We had been walking uphill and could now see the valley spread out around us, dotted with farms and vineyards off in the distance. As the road curved to the left, the line of trees parted before us, revealing the first glimpse of the ruins of the palace. From what I could see, it was enormous, as if a city unto itself.
But something felt off. A few minutes later my steps slowed as we approached the Minoan ruins. I held my right hand out before me with my palm open. There was an energy growing in the air, unlike the tingling electric feel coming off of Ryan. This was different; hot and thick, as if it were a living thing growing in stature and substance.
“Can you feel that?” I whispered, my dragging feet finally drawing to a stop. I held up both hands before my body, feeling the air as if pressing against a solid creature, though the area was empty before me.
“Yes, an energy,” he replied. He stood beside me, his left hand slowly waving through the air before him. “Did you feel this at Stonehenge?”
Did I feel this at Stonehenge? When I’d arrived at the ancient location, my body was still wracked with pain from Danaus stealing away my abilities and body for his own purposes. I couldn’t stand and every inch of me had screamed in agony. There had been a layer of pain in the air, but my senses were so clouded that I wasn’t sure which of the feelings was related to Stonehenge and the swell of power from the earth.
“I’m not sure. I think so,” I hedged, finally forcing my feet to resume their steady approach. My hand fell back to my side, where I anxiously flexed my fingers a few times as if to loosen the muscles. The power in the air was building. “Can you tell if the energy will peak tonight or tomorrow night?” I asked, glancing over at him.
“No idea.” He shrugged his wide, narrow shoulders before looking down at me. “I’m not an earth user.”
Frowning, I paused before a set of cracked and crumbling stairs that led up to the palace. There were essentially two types of magic: earth and soul, which was also referred to as blood magic. Most magic users dabbled in both, but eventually everyone specialized in one side or the other. Both sides could do the same things, but each magic style had its own requirements and limitations.
And then there was Rowe. As a naturi, he was naturally a strong earth magic user, but he seemed equally adept at weaving blood magic, given that he’d gone to the trouble of arranging a harvest in Egypt less than a week ago. It would have been so much easier if the naturi stuck to earth magic and the bori stuck to blood magic. Then a person would know exactly where she stood when the shit hit the fan.
With one foot on the stairs, I reached out and scanned the area. Danaus and Penelope were roughly south of us, slowly approaching, while Hugo was in position to the east. Unfortunately, out of the five of us, only Danaus could sense the naturi. We were waiting for him to fire a shot to signal that they were here if no one else reacted first.
Creeping to the top of the staircase, I paused, squatting down, pressing my hands against the worn stones. The palace was mostly raised above the hill upon which it stood. If I walked onto the ruins, I would stand out as an easy target for any of the naturi. Despite the darkness of the night, I could easily see within the thick shadows. The only forms I could pick out were columns and bits of broken stone. The area appeared deserted, but I knew better.
I rolled my shoulders once and clenched my teeth. The push of the power in the area had grown a little stronger as I climbed the stairs. A throbbing had started in my temples and I could feel pressure building at the base of my skull. For a whole new reason, I had begun to hope that this battle wouldn’t take too long. The pain was starting to become a distraction, and I wasn’t sure how it would affect my ability to control my powers.
Ryan eased down so he was sitting opposite me on the stairs, his body held low to the ground. I wasn’t sure how good his eyesight was in the pitch-black, but I assumed he knew a spell or two to make it better than the average human.
“Has Danaus told you about Rowe?” I whispered, drawing the white-haired warlock’s attention back to my face. He nodded, so I continued to pick away at the thought that was nagging at me. How often would I find myself in the company of an ancient warlock with oodles of magic information crammed into his brain? “He’s different. Scarred. Dark hair, dark eyes. Unlike the other naturi. It’s from the magic?”
Ryan seemed to hesitate a moment before he nodded. “He’s tainting the magic so it’s tainting him,” he finally replied in a low voice. “He’s using the power of the earth to fuel blood spells.”
I stared at him for a long minute in silence, taking in his snow white hair and gold eyes, features I’d never seen on another human being in all my six hundred years, before finally voicing the thought we both knew was floating through my head. “The opposite of what you’ve done. You’ve tainted earth spells by fueling them with blood magic.”
The perpetual smile that seemed to haunt Ryan’s face melted away and his expression became completely unreadable. There were no laws against what he and Rowe were doing. However, it was my understanding that the mixing of styles was dangerous and frowned upon.
“This isn’t the time for this conversation,” Ryan stated in chilled tones.
“Actually, it is,” I corrected, smiling broadly at him. I leaned closer and lightly laid my hand over his wrist. “You know earth spells. You’ve got an abundance of power flowing up from the earth here. Use it. Cast something here and now. Anything.”
He pulled back, his mouth finally slipping into a frown. “The earth spells I know aren’t to be used lightly, and my strength isn’t in using power from the earth. It would be too dangerous.”
“More dangerous than allowing the naturi to complete their sacrifice here tomorrow night?” I demanded, my voice briefly spiking higher. “If you cast something here now, won’t it siphon off some of the power? Couldn’t it disrupt their ability to break the seal?”
The warlock looked away from me, staring off across the ruins. His brow was furrowed in thought as he turned over my argument. My understanding of how magic worked was pretty rudimentary, but the logic seemed to fit. If we used the magic here before the naturi, the power from the earth would dissipate and move on to the next location. It was extremely unlikely that the naturi would be able to find the next location before the new moon tomorrow night. They would have to wait until the Fall equinox more than a month away. That would give us ample time to hunt down Rowe and destroy him.
“There’s another problem,” Ryan stated after a couple minutes. “Regardless of which earth spell I cast, I’d have to start it with blood magic and then switch to earth magic.”
“Can you do that?” I asked, earning a very smug smile as laughter danced in his narrowed eyes. I rolled my own eyes in response. “So what’s the problem?”
“I don’t use my own soul to fuel my magic,” he admitted, his smile never wavering.
Of course not. That kind of nonsense was for the novices. Why waste the energy from your own soul when you could drain anyone else’s energy that happened to be near you? No wonder he was so comfortable as the head of Themis. Not only was he tapped into an excellent source of information regarding all the other races, but he was constantly surrounded by an ample source of energy. Much like nightwalkers, blood warlocks always stuck close to cities, while the few earth witches in the world preferred wooded regions. You have to stick close to your food source. Or in the case of magic users, your fuel source.
“I repeat: What’s the problem?”
“No humans nearby.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to remind him that Danaus was not far, but I swallowed the hunter’s name. We both knew that Danaus wasn’t entirely human, though I wondered if Ryan was aware that Danaus had some kind of bori connection. Obviously, the hunter was off limits, which was probably best for everyone involved.