Curse on the Land

by Faith Hunter

  Beneath me, within me.

  Within the patients in the hospital.

  I could see Fractura halt and tear, shredding and dissipating into the earth. Into the Earth.

  The slimes that had grown over me . . . died. Crumbled. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

  The slimes on the ground withered and died. The slimes on the witches followed, dying, feeding the earth.

  The roots inside my belly twisted and went still.

  I gulped in a breath. Another. Shaking. Crying.

  The heart of Infinitio/Unendlich, the infinity loop, spun out of the circle that no longer was. Like a train off the track, hard, out and away. Flung free. Where it could wreak havoc on its own. But, freed from the slimes, I was able to shift my own energies out and slip the smallest part of me through the loop. Catching it. It spun around me, uncertain. I gave it the tiniest of tugs.

  “Nellllllll,” it called, the sound of its voice like bells ringing, calling, charming.

  It’s alive. “Yessss,” I whispered back. Towing gently. Drawing it toward me.

  It wrapped itself around me, holding on. It knew me. It was aware. And it burned. Every part of my magics it touched burned. The last of the ley line energy that had been siphoned off, stored. It scorched my body and my soul, burning, burning, burning. I dragged in a breath to fight the torture. It didn’t help. It just made me more aware.

  Ignoring the pain, the rapidly growing agony, I gripped the Infinitio loop where it gripped me. As if I had taken its hand in welcome. “Nelllll,” it trilled.

  I slung it up out of the earth.

  Into the containment vessel held by Soul.

  “Betraaaayyyyeeerrrr,” it screamed, just as Soul closed the lid on the jar. Sealing it within.

  The last threads of the working broke, shockingly. Magics sluiced over me, lifting my hair, burning, stinking like magical fire, chemical and astringent, like something Tesla might have imagined had he indulged in drugged dreams. I gasped, realized I was flat on my back, my hands buried, burned in the coarse soil, lumps and clumps raised up where the slime blooms had come through and then died. I pushed against the earth to sit upright, muscles pinging with pain. The dead slime molds around me crumbled. Dust on the breeze. My skin was slicked with my blood, fresh, liquid, and chilling over older blood that was cold and tacky to the touch. All the witches were covered in the gleam of power, bright in the night. All were bleeding. Some were crying. Others angry. The soil around them was disturbed. All this I took in with a sweeping glance as the world swirled around me and my gorge rose.

  My head swam. My mouth was dry. I couldn’t hear.

  The witches were screaming, some standing, some lying on the ground. The working had fallen, taking some of them with it, the backlash knocking them out.

  Hopefully not dead.

  At the south point on the twelve-place witch working, a woman stood. Rivera Cornwall. The witch from the safe house. Before I could make sense of what I was seeing, she pointed at me. Fire seemed to weave through her fingers.

  When I went to the safe house, Rivera had said one word over and over, “No.” She had gone with Wendy, her twin, to the hospital, by an ambulance, for what was later revealed to be a through-and-through wound, involving only fatty tissue. Rivera had then bolted and disappeared. Had the shooter even meant to shoot Wendy at all? Or had the superficial resemblance between the twins meant that the shot had been intended for Rivera? She was crafting a working, and all the other witches were on the ground, still affected by the molds and the ley line backlash, all except T. Laine, who was carrying the containment vessel back down to the cars.

  I didn’t know if Rivera was guilty or not, but I couldn’t let her get away.

  “Soul,” I croaked. And pointed at the witch. Just as Rivera threw her hands out, directing a shatter working toward Lainie.

  There was a blast of light. And Soul disappeared, taking with her the containment vessel. And all the power of Rivera Cornwall’s curse.

  T. Laine whirled. Saw Rivera. Raced to her, tackled the witch, and took her down. Banged her head hard on the ground, so hard I felt it through the soles of my shoes. Lainie slapped a pair of witchy cuffs on her, and said, “Tu dormies.” Rivera’s eyes closed and instantly she was asleep.

  “Stupid witch,” T. Laine said.

  My palms on the earth told me that the earth was calming. The vibrations were stopping. The Old One shifted and stilled. Sleeping. It was over.

  * * *

  I woke in a hospital, being sewn up. The doctor leaning over me said, “You’re awake. Good. Some of us were worried.”

  I focused on him, a blurry image of an overweight, balding, out-of-shape man who stank of tobacco and Mexican spices. Leaning over me, around him, were four others, all in white laboratory coats, all looking on with interest. Two were witches. I could see the magics swirling around them, one set of energies green and verdant, the other magics dimmer, slower, brown with red tints, hard as stone. Interns in the University of Tennessee Medical Center’s paranormal emergency department. I could see their magics. This was new.

  “Be glad your friends were so insistent,” the older doctor said. “Any other patient would have been stapled closed.”

  “Metal might have interfered with her healing,” a voice said.

  I blinked a dozen times, clearing my eyes, and tilted my head. Occam was standing at my right side. He was wearing his gobag clothes, thin and insufficient to the cold, but his hand holding mine was feverish, heated with the warmth of his cat. His face was inflexible, as if he held tightly to himself and his emotions. His eyes contained some feeling I couldn’t name, an intractable, obstinate, purely pigheaded something. And in his eyes was both a knotty problem and a stubborn solution. I could read all of that and more. I could see his cat energies, a boiling, golden overlay of power, like a tornado, whirling and spinning, forceful, dominating, violent, and yet controlled, like a tornado made of sunlight. The energies were something beyond my understanding, but were harnessed to him. Part of his skin and bones and, perhaps, even his soul.

  To his side stood T. Laine and Soul. T. Laine looked like moonlight on frozen tree branches, her witch energies sparkling and deadly, far more deadly than I expected. A moon witch on the last day of the full moon.

  Soul . . . Soul was a blazing dragon, light and movement and intensity, with glistening scales and horns and claws, wings tightly furled to her. As I watched, the dragon saw me looking and swiveled its head on its neck to look back at me. Eyes the colors of moonlight on ice clouds, the tints of moonbows, focused and pierced me.

  “You can see me,” Soul said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “That is unfortunate.”

  “I don’t think it’ll last.”

  “One hopes not.”

  Beside me, the doctor said, “Now that you’re awake, we’ll need to administer lidocaine to close the larger lacerations. This will pinch.”

  It didn’t pinch. It hurt.

  * * *

  I had to hobble to the van. Had to be helped inside. Occam had to belt me in before he slid in beside me. He buttoned my coat. And made sure the faded pink blanket was arranged carefully over me. I let him do all that because I had one hundred eleven tear lacerations on my body. Some were small, needing only a single stitch to close them and help them heal. A dozen needed ten or more. Some looked burned. All of them were in bruised and damaged flesh.

  But mostly I let Occam take care of me because he needed to do something for me. And because my hands were bandaged. There was that small problem. Of the overall damage, my hands and wrists had taken the brunt of the attack. They were in pretty bad shape, with twenty-two lacerations on the left and twenty-seven on the right. They hurt. Even the smallest movement hurt. The van making a turn onto the main road hurt. Breathing hurt.

  I needed to sit in my yard and commune wi
th Soulwood. That would help me heal. I hoped.

  If Soulwood had been protected from the Break spell.

  If the witch magic hadn’t killed it.

  I didn’t know.

  Because I couldn’t feel my woods right now.

  Soul climbed into the van with Unit Eighteen. Well, the unit as it existed now, without Paka and with Rick in a cage on my land. Soul said, “You missed the case summary.”

  I turned to study her. She was dressed in new clothes, silver gauzy stuff that caught the slightest breeze. Her platinum hair was swirled into a long curl that rested over her shoulder and down to her lap. She no longer wore her dragon form, the effect of Break having worn off, thankfully. Occam started the unit’s van and pulled away from the hospital. I had seen entirely too much of UTMC over the last few months and I was more than happy to see it vanish behind us.

  “All through Knoxville, the molds fell apart and dusted away,” Soul said. “We don’t know why or by what mechanism. The patients in the paranormal unit are, one and all, making swift and amazing recoveries.”

  “Oh. Okay. I guess,” I said, knowing that I sounded as if I was hiding something. Which I was. “Um. What about Rivera?”

  “Rivera Cornwall is in custody at PsyLED. Lidia Rosencrantz is now at FBI, awaiting further interrogation. Irene and Lidia Rosencrantz and Daveed Petulengo confessed to working with Kamines Future Products to be paid for stealing the research and development. At this point they are each blaming the other for the murder of Colleen Shee MacDonald.”

  At my blank look, Soul added, “JoJo said you told her to follow the money. She traced additional wire deposits from the Cayman Islands to Rivera Cornwall. All the witches’ money originated from the same account as the funds that were wired to the COO, Daveed Petulengo. And when JoJo did some tracking back, she discovered that the account was owned by Kamines Future Products. While corporate espionage wasn’t the sole reason for this fiasco, it played a large part. I understand that Kamines was on your short list of companies interested in self-perpetuating energy?”

  I nodded, trying to figure out what I had missed. Where this was going.

  T. Laine said, “The Rosencrantzes were working under the table for the CEO of Kamines to gain access to and control of the testing results. So were Rivera Cornwall and Petulengo. Kamines was hedging its bets. The Cayman accounts payed for the assassins who shot at you and Occam at the pond, and Petulengo himself was responsible for the shooting at the Cornwalls, hoping to hit Rivera, who had changed her mind about being part of the conspiracy.”

  “Not crime? Not terrorism?” I asked.

  “No. Wendy and Aleta figured out that the German coven’s working had created slime molds, secondary to Infinitio and Unendlich, and they feared the working might injure the earth, so they sabotaged it. Taryn and her coven began a different form of sabotage to keep the working from success. The two opposing forms of sabotage twisted the working, and the result caused the workings to turn against the Old One, trying to drain the power of the earth.”

  “What will happen to them all?” I asked, though I knew, in a general way, what witches did to their own who were caught misusing magic.

  Occam said, “There are several null sites, run by the National Conclave, where witches can be kept sealed away from their magic. The Rosencrantzes took money to turn on their coven. They’ll be transported to Virginia for confinement for as long as they live.”

  “And Rivera Cornwall?”

  “She’s fine. A little wigged out by it all,” T. Laine said. “She’ll serve a jail term but not nearly so long or arduous as the ones the Rosencrantzes will serve.”

  “Daveed Petulengo?” I asked.

  “Will be tried in a human court of law,” Soul said. “Not our circus. Not our flying monkey.”

  Which made no sense to me at all, but I nodded. “Kamines Future Products?”

  T. Laine gave me a smile that belonged on the devil himself. “They got notes on the workings. The moment they try to use them, I’ll know. And they will be stopped. Permanently.”

  “Okay,” I said, digesting their words. “Sooo . . . Irene and Lidia deliberately took a job . . . ,” I said, feeling out what I had learned and sensed in the circle, “. . . related to the witch working that cost them their family to the Holocaust, and their great-grandmother to suicide, trying to keep that curse out of Hitler’s hands. They wanted to remake and sell that curse?”

  “Money spoke to them,” Soul said. “They were . . . misguided. The Rosencrantz clan has agreed to the punishment. Lidia and Irene will be incarcerated for the rest of their lives, their magic stripped from them. Rivera’s magics will be stripped for a period of twenty years. All will remain under lock and key in null sites with no opportunity of parole.”

  “And Infinitio?” I asked, remembering the scream as the vessel was closed. Betrayer . . . “They helped make it. Helped keep it going. It had achieved some sort of sentience. What happens to it now?”

  The silence in the van was acute except for the hum of tires on the highway.

  “It will remain locked away with other things that are too dangerous to be allowed into the world.” Soul looked around the van. “Nell needs assistance tonight,” Soul said. “It will be hard for her to get around with bandaged hands.”

  “I’ll stay,” Occam said. “My leopard can take care of Rick and hunt anything that comes onto the land.”

  “I’ll stay,” T. Laine said. “I can cook. And I can spot a magical attack before any of the rest of you.”

  “Why do you need to be able to spot a magical attack?” Soul asked, ever the teacher. “Why would Nell be attacked?”

  “If Rosencrantz had an outside witch accomplice,” T. Laine said, “There might be repercussions for today and tonight.”

  “I need to talk to Rick,” JoJo said, “assuming he can understand English at this point, so I’ll stay too.”

  Talk to a black leopard? I thought. But I didn’t speak the words.

  Tandy, who had been silent until now, opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Soul said, “Tandy and I will write up the reports, then. Agreed, Tandy?”

  “That’s not what you want,” Tandy said, his voice still raspy from the use of his power. “Or . . . it’s what you want, but not ultimately what you’re trying to accomplish.”

  “Allow me my foibles,” Soul said to him, sounding tired but tranquil. “You and I need to talk about what happened to you when you were hit by the sonic-blast working. The alteration and enhancement of your empath gifts is gone and you are back to normal now, yes?”

  “Yes,” Tandy said, sounding tired, disgruntled, and resigned.

  “We will do paperwork. We will talk. The others will take care of Nell.”

  “Pizza,” Tandy said. “I’ve pulled sixty hours on this case in the last three days. I haven’t slept. I haven’t eaten. I want pizza. And you to pay.”

  I turned in my seat to stare at the empath Tandy, who had started in Unit Eighteen as the one least likely to take care of himself, had just stood up to a VIP of PsyLED. He had changed. I wasn’t sure it was a good thing.

  Soul raised her eyebrows but smiled when she said, “Pushy for an empath. Working with Eighteen has been beneficial for you. I like this part. Done.

  “And you”—she pointed at me—“what do you see of me now?”

  “Normal human you,” I said.

  “That is fortunate. Sleep.”

  I did, and woke only when T. Laine nudged me awake at the house.

  NINETEEN

  I pushed open the door, banging it against the inside wall of the cold house. The mouser cats rushed in, anxious, tails high.

  I stumbled in the dark, in my own house. I had never done that before. Occam caught me, one hand under my arm, the other holding paper grocery bags. Stepping surely, lightly in the shadows. Cat eyes, seeing i
n the dark; had to be. “You okay, Nell, sugar?”

  “I’m just peachy,” I breathed. I flipped the switch and the lights blazed, the house looking unlived in, abandoned. The fire was out in the cookstove. Even the walls were cold to the touch. A fine layer of ash from the woodstove and dust coated everything. I had been home from Spook School for a week and hadn’t dusted anything.

  JoJo shut the door behind us all. I stood in the entry, exhausted, leaning against the wall, and watched as my coworkers carried groceries to my kitchen. Occam started a fire in the Waterford Stanley and added water to the water heater, just as if he lived here, as if he knew what to do. Feeling as if the earth had gained a few tons of gravity in the last hours, I made it to the couch and sat, clumsily pulling an afghan over me.

  T. Laine pulled food from the grocery bags, which was a good thing, as there was no meat in the kitchen and nothing fresh to cook. Had I been alone, with my bandaged hands, I’d have made do with leftovers and water. Thankfully they had picked up a cooked turkey breast and raw veggies and a loaf of artisan bread. And some canned soup for me. I had eaten commercially canned food at Spook School, and most of it was nasty stuff, but the spicy tomato smell of the soup was pretty nice as it glopped out of the waxed-paper carton, into a soup bowl.

  My teammates sliced meat, poured kibble for the mousers, opened and washed the salad fixings, and nuked the organic roasted red pepper–and-tomato soup.

  I kicked off my shoes as they made themselves at home. T. Laine knew where I kept the sheets, and while the bread toasted, she made up the guest beds. JoJo went to my room and got out my nightclothes. At home in my kitchen, Occam set the table, shooing the cats out of the way, talking to them with little bats and pats and hisses and vocalizings that the mousers seemed to understand. These were things that only the very best of friends would have been able to do.

  I felt the tension ease out of my torso and limbs as my friends worked. Tears stung my eyes. “Thank you,” I said, the words too loud, ringing in the tall ceilings and up the stairs. “For taking care of me. For proving what Rick said when I first met y’all. That I’d never have to ‘go in alone.’”