Stain of Midnight

by Cassandra Moore

  Charlie didn’t look away from his view out the passenger window. He knew where this would go, or so she fancied.

  “That’s more than I’ve given anyone since— Since Derek.” Since Derek, and everything else tied to that failed relationship.

  A collection of pixels on a small digital screen didn’t amount to much, even she had to admit. Easily erased, easily modified, the very picture of impermanence in an age of casual snaps and disposable data. Yet it still felt more solid to her than the more permanent tokens she’d received from past liaisons. She’d been a different person with those lovers, a different Sonja who hadn’t yet discovered how even the most solid pieces of life could fade away.

  One casual snap with her dog taken at a stoplight. An expendable moment in time. It could mean nothing, but it felt as though it meant everything instead. It worried her, and also elated her.

  The least you could do is decide which it is. She sighed. It’s going to be a long drive out to Bonney Lake if you’re going to chase yourself in circles like this. Can’t you just see where this goes without doubting it, for once? It’s not like he promised forever.

  It’s not like you’d believe him if he did.

  The Humvee’s weather stripping had seen better days. Chill autumn air drafted in through the cracks as they sped down the highway. Charlie loved it. He could enjoy all the scents from the areas they drove through without sticking his head out the window into the cold. Sonja loved it less. The heater couldn’t quite keep up with the influx of icy air. Every winter, she pondered a different car. One with door seals that worked. Every spring, she dismissed the notion for another year.

  Few cars passed her once she turned onto the road that led to Glenn Riley’s property. By the time she reached his long driveway, that number had dwindled to none. Evergreens shaded the dirt road with dots of color amid the branches of trees laid bare by fall. “This is really pretty land, don’t you think? Quiet, out of the way... Figures Kiplinger would go and screw it all up.” She frowned. “But he came an awfully long way from his usual stomping grounds to do it.”

  The more she thought about it, the more it bothered her. This remote location had given him ample opportunity to perform a noisy, messy ritual without police or neighbors to interrupt him, but Sonja knew of at least three places in the city proper he could have gotten away with it, too. Every city had its seamier neighborhoods, and every vampire population had areas it controlled within the local hunting grounds. An out-of-the way house in a peaceful suburb didn’t make a loud, obvious statement to anyone, and only the particular violence of the ritual distinguished it. That led her to believe he’d chosen this place as a deliberate act. And that led her right back around to why.

  The front door opened as Sonja parked the car next to the other one in the driveway. Charlie whined. “It’s all right. That’s just Dani,” she said. “Though she looks pretty rough, doesn’t she. Poor woman probably didn’t sleep much.”

  If at all. She had dark circles under her eyes, and Sonja wondered if Dani could have packed for a weekend trip in the bags under her eyes. She walked as if each step cost her a bit more effort than she wanted to pay for such a small act. Her skin had a sallow cast to it that looked worse when she stepped into the sunlight.

  Sonja opened the car door. “Hey, Dani. You all right? You look like shit.”

  “I feel like shit,” she said, with a wry twist of her lips. “So I guess it’s truth in advertising. Cameron texted me and said you’d be out.”

  “Here I am. I just want another look at the mess out back.” She walked around to the back of the vehicle to dig a bag out from the storage area. “Anything I can do?”

  “No. Or— I’m not sure.” Dani hesitated.

  Sonja looked around the back of the car. “Spit it out.”

  “Better if I show you. When we get inside.”

  She didn’t like the sound of that. Not Dani’s inability to sum up what bothered her in words, and not the nervous tone in her voice. “Only if you promise to keep your pants on,” Sonja said, aiming for humor to lighten Dani up.

  She chuckled. “Who wants to keep pants on? Nobody likes pants.”

  “I can’t argue there.” Sonja slung a battered canvas messenger bag over her shoulder, then slammed the back of the Humvee closed. “Let’s head in, then.”

  On the way by, she let the dog out of the passenger seat so they could all go inside. Dani had cleaned up since last night’s visit, but then she’d made her own mess. The glass of beer from the coffee table had been exchanged for a can of soda, and a plate had a half-eaten sandwich on it. Where her teeth had bitten through it, Sonja could see tiny points of dark blood on the bread. Sore teeth? Bad gums?

  Dani plopped down on the couch. “Is the black stuff out back dangerous?”

  “I don’t think it’s healthy, no.” Sonja leaned against the edge of the sofa. “Is it still there?”

  “Yep. And there’s more of it.” Dani’s lips flattened. Sonja could see the other wolf’s jaw work as she fought with herself about what she said next. “Can it— Can it spread to people?”

  Concern turned to active worry, prickling along Sonja’s spine. “Let’s assume it can. You think it has?”

  In answer, Dani leaned down to untie one hiking boot. She pulled it off with a slow, deliberate motion, as though she didn’t want to reveal what it hid. The white sock went next, with an even slower tug to remove it. Sonja could see why. Half the bottom of Dani’s foot had turned black. Spidery veins of the darkness reached up over her heel, traced the contour of her arch.

  Just like the witches. Sonja drew in a slow, deep breath. “The other one, too?”

  “Both feet.” Dani pulled the sock on again fast. “It’s over the front of the other foot.”

  “When did you notice it?”

  “When I went to sleep last night. This morning.” Dani waved her hand to dismiss the uncertainty. “When I crashed, the sun had come up, so I guess this morning.”

  “It’s not the next day until I’ve slept,” Sonja said, more for words to say while she sorted the information in her mind. “Did it look just like that?”

  “No. It was just small spots on my feet. I thought I’d stepped on something after I took off my shoes, and I was too tired to care about washing it off. Then I woke up and it had spread.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No.” Dani shook her head, but the corners of her eyes wrinkled with unease. “I wish it did. It feels numb. Numb, and dirty. Unholy.”

  “Unholy?”

  Dani’s nervous laugh had no humor in it. “Not that I’m all that holy myself. I haven’t been to Mass since I first sprouted fur. But that’s the word I keep thinking of. Unholy. Evil.”

  Not words Sonja had used since long before her own transformation. Absolutes like good and evil had fallen by the wayside in favor of a spectrum between not a douchebag and dishonorable asshole. Everyone had their measure of worthiness, even the vampires, and every last intelligent creature on the planet had the capacity for selfish, terrible acts. Where other werewolves saw a binary between their kind and the bloodsuckers, Sonja saw individuals with the ability to make the right choices.

  Or maybe I just see assholes waiting to happen everywhere.

  “If that’s how it feels, then ‘unholy’ is the right word. We’ll go with that.” She eyed the sandwich before catching Dani’s gaze. “Anything else? You didn’t finish your food.”

  “Wasn’t hungry. I thought it was just the crap sleep and situation.” Dani ran a hand over her face. “Honestly, I feel a little off. You think it’s related to this whole mess?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me, but I’m not willing to borrow trouble yet.” Not when I’ve apparently leased it for a high monthly fee already. Sonja pushed off from the couch. “Let me go get a look at the yard. There’s something going on with the witches in the area. A bunch of them contacted me this morning to say they felt magic last night, worked some themselves, and ended up w
ith that same sort of black veining. But you haven’t worked any magic, and it’s just in your feet. Not all over, like they say.”

  “Could it have been from walking through the yard?” Dani stood up with a soft grunt.

  “Maybe, but Cam and I were walking around there last night, too. Neither of us ended up with black feet.”

  “You saw Cameron without his shoes?”

  The blush burned in Sonja’s cheeks before she could stop it. “Yep. I’m going out back, now.”

  She fled before she had to answer any more questions. Maybe Cameron didn’t want their night in the sheets – and on the couch, and against the wall, and on the desk – to get around the pack rumor mill. Maybe you don’t want to shit where you sleep and tell the pack you’re sleeping with their enforcer. Like I’m not already a raisin in their grapevine.

  Though she would have preferred uncomfortable questions to her first look at the yard. Black sludge had grown out from the area of the ritual to stain more of the land. Sunlight hadn’t stopped it as she’d hoped it might. It seemed to absorb the light that touched it. No sheen gleamed off the surface, no oily residue colored the depths. The ooze sat on the dead grass, defiant of the light as it crept with an inexorable slowness toward untouched patches of soil.

  “Stay,” she told her dog. Suddenly, she didn’t want his paws to touch the ground here. Hell, I don’t want to touch the ground myself.

  Grass crunched under her boot as she stepped off the porch. She didn’t recall it sounding so dry the night before, or looking so grey, though the darkness might have skewed her perception. As she walked, she got into her bag. A bottle of spray lubricant, a pouch of dried wolfsbane that made her sneeze every time she opened it, a spray bottle full of salt water, a handful of plastic jars... Eventually, she found the one she wanted. The sludge hurt her eyes to look at, as they strained to make sense of a substance that shrugged off light. She twisted the lid off the jar, then scattered the contents as far as she could disperse them over the puddle. Rainbow colors twinkled in the sun as they settled on the puddle.

  “Whoa. That magic powder?” Dani called from the porch.

  “Glitter,” Sonja answered.

  “You just threw glitter at an evil puddle?”

  “The puddle doesn’t reflect light. Glitter does. Look.” Sonja pointed at the pool of ooze. It pulsed in regular rhythm beneath its prismatic coating. “What does that look like to you?”

  Dani squinted at it. “A heartbeat?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why is it doing that?”

  “Hell if I know.” The glitter jar went back into Sonja’s bag. “Want to help?”

  “Are you going to cover me in glitter?”

  “As fancy as you’d look, no. Go get a broom and a wet cloth. Then find me a ladder.” Sonja moved back to the porch so she could spread out what she needed. A couple big squares of cheesecloth from a side pouch. The contents of a brown earthenware jar she’d sealed with wax. A long length of cotton twine. Her hands trembled as she poured the blue powder into the cloth, which made it more difficult not to touch the stuff. I hope I’m right about how this will work. Please, let me be right about how this works. I don’t want to end up with a road map of black veins.

  “More glitter?” Dani came back out with a yellow broom in one hand and a soggy washcloth in the other.

  “No, this is magic powder.”

  The other werewolf peered at it. “It doesn’t look very exciting.”

  “Not yet. It’s still dormant.” Sonja folded the corners of the cloth in to make a little packet, which she sealed with the length of twine. “It will be a lot more interesting when I activate it.”

  “I thought werewolves couldn’t do magic.”

  “They can’t.” She kept her voice neutral. “Not like you’re thinking of it. The gift that makes a werewolf, which a lot of people call lycanthropy, takes away the ability to access power like a true magical practitioner does.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s complicated.” Sonja made a loop out of the part of the string that didn’t hold the pouch closed. “Everyone has stores of energy inside themselves. Think of when you last shifted shape. You reached inside yourself for what you probably call your beast, or your wolf. That’s your store of energy. Your well of personal power. Your lycanthropy does the shaping for you.”

  “All right.”

  “Witches have that, too, but theirs doesn’t feel like a beast. It feels like a full tank of sunlight. Raw power, totally without form. When they work magic, they give that magic a shape, not the lycanthropy. They tell it what they want it to do. But that tank would run empty fast.” She stood up and took the broom. “So they open themselves up to the power around us. They let it pour into them to refill the tank.”

  Dani made a noise of understanding. “Then once it’s in the tank, they shape it and tell it what they want it to do.”

  “Precisely.” As Sonja explained, she wound the loop of string around one edge of the broom so the pouch would dangle from it. “There’s power all around us. The favorite metaphor for it is a river. Rivers of power flow all over. Little streams or big, fat torrents. Practitioners call them ley lines. Some areas have more than others. Tacoma’s pretty rich in them. Mount Rainier has a great deal of natural power stored in it and running off it.”

  Dani followed Sonja into the yard. “So why can’t werewolves do the shaping like witches?”

  “We’re specialists. Our power already has a shape, thanks to our beasts. It’s very strong, strong enough to let us change our bodies into different forms. But its weakness is, it’s locked into doing only one thing. Stay behind me, please.” The breeze blew in from the west. Sonja positioned them both upwind from the ooze, then held the pouch-on-a-broom up high. Motes of powder drifted down from it to cover the ground.

  “Since our power already comes shaped, we can’t sculpt it like the witches do.” Dani caught the idea.

  “Exactly. Our power is so personal to us, and is so bound up with our connection to a certain type of energy, we can’t open ourselves to what’s around us. We’re limited.” More powder drifted down as she shook the broom. “It also makes us blind. We can’t see the ley lines, or sense them. A magical practitioner could look at this yard and see how the ritual shaped the magic in the area. I would have brought one, if they weren’t all sick right now.”

  “Instead, you’re sludge dusting?”

  “I’m giving myself the ability to see the power here. Werewolves can’t see power or shape it. But if someone who can shape it puts energy into an object, or a substance...”

  “Like that powder?”

  “Right. Magic practitioners can store power in whatever object for someone else to use. Then you just have to know how to, hm, to spark the energy that’s everywhere. Like a lighter igniting the fuel vapor that surrounds the sparker.”

  “You know how to do that?” Dani sounded impressed.

  “I know how to do a little of everything.” Particles of dust stuck to Sonja as the fickle breeze gusted them. “Sonja of all trades, master of none.”

  “Except being a wolf.”

  “Yeah.” Sonja shook the broom harder than she intended. “Except being a wolf.”

  Dani cleared her throat and changed the topic. “What about the biters?”

  “They’re a whole different kettle of leeches. Vampires don’t have those inner wells of energy. They’re empty.”

  “But they’re still powerful.” Dani sounded confused.

  “Mm-hmm. Ask yourself how that is. Magical practitioners get their power from within and without. Werewolves get their power from within. So where do vampires get their power?” Sonja glanced over her shoulder at the other werewolf.

  Realization dawned on Dani’s face. “The blood they eat.”

  “Give that wolf a chew toy. Yes. Vampires get their energy from their dinner. Blood is life, life is power. Every drop of blood contains a measure of someone’s personal energy.” Sonja
swished the broom with its dusty packet closer to the middle of the sludge puddle so it would reach farther. “That’s a good part of why their power increases as they get older. A little bit of energy lingers each time they eat. They also gain practice with their abilities, and knowledge. But that’s their limit. They only have as much power as they’ve pulled out of someone else.”

  The pouch on the broom had started to look depleted. Sonja gave it one hard, final shake, then turned to walk back to the porch. Dani looked back at the powdery ooze. “If vampires can’t use magic, and they get their power from what they eat, how did Kiplinger do this?”

  “That’s another question I’d love to have answered. But my best guess is, he used a larger-scale example of what I’m doing here. I’m using powder someone else put magic into. He used the four jars. They’re artifacts.” Sonja pulled the pouch off the broom and held it up. “Imbued objects, like this. But they’re not like anything I’ve ever heard of, and they’re not anything I could find information about. It was really advanced ritual magic. He shouldn’t have been able to do it. This, out here? This is worse.”

  She pulled a gallon-sized plastic zipper bag out of her satchel to hold the powdery pouch. Otherwise, the stuff would coat the inside of her bag and taint all her gear. It might also catch fire in a minute. That would be irritating. I like this bag.

  Dani took the broom. “How do we fix it?”

  “You aren’t the first one to ask me that today. Which means it’s the second time I have to say I’m not sure. Hand me that wet towel?” Sonja wiped herself down, despite the lingering dampness it left on her clothes and hair. “Stay on the porch with Charlie. When I tell you to, shield your eyes and his. I’m going up on the roof. Where’s the ladder?”

  “Leaning against the porch there. Why are you going up on the roof?”

  “To get a better view.” Sonja flashed a grin, then slung her bag across her body and headed up.

  An aerial view of the yard didn’t give her any more confidence in the situation. Last night, she would have sworn the blackness had confined itself to the ritual area. Now, it had become an amorphous blob of corruption that expanded past the four corners that bounded the ceremony. Nearby plants drooped despite the first onset of their hibernation. Or worse. A few hardy trees retained tenacious leaves, which showed black lattices of veins beneath the surface. One dripped what looked like tarry sap down its rough bark. This is a mess. A fucked-up mess that I don’t know how to unfuck.