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“It saves time,” Grey huffed at him. “Gather your strength.”
“Listen to the Soul Weaver,” Dane chimed in as he wrapped his arm around Clay’s waist.
“So, what’s the plan now? Can we even get closer to the rift if the pestilents in the area are making you sick?” Lucien demanded.
“How do we find the rift in the first place?” Gio added.
“I don’t think finding it is going to be a problem,” Clay muttered. He rubbed his forehead with one hand while he wrapped his other arm around Dane’s shoulders. “I can feel this sort of wounded area in the earth to the west of us. I think it’s up in the mountains, north of Sedona.”
Calder nodded. “I feel it too.” His voice was soft and wavery as if he were speaking through a dream.
Both of his mates turned as one, instantly going to his side. “What? What do you feel?” Lucien demanded.
“Are you all right? Do you need Dane to heal you too?” Gio pressed.
Calder shook his head and offered up a small smile to both men. “No, I’m okay. I don’t think it’s hitting me the same way that it’s hitting Clay. It’s like I can feel ripples in the water where the pestilents are draining the Earth. The water flowing down out of the mountains toward the city is sending whispers of what’s happening through all the water in the area.” He turned and pointed to the little stream that was running alongside the campsite where they were parked. “I can hear the whispers from there. Between Clay and myself, I think we can follow the trail to the rift.”
The wind picked up, swirling through the camp and making the high branches of the pine trees sway. Hale turned his head away from the group, his nose following just the tiniest hint of a scent. He wasn’t entirely sure he’d smelled it, the odor had come and gone so quickly on the stiff breeze. It could have easily been a dead animal nearby or some uncollected trash.
Or it could be the pestilents.
“What do you want to do? Should we camp here for the night, see if you can get better adjusted to the area while we look over some maps? Sedona is covered in hiking trails. From here, it might be best if we hike in rather than cutting through the city,” Baer was saying, but Hale was only partially listening. He was vaguely aware of Clay responding to Baer about taking the lead through the woods, but his nose was still chasing the scent.
“Hale?” Harrison inquired softly beside him.
He lifted his hand, calling the wind down to him to see if he could read what was riding on it the same way Calder could read the ripples in the water. “Just checking something,” he murmured. It could be nothing. He could be wrong.
But he wasn’t.
The second the wind wove through his fingers he was hammered by the scent again, the heavy weight of the otherness of the pestilents slapped him in the face. There were dozens of them in the area, and they were getting closer. They must have used the sound of the wind rustling trees and the debris on the ground to mask their approach.
“Pestilents!” Hale shouted.
There was the sharp shuffle of feet and a new electric feeling to the air as his brothers pulled on their own powers, readying for the attack.
Hale needed only to stretch out his hand to instantly come into contact with Harrison’s sleeve. “Go with Grey and Cort. Get armed.”
“Right!” Harrison ran with Grey and the other mates to grab weapons from the back of the vehicles.
“Where are they, Hale?” Lucien demanded.
“Close. All around us. They’ve been using the wind to hide their movements and their smell.”
An ear-piercing cry rose from a mountain lion at Hale’s side. Baer had already shifted and from the way his nose was twitching, it was easy to guess that he was now picking up on the pestilents as well.
The wind gusted again, bending the tops of the trees and carrying with it a woman in a long, black duster. Her black hair whipped and danced about her pale face as she was slowly lowered to the ground a few dozen feet away from them.
“Saying we smell isn’t very nice,” she taunted. “Exactly how wonderful would you smell if you started dying the second you entered this horrible place?”
Hale glanced over at his companions to see the same surprised looks on all their faces. Apparently they hadn’t encountered this woman before. Oh lovely. It wasn’t enough that they had John and his hordes of brainwashed humans as well as the pestilent army. No, now they had another pestilent witch to deal with.
Hale had to concede that it shouldn’t be a shock, though. They were damn close to the rift. The pestilents no longer had any reason to hold back. If they failed, the pestilents would never get another shot at the powers of the Earth and their own planet would die.
