Graveyards, Visions, and Other Things That Byte (Dowser 8.5) Read online

  The elf on the right was cradling his left arm across his chest. The face, neck, and chest of the one on the left was scored by black slashes. It was an easy guess that their wounds had been inflicted by Beau.

  Energy I could see but not feel from behind the wards shifted. As it did, Beau transformed into his human visage.

  The elves stumbled a step to either side, then stilled, waiting for an attack that didn’t come. Beau lay curled on his side. Naked. And wounded enough that his magic had forced the transformation on him, even while unconscious.

  But he was still alive.

  The pain in my chest eased, replaced with a cool, detached ache.

  The elves closed the space between themselves and Beau again. The one on the left flicked his sword downward, making it somehow lengthen before my eyes. Then he laid it across Beau’s neck. Both elves regarded me steadily with their dispassionate, glistening green eyes.

  I laughed. The sound was terrible even to my own ears. “They shouldn’t have come at night.”

  “No, Rochelle,” Tess said.

  I reached for the premade spells on the windowsill, then paused, contemplating them for a moment. I would leave them for Tess and Gary.

  “You’ll remember to use these?”

  “Yes,” Tess said, speaking through the tears pouring down her cheeks. “Yes, yes. But you aren’t going out there, Rochelle.”

  “I am.” I headed out of the room, toward the front entranceway.

  Tess moved alongside me, pleading. “This wasn’t what the witches set up … Scarlett said the house wards would hold better than the perimeter wards, because you live here. You and Beau fuel them every day. The elves can’t get in here.”

  Gary loomed behind Tess, silent.

  “Exactly,” I said, pausing with my hand on the front doorknob. “They need me to step out. So they’ll kill Beau to make that happen.”

  “Beau didn’t want you going out, Rochelle,” Tess said, still trying to remain somewhat collected and rational. “He’d want you to protect the baby. Wait for the witches, for Jade.”

  “The witches aren’t coming, Tess. Not quickly enough. And Jade isn’t coming at all. There’s just us. Just me.”

  Tess touched my shoulder lightly. “Please, my girl.”

  I turned back to her then. Taking in her silver-and-blond-streaked hair, the dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks. My adoptive mother. My chosen parent. Doing exactly what she was supposed to do, what I’d secretly hoped she’d do. Protecting me.

  I smiled. “I love you. I’ll be right back. With Beau.”

  Tess’s face crumpled. “No, no. Gary? Gary, stop her.”

  Gary settled his arm across his wife’s shoulders. “I’d go out for you, Tess. Hell, I’d go out right now if I thought I wasn’t just going to be in Rochelle’s way.”

  Tess inhaled with a shudder, then wiped the tears from her face. “All right. All right, then.” She balled her hands into fists, then marched back into the front living room, going for the spells.

  Gary glanced after his wife, grinning despite himself. Then he touched me lightly on the shoulder. “You get Beau over the threshold. We’ll be ready for you. For them.”

  I nodded, taking in Gary’s steadfast determination and allowing it to buoy my own resolve. “I need your knife, please.”

  He immediately tugged a small Swiss Army knife out of the pocket of his jeans and held it out to me, tiny in the palm of his big hand.

  I took it and tucked it away in my back pocket. “I’ll be right back.”

  “I know.”

  I turned, opening the door before I could think about my hastily cobbled-together plan any further. Before I could start to doubt the wisdom of my next move.

  I’d seen what was set to happen after this coming moment. I believed that I was taking the first steps to change the future I’d captured in my sketchbook. That vision was recorded, but not contained. It was still malleable — or so I hoped.

  I stepped out of the house. It was cold, but the stars were still peering through swathes of dark cloud overhead. The brick underneath my socked feet was gray. I traversed the three steps to the front path, not bothering to look up. The path was also brick, laid by Beau in the fall. He was planning to plant an edging along either side in the spring. But for now, there was nothing between me and the lawn, between me and the elves standing in my front yard.

  The door closed behind me. I heard the lock turning. Good man, Gary. A good chosen father.

  I stepped onto the grass, instantly soaking my socks.

  I looked up.

  The elves had turned to face me. Beau was still lying unconscious between them. The elf on the left still held his glass blade across Beau’s neck, against his human skin.

  I lifted my face to the dim starlight. To the dark night spreading all around us. There were no trees near the house, no deep shadows in which to hide. But that didn’t matter.

  Because the vision had already shown me how to vanquish the elves. I just had to read between the smudged lines.

  “You shouldn’t have come at night.”

  The elves didn’t respond.

  I took another step away from the protective magic coating the house behind me. That magic might not have been my own, but I understood how it worked. And I didn’t want to risk compromising the protections that stood between the elves and Tess and Gary.

  I unzipped my hoodie, pulling it off and exposing my rounded belly. I dropped it to the ground, leaving only my tank top and my dual arm-sleeve tattoos between me and the early-morning chill.

  The elves glanced at each other.

  My strip show was presumably confusing to them. But if I was going to call on the sorcery embedded in the tattoos, I needed my arms bare.

  Though I felt a dark certainty that told me I wouldn’t need that magic. It wasn’t going to come to that.

  I pulled Gary’s knife out of my pocket, flipping open its inch-and-a-half-long blade.

  The elf on the right snorted. He was still favoring his arm.

  They had probably expected me to negotiate. But I wasn’t great with words. I wasn’t witty or snarky. I wasn’t a diplomat. That wasn’t my role. Others did that much better than I ever would.

  They’d been sent to kidnap an oracle. But they were going to have to contend with a dark sorcerer instead.

  I sliced my right forefinger with the tip of Gary’s knife. A tiny drop of blood welled, black in the low light.

  “Like I said. You shouldn’t have come at night.”

  I pressed the spot of blood to my wedding ring. And as I did, I triggered a connection that had remained intact even when Jade had destroyed its anchor — when she’d made Beau and me our wedding bands. It was a connection that had once been bound within the gold and diamonds that my grandmother, Win, had worn in the form of a brooch. But even with that brooch remade, the power it had once held had somehow remained tied to me. Tied to the blood that ran in my veins.

  I probably didn’t even need to bloody the wedding ring at all, except that it made a powerful focus for my intention.

  For my summoning.

  I had thought the connection was broken. I’d thought that Jade remaking the brooch into the rings would have destroyed it. But the vision my mother sent me had shown me what I needed to know. What I needed to do.

  A demon ripped through the darkness behind me, tearing through dimensions to answer my call. I could already feel its hot breath on my neck and shoulders.

  The elves stumbled back a step, both of them raising their swords.

  The demon curled its taloned, scaled fingers around my shoulders, shifting upward on its hind legs until it towered over me. Its red-eyed gaze was trained on the elves.

  “Protect Beau,” I said.

  The demon released me instantly, shifting through the front yard like a dark ghost.

  The elf with the broken arm vanished without a sound. The second elf pivoted to defend the first, but found himself slashing at
empty air.

  The body of the first elf dropped to the ground a few feet away. He was still alive. Barely. The second elf spun and spun, looking for an opponent but seeing nothing.

  Then he turned toward me, charging wildly. Hair streaming back from his determined face, he sliced forward with his sword. Trying to decapitate me? Perhaps I’d been wrong about the elves’ intentions.

  The demon snatched him out of the air, then practically bit his head off with a single chomp.

  The elf didn’t make a sound.

  The demon dropped him at my feet, like an offering. Then it hunkered down to steadily gaze at me with its slitted red eyes, emanating contentment.

  The first elf was trying to crawl away.

  The demon glanced in that direction, then back at me, opening its toothy maw in a deviously playful replica of a smile.

  The first elf gained his feet and started running.

  The demon loped after him, its pace steady but not at all rushed.

  I stepped over the body of the elf who had tried to attack me, crossing to Beau. I crouched next to him, laying my hand on his chest. He was alive, and taking in long, deep, healing breaths.

  The demon returned. But it was dragging two elves behind it, rather than just the one that had fled. The angle of the third elf’s head suggested his neck had been snapped.

  So Beau had gone up against three of them, killing one elf and maiming two. A fierce, completely stupid, utterly vicious pride flooded through me, taking my breath away.

  They’d come here. To my home. With only three elves. They had underestimated us.

  And they would do it again.

  The demon hunkered down across from me. Its jagged-toothed maw was dripping with a clear, viscous liquid that I assumed was elf blood.

  Rochelle.

  Its voice sounded in my mind, contented and pleased.

  A shiver skittered up my spine.

  The demon reached out, gently caressing my face as if it had missed me. Mine.

  I nodded, acknowledging the connection but not thanking it outright.

  The demon’s eyes glowed a deep red.

  Beau groaned, opening his eyes. “Damn it …” But whether he was cursing me, the situation, or the demon looming over him wasn’t clear.

  The demon shifted its attention over my shoulder, back toward the second elf it had dropped near the path. Then it deliberately drew my attention to the other two elves sprawled on the grass behind it.

  Mine?

  “Yes,” I said, as mildly as I could suggest such a thing. “Take them with you when you go home.”

  Home? Now?

  “Yes, please. I’ll call you when I need you.” Again, I swallowed an innate desire to thank the demon for slaughtering sentient beings at my request. But even I couldn’t ignore my own use of the word ‘when.’ Not ‘if.’ When I next summoned the demon. When I next asked it to kill for me. Again.

  And when I asked it to protect my child above all else? Was that the next ‘when’? The eventual, destined ‘when’?

  I shook off that dark thought. Focusing on the present was the best way to unmake the future.

  The demon leaned toward me, then inexplicably tapped its chin on the top of my head. I curled my hand around Beau’s, and he squeezed me lightly in acknowledgement. A heavy silence settled around us.

  Then the demon’s shudder-inducing chuckle sounded in my mind, and it shifted into the darkness of the cool early morning. First one elf, then two disappeared. More energy bloomed behind me. I glanced over my shoulder to see that the third elf was gone.

  I waited, feeling the warmth of Beau’s hand in mine. I slowly became aware of my wet socks and chilled arms. Still, I waited.

  Nothing else appeared out of the darkness. The elves and the demon were gone.

  For now.

  “I thought about loading the bodies into the truck, then taking them to Pearl,” I said.

  “Fuck, Rochelle.” Beau squeezed his eyes shut. “Holy fucking shit. That’s … that’s …”

  “You’re the one who practically tore one of their heads off.”

  “That in no way equals you feeding three of them to your pet demon.”

  I smiled at him.

  He squeezed my hand again, then offered me a weary smile back.

  Like me, Beau had assumed that Jade had severed my connection to the demon when she destroyed Win’s brooch at my request. But he didn’t bother chastising me for calling the demon to our rescue. Didn’t even question how I’d done it. Because that wasn’t how we were together.

  “Can you move yet?” I asked, shivering.

  “If you help me, yes.”

  Beau rolled to his side, then pushed himself up onto his knees. I gained my feet, leaning down to put his arm over my shoulder. The ivy tattoo on my right arm lifted up and twined around both our arms.

  Beau grunted. But when I steadied myself to take his weight, he wasn’t as heavy as I expected. The ivy was somehow helping me to lift him.

  By the time we retrieved my hoodie and made it to the path, Beau was practically walking on his own. Shifters healed quickly. Thankfully. Because there was no way our day wasn’t just getting started.

  A second vision hit me just inside the door. Tess was reaching for me, relief etched across her face. Beau was leaning in the doorway. The night was an endless swath of darkness behind him. Behind us.

  The white mist of my oracle magic took my sight without warning, flooding through my body, toes to forehead. Overwhelming everything — sight, sound, taste, and touch. I arched up into the onslaught, desperately trying to let it flow through me. Fighting it would make it worse, and if I fell, Beau would catch me, wounded or not.

  The mist instantly resolved into a golden-haired woman standing over a body. Relief flooded through me, as for the briefest of moments, I thought I was finally seeing Jade. I thought this vision was a confirmation that the dowser still walked the earth. But I realized that the woman’s hair was a darker blond and longer and curlier than Jade’s.

  Then she looked up, pinning me with her red-eyed gaze.

  She was in full vampire mode, fangs on display and fingers flexed. Ready to rend and tear, to rip her prey’s heart from its chest and consume it.

  “Jasmine …” I whispered.

  Pearl Godfrey was lying sprawled at the vampire’s feet. Unmoving … unconscious … her skin almost as gray as her hair …

  Dead?

  The vision collapsed into mist, then my sight returned.

  I was still standing in the entranceway. Beau was holding one of my arms, and Tess the other.

  “Living room,” Beau snapped, trying to gently prod me forward.

  I resisted moving. “No. No. We … we have to go.”

  “You’ll need to draw,” Tess said, her face tight with concern.

  “Go?” Beau echoed. “You’re not leaving the property. You’re not leaving the house, not until the witches come and fix the wards.”

  I straightened up, standing under my own power. A cool surety replaced the terror that had been rekindled by the vision. I met Beau’s gaze, the green of his shifter magic still overwhelming the dark aquamarine of his eyes.

  He straightened, stiffened. His expression blanked from whatever he saw in my look.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He shook his head, ready to deny whatever I was going to say.

  “The witches aren’t coming. We have to go. We have to save Pearl Godfrey.”

  “Pearl?” Tess murmured sadly. She’d had tea with the head of the Convocation, twice at our house and once at Jade’s bakery. She liked the elder witch.

  Beau’s expression turned stony, obstinate. “Text your warning. Sketch the vision, then ask Blossom to take it to Pearl.”

  I laid my hand on his chest. “This is the next step.”

  Tension twisted through his body. I understood his struggle. He was already hurt, and he was scared. Not just for me. He was scared for the baby.

 
“Whatever we need to do,” I murmured, quoting him. “Whatever it takes. Magic wills me this way.”

  He closed his eyes, trying to deny his own words.

  “Beau …” I whispered, feeling utterly terrible for forcing his decision. “Don’t make me go alone.”

  His eyes flew open. They were back to their normal aquamarine. He pressed his hands to my face briefly. “Never, never. Okay … you need shoes … your bag …”

  “I’ve got it,” Tess said, already heading for the main stairs. “I’ll double check that Rochelle has an extra sketchbook and two sets of new charcoals.”

  “I’ll make sandwiches,” Gary said gruffly. Then he laid a hand on my shoulder, telling me with that simplest of gestures that he loved me.

  Before I could reciprocate, he turned and hustled back to the kitchen.

  I turned to Beau. “I’m sorry.”

  “Stop saying that. You know I don’t need to hear it.” He kissed me tenderly. “But I am going to need food. A lot of food.”

  “There’s beef jerky in your stash drawer.” I was a vegetarian, but Beau’s shifter metabolism practically demanded meat. I enjoyed buying him treats — mostly jerky and Oreos — and tucking them in a kitchen drawer for him to discover.

  He grinned. “Thank you.” Then his expression became grim. “Pearl?”

  I nodded.

  “Day or night?”

  “Night. Or early morning.” Then I pushed through my natural inclination to constantly question myself, to stop myself from jumping to conclusions about the visions. I made a guess, based on how the magic had arrived and departed so quickly. “Soon. Before the night’s done. Based on the speed of the vision … the tenor of the magic.”

  “Okay. Okay. Text a warning, just in case the witches are paying attention. And … I’ll get some clothing.”

  I nodded.

  Beau shut the front door behind us, then headed up the stairs. I watched him go, desperately wanting to simply admire the view of his naked backside but knowing it wasn’t the time.

  “Beau?”

  He paused, turning back halfway up.