“Do you have any idea how the stones are created?” I asked.
Roisin shook her head. “No, nor do we understand why they were created, or why the ley lines are being corrupted.”
“But you think the Knights know,” I said.
“Yes,” Bob said, “and that is why the Fae think the Knights have something to do with it.”
Up until then, Lizzy had been quiet through all of our discussion. “Erin, one thing we do know is that the lines in Ireland were upset less than a minute before it hit Westport. This is happening all over the world.”
I looked at the pendant. “I always thought it took a special kind of magic to create an artifact.”
“That is correct. The major artifacts are usually created by what you call a spirit mage,” Roisin said, “but any strong mage can create an artifact. It does take a talent for casting mage spells, and some have theorized that those mages who can do so have Fae blood in their lineage. But I know for a fact that a ley line mage created at least two major artifacts about eight hundred years ago. The Sword of Lightning and the Staff of Storms were created by a ley line mage named Horatio Stormbringer. Both artifacts are held by the Fae, but Horatio was a human mage. I never detected any Fae blood in him or in his magic.”
“Well, if I’m going to have Sam test this thing, I should get going,” I said.
“I’ll drive you home,” Oriel said.
We took our leave and walked to where he left his car. Everything looked normal in the underground parking garage, but on our way out of the Village, we had to detour around a couple of places. Once, where a tree had fallen across the road, and in another place where the road itself had cracked.
As soon as we left the Village, Oriel turned on the radio. The news reported large earthquakes in Seattle, Italy, Turkey, and Japan. The Seattle quake was felt in Westport.
I had Oriel take me to my place so I could shower and change clothes. After we entered my apartment and I reset my wards, he reached for me and pulled me into his arms.
“I had such high hopes for last night,” he said, and kissed me. Our bodies pressed together, and I felt heat from him flow into me. I wanted to kiss him forever. I blocked out all thoughts, disregarding what kind of mess I might be creating for myself, and kissed him until the world shrank to the two of us, conscious only of what I wanted him to do to me.
His lips touched first one eyelid, then the other, his hands running down my back and over my butt. He pulled me to him as his mouth nibbled my throat. One of my hands slid to his butt and the other tangled in his hair. I pulled his head up, and my mouth found his again. A part of my mind questioned what I was doing, but I pushed it away. I no longer cared about anything but his hands, his mouth, and the fire that I needed him to quench.
It was afternoon, and soft light filtered through the rain hitting my bedroom window. I lay beside Oriel, admiring and languidly stroking his long, lean body. During our love making, he had reverted to his Fae form. The tattooed designs on his neck and shoulders flowed down his torso to his hips, and the soft, short fur growing on the backs of his forearms and hands was repeated on his legs and feet. It was strange but not unattractive.
“We should probably get up,” I said. “I want to show the ruby to Sam. Want to take a shower with me?”
“Sure. Can you carry me in there?”
I slapped his butt hard enough to leave the mark of my hand print, and he jumped away from me.
“Come on, lazybones,” I said, crawling off the bed and heading for the bathroom. I heard the bed creak behind me when he got up.
His arms curled around me as I adjusted the water to find the right temperature, and his mouth nuzzled my neck. He had shifted back to his human form.
“And we can come back here after we talk to Sam?”
“We’ll see.”
He spun me around and planted his mouth on mine. As we were kissing, he pushed me back into the shower and pulled the shower door closed behind him. We washed each other and made love again.
After our shower, we dressed and he drove me to Rosie’s. I left him sitting at the bar looking at the menu and went back to Sam’s office. I hadn’t told Sam about the pendant or the story about the Heart of Magic artifact before, so our conversation lasted almost an hour.
When we came out, Oriel had finished his meal.
“Sam and I are going out to his place to experiment with the ruby,” I said. “I’ll give you a call later, okay?” I gave him a quick kiss.
“Sure.” He stood, lay some bills on the bar, and walked out without another word. I couldn’t tell if he was angry, irritated, or if that was just his normal demeanor, but I thought it was a bit abrupt.
“New boyfriend?” Sam asked as we headed out the door to his car.
“Yeah.”
He gave me a raised eyebrow but didn’t say anything.
We drove out to Sam’s house in the foothills on the northeast edge of town. I had been there a couple of times before. He had a log cabin—not rustic in the least but rather with the feel of a fancy mountain lodge—perched on a rise overlooking the city. Behind the house, snowcapped mountain peaks rose in the distance.
His laboratory was in the basement. Stone walls and a concrete floor. He cast a ward and then took the pendant from me. A pentagram was painted on the floor, with candles in tall holders set at the points. He set the ruby on the pedestal in the center, then lit the candles, sketched a rune at each of the archbishop points, and said an incantation.
For the next hour, I sat and watched. I couldn’t tell what he was doing, but the ruby occasionally flared with light. Then he lifted his head and turned to me.
“Erin, go out the door, wait about a minute, then come back in.”
I did as he said, closing the door behind me, and waited on the steps. After waiting for two minutes, I opened the door and stepped through. I felt the same buzz as I did when breaching the ward at Rosie’s, but also a bit of a drag, as though something was pulling at me, then I was inside. Sam was facing me with an expectant expression on his face.
“It feels like the ward on the bar’s front door but with an extra pull to it. I don’t know how to explain it any better. Like for an instant something was trying to pull me down to the floor.”
He nodded. “Let’s set that spell on the entrances to the pub, and then we’ll just have to wait and see if it has any effect the next time the ley lines scramble.”
We drove back to the bar, and Sam cast the spells. I called Oriel, but he didn’t answer. I tried twice more, sandwiched around my dinner, then caught the bus back to my place.
I smiled while I pulled the sheets from the bed and hauled them down to the washroom in the basement, feeling as relaxed and happy as I had in a long, long time. I tried to call Oriel again before I went to bed. Cell phones and computers worked sporadically in Killarney Village, and they did not work at all inside the fairy mound, which was the reason Lizzy spent so much time at Rosie’s doing her school work.
I figured I’d see Oriel when I saw him. It wasn’t like we’d pledged undying love to each other. But my bed did seem a little colder than normal.
Chapter 9
The phone rang while I was on my morning run along the creek. When I answered, Frankie said, “Erin, I need to see you as soon as possible.”
“Okay. I’m out for a run at the moment, but I can cut it short and head home.”
“I’ll meet you at your place,” she said and hung up.
When I got home, she was waiting in the parking lot with Lieutenant Dan Bailey. They got out of his car, and I saw they were carrying a long box. Upstairs in my apartment, Bailey set the box on the table and opened it. Inside were three Knight swords, each with a star ruby set in the pommel.
“Gee, you shouldn’t have,” I said. “Frankie, I’ve always said Lieutenant Bailey is the most romantic man I know.”
She snorted.
Bailey shot me an exasperated look and said, “With you, I’m almost inclined to take that seriously.” Lifting one of the swords from the box, he handed it to me hilt first. “Do you think you could wield that thing?”
I shrugged. “It depends on whether you mean wield it as a sword or wield it as a magic wand. Sam is the one you want to talk to for spell casting.” I looked toward Frankie. “He did some experimenting yesterday with the stone I have, and cast a new set of wards at Rosie’s using it.”
“So, you understand what the rubies do?” Bailey asked.
I told them about how my stone had blocked the negative effects of the ley line disruption two nights before, and what Roisin had said concerning creation of the great artifacts.
“Were you able to divine anything from studying those things?” I asked when I finished.
Bailey sighed. “What you’ve said makes sense. I could embed magic into a ruby like that, but you don’t just plant raw magic into an object, unless you’re doing it as a reservoir so you can pull the magic out later. You know, to enhance your magic. Let’s say that you traveled to a place where there were no ley lines. You need something to draw magic from, right? So, a reservoir would give you access to magic, like a battery provides electricity on the go.”
He showed me a ring on his finger, set with an emerald. I touched it, and it felt like touching a ley line.
I shook my head. “I don’t understand. There isn’t anywhere in the world where the ley lines are so far away that you can’t draw on one.”
Frankie chuckled. “For you, maybe, but a weaker mage might not be able to reach as far.”
“That’s just an example,” Bailey said. “If you completely open yourself up and pull as much magic as you can from a ley line, what happens when you can’t pull any more?”
“Uh, there’s an explosion. I mean, I can always pull more, there’s just a limit to how much I can hold at a given time. When I fill up, I have to discharge it, and if I don’t, then it discharges itself.”
They both stared at me.
“An explosion?” Frankie asked.