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.