Page 77 of Demon Loved
“I get it,” Brianna said. She paused there, brows pulling together for a moment. “But don’t you think it’s kind of weird that he didn’t mention you once during that whole conversation I had with him?”
“Not really,” Belshegar replied. “Once he realized the extent of your powers, I became superfluous to him. Also, leaving me out of your discussion might also have made you wonder why he’d overlooked my presence here, which would be some cause for dissonance and worry.”
“Well, I guess he got that part right.” She stopped there, and her shoulders lifted ever so slightly, almost as though she was doing her best to rid herself of any thoughts of the Collector and his machinations.
When she spoke again, her voice was firm.
“But that’s the only thing that bastard is going to get right.”
23
Brianna knew they were awfully exposed on the promontory where the McAllister clan had been performing their magical ceremonies for the past hundred-plus years. Anyone could see her and Belshegar out here and wonder just what they were up to.
Her shoulders gave a nervous hitch, and immediately, he reached out to take her hand. “You have nothing to fear.”
“If you say so.”
She knew how brittle her voice sounded…and she also knew it was her way of trying to cope with the tension of the situation, the reality of knowing that some eight hours from now, they would be standing out here again, doing their best to weave a web of magic that would keep the Collector away from this place forever.
“I do say so,” he replied calmly. “While our enemy can see a great deal, he can’t see everything. And because your father and the other elders and your prima and her consort are already working with the energies that will be at their greatest strength tonight, I have to believe the Collector’s surveillance will be focused on them.”
If that was Belshegar’s way of trying to comfort her, Brianna didn’t know whether it was all that effective. What was the point in feeling personally safe if her father and a whole bunch of people she cared about could be attacked at any moment?
However, she also realized that she couldn’t allow herself to be so scattered. No, she needed to do what she could with whatever her companion wanted her to learn from this place. If she was a fidgety mess, how in the world would she be able to help tonight in any sort of effective way?
“All right,” she said. “What am I looking for?”
“Energy,” he replied promptly. “Decades of rituals performed here created their own power. You only need to sense where it’s strongest and learn how to draw on it. Your own strength is already vast, but in a situation like the one we’ll face tonight, you’ll need all the help you can get.”
Well, at least he wasn’t trying to sugarcoat things. Before they’d come down here, they’d stopped at her apartment so she could change into sturdier shoes and pull out the floppy canvas hat she often wore when she went hiking, so she had to hope if any onlookers spotted her and Belshegar walking around on the flat part of the hill that overlooked the Verde Valley, they’d think they were only out getting some fresh air and nothing more.
“All right,” she said, knowing that she didn’t sound particularly hopeful. Even though she realized he was only trying to help, she also couldn’t help thinking that she didn’t know what the hell she was doing. Maybe her power only woke up during moments of extreme stress, which meant this sunny stroll through the dry grass wasn’t going to do her a damn bit of good.
Way to fail before you even get started, she scolded herself. Belshegar thinks you can do this, so that means you can, right?
As long as his confidence in her wasn’t utterly misplaced.
She moved a few paces away from him, headed toward the spot where the McAllisters always gathered at the four quarters of the year — Samhain and Yule, Ostara and Mabon. As she went, she thought she could feel something stirring, sort of like a kind of warmth seeping up through the soles of her hiking boots and moving all through her body.
Was this the power Belshegar had been talking about?
It had to be, since she’d never experienced anything like this before, even though she’d attended plenty of rituals in this location. Not all of them — she’d missed a few when she was off at college, and there had been others where she hadn’t felt as if she could contribute a whole lot to the ceremony — but she’d probably been to more than most in the McAllister clan, thanks to her father being an elder and wielding his own special kind of magic.
“I feel it,” she said.
“And I see it,” Belshegar replied. “Look down.”
She’d been gazing ahead, doing her best to let her senses flow freely rather than staring down at the earth, but when she glanced at her feet and legs, she saw a warm yellow glow surrounding her, shimmering like gold dust.
That was a little too conspicuous. No, there wasn’t anyone else in their immediate vicinity, but if somebody was using the coin-operated binoculars up on the overlook, they might have been able to see a woman walking around on the promontory and glowing like she was radioactive or something.
As soon as that thought went through her head, the glow disappeared. Oddly, though, she could still sense the warm pulse of the energy behind it.
“Is it gone?” Belshegar asked from behind her, and she shook her head.
“No. I just got worried about someone seeing me looking like that, and the glow sort of went away. The energy is still there, though.”
“Good. That means it wants to work with you, wants to help.”
