Page 22 of Grizzly's Grump
My knees buckle as a low buzz ignites behind my eyes, sharp and rising—too fast, too loud. I brace against it, hands trembling, spine locking in defiance.
But the ley lines don’t care.
The hum surges, ancient and unrelenting, a roar that tears through my chest and shreds the ground from under me. The world tilts—then vanishes, swallowed by the pulse as darkness catches me before the ground does.
CHAPTER 8
CALDER
Idon't realize she’s gone until I head to the food truck and find it dark, locked up tight, and empty. The embers in the firepit are cold; no fresh footprints in the dirt. She was here—not long ago. But now? Gone.
My gut knots. She wouldn't have left without saying something or leaving a note, would she? Surely not after the way I found her in the woods earlier in the day—shaken and rattled to her core. She needed grounding—roots, reassurance—not more chaos. Whatever pulled her away, it wasn’t calm or clarity. She must not understand what she’s walking into—or how dangerous it could be.
The night carries an unnatural weight, as if the forest has fallen into uneasy stillness. And then it hits me—a flare.
Not just a spike of ley energy—but something tangled in it. A signature I know like my own shadow now. Cilla. It hasn’t been long—just a few days—but even raw and untrained, her energy leaves a mark. The first time I felt it, she was standing too close to a convergence, and the current shimmered—just slightly, but enough to make me look twice.
Since she arrived, the lines have stirred with a frequency and force I’ve never seen. Whatever she carries—grief, fire, fate—it thrums through the ground like warning drums.
A crack tears through the ley lines—violent, hot, and sharp enough to knock the breath from my lungs. I know—without logic, without reason—that she’s at the heart of it. The forest stills, the air holds its breath, and my instincts pull hard toward the rupture like a compass locked on one magnetic truth: Cilla’s out there.
She shouldn’t be.
The moment the lines split wide, something splits in me too—a flash of white heat down my spine, my breath stuttering as static prickles over my skin. It feels like being dragged too close to a lightning strike. The pull is magnetic and nauseating, an undeniable spike in the town’s buried current. I don’t need empirical evidence. I have proof. I feel it in her—something in that surge calls to me, threads through my chest, anchoring in my gut like a tether being yanked hard.
I feel it in the marrow of my bones. The surge isn’t just energy—it’s her, threaded through the current like a heartbeat too fast and too loud. A ripple in the tether that’s been buzzing under my skin since the day she rolled into town. But this? This is different. Urgent. Like a hook yanking straight into my spine.
I didn’t see her leave. I wasn’t even there. But I can picture it—one minute she’s outside the food truck, pacing and pissed, and the next, she's gone. The path into the woods is completely empty, like the trees conspired to erase her steps and swallow her whole. The air has gone too still, like the forest is bracing itself.
As I'm mulling all of this over, there's a sudden flare. It feels as if something has come alive. It's seething and barely contained. It rips through the ley lines with a howl, not a whisper—bright and blistering, like lightning breaking the sky openfrom below. The air turns electric, sharp as metal on the tongue, and the trees shudder in its wake.
A pulse radiates outward in jagged bursts, like heat waves on asphalt, except colder—wrong. It slams through open space, making the windows of the food truck and my workshop rattle and my vision blur. I feel it in my teeth, in my bones, a vibration too deep to be sound and too loud to be silence. Every instinct inside me roars to life. Something’s not right. Something’s broken loose. It’s not just power—it’s personal. A line has been crossed. And I know—without logic or sight—that Cilla’s the one who triggered it
I warned her. Told her to steer clear of the woods after dark. Especially near the break. But Cilla—stubborn, curious, impossible Cilla—doesn’t yet know when to back down.
I’m still standing near the firepit outside her food truck, staring into the cooling embers, trying to breathe through the pressure building in my chest when it hits. It’s not a physical map, but something internal—ancestral instinct shaped by years of living along the lines. The pattern lights up in my mind’s eye, bright and urgent, flaring like a beacon from the underworld. I stagger back a step, heart pounding like a war drum, every instinct firing at once.
"No," I mutter, breath catching in my throat as I stare into the dark. "Don’t do this."
But she already has, and now I have to bring her back.
The thought hammers through me as I pace outside the food truck, boots scraping across packed earth and scattered pine needles. My breath comes hard and shallow, catching in my throat as I circle in tight, restless loops, jaw clenched so tight it sends a throb into my temples. Tension knots through my shoulders, muscles flexing under the strain. The flare vibrates through the lines—sharp, unmistakable—etched into instinct after a lifetime on ley-fed ground.
The air around me feels charged, like it's bracing for impact, mirroring the storm straining through every nerve like it’s looking for a way out. Every nerve ending is lit up with dread. The ley energy lashes through me the second it flares—sharp, hot, and violently wrong, nothing like the steadier pulses I’ve learned to recognize and endure. Not natural. Not the kind of subtle hum that marks the lines when they’re stable.
This is wild. Raw. Like something woke up that should’ve stayed sleeping, and now I know exactly where she’s gone.
"Dammit, Cilla," I growl, already moving. I take off on foot, heading straight for the trail that cuts into the trees. No one would be stupid enough to go out there after dark—except her. The woods close in fast, the path dims and narrows, but I don’t hesitate. I let instinct lead.
She just had to go poking into things she doesn’t understand—things I wish I could’ve protected her from. Doesn’t she realize what kind of power she’s messing with?
These woods aren’t just trees and shadows. They're holders of ancient memories, warnings, and old energy that don’t take kindly to being stirred.
The last time someone untrained wandered too close to a rupture in the ley lines, it took the entire town to bring him back—and even then, he never really came back. I watched a man forget his own name—watched his eyes go blank, the weight of it making his spirit collapse—until nothing was left but a shell barely tethered to breath.
And now she’s out there, raw and unshielded, poking into the same storm with nothing but stubbornness and spite.
The thought of her caught in that kind of maelstrom—alone—makes my chest tighten. My bear rouses, unsettled, instinct clawing for release in a way that threatens to tear past the control I’ve fought to maintain.What scares me isn’t the power—it’s the thought of losing her to it.
