Bloodfire (Blood Destiny 1) - Helen Harper Page 0,54

I didn’t take him up on his offer of help.

I sat down on top of the dune, but not too close to the ring of stones. Even though I knew that they were just coals, they gave me the creeps. He sat down beside me and stretched out his legs. I started at the beginning, sketching out everything that had happened, including what I’d found out at Perkins and the shadowy CCTV shape that Nick had shown me.

Alex pursed his lips. “I don’t know that I can offer much about who this woman might be. Obviously the fact that she had to break into a local store to get coals means that wherever she’s from, or wherever she came from to here at least, doesn’t have those sorts of materials ready to hand. She must have some magic training though to be able to create a triangulated grid.”

“A what?”

“The runes of seven and the stones here. They form a triangle which would have allowed her to trap your alpha in the middle and hold him. Or summon a terrametus.”

“So we need to destroy the grid so she can’t do it again then!” I stood up and almost jumped towards the ring of stones, picking one up and throwing it towards the sea.

Alex stayed on the sand and shook his head. “The runes and the stones are needed to form the grid but once that is done they aren’t required any longer. The power remains until the creator is killed.”

“So she can still use this at any time to do anything she wants?” Even I could hear the rising panic in my voice.

“Yeah, man, she can. But I can put a warning ward around so if there are any signs of magic or transportations then we’ll know about it.”

I remained deeply unhappy. “But I thought you needed a portal to transport from one plane to another?”

“Portals are more economical with energy, but they’re not great if you want to be a circumspect dude.”

I tried not to roll my eyes at Alex’s ability to use the words ‘circumspect’ and ‘dude’ in the same breath and changed tack. “What do you think the electric screwdriver was for?”

“Now that one I have no clue about it.” He shrugged and stood up, brushing sand from his jeans. I was pretty sure it was a wasted effort. It doesn’t matter what you try to do to keep sand away from you, once it was there in your clothes, it was staying. Even if it had been six months since you’d last visited the beach, somehow, somewhere, sand would still linger. Alex continued, “But there is one thing I can definitely help with.”

I raised my eyebrows hopefully.

“The wichtlein. Give me the stone and I’ll track it for you.”

“But won’t it have disappeared back down whichever hole it came from?”

“Not if the death and destruction it warned of isn’t over yet. And the appearance of the terrametus dude would lead me to believe that it’s not.”

The hope that I’d felt earlier in the police station began to re-surface. “Then what are we waiting for? There’s no time like the present.” The pebble was in a pouch in my backpack so I pulled it out and offered it to him.

“Won’t the Bros want to be involved?” He made no move to take it from me.

“I think I’ve made my feelings about them perfectly clear already.” I hiked my backpack on my shoulders to make it more comfortable and tightened the straps.

“Yeah but they do have mad skills. And if Corrie finds out you’ve been off doing more stuff on your own, he’ll be even more pissed off with you.”

“I’d like to see you try calling him Corrie to his face, Alex. Anyway, he’s not the boss of me and they’re all leaving tomorrow afternoon because they could only commit to three days. And I won’t be alone because you’ll be with me.”

Alex paled slightly.

“Don’t worry,” I said calmly, “I’ll keep you safe. And no fighting, I promise.”

Unfortunately a cloud took that moment to pass over the moon and throw a shadow over us. It didn’t exactly boost Alex’s look of confidence. I didn’t want to wait any longer, however, because if too much time passed then the trail might go cold. I held the stone out to him again and tried my best puppy dog eyes.

He grimaced, and took it from me. “Fine. Just don’t look at me like that again – I don’t need to be any more