“I did. Maybe the spell’s breaking down.” He drew his sword, scanned the cliff wall. “Maybe the caves behind it will appear now.”
“If they do, you’re not going in. You gave your word.”
“I keep my word.” Irritation flickered over his face. This was the soldier now, she noted, and not the pipe-playing farmer. “But if one of them sticks its head out, just a bit…Do you see anything? I’m not seeing anything different than it was.”
“No, nothing. Maybe it’s the magic trio on the cliffs. Seems like they’ve had enough time to do something.” She kept her hand on the stake in her belt as she worked her way as far toward the crashing surf as she dared. “Can’t see from here. Can you, like, be a bird? Like a hawk or something? Take a look up there?”
“I can, of course. I don’t like to leave you alone down here.”
Irritation rippled down her spine. Here she was explaining herself again. “I’m in the sun, vamps can’t come out. Besides, I’ve worked alone for a long time. Let’s get a status report on magic time. I don’t like not knowing where we stand.”
He could do it quickly, he thought. He could be up and back in a matter of minutes. And from the sky, he could see her, and anything that came at her, as well as the group on the cliffs.
So he passed Blair his sword and thought of the hawk. Of its shape, of its vision, and of its heart. The light shimmered into him, over him. In that change, as arms became wings, as lips formed a beak, as talons sprang and curled, there was a sudden and breathless pain.
Then freedom.
He soared up, a gold hawk that took the air, and circled once over Blair with a cry like triumph.
“Wow.” She stared up, watching his flight, the sheer power and majesty of it. She’d seen him change before, had ridden on his back when he’d taken the shape of a horse into battle. And still, she was dumbstruck.
“That is so sexy.”
While the ground continued to shake, she gripped Larkin’s sword, drew her own. And with the sea roaring at her back, faced the blank wall of the cliff.
Overhead, the hawk swept through the air over the cliffs. He could see keenly enough to pick out individual blades of grass, the petals of the rugged wildflowers that forced their way through fissures in rock to seek the sun. He saw the long ribbon of the road, the wide plate of the sea, and all the way to where the land met it again.
The hawk yearned to fly, and to hunt. The man inside it pitted his will against that yearning even as he skimmed the sky.
He could see them below, his cousin, the witch and the sorcerer, hands linked as they stood on the quaking ground. There was light, wild and white, in them, around them, a spinning circle that rose up in a tower to shake the air even as the ground.
The wind caught at him, plucked at his wings like greedy fingers. In it he could hear their voices, blended together as one, and could feel their power, a hot stream that washed the whirling air.
Then that wind slapped at him, and sent him into a rolling, spinning dive.
Blair heard the hawk cry, saw it spiral. Her heart rolled up into her throat, lodged there as Larkin tumbled through the air. It stayed there, a hot, hard ball even as the hawk sheered up, wings spread. Then dived to land gracefully at her feet.
For a moment, she saw the melding of them, hawk and man. Then Larkin stood facing her, his breathing labored, his face pale.
“What the hell was that? What the hell happened? I thought you were going to splat. Your nose is bleeding.”
Her voice was tinny to his ears so he shook his head as if to clear it. “Not surprising.” He swiped at the blood. “Something’s happening up there, something very big from the feel of it. The light damn near blinded me, and the wind’s a bloody wicked one. I couldn’t tell, not for certain, if they’re in trouble. But I think we’d best go up and make certain.”
“Okay.” She started to hand him his sword, and the ground heaved. Off-balance, she pitched forward. He managed to catch her, but the momentum threw him back against the rock, and nearly sent both of them into the water.
“Sorry, sorry.” But it was brace against him or fall. “You hurt?”
“Knocked the bleeding breath out of me again is all.”
The next spume of surf soaked them both. “Screw this. We’d better get out of here.”
“I’m for that. Steady now.”
They linked their arms around each other’s waists, struggling to stay upright. Rock and sod began to spill down the cliff face, making the idea of climbing up it again unappealing if not impossible.
“I can get us up to the others,” he told her. “You’ll just have to hold on, and I’ll—”
He broke off as the wall itself began to waver, to change. To open.