letting in fresh air, if the flickering flames of the fire pit were an indication. It wasn’t a proper ward, not a proper witch circle, because it seemed to cover the entrance only, and it wasn’t round. The energies were strange too. This was something I hadn’t seen before. My brain went immediately to Star Trek shields. If the shield let in air, it probably let in sound too. I’d been anything but silent. A tiny stem dropped from above and landed on the shield. It made a soft popping noise and gave a small tone of sound, like a dented brass bowl tapped with a fork. No one inside looked up. There were dozens of such bits of detritus on the shield, the noise of their falling having made the people inside deaf to exterior noise.
A shield meant I couldn’t get in.
Unless it was permeable to other things besides air. Maybe not branches or stems or rain or humans or skinwalkers or weres. But the Flayer had gotten in. Maybe . . . I studied it closer. The shield wasn’t a modern hedge of thorns. In Anzu vision, the energies were orange and blue, netlike, with ropes of power, thicker in some places than others. Shields were created to let in and keep out specific things. Maybe it would let in vamps. Maybe it would also let in creatures like me. Like an Anzu. But Anzus had weaknesses, for instance, a lethal allergy to being cut by iron and iron based metals.
I couldn’t see anything made of metal in the cave, no steel or silver, no athame for a sacrifice. But Shimon had his own weapons—talons and teeth. If he was here, and if there was a rift in the possession of the EuroVamps, then he had to know what the pool at the bottom of the crevasse was. And he might know that arcenciels came through rifts. And it was likely the Flayer wanted to capture rainbow dragons. Arcenciels, to old vamps, were like chocolate and diamonds were to humans—there could never be too many. My thoughts and Beast’s came fast, overlapping.
Had an arcenciel come through the rift and flown by the vamps Eli had arrow-shot and alerted them? Had Shimon put the presence of rainbow dragons and me together and begun looking for the rift? If he could timewalk, then he could have followed me here the first time I came in Beast form, found the rift, prepared the cave, gone into the future (or the past?) to the Regal, left himself a message of the location, and then returned to his own time and place. Somehow or some-when, he had gotten all these people and supplies here. I hadn’t seen a car anywhere when I flew in. Or maybe the Flayer could do that Star Trek thing and transport, using magical energy and his mind instead of tech. The possibilities and dangers made my head spin.
I tilted, falling, wings flailing. I leaped back to the other side and settled on the tree.
Only one thing mattered. Shimon Bar-Judas, the Flayer of Mithrans, the Son of Shadows, was at a rift, was going to sacrifice EJ for some purpose, maybe to gather power for a new time circle. He was going to capture a dragon, and with captured arcenciels, he could do anything, even perhaps keep the arcenciels from killing him and his bloodline two thousand years ago.
Maybe.
It was as a good a guess as any other for a magic that had been created and refined for two thousand years.
The first time I ever saw vampire witches was in a witch circle with a sacrifice. With EJ and Angie Baby. Back then the witch-vamps had been trying to bring back the long-chained. Or . . . Or they had been going to timewalk? Maybe change the past to somehow save the long-chained? Do something special to make their scions’ transition through the devoveo work?
It was important and equally immaterial. I didn’t have time on my side. What I had was the memory of being Bubo bubo, owl, but bigger and far more formidable. And I had my own timewalking magic.
Beast?
Beast is best ambush hunter. Beast bird is best ambush hunter from sky. Beast will save kit.
Dang skippy.
Will save skippy too.
I made a tock of laughing agreement that echoed softly in the crevasse. The sound reverberated into silence. Across the way, the Flayer of Mithrans bent to pick up EJ. We need to timewalk. Now!