Spirit Formed Read online

  Shasta exchanged a look with Cord. Great. An entire town full of potential victims. She tried to make a diplomatic response. “That would have been good information to have when we were hired. We would have taken precautions.”

  Godric stood a little taller. “We successfully killed two herds. I didn’t think it was relevant.”

  Shasta simply nodded. There wasn’t anything she or Cord could say to that. If Godric didn’t understand yet … well, he probably wasn’t going to at all.

  When Godric didn’t get a reply, he continued over to Areena where she was placing a bow back on its hook. “Areena, how did you fare during the fight?”

  Areena’s dark blonde hair was pulled back in a French braid, and a long knife hung from her belt. She turned to them, frowning. “Well enough.”

  Cord edged forward. “How did these deer compare to the previous ones?”

  Her shoulders rounded. “They were tougher. The only person I even saw injure one was Shasta. I don’t know how we’ll kill them this time.”

  Shasta frowned. “No one else was able to hurt them?”

  Areena shook her head.

  “Could you tell if they were created or if they’d been morphed by some wild magic?” Shasta watched her closely.

  “I’ve seen creatures changed by pockets of magic … It’s both more purposeful and capricious.” She shrugged. “Unless the magic is continuing to change them, which I suppose is possible, they wouldn’t get harder. That’s not how it works.”

  Shasta resisted glancing at Cord. Areena was right; if the deer had run across magic once, they would have been different.

  “Thank you,” Cord said.

  He turned to Godric and motioned for them to step off to the side where they couldn’t be heard. “We need to examine one of the deer to understand what we’re dealing with. To that end, Shasta and I will track a deer we injured.”

  “You think you can find it?” Godric arched an eyebrow.

  “We injured one of them pretty severely,” Shasta said. “We don’t think it could have gotten far.” Godric started protesting, and she held up a hand. “Even if we don’t find it today, we will eventually. And when we’ve returned, we’ll work on implementing some defenses for the town and residents. Is that acceptable?”

  Godric looked past them to the injured elves and flustered townsfolk before locking eyes with Cord. “I trust now that there’s evidence of the continued problem, we will have your full dedication to solving it?”

  Cord gave a curt nod. “You have my word.”

  Before anything else could be said, Shasta interjected, “And mine as well. Oaks Consulting takes filling contracts very seriously.”

  “Excellent,” Godric said crisply. “I look forward to hearing more about your results.” He gave them the barest hint of a smile and walked away.

  Shasta rubbed her temples. Considering Cord’s insistence last night that there was nothing to be done here, that could have gone much worse. Though, the next time her partner got it into his head to protest their assignment, she was going to gag him and tie him to a chair so he couldn’t complicate matters.

  Cord loudly huffed out a breath. “I suppose I owe you, Michelle, and him an apology.”

  “Godric and my mother would probably settle for a job well done. I wouldn’t mind an apology. You made this more difficult.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Accepted.” Shasta looked down the road in the direction the deer had run off. “If we’re going to track the buck, we probably want a blood sample and some supplies.”

  “Our place is on that side of town. We can grab some supplies on our way.”

  Shasta nodded. “There’s just one stop I need to make first.”

  “Oh?” Cord arched a brow.

  It didn’t take much time for them to swing by the café and get a spare napkin. Outside, Shasta used it to soak up some of the blood the buck had left behind. If they had trouble following the animal, she could try using its blood for a tracking spell.

  From there, it was a short walk to their house. Not far past where the shops ended and wildflowers took over, they hung a right onto a footpath. A light breeze ruffled the top of the waist-high grass on each side of them. The field was dotted with houses, including their own. It was more than a tenth of a mile off Main Street, and when they’d first arrived, their SUV had to push its way through the grass. Since they’d been here, the vehicle hadn’t moved, and the grass had recovered.

  The sleek SUV looked somewhat out of place next to the picturesque cottage with whitewashed walls, a thatched roof, and enormous rosebushes on both sides of the front door. As tired as Shasta was after the fight and adrenaline rush, the frilly peach blossoms the size of dessert plates lifted her spirits. The air was heavy with the scent of roses as they passed between the bushes.

  Inside, the house was simple, with one open area for the kitchen, dining room, and living room, and a separate bedroom and bath off to the left. From the front door, Shasta could see out the double French doors to the back of the house and its patio with a wooden table and two chairs.

  She made a beeline for the supplies sitting along the living room wall. Snapping open the outer pocket of a duffle, she retrieved a small unbleached cotton bag. Trying not to touch the blood on the napkin, Shasta put it into the bag and pulled the drawstring closed. Now she had a biological sample that she wasn’t worried about contaminating.

  With that taken care of, she found her daypack, double-checked that there were ample medical supplies (including healing charms), and put the sample of the buck’s blood into an outer pocket.

  Beside her, Cord was going through his own daypack. When she paused, he passed her three canteens. She added them to her pack and then looked it over. That should do for today.

  With the packing finished, she washed up. While Cord was in the bathroom, she put together a few snacks for them to eat on the way. A bag of food for each of them went into the packs, with another laid out for them to eat along the way.

  Ten minutes after they got to the house, they were headed out again. Shasta hadn’t felt hungry, but as soon as she tasted the first bite of cheese, her stomach gurgled.

  Cord chuckled. “It’s easy to forget isn’t it?”

  “Yup. Fighting makes you ravenous, and you always forget how hungry you are.” She took another bite of the sharp cheddar. When Cord didn’t answer, she glanced over. His cheeks were bulging as he slowly chewed. She snorted. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you to take small bites?”

  He narrowed his eyes at her.

  Still smiling, she took another bite of cheese.

  Now back on the road, she paused. There were a bunch of deer prints and spots of blood in the dirt. “Should I try to set up the tracking?”

  Cord cocked his head as he considered the trail. “Magical or elven?”

  “I was thinking a bit of both, why?”

  “Since we don’t know what changes were made to them, I’d rather not use magic. They could be sensitive to it.” He looked pointedly at the tracks. “Besides, we don’t need any help following them.”

  “True. We can reevaluate if we lose the blood trail.” Plus, using magic took energy that came from within her. While she could balance the spell and hike, they also had to plan for the return trip. If they were lucky, they’d be carrying the buck back, and that wasn’t going to be nearly as easy as this part.

  Cord nodded, and together they set out. Since the deer had run along the road, that made for easy walking. They stayed to the side of the tracks, keeping an eye on blood drops. From the tracks, Shasta could see the deer had still been running. That surprised her because they were more than a half-mile from town. The deer she’d grown up with had been the type to run until they were just barely out of danger and then stop. Why would this herd still be running?

  For that matter, why had they attacked the town to begin with? Because deer were prey animals, their first choice when confronted would be to run away. But she could see them becoming bolder as they realized how difficult it was for them to be hurt. It wouldn’t take surviving too many bear or coyote attacks before they lost their fear of those predators.

  Shasta carefully skirted the tracks, eyeing the increasingly large spots of blood. At least they didn’t seem to have any superfast healing abilities. Maybe the wounds had been significant enough that the buck would collapse soon.

  Unfortunately, that thought brought her full circle. She was back to the questions plaguing the townsfolk and more recently Cord and her: Why were the deer attacking and why were they so difficult to injure?

  “Cord, what do you think about these deer?” Shasta asked.

  Rather than look at her, he was studying the tracks as they veered off the road and into the woods. “I think our job just got harder.”

  “That’s all you have to say? You were a lot more vocal this morning.” Shasta ducked under a limb as she followed him off the road.

  He looked over his shoulder at her, his lips pressed into a thin line. “They’re the strangest deer I’ve ever hunted. Had I not seen their teeth, I would have believed we were facing a predator that looked like a deer but was attacking the village in search of larger prey.”

  That took Shasta a moment to process. “You’re not treating this like we’re tracking deer, but like we’re tracking an unknown. That’s why you’ve been so quiet.”

  Cord nodded. “They may look like deer, but they don’t act like deer. And I’m not sure they even think like deer.”

  “I’m beginning to wonder if they’re deer at all,” Shasta said quietly.

  “Why is that?” Cord narrowed his eyes.

  Shasta shrugged. “The behavior; it speaks to a different mentality than prey creature. And the fact that th
e only weapons that did anything approaching real damage to those creatures were our swords.”

  Cord summoned his sword. He turned it so the light reflected off the blade before meeting Shasta’s eyes. “What made our weapons different than the others?”

  The arrowheads were metal, so it had to be more than that. “They were made by elven smiths? Mom added spells to them?” Shasta summoned her own sword. Though she’d long ago grown accustomed to the sensation, she could feel the spells in the weapon. “They’re magical.”

  “Fight fire with fire, and magic with magic,” Cord said dryly.

  She went through the fight again in her mind. Every stab, every slice, felt like something had been holding her sword back, preventing it from doing as much damage as it should. “If we’re going with that theory, we might need stronger magic.”

  “Yes, and we need to see every weapon they’ve used against the deer. If our weapons are the only magical ones, then our theory is correct.” Cord sighed and dismissed the sword. “Of course, we can’t do any of that until we finish tracking down this deer.”

  “It’s a good theory, even if we can’t test it yet.” She twisted her wrist sharply, and the familiar weight of her sword vanished. “Let’s find that deer.”

  Cord headed into the woods. Shasta followed, carefully moving aside a heavy branch as they pushed their way through the overgrowth at the edge of the road. For the first few feet, there was a swath of trampled flora from where the deer had continued their stampede into the forest. Past that, the trees were older and spaced out, giving the deer plenty of room to move.

  Based on the tracks, the deer had slowed once they’d gotten off the road. That left less for them to follow, though there were still the occasional hoof prints and spots of blood that were easy enough to see.

  Shasta studied the trees around them carefully. They were a mix of evergreen and deciduous. This time of year, all of them were fully leafed out, blocking a great deal of light from reaching the forest floor. While the very edge of the woods next to the road had been thick with shrubs and small trees, only a few feet into the forest, most of the underbrush had been replaced by a thick mat of leaves.

  As they progressed deeper into the forest, the blood trail thickened. Where before there had been spots here and there, now there were thick smudges. It wasn’t long before the smudges became small pools.

  Shasta exchanged a glance with Cord. The buck had lost a lot of blood and should have collapsed somewhere nearby. Without a word, they both summoned their swords. With the comforting weight of the weapon in her hand, Shasta sidestepped a puddle of blood. Ahead of her, Cord stepped over a fallen tree that was nearly two feet in diameter and stopped.

  Whatever had gotten his attention was blocked by the deadfall. Shasta stepped up onto the tree. Directly in front of her, the leaves were saturated with blood. It spilled across the forest floor, completely covering nearly four square feet.

  “Where’s the buck?” she asked. It wasn’t lying in or next to the pool of blood. There wasn’t a trail away from the area. The buck was simply gone.

  Cord’s eyes were wide and only focused on her for a moment before scanning the woods around them. “I don’t know. It should be here.”

  Shasta returned her gaze to the ground. A few feet from the blood, the earth was churned, leaving behind distinctive deer tracks. To her, it looked as if the deer had milled around a bit before leaving. But there weren’t any other tracks, and there was no way a deer was walking away from that much blood loss. It seemed like the animal had simply vanished from where it bled out.

  Shasta gave the woods a once over. As far as she could tell, they were alone. Cord was alternately studying the tracks, the blood, and their surroundings. With him on guard, Shasta dismissed her sword and reached for the sample of the buck’s blood from her pack.

  She carefully removed it from the cloth bag and cupped it between her hands. Lowering her shields, she could feel most of her surroundings. Below the log, the earth hummed a greeting before returning to its steady rhythm. For as quiet as the earth had been in this area, the greeting was a welcome surprise. However, it quickly returned to its usual rhythm, unconcerned or unaware of what had transpired with the deer.

  Around her, she could feel the plants and a variety of birds, rabbits, squirrels, and other small creatures. She didn’t feel a single deer. That could mean they were out of range or something else might be afoot. She didn’t have enough magic to figure that out, but she could still attempt to track the buck.

  Focusing on the blood-soaked napkin, Shasta pushed a twist of her magic into the cloth. “Connect me to buck.”

  Nothing happened.

  She tried again, this time mixing her elven abilities with the magic. “Guide me to the buck’s location.”

  This time she got a small vibration from the napkin resonating off the pool of blood on the ground. She added more magic to the spell, trying to push it out. Again it fizzled. “Dammit.”

  Cord gave her a puzzled look. “It didn’t work?”

  “It’s like the buck is gone.” Shasta put the napkin back in the bag and stuffed it in her pack.

  “Gone?” Cord frowned.

  “Gone. Poof.” Frustrated, and not sure what else to say, she made a vanishing motion with her hands. “It may not be the best tracking method, but I’ve used it before, and it works. Today there was nothing. Like the deer doesn’t exist anymore.”

  Cord stared at the pool of blood. “It died here.”

  Based on the amount of blood and the imprint in the leaves, she agreed. Unfortunately, that didn’t give her answers. “I never said otherwise.”

  “Sorry.” Cord vanished his sword and rubbed his temples. “I just … Where? How?”

  Shasta examined the area again. Other than the missing deer and the pool of blood, there wasn’t much of interest. There were plenty parts of the forest that had deer tracks, so that wasn’t a particularly unique identifier. In fact, from a woodsman’s perspective, the only thing that set this bit of forest apart from anything around it was the tree she was standing on. It had taken down two smaller trees when it fell, leaving a gap in the canopy. Around them, young trees were starting to grow, beginning their competition to see who would fill the void. Until then, this particular spot had a little more sun.

  “I wish I knew.” She sighed. “I really wish I knew.”

  Cord shook his head. “What are we going to tell Godric?”

  Shasta bit her lip. Nothing she said would make him feel less guilty about doubting the townsfolk. “We go back to the beginning. We collect evidence to support our theory as to why our weapons worked and the others didn’t. We tell them we won’t stop until we figure this out.”

  “You’re right.” He headed in her direction. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too.” Shasta offered him a hand.

  He slid his fingers across her palm and stepped onto the log with her. “Thank you.”

  “For what?” Shasta looked up into sad blue eyes.

  “Being you, being kind, not saying you told me so.” The corner of his mouth turned up at the last bit.

  She squeezed his hand. “You know that already, and the guilt you feel is more punishment than any talk I could give you.”

  He dropped his gaze.

  Since there wasn’t much more she could say, she released his hand and hopped down. “Come on. It’s a few miles back to town.”

  He nodded and followed her.

  Wishing there was something she could do to make things better, she took the lead. For as quietly as she knew Cord could walk through the woods, now every footfall seemed as loud as a shout, with snapping twigs and crunching leaves.

  He liked to solve problems, have answers, and save the day. This time not only were they returning without the victory everyone wanted, but they had more questions. That wasn’t a feeling Cord enjoyed.

  Not that she was happy about the current situation. The tracking spell was unconventional, but it should have worked. She had blood from the creature in question, and that should have allowed her to find it even if it was far away. Since it had resonated with the blood pool, she knew the sample was from the correct deer.

  While her magic was less dependable than that of a true witch, the spell reacted as though its target simply didn’t exist. Even if the buck had been dead but somewhere else, the spell would have located him. So, why hadn’t it worked?