Rituals (Cainsville 5)

But it only looked around. Then it tilted its head, and I thought maybe it heard me, so I tried again, louder, but it only launched and winged across the road. It flew to a gap between two buildings before landing on a twisted tree.

Below, I saw two figures. The raven peered down and I peered along with it, and the darkness lifted enough for me to recognize Helia and Alexios. I let out a mental sigh of relief. They seemed fine. They were crouched in that alley-like gap, Alexios peering around the corner and whispering to his mate.

T

hen the dryads went still, and the raven's head shot up. Footsteps sounded from the empty field behind the buildings. Alexios gave a quick look around, and the two dryads darted to the tree the raven was perched in. They pressed against it and melded with the bark until the dryads looked like two extra lumps in an already twisted trunk.

The raven took flight and sailed down that alley toward the field. It flew straight to four shadowy figures making their way through the field. Four cloaked figures. Four Huntsmen, it seemed. Then the raven dove between them and, under two of the hoods, I spotted faces. Very familiar faces.

DEATH BY HELL-BIRD

"I think she likes you," Ricky said, moving up beside Gabriel as the raven swooped past him twice, cawing.

Gabriel barely gave a distracted "Hmm," his gaze fixed on the bird.

"Trouble?" Ricky whispered as he patted Lloergan's head.

Gabriel gave his head a sharp shake and pulled his attention from the raven. "That's theirs, I presume."

Ricky was about to answer, but Meic--one of their Huntsman escorts--beat him to it, saying, "She is."

"Can we ask what she's seen?" Ricky said.

"She's roaming free. Ioan will be linked with Brenin. I cannot communicate directly with her, but she seems calm, and she's suggesting we walk down that passage. I'll take her word for it."

Ricky glanced at Gabriel, who was trying to hide his impatience and doing a shitty job of it. They'd been scouting for the last hour now, finding absolutely nothing.

At one point, Gabriel had said, "Is this necessary?" and Ricky knew he wasn't just asking about the surveillance. He meant the whole expedition. If Walter had taken Seanna to kill her, she was almost certainly dead. And if she wasn't? Well, Gabriel wasn't particularly concerned about that, and only mildly more concerned about the dryads. But Liv was concerned, and that's why Gabriel was here, keeping his mouth shut as well as he could manage, letting out only that one complaint before setting his jaw and resuming the search.

They walked into the passage between two brick buildings. It was a densely overgrown passage, and they had to pick their way through the undergrowth as Gabriel watched the raven, perched on a tree, watching him back.

Gabriel turned to Meic. "Do we know where Ioan is? I'm familiar with the area, and I really don't feel I'm assisting here at all. I would prefer to find Ioan and see what his hound has found. I accept all responsibility for any danger incurred in doing so."

"Olivia is fine," Meic said.

Gabriel made a noise under his breath, a soft growl of annoyance, not at the answer but at how transparent his true motive had been. Then Gabriel checked his cell phone.

"They haven't started working again in the last sixty seconds," Ricky murmured.

He got a glower for that, but it was true--the phones had lost service shortly after Liv left, and Gabriel had been doing sixty-second checks ever since.

"Satellite radios," Ricky said. "We need to invest in satellite radios."

"Or we could just not split up. Wasn't that the plan? Stick together no matter--" Gabriel broke off and rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't like this. Which I realize is stating the obvious."

"Kinda, yeah. Are you getting a sense she's in danger?"

A pause.

"That's a no," Ricky said. "If you did, you'd have said something."

"There was a moment, roughly ten minutes ago, where I did have the sense something was wrong."

"Which passed too quickly for you to even remark--"

"Ricky," a woman's voice said.

There was that split second where he thought it was Liv, which only proved how much he too was hoping to hear her. This voice, light and girlish, sounded nothing like Liv's. When Ricky looked around, seeing nothing, Lloergan sighed. Deeply. Then an old tree beside him rippled, the trunk seeming to separate.