Della’s concentration broke when the police officer burst on the scene. She felt the strength of the ritual waver. James, the Orcadians, Cassandra, Lucas, and Richard had kept their focus, but they had lost Della’s participation and that weakened the force of the magic. She could feel the foul forces swirling around the interior of Maeshowe drawn inward, pressing at the edge of the magical circle.
She struggled to maintain her focus. The Orcadians had warned her that for the ritual to work, for them to switch off the spell MacHugh had set into motion, they’d need every bit of their strength.
She’d started to lose her focus when one of the Orcadian sentries rushed in saying they’d been attacked, and the fire spirit James had banished when they first entered had immediately reappeared and killed the sentry. She’d clenched her eyes and stopped up her ears so as not to witness his horrible death and reassured herself the thing couldn’t make it across the magical circle, that she and her friends were safe as long as they continued with the ritual.
And then that police officer had run in and pointed a gun at them.
She didn’t know much about magic, but she suspected magical circles weren’t bulletproof.
Then the troll appeared and tried to trick him. The man had hesitated and then tried to arrest a genius loci in the semblance of a folkloric creature.
It would have been laughable if it hadn’t put the entire world into grave peril.
When the officer turned his rifle on the troll, several things happened all at the same time.
The troll laughed in the man’s face and leapt forward. The gun went off, and at that range, the bullet must have hit, but the troll seemed unaffected as it pushed the police officer back.
Straight across the protective circle.
The man’s shoe scraped the chalk barrier, erasing it.
A magical creature couldn’t come close, but an ordinary man could destroy the powerful sigils as easily as if they were a child’s drawing on a playground.
The troll laughed and capered with glee, and suddenly the entrance passageway swarmed with them. The fire spirit stepped forward, hands flaring.
James Firth and Richard shouted out a power word at the same time. Force rippled out from the circle like a shock wave. The fire spirit flew back, fading, its lines of fire unraveling, but it did not disappear. The crowd of trolls staggered and stopped in their tracks.
“Close the circle!” Sebastian wailed.
“It doesn’t work that way,” Lucas said. “Once broken, the whole ritual has to be begun again.”
He said something more, but Della couldn’t hear him with that cop blasting away at the fire spirit.
The bullets, of course, did nothing. The fire spirit began to reform.
James and Richard didn’t have the strength to banish it again. Not if they wanted to maintain the push of the ritual to stop MacHugh’s spell.
And if they stopped doing that, the whole effort would collapse, and that poor man killed by the fire spirit would have died for nothing.
Everyone would die for nothing.
She had to do something, but what? She was trying to focus her energy on the ritual the Orcadians had started, a ritual she didn’t understand but could feel in her bones. As they had started, she could feel the ley lines begin to power down, she could feel the toxicity of the earth’s power grid begin to lessen. The ritual was working. She couldn’t stop now. But how could she defend herself if those creatures came rushing at them again?
And they would. The trolls were already regrouping. The fire spirit was glowing brighter, its flaming lines coalescing into a more solid form.
They needed more power if they were going to take care of both threats at the same time.
She turned to Sebastian, who was standing there shaking. He hadn’t participated in the ritual at all. The only reason he was inside the circle was to keep him safe.
His power only comes when he’s in mortal danger. That’s what Richard said.
“Get ready,” she told him as, with a strength born of fear, she grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him at the fire spirit.
Sebastian let out a squawk and stumbled right for the thing. For a moment, Della hissed in terror, thinking she had just killed her ex-boyfriend.
And then Sebastian’s energy lit up like an arc lamp.
It was almost a visible thing, a surge in power so great that it made everyone in the now-useless circle stumble one or two steps away.
Sebastian cried out and pushed at the fire spirit, actually shoved it like it was a normal human being. The spirit flew back against the wall and vanished with a whoosh and a waft of brimstone, leaving a burnt silhouette as the only evidence of its passing.
“Go away!” he screamed. The trolls scattered, running in a disorganized mass for the passageway.
The ley lines convulsed, the ground rocking in a very physical tremor. Della looked up at the ancient masonry as dirt trickled through the gaps in the stone. This monument had stood for thousands of years, but it had probably never been subjected to forces such as those passing through it now.
“Focus!” one of the Orcadians shouted.
The ley line grew in strength, the taint in its power making Della wretch, her knees going weak. Sebastian fell, his face wracked with pain and exhaustion. One of the Orcadians collapsed.
The Orcadians resumed their chanting in Old Norse. The strength of their ritual began to stabilize, pressing down the rising taint of the ley lines.
The nexus redoubled its strength. The network of ley lines acted like a living thing, as if they had sensed Sebastian had fought off the creatures in the tomb and now the lines themselves were summoning the strength to get rid of these interfering humans.
Della focused. Although she had been initiated into the Orcadian Rite, she didn’t know any of the rituals. It was like being handed a degree in electrical engineering and told to fix a power station. She could only try and lend her own force of will to those more knowledgeable around her.
It felt like it was working. The taint of the nexus began to subside. She could feel the power of the ritual push down on it like a wrestler who had finally gotten on top and pinned his opponent down.
But it was slow, grinding work. The pressure of the nexus took all their energy, all their willpower, all their concentration.
And then that concentration snapped as a troll appeared in the middle of the broken circle and leapt onto James’s back, sinking its yellow, snaggled teeth into his neck.
James cried out. He had been the leader of the ritual, the most powerful person chanting, and his focus shattered.
Just like everyone else’s. They sprang back from the creature or glanced around, fearful of another popping into sight. None came. The ley lines were using most of their strength to shake off this troublesome race on their planet and only spared enough to materialize one creature to disrupt the ritual.
It was enough. Everyone was panicking now or trying individual efforts that did not add up to nearly enough power. Only Lucas had the presence of mind to smack at the troll, using his Talent as much as his fist to knock the hideous thing off James’s back…
…only to have it leap on him.
The ley line’s power swelled. Nausea almost overcame Della. A couple of the Orcadians fell to their knees. If the nexus wasn’t stopped right now, Della sensed it would all be over. But the troll had thrown Lucas to the ground and was choking him. He’d die in another couple of seconds.
She could save Lucas or try and stabilize the ritual. She didn’t have the time or the energy to do both.
She tried to do both anyway.
Della took a deep breath, closed her eyes to the chaos around her, ignored her shaking legs and churning stomach, and summoned the very last of her willpower.
She imagined it all balled up in her head. With a sudden effort, she brought it smacking down on the floor like an upside-down nuclear explosion, its force spreading out with unstoppable fury. Even with her eyes closed, she saw the troll get knocked back out of this plane of existence. The rising power of the nexus got clamped down, not gone but temporarily stunned.
And then more power joined her own. She felt Richard and Cassandra add their power to hers, and then some of the Orcadians. Lucas joined in, and Sebastian recovered enough to lend an inexperienced hand. The chanting resumed, but by then, it was barely needed.
Della felt something strange. As the taint in the ley lines withered, she felt another surge of power trying to push it down. It came from the other side of the island. How she could know this, she wasn’t sure. Another group had added its strength to theirs.
The Stromness group, it must be, Della thought. They finally saw who was winning and picked the right side.
Better late than never.
The ley lines eased down in power. The taint disappeared. The network of earth energy ringing the globe became neutral again.
But Della didn’t feel that. She had passed out.
She came to with Lucas holding her and shouting into her face.
“Are you all right? Della, say something!” He said it like he had said it several times already.
“Stop screaming in my face.”
“You did it!”
Now that she was conscious again, she could feel that everything was back to normal. “We did it.”
Richard’s face appeared. “More you than us. I’m surprised you didn’t burn yourself out.”
“I feel… strange,” Della said.
“You do.” Richard frowned. “The magical energy radiating from you feels different somehow.”
“Could someone please tell me what the hell just happened?”
They turned. The police officer stood not far off, still gripping his useless rifle.
Richard grinned. “Good to see you again, DCI Matthews. Isn’t it awful when a repeat offender’s supposedly unbelievable alibis turn out to be true?”
DCI Matthews was slightly paler than your average ghost.
“It’s all real,” he said in a soft voice. “Magic and trolls and demons are all real.”
“Yes, they are,” Lucas said. “I think we’re going to need to sit down and have a long chat.”
The police officer looked around at the scorched body and the black silhouette in the wall.
“I’m going to have a devil of a time explaining this to my chief,” DCI Matthews complained. “You two are trouble to everyone around you.”
“I can vouch for that,” Della said as Lucas helped her to her feet.
“Hey!” Richard cried. “You had fun saving the world. Don’t deny it.”
Della glanced at the terrible sight of the burnt Orcadian man. “It’s not fun at all.”
James walked over to the body and looked down at it. “Poor Harold Ruskin. He was a good man and a good practitioner.” He turned and looked Della in the eye. “He died doing what he loved, doing what he was good at, and he died saving his friends and family. He wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Don’t mourn him, just honor his memory. He’s fully in the spirit world now. Death is terrible, yes, but it is not the end.”
Quite true, a voice said in her head. Della jerked with surprise as she recognized it as Montague’s. I’m off to where I should be now. Thank you for releasing me.
“I didn’t do anything,” she said out loud, drawing curious looks from everyone.
Ah, but you did. I had tied myself to those books. I worried that someone might steal them, so I put my own personal energy into the ward. I forgot to unlink that when we went into danger in London, and when I was pushed to the other side, the link remained. I was stuck between worlds, and that muddled my mind so much I didn’t know what had gone wrong. Then the ley lines tried to reach through to me and force me to do their will. Now that the books are safe and the ley lines calm, I am free.
“Goodbye,” Della said, a lump forming in her throat.
Take care of your friends. They need you.