River Marked (Mercy Thompson #6)(52)
Author: Patricia Briggs

One of the hawks screamed an insult back, and Adam smiled, an expression that was as full of challenge as the hawk’s cry.

"Anytime, hawk," he said. "Anytime." He was still ticked off about being shot, I thought. Come to think of it, I wasn’t too happy about that, either.

"Calvin and I came about an hour ago," Jim was saying, ignoring the prefight exchange, "and set up what we needed with flashlights. Coyote was pretty firm about no visible modern technology for the ceremony." He looked at Calvin, and I was sure he could see in the dark a lot better than his nephew. "Flashlights were mentioned particularly. But I’m an old man and a big believer in `work smarter, not harder,’ so we came up with the truck."

Stonehenge consisted of the heel stone, a pair of concentric circles–the first the ring of lintel stones held up by standing stones, the second a ring of monoliths–maybe eight or nine feet tall– and an inner court.

The inner court was shaped somewhat like a horseshoe with the open end pointed northeast– at the heel stone, in fact. The outer rim of the horseshoe was delineated by five huge sets of stones, each made of two standing stones holding up a lintel stone. They always reminded me of those staples used in furniture building with a small band and tall legs. There were two on each side of the horseshoe and one in the center; all of them are taller than the outer ring, and the center one was taller still. Inside these massive rock sculptures was another set of the monoliths, following the horseshoe pattern.

On top of all of the monoliths, both in the inner court and the outer, were fat, clear glass containers that protected the fat, white, unlit candles inside of them. The candle wicks were mostly blackened, indicating that they’d been used before.

In front of the tallest of the massive cement- pretending-to-be-rock staplelike things, there was an altar–eight or ten feet long by three feet wide and two feet high.

A few feet in front of the altar, the wood for a small fire had been set on top of what looked like a circle of two-inch-thick coarse gravel, much darker and coarser than the gravel already there. I bent down to touch it, and Jim spoke.

"Tomorrow morning, when we can see, we’ll come clean up," he told me. "The gravel will make it easy to erase any sign of fire. We don’t want to give anyone ideas and have a bunch of teenagers lighting fires up here at night. It will also make sure that the fire doesn’t spread. Grass fires happen this time of year, but I don’t want to be the one who is responsible for one."

Adam had climbed up on a monolith to take a closer look at the candles, a casual pull-up that hinted at the strength he kept in check. He dropped to the ground and dusted his hands. "Hard to light from down here."

"We kept the stool I used to put them all up there." Calvin had stayed near Adam but kept taking surreptitious glances at me. Then he frowned. "Mercy? Is that a black eye?"

I reached up to touch it.

"She got into a fight in Wal-Mart," Adam said. Someone who didn’t know him probably wouldn’t hear the amusement in his voice.

"What?"

"She was attacked in Wal-Mart."

"You should see the other woman," I said. I noticed we were missing someone. "Where’s Jim?" He’d been talking to me just a minute ago. I’d have thought that the noisy gravel would keep him from sneaking around. Apparently, I’d been wrong.

"He’s gone to wash and change." Calvin said. "There’s a little building over there, used to be a tourist shop, but it’s been closed for a few years now. Jim has a key. I’d better start lighting the candles. It takes a while."

"We can help." Adam took a cigarette lighter out of his pocket. Adam didn’t smoke, but he took being prepared to a whole new level.

"I only have one stool," Calvin apologized.

"That’s okay." Adam moved behind me, grabbed my hips, and lifted me up over his head and onto his shoulders. "Hey," I said indignantly.

It would have gone a little smoother if he warned me first. As it was, I had to scramble a bit for balance. He waited until I was steady, then patted me on the hip.

"I don’t need a step stool," Adam said, walking over to one of the monoliths and handing up a lighter. "I have a Mercy."

Even with the three of us working on it, lighting the candles took a long time. I’d never noticed how many of them there were before. More than thirty, I thought, maybe even fifty of them.

When we were through, there was a Christmasy air provided by dozens of white candles. By happenstance or design, we met Calvin at the last standing stone, right next to the altar. Adam set me on the ground while Calvin finished the last light. In the short time, the magic in the ground had grown, and it jumped at me like an eager flame when my feet hit the gravel. I staggered a bit, and Adam, probably thinking I was still off balance, put a hand on my shoulder to steady me.

Calvin climbed off his step stool, put his lighter in his pocket, and folded up the stool. "I’m going to take this over to the parking lot. Meanwhile, Uncle Jim asked me to tell you that you need to take the shape of your beasts."

"Do you know what Coyote has us doing?" I asked. Calvin dropped his eyes. "No."

I snorted before he could say anything. "Don’t bother. You are without a doubt the worst liar I have ever met. Good for you. But you might keep it in mind and compensate for it. Cultivate a mysterious air and don’t answer the things that might tempt you to lie." That was what Bran did. Even Bran couldn’t lie to a werewolf. I didn’t think he could anyway.

"How long do we have?" Adam asked. "Walkers may be able to flash between shapes, but I take more time."

"I didn’t know. Sorry. I should have told you before I started on the lights."

"If they want us here, they’ll wait for us," I told Adam.

"Yeah," Calvin agreed. "I’m pretty sure that this ceremony needs both of you." He took a step away from us, then stopped. "Hey, Fred told me you were asking about deaths on the Columbia. He asked me to check into it, so I asked a friend of mine who’s a cop on the river. He told me that in the past three weeks there have been twenty-six people who are presumed drowned between the John Day Dam and the one at The Dalles, not including the family of four that was reported missing late this afternoon when their car was found at a state park on the Oregon side of the Columbia. That’s more people than we’ve lost on the river in the last five years combined."

"What family?" I asked.

"A stockbroker and his elementary-teacher wife and their two young children," he told me.