The fire snapped, sparked, spread around the circle he’d created. It burned hot red, cold white, then at last, pure, calming blue.
“So evil is banished from this place, defeated by valor and light and grace. We six stand witness willingly. As I will, so mote it be.”
The circle of fire flamed up, turned the air a soft blue, then shimmered away.
“It’s done.”
Doyle nodded, sheathed his sword. “If the star’s here, it’ll wait. We have wounded to tend.”
“Just like that?” Riley asked as he stalked out. Bran stayed her when she would have stalked out after him.
“That’s for later. We’re all more than a bit battered. I’ve a small kit in the car, but . . . Sawyer, are you able to shift us there? I’d rather not even attempt that short walk.”
“He’s hurt. His back, his arm.”
“Not that bad,” he assured Annika. “I can handle the shift.”
Sasha limped out with Bran’s help. Riley ignored her own wounds, though the back of her shoulder burned like a bitch, and stepped out.
Doyle stood, his face a mask under spatters of blood.
“We’re shifting to where we left the car, the bike,” Bran told him. “We do have wounds to tend.”
“Move in,” Sawyer requested. “Easier that way.”
With a hand not altogether steady, he took out his compass. Breathed in and out a moment, nodded.
Riley felt a quick bump, then found herself standing beside Doyle’s bike. She noted Sawyer didn’t object when both Annika and Sasha helped him into the car.
“I’m driving,” she told Doyle.
“Nobody drives my bike.”
“Today I do. Look at your goddamn hands.” She pulled a faded bandanna out of her back pocket, shoved it at him. “Wrap that around the worst one, and don’t be a complete fuckhead.”
She got on the bike, kicked it into a roar.
“It’ll be healed before we’re back.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass. Get on or walk.”
Because he knew he wasn’t as calm as he wanted to be—needed to be—he swung on behind her.
She drove the bike as she drove everything else. Recklessly fast. But he was in the mood for reckless. She knew how to handle it, which didn’t surprise him, and took them snaking around curves and turns, sweeping by stone walls, skimming by hedgerows.
The blur was fine with him, as was the sting and burn of his healing wounds. It masked, for now, his own ugly and intimate nightmare.
By the time she roared up to the house, cut the engine, he judged himself healed and calm. It took seconds to understand she was neither.
“Did you forget there were five other people in that cave?” she demanded. “Or did you just decide you were the only one capable of getting the job done?”
“I did what needed doing.” He walked away from her as his own words brought back his brother’s face, the killing edge of the sword on his back.
“Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.” When she would have torn after him, Sasha called her name.
“Riley. He’s in pain.”
“He stopped bleeding before we were halfway here.”