Sapphire Nights (Crystal Magic Book 1)(100)

Energy continued surging through the wood, and her stick bucked like a wild horse.

The ground rumbled. What sounded like an avalanche roared in the distance. But it was the power rushing through her hands that frightened her most.

Her aunt and Daisy hummed a high-pitched note that was almost as scary as the thunder outside. But the energy they evoked was positive—she could swear it was as if she were part of a giant magnet pushing back a negative charge.

The rumble rolled closer, lifting the ground they stood on. Earthquake?



Walker could only watch in horror as the detonator falling from Gump’s pocket set off explosives beneath Bald Rock. The impact blasted the enormous outcropping into individual boulders, shooting them into the air. The debris slammed back to ground on the already dangerously loose hillside. Rocks and dirt began to slide.

In an instant, an avalanche cascaded straight toward the farm and Sam.

She was down there, he knew it, he could feel her terror resonating with his, and it was all he could do not to follow the landslide down.

Take out the enemy first. Think, Walker, don’t react.

Fighting the bile boiling up his gullet, Walker gripped the rocks of the cliff wall while the ground beneath his feet shook. The wide path he stood on didn’t crumble. The same couldn’t be said of the precarious ledge where Gump perched.

Even as Walker reached for him, the ledge cracked. Before his eyes, the sociopath lost his balance—and tumbled into the snakes’ nest as it slid downward with half the mountain.

Gump’s screams followed him down—a violent end to a violent man.

But Walker had no compassion for evil. His heart and mind roiled in terror for Sam—beautiful golden, laughing Sam, frowning, snarky, intelligent Sam, naked loving understanding Sam—down there, amid the rubble and debris surging relentlessly toward the shrub-covered foundation he assumed had to be the original farmhouse. Where the hell could she be hiding? There was nothing to hide behind or stop the tide of destruction.

His heart plunged with the rocks. Paralyzed in shock and helplessness, he watched Gump’s green jacket disappear in a cloud of dust and stone. Once again, he had no control over the shit life threw at him. He hadn’t even prized a confession from the bastard, although the detonator and explosives confirmed the man wasn’t worth the rocks he’d stood on.

But Sam didn’t deserve to die because Walker hadn’t been able to stop a lunatic—again. He had to find a way down, find Sam. . .

The eerie hum continued in a crescendo, echoing off the bluff face, even as the slide lost momentum on the level ground of the farm. Skidding downward on the loose shale in his quest to find Sam, Walker watched in disbelief as the powerful tide of granite and debris tumbled to a gradual halt.

It formed a barrier of rocks and dirt outside what appeared to be a line of Daisy’s peculiar guardians. A few smaller stones rolled through an unfinished area of the circle—just as if the tiny stone statues had halted a landslide.

Harvey climbed up to stand beside Walker in silent appreciation of the utter destruction. In the distance, sirens screamed.

“Holy shit,” Walker muttered, searching for any sign of movement below. “The sheriff won’t believe this.”

“If Gump’s head wasn’t crushed, he’ll die of snakebite,” Harvey said prosaically. “We could pretend we didn’t see him, if that helps.”

That jarred Walker from his shock. “If he’s alive, I want a confession. But if Sam’s down there, I’m going after her first.”

“She’s there all right. Her energy is almost as powerful as Mariah’s,” Harvey warned. “She’s not going anywhere. This earth is hers. You’d do better to look to yourself.”

Walker didn’t bother sending him an incredulous glance. Choosing the safest trajectory over the loose stones, he clambered down to the farm. The avalanche had provided a safer angle than the steep bluff.

By the time he reached the bottom, ATVs were roaring up the rutted drive from town. Lucys trekked up from the vortex or off the bluff from various directions where they’d been concealed. It was as if all the spirits on the mountain had materialized and were finding their way to the farm. If he didn’t know better, he’d think the Lucys had been hiding in caves with their ancestors.

Praying that Harvey was right and that Sam was safe, Walker hurried downward, hailing the sheriff and Monty on the first ATV in his path. Another deputy and Kurt rode the second. Officialdom and Lucys gathering on the same plain. The sun might implode next.

When he got close enough to be heard, Walker gestured up the rock slide to where the sleeve of an emerald coat could just be seen. “Alan Gump is up there. He had a detonator in his pocket. Watch for the vipers.”

The sheriff and his man looked grim and spoke into their radios. No one seemed eager to climb to the rescue.

Walker kept walking. Or limping. The climb had been hard on his bad leg. He didn’t stop to investigate Daisy’s crazy lamassu farm, but slid over it, trying not to fall on the hill of loose rubble. Inside the circle, Cass was shoving aside shrubbery and tugging on a nearly invisible steel door. A bunker. Of course the crazies would have a bunker, if only for drug storage. Either he was going insane or he was starting to understand their rationale.

Daisy popped out of the concealed door, her frizzy gray hair coated in dust. Ignoring Cass, she strode straight past the gathering Lucys, to her line of lamassu. Walker noticed the gathering Lucys deliberately placed themselves between the door and the Nulls, hiding it from view.