Eighteen

 

My shadow magic writhed deep within me as the car slowed further and brought us to a stop outside of a rundown barn with a corrugated steel roof. The darkness flickered and rippled around the edges of the building and set my teeth on edge. The rain had eased somewhat, but there was still a blurriness to our surroundings. My ears pinned back, and I allowed my wolf side forward to better sharpen my senses. Something was very wrong there. Could the ritual have gone better than Saoirse and Alasdair had assumed?

A small man edged out into the rain from the darkness of the barn. He put his hand above his eyes to shield them from the rain before he gestured to us.

"That must be our contact. Should I get you an umbrella, or will you survive the run?" Alasdair said with a grin.

I narrowed my eyes at him before I shot out of the car and ran to the barn. The feeling of the shadow hit me before I got to the doorway. It stole my breath away and almost made me double over with the shock of it. I stood straight and fixed a polite smile on my face to cover the agitation I felt. No one could know.

"Seamus, I assume," Alasdair said to the small man with flame-red hair.

Seamus was looking between us rapidly while his hands did a quick fluttery dance on his thighs.

"Can I go now? You're here, the thing's inside," he asked in a thick accent.

Alasdair nodded, and Seamus ran out into the rain and across the road. He had smelled human and so was likely a friend of the Guardians, or perhaps just a poor man that had gotten caught up in something dark and wicked.

Alasdair pulled a small jar out from his pocket and dipped a finger in a very strong-smelling salve within in. He reached out to me with the stuff on his finger. I curled my lip.

"I'm quite capable of applying it for myself," I growled.

He stepped into my space and smeared it just under my nose.

"And where would the fun be in that?" he growled back.

He applied the paste to himself and opened the crooked barn door to reveal the mess within. A series of soft lights had been hung on the walls. The pale-yellow light slipped over the rough floor and pooled at the edges of the ritual site. It couldn't penetrate the heart of it, leaving the smudges of blood and remains of Robert in semi-shadow. My stomach began doing somersaults. I'd never seen anything like it. I mean, I'd cleaned up rogue lycan kills, and they were bloody, but this was something else. It felt like Robert's final moments, the absolute agony of it, filled the air.

Alasdair stepped into the space with his back straight and his expression neutral. I took his lead and tried to make myself useful. I wanted to be a Guardian, to make a difference. This was the path I wanted to walk.

Alasdair took the right-hand side of the barn, I took the left. The floor was uneven packed earth. Even through the salve, the stench of death was palpable. It coated my tongue and raised my hackles. The sigils meant nothing to me, so I left those for Alasdair and looked in the nooks and crannies for something that could have been missed. The rain dribbled down the wall of the far corner and was beginning to turn the floor there to soft, dark mud. Something about it tugged at the shadow within me, making it very difficult to focus on where I was putting my feet. I drove the magic down deeper inside of me and mentally wrapped it in tight bindings. That was the last place Alasdair could find out about it.

The shadow was tightly bound, but I could still feel the tugging sensation. Walking over to the corner, I peered at the mud trying to see if there was anything there. I was ready to shrug it off when I saw something pitch black. It was pressed up against the wall and almost hid from the light. Crouching down, I leaned over to get a closer look at it without touching it. The goddess knew I didn’t want to risk getting any shadow magic on me. Alasdair came and crouched next to me. He looked at me and followed my line of sight. His shoulder pressed against mine, which brought a feeling of calm and safety that I both resented and appreciated.

“What is it?” I asked him, keeping my hands close to my body, not wanting to risk being too near it.

“A shadow bead,” he said, reaching down with a pencil to poke it.

The bead was about the size of my fingernail and rolled under the pencil’s probing to reveal an engraving.

“Won’t that engraving be unique to the church it came from?” I asked with a grin.

We had a lead! Alasdair nudged me gently with his shoulder and pulled out a small plastic bag which he put the bead into.

“Yes, it will. Well done, Niko.”

He held the bead up to the light and revealed the engraving to be a pair of circles sitting close together with a small chain joining them. I wrinkled my nose. Something about it set my teeth on edge. I stood and shook the feeling off. It had been used in the ritual that took the poor wolf’s life; of course I didn’t like it.

“Were the sigils as you expected?” I asked.

Alasdair pocketed the bead and frowned.

“No, there was a sigil here that had blurred in the photo. It links into chaos. Come and look, I’ll teach you.”

The calm left the moment he stepped away from me, leaving me torn. Did I want to be near the infuriating wolf to catch a break, or was encouraging him and his tactile nature too big of a price to pay for a little calm?

I remained a couple of steps away from him as he walked me around the ritual site, where I studiously looked away from Robert’s remains. The shadow sigils were formed of broad ribbons and soft curves, whereas the chaos ones were sharp and made of many thinner lines. The rest of the sigils were unusual designs that Alasdair didn’t recognise.

“So, what does this mean?” I asked.

Alasdair put his hands in the pockets of his pants and looked over the sigils once more, his back rigid and his expression one of deep thought.

“I’m not sure, but I suspect it’s far worse than we initially thought.”