Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4)

by Faith Hunter

  “I don’t eat people.” My land does. Had my species once eaten children? My stomach did a little rolling flip of nausea.

  “So I have been informed,” he said solemnly, “and I am grateful.”

  “Jane Yellowrock is your sister,” I said baldly.

  Tandy’s head jerked up. JoJo slid her eyes to me. “Need to know, probie,” she said. Meaning that I should have kept my big mouth shut.

  “Yes,” FireWind said softly. He didn’t sound angry. His expression didn’t change.

  “Does Rick know?” I asked.

  “LaFleur knows almost everything.”

  “Well. Okay then. I’m going onto the roof to read the land.” I got up and walked from the room, FireWind stepping aside in time for me to not bowl him over on the way.

  • • •

  I had seen the square of wood planks that held the fifty gallons of Soulwood dirt. I had come up once and looked at it. It still bothered me, though saying why was beyond me. Maybe because the dirt was piled in a rough wood cage or low fence atop a flat-roofed, three-story building when it should be attached to my land. I knew that the high-in-the-sky part didn’t really matter, but it just felt wrong.

  Dirt in a pot or on the flat, smooth roof, it didn’t matter. The soil knew Soulwood, was a part of Soulwood, and was therefore part of me. The mineral-based, modified bitumen surface could be easier to work around, or through, than old-fashioned tar.

  The dark of early night grayed everything, and my eyes began adjusting to the lack of light. The door opened and shut slowly, on its own gravity power, and I watched as Occam peeled back a tarp, revealing the soil. The air was heavy and muggy and my skin was already slick with sweat in the heat. Lightning flickered on the horizon, and I hoped that might mean rain soon and cooler temps.

  I kicked off my shoes and blew out a hard breath. The pale gray-white roof felt odd and sort of slick beneath my bare feet, still warm from the day, and nasty. The roofing material was a modified bituminous membrane roofing. The name sounded like pure minerals, but the bitumen was contained in atactic polypropylene, a chemical that I was pretty sure was toxic to plant-people. I could feel my body fighting off the chemicals and curled my fingers under, hoping I didn’t grow leaves while up here, as part of my body’s immune response. I didn’t want the new boss to see them. He might know some things about me from reports, but that was a lot different from seeing me grow leaves. That felt oddly personal and intimate for a relationship that didn’t exist yet.

  I stepped onto the dirt. It too was warm from the summer sun, and I wriggled my bare toes into the soil, sighing in happiness this time. I was home. I let go of all the tension that had squeezed my chest and hunched my shoulders and accepted the faded pink blanket Occam extended. I hadn’t thought about the blanket in my truck. I used the blanket when I read the land, and though I could likely read the land just fine without it, it was comforting to have. I dropped it and plopped to my backside on it. The loose soil gave and I sank farther before it compacted and I stabilized. I shuffled my hands beneath the surface of the dirt. Occam knelt beside me in the dark, his blade exposed and ready to cut me free.

  Ayatas FireWind exited the door from the third floor, arriving last, probably after inspecting Rick and giving orders to the rest of the team. He took up a place behind me, his back to the waist-high wall that protected us from accidently falling and landing on the concrete below.

  I closed my eyes and reached slowly for Soulwood. The land was here. And there. I merged myself from here into my land and followed it down and down, through the brick and steel and mortar and deep under the foundation. And out, seeking. There was broken rock to one side, a ridge of hills over there, and deep alluvial soil in the Tennessee River valley, left from ancient floods. There were buildings that had been dug deep, many stories down. Power plants that thrummed into the earth. Dams and tributaries and islands in the water.

  Soulwood reached for the blood that was still being poured onto the land, an elastic and thirsty yearning. The blood-sorcerer sacrifice was still taking place. There. I was ready for it this time and I shoved down on the bloodlust that tried to grab me, tracking the blood. There. Only a few miles away. I was grateful for Occam’s presence. He seemed to mute the effect of the bloodlust. I could search in safety.

  Something else, something darker than my land, reached out. Fast. Latched on to me. I knew it. The vampire tree. It too was sensing the blood from the sacrifice. It too felt a rising bloodlust. The tree sent its vision of the Green Knight into my mind, its armor made of metal in the shape of overlapping leaves. A crusading tree. And now there were two of us searching for the witch circle, which made it simultaneously easier to find and harder to resist. The witch circle was … there.

  “Occam,” I whispered, a mere breath of sound.

  I felt him sit behind me, encircling me with his arms, his legs out around mine. I leaned back against him, feeling his magic wrap around me, sigh through me. His magic was tied to Soulwood. Was tied to me. It hugged me like a warm blanket in winter.

  There was a time when this type of contact would have been unpleasant, would have been a reminder of John and other things best forgotten. But it wasn’t, not any longer.

  “Do I need to cut you free, Nell, sugar?”

  “Not … yet,” I whispered.

  “In that case, I need you to breathe.”

  I took a breath, long and slow, and realized I hadn’t taken one in a while. Too long. I followed the blood, resting in Occam’s embrace, not giving in to the bloodlust that would make me claim the sacrifice for the land and then claim the earth there itself. And … thereby claim the curse for myself. Oh … that was possible. Care and care and greater care, I thought.

  I placed the river bends. The direction of the flow. The position of the moon, still below the horizon. The hydroelectric power plants. The Watts Bar nuclear power plant, not so very far away, a beacon of heat and light. I also located the places where the earth was poisoned with radiation from the power plant and the testing at Oak Ridge. Classified places of poison and death and secrets. Secrets I could never share because there was no way I should know about them.

  I let myself be drawn back to the sacrifice. To the blood.

  And maggots.

  SIXTEEN

  “Vampires are being called,” I muttered. “Yummy hasn’t called me. Someone needs to contact the Master of the City. See if they’re being summoned this time too.”

  I heard FireWind’s voice on his comms system, relaying the message.

  “Occam,” I whispered, “I need a map of Knoxville. A paper map.” I meant most anything nondigital that magic wouldn’t ruin, remembering the paper map T. Laine had shown us once. Occam said something to FireWind and I felt more than heard his steps move away. Occam kept his arms around me.

  Softly, his lips at my ear, he said, “What do you think Jason used as sacrifice?” He was asking if a human had been killed.

  “I don’t know.” But mostly I just didn’t want to guess. Not yet. Minutes passed.

  “Is he still at the curse circle?” Occam asked.

  Bloodlust shuddered through me, but leaning against Occam eased the power of the spell. “Yes. He’s killing another … something. Someone?”

  I hadn’t heard anyone return, but the quiet, crinkly sounds of a map being unfolded pushed back the silence. I opened my eyes and tugged one hand from the soil. I had slumped against Occam and he pressed on my spine, helping me sit up.

  FireWind knelt on one knee and offered me T. Laine’s map of Knoxville. I thought about the rivers and the tributaries, the moon and attraction of magnetic north, which I could feel as a deep steady draw in the earth. I turned the map and placed a finger on the paper. It landed on Mascot Road in a bend of the Holston River. “Around here? Is there someplace he could use here?”

  “Lot of places,” Occam said. “This area isn’t heavily populated. But it’s a lot farther out than before. Are you sure?”

  “
Yes.” There was no doubt.

  “What do you feel, Ingram?” FireWind asked.

  “Blood. A lot of blood. He’s sacrificing. I can’t say what’s dying. But he’s using the life force to call something …” I hesitated. “Filthy isn’t the right word. Neither is evil. But it’s maybe both and neither. The spell is calling vampires and Rick and it. And it’s trapped in the earth.”

  “Demon?” FireWind asked, his voice a whisper of sound.

  “I don’t know. The witches said a demon was being summoned, but it isn’t deep. Not hell deep.” And not as deep as magma, which was a lot closer than it used to be, thanks to lots of things, not the least Soulwood’s interference in the geology of Knoxville while helping me.

  “Hell?” FireWind asked, surprised.

  I knew, intellectually, that the hell where demons were imprisoned wasn’t under the earth, as in a physical place. But it was possible that some demons were tied to fire or attracted to fire, and that kind might associate with magma. When summoned, that kind might use the energies stored in the crust’s molten core to rise. The salamanders had done so, but this wasn’t a salamander. Was this thing a fire demon? I shrugged.

  “To clarify,” FireWind said quietly, “you are stipulating that the sacrificial blood is being used to summon an intelligence or an entity up through the earth.”

  “Just a minute.” I eased back into the earth, deeper, straight down through soil and broken granite, through layers of rotting limestone, and deeper still to bedrock. And deeper. I searched, moving slowly, sensing ahead, finding the sleeping presence deep in the earth. What I thought might actually be the soul of the Tennessee River valley. It was resting, somnolent, though not so torpid as it might have been a hundred years in the past, when white men began to dam the rivers and build power plants. But that presence was not being called.

  Before I could poke or prod the presence, even unintentionally, I eased away from the surface of the sentience. Back to my job. Back to the rooftop of the PsyLED building.

  I looked at the new boss. I didn’t know why I was predisposed to dislike him. He had done nothing bad to me. He hadn’t fired me or even said anything about a dog or a teenaged girl at HQ, though he had to be able to smell them both with his skinwalker senses. Maybe it was the deeply self-contained, reserved aspect of his nature. The sense that he was aloof, unapproachable, and arrogant. Arrogant, superior, righteous men were irritating.

  I dipped my head and thought carefully about my words. As a Cherokee, he might know things about the spirit of the land that white men didn’t. “The spirit that guards the earth is well. The thing that is rising through the crust of the earth doesn’t belong there. I can’t think of anything natural that might make the earth shudder with revulsion. It feels nasty but sentient. It doesn’t feel anything like salamanders. I think it’s something intelligent. Maybe a Power or a Principality.” I didn’t know his religious background so I added, “Powers and Principalities are how the Christian Bible refers to spiritual entities and authorities other than God or angels.” I watched his face in the night, as he processed my statements. Seconds passed as I measured the rising speed of the filthy thing, my hands buried in Soulwood soil.

  “How long before this demon reaches the surface?” he asked.

  I drew a sharp breath at the term demon. “I don’t know. But the more blood Jason uses, the more likely the filth is to break free. I think. I’m not really sure.”

  “Thank you, Ingram.” FireWind had been leaning against the low wall. He pushed off and went back down the stairs, silent on the night, leaving Occam and me sitting on my pink blanket, wrapped around each other on the roof in the muggy heat.

  “You okay to get up, Nell, sugar?”

  “I’m just great,” I lied.

  Occam chuckled and said, “I know you’re fabricatin’ here, but it does feel good to not have to cut you free of roots and vines and branches and trim your bushels of leaves.”

  “I never had bushels of leaves, not even in autumn. I think I’m more of an evergreen, and evergreens don’t shed.”

  Occam snickered at my seasonal leaf joke. “Come on, Nell, sugar. Let me help you find your sea legs.”

  • • •

  We parked in front of the Knoxville Livestock Center on Mascot Road. The stockyard was miles out of the city limits, in a farming area with lots of acreage dedicated to crops and sparsely populated by houses. On satellite maps, the stockyard itself was a large square of land, marked by unpaved roads and unpaved parking, a few corrals, outbuildings, some scattered farm equipment, a large roofed area, and a few acres of pasture. In person, the place was hot and stank of manure, cows, horses, and maybe chickens and goats, the mixed scents strong, even from the road in front.

  There wasn’t time to reconnoiter, not with someone or some things dying, and the unit’s small drone was out of order, waiting on a replacement rotor. Op planning was supposed to include strategic, operational, and tactical elements. Ours was pretty simple. Move in. Locate the witch circle. Throw a massive null spell at the working. Take down Jason. Without backup. Not because we were all macho or full of hubris, but because humans were no match against witches and other paras, so local law backup was useless and probably presented more danger than assistance.

  On the way, in the unit’s van, we had geared up in vests and completed weapons checks. FireWind had assigned clock positions to the entire property, based on the satellite map. The entrance was six, the main roofed structures were at the center of the clock, and some structures of some kind at the back of the cleared area were twelve. The hours were less assigned than general placement based on the fixed points. That was all we had in termes of strategy.

  “Comms check,” FireWind said.

  We all called off and Jo, back at headquarters said, “Clementine is recording. Head and vest cams recording. All go.”

  The security lights were off. All the buildings were black-on-black, and with the moon still below the horizon, the property was unrelieved dark, darker than the armpit of hell, as John used to say.

  My husband had a lot of pithy sayings. If he could see me now, he’d be telling me to get my backside home. But I wasn’t a wife anymore. I was an officer of the law, a federal agent, in a Kevlar and Dyneema vest, weapon drawn, wearing night-vision headgear.

  We raced forward, scanning the property and buildings. Bloodlust hit me again, seductive as a ball-peen hammer. It shuddered through me.

  “Blood,” Occam said, his voice in my earbud. “I smell a lot of blood.” His eyes were glowing gold, and he and FireWind were advancing like hunting cats, all caution and excitement and careful forward progression.

  My breath came fast.

  We proceeded along the dirt entry road to the wall-less, roofed area. Courtesy of the new boss, I had my own headgear, instead of having to share one set with the others. FireWind had brought all sorts of toys from PsyLED main HQ to the unit, which meant the world wasn’t black as pitch, but glowed green in the low-light-vision goggles. Stalls, pens, but nothing moving. When I flipped the switch to infrared, there were animals lying everywhere. There must be a livestock sale tomorrow. Or today. But nothing moved. The pens and stalls were full of animals, all dead, all drenched in blood. I didn’t switch off the headgear and shine my small flash as FireWind did, to get a better view. What I could make out in the green glow was bad enough. What I felt in the land was worse, a vile sickness that washed up and over everything. Sick, sick, sick. Illness and death. My bloodlust died.

  “Is the circle under the covered area, Ingram?” FireWind asked.

  Even through my field boots I knew it was farther back. “No,” I said and pointed deeper into the property, into the darkness. “The Holston River is that way. The circle is close to the bank of the river.” And the sacrifice. And the closer we got, the more I knew for certain what Jason had used. I could feel it, even through the soles of my boots.

  “Moon witches want the open sky overhead,” T. Laine confirme
d. “And what I’ve learned suggests that this curse working needs open, empty sky.”

  “Then why the dead animals?” FireWind asked.

  “I think the dead animals are secondary to the main sacrifice,” T. Laine said shortly. “Their throats aren’t slit. They just sponeaneously bled out. Like magical Ebola or something.”

  “I smell fangheads,” Occam growled, “and their blood. A lot of blood.”

  T. Laine raced forward several steps and stopped. Her body quivered like a live wire. “The curse circle working just ended. Jason has to still be here, somewhere on the property. We don’t have much time.”

  Knees bent, weapons pointing down in front, in two-hand grips, we sprinted in the direction I had indicated, beyond the covered holding pens into the open area, a place with no cover.

  “I don’t see anything,” Occam said. “But I smell the blood. And cattle. And death.”

  I swallowed hard. Hunger …

  FireWind said, “Spread out. Take it slow. Move into cover where you can. Dyson, take a position between the stalls and the road, in the trees at five o’clock.”

  Tandy turned and melted back the way we came.

  We moved across the property, past the covered sheds and a Quonset hut–like building, toward the river, leaving behind the dirt road for a grassy area that might once have been used as pasture. Ahead was a line of trees and a road, then more trees and the Holston. The smell of magic grew on the air, tingling and foul, making me want to sneeze.

  “Fangheads,” Occam growled. “Fanghead blood.”

  And now I was sure. Jason’s attack used a vampire as sacrifice. Vampires. At least two of them.

  On the road beyond the grassy space, a vehicle sped up. Braked. A door closed, a sliding door, like on a van or panel truck. The vehicle raced away. The decision to not have human law enforcement backup on-site came back to bite us. There was no one to give chase, and any local law meant the sheriff’s deputies who covered many square miles of territory and were likely twenty minutes away, running lights and sirens. The van sped away, into the night.