Page 46 of Shadow's End

“It’s an opinion more than a few of us now agree with,” I muttered. Question was, did the council dare do anything against her and risk retaliation?

Because shewouldretaliate, especially if things went badly for Roger and her mind—and impulse control—slipped any more than it already had.

Mac returned, handed Tala a pair of gloves and booties, then headed toward the front stairs. Tala gave me a nod and followed. As they disappeared through the door, I capped my drink, tucked it into the backpack’s side pocket, then walked around the side of the house to check the van. I didn’t open the front doors because a quick look into the cabin said there was no one in there, and it wasn’t my job to be going through the glove compartment or center storage well for clues. But the rear section of the people mover had all the windows blocked out, and that very much suggested it had indeed been used as a mode of transport for vampires.

I guess the question was, whose?

I gripped the van’s handle and carefully slid the door open. No stench of blood or flesh rushed out. The air wasn’t pleasant, and oddly reminded me a little of the slightly sweet but musty scent that sometimes came from older people. Which, given the vamps we were dealing with were very old indeed, made sense. And it was certainly better than the scent of decay some fiction would have us believe they smelled like.

I closed the door again then headed around the back of the van and across to the machinery shed. The right half was filled with closely packed hay rounds, but the left was empty aside from a ride-on mower that didn’t look as if it had been used in months—which meant someone else had to be looking after the lawns and gardens surrounding the house, because they were pin-neat—and an odd selection of rusted gardening tools.

I did a circuit around the accessible bits of the interior just in case I’d missed something, then headed out again, stopping to study the yard and the tree-lined fence to my right. Instinct twitched and I resignedly turned and headed down that way.

The huge old gum trees were in full flower, their pale creamy flowers contrasting sharply against the green of old leaves and the coppery bronze of the new growth. Their lemony scent filled the air, and I drew in a deeper breath, hoping to wash the lingering remnants of death from my lungs.

And smelled, underneath the lemony divineness, the hint of wrongness. Magical type wrongness.

I swore and scrubbed a hand through my hair. It seemed fate hadn’t yet finished handing out clues, because that wrongness suggested someone had performed a spell somewhere nearby, even if no magical threads lingered in the air. It was probably the source of the punch beastie, but until I followed that faint scent, I wouldn’t know for sure.

There was a part of me that really,really, didn’t want to follow.

But that was cowardice speaking, or perhaps even the natural desire of a mother-to-be not to take risks.

And yet if I didn’t, we’d all pay the price. Or so instinct was saying.

Instinct could be a real pain in the ass sometimes.

Mosttimes.

I blew out a breath and swept my gaze left and right. There was very little grass growing under the trees, thanks no doubt to the fact they were too close together and the shadows under their canopies rather dense. The fence dividing the home paddock from the sloping incline of the next one was a basic three-strand wire. The grass on the other side was far longer than it was here, making it difficult to see if anything or anyone lurked. If something did, it probably wouldn’t be a vampire, given the sunshine, but until we had some idea what the beastie with the lethal punch was, it also had to remain a possibility.

I ducked under a low-hanging branch and stopped close to the fence. That’s when I spotted the trail in the grass. Someone—something—large had run through this field fairly recently, heading toward the top of the hill.

It didn’t take much of an effort to guess it had been our monster.

I climbed through the fence and walked over to the crushed grass. It was a wide, flat trail, and while I was no tracker, I was pretty damn sure it hadn’t been made by anything human. Not given the way the footprints had impacted the otherwise hard soil.

I swung my pack around to tug out a bottle of holy water, and then spun a repelling spell around my other hand. I hoped neither would be necessary, but I’d learned the hard way it was always better to be safe than sorry.

I walked into the long grass, keeping to the right of the trail and damnably glad I was wearing boots. It’d be nigh on impossible to see a snake in this stuff before you stepped on the thing.

The wide line of trampled grass continued up the slope, but the closer I got to the top, the more instinct twitched.

I’d just about reached the crest when I spotted the large circular section of flattened grass and stopped. The feeling of wrongness swirled around me, and while there were no spell threads evident here, therewerecandles. Melted black candles, the type used in darker magics and summonings.

My grip momentarily tightened on the holy water, even though I had no immediate sense of danger. Nor could I see any indication of a pentagram on the ground, though the candles were sitting at what would be the five elemental points. There was blood here, too, I realized after a moment. I couldn’t smell it from where I was standing, but the grass in the middle of the pentagram was stained with what instinct and experience told me was dried blood.

I carefully walked around the edge of the circle, looking for any indication the thing I’d been tracking had simply pounded through here and run on down the other side of the hill.

It hadn’t, because there was nothing but an undisturbed sea of yellowed grass that swept down the hill to what looked to be a dry creek bed.

Whoever had summoned the demon had also sent it back to whatever hell it had come from.

Which was good but a little puzzling. I mean, why not simply leave it unleashed to cause havoc and keep us away from the fight, as Marie had tried with the basilisk? Did that mean she’d changed tactics after we’d dealt with her snake? Or that Marie wasn’t responsible for the presence ofthismonster?

Once I’d returned to my starting point, I put the holy water back into my pack—though I kept the repelling spell twisting around my fingers, just in case—and rang Monty.

“I guess you found something,” he said, by way of hello.

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