Page 58 of Transfiguration
“Imprecise.”
“Yes, but I’ve gotten great at reading it over the years.” Con shoved a layer of magic into the ring, and it blazed into bright colors, powering up. He let the wind rise within the space, and an outline appeared for each of his tracking runes. All individual and specific to the particular person it was bound to. One blazed too bright to look at.
“You’re tracking me?” Seiran asked.
“You’ve vanished more than once, Father Earth,” Con said, and shoved the rune aside. He slid them in a circle as if they were on rotation. Those closest were the brightest. Sam’s and Luca’s were dim, even though they should have been as bright as the kids or Kelly. Kaine’s was also strangely dim. Maybe Con couldn’t track the fae the same way? He finally got to Bella’s mark, and it was little more than a vague outline. Con grabbed a hold of it with his magic, binding it with the iron grip of the wind, and letting his senses latch onto the mark.
He worried at his lip for a minute, fearing it wasn’t enough to track. Was the rune too weak to follow? But a ping resounded in his mind, making him whip around to look behind him. “You’ll need to drive,” Con told Seiran. “The signature is weak. I’ll probably be pretty vague with directions. It’s going to take a lot of concentration to hold the spell.”
“Noted,” Seiran said. Con snuffed the power of the circle, storing the power in his energy runes and using it to hyper-focus on the location. He followed Seiran to the car, feeling more like a zombie than a person. Being in two places at once was always disorienting. But once he was in the car, strapped in, he let the direction guide him, and shut off his awareness of everything else around him.
TWENTY-FOUR
They arrived at the location two hours south of the Twin Cities. A middle of nowhere swath of farmland all around with oases of trees surrounding a rare farmhouse or barn. Seiran didn’t ask questions, just kept the car moving in the direction Con pointed. The pulse in Con’s brain grew loud enough that they had to stop. He didn’t know where they were until he opened the door of the car and found them standing outside a decrepit, old farmhouse. The roof was falling in; the siding splotched with weather-stripped paint.
Trees overgrew most of the area, and a burnt shell of a vehicle sat off to the side. Con approached it with Seiran at his side, casting a spell of clarity, searching for magic.
“Still feels hot,” Seiran said. “It’s too new to be from the backlash of the fire spell.”
The heat pulsed with the same magical residue used in the loft. Con snarled at the rolling waves of the spell, familiar and maddening now. He slammed power into his break runes, and the pressure popped. He swirled a wave of air around them, latching onto the moisture in the ground and bringing rise to a small rain shower to douse the last of the fire.
“I’m just gonna call you Storm from now on,” Seiran joked.
“Not far from the truth,” Con admitted. He picked up a stick and poked through the burned vehicle, fearing he’d find Bella’s little body eaten up by the fire like Luca’s had been. The vehicle appeared to be the remains of one of Hart’s many private SUVs, but the fire burned hot enough that not much other than the frame remained. Would Bella’s body be gone? He didn’t find any sign of bone as he dug through the soot.
“What’s that?” Seiran asked, pointing to an area near what might have been a passenger-side door. It looked like a slip of fabric. Con’s stomach flipped over in fear, but he made his way to the spot, prying it up with the stick. It was a piece of the backpack. The tracking part of the rune was only partially visible in the stitching. The fabric itself untouched by fire but cut clean. Had the kidnappers realized it was a tracking thing and removed that part of the rune? The pack was bound to Bella’s will. Even as little of a charge as it was, she would have to have wanted it to tear for the runes to allow it to be broken up. Had Bella cut it somehow to help him find her?
“What does it mean?” Seiran asked.
“Bella’s alive. If she was dead, it would have burned, the runes tied to it unusable,” Con said.
“Would they make her cut it?”
“How would they know it was the tracking rune?” Con countered. “Runes aren’t universal any more than spells. I tied this one to Bella. Specific to her. I literally created this rune myself a few days ago. There are always some similar elements in each rune, but this is my magic, bound to her magical signature.”
“Did you point it out to her? Maybe she told them?”
Con shook his head. She’d been half asleep. He’d only mentioned it in passing. Not given her specifics. “I think she left it here?”
“Does that mean she’s here somewhere?”
Con took a few steps back and cast his focus spell to find a trail of anyone who moved through the area. Bella’s small form glowed like a star. She had been here but got in another car. He had only outlines, though maybe there were two adults and her? The car showed up as nothing more than a wall of voided life and a door that they all disappeared into.
Why here? Why the fire? What the hell was going on?
“Is there someone else there?” Seiran asked, pointing off toward the farmhouse ruins. “Your ripple thing moved over there. And that’s another spell I’d like to learn.”
Con caught the shimmer of movement too, so faint at first, he thought it had to be leaves or wind or something, but he felt himself drawn forward. The power of the ley lines hit him first, like a lightning bolt of energy. He froze, the few seconds of pain evaporating as he cycled the added weight of the ward to his magic stores. A basic keep out sort of thing; the spell packed the punch of a high volt electric fence, only with magic. Con’s defense runes, tattooed into his left arm, diffused the worst of the energy. He held his hand up to keep Seiran back. “Ward fueled by ley line magic?”
“It’s the easiest way to create a ward if a witch isn’t that powerful. Fuels it as long as the ley lines exist.” Seiran raised his hands and a swirl of magic smashed into the ward, unraveling the ties to the ley lines. Unlike the break spell, there was no backlash or pop of energy. It all dissipated back into the lines of magic woven through the earth, slinking away like a tide receding.
Con made his way forward, having to half crawl through the narrow collapsing doorway to enter the space. He thought he caught a female figure darting away, too big to be Bella, and his mind latched onto the familiarity of the shape, like he’d seen it a thousand times before. “Kat?”
Not possible, Con thought. She’d been dead a long time and he couldn’t see ghosts. But the hair and the shape of the dress made his heart cling to hope. He made his way into the narrow space, Seiran close behind.
In the center of the ruins was a circle etched into the ground with a sharp blade. Con touched the edge by accident and recoiled in pain as magic sucked him forward, as if he could be devoured by the ley line itself. “Fuck,” he cursed, reeling back, landing half in Seiran’s lap.
“What is it?” Seiran asked, wrapping an arm around Con and holding them both back.