Page 36

Chapter 36

The ogres’ bodies were horrifyingly familiar. I’d have bet my bottom dollar that these were the same ones that had attacked us last time. Their flesh had started to decay and their clothes had a fine covering of dirt. They smelled of earth and rot and my stomach roiled.

‘Ogre zombies! Oh Goddess. They’re already dead! What do we do?’ I shouted at Bastion in panic. I fumbled for my athame. I was not a warrior, I was just a witch.

‘We kill them again!’ Bastion called back. ‘Permanently this time. Do you have a bomb?’

I reached into my pocket and encountered the reassuring weight of the potion vial. ‘I do!’

‘Keep it in reserve unless things get dicey,’ he called. ‘Stay out of the way and leave this to Oscar and me.’

The thing is, I’m not too good at following orders. I could definitely do something helpful; hanging out with Jinx had taught me to think on my feet. I ignored the adrenaline rush, pushed away the panic and forced myself to think. Then I opened my tote bag and looked at my potions. I could work with this.

I had the bone-setting potion with me and I could tweak its use. Maybe. If not, I’d paint some runes on the ground. No harm, no foul. I pulled out a brush and painted gengente to provoke the opposite reaction to the potion I was using. Instead of bringing something together, I wanted to divide. Then I painted uruz for power or force, dagaz for transformation and hagalaz for destruction.

I stepped back from the huge runes I’d painted and pulled my magic forward. The runes lit up and the ground trembled a little at first, and then a lot more. Whoops. Maybe I’d used a little too much power; I’d intended to make a small pit to shove the ogres into, not start an earthquake.

The tremors increased in force. ‘Hold on to something!’ I shouted in warning to Oscar and Bastion.

‘What have you done?’ Oscar asked as the ground started to rumble.

I didn’t bother to answer because it would soon be evident. The road rippled and trembled. A small hole appeared at first, as I’d intended, but before I could crow in triumph I noticed that it didn’t stop growing. Soon it was bigger than a council-neglected pothole. The ground shuddered under our feet then tore open.

A large ravine appeared, cutting through the road and into the grass verges. The rift was as long as I could see. Rune ruin! That was a mite bigger than I’d intended. Still, a huge chasm would be useful. And although the earth had been divided, I was sure I could heal it again. Probably.

I sent a triumphant grin to Bastion. Ha! I was not just a pretty face. ‘Stay out of the way’ indeed!

The zombie ogres were slow to react to the gaping ravine – the undead aren’t the sharpest athames in the box – but Bastion’s reaction was lightning fast. He shifted into griffin form and flung himself upwards. When he was airborne, he grabbed one of the eight-foot ogres with his claws, effortlessly rose up with him in his talons then dropped him into the hole.

Oscar took a similar approach; he used the IR to shove the ogre closest to the chasm into its gaping maw. Nice.

The men quickly found their rhythm and the undead ogres found their doom. I could hear their bodies whump as they hit the bottom but such was the depth of the hole I couldn’t see them. When all of the reanimated bodies had been reburied, we took a breath to evaluate the situation .

‘Nice work,’ Bastion commented with a half-smile. ‘But you’d better fix the sinkhole before the Connection get wind of it.’ Calling it a sinkhole was like calling a hurricane a breeze, but not much fazed Bastion.

‘I’m on it,’ I confirmed. I used the bone-setting potion again but this time I didn’t use gengente to reverse it. I painted on a large uruz for power before adding a jera for completion and a sowilo for health. After a moment’s hesitation, I added dagaz for transformation.

I was suddenly nervous. Without the threat of the ogres looming over me, I doubted the wisdom of my action. My head still hurt and I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I should for this sort of thing. I couldn’t afford to make a mistake.

I felt a wave of emotion from Bastion and it took me a moment to decipher it. Faith. He believed in me. It steadied me.

‘Hold on,’ I cautioned Oscar and Bastion, then drew my magic forward through the large runes. They lit up, the ground trembled again and we braced ourselves. For a moment I thought the rift was getting worse but then it slowly started to close. I leaned into the sowilo a little more, making sure the uprooted grasses found their way to the earth again unharmed by their jaunt .

‘I think you’ve been selling yourself short,’ I commented to Bastion. ‘Those ogres had to weigh more than six hundred kilograms.’

‘I think you’ve been selling yourself short,’ he countered. ‘You’re a specialist in runes, potions and mayhem.’

‘That was rather impressive, wasn’t it?’ I allowed myself a small smile of satisfaction.

‘Very impressive. In fact, it was very sexy,’ he murmured. I felt his blood heat.

A kraa interrupted our moment and Fehu plunged towards us. ‘You’re late,’ Bastion grunted. ‘You missed the party.’

The raven landed on Bastion’s shoulder and hung his head. ‘It’s not your fault,’ I reassured him. ‘I used magic to end things rather quickly, otherwise you’d have been perfectly on time.’

He brightened, gave me a happy kraa, flew to my shoulder and hopped from one foot to another. If he’d had a tongue, he’d have been sticking it out at Bastion.

I felt Bastion’s amusement – and that was when I realised that was all I felt. The all-pervading agony he’d been experiencing had disappeared. ‘Hang on a minute! Your pain has gone!’ I pointed out brightly.

He blinked. ‘It has.’ He had a light-bulb moment. ‘The shift healed the headache.’ He groaned aloud. ‘I’m an idiot. I’ve never shifted to heal something like a headache before. Open the bond, give me the rest of the pain and I can shift again and get rid of it.’

Bastion pulled at the bond and this time I let him take all the pain. In seconds he shifted and the hurt vanished between us, like ballast being thrown from a hot-air balloon. In that moment, we were blissfully free of pain.

I couldn’t help but wonder how long it would last.