Belladonna (18 page)

was
walking in circles.

Feeling the stitch in her side flare up again, she slowed to a walk, breathing hard, craving water. But when she looked back, she saw the dark shapes heading toward her. Closing the distance.

Can't,
Caitlin thought as she stabbed the hoe handle into the sand and leaned on it.
Can't run anymore. Need water, need rest,
need a way out of this place, need ... help. Lady of Light, I need help.

She looked toward the horizon and let out a sobbing laugh. More dark shapes. More of those creatures coming for a feast.

Coming for her.

Caitlin closed her eyes.

Even if she could continue to outrun them, what would be the point? Survival? For what? There was no food, no water. She was going to die here, one way or the other. And even if she could get back to Raven's Hill with a snap of her fingers, living there wasn't much better than being lost in this place. Yes, she had Aunt Brighid and the garden, but her life was as barren as the sand.

I
don't want to go back to Raven's Hill. And I don't want to die here. I need help.

The ground beneath her vibrated like she was standing on a giant tuning fork.

Her eyes popped open and she twisted her torso to look around, not daring to move her feet.

A long step away from her was a heart's hope plant, so tiny it could barely support the single bloom.

Her breath caught. Her heart rapped against her chest. And she remembered what she had done in the meadow, what she had said.

Maybe,
she thought.
Maybe.

She glanced around. The dark shapes were getting closer. Couldn't think about that. Couldn't think about anything but what Ephemera could do.

Shifting until she stood a shoulder-width from the heart's hope, Caitlin bent at the waist and held out the hoe handle with both hands. She rested the broken end on the sand; then, using herself as the center point, she drew a circle in the sand.

"This is my place," Caitlin said as she drew the circle, "Within the bounds of this circle is a place of Light and hope. My heart dwells within the bounds of this circle, and creatures of the Dark are not welcome here. You cannot touch this ground. You cannot touch me."

As she closed the circle and began tracing it again on the sand, she felt the world beneath her feet become soft, fluid.

Come on, Caitlin Marie, think about what you need here while you have the chance to get it.

Water. Food. A place that wasn't
this
place.

As she finished the second tracing of the circle and began the third, she saw the creatures running toward her, and her focus almost snapped. But she held to the thought that she was safe inside the circle. She had to believe that.
Had to.

The world beneath her feet was no longer soft. Whatever Ephemera could do had been done.

Caitlin bit her lower lip to hold back a cry of despair. No food, no water. Nothing but the tiny heart's hope within a circle sketched in the sand.

She widened her stance. Shifted her hands on the hoe handle for a better grip.

Then she watched as the ant creatures reached the circle and disappeared, reappearing on the other side of the circle moments later. They didn't go far before they began milling around, searching for something.

Caitlin slowly lowered her arms, letting one end of the hoe rest on the sand.

The creatures couldn't see her, couldn't sense her. Couldn't find her. She was close enough to that awful place to see it — and them — but she was no longer
there.

She sank to her knees and watched the ant creatures.

Slowly, she noticed the difference in the sand — and the difference in the air, which smelled of fish and seawater. Within her circle, the sand was no longer rust-colored. Scooping up a handful, she let it sift through her fingers until all that was left was a small shell like the ones she used to bring home when Michael took her for a walk on the beach.

She had done this much. Maybe after she rested a bit, she could try to shift herself from this little patch of Raven's Hill beach to her garden.

She waited until they were gone, having accepted that their prey had somehow escaped. Then she stretched out beside the heart's hope and gently brushed a fingertip over the bloom.

She didn't have food or water, and she would be in desperate need of both very soon. But she was safe from the creatures, and even though she didn't know how to take the next step, she had gotten back to the part of the world she knew. For now, that was enough.

*

It found the remains of the young male — one of the three boys whose hearts had embraced Its whispers to harm the Light that lived in the cottage. But It couldn't find the Landscaper. She was here but not here. It could feel the resonance of the current of Light that had formed in the bonelovers' landscape because of her presence, but It couldn't find
her.

A spot in the sand. Nothing there — and yet something there. This had the same there/not there feel as the garden hidden on the hill behind the cottage.

She was strong, but she had seemed unskilled, like the young ones at the Landscapers' School, who had been so easy to kill.

But she had known how to escape from one of Its landscapes. No one had escaped from Its landscapes before.

At least, not until that incubus had managed to elude Its attempt to bring him into the bonelovers' landscape. The incubus lived in the Den, one of the True Enemy's landscapes.

Then the male who had fought It at the village where the Landscaper lived. He had broken free by resonating with the True Enemy's heart.

And this young female was somehow connected with the True Enemy because of the Place of Light they had taken away from It.

These human creatures were all connected to
her,
to Belladonna ... the True Enemy. It couldn't reach her landscapes. Even when It felt the male crossing over and tried to hold on to him, It had been pulled away to one of Its own landscapes. If the Landscaper found a way into one of Belladonna's landscapes, It wouldn't be able to reach
her,
either.

But there were Dark hearts in every landscape, and It could always reach
them.

And one of
them
would be able to find Belladonna's companions — and destroy them.

*

"What, exactly, am I looking for?" Sebastian asked for the third time.

Lee was ready to pound his cousin's head against a wall. "I told you. I don't know
exactly.
Someone who doesn't belong.

Someone ... different."

Sebastian looked down the Den's main street, where two men and a succubus were staggering toward a brothel that provided slightly more privacy than having sex in the alley. He looked in the other direction, where three bull demons stomped out of a tavern, bellowing.

"Guess someone had a good night playing cards," Lee said.

"Omelets all around," Sebastian muttered, watching as three horned, shaggy heads turned in the direction of Philo's place, where Lynnea waited tables and cooked a few "special" dishes.

"I hear Lynnea's got the bull demons clearing out some of the brush around your place and cutting another path so folks aren't walking through your backyard when they want to get from the Den to Aurora."

"Yeah," Sebastian said, stepping aside to let the bull demons stomp over to their favorite table and then wait politely for Lynnea to notice them. "She made a cake — with a buttercream frosting, mind you — and brought it to Philo's during one of her work shifts. Gave each of the bull demons a piece of cake and offered to make each one a cake of his very own in exchange for clearing brush and cutting the new path. The negotiations got ... noisy."

Lee grinned. "I heard you almost had to lock up your own wife."

"You hear too much. Anyway, they each get a cake for clearing the brush, and another cake for cutting the new path through the woods so we can maintain some privacy at home."

"Did you get a taste of the sample cake when all this bartering was going on?"

Sebastian just sighed.

Lee laughed.

"So," Sebastian said, watching Lynnea and the bull demons. "Tell me again about noticing someone in the Den who's different?" When Lee didn't answer, he turned and looked at his cousin. "Lee?
Lee!"

"I have to go. Someone needs ..." So strong. The need was so strong. "I have to go."

He started to step back, to step away. Before he'd completed that first step, Sebastian grabbed his jacket and hauled him back so close that the only things separating them were Sebastian's fists.

"Where are you going?" Sebastian demanded.

"I don't know. It's not a place. I don't get a sense of place."

"You're the only Bridge Nadia and Glorianna can count on. Maybe the only one living in their landscapes. If something happens to you ..."

"I know." Lee tried to free himself, but even if he decked Sebastian, Lynnea was heading toward them — and the bull demons were on their feet, waiting to see what the humans were going to do — and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Teaser hustling toward them. He wasn't going anywhere until Sebastian let him go. Unless he took Sebastian with him. All it would take was a stumble and a step back, but ...

"I know," he said again. "But I have to go. I'll use my island to cross over to the place where I feel the need. I'll be careful. As long as I stay on the island, I'm connected to Sanctuary. I can get back. I'm not going to take a risk that will put us in danger, Sebastian, but I can't leave a heart out there when the need is so strong."

Sebastian uncurled his fists but didn't quite let go of Lee's jacket. "You're exhausted now, practically asleep on your feet. How long will this take?"

"You can't pin a time on something like —"

The hands tightened into fists again.
"How long?"

This isn't about me being the only Bridge in Nadia's and Glorianna's landscapes. This is about family.
"Give me four hours. If you don't hear from me by then, figure I've run into bad trouble."
Not that knowing that would do you any good. If I'm in the kind of
trouble that makes it impossible to reach my island, there's nothing you can do to help me.

Sebastian let go of Lee's jacket and stepped back. "Four hours."

Using his unusual gift of being able to impose his small island over another landscape, Lee brought the island to the Den's main street. He extended one hand back and felt the bark of a tree. One step back and he was standing on the island, vanished from the sight of the Den's citizens even though he could still see them,

Slipping one hand into his jacket pocket, he fingered the coiled braid he carried everywhere. Resonance and need rang through him, confirming what he'd already suspected. He was about to let Ephemera's currents of power take him to an unknown landscape in order to find the woman who belonged to a discarded braid of hair.

And he hoped she was worth the risks.

Chapter Thirteen

"I
z dead."

"Iz sleeping."

"Iz
dead!"

"Iz
sleeping!"

"How you know iz sleeping?"

"Cause I poked it? See?"
poke poke poke.

Michael jerked awake, coughed up more bog water, then groaned. "I'm not sleeping now, you brainless twits, and I'm not dead, either."

Silence. Then the first one said, "We could kill it. Iz enough flesh on it to feed the clan."

Clan. Bog.
Lady of Light, have mercy on me.

Michael pushed himself up to a sitting position and carefully rubbed his eyes, which felt hot and gritty. Then he looked at the two youngsters standing in front of him — and the adults silently moving closer.

The Merry Makers were human-shaped, and a full-grown one came up as high as a human man's chest. But they looked like they were formed from the bogs they claimed as their own: thin, brown bodies with limbs that looked like animated branches; hands that had long, twiggy fingers; faces that could have been carved from gnarls of wood; hair like the moss that hung from the trees that grew on the bog's islands.

There was a vicious strength in those thin limbs that could easily overpower a grown man, and humans lured into the bog by the lights and the music seldom found their way home.

Unless they could bargain.

"I am not familiar with this clan," Michael said, feeling the need to step as carefully with his words as he would with his feet in order to get out of this dark place. "But I have been among your people before." Early in his wandering, when he'd been young and foolish and lost one night — and had learned firsthand that the stories about the demons who lived in their world weren't just stories. "We shared a night of music."

They didn't speak. Their large yellow eyes just stared at him.

There was no place for him to go. The Merry Makers were in front of him. A quick roll would have him back in the water, but the water offered no real escape from them — and trying to escape would be enough to condemn him.

Then one clear note sounded through the air.

Michael looked toward the sound and noticed his pack sitting close by, open.

He didn't remember taking off the pack, but his memories of what happened after he hit the water were jumbled bits of images. At least now he understood why he'd thought trees had reached down and saved him from drowning.