Graveyards, Visions, and Other Things That Byte (Dowser 8.5) Page 13

  “It’s Jasmine … I think we might be going up against Jasmine.”

  Beau nodded curtly, seeming completely unfazed at this revelation. Then he continued upstairs.

  I pressed my left hand against the wall, feeling magic stir through the barbed-wire tattoo running the length of my arm. Jasmine was a vampire. Newly made, but — as I understood it — with the blood of the executioner running through her veins. She could walk in the sunlight. She was likely stronger than Beau.

  But she wasn’t stronger than both of us.

  And she certainly wasn’t a match for my demon.

  I retrieved my hoodie from where it had fallen to the tile floor, bending with some difficulty. I didn’t want to call the demon again, but I would if it was necessary. I’d already proven I’d do anything to protect Beau. And I couldn’t even fathom the dark depths of what I would do to avoid the future I’d sketched for my child.

  I was just the same as my mother before me, I realized suddenly. The way she had run from the future she’d seen for me — the way she’d thwarted the vision of what I would become if my grandmother raised me.

  But for my own daughter? I would become the woman rendered in black ink by my mother’s steady hand before I was even born. The dark sorcerer with the demon and the whip. I would become her in an instant, if that was what it took.

  With Beau beside me, though, I could hope … I had hope … that it wouldn’t come to that.

  I tugged on my hoodie and removed my wet socks, heading into the kitchen to help Gary pack sandwiches and carrot sticks in a paper bag.

  We had the head of the Convocation to rescue and a dark future to thwart. Food was a good idea.

  I sketched while Beau drove north through the city at speed, both of us guessing that Pearl’s house on the waterfront was our destination. As I captured the vision of Jasmine and the elder witch in my notebook, I caught a glimpse of the wrought-iron gate at the top of Pearl’s driveway and was able to confirm that assumption.

  Point Grey was still relatively quiet at just after four in the morning, as we illegally parked in a residents-only section on a perpendicular street a block south of Pearl’s house.

  All my text messages to the elder witch since the elf attack had gone unanswered.

  I tucked my sketchbook away in my satchel, peering out the windshield at the dark-swathed peaks of the North Shore mountains over top of the beachfront houses. I rubbed the fingers of my left hand together, feeling the charcoal crusted on my skin. Beau waited beside me with his hand resting loosely on the steering wheel, silent but ready.

  I knew that he would start the car and be driving away before I’d even finished asking him to do so.

  We could run.

  We could flee Vancouver in the hopes of foiling the vision of our daughter’s future. On our present course, we might actually have been barreling straight ahead into fulfilling that future, drawing closer to it with every step we took. There was no way to tell. Not until I saw a different future.

  But Pearl Godfrey would die if we left.

  I didn’t believe that magic would have shown me the elder witch’s death if I wasn’t meant to act on it.

  “I’m with you,” Beau whispered.

  I reached for him, threading my fingers through his. He pressed a kiss to my knuckles, then to my wedding ring.

  “Rochelle,” he murmured. “Oracle … lover … wife … mother … I’m with you.” He didn’t ask me if I wanted to run. Or if I wanted to change my mind. The question was implicit.

  “I love you.”

  “I know.”

  I opened my door, and before my feet hit the sidewalk, Beau was by my side. He closed the door behind me, locking the car and lifting his nose to the sky.

  “Magic,” he murmured.

  “Elf?”

  He shook his head. “Can’t smell them. Well, I couldn’t smell them. Not until …”

  “Blood had been spilt.”

  He nodded.

  “Jasmine?” I asked.

  “No. Witch magic. I think.”

  Pearl’s wards. I settled the strap of my satchel diagonally across my shoulder and chest. It rested over top of my belly, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Not yet. “Okay. We walk east a block, then cross down to Pearl’s.”

  “That’s the angle of the vision?”

  “I think so. Based on the position of the house, of the hedge … and the gate.”

  “And … approaching a different way isn’t the better choice?”

  He meant trying to foil the vision from our very first steps. I raised my face to the dark, cloudy sky, wondering if it was going to rain. Then I started walking, giving my magic leave to guide me if it wished to. And if not? Well, then Beau was quick on his feet and I was fairly certain I could contain Jasmine. If she didn’t get her teeth on me … if I didn’t go too far and completely wipe her mind …

  Ignoring my own doubts, I focused on the feel of the sidewalk underneath my feet, the crispness of the air, and the hush over the neighborhood.

  We turned north at the corner.

  A wave of magic slammed into me, actually causing me to stumble. My tattoos rippled, shifting, compensating. The magic dissipated.

  I started to jog, picking up speed down the short hill. Beau was by my side. Even with the training he forced on me, I was more of a sprinter than a long-distance runner. And being pregnant didn’t help with my endurance or lightness of foot, though my second trimester had been less exhausting so far than the first had been.

  “Separate and distract,” Beau murmured. Then he pulled ahead of me, ducking behind the cedar hedge that surrounded the front yard across from Pearl’s house.

  Beau had tried to number the series of scenarios he’d been drilling me on during training, in anticipation of being attacked, or needing to escape, or wanting to hold our ground. But I had outright refused to remember what number went with which scenarios when he started alphabetizing contingencies. ‘Separate and distract’ was attack scenario 2A … or maybe it was 2B?

  Scenario 1 was always the same. Run. But we’d already decided that running wasn’t an option.

  I was the distraction. And I could do that job far better than sneaking up behind hedges and decapitating foes.

  I kept moving, taking advantage of the lack of traffic on Cornwall as I swerved left and the top peak of Pearl’s house came into view.

  No traffic at all was unusual. It was a busy road, at any hour. So it was an easy guess that magic was holding it back. But whose magic?

  Scarlett was standing at the top of Pearl’s driveway. Her vibrant, strawberry-red hair snapped and snaked around her head. The blue of her witch magic glowed in her eyes — and reflected along the edge of the thin sword she held between herself and the seven-foot-tall elf standing in the middle of the road.

  I kept running, though doing so made no real sense.

  A second elf had fallen a few steps behind the first, but was slowly getting to her feet. A third was lying at the top of Pearl’s driveway, just outside the domed wards that encased the property. I could see lighter spots within those wards, slowly weaving themselves back together with darker-tinted magic. It was an easy guess that Pearl’s defenses had taken several hits from the elves already.

  I ran along the hedge, feeling Beau keeping pace with me on the other side.

  Scarlett engaged the elf standing before her. More magic exploded between them as their swords clashed.

  The witch was courageous and quick. She was also, even to my inexperienced eyes, woefully outmatched.

  The second elf gained her feet, manifesting a milky glass sword seemingly out of nowhere.

  Still running, I reached for her. She was shorter and slimmer than the elf pressing Scarlett, but still easily a foot taller than me. My tattoos — the ivy and the barbed wire — flowed out from my arms, latching onto the elf’s shoulders and halting her midlunge. She snarled, startled.

  The larger elf blocked Scarlett’s slash, pinning her s
word and backhanding her harshly across the face. The witch flew backward through the wards, tumbling across Pearl’s front lawn.

  I began reeling the elf I was holding toward me. She fought me every step of the way.

  The larger elf peevishly slammed his sword across the boundary magic that now stood between him and his prey, Scarlett. Magic reverberated in response. Then he turned and laid his glittering green gaze on me and the elf I had a firm hold on. Repositioning his sword, he took a step in my direction.

  A monstrosity erupted out of the hedge behind me. Orange with black stripes and over seven feet tall, it landed next to the elf I held fast. Reaching with massive hands, Beau in his half-human, half-beast warrior form snapped the elf’s neck.

  The larger elf snarled, pausing to assess the new players on the scene.

  “Tear her head right off, Beau,” I said. My tone was dark but steady.

  Beau ripped the head off the elf. I retracted my tattoos. The body fell with a hard thud to the pavement.

  I stepped forward, clearing my path to the larger elf. My tattoos churned around my hands, loose and ready. Waiting.

  “Hey, asshole,” I said. “I’m sure this isn’t the first you’ve heard of it, but we don’t take too kindly to being invaded around here.” I held my hands aloft. “By my count, it’s Beau and Rochelle four, elves zero. Let’s make that five.”

  Huh. Apparently, I could be witty and snarky — at least when severely pressed.

  The elf snarled, manifesting a second sword so that he held one in each hand.

  Beau tossed the head he was still holding, as if he were passing the elf a basketball. Except way harder and faster than you’d ever do with a teammate.

  The elf sidestepped the spinning head. It hit the wards covering Pearl’s property and exploded into a fine powder.

  Scarlett had made it to her feet and was slowly stalking across the lawn toward us.

  Beau stepped to my side. By my best guess, the elf was slightly out of reach of my tattoos. We waited for him to make his move toward us, wordlessly knowing that we’d execute the same play, just as we’d practiced in case of extreme need — I hold, Beau decapitates.

  Pearl stepped out onto the steps at the front of the house. Her gray hair was held back in a tidy bun, and the blue of her magic was simmering in her eyes. I hadn’t realized she’d been standing in the doorway. Magic streamed from the elder witch’s raised hands, electric-blue beams that originated from each of her fingers. She appeared to be feeding the protective boundary, reinforcing and repairing it.

  “Scarlett,” Pearl snapped. “Stand down now. Beau and Rochelle have it under control.”

  Scarlett ignored her mother. Gaining speed as she hit the driveway, she raised her weapon — a jeweled rapier that looked as though she’d sharpened or strengthened it with her own magic. Jade’s mother was a sight to behold. Even with the side of her face swelling from the elf’s blow, her expression was one of steely determination. I had always thought she looked exactly like Pearl, just twenty years younger. But in that moment, all I could see was her resemblance to every sketch I’d ever rendered of her daughter.

  The elf shifted, angling his body so he could keep tabs on all three of us. But he was still slightly out of my reach. I was going to have to close the distance myself.

  “Scarlett!” Pearl shouted, stepping down the stairs and along the front path. “That’s enough!”

  Scarlett blew through the wards at the top of the driveway.

  The elf spun to check the strike she was already executing.

  I lunged forward, reaching for the elf with my tattoos — but missing.

  And suddenly, he wasn’t alone.

  Three more elves appeared from out of nowhere — but I didn’t know whether magic had brought them in, or whether I’d just been so distracted that I hadn’t noticed their approach.

  All three ignored everything else as they tried to grab for me all at once. Beau knocked the elf nearest to him to the side with a vicious blow. Then he grabbed the second, the two of them tumbling down to the ground in a tangle of limbs and blades and claws.

  The third elf managed to get hands on me, lifting me off my feet as if she were executing a snatch-and-run.

  So they knew who I was.

  But apparently, they didn’t know me well enough.

  Not bothering to fight the elf’s hold, I slammed the heel of my left hand to the gemstone embedded in her forehead, flooding her mind with my oracle magic.

  She screamed, loosening her hold on me. But I didn’t let her go. Instead, I twined my ivy tattoo around her pale, delicately scaled neck.

  Some sort of magical feedback hit my palm, radiating agony through the bones of my hand, wrist, and arm. My arm went numb. Stifling a scream, I kept in contact with the gemstone, pushing back with my magic viciously. The elf stumbled, falling to her knees, which conveniently set me on my feet.

  When all that was left of her eyes was the white of my oracle magic, I let her go. She fell at my feet, but I was already turning back toward the fight.

  Beau had badly wounded one of the elves, but was locked in a standoff with his second opponent. He was holding the elf’s weapons at bay while they attempted to kick out each other’s legs.

  I reached out with my tattoos, lassoing the elf around his neck. Then, just as Beau met my gaze over the elf’s shoulder and released his hold, I yanked the attacker off his feet.

  Beside us in the street, but too far away to help, Scarlett fell.

  Pearl stepped through the wards. Blue lightning crackled from her fingers.

  “No!” I cried.

  Beau tore the head off the elf I was choking. I let the body go, desperately trying to redirect my magic. To grab hold of the larger elf that stood between me and Pearl.

  That elf was raising his sword, preparing to decapitate the strawberry-haired witch unconscious at his feet.

  A lick of Pearl’s magic reached out, looping around Scarlett’s waist and yanking her out from under the elf’s blow. His sword hit the pavement instead, gouging it.

  Pearl tossed Scarlett through the boundary behind her. The ward magic caught the strawberry-haired witch, cushioning her fall and gently lowering her to the grass.

  More lightning shot out of Pearl’s fingers, striking the towering elf looming before her and the wounded elf beside Beau and me. Both elves jerked and spasmed as if being electrocuted. Then they fell, their white armor smoldering and blackened.

  Pearl snarled. “You don’t touch what is mine to protect, you ingrates.”

  I stepped over to check on the status of the elf nearest me as Beau did the same for the one close to him. “Pearl, get back behind the wards.”

  “It’s no matter, Rochelle. It’s taken care of.” Pearl brushed her hands together.

  I pinned her with my gaze. “Get back through the wards. Now.”

  She frowned.

  Beau tore the head off the elf he’d paused to check.

  The elf at my feet rolled away from me. Distracted, I looked away from Pearl.

  Another elf appeared out of nowhere. As if he’d teleported, like Blackwell could. He was holding the arms of two more elves, but he quickly released his companions, who charged me.

  Then, somehow, he stabbed Pearl in the side of her chest in the same motion.

  Magic exploded between them, throwing the elf and one of his companions backward. Both of them crashed into Beau, who’d already been stepping forward to engage the newly arrived threat.

  Pearl fell without throwing out her hands. Without trying to stop herself from hitting the sidewalk.

  Latching on to the elf closest to me with both my tattoos, I blasted him with my oracle magic even as I dragged him after me, moving toward Pearl.

  A second elf — the one Pearl had dropped with her magical lightning — grabbed my foot, then attempted to stab me in the stomach.

  A figure appeared next to me in a blur of white and gold, picking the elf up off the ground and tossing h
im against the boundary wards. The elf exploded into fine white powder.

  I looked toward my rescuer, expecting to see Beau.

  I saw Jasmine instead.

  “Hey, oracle,” she said, cockily stalking over to the elf I held fast.

  “Wait … wait!” I cried, desperately looking around for Beau and not seeing him.

  The elf I was holding knifed Jasmine. She deflected the blow, though, taking it in the stomach instead of the heart.

  I tightened the barbed wire around his neck, cutting into his finely scaled skin.

  Jasmine yanked the blade out of her belly.

  Choking and clawing at the tattoos I held him with, the elf fell to his knees even as the knife in Jasmine’s hand crumbled into white dust.

  The teleporter abruptly appeared next to Pearl. He was still grappling with Beau, but obviously trying to get to the elder witch. To finish her off.

  Jasmine darted into the fray.

  I cinched the barbed wire tighter and tighter around the elf’s neck, reeling in my tattoos until he was only a hand’s width away from me. I met his panicked gaze.

  Then I tore his head off.

  Whatever it took.

  Whatever the cost.

  I released the tattoos. The elf’s body fell to one side.

  The teleporter threw Beau off him, tossing him across the street and through the cedar hedge behind me.

  This left Jasmine standing over Pearl. She looked up, pinning the elf with a red-eyed gaze, her fangs in full view.

  My vision realized.

  “Try me, asshole,” Jasmine snarled.

  I stepped forward, reaching for the elf as he readied a lunge for the vampire. But my tattoos responded sluggishly, so that I managed only to brush the back of his neck. I was too far away.

  The elf whirled around, spotting me. Then his gaze flicked over my shoulder as Beau erupted from the hedge, racing across the street behind me.

  The elf disappeared, teleporting away.

  “Behind the wards,” I snapped. “Now!”

  Jasmine scooped up Pearl and ran down the driveway.

  “The bodies, Beau,” I said, utterly weary.

  “I got them.” His words were mangled by his not-quite-aligned jaw.