Blood Kissed (Lizzie Grace 1)

“Good.” I glanced at my watch. We were beginning to push it timewise—there was now just under an hour left, and we not only had to get into the forest, but alter Belle’s form and call the wild magic.

And if it didn’t respond, we were going to be well and truly up that well-known creek without a paddle.

“There’s one more thing you both need before you can leave.” Blume reached into the black carryall and pulled out a cell phone, a small black box, and a gun. The latter he held up. “Do either of you know how to use one of these?”

“No.”

“Then we’ll skip that idea.” He placed the gun down then handed Belle the cell phone. “I’ll remotely activate this once you get into the forest. Waverley might ask you both to empty your pockets, but I doubt he’ll think anything of a regular-looking phone.”

“I’m gathering it’s anything but that, then.” She studied it briefly before tucking it into the pack she carried.

“Oh, it is a phone, but it’s one we can remotely access. Through it, we’ll be able to track your location, and hear everything that’s said.” He opened the box and pulled out a rather plain-looking ladies’ watch. “And this is for you, Ms. Grace. It’ll record both video and audio. You just have to activate it by pushing this button here.”

He pointed at the largest of the three buttons on the watch. I undid my own watch and then strapped his on. While it was larger than the one I usually wore, it didn’t look too out of place on my wrist.

I glanced across to Belle. “Ready?”

Her tension echoed through me, but all she said was “Yes.”

We headed out. After I’d locked the door again, Blume headed left while we went right. The night was still and quiet, but the air held an odd note of expectation.

Whether Waverley was so positive of victory this time around that his certainty was breaching the distance between us, or it was simply a product of both my fear and imagination, I couldn’t say.

We quickly left Castle Rock’s well-lit streets for the deeper shadows of Kalimna Park. There was little indication of life in the immediate area—even the crickets were silent.

Once past the outskirts of the park and completely alone, we stopped and swung our packs off. Belle pulled out Redfern’s clothes and quickly changed, while I carefully retrieved the small gemstone we’d attached the glamour spell to from its secure canister and examined it. Belle’s spell formation was seamless, with no faults or fissures that I could see. But the true test would come not on the spell’s activation, but whether it held up against Waverley’s magic.

Belle stuffed her clothes into the pack, tucked it between the exposed roots of an old gum tree, and cast a quick spell so she could find it again later. She pulled off one of her boots—the style of which was basic enough to pass as men’s footwear rather than women’s—and then her sock. I handed her the stone. She placed it underneath a couple of toes and put her footwear back on.

She adjusted her boot a little and then raised a hand and began the activation incantation. As the power of the trees and the earth stirred in response and began to weave through the spell, strengthening it, her form flickered—an effect that reminded me somewhat of a television not quite tuned right. As the spell neared its peak, the glamour rolled up her body, concealing her form under the portrait of another. When it reached the top of her head, the force of the spell faded, becoming little more than a barely noticeable background buzz.

The person who stood in front of me now was a thinly built man with a pockmarked face, sallow cheeks, and receding gray hair. Morris Redfern, exactly as he’d appeared in the photograph Blume had given us.

“Move around,” I instructed.

She turned and walked away several steps. A tree branch tugged at her borrowed shirt, but the glamour didn’t react to either the branch’s encroachment or to her movement. There wasn’t even the slightest shimmer.

“I think this glamour might be one of your best spells ever, Belle.”

“It needs to be to fool Waverley.”

Her voice remained the same—a glamour could only change the perception of appearance, which meant Belle wouldn’t be able to speak once we got into that clearing.

“Your turn now,” she added. “Call the wild magic.”

“Not until we get closer.”

And not just because the less time I had to contain it within me, the better it would be for my survival rate, but because we had no real idea what was going to happen when I did call to it. We really were stepping into uncharted waters in even attempting this.

I pulled the sharpened stakes from the backpack and handed two to Belle. While ash, rowan, oak, or hawthorn were generally accepted as the best woods to use for staking vampires—at least according to wisdom in the book of vampires Belle’s granny had left her—all we’d had on hand was birch. It was generally used in cleansing rituals or to calm emotions, but in the past it had also been ascribed the ability to expel evil spirits.

And evil was certainly an apt description for our vampire.

Belle placed her two under her loose shirtsleeves, holding them in place with the help of two thin rubber bands. I did the same, and then tucked a third one—pointy end up—into the waist of my jeans behind my back.

Which left only a couple of charms, and two warding potions contained in fragile glass. I shoved the charms in my pockets and then carefully slung the pack over my shoulder and continued up the road.

Where it quickly became evident there would be no need to call the wild magic. It was coming to us.