Chapter 6

6

GAbrIEL

S omething was wrong—very wrong. The vibrations of the ley lines, usually subtle and barely there, were suddenly impossible to ignore. It was like the difference between someone gently pressing a piano key and someone throwing an anvil directly onto the wires. It felt close, just on the edge of vampire territory.

I made a split-second decision. Something in my gut was telling me I had to investigate, and I had to do it quickly. I ran, legs pumping furiously as I tore through the trees in the direction of the disturbance. It was like I was being pulled forward by an invisible chain anchored behind my ribs.

Soon, I came up against the barrier where the woods changed into something darker and more twisted. I'd come across the Ravening Vale a few times before and tried to avoid it whenever possible. But then that feeling in my chest tugged at me again, and I braced myself and kept running. I pelted through the woods, ignoring the ghoulish scenery and the branches that tried to snare me.

I burst out into a clearing filled with flowers the color of a barely risen moon. On the other side of the clearing, a massive statue was unfolding itself, clambering to giant stone feet. Clutched in one of its hands was a woman with a familiar head of chestnut hair.

It was a good thing I didn't technically need to breathe, because it felt like my breath had been knocked out of me.

"Evangeline!" a woman yelled from the base of the statue.

Evangeline didn't reply. She'd gotten one hand free and was tracing a complex pattern in the air. As she did, the tiny waterfall trickling down from the cliff above began to flow toward her, wrapping around the statue's gigantic stone fingers. Then Evangeline clenched her own hand into a fist, and the water froze solid, expanding enough to force the stone hand to loosen slightly.

It was just enough for the witch to squirm free. Unfortunately, she was several stories up in the air, and as soon as she managed to free herself from the statue's grip, she plummeted down toward the unforgiving ground, sparkling with fragments of ice.

I moved without thinking. In a split second, I was across the clearing, arms outstretched. The witch fell into them, and she blinked up at me in surprise.

She was very warm, and I watched the line of her throat move as she swallowed.

"Thanks," she said as I set her down carefully.

Before I could reply, she shoved me hard. Too surprised to resist, I stumbled backward, barely keeping my balance. A massive stone fist crashed down right where I'd been standing.

"Have you lost your mind?" I had to shout to be heard over the sound of stone on stone.

The woman with Evangeline swore loudly and fired a bolt of something bright green at the statue's leg. If it did anything, the statue didn't let it show.

"Sane as ever!" Evangeline said, and I watched with absolute dismay as she pulled herself up onto the statue's wrist and began waving her arms in the air. The statue's glowing eyes pivoted to look at her.

"What are you doing?" I yelled. "Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

"It's looking at me!" Evangeline yelled back.

"Yes, I can see that! Monsters frequently look at the thing they're about to obliterate!"

"She's checking how it's tracking her movement!" the other witch called out. She'd backed away from the statue and was rummaging through a bulky, black leather bag, pulling out bottle after bottle of strange substances and throwing them at the statue's feet. Thick vines began to sprout up out of the ground, tangling around one giant stone ankle.

The statue began to raise its arm, and Evangeline jumped down, landing in the wildflowers.

"I'm going to need to get closer," she said grimly.

"You're insane. You are actually insane," I said, more to myself than to her. She flashed me a sharp grin I knew immediately I'd be spending a lot of time thinking about.

"If it's looking at us, not just sensing us, that means I can blind it," Evangeline explained, rummaging in her pockets. The statue tried to swipe at her, but I shoved at the massive stone hand, pushing it out of the way. Even with my vampiric strength, I wouldn't be able to take this thing on directly, but if I was clever about it and used momentum against it…

Evangeline pulled two small spools of wire and string out of one pocket, and a flat gray stone out of another. Moving so quickly that my eyes could barely track the motion of her fingers, she twisted a net of the thread and wire around the stone, then murmured a few words to it.

"I can use this to make a sphere of darkness, but it'll only be about fifteen feet across, so I need to get it as close to this thing's face as possible. I'm going to try to climb up it again."

"Again?!" I managed.

Evangeline shot me a sour look.

"Are you going to stand around questioning my judgment, or are you going to help?" she asked, throwing up a shimmering shield just in time to block another blow from the statue. It was silvery-blue and lasted just long enough to protect her before flickering out of existence.

"Can't you use magic to move it where you need it to go?" I asked.

"Short answer? No," she said, then crouched like she was about to start sprinting toward the statue's entangled leg.

I put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. "Give me the spell."

"Wh—" she began, but I cut her off.

"Quickly!"

As soon as she had passed the wrapped stone to me, I reared my arm back and threw the stone toward the statue with all my strength. My aim was true, and I hit my target exactly as I'd hoped to. The stone landed in one of the creature's horrible mouths. An orb of pitch black surrounded the thing's head. The statue began clawing at its own face, its elongated fingers disappearing into the darkness.

Evangeline gave me an assessing look. "Nice shot."

"Thanks," I said breathlessly.

"So, this is him?" the other witch called between firing off spells.

"Isabella, I'm begging you to not be weird about this," Evangeline called back, and Isabella laughed.

"We should go while it's distracted," I said, although I didn't expect them to listen to me.

"Not yet," Evangeline said. "I need to get that piece of metal on its lower lip."

I looked at the statue, which was swinging its lanky arms around to try to find us. "How important is it, exactly?" I asked.

"Important enough to be worth the fight," Evangeline said firmly.

I looked her in the eye, and her gaze was unwavering and confident.

I sighed. "Do we need to kill it or just immobilize it?"

"Immobilizing it should be enough," she said. "I just need a picture of the inscription on the metal."

I stared at the statue thoughtfully. "I don't know how much I'll be able to hurt something made of stone, but I can draw its focus so the two of you can have space to work."

"I think I have a plan," Evangeline said. "Can you get up the cliff?"

The cliff was jagged white stone with plenty of handholds. I nodded. "It shouldn't be a problem."

"Perfect," she said. "Once you're up there, I need you to get its attention, then I'll drop the darkness spell. Once we get this thing trapped, I'm going to need you to get a picture of the inscription."

I ran for the cliff and clambered up quickly. Standing at its full height, the statue was tall enough that it was shoulder height to the cliff. There was a tearing noise as it broke free from the vines binding its leg, and the two witches began to fire spell after spell at it, slowly driving it backward toward the cliff face.

"Now!" Evangeline shouted once it was only a few yards away from me. I hefted the biggest stone I could find and threw it at the creature's head. I couldn't see where its face was in the sphere of darkness, but I heard the solid crash of the rock connecting with something. The statue turned to face me with a sound like an avalanche, and Evangeline dropped the darkness spell.

All five of the statue's glowing eyes locked onto me, but before it could reach out, there was a massive rumbling. Evangeline had twisted up two mounds of earth around the statue's feet, reaching up to mid-shin. She made a gesture, and the mounds slid backward, unbalancing the statue. It flung one huge arm against the cliff to try to steady itself, and that was when Isabella swung into action. She pulled thick, twining tree roots from the cliff face that wrapped around the statue's wrist, its neck, grabbing onto any part of it they could find purchase on. Then they pulled, yanking the statue forward.

The great stone creature was pinned, its legs dragged out behind it, and its arms bound to the cliff. Its neck was bent at an unnatural angle, its chin resting on the lip of the cliff right in front of me. Both witches were visibly straining with the effort of keeping it pinned. I was distantly aware that I was shocked, but I pushed that aside. There would be time for that later.

I snapped half a dozen pictures of the markings on the metal in quick succession, briefly checked to make sure at least one of them wasn't blurry, then leaped down the cliff, skidding down the stones.

"I've got what you needed," I said, rushing over to the panting witches. There was the sudden sound of tortured wood splitting behind me. When I glanced back, I saw the statue had managed to tear its hand free. "Time to go, don't you think?"

We ran through the woods toward the city. Evangeline took the lead, and I took up the rear. With my senses, it would be easier for me to tell if something was following after us, and with the witches in front, I wouldn't accidentally outpace them.

As soon as we crossed the border from the Ravening Vale into the normal woods, we stopped to give the witches a chance to catch their breath. In a shady area at the base of a gigantic tree, Evangeline and Isabella both collapsed down onto the roots.

"So," I said, once they'd taken long, desperate gulps from water bottles Isabella had pulled from her bag. "Would anyone care to tell me what the point of that was?"

"That thing was guarding a prophecy about the artifact I'm looking into," Evangeline said, pushing her sweaty hair out of her face. Even after a fight, she looked radiant. I tried not to stare directly at her, but it didn't help. "Speaking of, I'm going to need to see those pictures you got."

I pulled them up and handed over my phone obligingly. "Don't look at my other pictures."

"What, do you have pictures of all the humans you drain?" Isabella asked.

I stared at her, trying to find the energy to explain that I didn't feed on humans. "No," I said finally. "I have pictures of other things." There was absolutely no way I was going to explain the number of pictures I took of myself. Without being able to use mirrors, pictures were the easiest way to see how I looked, and I never remembered to delete them.

Evangeline, bent over the screen, ignoring us. "I don't recognize the script," she murmured. "But maybe Marcus can translate for me?"

I went to her side so I could look at the picture over her shoulder. "There's no need for that," I said. "It's Glagolitic script. A variant of Old Church Slavonic."

"You can read this?" Evangeline asked, looking up at me.

"I can," I confirmed. "It's one of the languages my mother prefers to write in. A holdover from her days in the Byzantine empire."

I perched on the root next to Evangeline and looked closer at the image.

"It's complicated," I admitted. "I might need some time to translate it properly. With prophecies there are often double meanings, so I'll need to be careful with it. How important is it that I try to preserve the rhyme scheme?"

"I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's not very important," Isabella said.

Evangeline was looking at me oddly. As soon as I met her eyes, she looked away, and the back of her neck went faintly pink. She had a birth mark in the shape of a crescent moon curving around one of the delicate knobs of her spine.

I forced myself to look back at the phone. "Either way, I'd like to make sure my translation is accurate. Perhaps I could translate it tonight, then stop by your office in the morning?"

"I mean, if you wouldn't mind," Evangeline started, but Isabella nudged her with an elbow.

"That would be great," she said firmly. "Evangeline would be really grateful for your help."

"And in the meantime, you should avoid any more excursions into the Ravening Vale," I said. "This place would gladly devour a witch as powerful as you, Ms. Summers."

"The Ravening Vale?" Evangeline said. "Witches call it the Valley of the Forgotten."

"My people tell their little ones horror stories about it," I said. "They say that the Ravening Vale was created by witches to track and consume runaway vampires."

"And you went wandering around in it anyway?" Isabella asked.

"I wasn't wandering. I could tell something was very wrong, and I had a responsibility to make sure it wasn't a threat that could harm my people." I glanced up at the sky and frowned. "We should start moving if you want to make it back to the city before nightfall."

We parted ways soon after, with the witches going toward the city proper, and myself heading for vampire territory. Despite the fight, I felt surprisingly good. I'd had a direct role in something. I had taken action—real, direct action—and it had repercussions with the potential to actually last.

As soon as I got home, I went straight to my study. I moved aside stacks of papers—all the proposals that my father had ignored—and cleared space to start in on the translation. I had a lot of work to do if I wanted to have it ready by morning.