by Faith Hunter
“Are you sure?” I asked. It was an awfully weak circle.
Big Evan glared at me. “I do this my way. This is witch business.”
I shrugged, and Evan placed the flute between his lips. He started to play. It was a simple melody, only four notes, something he could play with the fingers of one hand, four notes in a dirge of song, primitive and plaintive.
He had played for less than five minutes when the disc between his knees moved slightly, angling to the right only a few millimeters. It paused, then traveled over the sheet the way iron moves toward a magnet, and stopped at the edge of the black circle I had drawn and Evan had powered. The witch stopped playing, the sad notes hanging on the air for a moment. “The lair is there. Behind that wall and down.”
Bruiser pulled a crowbar out of his belt, and I smiled. “Mr. Prepared for Anything,” I said. He flashed me a smile before he wrenched back and stabbed forward, wedging the sharp end of the crowbar into the wood of the shelves. Within minutes, the back of the bookcase was in splinters, revealing only brick, until he splintered a long board off the wall and a small aluminum handle appeared down near the floor. I took up the shotgun and braced it against my shoulder. Set my feet and bent my knees slightly. Bruiser looked at me, and I nodded. He bent forward and gripped the wood. With a single savage jerk, the damaged shelves squeaked open on hinges. A black maw appeared.
Something white smudged across the darkness. Time slowed into the consistency of glue, each moment clear and concise, as if trapped in amber. All I could think in that long, stretched-out moment was that Molly would never survive the loss of her husband. My godchildren, whom I hadn’t seen in months, would grow up without their father. If this didn’t work.
Silandre waved through the opening, as if pulled along by more than four limbs. Big Evan stood, as if safe in his weak circle. I fired once, twice, three times as Silandre raced up the hidden stairs. Missing her each time as she wove side to side. The vampire launched herself at Evan, the witch in her lair.
I pivoted, following Silandre’s wavelike charge.
Bruiser fired at the form that followed Silandre. Fired again, at Lotus, her black hair flowing like a skein of silk. The rounds hit. But the silver fléchettes didn’t slow the vamp.
Silandre seemed to fly through the air. And across the circle. Around Evan, the witch circle imploded. It’s not going to work.
Faster than I ever expected, faster than any creature should be able to move, Evan reached out and scratched Silandre. Her blood shot into the air.
Big Evan adjusted the angle of his hand and reached for the witch still moving toward him. He scratched Lotus. And both vampires fell.
It was anticlimactic after all the killing and all the blood. With the iron spike wielded by a witch, the vampires were bound. Not dead, but in a form of stasis.
“Huh,” Big Evan said. “Would you look at that? It worked.” The sound of surprise in his voice made me shudder.
From the black hole leading down to the lair came a moan of pain.
CHAPTER 27
While There Is Breath, There Is Hope
I flipped on the switch and looked down the stairs. At the bottom was a tiny room, barely big enough to hold the oversized bed. The walls were unadorned; the mattress had no sheets. The room smelled of damp and mold and human blood and human waste.
Curled up on the floor, wedged between the wall and the floor, were four forms. Three women and a child. “Evan!” I said. I leaped the distance down, landing in a small, clear spot of floor, and touched the woman nearest. She flinched. “It’s okay,” I said, “You’re safe now.”
The woman turned her head to me and blinked. She was pale as death, and her throat was bloody from forced feeding. It was an Acheé witch. I looked at the others, trying to see beneath the blood loss and bruises, and I realized that we had all of them and all were still alive. Including the old woman who had walked my dreams, Kathyayini, who slept, scarcely breathing, in a corner of the small room.
I blinked back tears, thinking of the time they had spent here in this lair, tortured and tormented, all because I hadn’t come down to search. I ignored the small voice that whispered I wouldn’t have found the witches, not without Big Evan and the spell he used on the discs. Like the accusation I had made to Big Evan, I wasn’t ready to forgive myself yet. Not about everything. Not about this.
I said again, “It’s okay. You’re safe now. Let me hand you up the stairs.”
The witch started to cry. Above me, Big Evan bent over the hole to the lair. He started to curse softly beneath his breath.
• • •
We were standing in front of the refrigerator in the old bar, waiting to step into the witch circle. Just Big Evan, Bruiser, and me. And two unconscious vamps. Evan hadn’t been gentle with them, not since treating the Acheé witches. His eyes had filled with tears over the girl, not yet an adult, abused and nearly catatonic with fear. Kathyayini was in a coma, still dream-walking when the ambulances came.
And he had been taking his anger out on the vamps ever since. Yet I knew that Evan would have a problem taking a life, even a vamp’s undead life, even with justice so long overdue. He had already refused to kill, saying that no witch would use blood magic to break black magic. And I wasn’t sure if he could break the spell of the full witch circle without taking their blood and their heads.
“Time?” I asked.
“Eleven twenty-four,” Bruiser said.
“Close enough,” Evan said, urging us on.
I didn’t have to have my cell phone handy to know that the others were looking for us, worried sick. I could actually feel Rick’s panic, like a burr stuck in my paw. He had nearly changed already once, and the pain had been unendurable. Now the moon was at her fullest, almost midnight of the full moon, the witching hour. We had been waiting for hours, Big Evan setting the timetable and outlining the plan.
And now, at last, it was time to save Misha.
“I’ll go through first,” I said, “and open the trapdoor. Then you send the vamps through. They’ll fall through the opening into the circle below. Then I’ll close the door and you two come through, one at a time.”
I had wanted to do it all by myself and not risk Big Evan again, but breaking a working this strong took a witch and the blood of the vamp who set it into motion. Since he was dead, I was hoping that the blood of his killer and the blood of his heirs would do. I stepped into the fridge and fell.
Even though I was expecting it, I nearly lost my supper. I caught myself only by the most delicate line of luck. I landed hard, stumbled, and ended up on one knee and both hands. Moving fast, I turned on the flashlight and opened the trapdoor. The reek that flowed up through it was so close to the stench of the charnel lair that my stomach roiled again. I dropped through and stood to the side, the trapdoor open. I didn’t look around with light. I couldn’t make myself. I was such a coward sometimes.
Moments later, the two vamps fell through to bounce at my feet. They were bound with silver and steel and a spell. And a full roll of duct tape, Big Evan’s last-ditch protections against vamp strength. I closed the door, and when it opened, Bruiser walked down, followed moments later by Big Evan, whose bulk barely fit through the opening.
The big man swore at the sight of the twelve witches, taking the flashlight from my hand without asking and studying them. He spent the longest on the witch who was nearly buried. Now only her mouth and nose were above the ground, but even he was afraid to brush away the sand, for fear the spell would activate and kill her instantly. “While there is breath, there is hope,” he whispered.
His face was grim as death when he came back to me, harsh lines and angles in the sharp light of the flash, his body bent to protect his head from the floor system above. He nodded at me, and I opened another new sheet, this one already partially marked with a circle, part of the preparations we had made in the hours while we waited for midnight.
I spread the sheet over the uneven floor, in a place betw
een the bones that littered the surface. Normally Evan would have used a spade to dig a circle in the earth, but the bones and the absolute concentration of power made that unpractical.
He picked up Lotus and tossed her into the circle. Bruiser tossed Silandre. Both vamps were rounded, sensual, and warm to the touch, full of witch blood. Neither showed signs of the transformative process of the witch working and the binding of the red iron. And neither had spoken since they were captured, maybe silent in the presence of lesser creatures. Maybe waiting out the clock for the few minutes left until midnight.
Evan stepped into the circle and sat, rolling the vamps close and digging in the bag I had carried for his supplies. This would be Big Evan’s show, not mine. I was just the helper. Bruiser was the muscle, standing guard at the bottom of the steps below the closed trapdoor. He was silent, watching us, his face impassive, his body loose and ready for anything that might land in the circle above us and come through the door.
Walking sunwise—or, in this case, literally clockwise—I walked the witch circle, setting out twelve candles, one beside each buried witch. I lit them according to my instructions, beginning with the witch wearing the pocket watch set at the number one. When I was done, Evan asked, “Anything else you need to tell me?” When I shook my head, he said, “Say it again.”
I restrained a sigh and a retort. I wasn’t a witch, I wasn’t used to memorizing spells, and I had never crafted one. He wanted to make sure I hadn’t left anything out that would help him with the spell and had made me repeat Kathyayini’s words over and over. “Long years past was cold iron, blood, three cursed trees, and lightning. Red iron will set you free.” I opened my hands as if holding a tea tray flat on my palms, as if saying, See? Just like last time, and telling him with my eyes, as I had told him with words, that all this part had been figured out.
He nodded for me to continue.
“Shadow and blood are a dark light, buried beneath the ground.” I pointed to the witch nearest. “The one you seek,” I said, pointing to Misha, “she is bound to the Earth. She didn’t mean to be bound, but she cannot get away now.”
“We still don’t know what is being used as a focus for the spell?” Evan asked. I shook my head. “Time?”
“Eleven fifty-two,” Bruiser said.
“Good.” Evan drew a knife, an athame. The whole thing, handle and blade, was purest sterling silver. He pointed the tip at the circle, and I closed it with the black marker. I drew a blade. Mine was steel with silver plating, but, really, even plastic would have done. I went to kneel near the witch who was almost buried. It was my job to scrape away the sand the moment the working was broken.
Big Evan Trueblood was an air witch, meaning he worked with air currents, sometimes with weather, with wind, with storms. But most often Evan worked with sound. He pulled a box from the bag he had brought and opened it with quick metallic-sounding snaps of the latches. Within was a flute. The witch placed it to his mouth and blew a long, slow note. This wasn’t a wooden flute, with a hollow sound and a limited range, but a large, silver flute, larger than any flute I remember seeing used in the high school band. The tone was haunting and low as single notes became a melody.
Beneath my feet and knees, I felt the sand shiver with the deep vibration of the music. It was sweet one moment, discordant the next, melancholy and joyful by turns. Moment by moment, the sand beneath me grew more and more disturbed, until I could hear its disquiet over the music, a scratching, dry abrasion, the surface sand worrying across the deeper-packed earth.
It moved as if alive, shook as if frightened, slid as if sentient. And as I watched, a bead of sand crept closer to the mouth of the buried witch. I looked to Evan, sitting in the center of the circle, playing his flute, his form placid, his melody serene.
Another bead of sand slid within her mouth. She didn’t move. Didn’t react. But my heart rate spiked. The music sped, its tempo rising, the notes climbing high, only to fall into the deeps. I glanced at Misha and started to rise. She was sinking, sinking fast, into the sandy earth. As if she were in quicksand, her body sank, note by note.
The two female vamps in the center of the circle with Big Evan sat up. Lotus shook, her body moving with a tremor like a seizure. My hand holding the vamp-killer started to sweat. I changed my grip, and changed it again. Something was wrong. I looked to Bruiser, and he shook his head. He didn’t understand what was happening either. But what wasn’t happening was an ending to the spell.
Which meant something else was happening. The spell was speeding up. Whatever was supposed to happen slowly was suddenly happening faster.
Silandre lifted her head, her mouth open, and she took a breath so deep it made the candle flames waver. She sang a note. Only in that moment, with the single, strident note vibrating against my eardrums, did I recall Bodat’s comment back when we first started researching Silandre. She had been into opera. She and Lotus had sung opera. And the note she sang was interfering with both the spell and Evan’s attempt to break it.
The woman beside me shuddered and slid beneath the earth. All around the circle, the witches were sliding deeper, their faces stoic and unyielding as the dead.
Lotus took a breath, as long and slow as Silandre’s, about to join in the singing. I was out of time.
And that was the spell. Time. Immortality. Not the enhanced life span of the vampire, tied to the night and to the taking of blood, but true immortality—dependent on nothing, with the speed and power and physical perfection of the flawless predator. I raced forward, my arm swinging back, my grip changing with my purpose. Settling and firming. From the corner of my eye, I saw Bruiser draw his own blade, following my lead.
Lotus’ note sounded, a clarion call to eternity. And I stepped over the circle. The ground shook. Lightning danced over my skin. Striking deep as my foot landed on the inner side of the circle. Pain shot through me, but my foot landed true. My body pivoted, all my weight behind my arm. My blade followed, sweeping ahead of me. Taking off Lotus’ head. The note stopped the instant her head left her neck. There was little blood. A drop that flew upward, a trickle that followed gravity. Her head spun, her silken hair flying in an arc, obscuring eyes that looked, for a moment, startled.
Silandre’s head left her body an instant later, falling toward the sheet. Evan pulled the flute from his lips, stopping his melody. The silence was awful for three rapid heartbeats that fluttered against my eardrums. The heads landed, soft thuds. The bodies slid down.
The earth moved. The clock-working fell in a shower of sparks. With a roar of sound, like a sandstorm, the earth disgorged the witches. Bodies erupted from the grave.
I fell. Bruiser’s feet slid, his balance gone. Evan caught himself on one hand.
On hands and knees, feeling my way in every respect, I crawled across the moving earth to Misha. When I reached her side, I grabbed the amulet on her chest. Gave it a mighty jerk. Misha’s eyes opened. She gasped.
“The amulets,” I shouted. “Rip them away!”
The next moments were never clear in my mind, seen in snapshot instants of memories, as Big Evan raced widdershins and Bruiser raced sunwise, ripping the amulets from the witches, including the one who had been swallowed alive by the earth and regurgitated, gasping and vomiting sand.
Then the house above us began to groan and shudder, dust and debris raining from the old floor. There wasn’t time to get us all up through the trapdoor. Evan Trueblood took up his flute and, with a working he had ready, stored for use, he blew a hole through the foundation wall.
We grabbed every live being and threw them out the hole into the icy, wet night. I had a feeling that Evan held the house up through force of will and every spell he had stored, because it fell just as Bruiser and I dragged the last witch to the curb.
• • •
Two days later, Big Evan sat in his pickup truck, his head bowed, his hands draped over the steering wheel, fingers dangling. He had been avoiding me, so I had ambushed him in his truck. I waited
till he had the key in the ignition, opened the passenger’s door, and leaped in. “Not before we chat,” I said.
He heaved a sigh that moved the air through the cab—or maybe that was just his magics settling. “First,” I said, “You worked with me when you might have sent me packing and tried to do this job on your own. Thank you.”
When Evan didn’t look up from his hands and only pursed his lips, I went on, realizing later that he might have been pursing his lips to kill me with a whistle. “Second, I tried, I really tried, to do it the witch way. And I’m sorry I interfered with your spell—”
“It wasn’t working.”
I closed my mouth. I wasn’t sure what wasn’t working, but these were the first words Evan Trueblood had spoken in my presence in two days and I wasn’t going to get in the way.
“I thought I had all the math in my head. I can do math around ten other witches, I can see it in the air around a working. I thought I had it. But I messed up.”
I was staring at his hands now too, not sure where this was going, but it sounded perilously close to an apology.
“If you hadn’t been there, the fangheads would have gotten totally free of the temporary binding and attacked me, and I’d have been part of the circle. And they would have finished the working. All of the witches would have died. Molly would have killed me.”
I smiled at that, but Big Evan wasn’t watching me. He turned his hands over and stared at the empty palms. “In the past hundred years, the witch population in the Southeast dropped by seventy percent.” He turned his head to take me in. I was sitting there in my jeans and sweater, my hands pale from the cold, attempting to keep my face unemotional, nonreactive. “Vamps are responsible. We knew it, but we couldn’t prove it. The European council of Mithrans wasn’t interested in anything we said, though we petitioned them for decades at every convocation, or whatever the fangheads call their gathering of the chief bloodsuckers.