Page 51 of Demon's Bluff

Chapter

12

I yelped at the unexpecteddrop in the ley line, faltering to a knee when vertigo hit me. I mentally scrambled to renew my hold on the line. It tasted different, angry maybe, that I was trying to bend the rules of time so far, if energy could be thought capable of such. Eyes clenched shut, I forced my mind past the resistance until the rough connection smoothed and the flow renewed.

I was still connected to the demon collective by way of the spell itself, and I could feel the energy-spindling curse gathering up my life’s force as I sloughed it off, moving backward through time. The twined spells were working. All that was left was to register the process.

“Evulgo,”I whispered to drop what I’d just done into the collective as a unique expression of magic. I was sure no demon would ever even think to look for it, seeing as my actions were being spread out over who knew how many years. I could feel them, lightly in my mind, their collective thoughts rising and falling like the tide as the days and nights passed. “Jariathjackjunisjumoke,” I added to set me as the originator of the spell, and finally,“Ut omnes unum sint,”to seal it. It was done. Now all I had to do was survive the trip.

My breath came in with the dry choking feel of sawdust filling my lungs, and I held it, squicked out by the continued, utterly weird sensation of my body’s energy spilling from me as if it was being pulled into a tube. My head began to hurt, then ache.

“I can do this,” I whispered as my fisted hands pushed into the damp cement. The length of black gold that Al had given me to gauge my passage shook in my grip, the two ends glinting. Five years. He had broken it five years ago. When it mended, I could stop. Not a moment sooner. Too bad my head was beginning to feel like a migraine and a heart attack had a baby.

The booms and crackles of a magical fight were gone, replaced by an odd rise and fall of that headache-inducing whine. I slowly pried my eyes open, panting as I tried to figure out where the light was coming from. A big nothing hung past the red-sheened bubble that protected me. It wasn’t dark, and it wasn’t light. My mind had no reference. It was as if the entire universe was in this small bubble, and perhaps for me, it was.

It was almost like being stuck in a line jump, but unlike a line jump, I still had my body. I could feel the cold of the cement and the grit between my fingers. The scent of blood from my circle was thick in my nose. I was here, present.

“I can do this,” I said again, teeth clenched. The chain in my hand was slowly losing its tarnish, but it was still broken. My vertigo was awful, and worried I would collapse and break my circle, I drew less on the line to slow my passage down.

“Morgan,” a high voice rasped in pain. “Oh, God, let me go.”

I spun, my butt hitting the cold cement as I lost my balance. It was Elyse, curled into a tiny ball behind me. She was in my circle.

Shocked, I stared. “How the hell did you get in here?”

Elyse struggled to find my gaze, her focus distant. “Let go. You’re pulling on a line through me. Burning. Let go…”

Through her?I thought, realizing now why the line felt wrong. “How did you—” I caught my next words. “You’re not supposed to be here!” I said as I figured it out. My circle was down. Elyse had taken it, and now it was Elyse’s circle that contained the spell, not mine. She must have assumed control of my circle right as the spell invoked. It was no wonder she was in pain. She was channeling the entire ley line.

“Let go of me,” she groaned again in agony. “You will rot for this. I promise you. Stop the curse. Stop it!”

“You idiot!” I rolled to my knees, startled when her coat winked out of existence. “What did you think was going to happen?”

“Stop the spell!” Elyse screamed, eyes mere slits. “I can’t let go of the line. It’s burning!”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have tried to take control of the spell!” Frantic, I looked at the length of chain. It hadn’t mended, but Elyse…Elyse was shaking in anguish.

“You’re burning me alive,” she rasped, head down.

Son of a moss wipe,I thought.“Stet!”I shouted, my sympathy warring with my annoyance as I let go of the ley line running through both of us.I should have known when the taste of the line shifted,I thought as the spell ended with a soul-snapping thump.

I jerked, choking down a gasp of surprise when a burst of white light slammed into me. Elyse’s protection bubble had fallen, and I pulled the scent of warm, mucky water deep into my lungs as my eyes teared and I coughed the sensation of dust from my lungs. I blinked as the light dimmed and the world slowly became understandable again. It had only been the light of the moon, but it had seemed as if the sun had gone nova.

Lips parting, I stared out from under the bridge at the softly lit park, only now believing what I had done. Thirty seconds ago, the moon had been a bare sliver almost below the horizon. Now it was nearing full and hanging high among the trees. Shocked, I reached for the bridge’s support. The stone was warm under my shaking hand, and as I straightened, a sharpting…ting, splootdrew my eyes as something bounced to the edge of the footing and into the ugly green water. Whatever it had been, it was gone.

“It worked!” I exclaimed, then winced when the couple walking their dog noticed me and continued on, heads close together as they gossiped. I’d done it, and I touched the outside of my pocket to make sure the snapped stirring rod was still there. It was, and I exhaled in relief.

“What the hell did you do with my clothes?” Elyse croaked from the base of the footing. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

I turned to see Elyse kneeling over the water, trying not to throw up, stark naked apart from her socks. She was younger, too, her dark hair longand having a simple cut. I closed my eyes in a strength-gathering blink. I looked pretty much the same.Almost,I mused, sighing at the demon mark decorating the underside of my wrist.At least I still have my clothes,I thought as I shuffled my jacket off and draped it over her.

Elyse clutched at it, but I wasn’t going to hold her hair back as she fell into dry heaves.

Al’s chain lay on the cement like a broken promise, and I picked it up. I stood, slipping the necklace into a pocket, and tried to figure out how far I had managed to get. My hair was longer, bound in a braid I recognized needing at least eight pixies to make—Matalina must still be alive. Then there was that demon mark, a single slash through it, a promise to pay Al back for saving my life. If I had one on my foot, that would narrow the time down as well, but I wasn’t about to look now. I ran my thumb against my fingers, feeling a prickling of smut on my aura, but it was the tentative touch on my neck that gave me the best idea of when we were as the flash of arousal nearly brought me to my knees, flaming all the way to my groin.

“Crap on toast,” I whispered, breathless and kind of ticked. It was my vampire scar, and it was full and potent, almost new. Five years? Not a chance.Two maybe,I thought as I peered out at the world, worried.

Elyse had gone quiet, and I rested one shaky hand on the bridge, the other on my neck, as I wondered when we were. It was warm. There were leaves on the trees.Summer.