Page 62 of Last Resort

Erik froze, unsure how Ben would react. To his relief, Ben grinned. “You say the nicest things.”

A steady stream of people joined the circle until they ringed the empty plot. Alessia had an iron brazier surrounded by a tempered glass enclosure that kept the wind at bay. She struck a small bronze gong to get the group’s attention.

“Thank you for coming,” she called out above the wind and the surf. “Please hold hands during the ritual and lend your energy to creating an effective barrier. You aren’t required to say anything, but if you feel moved to do so, you can say in unison ‘rise and contain’ between the verses of the incantation.”

“It’s worse, being this close to the site,” Jaxon said. Erik and Ben nodded. Arjun just shivered. Jaxon maintained that Arjun’s spectacular intuition was in part supernatural, even if Arjun himself wasn’t convinced.

“Feel it?” Erik asked Ben.

“Yeah. It’s all jangly and out of tune,” Ben replied. “Like a band playing off-key.”

Erik nodded, although to him, the malignant energy of the genius loci felt like the scrape of claws across slate. It left him with no doubt this was a “bad place” on a primal level.

“Makes you wonder how people stayed here,” Ben murmured.

“The hotel was a massive construction of stone with iron supports,” Jaxon replied. “That probably tempered the eerie feeling, although it clearly didn’t change the owners’ luck.”

The gong chimed again, and they fell silent as Alessia began the ritual and took hands to form a human chain.

She spoke the first part in Latin, adding dry ingredients to the fire that filled the air with the scent of cedar, sage, and clove. Smoke rose from the brazier and spread out across the site, adding another layer of purification.

“We bind you to this land,” she said.

“Rise and contain,” the volunteers responded, adding their energy to the protective curtain of power Alessia wove with her spell.

“You will not harm the people of this place.”

“Rise and contain.”

This time, Erik thought he could make out a faint sparkle in the air around the perimeter of the site, just inside the human line.

“You will not cause ill-will or negativity.”

“Rise and contain.”

Now Erik felt certain he saw a faint scrim pulsating in the darkness.

“By the power of the light, the goodwill of those gathered, and the magic of my ancestors, I bind, weaken, and constrain the dark energy of this site.”

“Rise and contain.”

The supernatural curtain now appeared as a translucent, coruscating dome that covered the entire site.

“So mote it be!” Alessia’s voice rose with the completion of the spell. Erik felt a frisson of power as a tingle down his spine and sudden warmth where he held hands with Ben on one side and Jaxon on the other.

For just a second, the supernatural dome flared bright before winking out. Although the light faded, Erik felt the remaining energy, a protective seal that would temper the strongest period of the genius loci’s waxing energy before its negative power returned to a low hum.

“The ritual is concluded. Thank you for your help.”

Erik thought that Alessia looked spent from raising powerful magic, even with the help of the volunteers. He didn’t consider his own abilities to be “magic” per se, although that definition was up for debate. But he knew that during difficult “reads” of objects with his psychometry he had borrowed energy from Ben and others linked by touch. Erik could only imagine how that would be scaled up with the contribution of the dozens of people tonight.

As he let go of Ben’s hand and turned, Erik caught a glimpse of motion. Holden Carr stood on the outside of the circle, partially hidden by a stand of seagrass.

“Carr’s over there!” Erik pointed. They took off running in his direction just as Hendricks must have spotted him as well. The police car’s lights came on, and Hendricks drove toward where Carr had been seconds before.

Erik’s breath puffed in the cold air, and his lungs burned, but he kept pace with Ben as they sprinted after the elusive man. Hendricks sped past them, but Carr quickly left the sidewalk and the road, darting between houses and through yards.

Hendricks stopped the car and gave chase on foot. Erik and Ben spread out, trying to cover more territory. Dogs barked and security lights flared to life.

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