She flipped her hands over, hiding the reddened palms from her sight and pushed them out before her.
The hair on the nape of my neck prickled as she called to that ley energy and a pulse answered her. And the junkie takes another hit.
Eris eased from the table, onto now steady legs. “Unlocking that one hurt?” she asked Johnny.
“Hell yes. I nearly decked you before I realized what I was doing.”
“This one will hurt more.”
He rolled his shoulders as if preparing for it. “Why?”
“I told you before, each of the first four tattoos were locked to an element and set to a purpose. The fifth bound them all together. They weren’t exactly happy about that.” She showed him her palms again. “I need them free in order to unlock this one, which has your memories bound in it.”
“Why did you take my memories?”
“These last three tattoos are all spiritual. They each required an offering.”
“My memories were offered up?”
“Your past was relinquished. The man who paid me to do this requested that offering specifically. He said you had an unhappy childhood and wouldn’t miss it anyway.” Her tone had gone bitter and she was intently studying the floor. “That sounds stupidly weak now.”
“Just undo it.” Johnny sat on the table and stretched out.
This time a purple candle was added to the tray. “I call upon the expansion of the planet Jupiter, with golden rays of warmth and light.” The mixture of nutmeg and clove was strewn across his chest. A heavy padlock was placed upon his sternum, right onto the pentacle, and a golden key was laid between the upraised wings on un-inked skin. Using an amethyst point, she traced the elaborate feathered details, then lifted the lock and drew the pentacle and circle beneath. She whispered, “Jupiter, planet named for the Great Roman god of thunder and lightning. Be generous. Hear me.”
Slipping the amethyst through the loop of the lock and touching only the ends of the stone, she used it to hold the lock three inches above the pentacle tattooed upon Johnny’s chest.
“Elements four, here combine.
Elements meet, pentacle sign.
Elements four, given wings.
Elements meet, here a king.
Earth: What was hidden now is found.
Air: What was unknown is now explored.
Fire: What was shackled is now unbound.
Water: What was taken is now restored.”
The golden key began to twitch. Air lifted salt from the bowl and threw it around the circle while the water in the glass bottle bubbled and the flame of the round red candle stretched high and danced.
“Jupiter! Be generous, I beseech you!”
The key flipped into the air and glided into the lock.
“Open!”
The key did not turn.
“Open!” she commanded.
The key remained still.
Eris reached for the key, hesitated … and gently put thumb and forefinger to the golden surface.
As if the god Jupiter himself stood in the circle and had denied her, lightning exploded from the lock. It sent her backpedaling, stumbling and falling even as the lock thudded to the floor, breaking the head of the key as it struck.
Johnny yelled and clutched at his chest, rising up on his elbow.
That was when I heard gunfire outside.
It was followed by the clanging of feet on the metal stairs. Someone tried the doorknob. Zhan put a round through the door and the stairs thudded as if someone heavy had gone down hard. There were shouts from outside, a few screams, and the peel of cars burning rubber to flee the area.
Zhan dropped into a crouch, keeping her aim true. “Get down,” she shouted to the rest of us. We obeyed; the shots continued outside.
Johnny’s yell dwindled to a groan, then he collapsed against the table, his arms flopping over the edge. Though he was breathing, he didn’t move.
I crawled forward.
Nana grabbed my arm firmly, holding me back. “Don’t break the circle.”
Amid the shots and shouts that were continuing outside, one rattled the door and the knob flopped. Then the door burst open, ripping from its hinges and crashing into the chair Zhan had been sitting in. The chair flipped forward. One of the legs cracked on her forehead. Zhan went limp.
The Rege lurched through the entryway—it was his shoulder that had broken the door. He held a gun. His eyes locked on Johnny and he took aim.
“No!” I shouted, calling energy from the ley.
I heard movement to the side behind me.
The Rege got off two shots before the power of the ley enveloped him, but when he was wrapped in that dangerous energy, it required his full attention. The barrier around him, his own shields, blocked the magic. The barrel of his gun shifted toward me. My fists clenched, rising up before me as if I dared fight him, but in truth, I was squeezing that ley power down, crushing him with its weight, until his shields were pulverized and every pore opened as if his skin was perforated with tiny funnels.
Weight pressed down on my shoulders as the Lustrata’s mantle appeared on me, glowing soft white light.
I could never guess how many women he had ever raped, abused, and broken. But I was thinking of them, his faceless victims as I rammed ley power into him, violating his body with it.
His eyes bulged. His hands shook like he had palsy. “No!”
Ley line power lifted him into the air and his body warped, sprouting hair and teeth.
I wasn’t just stopping him. The Lustrata was administering justice. I was doing what I never wanted to do to any wærewolf.
With a gasp, I loosed my fists, dropped the power, and stepped back. My mantle faded and disappeared. The creature dropped to the floor in a tangle of misshapen limbs, snarling and writhing. It flopped and groped, reaching toward my sentinel.
I pitched forward. “Zhan!”
At her name, she stirred. Seeing the inhuman thing so near her, she reacted swiftly. Before I could cross the room, she put four rounds into the thing’s head. She pulled the trigger three more times before she realized she’d spent her bullets. I dropped to my knees at her side.
The sudden silence—inside and out—was deafening.
The Rege fired two shots at Johnny, who lay helpless.
I didn’t want to look.
But I had to see. Slowly, my numb body responded. I saw a splash of red on Johnny’s face. My heart sank into my stomach.
Then Lance surged forward, screaming, “Mom!”
Nana grabbed Lance before he could break the circle.
Eris moaned. “Fuck that hurts. Shit, shit, shit.” Panic elevated her voice with each word. Behind me, Zhan got to her feet. I glanced at her. A trickle of blood ran down her face and her forehead was bruising. She checked the door even as she reloaded her gun.
Ignoring the mess that had been the Rege, I focused on the circle. My mother was bleeding, scraping her heels over the floor as she shouted another f-bomb.
And I found myself staring at Lance, who was trying to remove Nana’s grip from his arm. “Young man, get a hold of yourself,” she was saying.
Mom. He’d shouted “mom.” Shouted it at my mother.
The world swayed. My knees hit the floor.
Johnny may be dead. My mother’s been shot. And I have a brother. A brother she kept. And raised. And didn’t leave.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The next minutes were a blur. I was completely numb until Nana’s voice reached me. “Persephone, Johnny is not hurt.”
My mind snapped back into working and I clamored to my feet.
“Eris blocked the shots,” she added.
“We have to call an ambulance,” Lance pleaded, cheeks wet with tears.
“Don’t break the circle,” Eris said, gritting her teeth.
“Mom, no …”
At that, Nana let go of him, finally catching on to what had torn through me like a hurricane.
Eris drew on the ley
line—I felt the surge as she sucked power into herself. Even so, with great difficulty and much yelping, she twisted herself around and reached into the box with her left hand rifling around and coming up with the dagger. She clamped the sheath in her teeth and drew the blade. After spitting the sheath to the floor, she stabbed the black-handled dagger into the air. “Cut now the door, without breaking my circle.” She dropped the dagger. “Persephone. You have to finish.”
“You need medical attention!” Lance begged.
Zhan left the doorway, sliding her gun into her shoulder holster. “I have medic training. Let me in.”
Nana jerked on Lance’s arm. “Do you have an emergency kit?”
He blinked, seemingly as numb as I had been a moment ago. “Downstairs,” he said. “In the shop.”
“Go get it,” she said.
He grabbed keys from a peg by the door, then stepped back as Kirk and Todd swarmed in with Gregor and two other Omori, all of whom had their wrists bound with zip-ties. Gregor dropped to his knees beside the grisly mess on the floor, saw a swollen hand with an identifying pair of rings. “The Rege! What have you done?”
Lance took to the stairs.
To shut Gregor up, Kirk whacked his head with the butt of a pistol.
“Is the Domn Lup—” Kirk’s words stalled as he saw the same splash of blood that had distressed me.
I stepped through the door my mother had cut in her circle, feeling the static kiss of power as I entered. My hands roved all over Johnny, smearing blood but finding no wound. “He’s unconscious but unhurt,” I confirmed.
“Magic,” one of the Omori cried, realizing what was happening on this side of the room.
“The energies are contained within the circle. For now.” But we’d have to stir some more to finish this.
“The police are coming,” Kirk said. “What do you want us to do?”
The wail of sirens was getting close. Damn it, we have a spell going on, a dead half-formed wære, and—
“This magic must not be stopped,” I said. “Free the Omori and tell the—”
“What?” Kirk demanded.
I affixed the Omori wæres with as threatening a countenance as I could muster. “Your Rege is dead. All you have is your Domn Lup. Swear to me that you will go along with this, or I’ll half-form you and have you shot where you are.” I hope they believe me. I don’t know that I could harm anyone being submissive.
Gregor’s wide, despairing eyes shut. His mouth twisted in grief and fear. “And the witch strikes… .” he growled.
I moved as close to him as I could without breaking the circle. “If you prefer to die rather than see the new age your Domn Lup will usher in, so be it. I will give you that honor.”
He looked up, eyes widening.
“But if you have any shred of hope inside of you, any desire to live in a better world, swear your allegiance now.”
Gregor bowed his head. “I shall.” He fixed his comrades with his stare. “And so shall you.” They bowed their heads.
“Swear it,” I demanded.
“On Ninurta’s Hallowed Grave,” Todd clarified.
Gregor lifted his chin. “On Ninurta’s Hallowed Grave, I swear my compliance for now and my loyalty to the Domn Lup.”
I breathed deep, sighed it out. “Tell the police this stranger attacked and broke in during the ritual, got too close, and it caused a transformation. He had to be put down. That’s what the shooting was about.”
Todd’s head bobbed up and down. “If we’re all guards of the Domn Lup, we have authority to protect him.”
Lance rushed through the doorway with the emergency kit. A cell phone was pressed to his ear. “Come quick, she’s been shot twice,” he was saying. He’d called 911.
“Let me.” Zhan took the kit from Lance and approached the circle. “May I come in?”
I indicated where Eris had cut the door in the magic circle. “Through here.” Nana shoved a pillow and the crumpled blanket from the couch into Zhan’s arms. She stepped over the salt circle and moved toward Eris. “Sealed again is the door.” I visualized the circle whole once more.
The zip-ties were cut. “Let’s get out there and figure out our positions and our story,” Todd told the wæres. They headed out.
Zhan continued her examination of my moaning mother, murmuring to herself, “One shot to the arm. Passed through. That’s how blood got on Johnny.” She gently searched Eris’s back. “No exit wound from this. Here.” She ripped into a gauze pack from the kit and pushed the sterile fabric at me. “Hold this to the shoulder wound. Apply pressure.”
When I did, Mom cried out.
“As much pressure as she can stand,” Zhan corrected.
While I did that, Zhan wrapped an elastic bandage around Eris’s upper arm. Eris’s teeth chattered as she cried out again. Zhan grabbed up the athame to slice through the bandage. Black-handled ceremonial blades weren’t to be used for actual cutting and were usually dull, but this one was sharp.
“I cannot leave the circle until this is done,” Eris insisted.
Zhan dropped the blade and wrapped the remaining length of the bandage around Eris’s ribs to keep her arm in place. “Then let’s finish it,” Zhan said, adjusting so she could hold Eris up while applying pressure to the shoulder. I covered my mother with the blanket, tucking it around her body.
Beyond the broken door, I heard the arrival of the police cruisers.
“What do I do?” I meant with the magic, not the police.
“You have to unlock the foo dog. He needs to be on his stomach.”
Zhan had to abandon her patient temporarily to help me roll Johnny over without dumping him on the floor. The massage table had a cushion-edged hole in it so we could align him properly, and I checked underneath to make sure he was breathing normally.
“Light the green candle. Place it with the others.”
I did so as Zhan returned to my mother.
“Take the lilac and vetivert, cover the red foo dog and only the foo dog, and repeat after me.” She waited while I scattered the herbs. “I invoke the socialization of the planet Venus, whose duality in love and war finds harmony. Symbolized perfectly in this creature, that is not only a devoted dog, but a defender ready to make war to protect its own.”
Though her words were harsh and fast, I repeated them slower. Then I took up a stone. “Jade?”
She nodded.
“Trace the edges and all details as smoothly as you can. Don’t rush. Imagine the lines are strings, bindings that you’re erasing.”
As I did so, Eris murmured of Venus, of love and war and balance. Her brows furrowed in pain and concentration.
“I’m done.”
“Is there any aspirin in the kit?” Eris asked Zhan, who was taking her pulse.
“Yes, but it would thin your blood. You can’t have it.” Zhan shifted slightly as if taking Eris’s pulse at the wrist of her wounded arm.
“Fuck,” Eris groaned. “Press the jade into the dog’s mouth. Hold it there firmly. Pour your will into the foo dog, through the jade. You have to let the ley energy travel through you and that is going to hurt. It’s sorcery and—”
“I’m no stranger to sorcery.”
That statement cut through her anguish and she stared for a moment, then forced a weak, brief smile. “That’s my girl.” She swallowed. “Let it fill the foo dog and bring him to life. You have to feel his heart beating. You have to tell him to give Johnny back his wærewolf instincts. All of them. When the dog relents, you have to make it transfer that energy from within itself, back into Johnny.”
“Got it.”
“The dog won’t give it up easily.”
“Got it.” I put the jade over the foo dog’s mouth and positioned my hands.
“Repeat after me and mean it.”
“I will.”
When she spoke, I shut my eyes and repeated each line after her.
“Divine and auspicious,
Restraining motives vicious,
Dignity once suppressed you
Power now arrests you.
Unleash his instinct
Unleash his nature
Unleash his instinct
Unleash his nature.”
As the chant continued, an alpha state filled me and a wave of ley energy rushed through me. I could feel the foo dog, feel it as if it were a real, three-dimensional, furry creature under my hands. Live. Come alive.
I squeezed, urgent to feel that heartbeat.
Live! Live!
With ley power I jolted the dog—and Johnny—as if my palms were the pads of a defibrillator. The next thing I knew, the foo dog was trying to bite me.
“It doesn’t know you,” my mother said. “Make him obey!”
Down boy! You have to give Johnny back his instincts!
The beast continued to snap at me. The edges of its teeth scraped at my palm. It couldn’t get a bite of me because its nose was stuck against my palm and, apparently, it could not move its head.
Give him back his instincts!
Ley power dripped down my arms and into the dog in more moderate jolts, as if from a shock collar. Still, the animal snapped and growled at me. I imagined the flow stockpiling until there was a surplus in my shoulders. After holding it back as long as I could, I enveloped the foo dog’s head with it like a muzzle and thought, Give him back all his wærewolf instincts, now!
The dog yelped as if struck. Though it had ceased snapping at me, it continued to whimper. I loosed my grip on the muzzle and put my fingers around its head and petted it gently.
Taking that it allowed me to do this as a sign the dog was ready to surrender the contained instincts, I thought: Release what is Johnny’s back into him. Return to him what you once held. Relinquish your duty and rest.
For a full half-minute, it felt like kernels or pebbles dropping from the foo dog’s mouth to bounce off my skin and tumble into Johnny. When that sensation ended, the dog licked my hand.
Instead of getting a wet palm, however, it knocked me back a step as if the dog had just shoved me back and jerked from me all the power that the ley had given me in one fell swoop.
Arcane Circle Page 29