Stain of Midnight

by Cassandra Moore

  Time to start at the beginning. She could still hear the very first words her teacher had said. All magic, bright and dark, begins with energy. Understand the energy and you understand the magic. “Eyes!”

  She gave Dani five seconds before lighting a tiny spark of power deep within, hers and hers alone. With a wordless bark of sound, Sonja forced it outward to ignite the energy simmering within the magic powder on the ground. Half a second to close her eyes almost wasn’t enough. Azure incandescence flared brightly even through her eyelids before it dimmed to a tolerable level. She opened her eyes.

  “...what the fuck?” she murmured.

  Before her beat a heart of darkness. Half-submerged in the pool of sludge, a node of energy blacker than even the ebon slime pulsed in the center of an arterial web of ley lines. Every expansion drew in pure power from the argent veins that flowed through the area, diverted by the pull of the magically constructed heart. Every contraction forced tainted energy back out into the arteries and corrupted the ley lines all around. Even the massive, torrential rivers of power from the mountain couldn’t escape the stain. Insidious tendrils of power crawled out through them to creep into the city’s magical power supply, and worse, reached toward the mountain’s vast vault of stored energy.

  No wonder the witches are sick. If they drew this into themselves... They would corrupt themselves, body and spirit. And I’d bet it seeped into Dani when she walked around out here. Maybe even from her eating the food that has been sitting in the vicinity. It’s polluting everything in the damn area.

  A faint, web-like tracery of motionless energy reached out from the heart. To Sonja’s trained eye, it looked more like a collection of tethers than capillaries in the dark heart’s system. Kiplinger tied this power to people. That must have been how he commanded Derek, and Kayla. So, what, he sacrificed a shadow wolf to link the power to other shadow wolves through sympathetic magic? Sacrificed a witch to hook into the ley lines of the area. Derek said he’d been commanded to hunt down the pack, so Kiplinger would have needed to sacrifice one of the pack so the shadow wolves could find them to kill. The human... Was an innocent, and he had to use an innocent in the ritual where he created the shadow wolves. Power by stealing an innocent life.

  She surveyed the surrounding area. Many of Rainier’s natural ley lines flowed through here on their way to the city and back to the mountain itself. He picked this place not just because it’s quiet, or because one of the pack lived here. He picked it because it’s a natural node, and a prime place to put that damn heart. It’s spreading the shadow for him. If he did this in enough places, he could corrupt the whole area. But why? He can’t use this energy. This doesn’t do anything for him. Why would he go to all this trouble?

  It didn’t make any sense at all. Not yet. But she was pretty sure she wouldn’t like it when it did.

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She dug it out without a look at the screen. “Sonja Carter.”

  “Just the voice I needed to hear, Sunny.”

  “Cam. I’m standing on the roof at Glenn’s house.”

  “I sure hope you’ve got a better view of all this than I do. We just got ambushed at the morgue.”

  “What? Are you all right?”

  “Yes and no. I’ll explain here in a minute. But there’s a couple things you ought to know up front. First of all, Noah took a couple nasty wounds. They’ve turned a shade of black I don’t care for, and he says he can feel the same darkness Kayla feels.”

  She stared out toward the yard. The traces of the powder’s light had started to fade away already, the stored energy spent. “That makes more sense than I want it to. What else?”

  “I found where Kiplinger’s hiding out. Him and some woman, apparently. Noah’s calling the pack to take him out before the sun gets any lower. We’re going to be cutting it fine, but I can’t risk losing Kiplinger a second time. If he moves, it may take us forever to find him again, and Noah... Noah’s not getting any better while we stand here. You still think killing Kiplinger will take care of the magical sickness?”

  “I don’t honestly know. It’s a big maybe, but it can’t hurt.” A few quick steps took her back to where the ladder peeked over the edge of the roof. “Give me ten minutes and I can be on the way.”

  “No. I need you to do something else. Please.”

  She frowned. “Do not tell me this is some kind of macho bullshit, Cameron Roswell. Or some kind of ‘we’re pack so we do this ourselves’ bullshit, because if it is—”

  “Sunny, will you listen to me?” It wasn’t the abrupt bark that stopped her. It was the plea beneath the rough words, the raw emotion that lurked underneath. “I know how to beat a vampire down. But I don’t know how to fix what’s happened to Noah. What if taking Kiplinger out doesn’t work? You’re the only one I trust to fix this. Please. I already lost enough pack this week. I need you to save my best friend.”

  Chapter Nine

  The drive to Vincenzo Pirelli’s manor felt like it took forever, even though the traffic was clear and the roads were unobstructed. Sonja had to fight to keep her speed anywhere near the legal limit. Worry dilated time in her perceptions, so every minute on the road felt like an hour in which Cameron could go and get himself killed without her.

  Rationalizations had totally failed her. She’d driven away from Glenn’s house telling herself that she worried about the pack managing to kill Kiplinger right. Or that she didn’t trust them to know what to do so the magic ties would dissolve properly and free Derek or cure the city’s magical workers. That it was Derek she fretted about, Derek and her witch friends, and she truly did worry for them. But not only them.

  She could find a way to undo magics. That would take effort, but she had faith in her ability to solve the problem. She couldn’t un-kill Cameron if Kiplinger got the best of him.

  Admit it. You’ve gotten attached. Right before someone walks into danger, you’ve gotten attached. And how’s he going to feel when the emotional clutch of mourning eases, and we’re not in the middle of a crisis? You’re setting yourself up for heartbreak again. Keep your head in the game. Be ready to walk away when it’s over. But her thoughts strayed back to Cameron as she drove around the edge of Tacoma proper toward the quiet piece of land the city’s vampire lord called home.

  The sun hadn’t dipped below the horizon yet when she pulled up the manor’s drive. Light-up Halloween decorations remained lifeless, waiting for the dark of night just as their owner did. Sonja had always loved the irony of a powerful vampire decorating his home for a holiday filled with ghosts and ghouls, nevermind how he threw an annual party for the still-human families of his people. Children who dressed up as vampires tended to end up with extra treats from a delighted, fangy host.

  One of Pirelli’s human servants answered the door. “Good evening, Miss Carter. Lord Pirelli hasn’t awakened yet. Can I leave a message for you?”

  “I’m here to see Moira. Is she awake yet?”

  The servant frowned. He hadn’t expected that answer. “I believe so, but she was feeling under the weather last night. I’m not certain she’s accepting visitors.”

  Under the weather. That’s the most polite way to describe what happened last night I’ve heard yet. “Could you ask? It’s important. And it’s regarding last night.”

  Another unexpected answer. Pirelli’s daytime servants knew how to run the house, but most of the supernatural politics happened after dark. They didn’t have to cope with callers who wanted to talk a less normal kind of shop very often. “Very well. Please come inside. I’ll ask the lady if she would like company.”

  Sonja handed over her coat as she and Charlie went inside. The servant frowned at the dog but did not say a word. Pirelli himself had told his staff to let Charlie in after he’d proved himself well behaved, and Sonja had done the vampire enough favors. She kept her dog on the carpet runners to limit toenail scratches on the hardwood floors, and no one tried to make her keep her friend outside.

  The
servant led them to a sitting room. As he disappeared back through the door, Sonja paced the room with restless energy. A real, carved pumpkin decorated the hearth. Stylized paper bats hung in strings around the edge of the room, faces grinning with colorful fangs on display. They looked out of place against the expensive décor and fine art. I wonder if that’s why he puts them here. A ridiculous juxtaposition of mundanity and opulence. Long lives must get boring without adding some humor here and there.

  She wondered what it said about her life that today’s biggest dose of normalcy came in the form of paper bats in a vampire’s sitting room.

  A few minutes later, Moira stepped in. Sonja had spent many hours in Moon Blessings, the metaphysical store Moira had run before her encounter with a shadow wolf. The store waited, closed and quiet, until the day she felt she could return to run it. Sonja didn’t know if that day would ever come. The shadow wolf’s attack had changed Moira indelibly. She would never again be neutral, and her friends worried she would never again use magic. Not as she had before.

  She looked pale, exhausted, but Sonja thought Moira looked better than Dani had. Way better than the rest of the practitioners have to right now, too. Pirelli had kept Moira alive and well, on the whole, but it would take time to erase the rest of the shadow taint’s ravages. Her eyes still had the faint purple glow behind them, much like Kayla and Derek’s did. With a normal werewolf attack, Moira would have undergone the change to become one. A shadow wolf infection had almost killed her instead. No one understood what sort of uncanny gifts that near-death had left behind.

  “It’s good to see you, Moira,” Sonja said with a smile.

  The older woman gave her a wan ghost of a smile in return. “It’s good to see you, too, Sonja. You’ve been all right?”

  “Until last night. Then the city went squirrely. How’ve you been?”

  “Well enough. Until last night. Then I went squirrely with the city. That took a while to calm.” She crossed the room to sit down on the plush sofa, then patted the cushion next to her. “Come and sit. Tell me what’s going on.”

  So Sonja did. She sat down, pulled out her notebook, and started at the beginning. The encounter with Derek. The ritual. Sick magical practitioners, feral shadow wolves, the spreading stain across the yard. The magical heart corrupting the ley lines. Her suspicions. Moira listened with pursed lips and narrowed eyes.

  Her first declaration echoed Sonja’s thoughts. “Paul Kiplinger could never have done that. That is advanced magic on a scale I have trouble fathoming. I’m not sure I could figure out how to do it. Not in the time he’s had since the shadow wolves.”

  “Could he have been planning it for a while before?” Sonja asked, though she thought she knew the answer.

  Moira shook her head. “I don’t think so. Why would he not have started with that? Why tip us off with shadow wolves and comparatively clumsy attacks when he had this planned? I’ve talked to Vinny about it. Kiplinger has never displayed any interest in magic for hundreds of years.”

  Sonja eyed her sideways. “Did you just call the most powerful vampire in the city ‘Vinny’?”

  Moira coughed. “Forget I said that. Kiplinger never had any aptitude for magics that Vincenzo knew about. He had the same megalomaniacal desire to rule that a lot of vampires develop when they didn’t get enough love in their childhoods, or whatever it is that inspires them to be power-hungry idiots, but not magic.”

  “His father probably didn’t buy him a pony.”

  “Isn’t that what they say? ‘And all for want of a pony?’“

  “That’s ‘want of a nail’.”

  Moira snorted. “It should have been my way.”

  “What about a grimoire? Could Kiplinger have followed instructions in a book of magic to do this?”

  “No. This isn’t Swedish furniture. You can’t put together a complicated magic ritual with diagrams and a hex wrench.”

  “...hex...wrench.” Sonja facepalmed. “That is the worst pun I’ve ever heard.”

  “We practitioners love that one.” Moira smirked. “The point stands, pun or not. This would take an understanding of magical workings gained over decades of practice. And I do mean practice. One mistake could fry you from the inside out.”

  Sonja rested her elbows on her knees and let her hands dangle between them. “What does he get out of this? He can’t use the energy. It softened the local magical resistance, but he never once tangled with any practitioner other than you.”

  “And I was bait for Noah and Kayla.” Sonja heard the bitterness in Moira’s voice, and couldn’t begrudge it.

  “Kiplinger gained control over the shadow wolves, but he had most of them. And he didn’t follow up by checking if Kayla had taken out Noah. Kiplinger found one of the pack easily enough. And with his ritual, he could have found any of the wolves. Hell, Kiplinger got to Pirelli’s pet coroner and set up an ambush in the morgue. This doesn’t make sense.”

  “Unless it’s not for Kiplinger’s benefit.”

  Sonja looked over at the older woman. “Cameron said Kiplinger mentioned a woman. You think she could be a practitioner?”

  “I think Kiplinger isn’t, so it would make sense he’d found one. We know he’s worked with them before.” Moira made a vague gesture to encompass the area. “Tacoma has a lot of ambient power. She might have cut a deal with him. Magical help for the opportunity to create a personal power node. There are only a few witches I’ve heard of using that power, but none of them pleasant.” She eyed Sonja. “You knew one.”

  Sonja ignored the last statement. Instead of framing a response, she pulled her phone out of her pocket so she could text Cameron. -Heads up, Kiplinger’s lady friend may be an energy slinger. Be careful. Get her out of the fight early if she’s there.- “If it wasn’t Kiplinger who did this, killing him may not fix the mess in the city.”

  “Probably not. We’re going to have to deal with her, too. Even then, we may have to dismantle the magic so it will stop polluting the energy here sooner.”

  “Do we know anyone who can do that?”

  “No. It’s theoretically possible. There are old legends of people who could, but we haven’t heard of that form of magical practitioner or shapeshifter in thousands of years. That’s if they ever existed to begin with.”

  “Oh, good. More research on the impossible, improbable, and inconceivable.” Sonja flattened her lips. Not the news she wanted right now. “We need more information on this, Moira. Information on how to slow the spread, at least. Noah is sick, I think Dani is, too, and most of your old friends aren’t doing very well.”

  Moira spread her pale hands. “Don’t think I’m not aware of that, Sonja. I’m just as anxious as you are, but I don’t have any more information.”

  “Would Pirelli?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “His library is extensive, from what I understand.”

  Moira let her hands drop. “The library. He likes you, but it makes him nervous that you know about it. You know how the lords guard them.”

  “‘Knowledge is power. Never give your power away,’“ Sonja quoted. “So I’ve heard. He’s looked for references to the jars, on the ritual that made the shadow wolves, but he’s come up empty. We have new information now. Can you get him to let me in?”

  Thoughts turned behind Moira’s eyes. Sonja held her breath. She’d run out of places to get fast information, and all her sources in Tacoma had fallen ill. Every second ticked by with painful speed, escaped moments in which Cameron charged after an enemy who played outside the known rules. She forced down the urge to shake Moira by the shoulders and ask if Pirelli’s neurotic secrecy was worth their friends’ lives. Not a fair question, but Sonja had thrown justice out the window the moment Cameron asked her to save his best friend.

  “I’ll go try to wake him early. It’s not far away from time anyway, and this needs his attention.”

  Sonja let out an explosive sigh. “Thank you.”

  “He may not know
anything,” Moira warned. “This may not solve our problems.”

  “But at least we’ll know we have to look elsewhere.” Sonja stood up as Moira did. “That’s a start.”

  “Or an end,” Moira said on her way out of the room.

  Sonja stared through the empty doorway. “No. An end means I’ve stopped looking,” she murmured.

  As she started her circuit of pacing around the room anew, she pulled out her phone. No response from Cameron. Kick his ass, she thought at the device. Kick his ass, and come back safe.

  Cameron switched his phone to silent mode and put it back in his pocket. He’d seen one too many movies where an inconvenient cell phone call ended with a person permanently disconnected. “Sonja says Kiplinger’s lady friend might be an energy slinger,” he murmured to Noah as they hoofed it down the sidewalk in a quiet suburban neighborhood.

  Noah snorted. “Great. Just what we needed. How does that man attract any women at all, let alone the ones who should know better? What can they possibly see in him?”

  “Charm, good looks, megalomania...” Cameron rolled one hand in an and-so-on motion. “What’s not to love?”

  “Naturally. What was I thinking?”

  “No one can resist a man with bad dental work and delusions of ruling a city.” Cameron spread his hands. “Don’t ask me, boss. I don’t know what they see in him, either. Bet she’s from out of town. Either that, or she has some serious beef with the local witches. We’ll find out soon enough. Sunny’s on it.”

  “I’ll bet,” Noah said with a tiny smirk, then let it drop.

  Halloween decorations lent the entire mission a near-comical vibe. Werewolves ambling down the street, headed for a rumble with vampires in a house at the far side of a dead-end street. Dying daylight spilled down the road, throwing long shadows behind still-dark jack-o’-lanterns and lengthening the reach of plastic headstones planted in yards. A coat covered the tacky bloodstains on Cameron’s shirt. Noah had found a sweatshirt in his trunk to swap his torn T-shirt for.