Repairer of the Breach (Stones of Fire Book 4) by Sarah Ashwood (reading eggs books .TXT) 📗

“Take it,” the voice insisted. “It is me. Take it.”

I can’t lie. The hand rising up out of the water creeped me out. It reminded me of the first night I’d met Carter, when a water shifter had appeared in his bathroom, in his apartment, and tried to kill me. Was this some type of water shifter? Would it try to grab me and suck me down into the whirlpool if I waded into the liquid? I’d have to do exactly that in order to grab the vial.

“Take me,” the voice insisted more forcefully. “You must return to him. Night draws on apace.”

Night draws on apace?

That dialect as much as anything told me I wasn’t back in the good ol’ USA anymore.

Cautiously, saying a prayer that I wasn’t making an idiotic decision, I first kicked off my sandals then picked up the hem of my borrowed dress, hoisting it above my knees, and stepped into the water. The cavern floor under my feet was bumpy and sharp. I stumbled a couple of times as I waded out into the middle of the pool, but managed to make it without falling and getting soaked. I retrieved the vial from the hand and quickly stepped back, intending to get out of there.

“Wait,” the voice demanded.

I didn’t want to wait and give it a better chance to grab me.

“What?” I asked reluctantly, forcing myself to freeze.

“He will need this, as well.”

The hand retreated into the depths of the pool, then came up again, this time holding a sword.

A sword.

I stood there staring. I think I said, “A sword? Carter will need a sword?”

The weirdness was getting to me. Why would he need a sword? I was used to seeing him carry, but I highly doubted he was trained to wield a sword.

Then again…

Maybe it’s better to have a weapon of some kind, any kind, so we’re not totally defenseless. We don’t have anything else.

While I stood there dithering, the hand in the water waited too, holding the sword aloft without trembling. Something about the hand sticking out of the water, the sword, struck me as oddly familiar. Almost like a sense of deja vu, although I knew for a fact that I’d never in my life seen anything remotely similar, except for the water shifter in Carter’s shower. And she sure hadn’t been offering me a weapon. She’d been trying to murder me.

I puzzled on it for a second until it struck me.

The Lady of the Lake.

The old Camelot legend, of King Arthur and Excalibur and the Lady of the Lake. Wasn’t it sort of like this?

That is too weird, I said to myself as I waded forward a few tenuous steps to accept the sword. It wasn’t easy juggling a sword and the vial without dropping my hem and getting it wet, but somehow I managed to hold onto all three. The hand slid back into the water, vanishing as I turned away, and I mulled over the extraordinary scene as I climbed out of the pool.

My confusion didn’t lessen as I left the cave and emerged into daylight. Outside, the owl still perched on a nearby boulder, blinking at me.

Fragments of another story teased my mind as I stared at my guide.

Perseus. Didn’t he have an owl guide or companion?

I blew out a puff of air.

“I guess I got what I was supposed to come for,” I announced to the owl, lifting the vial and the sword to show him. Or was it a her? Hard to tell with an owl.

“Time to go back to Carter. Hopefully he’s okay. I’ve been gone a long time. Are you going to show me the way?”

By this point, I wasn’t even surprised when the owl flapped its wings, lifting itself into the air. He headed down the mountain and so did I, happily. I was ready to quit exploring strange worlds and return to Carter, especially before evening arrived.

Chapter Five

Thanks to the help of my feathered guide, I made it back to the beach just as evening was draping itself like a curtain over the landscape. I probably could have found the beach on my own, knowing it was down the mountain, past the city, down the hills, and through the forest to the beach. Then it would’ve been a matter of searching the beach till I found Carter. However, by following the bird, I was able to more or less head directly to the spot where I’d left an injured, sleeping Carter.

He was still out when I arrived, and still in his Talos form. As I knelt next to him in the sand, a stiff, evening breeze swept over us, making me shiver. I glanced overhead worriedly. Grey clouds were rolling in over the water. The leaves on the trees whispered and trembled, some of the limbs creaking softly in protest. I’d lived in Texas long enough to recognize the signs of a potential storm.

“Great,” I whispered. “Just what we need.”

Fear of being stuck out on the beach with no shelter spurred me on. I glanced over at the owl, who had landed on the grass nearby, lifting the vial that the hand in the pool had given me.

“Don’t suppose you have any idea how I use this, do you?”

The owl blinked.

“Thanks. That’s helpful.”

I blew out a puff of air. “Okay,” I muttered, adjusting my glasses. “It’s water. Maybe the water itself wakes him up and heals his wound. Guess I’ll try. Don’t know what else to do.”

Acting off either instinct or my best guesses—since, let’s face it, all of this was pretty far outside the realm of my knowledge and experience—I first tipped the vial and poured a little of the water onto the slice across Carter’s ankle, figuring that blood was what had opened the portal and gotten us here, so it was probably vital to make sure the bleeding stopped.

The water hit the wound with a hiss and fizzle. Steam