Page 48 of Wind Called

“What is it, exactly?” Bellamy asked, gray eyes also scanning the landscape from behind her sunglasses. “The vortex energy, I mean.”

“Magic,” Clint said simply, and then cracked a smile that deepened the laugh lines around his eyes. “Although maybe you don’t believe in magic.”

Marc looked over at Bellamy, and her lips twitched in amusement.

Boy, was their vortex guide off base about that.

But since they certainly weren’t free to tell him that they were both from witch families and knew all about magic, Marc stayed silent.

“I believe in a lot of things,” she said, which he supposed was a good enough answer. “I guess I was just wondering if there was any kind of scientific basis for the energies people believe exist here.”

Clint nodded. “That’s one of the theories. Something about the composition of the red rocks and all the iron they contain creating energy fields that don’t exist anywhere else in the world. I suppose that’s as good an explanation as any.”

Right — the distinctive reddish hues of the rock formations in Sedona came from an abundance of iron oxide, and even though other places in the world also had reddish rocks, none of them were the exact shade you found here. Marc could see why people might think the concentration of those minerals could create vortexes of unusual energy.

“Got it,” Bellamy replied. She looked up at Cathedral Rock, probably still a good half mile away, and then down at the creek. “I think I should walk in the water.”

“Go ahead,” Clint told her. “A lot of people think that’s where the energy is the strongest.”

Was that such a great idea? What if she got caught up in the vortex energy like she had on the Devil’s Bridge and started speaking in tongues or something?

Marc tried to tell himself it would still be fine. After all, it sure looked as if Clint had plenty of experience shepherding people through vortex areas, so it probably wouldn’t be the first time he saw someone act a little crazy while caught up in the moment, thinking the vortex energy was acting on them.

And even though he knew Bellamy wasn’t psychic — at least, not in the way people generally thought of such things — she seemed to guess what was passing through his mind, because she flashed him a peace sign and said, “It’s cool, Marc. I’ll be fine.”

Smiling, she wandered down to the water’s edge, then paused to pull off her hiking boots and socks. Because it was another hot day, she’d put on a pair of cargo shorts, so she didn’t have to worry about rolling up her pants and getting them out of harm’s way.

She walked a few feet out into the water, then stood there with her eyes closed, hands loose at her sides, as if she was doing her best to relax and let the vortex speak to her.

“Is that water very cold?” he said to Clint in an undertone.

“Oh, yeah,” Clint replied. “Even at the peak of summer like we are now, it never gets much warmer than fifty-five, maybe sixty degrees. Oak Creek is fed by snow melt from up in Flagstaff.”

Marc supposed he should have already known that. To be fair, he hadn’t done a huge amount of research on Sedona since it was just enough of a drive from Tucson that he couldn’t really count it as a day trip.

If the water really was that cold, Bellamy didn’t seem to be too worried about it. She stood there silently, eyes still shut, and didn’t appear to have moved at all in the last minute or so.

He wondered what she was thinking.

Damn, the water was freezing. Sure, she’d known it would be — her dads had brought her here on outings plenty of times when she was a kid, and she’d splashed and played in the creek as if it wasn’t any big deal. After all, if you came here in the summer, you’d dry off plenty fast once you stood in the sun for a couple of minutes.

But she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about how chilly the water was.

No, she was supposed to be trying to see if the vortex energy here was even stronger than it had been out on Devil’s Bridge.

She thought she could sense it pulsing under the thin layer of reality that most people saw, almost like a slow, strong heartbeat, or maybe the rhythm of the world’s biggest bass drum. It felt calm, unhurried, and in that moment, Bellamy let herself be buoyed up by its strength, by its utter belief that all was as it should be, and no one here should have any reason to give in to worry or fear.

Yes, this felt very different from the energy at the Devil’s Bridge, which had been wild, almost jangly, like the winds that sometimes came from the east and brought with them warm, dry air that put everyone on edge. Even as that thought passed through her mind, though, she heard them again.

Out there….

Watching….

Waiting….

The Collector?she thought, feeling a little foolish. After all, she had no way of knowing if those voices belonged to anything that could be considered an intelligence, or whether the vortex energies were dredging them up from some hidden place in her brain.

The Collector…and others,the voices whispered, and at once, Bellamy frowned.

---