River Marked (Mercy Thompson #6)(51)
Author: Patricia Briggs

In the night, it was different.

The minute my foot landed on the flattened area around the monument, I could feel the pulse of magic under my feet. Adam sensed it, too– though werewolves don’t usually feel magic other than their own. He lifted his head and took a deep breath.

"I thought this was an awfully public place to be meeting," I told Adam. "You can see up here from all the way over the river on the main highway. Suddenly, though, Coyote’s desire to meet here makes better sense. I’ve heard talk of ley lines since before I could walk–Bran might be a werewolf, but he understands the working of magic even if he doesn’t do witchcraft or wizardry himself."

I paused, frowning. "I don’t think he does, anyway. I’ve been here a lot over the years, and this is the first time I’ve ever felt magic."

"Ley lines?" said Adam. "I can feel something." He closed his eyes and breathed in, as if trying to pick up that little bit more that isolating his senses might give him. "Ley lines, huh? Feels like someone stroking my hair in the wrong direction."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" I asked.

He snorted. "No flirting. We’re here on business."

We’d come early; my husband, the eternal tactician, had determined that would be the better course. I liked those two words together. "My" and "husband."

"What are you grinning about?" he asked.

I told him, and he grinned, too. "Hopeless," he said. "You are hopeless. We are supposed to be getting the lay of the land, not making goo-goo eyes at each other. I suppose it won’t do much harm, though, since it has already been scouted." He tucked his arm around me and nodded toward the tall stone outer ring of Stonehenge, where a pair of hawks perched, watching us.

"Ah," I said. "But are they enemy scouts or friendly ones?"

"Friendly," said Jim Alvin, coming out of the shadows like . . . well, like a good Indian scout. "Hank found that as a hawk he can better resist the river devil, so we thought it would be safer for everyone if he stayed in his feathered form."

It takes a lot to sneak up on a coyote–upwind, silent, and cloaked by darkness and stillness. From Adam’s expressionless face, I knew he hadn’t sensed Jim, either. I reached up and tipped an imaginary hat to him. "Are all medicine men as adept at sneaking around as you are?" I asked.

In one of those coincidences that happen only once in a while, Calvin came tromping down the gravel driveway, making as much noise as any human possibly could. "Uncle Jim? Are you around here somewhere? I parked the car where you told me–" He stumbled over an uneven spot in the road. "And why can’t we use flashlights again? Because we want to break our necks?" That last was said quietly; I’m not sure he intended anyone else to hear.

"Not all of us," said Jim unnecessarily.

"Where are you?" Calvin asked.

He couldn’t see us though we were no more than forty feet away, and the half-gone moon lit the night. I tried to imagine what it would be like to wander around the night half-blind to everything around you.

Vulnerable.

No wonder people look for monsters in the dark.

"We’re over here," Jim said, and Calvin changed his trajectory. About half the way over, he saw us. I could see it in his body. Evidently his uncle could, too. "The Hauptmans are already here. Hank and Fred are waiting in the monument."

Calvin increased his pace. "Everyone is early. Do we have to wait until midnight?"

"We’ll see. The earth is rich tonight," Jim said. "Waiting for us."

"Nature abhors a vacuum," I said. "Why aren’t there nasty things out here sucking up this magic?"

"Because it is ours," said Calvin.

"Shamanistic–not accessible to witch, wizard, or fae?" asked Adam in fascinated tones. "I’ve heard about this kind of place, but never with any detail. I assumed they’d be hidden places."

"Not accessible to other kinds of magic users without a lot of work," said Jim. "And more time than they are allowed–this is a pretty public place. My grandfather cleaned out a coven. Burned the whole town to do it, and Maryhill never recovered–but they haven’t tried again. I’m not sure that the fae can’t access it; but if they do, they probably can find a place nearby that is more private and almost as powerful. Ley lines are lines –they don’t just stop in one place. From what I’ve heard, a wizard wouldn’t hurt anything, but I’ve not seen one here."

"The power was here before Stonehenge," said Calvin, "but the construct seems to make it more accessible. There are a couple of places near here that were more traditional places of power and probably were better before Sam Hill built this here."

"Did Coyote tell you what he wanted you to do with all this magic?" I asked.

"Coyote?" asked Calvin, "Who is Coyote?"

"Coyote," said Jim dryly.

Calvin smiled uncertainly, blinked a couple of times, then seemed to get it. "Coyote?"

Then he looked at me. "She knows Coy–" He broke off mid-word, staring at me.

"Damn," he said in awe. "Oh, hot damn."

"Watch your mouth, boy," Jim said.

"Freak’n sh–" Calvin bit off the last word. "That’s why. That’s why you are a walker when your mother is white. Coyote is your freakin’ father."

I don’t know why his reaction offended me. "No. I have it on the best of authority that Coyote is not my father. My father was a Blackfeet bull rider who died in a car wreck before I was born." I wasn’t completely sure that Coyote wasn’t my father– but I knew that he didn’t think so–and I wasn’t claiming him if he wasn’t claiming me. Calvin frowned at me.

"I am not," I said clearly if through my clenched teeth, "Coyote’s daughter."

Jim took a deep breath. "Glad that’s cleared up. Yes, Coyote told me what he wanted me to do. It’s all set up inside the circle."

"Let’s go see it, then," Adam said. He took Calvin by the arm, and said, "Follow me. I’ll keep you on your feet."

We walked past the heel stone, a sixteen-foot- tall monolith just a little northeast of the rest of the monument and under the continuous ring of cement-formed stone that was the outer edge of the henge. I looked up warily when we walked underneath the cement slab where both hawks were perched.

They were about fifteen feet over our heads, and my inner coyote was sure that wasn’t far enough away. We were loud, too; the fine- textured gravel wasn’t conducive to quietness.

"Hawks hunt by day." Adam’s grip on Calvin had shifted upward until he just rested a hand on his shoulder–but he was talking to me. "As long as Hank doesn’t have a gun, wolf trumps hawk at night."