Author: Tower Curator

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“I can’t believe scum like that tasted your blood before me,” Serena sulked once they were back in their room.

“I can’t believe that we’re working with those monsters,” Nel said, gripping her hands into fists. “They should be exterminated, not bartered with.”

“Hey! I’ll have you know that I would very much resent being exterminated.”

Eva moved past the bickering idiots and slumped straight into one of the beds. At this point, she wasn’t sure if she would care about them murdering each other.

Her head was hammering, Sawyer’s actions were just as nauseating as they had been earlier, and now she had Nel and Serena talking far too loudly. Casting a darkness spell around Serena to get her safely back into the room had taken its toll. All she wanted to do was to sleep for the next thirty-six or so hours. Then, the ritual would have worn off.

They would have to move fast once it ended if they didn’t want all the knowledge she had learned to become useless.

Sawyer had worked through about half of the bodies. The light from sunrise was not making their appearance any better. Though she could actually stomach their appearance. It was still the smell that got to her the most.

If only Sawyer would go around and open the caskets before he got to them. Something to let them air out.

At no point in moving between caskets had Sawyer pulled out his cellphone. Perhaps because the sun had risen and most vampires slept through the day. Or maybe he knew that his minion had perished. Eva really didn’t care what he thought so long as he didn’t flee.

On the plus side of everything that had happened with the vampires, Eva now had a cellphone. At least until the phone company didn’t get payments from the dead vampire. Maybe she’d be lucky and he would have some bank account set up to automatically make payments.

What, exactly, she would do if and when Sawyer called, Eva still didn’t know. She would likely just ignore it. Maybe with a text message about how she shouldn’t be contacted for a few days because of whatever reasons.

If she saw an opportunity to taunt him with it that wouldn’t cause him to run, she would probably take it. Maybe a text message right as she launched a surprise attack.

“They can’t be trusted,” Nel said, hands on her hips. “They’ll stab us in the back the moment they see the chance.”

Eva had her face buried in the pillow, but she still used her blood sight to track everything around her. She trusted Nel and Serena to an extent and didn’t think that either would attack her. Like Nel, she didn’t believe in the vampires to half the same extent.

The tenants in the neighboring rooms were still asleep. No one was outside and she couldn’t see all the way to the manager’s office. She wished that they were in a room closer to the vampire’s thralls, but she’d just have to make do.

Eva half expected a bunch of thralls to show up around noon to break in the windows. She would have to keep an eye on her blood sight and watch for anything suspicious outside.

“They made a fuss over Lucas for two reasons. Reason the first,” Serena held up a finger as she spoke, “one of their number had just exploded. They were scared. The other reason is that Kuvon couldn’t appear weak in front of his den. They would have eaten him alive if he had shown weakness. Literally, probably.”

“So what, since we’ve assuaged their worries they’ll just fall in line?”

“Nooo,” Serena said, drawing out the word with a shake of her head. “They’ll fall in line because Eva promised them a whole case of her blood.”

Eva just groaned. “Don’t remind me,” she mumbled into her pillow.

“It might not have been the wisest thing to do,” Serena said with a sage nod.

“I didn’t want to fight. Even if I could have clapped my hands and killed all the vampires, I don’t know that I would have held up against the thralls. And there were a good number of them. With me useless and Nel,” Eva paused, turning her head to the side just enough to stare at the augur with one eye. “Well, you would have had to deal with them on your own.”

Nel just huffed, crossing her arms across her chest. Though, Eva didn’t count that as a disagreement.

“And then there were the extra vampires you mentioned. The ones that might not be there.”

“Those were August strain vampires,” Serena said. “They tend to like large groups. Six just feels small. Even for a town this size.”

“How many more would you expect?”

“Four to six. Ten to twelve in total. Minus the one called Lucas, obviously.”

“So we would have only killed off half of them. Probably wouldn’t have been able to trick the other half into drinking blood either.”

“They would have realized something was suspicious if we offered them a few vials.”

“There you have it,” Eva said to Nel. “Unless you’ve got a better idea, having them as our allies is much better than fighting both them and Sawyer. Doubly so because our fighting would probably draw Sawyer’s attention prematurely.”

Still with her arms over her chest, Nel huffed again. “We should call the Elysium Order. Even if they’ve suspended operations, they can’t ignore an infestation of vampires and a necromancer.”

“Yeah, I’m sure they’d be thrilled as can be to receive a call from you, me, and another vampire,” Eva said with a wan grin. It was half covered up by the pillow, but she was fairly certain that the augur got her meaning if her averted gaze was any indication. “Besides, this is our revenge. I want Sawyer’s blood to rain down around me. Not to watch from afar while some nuns fumble their way into letting him escape again.”

Nel narrowed her eyes, but didn’t respond.

Eva just burrowed her head back into her pillow. She really didn’t care what the augur thought at the moment. Her head was hammering. As Sawyer cracked open another casket, it was all she could do to keep from rushing to the bathroom again.

The side of her bed sank in under Serena’s weight as the vampire sat down. “I know you’re not feeling well,” she said in a gentle voice, “but it would be better for you to drain your blood for the vampires now. So you can rebuild your strength before we go meet them again.”

Eva groaned. Serena was right, but that didn’t mean that she had to like it. “You just want a taste.”

“Maybe,” she said with a light chuckle. “But I suppose I can save it for the vampires given our limited supply.”

Grasping around behind her back, Eva’s fingers curled around the hilt of her dagger. She brought it around and jammed it into her shoulder. The pooling blood left the surface of her skin and hovered in the air over her back.

“Just set out the empty vials we got back,” Eva said, ignoring Serena licking her lips. “I’ll take care of the rest. And, if it isn’t too much trouble, I’d appreciate quiet for a while. If anything happens with Sawyer, I’ll let you guys know.”

—

Around noon, Sawyer finally finished with his gruesome task. In the process, he gave Eva some hope that he wouldn’t do anything particularly terrible for the remainder of the time she had to spend with him.

Her hopes were quickly dashed.

Sawyer closed the lid of the last casket and proceeded to direct the skeletons around. They carried off the caskets to fill in the ritual circle rings.

Not every slot got a casket placed into it. Sawyer skipped over a few of them.

That was cause for some concern. Eva didn’t know if they would be filled in later with more appropriate corpses or if they were intentionally left blank. If it was the latter, Sawyer would need less corpses. He would be finished sooner. Regardless of what the ritual did, Eva did not want to see what would happen if she let him finish it.

But for the moment, he was taking a break. After heading back to his warehouse, Sawyer decided to get something to eat. It was somewhat shocking to see this horrible, terrible person slip a bowl of macaroni into a microwave and then proceed to eat it while looking over a tome. Eva couldn’t read whatever language the tome had been written in; undoubtedly, it was a necromantic text on some fiendish activity that he intended to unleash on the world. But the situation itself was just so normal–something that Eva could see herself doing–that it was almost surreal.

At least until she realized that he hadn’t washed his hands since having them elbow deep in several corpses. The same pale light that had killed the maggots earlier briefly lit up his arms before he had started to eat. That might have killed off bacteria and such, but it didn’t help all the grime coating him.

Eva almost vomited again at the thought of pieces of dead bodies falling into his meal. Little chunks of skin, stomachs, or intestines.

Haemomancy was not a clean art. Between her own blood and others’ blood, it was just the opposite. Eva was hardened against most feelings related to blood. That didn’t mean that she sat around drinking it all day like some sort of vampire.

She might occasionally get coated in blood. She might occasionally go elbow deep into someone’s body. They were typically far fresher bodies than Sawyer’s corpses, but it was a similar ordeal. But Eva at least washed her hands or showered before eating.

Eva immediately regretted thinking such thoughts as soon as they had crossed her mind.

Sawyer finished with his meal, dumped the bowl in the sink, and proceeded into the shower as if he had read her mind.

Of all the things that Eva didn’t need to see in her life, Sawyer showering ranked among the highest.

Though, on second thought, him showering was far more preferable to him cracking open more caskets and releasing the noxious fumes contained within. At least he was getting clean.

Why he even bothered, Eva couldn’t say. As soon as he finished toweling himself off and dressing, Sawyer walked into a larger side room of the warehouse.

Rows of caskets were lined up inside. Several were open, others were closed. Dirt covered the floor where it had come loose from the caskets. A large skylight overhead let in the early morning light. Not that the light was needed. A number of heavy-duty floodlights were hanging from the second floor, all illuminating the room to the point of leaving almost no shadows.

Skeletons shambled about the area alongside a number of zombies. Some carried things, buckets for the most part. Others looked like guards, all equipped with various medieval weaponry. Except for a handful that appeared to have guns bolted onto their hands.

There was a small group of skeletons accompanied by a handful of enigmas and even a few zombies.

Sawyer paid them no mind, even despite the zombies’ proximity to him. They didn’t even notice him. He might as well have been invisible to everything in the room.

His focus was on a younger girl who stood over one of the open caskets. Des, the blended girl who looked like some kind of Frankenstein’s monster, held a long knife in her hand. She was shearing off the flesh of a corpse’s arm as if she were peeling a fruit.

The scraps of flesh were dropped into a bucket carried by one of the skeletons.

Sawyer walked up to the young girl, ruffling her hair. “And how are we this fine morning?”

Des looked up to him and just gave a slight, jerky nod of her head. Her lips were still sealed together with stitches.

When she was last able to spy on them, Nel had mentioned a heart transplant involving the girl and an enigma. Eva had to wonder if that actually got completed or not. Externally, there was no sign of it. Eva wasn’t sure what sign there would be, but she had expected bright purple veins at the very least.

Thinking about that got Eva considering another topic. Her tongue was dark in coloration after her latest treatment. Her skin was the same as it always had been despite her blood being pitch black. Eva had to wonder just what color her heart was. And the rest of her organs. Devon had never cut her open to check after any treatments and Eva couldn’t exactly say that she wanted him to do so, but it might be interesting to find out.

Something to discuss with Devon when she got back home.

“You’ve made it through less than half of them,” Sawyer said, glancing around the room. His eyes stopped for a moment on each open casket before moving on to the next. “Better than yesterday, I suppose.”

After giving Des two pats on the head, he moved over to the wall. A number of tools had been hung up on a rack. Some, shiny new metal. Others looked like rusted implements from a horror movie.

A few tools were set out that Eva recognized. Unfortunately. The small silver cigar cutter-like device hung from a thin metal rod. Not far from it was the flexible knife that he had used to remove her original eyes.

Lying in her bed, Eva clenched her fists and ground her teeth together. They were good reminders of just why she was out in the middle of relatively rural Idaho, stalking a necromancer.

He ignored all of them. Instead, he walked up to a large tool chest and opened a few of the drawers. It took him a moment of searching, but he finally found what he was looking for. Sawyer pulled out a large silvery knife. One almost identical to the one held by Des. He pulled a few other things from the rack, a saw, a hammer, and a large spoon.

With the tools in his hands, Sawyer walked over to one of the unopened caskets. He cracked it open, much to Eva’s despair, and proceeded to remove flesh from the bones.

From what Eva had seen of Des, the girl was an amateur. Her knife hacked where Sawyer’s glided. Her strips of flesh were jagged and chunky where Sawyer’s were smooth and long. Eva could feel the lack of resistance as his knife cleanly severed muscles, ligaments, flesh, and everything else.

The way he moved and cut was so elegant that Eva almost forgot that he was slicing up a corpse.

Once finished with the limbs, Sawyer moved on to the torso. He used his knife to remove any excess flesh on the outside of the ribcage. Using the large spoon-like tool, he scraped out the entirety of the insides in a single go. It was sharp at the edges to cut any meat from the bones that might be still attached, but small enough to fit into a wide variety of chest cavities.

All of the mostly decayed organs got dumped into a bucket carried by the skeletons. Eva couldn’t see where the skeletons were taking the flesh, but she couldn’t help but wonder just what the purpose of all this was.

If he wanted to remove everything from the bones, surely the older corpses that he had sent to the ritual field were better for the task. They had all been in a far more advanced state of decay. More decay meant less flesh to remove. Unless, of course, the ritual required corpses of a certain age.

It was hard to say without knowing much about necromancy. Part of her hoped that he would go and review his plan with Des, or read a tome that Eva could understand that detailed everything he was intending to do.

Eva doubted that it would be that easy.

Though Des had a head start on the corpse she had been working on, Sawyer finished well in advance.

Mostly.

He finished scalping the skull. From looking at the skeletal remains, Eva had assumed he was finished. That was until he had grabbed hold of the saw.

Sawyer took the tool to the base of the skull and started removing the back of the skull, right near where the spinal cord connected to the brain. When he finally got it open, he looked inside.

There wasn’t much of a brain left. A lot of black goop that Eva wouldn’t have wanted to touch. Not much else.

Sawyer stuck his bare hand inside without a care and proceeded to scrape out the insides into one of the bucket skeletons’ buckets. Once the inside was mostly clear, he carried it over towards the tool rack.

Just to the side of the tools was a large brick structure that came up to Sawyer’s waist. Eva could feel the heat coming off it through her link to Sawyer.

He put on a heavy glove, gripped a rod that was sticking out the top, and pulled it back.

The head of the rod was an intricate design of weaved iron. And it was glowing red hot. A branding iron.

What’s more, Eva recognized the design. As Sawyer shoved the hot end of the iron into the hole in the skull, Eva realized just what he was doing.

It was one of the things that she had come across while skimming through the necromancy tomes that she had stolen.

Sawyer was making skeletons. The animated kind of skeletons. Ones that would wander around, doing his bidding and being nuisances to everyone else.

More skeletons. Between the field, the graveyard, and his warehouse, he already had so many skeletons.

Then, Eva remembered the crypt. The one that she, Arachne, Devon, and Juliana had all entered. The one that had been packed full of the monsters. There had been so many in the cave that, weak though skeletons were, Eva’s group had nearly been overwhelmed anyway. And then there was that giant mass of skeletons that Arachne had fought.

Eva considered the idea that Sawyer had some sort of compulsion to make skeletons. Although, the skeletons at the crypt probably hadn’t required so much effort to make. He would have just had to run around branding skulls. They would have been far less fleshy than most of the corpses he had dug up for this batch.

As Sawyer withdrew the branding iron from the skull and replaced it into the kiln, Eva could feel magic being channeled. The still hot sigil glowed slightly before fading.

The bones in the jaw creaked. A faint glow in the back of the skull’s eyes lit up.

Sawyer turned the skull over, inspecting it. Looking towards the casket, he watched as the rest of the skeleton tried to sit up.

After a satisfied nod, Sawyer reached over to the tool rack and pulled a scouring pad from a small bag. He shoved it between the teeth of the skull and chucked the skull back to the casket.

The skeleton’s body managed to catch it, but fell back down at the force.

“Clean yourself off,” Sawyer shouted at it. “Then fall in line with the others.”

It wasted no time in following his directions. Using the pad, it started scrubbing off bits of flesh that had been left behind by Sawyer.

Walking back to the casket himself, Sawyer picked up his discarded tools and moved on to another body.

Sawyer paused before opening the lid. He glanced towards Des, shaking his head sadly.

“Carry on without me for a time, honey. I’ll be back shortly.”

The girl looked up at him with wide, questioning eyes. With her lips sealed, she couldn’t speak.

Sawyer apparently got the message anyway.

“Don’t worry,” he said as he walked towards the door leading back into the livable section of the warehouse. “Just something that I forgot to take care of. It won’t take long.”

Her stitched lips turned downwards in a frown, but she nodded anyway.

As soon as Sawyer left the room, he pulled out a small cellphone from his pocket. Not a smart phone, but an older-style flip phone. One covered in grime and dirt. With all the brain goop on his fingers, it wasn’t getting any cleaner.

The contacts list held only two numbers in it and no names. He scrolled through to the second before Eva could even try to memorize either.

Eva tensed. A moment later, she felt a vibration. One that was on her side of their link, right at her hip.

Remaining unmoving, Eva waited.

The vibration continued for far too long. Sawyer leaned against the wall and started tapping a finger against it. The taps grew more and more impatient with every unanswered ring.

Finally, the rings ceased. On Sawyer’s side of things, she heard the phone connect to a voice mail system. As soon as it finished, Sawyer began to speak.

“I am aware that your kind dislike the middle of the day, but I do not appreciate being made to wait. Do return my call before something unfortunate has to happen. Next time, leave a message. That’s what it’s there for.”

Eva rolled her eyes. He doesn’t like people making him wait? Sawyer had ignored the initial call and then forgot about it for half the day.

With a displeased shake of his head, Sawyer dropped the phone back into his pocket.

Eva watched him return to making skeletons for a moment longer. When he didn’t do anything suspicious, Eva pushed herself out of bed.

She had until nightfall to discuss with the others just what they should do. Not responding at all would be too suspicious, but they needed to keep him in the dark for one more day. At least. Two, ideally.

Eva’s ritual would run out halfway through tomorrow night. While they could try assaulting him with the remainder of the darkness, Serena and any vampires that showed up to help might have to leave early to avoid the sun. If they managed to keep his suspicions low, they would have a full night to work with.

Either way, Eva was starting to get excited about just what she wanted to do to Sawyer. Maybe she would take the little cigar cutter off the rack and put it to use.

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It only took six hours for Eva to regret ever performing the ritual.

By twelve hours, she was certain that she would be sick multiple times before the ritual wore off.

The doubled vision and senses, she could handle. Sitting in one spot with her eyes shut went leagues in preventing her from feeling ill. Anything that reduced her sensory inputs to only Sawyer helped exponentially.

No. Her regrets didn’t have anything to do with the ritual itself.

Rather, her regrets stemmed from ever thinking that peeking in on Sawyer’s deprived mind would be a good idea.

It wasn’t.

It definitely wasn’t.

Watching him dig up a graveyard wasn’t so bad. That had consisted of him standing around and watching a bunch of skeletons. The skeletons shoveled out dirt. Eventually, one would hit a casket and wave him over.

That was around where things started to go bad. Cracking open caskets was not something that Eva would recommend to anyone. With all of Sawyer’s senses, Eva could smell the body contained within.

The smell.

She didn’t know where to begin in describing it. Horrible. Vile. Disgusting. No word she could think of had the proper impact.

Eva had barely managed to keep her lunch down. She was no stranger to gruesome things. Blood, violence, killing people even. None of it really bothered her all that much. She had become used to it.

But everything that she was used to was fresh. No time for rot to set in. Bodies she killed didn’t often fester inside a tiny box with no clean airflow. At least not while she was around.

She had actually started to regret leaving the bodies of those thugs lying around their warehouse. She actually hoped that the police had either found them immediately or wouldn’t until a hundred years after their bones had been picked clean by scavengers. Finding them anywhere in between would not be pleasant.

Sawyer hadn’t even wrinkled his nose at the stench. He reached in without hesitation and gripped the body’s chin. The leathery skin had holes in it, especially around the cheeks and eyes. He turned the head one way, then the other. A bit of cracking sound had accompanied the motions, but Eva couldn’t tell what it was. He was the expert, not her.

He plunged a bare finger into the eye socket. After wiggling it around for a moment, he withdrew, wiping the gunk on his finger on the cloth inside the casket. Closing the lid, he had checked the date on the tombstone before writing ‘three months’ on the lid with a marker.

“To the warehouse,” he had ordered.

Four skeletons had picked up the casket, one at each corner, and marched away.

In Eva’s opinion, caskets looked heavy. She had never lifted one, so she couldn’t say for certain, but that was just what she guessed by the size. How four skeletons could pick up a casket without their arms falling out of their sockets could only be explained through the use of magic.

That had been Eva’s experience with only the first of the caskets. He had stuck around, digging up tens of the things. Every one got an inspection like the first. Some smelled worse, other smelled better–or Eva was just getting used to the smell. One in particular had been damaged at some point. The casket hadn’t been sealed properly or it had broken open. Maggots infested the inside.

Sawyer hadn’t so much as flinched when reaching into the casket. He hadn’t taken any notice of the things as they crawled over his hands. Only when he removed his hand did he glance down at the maggots. A pale light washed over his skin.

The maggots dropped to the ground, unmoving.

Some of the bodies followed the first to the warehouse. Some went to ‘the field.’ A number of them got thrown back into their graves. Ones fresher than a year tended to go towards the warehouse. Older ones went to the field. Damaged corpses, those with missing arms or bashed in skulls for example, made up the bulk of those that were returned to their grave.

He never replaced them with any respect. He merely waved his hand and the skeletons shoved the caskets back into the pit, sometimes without even closing the lid.

Of course, Eva’s ritual had proved useful despite the obvious downsides.

When Sawyer had finally left the graveyard, Serena and Nel had been able to figure out exactly where he was and where his warehouse was based on Eva’s descriptions of the surroundings. There were three graveyards within the gap in Nel’s augur vision. Sawyer had probably picked the location specifically because of the close proximity to so many corpses.

She had managed to sketch out some crude blueprints of his warehouse as well. Every skeleton, zombie, ghost, or enigma that she saw, she noted down beside the sketch. Knowing that there were twelve enigmas patrolling the outside along with skeletons could save their lives.

“His hand,” Eva said softly. She didn’t want to speak too loud. Sawyer couldn’t hear her, but she could hear herself and that was bad enough. “I didn’t notice in the darkness of the cemetery, but it is discolored. There are stitches holding it to his wrist.”

Perhaps because it wasn’t a sense that Eva was leeching from Sawyer, watching her companions through her blood sight didn’t cause any extra sickness. She was free to watch Nel nod her head without any backlash.

“That makes sense. The girl was amputating his hand at one point. I didn’t see him reattach it, but given the state of the girl, I doubt attaching a new one would be beyond his abilities.”

Eva nodded, but did not respond. Unlike her blood sight, hearing Nel’s voice did cause some ‘double-hearing’ induced nausea. Instead, she just sat back and watched through Sawyer’s eyes as he went about his base of operations. She made notations where necessary. Anything that looked important or dangerous got marked on her blueprints.

She didn’t want Sawyer to get away, but he was the slippery sort. Destroying absolutely everything would be a suitable consolation prize. Especially if they then went to his Nevada home, either chasing after him or to destroy everything there.

“Hold on,” Eva said. “He’s leaving his warehouse.”

Sawyer hadn’t bothered to lock the doors on his way out. With all the skeletal guards and enigmas patrolling around, he probably didn’t need to. They would be more than able to handle just about any intruder. Especially ones that just happened to stumble across his hideout. Mundane police wouldn’t stand a chance.

Mage-knights of Genoa’s caliber or a group of Elysium Order nuns could probably get in. Neither of them would likely be stopped by a single locked door for very long.

“Where’s he going?”

Eva shrugged. “I see what he sees, not think what he thinks.” And wasn’t that a good thing. Peeking into Sawyer’s thoughts might give them insight into just what he was doing, but Eva doubted that she would remain all that sane. Serena and Nel would probably have had to restrain her.

“He’s headed towards his car.” A nice car. Eva didn’t know enough about cars to tell just what make and model it was, but it was nicer than Devon’s truck. She wouldn’t have expected a necromancer to drive around in a sleek sports car, yet there he was.

As he drove along the twisted roads, Eva called out his direction and any side streets that he passed by. Nel could write down any landmarks while Serena marked it down on their map.

“I think he’s headed towards the field he mentioned,” Eva said. “He’s pulling over to the side of the road and I can’t see anything around but wilderness. No buildings or lights. Not even a side road.”

His discolored hand twitched a little as Sawyer reached for the car keys. With his good hand, he clamped down on his wrist for just a moment before removing the keys from the ignition. In the same motion that dropped the keys into his pocket, he retrieved a syringe full of fluorescent green liquid.

Eva jerked back with a wince as he plunged it into his arm. The needle itself wasn’t the problem. A blood mage had to cut themselves far worse than the tiny pinprick.

The problem was the liquid. It burned. His pain came through their link loud and clear. And yet, he didn’t actually wince or anything to indicate that he felt the pain. Either he was much better at disguising the feeling than she was or he had a way to ignore it that didn’t prevent the pain from going to her.

“Are you okay?”

Eva started at Serena’s voice. She hadn’t even noticed the vampire placing a hand on her shoulder. “Fine,” she said without opening her eyes. “Just note down that Sawyer has problems with his hand. Twitches and loss of control. He takes some kind of injected potion for it that is not pleasant.”

Sawyer was moving again. Walking this time. There was a trodden trail through the sagebrush and dirt, so he had probably been this way a few times.

He crested the top of a small hill and looked down below.

“I don’t like the look of this.”

Skeletons meandered about in the shallow valley. Caskets and coffins were arranged into circular rings. Three in the innermost ring, five in the next, eight after that. The ring after that looked like it had room for thirteen, but four were missing. There was enough room for one or maybe two more rings of caskets after that, but neither had anything in them aside from meandering skeletons.

“It’s a ritual of some sort. Or Sawyer is just obsessive about how he arranges his bodies. I don’t have a clue as to what it could be for, however.”

“What kind of ritual?” Nel asked. “I’m no archivist, but I have been trained to recognize most common necromantic activities.”

“Rings of bodies. Three, five, eight, and so on. All centered around something in the middle. He didn’t look directly at it, so I’m not sure what it was.”

Studying through the necromancy books she had stolen might have been a good idea—even just bringing them along so that they could look things up. There was no guarantee that this particular ritual would be in any of the books that she had, but they would have been better than nothing.

Nel hummed in thought for a few moments. Eventually, she shook her head. “I would normally describe the more complicated things I see to an archivist to figure out what they are. Sorry.”

Eva just waved her off, though she kept that in mind for later. Maybe they could contact someone in the Elysium Order and ask. It wouldn’t be hard to claim that they were mage-knights on a job. Probably.

After surveying the ritual site for a few minutes, Sawyer walked down into the valley. He didn’t stop at any of the caskets. Neither did he stop at the center. He continued onwards until he had reached the top of the hill on the opposite side of valley.

Eva quickly counted up the caskets there were all lined up in a row. Twenty. Enough to finish the thirteen-ring, but not enough for even half of the first empty ring.

That was a relief. Whatever the ritual was for, it couldn’t be anything good. Eva decided to make the field a priority regardless of how anything else turned out.

She recognized a few of the caskets from the graveyard earlier. The rest might have come from the same place, but it was dark and she really hadn’t been paying all that much attention to the individual caskets.

He walked up to the first casket in the line and placed his hands on the lid.

Eva braced herself, preparing for the worst.

Once again, a stench belched forth from the casket that sent Eva’s head spinning. She had been hoping that she had gotten used to it, or that the casket might have aired out a little thanks to having been opened not long before.

That wasn’t the case. The fresh air in the interim just made the scent hit her tenfold as hard.

As Sawyer pulled out a set of tools, Eva stepped straight to her feet behind Serena and Nel. She rushed into the bathroom and proceeded to empty her stomach into the toilet.

— — —

Nel watched with narrowed eyes as the vampire took off after Eva.

Keeping the notebook in hand in case Eva had more for her to write down, Nel followed the two. She couldn’t let the vampire be alone with Eva while the girl was in such a vulnerable state. It wasn’t so much a matter of if but when the creature would stab them in the back.

Though, as Nel watched the vampire pat Eva on the back, she had to admit that the situation was disconcerting. Every vampire that she had ever met had been a bloodthirsty monster bent on killing as many of her sisters in the Elysium Order as they could before they got put down.

One acting… civilized just didn’t mesh with what she knew to be true.

She knew that they could act civilized. Sometimes, at least. If every vampire was in a constant state of madness, they wouldn’t be half as hard to find.

“I’m fine,” Eva said, shrugging the vampire off her back. She wasn’t too steady on her feet as she made her way to the sink and started washing out her mouth. “It’s just the smell. I don’t know how he can just ignore it.”

“Do you want to lie down for a few minutes?”

Eva gave a slow nod of her head. “I don’t think he’s going to be doing anything interesting for the next while. He’s performing surgery on the corpses. Currently, he’s removing the stomach–or what’s left of it–of one of the bodies.”

The vampire slung one of Eva’s arms over her shoulder and helped her over to the bed. “Sounds like you’re in for a long night.”

“Maybe Nel would be willing to light up some frankincense?”

Nel blinked at being addressed. “I thought you hated it.”

“I do,” Eva said. Her eyes were closed, but Nel could still feel some imaginary glare. “But if it overpowers the scent of rotting and bloated humans, I think I’ll take it.”

With a shrug of her shoulders, Nel went to her bag and started rummaging through. Frankincense had been one of the things she had brought plenty of. Keeping some lit for a while would hardly dent her stores.

It didn’t take her long to pull out the burner and a few pellets of frankincense. With her gemstone focus, Nel sparked the burner and stoked the flame. She carried it into the main room to help Eva sooner rather than later.

Soon enough, the wooden scent of frankincense filled the small room.

Nel gave a slight start as she realized that she had forgotten something. She grabbed the roll of duct tape and slapped a few strips over the smoke detector in the room.

That could have been bad, she thought with a sigh. She was relatively certain that incense wasn’t allowed in motel rooms. There were no smoking signs all over the building. Incense was quite similar to smoking, at least as far as fire-causing embers and staining smell everywhere went.

“Alright,” Nel said, “I’ve–”

A heavy knock at their door interrupted her. Though she had to wonder if it was actually a knock or not. It sounded more like someone took a sledge-hammer and used that as a door knocker.

Nel gripped her focus in her hand. No one had ever disturbed them at the other motels. Now they were extremely close to Sawyer and someone knocks?

She took a quick glimpse of the other side of the door.

As soon as she saw the motel logo on the man’s shirt, she let out a long breath. “It’s just the manager right? He works for the motel, at least.” Serena had taken care of the paying, so she hadn’t actually seen any employees. “He must have been walking by and smelled the frankincense.”

“Or he broke through my geas and realized that we didn’t actually pay him anything,” Serena said as she walked out of the bathroom, though she looked just as wary as Nel felt.

“It’s a human,” Eva said, still looking sick and leaning over the sink. “That’s all I can really tell you. I’ll stay hidden back here.”

There was another heavier knock against the door. If the guy knocked any harder, the door might come off its hinges.

“Best not to keep him waiting,” Eva said.

Serena stepped towards the door. “I’ll handle it. I’ll see if I can’t make him think that the frankincense is just his imagination.”

While Serena moved, Nel shuffled her feet. The chalk-drawn ritual circle was between the room’s two beds with part of it underneath one bed that had been shoved aside while it was being used. Most of it was out of sight from the door, but some poked out. She tried to disguise as much of it as she could before the manager saw. As long as he didn’t enter the room, it should be fine.

“Is something the matter?” Serena asked in a too-sweet voice as she opened the door. Her smile was just a bit too unnerving for Nel’s tastes. She had mastered the art of giving wide, polite smiles without revealing her fangs.

The manager didn’t respond right away. First, he glanced around the room. His eyes found Nel’s without delay. There was hardly any reaction before he dropped his gaze to the gemstone in her hand and again to the chalk dust around her feet.

Nel’s grip on her focus tightened. He knew.

But he still didn’t say anything. He wrinkled his nose slightly as he sniffed at the air before he turned back to Serena.

“My master wishes to meet with you and your two thralls. Immediately.”

All of the false humor vanished from Serena’s face as her smile turned to a grimace. “And your master is?”

“Lord Kuvon will accept no argument in the matter. Fetch your thralls and come with me.”

“There are only two hours until sunrise,” Serena said without so much as a glance towards the clock.

“Then I suggest that you make haste.” The manager took a step away from the door, back into the open air of the parking lot. He clasped his hands behind his back as he stared up at the night sky.

Serena turned back into the room with her grimace having shifted into pure anger.

Eva stepped out of the bathroom with her eyes still closed. “Tell me this isn’t what I think it is,” she said, apparently having heard the conversation.

“I used my geas on the thrall of another vampire,” Serena said through grit teeth. “And then I drank from him. This vampire is going to want a tribute for that offense.” Her eyes widened as she looked towards Eva. “He’s going to smell you. He’ll want a… taste. At the very least.”

Eva’s eyes opened. Just a thin slit of red peeking out from under her eyelids. She mouthed three very clear words. ‘I’ll kill him.’

“You’re in no shape to fight; that might not be an option. We’ll see. But we can’t ignore this. If we do, we’ll likely see a gang of thralls breaking in here. In the middle of the day.”

Eva grit her teeth. “Let me get my blood,” she said, turning towards her suitcase.

Nel hadn’t moved since she realized just what was going on. The hand gripping her focus was shaking. Her other hand was slowly stroking the black skull that hung from her choker. The symbol of Lady Ylva’s ownership of her.

It was a comforting motion, even though she knew that there would be no help coming from that front. Lady Ylva had asked her to handle the Sawyer situation. She wouldn’t be sending reinforcements.

Both Eva and Serena had completely disregarded Nel as any kind of possible help. Not really a wrong decision.

Nel was an information gatherer, not a fighter.

But she could use the magic of the Elysium Order. At the very least, she could unleash a wide blast of flame and give an opportunity for Eva to do something.

Vampires were the Elysium Order’s specialty, after all.

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“Going somewhere?”

Eva glanced up from her work to find Serena leaning against the doorway. Her arms were crossed over her chest and she had a slight frown on her face.

Turning away with a slight shrug, Eva continued packing everything that she thought she might need.

“Just a little road trip. Though how I’m actually going to take it is still up for debate.”

Eva tucked a potion satchel filled with poisons into the side pocket of her suitcase. They might not be any good at all, but no sense in leaving them behind. They didn’t weigh all that much and didn’t take all that much room. If she did need or want them, it was better to have them on hand.

Of course, when she applied that logic to everything that she owned, Eva found her suitcase rapidly running low on room. And that was after having removed several books that probably wouldn’t be needed.

“I don’t suppose you know how to drive?” Eva asked. “There’s a certain someone in Idaho that needs to die.”

“I do,” she started. “But that sounds like a long drive. Twelve hours or more? Unless this someone is right on the border. Traveling is hard for vampires. Too much sun and not enough protection inside a little vehicle.”

“Bundles of clothes don’t help? You were out watching my treatment a few days ago.”

“And I got sunburned doing so. Especially around my face.” She rubbed just under her eyes. “The goggles were the highest rated I could find and they still weren’t enough. Besides, you can teleport.”

“Not without a gate. Last time I tried without a gate at my destination, I wound up stuck in Hell.”

Eva zipped up the suitcase. Everything she could think of taking with her was inside. Blood, bloodstones, potions, poisons, a certain cursed dagger that she was hoping to reunite with its owner, the blood magic ritual book, a change of clothes including her blindfold and the dress that Arachne had made for her, Arachne’s necklace beacon—just in case she came back—and an assortment of enticements.

No one was supposed to be summoning demons at the moment, but if the going got tough, one or two probably wouldn’t hurt. Especially so far away from Brakket Academy.

Basila was coming along as well. Eva was somewhat disappointed that the stone basilisk hadn’t healed completely from its excursion into the Elysium Order’s cathedral. Appearance-wise, she was mostly fine. The fresh scales were far weaker than the blood-infused stone and one tooth was missing entirely. Everything else looked normal and Basila acted normal.

Given that it was a stone carving, she really should be happy that it had healed at all. A side effect of the ritual she had performed on it had tried to repair it without any actual living material to grow. That resulted in semi-soft blood filling in most of the spare areas. Eva might have been able to harden the blood more, but she was worried about affecting its movement and flexibility.

“Besides, I think Nel is coming along. My method of teleportation is not kind to those without certain demonic proclivities.” Lynn Cross had definitely not enjoyed it.

“Can she not drive?”

Eva shook her head. That had been one of the first things she had asked. To say that Nel was afraid of driving would be an understatement. Paranoid was the word that came to mind.

“Zoe and Wayne could teleport you both.”

“They could, but they might not be back until mid-to-late June. I’ve put this off long enough. Waiting for another month would just increase the chance that it never gets done.”

Serena shoved off the wall and skipped backwards as Eva walked out of the room with her suitcase in hand.

“I wonder if Catherine knows how to drive?”

“Even if she does, won’t she be too busy researching with the diabolist?”

Eva let out a long sigh. “Demonologist. And probably.”

Really, if it weren’t for Nel, she could probably get to Sawyer without too much trouble. Between running with Arachne’s legs and being able to blink around, she could probably make better time than a car if she pushed herself. Maybe. Probably not. Cars didn’t get exhausted.

“So, transportation for two,” Serena mused. “Do you need to get there in one day?”

“Not necessarily.” She was trying not to procrastinate more, but it had already been a month and a half since Nel found Sawyer. “One or two more days won’t matter much.”

“Then I could drive you. But we’ll be traveling for less than five hours a night.”

“This time a year, there’s a good eight hours of darkness.”

“True. But I would rather not take my chances. Four hours of driving and then we start looking for a motel of some sort to hide away in during the daylight. And then we’ll have to spend some time securing the windows and doors. Motel blinds are not known for their ability to keep away light.”

“I can cast a spell that will block out light,” Eva said. She cast said spell off at the far end of the common room to demonstrate.

The entire back half of the women’s ward darkened. An inky black soup filled the air, preventing either of them from seeing beyond the coffee table in the middle of the room.

Serena hummed at the wall of darkness as she walked up to it. She put one arm through the darkness, pulled the arm out and looked at it. After a moment, she stepped inside the shroud.

Eva could see her corpselike body through her blood sight as Serena tried to navigate around. It was almost amusing to watch the old vampire bump into the back of the couch. The loud yelp accompanying the bump did give cause for a few giggles before Eva let the spell dissipate.

“Well, that’s handy,” Serena said as she tried hard not to look like she had just run into the couch. She was draped over the top like she had intended to lean against it. “A bit darker than I’d like, but it could work. How long does it last?”

“Until I stop maintaining it.”

“And how long can you maintain it?”

“I,” Eva started. Then she paused and thought. “I’ve never tried for more than a minute or two. But it doesn’t cause much strain or concentration.”

“Handy in an emergency,” Serena amended her earlier evaluation. “I’d rather not rely on it. If you fell asleep or we came under attack, I could wind up a pile of ash.”

“I think I could maintain the spell for a full day. But it isn’t a big deal if you don’t want it.”

“Speaking of coming under attack, if anywhere we visit has vampires, they’ll likely be able to sniff me out. I hope you’re prepared.”

Eva shifted. That could complicate things. She wasn’t sure how much she wanted to confront vampires.

“Don’t worry,” Serena said. “We’ll be leaving not long after nightfall every night. With any luck, we’ll be gone before they have time to come looking for us. Besides,” Serena paused as she glanced down at her fingernails. She buffed them against her white dress. “I don’t like to brag, but I am quite powerful.

“Though, that raises another question. You said that you’re on a quest to kill someone. If I’m going to be a part of this, I’d like to know the details. Who is it? Should we expect attacks from your target in the middle of the day? Those kinds of things.”

Eva shrugged. It was no secret. “How do you feel about necromancers?”

—

Devon’s truck was not designed for three people. Eva still had no idea from where he had acquired it. She had a strong suspicion that it was stolen. A police officer pulling them over for outdated license plates had only reinforced that idea. Serena had mind-tricked him away. This was apparently not the truck that he was looking for.

But it got Eva thinking.

Couldn’t he have stolen a better truck?

The tiny pickup had its driver seat and its passenger seat just as any other vehicle. Cup holders and a storage compartment separated the two sides. Then, there was this tiny fold out chair just behind the passenger seat. It had no arm room and little leg room, the seatbelt was broken, and the padding was missing from half the seat.

Since Serena was in the driver’s seat, Eva had taken the passenger seat.

Poor Nel, Eva thought with a smile as she glanced over her shoulder.

The augur did not look happy. But really, it was either Nel or Eva and only one of them had demonic claws that the other was nervous around.

Still, Eva tried to be nice. She had slid her seat forwards to give the former nun some elbow room. It wasn’t much, but it kept Nel from having to keep her shoulders scrunched in.

It did not, however, stop Nel from glaring at Serena.

Given all of her time around demons, Eva had expected Nel to handle a vampire better. Old habits died hard. When they had first stopped outside of Nel’s apartment building, the augur had tried to cast a lightning bolt at Serena.

When she had missed, Nel moved on to fire.

Serena had weaved around that, punctured Nel’s shield with a hard hit from her elbow, and just about tore off Nel’s head before Eva managed to intervene.

The resulting conversation had not been pleasant, but Nel had finally decided that Sawyer was the greater of two evils.

Aside from the glaring and the lack of space, Nel looked a little green around the gills. Even after taking some medicine. Eva had to wonder if she got carsick normally or if it was because of how Serena drove.

She was leaning towards the latter. On the highway, it wasn’t so bad. It was mostly a straight line or long banking curves. The speed might have frightened Eva had she not been able to simply blink away. When they passed through cities for fuel or food, things started to get a bit more… hectic.

Frankly, it was amazing that they had only been pulled over the one time.

“Next exit has lodging,” Serena said, pointing towards an information sign at the side of the highway.

Eva glanced down at the clock. “We’re stopping then?”

“We are,” Serena said. The tone of her voice invited no arguments.

They had been traveling for just over four hours. She still thought that they could go at least six hours before coming close to dawn, but she wasn’t about to say anything. Serena had been kind enough to offer her services as a driver, it would be rude to insist on driving more than she was comfortable with.

Not to mention, neither of them were very familiar with the area. Both Montana and Idaho were more wilderness than city, even along the main highways. If they wound up missing a motel, it was entirely possible that they wouldn’t pass another for several hours. Eva didn’t want to rely on her darkness spell any more than Serena wanted to if only because it would be exceedingly dull to sit around all day long inside the blacked-out vehicle.

Most motels were just off the side of the highway. This one was no different. As such, it didn’t take long to reach.

A bright neon sign handily informed them that not only did the motel have vacancies, but it was also open twenty-four hours. Which was excellent news. Serena had been concerned that they might have to break into one if they couldn’t find an open motel at the late times of the night that they were traveling at.

Leaving Nel behind in the truck, Eva and Serena walked up to the reception counter. The bell on the door startled awake a pimply faced young man at the counter. He had a bright red mark running across his forehead from the edge of a computer keyboard.

“Welcome to–” His voice caught in his throat with a loud hiccup as he caught sight of Eva. Scrambling backwards, the guy tipped over his chair and fell to the floor.

It didn’t take Eva long to figure out the reason for the reaction. “I should have brought my blindfold,” she hissed under her breath. Walking around Brakket wasn’t a big deal. Out here, that was definitely not the case.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” Eva said, louder. “We just want a room. We’ll be gone tomorrow at dusk.”

Two wide eyes peeked up over the edge of the counter. As far as Eva could tell, he hadn’t even noticed Serena.

Not until she stepped forwards with a kind smile. “Hey there,” she said in a sweet tone of voice that definitely did not fit her. “How much for a single room until tomorrow night for three people?”

His eyes swiveled over to meet with Serena’s. Immediately, he started to calm down. She was probably up to more mind control things.

Eva didn’t bother asking. Whatever worked.

“Eight–” His voice cracked. “Eighty-four dollars.”

Serena glanced over towards Eva. “Eighty-four, he says.”

“I can–” Eva paused. Her words turned to a sigh.

Eva had money. Anti-scrying packets, though she hadn’t made any in a while—Juliana had been the main driving force behind their continued business—had provided her with a decent income for her first year and a half at Brakket Academy. All that money was back at Brakket.

“I knew I was forgetting something.”

Serena rolled her eyes. “I’ll pay.”

Meeting with the clerk’s eyes, she reached back behind her dress and pulled out…

Nothing.

She didn’t even have pockets on the back of her dress.

From the thin air held in her hands, she started miming as if she were counting out dollar bills. Eventually, she held out her hand and offered absolutely nothing to the clerk.

He accepted and started counting it out as well.

“There’s an extra ten here,” he said as he reached the end. One of his hands held up some more empty air.

“For you,” Serena said with a sickeningly sweet smile. “For putting up with us. Also, because we value our privacy and would appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone we were here.”

His eyes shifted towards Eva for just a moment. “I can do that,” he squeaked out in his cracking voice. The one hand drifted to his back pocket, slipping nothing into it. He put the rest of the nothing into the cash register.

Reaching under the counter, he pulled out a very real key. “One-oh-eight,” he said as he held it out to Serena.

“Thank you my dear.” She took the key and turned. Her smile vanished before her back was fully facing him. “Come on,” she said to Eva. “Let’s get Nel and get the blankets set up around the windows.”

Eva waited until they were back out at the truck before whispering to Serena. “Won’t they notice that the register is short by almost a hundred dollars?”

“You didn’t notice?” Serena asked with an eyebrow raised. “He forgot to actually record our stay. When they go to empty the register, the amount contained within should be the same as whatever it is supposed to be had we not been here. Unless someone has been embezzling.”

“Let’s hope that they don’t come knocking at the door in the middle of the day.”

Serena frowned, but shrugged after a moment. “If they do, I’ll hide out in the bathroom. They probably won’t have windows in there. You can scare them off.”

“Oh. Joy.”

“You’re the one who didn’t bring money,” Serena said as she pulled a roll of duct tape and a large bag of thick blankets from the back of the truck.

Inside the truck, Nel looked to be struggling with escaping. It seemed that she couldn’t find the lever to push the seat forwards and allow her exit.

Serena noticed, deepening her frown as she watched Nel. “I’ll try to stay awake, but I might sleep through part of the day. Don’t leave me alone with her. I’d rather you didn’t leave the room at all, but if you have to, wrap me up in some blankets and dump me in the bathroom. Just take Nel with you.”

Eva blinked. She hadn’t been planning on leaving at all. She still had research to do. Even if she needed a break from that, there was probably a television.

Except, while she could go without food for a time, Nel would probably be starving by nightfall.

“We might leave for food at some point in the day. I’ll be sure she goes with me.”

“Thank you.”

—

“We’re stopping again?” Nel asked as the group pulled into another side-of-the-road motel. “But we’re almost there.”

Eva glanced over her shoulder at the augur. She had been fairly quiet over the course of their three-day journey. She never spoke to Serena and really only spoke to Eva while the vampire was asleep. Nel herself only slept while in the truck. Since they only drove for a handful of hours a night, she was looking awfully tired.

Bags lined her eyes and her lids drooped as she looked out the truck window.

Maybe Eva would do her a favor and slip a sleeping potion into her drink tonight. She could understand nervousness and paranoia given who they were after, but there was a point at which it just became reckless and damaging to everyone else.

“Still have some preparations. If we want Serena with us, it would be better to start off on a fresh night, rather than one half gone. Unless you want to go and fight Sawyer on your own with no help.”

Nel fell silent, glancing down at her feet.

“I’ll get us a room,” Serena said as she cut off the engine and hopped out of the truck.

Ever since that first night, Eva had kept herself hidden from as many people as possible. Serena could pass herself off as a human much better than Eva could. Vampires did so all the time. With Eva’s distinctive appearance, no one wanted any rumors about her to spread around and potentially reach Sawyer’s ears.

“How long will these preparations take?”

“Potentially all day tomorrow. I’ve got one ritual in particular that I want to try as soon as we get the room set up. A few things depend on the success of that ritual.”

“What will it do?”

“I’d rather not get your hopes up. If it works, you’ll see. If it doesn’t, no hopes dashed.”

Frowning, Nel gave a slight nod of her head.

Neither of them spoke until Serena returned. There was a small trickle of red dripping down her chin that did not go unnoticed by Nel.

Nel’s face turned colors as she pointed at the vampire’s lips. “You didn’t!”

“It was just a quick snack,” Serena said with a shrug as she licked the blood from her mouth. “He won’t even feel anemic when he wakes up. More importantly,” she held up a key.

“Don’t worry about it,” Eva cut in before Nel could make a scene. “Let’s just get everything set up. Unless you want to spend even longer outside of Ylva’s presence.”

That silenced Nel faster than anything else. It was something that Eva had picked up on over the past few days. Nel had a problem with Serena, that much was clear. But she had a bigger problem being away from Ylva. The hel represented safety and protection for her, or something like that.

Argument over, they quickly carted everything they needed into their room. Nel and Serena actually managed to work together in duct taping thick blankets over the windows. Eva shoved one of the beds out of the way and got to work.

The ritual circle didn’t need to be all that large, thankfully. Her room would work just fine. Performing it out in the middle of the parking lot would reveal herself to all spectators or passers-by that were around and create more chances that Sawyer would hear of their proximity to his location.

After finishing with the windows, Nel covered up the smoke detectors and set up a miniature altar. As soon as she was done, she lit up some frankincense.

Frankincense, Eva thought with absolute revulsion. She tried to ignore it, but ugh.

Ever since she had first met the augur, Nel had always had the scent of frankincense clinging to her person and clothes. Eva had never spent enough time in her presence to become so thoroughly disgusted with the scent. She really had no idea how the augur could stand it. Three days of being stuck in a stuffy car and tiny motel rooms with Nel almost had Eva in a murderous rage.

As soon as she finished up with Sawyer, Eva vowed to research and invent time magics that would allow her to go back and slaughter whoever it was that invented frankincense.

It was made worse in that it didn’t help. Nel couldn’t see Sawyer. All that pungent scent of pine and lemon did was tell them that Sawyer hadn’t moved much since the day before.

Serena never seemed to mind, but Eva wouldn’t be surprised to find out that all of her senses were dulled unless blood was involved.

For that specific reason, Eva was not using blood to quickly draw out her ritual circle. She made do with regular chalk. It was dusty and got everywhere–including inside the joints on her hands–but she didn’t want to torment the poor vampire with the scent of her blood.

“Alright,” Eva said as she brushed the dust off her hands. “I think I’m done.” She did a quick double-check of the circle. During the previous days at motels, there had been a lot of spare time. Enough for her to memorize the ritual circle in full. Still, double checking cost nothing but a few extra moments and had the potential to save her from fatal mistakes.

Satisfied that her memory had served her well, Eva placed one of the thugs’ bloodstones in a small circle at the far end of the larger circle. The vial of Sawyer’s blood, she emptied into a glass bowl in the center of the circle.

She stripped her clothes off and sat down at the edge of the circle, just inside the ring.

With the others gathered around outside the circle, Eva started channeling her magic.

The bloodstone disintegrated almost instantly. Powder flew through the air and landed in the bowl of blood. It stirred and mixed together on its own. Once dissolved, the blood lurched from the bowl in a small ball and flew directly towards Eva’s face.

She didn’t dodge. And she tried not to wince as the blood seeped into the corners of her eyes.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Eva said as her vision split in two. There was a cold chill on her skin that she didn’t actually feel along with a light drizzle of rain.

Obviously, it wasn’t raining inside of their motel room. It might have been a cheap place, but it wasn’t that run down. Even if it was, Eva wouldn’t have drawn out a ritual circle beneath a leaky pipe.

Serena stepped forwards. “Did something go wrong?”

“No,” Eva shook her head. That action just made her stomach churn. She shut her eyes and lay back against the floor. “I just see and feel everything that Sawyer sees and feels.”

“You can see Sawyer?” Nel just about shouted. “With a ritual that simple? Then what have I been–”

“It will only last forty-eight hours. I figured that it would be more useful now rather than back at Brakket where it would run out and the information would be too out of date by the time we got here.” Eva smiled as she watched Sawyer’s actions. He didn’t even know. Or, if he did, he made no indication of it. “I can’t tell where he is either, though I’ll be able to find landmarks and figure out just what he has defending him.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to fight though. It’s too disorienting. We’ll have to wait until it wears off.”

Serena hummed for a moment. “Forty-eight hours? I’ll have to ask for an extension on our stay.” Through her blood sight, Eva caught Serena licking her lips.

“That’s fine.”

Nel crossed her arms and huffed. Eva could almost understand her frustration. Scrying was supposed to be her specialty, after all.

“Well? What is he doing?”

“Digging up a graveyard.” Eva watched through his eyes for a moment longer before correcting her statement. “I guess that he isn’t digging it up. He’s watching an army of skeletons dig it up.”

“An-an army?” Nel squeaked out.

Eva shrugged. They would be annoying, but she wasn’t going to consider the skeletons that big of a threat.

“More importantly, he has two enigmas at his side. Both looking incredibly docile.”

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