Page 44 of Demon Loved (The Witches of Mingus Mountain #5)
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.”
That sounded like a whole lot of anthropomorphizing to her, but she’d be the first to admit that she really didn’t know too much about how any of this worked.
Also, the energy that had settled here had come from generations of McAllister forebears, so it had a very human source.
Maybe it was more responsive to people than she’d thought.
If that was the case, then she had to believe that energy, layered in this spot after decade upon decade of ritual work, would do everything it could to protect the people who lived and breathed now.
“It does want to help,” she said softly.
She’d been so wrapped up in feeling the tingling hum of the energy beneath her feet that she hadn’t realized Belshegar had approached and now stood only a foot or so away from where she stood.
“That’s good,” he said, his voice also an undertone, almost as if he didn’t want to disturb the energy flowing around them. “And it’s good that you can tap into it so easily.”
Another unexpected aspect to a talent she hadn’t even realized she had until a day ago?
But energy was energy, she supposed, whether it had traveled across unimaginable universes or had simply built up over the years, like layers of paint on an old door.
Thinking of it that way made the situation a little easier to accept. This was just another part of her, like the color of her hair or the sound of her voice. It wasn’t anything to get freaked out about.
Although she couldn’t help thinking there might be plenty to freak out about later, once the Collector realized what they were up to.
But doubting herself would only make matters worse. Belshegar believed in her, and that meant she needed to believe in herself as well, even though she’d never been very good at that kind of thing.
She twined her fingers with his and did her best to smile.
“Well, now that we’ve got this figured out, let’s get some lunch.”
Her father had told her she shouldn’t cancel her classes that afternoon, so Brianna had dutifully driven down to Cottonwood to give Callie her guitar lesson, and afterward, had gone to Luke Dawson’s house ten minutes or so away to work on his piano.
It was inching past five-thirty by the time she started to head back up the hill.
Still too many hours to go until they performed the ritual, though. While she understood intellectually that waiting until dark was the only real way to do this, she hated the idea of trying to fill up the empty space in between.
In the end, though, it wasn’t too bad. She and Belshegar had already talked about going to Grapes for dinner, so she met him there and they had pizza and wine, and talked about everything except the upcoming confrontation.
If it turned out to be a confrontation at all.
Maybe the Collector would realize what they were up to but would decide not to fight back.
They were only one small clan, when you got right down to it, and there had to be plenty more artifacts scattered around the globe, just ripe for the picking.
Why get into a big battle here when he could turn his attentions elsewhere?
That all sounded very practical in her mind. Whether any of it was the truth was entirely up for debate.
After dinner, she and Belshegar went back to her apartment and killed some more time by watching a couple of TV shows.
She wasn’t very interested in either of them, but even though one part of her brain thought it might have been a better idea to take him into her bedroom and divert themselves that way, she knew deep down that she wasn’t ready for that.
When they did become intimate, she wanted it to be because the moment was right, and not because she was trying to distract herself from the very real possibility that maybe none of them would survive this encounter with the Collector.
No, she was imagining worst-case scenarios because she didn’t know what to expect. However powerful he might be, he was still only one man. There was no way in the world he could beat Belshegar and her father and Angela and Connor and the two elders.
But if he brought enough servants with him….
Around and around her thoughts chased themselves, but eventually it was not quite nine o’clock and time to go. Belshegar had been quiet for most of the evening, as if he understood that any pep talks wouldn’t find a very receptive audience.
He held her hand as they walked down to the promontory, though, and she couldn’t help being comforted by the strength and warmth of his fingers.
With the sun down, the mild temperatures of the day were long gone, and she’d had to put on a jacket before they left the apartment.
Unlike her, he didn’t seem to need any extra protection from the cold air, and that small difference reminded her again that he wasn’t human, no matter what he looked like.
It didn’t matter, though. After all, half of her wasn’t exactly human, either, so what was the big deal?