Witch's Pyre (Worldwalker 3)

Grace declined their unappealing offer by wrinkling her nose. She started wandering around the lab, peering into jars and touching instruments. “It’s been a while since you’ve been down here,” she said to Toshi. When she turned to face him, she gave him a glassy-eyed smile. “I wonder what prompted you to become so hands-on again?”

Toshi knew there was no point trying to act too innocent. She knew something was going on, but had decided that finding out what they were doing was more important than stopping them. For now, anyway.

“Just looking for meaning in my life now that I’ve discovered everything I

’ve ever thought to be true was built on a giant lie,” he rattled off as if it were of no consequence. She laughed aloud at his audacity. “What are you doing down here?” he asked in return.

“Alright. No more dancing around it, then.” She stopped her wandering and faced them. “I want to know if your renewed interest in the lab has anything to do with how Lily and her coven disappeared into thin air.”

“You’re really obsessed with that, aren’t you?” Toshi asked, not having to fake his surprise.

Grace’s eyes flashed with anger. “My scouts can’t find her. There’s no trail, no scent markers. Nothing. I’ve sent half the Hive clear into Pack territory, and there’s no sign of her.”

“I don’t see what you expect us to do about that,” Ivan said irritably. “We deal in real materials in the lab, not hocus-pocus. Toshi and I can’t help you if she’s been”—Ivan waved his hands about, searching for the appropriately derisive expression—“spirited away.” “Spirited away.” Grace laughed at the foolishness of that under her breath, and then caught herself. “Spirit walking.” Her smirk dissolved and her eyes moved about restlessly. “Maybe she wasn’t lying about the shaman.”

Toshi hadn’t entirely understood what Lily was talking about when she was pleading for her sister’s life in the redwood grove, but he did know that she had been about to tell Grace how she could be in two places at once. She’d talked about spirit walking and a shaman, and Grace had dismissed it out of hand. It seemed she was changing her mind about that now. Dread roiled in his stomach. The last thing Grace needed was more power.

Grace started heading for the door, already forgetting about Toshi and Ivan now that she had new quarry.

“Where are you going?” Toshi asked. “Grace!” he called out as the door shut behind her.

Lily’s spirit flew up and out of her tortured flesh. Down below, she saw herself writhing in flames. Out and beyond, she saw that the overworld had taken on the shapes of vast swaths of forest and rolling hills.

Lillian was out there somewhere, waiting for her. That wasn’t Lily’s first stop. She had to find Alaric and her braves. She turned away from Lillian’s faint call.

Lily scanned the virgin tracts of land for a beacon. As her body burned she felt it tugging on her spirit, like a child pulling on a balloon. But she was calm here. Patient. She couldn’t jump without some kind of tie to the land she was going to jump to. She needed the vibration of the land in order to unlock the key to that particular place in the same way she needed the vibration of someone’s mind inside their willstone in order to claim them.

She thought she’d managed it with Pale One. But Pale One was so close to the earth, so in tune with where she was that unlocking the vibration had been easy. Finding a human with that kind of awareness of the land he or she was standing on was going to be a bit harder. Until she found a suitable host to gather the vibration for the unknown place she had to jump to, all she could do was soar through the gray overworld.

Her body tugged with increasing urgency. Time was short. She looked one way and saw the silvery fog of the Mist right on the edge of the overworld. She looked the other way and saw a golden haze. She chose to let her spirit fly there. As she got closer, she understood what it was—the minds of her claimed still under Alaric’s rule.

Lily hoped that what she was about to do either went unnoticed or, at the very least, didn’t cause her host to feel violated. She scanned her Outlander claimed and found a girl gathering water from a stream. Her hands were in the stream and momentarily a part of it, but Lily pulled back, knowing that it wouldn’t work. Rivers flow over the land. They are wanderers, and not tied to any place.

Lily left the girl and went back to scanning the huge host. They were all moving about too quickly. None of them were tied to the place they occupied, but rather focused on where they would be tomorrow or the day after.

She found one of her claimed sitting on a rock. His mind was exactly where his body was in space, but the rock was too full of quartz for Lily to get a vibration from the land under it. Time was running out. Frantic now, she pulled up and out and saw what she was looking for. One of her claimed was digging in the ground, waist deep in the earth. He could feel it all around him—the smell of it, the texture, the thisness of that particular spot. His whole being was tuned into that particular patch of the planet because this was the place he was going to bury his best friend. She thought of calling to him by name, but stopped. She didn’t want to let him know she was there.

As she let her spirit dive into his, Lily tried to comfort him wordlessly. She was with him. The horizon pitched, there was a dizzying swirl of perception, and then it was her blistered hands on the shovel, and her heart that was aching with irreplaceable loss. She invaded his willstone with a small apology, and used it to sound out the vibration of this place. When she had the particular pattern locked, she dove out of him like a bungee jumper reaching the end of her tether and plunging upward.

As her spirit sped away from the ground and back up into the gray of the overworld, she saw him pause and clutch his chest. He glanced at the wrapped body of his dead friend and then up into the clouds above.

Lily spooled back into her body, still locked in the jaws of the fire. In agony, she let out a piercing scream that echoed around the bailey. Rowan pivoted and came charging toward the pyre, an ax already in his hands. Before he could reach her, a thunderclap tore through the sky, and with the roaring sound of air suddenly being emptied of over ten thousand bodies, Lily jumped them all hundreds of miles.

They appeared around the man burying his friend. He was still clutching his chest and staring at the sky. One moment he was alone, and the next he was surrounded by a multitude. Ten thousand men and women stood facing him in an ever-expanding circle, their staring faces manifesting out of nothing among the trees.

Lily appeared right next to him inside the half-dug grave. She made a whimpering sound and the shackles on her wrists clanked as she fell forward. He caught her burnt body in his arms.

“Thank you,” she whispered. Relieved it was over, she placed her head on the man’s shoulder and took a few deep breaths. She could feel Rowan’s tattoo cooling her burns from the inside, and every breath she took loosened the pain a little more.

Rowan ran to the edge of the grave and knelt down. “Give her to me,” he demanded, reaching with his hands to take her.

The man held Lily to his chest, his arms reluctant with shock. The man was an Outlander, so Rowan repeated his order in Cherokee. The man started nodding, but still had to be coaxed into giving Lily over. When he did, she heard him saying one phrase over and over.

“What’s he saying?” she asked as Rowan carried her away from the grave.

“He said he felt you before he saw you,” he replied. He lowered his voice and put some distance between them and the rest of her mechanics. “He said that you were with him, and then he pointed at his chest.” Rowan’s tone was tight. “What does that mean?”

“You know what that means.”