Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4)

by Faith Hunter

  T. Laine shook her head, not saying no, but saying with body language that he was stupid. She put her fists on her hips and looked up a good twelve inches into the man’s face. “Your weapons ever jam, bubba? Equipment ever malfunction?”

  Bubba, aka Gonzales, grinned, and his shoulders dropped, tension easing. “From time to time. It’s a pain in the ass.”

  Occam snorted under his breath and repeated, “Bubba.”

  “My weapons are just as likely as yours to fail when I need them the most. That’s why PsyLED Unit Eighteen has a wide variety of both mundane and magical weapons at our disposal. Against mixed paranormal and human enemy combatants, a combination of weapons and techniques is your best shot.”

  “What about the dizzy weapon?” Bubba asked. “Omnidirectional means it hits us too, right?”

  “Yes, if you’re stupid enough to detonate it while inside the twenty-foot radius. And it works on dolphins, whales, dogs, pigs, humans, witches, and vampires. And if you ask really nice, the local coven might make you a few. For a price.”

  “It always comes down to money with women,” a voice called out. The group laughed.

  T. Laine said, “No one’s paying me one silver dime extra to back your sorry asses, though, are they?” That shut them up for just long enough for FireWind to step forward and introduce himself. Once again the dynamics of the group changed, bringing the meeting down to bureaucratic, political mode and police protocols.

  By the time sunset was ninety minutes away, and the new, dark moon was beginning to drop over the horizon, the plan of attack was all worked out, with T. Laine joining SWAT in the first wave. Occam, Racer, and the feds were in the second offensive wave. The RVAC had done another flyover, a sniper in the trees reported no movement, and we needed to hit the place before the vamps died to power the demon spell. I made a bathroom break in the trees and picked another tick off of me. Nasty little buggers.

  I ate another apple and geared up, adjusted my comms unit, and signed onto the para freq, utilized in this multiagency operation. I also untied my field boots. For me and the job I had in the offensive, shoes would be in the way.

  The first wave of the assault team moved out on foot, into position.

  Roseberry Road had been barricaded against all traffic. The nearest neighbors had been evacuated.

  Occam and I got into my truck and downed bottles of water. The air-conditioning was like a blessing from heaven, not that I expected much of those these days. When the leaders’ vehicles moved out, we followed. Rick and Loriann were with FireWnd, in the car ahead of us. A few clouds on the horizon were golden, the sunset beginning.

  Over the comms channel there was little chatter. I glanced at my gas gauge and wished I had filled up. Occam said into my earbud, “I have the vest cams live. Thanks, Jones.”

  He held his tablet to me, and I tried to see on the screen, which was divided into small squares, one for each camera. I made out a man’s hand, part of an assault rifle, someone’s back, and what had to be T. Laine’s hand holding the null charm. It was a copper-colored ink pen, but the ink in the chamber was antimagic.

  The words blasted in my ear. “Gogogogogogogo!”

  I revved the truck and smashed the pedal to the floor. Along with the others who would be holding the perimeter, I raced down the road and into the Blounts’ yard, adding my C10 to the row of vehicles surrounding the property. Gonzales and his team were already inside.

  NINETEEN

  I leaped from the truck, grabbing my blanket and the pot of Soulwood soil with the sprig of the vampire tree. Heard shouting over the para freq. Heard the null pen go off. Felt it through my feet. I dropped to the ground behind the truck, half on the blanket, and touched a single finger to the earth. My other fingers were in the clay pot. Rick walked a me and leaped to the truck bed. He crawled inside his cage and slammed the door, clearly fearing the surge of magic. We were running about six minutes late and the moon was dropping below the horizon as dusk settled on the land. The curse/summoning was waking.

  Through the ground, I still felt the tidal forces of the new moon, its glow turned away from the earth. I felt maggots wriggling. I felt the power of the smoky fist, of B.K.L., in the stockyard. And I felt Loriann step onto the lawn. Her magic shot out like an electric charge, a wyrd that broke her shackles, sending them to the ground, along with splatters of her blood.

  Blood on the earth. She was mine. It would be so easy.

  But she didn’t rush for the house and her brother. She walked to us. I heard the soft sound of Occam drawing his weapon. He whispered, “Jones. You seeing this?”

  “Copy,” JoJo said into my earbud. “Ethier is moving. Help is on the way. Hold tight.” In the cage, Rick began gasping with pain. He mewled like a small child or a lost kitten. I felt Occam’s cat stir and reached for him. I sent as much of Soulwood as I could to them, but my land wanted blood and violence; calm wasn’t abundant.

  In the field behind the stockyard, the fist began to open, drawing power from the deeps of the earth, hot and glowing. Magma. Soulwood turned its attention to the new energies, intrigued. From deep and deep in the earth, the somnolent power that resided, motionless and waiting, stirred. If it woke, there would be earthquake. Flooding. Destruction. If the demon got free as Jason died, there would be earthquake, flooding, and destruction. Those six minutes might have cost us everything.

  Loriann stopped beside the bed of the truck. I could feel Occam as he moved to block her access to the back of the truck, to Rick’s cage, and to me. Gunfire rattled from inside the house and through our comms. Blood splattered on the walls and concrete floor. I felt it. Soulwood snapped its attention to the blood. Hungry.

  Bloodlust, that simmering need, woke. And grew. I was tied to the land. I began to retreat, but the smell/feel/sense of the blood in the house was growing. Bloodlust reached toward it.

  Occam ordered, “Get back. Get on your knees.”

  “Keep her talking,” JoJo said.

  Loriann said to Occam, “You’re not gonna shoot an unarmed woman, so listen to me.” I felt the power in the word listen. She had used a wyrd on him, forcing his compliance. “They’ll kill Jason. They won’t care. He’s just another blood junkie to them.”

  I pressed on my bloodlust, forcing it down, wrapping it tight. I drew away from the blood and the need and concentrated on Loriann’s voice. “If you go in, if Rick goes in, they’ll be careful. You can keep Jason alive. Put the gun away. We’re just talking.”

  JoJo cursed. “Sending help, Ingram. Hang on, Occam.”

  “Not interested in going up against SWAT,” Occam said, sounding marginally himself. There was a soft clatter on the tongue of the truck. “See that? That’s Bubba killing a blood-servant. Just broke his neck. Snap.” I figured Occam was holding the assault rifle, trained on Loriann, and had placed his tablet on the truck, but I didn’t risk a look, my attention on the house and the fight, my bloodlust snared by the violence.

  “I can unbind the spell on Rick,” she bargained, her words soothing. “As soon as Jason is safe. But you have to let him save my brother first.”

  “And we should believe you? On anything?” Occam said, still fighting her attraction. His words echoed in my earbud. JoJo was recording all this.

  Her tone waffling between desperation and threats, Loriann said, “He’s being forced through a shift right now, even in the cage. You know how that feels, don’t you, the need to shift while trapped in silver. You have to help Rick and he has to save my brother. Rick has no choice.”

  I wanted to hit her. Or drain her.

  My fist clenched in the pot of soil, my fingers closing on dirt and the sprig of vampire tree. Four fingertips of my other hand were touching the soil beneath me. The land had tasted her blood. I heaved back and back on the bloodlust. It turned to me. And then to Loriann, whose wrists were bleeding. Small splatters fell to the earth near me. Eyes closed, I knew blood. I could feel each drop, could hear them pass through the air and hit the soil, eve
n over the cacophony of the comms. Could taste them through the ground. Blood inside the house. Blood near me. Souwood reached for the blood, wanting.

  Over comms came the sound of screaming. Someone was hurt. One of ours. More blood fell.

  The feel of magic rose through the earth, a wave of dark power. Jason had set off a magical attack. Something prearranged. A wyrd spell. Others of our crew began to scream. T. Laine was shouting in Latin. It was her sleep spell.

  “Rick’s shifting. He’s in pain,” Loriann said, cajoling. “Let Rick loose and he’ll finish the shift and the pain will go away.”

  “And then he’ll trot off and save your worthless piece-of-crap brother,” Occam growled, “thanks to your blood magic.”

  “Hurry,” I whispered into my mic to JoJo, eyes tight against the growing bloodlust.

  “Once Jason is free,” Loriann said, “I’ll break the spell in Rick’s tattoo. I put in a backdoor. I can do it.”

  “Don’t believe you,” Occam snarled, sounding too much like his cat.

  Through the earth, I felt someone coming closer, as subtle and graceful as a cat. FireWind. Notified by JoJo.

  “Listen to me,” Loriann growled, almost sounding cat herself, furious, attacking. “It’s not too late. I can help Rick get in and back out.”

  Over the earbuds, on the para freq, I heard Gonzales say, “What the hell is that? Open fire!” His words were drowned out by weapons fire.

  “Kill it!” someone else shouted.

  T. Laine screamed to be heard over the firing, “No! It isn’t real. It’s just a magic construct! Stop firing! Stop! Cease fire! Cease fire!”

  Someone else screamed. Female. Vampire. The ululation of true-death.

  “Too bad. I gave you a choice,” Loriann said.

  Magic slammed into me. Ripped thorugh flesh and bone. Occam screamed, a cat cry of rage. Rick screamed. I grunted as my muscles gave way. I slid flat to the ground, biting my tongue, blood and spit spattering as my face landed on the dirt. I’d have been bruised if I had been standing. Occam growled. Loriann had somehow coerced him into a shape-shift. A hard, brutal, fast change. Rick screamed again. I couldn’t get my body to move, much less stand and fight.

  Metal clanged. Loriann had opened Rick’s cage door. Leaves erupted from the ground in the spots of my blood. In the spots of Loriann’s blood as the earth responded. Tendrils of fresh vines reached for my bare skin. My bloodlust reached for Loriann. I hauled back on it, struggling to not take her for the land. Because what if she really could unbind Rick? I forced open my eyes. Saw Loriann, her back to me.

  Numb, clumsy, I pushed away from the earth. Stood. Grabbed Loriann, my fingers on her bloody wrist. Hunger flooded through me.

  Rick, in black cat form, and Occam’s spotted cat lunged past us, toward the house. Grindylows raced in from somewhere, following. Claws out. I was too late.

  Pulling on Soulwood’s strength, I wrenched Loriann’s fingers back and straight-armed her to her knees. “I felt magic,” I said. “That was a spell! You’re manipulating the tat spells on Rick. Right now.”

  Loriann laughed.

  “She’s using the tat binding,” I said into my mic. But it was covered in my blood and I didn’t know how clearly JoJo would hear. “She sent Occam and Rick to save Jason. Two grindys are after them.” I could feel the magic coursing through her, following Rick.

  FireWind finally arrived, silent. He clubbed Loriann to the ground, a single, vicious fist to the head. It knocked her unconscious. He strapped the silver blood-cuffs back on Loriann’s wrists. With hands that were far stronger than a human’s, he untwisted the wire of a second, similar cuff and wrapped it around her head. Her wyrd magic stopped. Like a clean slice through the air. But Rick and Occam were already inside.

  FireWind was cold and brutal, his expression blank ferocity. “Can you call them back?” he asked me.

  “I can try.” I dropped down and curled my legs onto the blanket. “But you might have to cut me free. Use steel.” FireWind ordered someone to watch Loriann Ethier and he knelt beside me.

  I dug in the gobag, fingers finding the broken piece of black stone from the time of Rick’s original inking. Stolen from Rick’s house in my B and E. I had no idea why he kept it. I didn’t care. It was part of the spell that had bound him. I had stolen it to use in a last ditch effort that might help him. I dropped it in my lap. Put a fingertip on the earth. Shoved my hand into the pot of Soulwood.

  I reached for my land. And for Rick. There was strange power in the ground. A swirling miasma so thick it was like heavy oil and clotted blood. Light and dark energies, swirling, struggling. The fist was uncoiling, its dark energies anathema to the life of the earth. The fist shoved up through the stockyard ground, reaching for freedom it could only gain as the dark of the moon fell below the horizon. Magma boiled behind the fist, full of power.

  The massive sentient sleeping presence beneath the earth, the soul of the land, stirred. The earth trembled. Demon, Soulwood, and the spirit of the earth were about collide. This would be very bad.

  Closer to me, magics clouded the air and beat against the surface of the ground, contained but powerful. There was blood everywhere. I called to Soulwood and through my land I called to Occam. My spotted cat answered with a growl, always human enough to know me. I called to Rick. And … there. There he was. I found him.

  His magic was hot and cold and prickly and furred. Burning bright. He was different from the last time I touched his power. He was more … more were-creature. He was magic. He was power. Flaring, intense. He was an alpha, one who carried magic in every cell of his body. Yet that magic was constrained, packed down, restricted. Unfocused. Inward turned. Trapped.

  His magic was trapped.

  As if in a net.

  The tattoos were the trap I sensed, the magics holding him back.

  “Ethier!” FireWind coming to his feet. Shouting. Blood in the house. Gunfire. The sound of a body falling and the drumming of running feet. Loriann getting away.

  I reached out. Soulwood reached out. Rootlets and leaves burst from the wood in the walls of the house. I placed Soulwood over the net that constrained Rick’s power. Soaked Soulwood into the fibers of the spell that controlled him. It burned. The cold burning of witch magic, wrapped around and into the hotter magic of the wereleopard. Geometry and mathematics in every tiny, microscopic witch strand. Soulwoodstretched and sprouted, like rootlets seeking water. And grew into the witch magic …

  The strands were … the tiny punctures that once punched ink and magic into his skin. The pigments of the tattoo. And the vampire blood. There. That frozen, clotted bit of magic. Soulwood found the blood and took it. Broke it down. Whisked it away and into the earth. Ate it. And more foreign blood there. Cat blood. Easy to use, a useful sacrifice for the land. And … Jason’s blood.

  Rick screamed. Occam screamed. Silver. Silver was everywhere. Silver and blood and burning. My magic was ripped away from the tattoos.

  Occam’s leopard took him over, an emotional reaction so fast, so full of fear, Soulwood couldn’t follow. It was fear-flee-death-flame-burn-run-death …

  I reached through Rick’s eyes. Saw the cats had been caught in a silver mesh trap, one with spines that shoved through their pelts and into their flesh. Jason had set a magical and physical trap to capture Rick. He had instead caught both cats. And both grindys.

  Black cat blood. Spotted cat blood. Both of them magic. Two grindylows. Surely magic too. Their blood on the magical cuffs Jason wore.

  The new moon below the horizon.

  The spell in the earth.

  The ground beneath me quivered. Shook.

  Earthquake.

  The fist in the circle, in the stockyard, beat against the power that had imprisoned it in the dark eons ago.

  Light. Might. Purpose. Some unimaginable power holding it trapped.

  The fist beat that cage. Cracks began to form at the point of impact. The witch circle fed power to the fist’s battering. My
mind was open and aware of everything the magic touched, everything and everyone.

  Rick screamed. His cat in agony. The fist hardened. Solidified by the power in Rick’s cat blood. Trapped in Jason’s spell. The silver net stealing Rick’s life. The fist hit the boundary of the power holding it in stasis.

  It burst free. The earth at the circle erupted, rock and dirt flying into the air. The fist opened into the evening air. B’KuL’s open hand, reaching for the curse, reaching for the blood that powered the spell.

  Jason summoned B’KuL, the sound of the name vibrating through the land. I felt blood flow. The blood sorcerer had cut the throat of a waking vampire. Calling.

  Dark power blasting, the open hand of B’KuL flew through the night. Into … into the house where T. Laine and SWAT were. Where Occam was. Where Rick was. Where Jason was.

  The hand of power wrapped itself around Jason. Jason’s spell reached for Rick.

  I might kill my boss. My friend. But—

  I concentrated on the broken black stone. And I shoved the entire might of Soulwood through the stone into Rick’s tattoos. Shredding the magic in the ink. The magic that held him, bound him, used him. The magic that tied him to Jason and, through the blood witch, to the demon. And maybe tied all the magic to Rick’s soul. The broken chunk of black marble shattered.

  Rick’s were-magics sizzled. Exploded. Magic like a flashbang. But bigger. Hotter. The magical mesh constraining Rick’s tattoo magic erupted. I yanked Soulwood from him. Freeing Rick from the tattoo magic. And from Soulwood. Rick tore himself from the tatters of the old spell that had trapped and tortured him.

  His power burst free, burning through the last strands of the tattoo magic. But he was still trapped in a silver net with a raging, panicked Occam-cat and grindys. He opened his mouth and I thought he said my name.

  Soulwood and I shoved a single vine of our might against one tiny spot on the silver net.

  I thought of life. Of the roots of trees that broke apart boulders. My land, my tree, forced a hole through the silver net that held the cats and grindys, and attacked it from within. Growing, wrenching, ripping the silver needles from the cats’ flesh. Tearing into the spell set within it. Cleaving the spell. It fell into shavings and strips and strands of silver that tinkled to the concrete beneath the cats. I ripped Soulwood away.