Page 54 of Investigation of a Quest

Eamon bolted upright. Someone was in his house.

Shoving the blankets off his legs, he inhaled as he lowered his bare feet to the floor and froze at the familiar scent. Wet dog?

Eamon snatched his phone off the bedside table and crossed the room with silent steps. He pulled the bedroom door open, inhaling the intruder’s odor without the walls blocking it, but the familiarity didn’t change. Cerberus was in his house… alone. No human scent accompanied him. Bel’s fragrance clung to his wet fur, but she wasn’t here. Only her dog was… at four in the morning.

“Cerberus?” Eamon burst into a run, his mass disappearing into the shadows as if he ceased to exist. The mansion fell silent as if it were empty, and then Eamon’s fists closed around the handles to Bel’s library doors. Cerberus’ wet fur filled the air with a pungent stench. He’d clearly used his doggy door to enter the library since no one was there to let him in through the front entrance, and that fact made Eamon sick. Where was Bel that he needed to sneak into his house in the middle of the night?

Eamon unlocked his phone, his thumb finding the tracking app, but he stilled before it swiped the screen. Cerberus wasn’t alone. A second animal’s scent mingled with the pitbull’s, and Eamon forgot about Bel’s tracking app. He forgot to breathe. What was in there with his boy? And why wasn’t it his mother?

Lowering his body for an attack, Eamon flung the door open, but the expansive library was empty. He smelled Cerberus, so he knew he hid in this room. He couldn’t see him, though, but he didn’t scent blood. Thankfully, the dog wasn’t bleeding out on the floor somewhere.

But blood loss wasn’t the only way to kill a dog.

“Cerberus?” Eamon stepped into the library, and spotting the wet paw prints, he followed them to an oversized dog bed that sat in a cozy, dark corner. “Buddy, tell me what’s wrong.”

A small huff sounded, and a second later, a sodden mass shoved itself against his legs. Eamon almost burst into tears. The dog was alive. He was unharmed and whole, and Eamon scooped him up into his arms. The soaked animal shook, but it wasn’t hurt…

But the strange dog in the corner was.

“Hey, buds?” Eamon crouched before the tiny terrier cowering on the bed. Up close, his senses confirmed the second scent he’d detected wasn’t that of a monster, but a plain old dog. This innocent animal was black and shaggy and unbearably cute, but he was favoring his front paw. His leg was broken, and Eamon guessed that’s why Cerberus had snuck into his house at this hour. Had he found this injured terrier and led him here for help? Bel must be freaking out, so he grabbed his phone and dialed her.

But she didn’t answer.

It was his turn to freak out.

Eamon restarted the tracking app and scanned the map for his girl’s location. She was close to her cabin, her necklace pinging from the woods just beyond her property. That must’ve been what happened. Cerberus got loose to chase this dog, and she ran out after them. Instead of going home, Cerberus had delivered the injured animal to Eamon, leaving his poor mother to panic in the rain. She must be beside herself with worry, but why hadn’t she called him? It was late, but she knew better. It didn’t matter if he was sleeping. It didn’t matter if he were dead. If she called, he would answer, especially if Cerberus was in trouble.

“Come on, buds.” Eamon scooped the pitbull up, praying Bel hadn’t hurt herself looking for him in the dark. He didn’t want to leave the injured terrier behind, though, so he grabbed the tiny thing, who seemed to understand that he was safe, and rushed to his truck. He didn’t bother with clothes or shoes. He simply peeled out of his driveway, driving too fast in the darkness. His speed in this rain would’ve killed a human driver, but his skill delivered him to Bel’s cabin in minutes, his anxiety clogging his throat with every phone call she didn’t answer.

“Isobel?” Eamon leaped out of his truck, leaving the dogs locked inside for safety, and bolted towards the tree line. He followed her signal on his phone’s tracking app, winding through the soaked foliage to where her necklace had remained steady for too long. Maybe she’d fallen, but if she were hurt, why hadn’t she hit the panic button? Why hadn’t she summoned⁠—?

Eamon tripped, his knee slapping the mud as the force of its presence almost knocked him out. Magic… magic had been here. The trees reeked of power and malevolence, and he scrambled forward, dread gripping his heart so fiercely he thought he might pass out. Was that why her tracker hadn’t moved? Was she hurt? Had she interrupted something she wasn’t meant to witness when she chased Cerberus into the storm? Had they killed her?

“Isobel?” His screams echoed through the night, louder than the thunder shaking the sky. “Isobel!” He ran without seeing, his stomach churning and muscles threatening to give out. “Isobel, answer me!” The mud clawed at his feet, trying to drag him back down where he belonged, but he kept moving, his panic blinding him to everything save the fear that he was about to find her corpse. She’d been alone in this downpour for who knew how long, the rain cooling her body so he’d never again feel her warmth. Cerberus had come to him so that he might fix his mother, but Eamon couldn’t resurrect the dead. He wasn’t God. He was the devil.

“Isobel?” He skidded to a stop with a double-take at his phone, but he wasn’t seeing things. This location, with its broken tree branches and war-torn earth, had clearly seen magic’s carnage, but not a single living soul waited for him among the wreckage. The tracking app claimed Bel should be where he stood, but the woods were empty. His breath was the only thing polluting the air, and the pain in his stomach worsened. Why did her tracker put her on this deserted, muddy battlefield?

Eamon took an experimental step, his piercing gaze scanning the darkness. “No.” His stomach fell from his body when he saw it. “Isobel, no!” He raced forward, mud splattering his legs as he slid wildly, but he couldn’t control his emotions. They were as violent as the storm raging overhead because he knew why Bel’s tracker never moved from this position. The necklace no longer hung from her neck. It hung from a splintered branch, one with Bel’s scent painted across its bark. The rain tried to erase her memory, but her blood had dripped onto this tree. From the broken branches, someone had thrown her against its trunk, and Eamon’s entire world crashed down around him. Bel had been injured in these woods, her necklace clearly snagging on the branch and ripping from her neck, which meant that the woman he loved had come face to face with powerful magic, but he couldn’t track her. Someone had taken her, and despite his power, he was helpless, yet again. The ground where she’d fallen was long cold. She was gone, and he had no way of finding her.

Bel tried to open her eyes, but it felt like someone had threaded weights through her eyelashes. Her brain was pure fog hiding a dull ache somewhere behind the thickness, and she couldn’t move her limbs. Her arms hung heavy by her side, refusing to obey her commands, and it took her far too long to realize her immobility had nothing to do with her painful return to consciousness.

Bel cursed as she finally registered the bite of the rope digging into her wrists and the pain in her shoulders from having her arms bound behind her chair. She ordered her heart rate not to spike as her ankles tested their mobility and discovered they, too, were bound. She had no idea where she was; the concrete room dilapidated and dust-filled in its unfamiliarity, but she didn’t need to find herself. Eamon would track her when he realized she was missing. He was probably already halfway here, and while she wanted to freak out at her current predicament, she didn’t necessarily need her hands to press the panic button. If she could just hook the pendant’s chain with her tongue, she could suck it into her mouth and use her teeth to trigger the⁠—

“No!” The anxiety pulsing in her chest surged to a violent frenzy, and she almost threw up as the words poured out of her mouth. “No, no, no!”

Her necklace, her only hope of being rescued, was gone, and Bel leaned over the cracked floor to dry-heave her panic into the air. No one had seen her go into the woods. No one knew she was missing, and the witch from the crime scenes had taken her. She was powerful enough to evade Eamon. She wouldn’t have suddenly grown sloppy covering her tracks now, and without the necklace, Eamon would never find them. Had the witch sensed the protective spell blessing the charm and ripped it off? That might work in her favor, though. She couldn’t know the book pendant also carried an undetectable, military-grade tracker, so there was a chance she had it in her possession. There was still a chance Eamon could track them. Right?

But the minute that question pierced her mind, her memory came flooding back. The way the witch had screamed, ‘stop’. The way she’d thrown her hands out before magic enveloped the forest. The way Bel’s body had collided with that tree. The witch hadn’t stolen her book charm. The branches had ripped it from her throat. Eamon would be searching the woods for her. He wouldn’t⁠—

The hair at the nape of her neck stood on end, and Bel froze, her already thundering heart pounding dangerously in her chest. She wasn’t alone. Someone was watching her. The witch.

Their killer.

“What do you want with me?” She asked her unseen intruder. “I know about the temple. I know how those four men desecrated your holy ground, but they’re dead. I had nothing to do with what happened in that jungle.”

But the witch remained silent.

“Those men paid the price,” Bel continued. “It’s over. You got what you came for, so why take me?”