Calling the Blood Page 8

  He started listening to the people holding the cameras. Most of them reported the same general thing; they were watching a fight and the guy that was being pounded on had just laid waste to the gym. The details, though, were muddy. A lot of them were directly contradictory to what was happening in front of them.

  Then he felt it.

  A pushing at the edge of his mind, muffled because of the distance and technology involved but there. His gaze went back to where he knew the person was shooting at the fight.

  The pen and notebook next to his elbow lifted and flipped open. All his questions began filling the pages and notes about who to talk to about them.

  Chapter 20

  Dan shut off his live stream. He could feel the magic working. It had filled him and gone out with his words.

  Standing up, he went to the refrigerator and opened the door. The entrance to fairy was still there. The glowing blue plants on the walls cast a strange light into the kitchen.

  With a deep breath, Dan reached out to touch them.

  And burned her fingers on the barrier.

  He pulled them back with a curse.

  "It didn't work!"

  "I gathered," Civig said. He'd pulled the laptop over to look at it. He seemed fascinated by the glowing screen and used the track pad carefully, getting the hang of the motions quickly.

  "Why didn't it work?"

  Civig sighed and looked up at the pacing Dan running his fingers rapidly through his hair. "I don't know, Dan. I don't know how your magic works or how magic really works out here."

  "Was the spell not big enough? Was there not enough power? I could feel the power, though, I could barely hold it all."

  Shaking his head, Civig went back to scrolling through the page.

  Dan was muttering to himself and had his marker out to make notes on the refrigerator door.

  One of the squares on the page had a sign in the middle of it that Civig recognized. Something about the picture nagged at him so he put the little arrow over the symbol and pushed the button to select it.

  "I think you're going to need to do more research," Civig told him. "But there must be something on this side that can help. Your people obviously remember some of the magic, even if it's twisted."

  Dan stopped and stared at Civig. "What do you mean?"

  "You told me about movies and showed me some on this device. The people who make these movies have a real handle on what some of the fae look like."

  "Which movie? What site did you go to for a movie?"

  "It was in one of those pictures on the screen you had. I didn't change it, just looked at the pictures. This one moves."

  Civig turned the laptop so Dan could see what was going on.

  "That's not a movie," Dan said. "That's a live stream."

  "Isn't that what you were just doing?"

  "Yeah," Dan said, leaning over to turn on the sound. There was screaming and the person holding the cellphone was babbling about the destruction happening in the gym. More screaming and the camera focused on the monster tearing through the doors.

  Several people were on the floor, most of them covered in blood, several unmoving.

  "What is that?" Dan asked, moving the video back to the best view of the monster.

  "Ogre," Civig said. "Nasty one, too."

  "How can you tell?" Dan asked, allowing the video to run again. The girl with the phone was following the monster out the door and babbling hysterically.

  "Size, mostly. Shade of the skin, too, kinda. Ogres tend to be tribal and will decorate their skin to show what tribe they're from. That one's not decorated so it's probably cast out. They don't do that except to the worst."

  "How did an ogre get to a gym in..." Dan looked for a location tag on the video. "Arizona?"

  Civig shrugged. "No idea."

  "Could it have crossed the barrier? You said it was getting weak in spots."

  "Is a gym a sacred place? A place of power?"

  "Uh, not really," Dan said. "I mean, for some people it can border on a religious experience but it's mostly a place of pain and suffering."

  "Sacrifice?" Civig asked.

  "Some," Dan acknowledged.

  Civig shrugged. "Could be, then. But I don't think it could have been there long enough to build up that kind of power."

  Dan scrolled up and realized Civig was just moving through the new items on his profile feed. The livestream was from one of his fans. When he'd first started, he'd followed a lot of his fans back and that resulted with some of the most random things on his feed.

  Clicking on her profile, brought up a shared link to his livestream and an excited 'watching at the gym!' status share.

  "I think this is my fault," Dan said quietly.

  Other Works

  Stained Glass Forest

  Dreaming Tower

  Tone Deaf

  Swan Princess

  Copper Visions

  Death Comes to Merry Gardens

  Flash Fiction Collections

  Flash of Fire

  Out of Order Detective

  Flash of Copper

  About the Author

  Elizabeth Bruner is a romantic and a lover of fantasy. She can usually be found chasing plot bunnies in Colorado. She occasionally posts on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethBrunerAuthor/