley line can make you see things. You can have nightmares. The ghosts can mess with you. Did you see my sister walk a ley line?”

Ian rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know what I saw. It was enough to send me flying down here in the middle of the night, thinking it was real.”

“Well, what happened?” Sara demanded.

His look arrowed through her.

“It killed her, didn’t it?” Faith murmured. “The amulet. Like the vision, Sara.”

Ian remained silent, but his face spoke volumes. Sara swallowed the knot in her throat. As familiar as she was with paranormal gifts, even she found herself doubtful about Faith’s discovery. Why did Ian accept it so readily? She fingered the ridges of the amulet.

Faith labored to her feet. “The ley lines, then. The amulet has something to do with them. Sara, where’s your copy of Beardsley’s Compendium?”

“H-Home, I think.” Sara faltered, trying to sort out her conflicting emotions.

“Never mind. Mine’s in my trunk.” Faith strode to the tent doorway.

Alarmed, Sara moved to stop her. “Where are you going?”

“I’ll be all right.” Faith ducked out the tent door. “The line is fading. I can get through it now. What time is it?”

“After one, I think,” replied Sara.

Faith sighed. “Beltane is officially past. My new least favorite pagan holiday. Happy Spring, guys. I’m going to try to get some rest before sunup.” With that, she left.

Sara hovered at the doorway watching her sister go, trembling when Faith approached the dig. She heard Ian come up behind her, but her gaze remained on the tall blond form marching away across the moor. Not until Faith had almost reached her own tent did Sara turn away. She heaved a shuddering breath. Now that the immediate danger was past, she felt as weak as if she’d drained her gifts.

Ian’s hand came to rest on her shoulder. “Are you going to be okay?”

She strained to compose herself and stared at the amulet in her hand. “She was right. I should have found a way to destroy this thing.” Mechanically, she tied the broken lace back together, then looped the amulet over her head. “Now, I can’t let it out of my sight. Maybe my father was right to have it dismantled. Thank you...for saving my life.”

He cast a doubtful glance out the door, then his features softened. “I’m not sure I did, but you’re welcome. I don’t know how much of this to believe, even when I’ve got proof, Sara. I just didn’t want anything to happen to you.”

She tucked the amulet under her shirt, uncertain what to do with that look in his eyes, less certain where they stood now. “You should probably move your tent.”

“Probably.”

“But you’re not going to.”

Ian shook his head.

“Why not? You heard what Faith said.”

He touched her cheek. “You sure you’re all right?”

The unexpected contact of his skin against hers drove any further questioning out of her head. She closed her eyes, willing the touch to mean more than a simple expression of concern. A lick of flame raced across her skin, so strong she knew he must feel it. “I’m fine.”

He turned to go.

She took a quick step toward him. “Ian?”

He stopped and looked back over his shoulder.

Sara’s heartbeat slammed against her ribs. The word stay caught in her throat. She opened her mouth and hesitated. “Be careful.”

He smiled and left the tent. Her breath rushed out.

****

The next afternoon, Ian sat near the cliff edge with a pair of binoculars and his journal. The falcon circled in the air overhead. Its presence had scared off some of the other birds. Ian couldn’t bring himself to care that day.

He knew he should have been working, but the salt air and sunshine lulled him away from his assignment. He set his journal down. Lying back in the short, windswept grass, he tucked his arms under his head. Cottony clouds rolled across the sky in stately procession. He closed his eyes and let his thoughts drift.

They went right to Sara. Since he’d come upon her naked at the inlet, not a day had gone by that he hadn’t conjured that image in his mind. He almost regretted tossing her the towel so she could cover that beautiful body. If he hadn’t... Well, it was a good thing he had. Whatever she was, whatever she did or could do, he wanted her too much.

He’d held on so long to the conviction that any telekinetic deserved his hatred. One of her kind had murdered his father, and his attraction to her should have been a betrayal of the worst order. Her kind. Like he’d been willing to lump her in with murderers, just because of something she was, something she couldn’t change.

That made him the monster.

He felt like the falcon, whirling first one way and then the other. Wanting her, not wanting her. One minute, he’d almost made up his mind to put her at arm’s length. In the next, he thought of her soft skin, her sigh of surrender when he’d touched his lips to her throat, her laugh, her smile...

“Hi.”

His eyes flew open. Sara stood over him, dimpling. The look sent him into a delirious tailspin.

“Is this a rest break?” She sat down beside him.

He found his tongue. “I’m sick of working today. The terns aren’t busy, I’ve written seven pages on plant life, and Horus is doing cartwheels for my amusement. Sit and watch.”

She lay down with a soft groan, then pillowed her head on her arms. “Let me just tell you how good a lukewarm camp shower feels after a day of dirt and grime. By the end of a project, I usually feel like I’ve been petrified in mud.”

The moment she stretched out beside him, Ian ceased to think rationally. If he rolled over, he would have been on top of her, feeling that incredible body underneath him. His hands itched to touch her and banish his inadequate memories of her skin with the feel of the real thing. He inhaled, almost disappointed when he couldn’t smell cinnamon on the air.

“I came to help you with the falcon project,” she said.

His heated thoughts shattered into pieces. He sat up.

She unfolded her arms and sat up, too. “What? Do you not want the help now?”

“No. Yes, I want the help. I just didn’t—”

“You thought I’d back out.”

He took her hand, surprising both of them. “I don’t want you to do it.”

“Why not?”

How could he tell her what she did to him? Where would he even start? “You don’t have to prove anything to me. And you don’t owe me anything. Besides, I don’t want you getting hurt doing this on my account.” He realized he still held her hand, and released it.

She stared at him for a moment. He couldn’t read anything in that whiskey-colored gaze. At last, she got to her feet. “Do you have a pair of heavy leather gloves?”

“On my trunk in the tent. Why?”

She started toward his tent. He stood up and jogged after her, catching up just as she went inside.

She picked up the right-handed glove and put it into his hand. “I know I don’t have to prove anything to you, but I think we need to do this. I am not dangerous to you. I might even be able to help you.”

He glanced down at the glove. When he looked up again, she’d already left the tent.

Outside, she waited beside one of his tarp-covered shipping crates. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

“How close can I get to Horus before he’ll attack me?”

He didn’t answer.

“Come on, how close? You’d better put that glove on. You’re going to need it.”

Uneasy with doubt, he shoved his hand into the glove. “Forty, fifty feet. But that’s as a human. Are you sure about this?”

“Sure, I’m sure.” She walked toward the cliff edge.

He followed. “Be careful about him. I don’t know what he’ll do if...”

She paused to look over her shoulder at him.

Ian cleared his throat and rubbed his gloved hand through his hair. “...if he thinks you’re just another female falcon.”

“Are you worried he’s going to flirt with me?”

Exactly how did a man get jealous of a bird? “Just be careful, all right?” he shot back.

She paced to the very threshold of the cliff and looked down. Wind swept her hair off her shoulders. He tensed, wanting to pull her back.

“Trust me,” she said, and stepped off the edge.

“Sara!” He lunged for her, but the hem of her shirt slipped out of his reach. His heart wedged in his throat. He dropped to his knees at the cliff edge. Strangling, he dug his fingers into the precipice and watched her fall in a graceful swan dive.

Light burst along the contours of her body. She blurred, and—Flash!—a falcon rolled in midair where Sara had been. The bird soared outward over the water.

Ian sat back with his mouth hanging open. “Sweet mother of Jesus.” The echo of his racing heartbeat pounded through his body.

A long, sharp cry rang out overhead. He looked up. Horus folded his wings and plummeted through the air. Oh, God, he’s attacking her. Unable to look away, he watched as the other falcon—Sara—wheeled to fend off the assault. She gave a cry of her own and spun sideways.

Horus flashed by and climbed higher, only to round on her again. Ian closed his eyes, expecting Horus to knock her from the air the same way he hunted his food. Two hundred miles an hour, he thought, picturing the male’s next attack. She’d never stand the strike.

He heard another series of calls from both of them, and opened his eyes. The birds reeled around one another, soaring past and circling back to do it again. It looked like...

Dancing.

Stunned, he watched them spin and plunge in an aerial ballet. He almost lost track of Sara in their dizzying whirl.

Then they separated. Horus rose into the air and went back to circling. Sara, the larger falcon, swept across the sky toward the cliff.

She sailed closer, dropping her tail and tilting her wings when she reached him. He stood up, remembering at the last minute to raise his gloved hand. She landed on it with a drawn-out chirrup that sounded suspiciously like laughter. Air from her flapping wings gusted against his face. He stared into her large, vivid-green eyes in wonder.

She was beautiful.

Awestruck, he held out his left hand. She gave the chirping sound again and swept her wing against his hand. The springy-soft primaries brushed through his fingers.

She leapt from his hand and fluttered to the ground. The light flashed again, and the next thing he knew, Sara stood beaming in the bird’s place. She launched herself at him and threw her arms around his neck. “I did it! He talked to me! Why did I never try that before?” She giggled and kissed him on the cheek.

Ian’s heart squeezed, and something inside him snapped. Unable to stop himself, he swung her in a circle. He set her down, but couldn’t make himself let go of her.

Still laughing, she pushed her hair back. “It was only in the most basic sense, but we communicated. At first, he was angry that I was in his territory. Then he must have thought I was just a female falcon, like you said—”

Ian felt his smile falter.

“—but I think he realized I was different, so he backed away.” Her face fell. “He’s lonely.”

“Lonely?” Ian echoed, still racing to absorb the weight of what was going on inside him. He ached.

A frown crossed her features. “Before I came back, he called out. It wasn’t so much that I understood the sound, but I had this feeling—isolation. I’ve known that feeling since I was ten years old.”

The sorrow shadowing her expression pulled at him in a way he’d never felt before. He couldn’t stand to see it. Cupping her face in his hands, he kissed her, very gently. “You’re not alone, Sara.”

She smiled at him with a brilliance that squeezed his heart all over again. “Thanks.”