Bloodmagic (Blood Destiny 2) by Helen Harper Read Free Book Online

hills sprinkled with lavender coloured gorse bushes and sprigs of white heather.  Occasionally I’d catch the scent of the flowers, but mostly what I smelled was good old-fashioned fresh air.  I filled my lungs deeply and stretched out my stride, regulating my breathing to match my gait and enjoying the moment.  For the first time in a long time I managed to completely empty my mind of my stresses, worries and loneliness and just savoured the moment.  A couple of hikers stopped to let me past along the route, nodding greetings as I whipped past them, but for the rest of the trip I was alone.  It had been far too long since I’d felt this close to the natural world and I appreciated every moment.
    I rounded a bend and then, far too quickly, the Clava Cairns were in front of me.  At first glance there wasn’t a huge amount to see – some standing stones were sprinkled here and there in a pretty clearing, whilst smaller rocks were piled together to form largish circular mounds.  The contrast of the mossy grey cairns against the brilliant emerald green of the grass and trees was fairly striking, but the grey skies and cold wind rather marred the effect.  I moved closer to the nearest circle and peered at it.  There was a raised of lip of stones all around the outside, and I noticed that the rocks seem to have been chosen for colour.  Interesting.  The ones away from me were definitely redder and larger whilst the ones by my feet appeared smaller and whitish.  I wondered idly whether that was by accident or design.  One never entirely knew for sure with these kind of ancient burial grounds.  One thing I did know though was that whatever bodies the Cairns had entombed, they would definitely be human.  Any being connected with the Otherworld used cremation to dispose of their dead; the risk of anything using some form of twisted necromancy to make nefarious use of the bodies left behind was just too strong.  I shuddered slightly at the thought.  At least necromancy was a power that seemed to have fallen through the mists of time.  Much like the Draco Wyr, my traitorous mind whispered before I pushed that thought away without examining it any further.
    Leading through two of the cairns were corbelled passage graves.  I wandered slowly through one, scuffing the soles of my feet against the rough ground and a few fallen leaves as I did so.  It was almost possible to imagine the humans that had come through the same passage to lay their fallen dead reverently inside.  Old buildings had always had that effect on me.  Once inside the unroofed structure, I trailed my fingers gently across the stones, following the inner circle around.  I couldn’t feel any twinge of anything otherworldly but something about the arrangement of the stones triggered my vaguely ritualistic motion.  I was glad that the roof was no longer present at least – I always found small spaces somewhat claustrophobic. After a few moments, however, I pulled myself away and back out to the greenery to find Mrs Alcoon’s blisterwort.
    It’s not a showy herb, unlike some others I could think of, so it took a bit of time to find enough cuttings to root up to make my journey worthwhile.  I carefully placed them inside a small cotton bag that I’d brought just for this purpose and then, with a somewhat lighter heart, headed back down the way I’d come.  It was only early, in fact barely three o’clock, but already dusk seemed to be approaching.  I scowled to myself at the irritating vagaries of nature that curtailed my daylight hours and then straight away laughed aloud at my nonsensical spite.  The sound was whipped away almost immediately by the wind, but the suddenness and spontaneity of it made me smile further to myself.  Okay, things might be pretty bad on the surface – I had the Lord of the Pack itself after me (and if he found out I was human he’d probably pull me apart limb by limb), no friends and stupid faeries to contend