Phoenix and Ashes

She had only one thing to try. If she waited for the drug to wear off, it might be too late. She had to burn it out before Alison expected it to wear off. Because Alison certainly had Locke with her still, and perhaps Locke's brutish manservant, and there was no way she could escape them all.

Once again, she turned within, concentrating on another sigil, this time a simple one; just as well, because it kept slipping away from her as she felt herself floating away.

Ateh. Malkuth. Geteth. She had traced this thing a thousand times; each Name from her mother's notes attached to a particular stroke in the air with finger or wand. But now she traced it in her mind instead of the air, and muzzily tried to hold the image burning there.

It nearly escaped from her three times before she completed it, and tried to put purpose to it. Its intention was to purify. Could it purify her blood?

Only one way to find out. It seemed to flutter in her mind, like a bird, impatient to fly. It, at least, thought it had a purpose.

She set it free, and let go. If it didn't do what she wanted, there wouldn't be a second chance.

August 13, 1917

The Hoar Stones

"What did you do with him?" Alison asked, as Locke made his way up the path to the Hoar Stones behind her, with Eleanor slung over his shoulder like a bag of coal. She was impressed in spite of herself; she was accustomed to seeing Locke leave all of the work to his servant, but it appeared he could manage quite a bit by himself. He'd certainly managed to bring Reggie Fenyx here on his own, and he was carrying Eleanor as if her weight was inconsequential.

"He's in the lee of the rocks, just outside the chamber," Locke replied. "He's still out cold. I thought you'd want to keep the chamber itself clear so you can work."

"Very wise. Leave the girl there as well," Alison said, absentmindedly; they were still a good thirty yards from the Hoar Stones, yet already she could feel its power drawing her. Had the work she'd done here last spring woken some ancient source of magic from a long slumber? Well, if that was so, all the better.

She reached out to the source of the power, greedily, and felt her lips stretching in a grin as it responded to her. Lovely, lovely Earth-born power; whatever purpose the Hoar Stones had been originally meant to serve, over the centuries there had been enough who had used it as a place of sacrifice that the ground here was as blood-soaked as the fields of Flanders. Blood spilled called power, and this sort of power was the kind that answered her hand the best.

She felt like a child in a sweet-shop, told to take what she wanted. Finally, she was going to have it all!

The power filled her, thick and intoxicating, with the hint of corruption she found so irresistible, and she moved into the chamber as if in a trance as Locke dumped Eleanor beside another bundle of blanket and clothing just outside it. It occurred to her then that Locke was probably stronger than he looked; Reggie Fenyx was no small man, and Locke had somehow manhandled him from the motor all the way up here.

Then again—Locke might have managed to rouse Reggie enough to get him to walk. Even unconscious, a clever use of magic could have gotten Reggie to stumble along in Locke's wake or in front of him. And if he damaged himself somewhat, well, so much the better; he'd look like someone who had been staggering about after an accident.

She put them both temporarily from her mind as Locke and the girls joined her in the chamber. This was going to be a difficult piece of work, and she needed to concentrate on it.

Reggie lay quite still as Alison's henchman dumped someone beside him. The last thing he wanted any of them to know was that he was awake and aware and prepared to act—if feeling nauseous and half-crippled counted as being prepared to act. Little did any of them know that he'd been using his pain-medications for so long that he had built up a tolerance for opiates; the air moving around his face when the auto was in motion had served to arouse him, and the drive out into the country had given him long enough to get his brain more-or-less working again. When the man had mumbled some sort of half-learned charm over him, he'd felt the intent of it through the very minimal shields he had put up, and had acted the part of an automaton, staggering up the shadow-shrouded path in the man's wake. Unfortunately, he was without a cane, and the ground was anything but even. He didn't even want to think about the damage he had done to himself, trying to walk; he thought he'd felt something tear loose around his kneecap once. The pain of his knee had burned what was left of the drug out of him altogether, and he must have stumbled and fallen a dozen times. Evidently the man had expected that, because Locke just stopped whenever that happened, waited for Reggie to pick himself up, then led him on.