“Always,” he said from behind me. He stepped forward, his arm brushing mine, sending little tremors of electricity scampering across my skin.
“Can you break the lock?” I said, oddly torn between wanting to press closer to him and needing to create space. In the end, I did neither.
“I can, but the lock is wrapped in magic. If I smash it, there is no telling how this place will react.” He paused, his gaze on the heavy darkness beyond the gates. “There is much power here, and some of it is very old. And it is not quite as benign as you might presume.”
“Great,” I muttered, stepping back to first study the gates, then the old chain fence that disappeared into the darkness to either side of the main gate. I could jump over it no problem, but that would leave me without a fast getaway option should things go bad.
“You could always become Aedh.”
“If the magic inside that place can stop both you and the Raziq from entering, what chance have I got?”
He shrugged. “You are part wolf—a flesh-and-blood being as well as an energy one. It could be a vital difference.”
Could be. Could not be, too.
I returned to my bike and switched her off, then picked up my phone, checking to see whether I had service up here. I didn’t, so I shoved it and my wallet into the under-seat storage before walking to the fence. I leapt up, grabbed the top of the fence, and hauled my ass—rather inelegantly—over.
Once I’d dropped down on the other side, I turned and glanced at Azriel. “Well?”
He shook his head. “I can go no farther.”
“Naturally,” I muttered. Then I mentally smacked myself for being annoyed. It wasn’t his fault, after all.
But as I resolutely turned and followed the faint path through the trees and the darkness, I couldn’t help my trepidation. There were some things that even I—trained as I was by two of the best guardians the Directorate had ever produced—couldn’t fight alone. And I had a bad feeling that I was walking toward one of them now.
As my eyes became adjusted to the darkness, I became aware of shapes looming through the trees. Small buildings that smelled of incense, smoke, and ancient magic, as well as various silent, unmoving figures who hunched in the shadows—concrete monoliths hung with moss and lichens.
It wasn’t really what I’d imagined a witch’s ritual site would look like, but then this place was supposedly far older than even the coven that no longer used it.
The path meandered its way through the trees, sometimes widening into broader clearings but generally remaining little more than a goat track.
The wind was cool and fresh, smelling faintly of decomposing forest matter, eucalyptus, and the musky hint of animal. Probably kangaroo, given they were considered a pest in the Macedon region.
But the farther I walked into the mountain’s heart, the stronger another scent became—humanity, accompanied by the faint hint of roses. The scent of a woman rather than a man.
I slowed my steps and proceeded more cautiously. Ahead, through the trees, the darkness was lifted by a fierce orange glow that sent sparks cascading into the air and filled the night with the raw aroma of burning greenwood.
My fingers twitched with the need to reach for the stake, but as yet nothing and no one had threatened me. To walk in there expecting trouble might just encourage it.
The light of the fire grew stronger, until the shadows and the night were banished and the air rode with warmth and electricity.
It wasn’t a normal fire. Not completely. The flames moved and danced in a manner that seemed almost controlled—as if there was a being inside them that stirred them to life.
And yet I could feel no life other than myself and the woman who stood so close to the fire.
Fear tripped lightly down my spine, but I ignored it, pausing in the cover of the trees to study the clearing beyond.
The fire dominated the center of the rough circle, the wood piled high and burning fiercely. The witch stood so close to the flames that her skin had an orange glow and her hair seemed to flicker. There was no one else in the clearing. My gaze swept the grass. I couldn’t even see a protection circle, which seemed unusual.
“I know you’re there,” she said, her voice clear and untroubled. “The magic of this place war
ned me the minute you breached its boundaries.”
I walked into the lighted clearing but stopped halfway to the fire. The heat of the blaze scalded my skin, and I had no idea how she was managing to stand so close.
Her clear blue gaze swept me before rising again. “You’re not what I expected.”
“I daresay I’m not who you were expecting, either.”