"Adriel?" White Feather screamed into the noise. "Can you turn this off?"
Things were going black. Was the storm causing clouds or too much dust?
"Adriel?"
I heard my name again, but from far away. When had I last drawn a breath of air?
"--turning blue."
Lynx was a cat. He changed in front of me, maybe to have more strength, maybe to help heal his injuries. He was too small to be a Lynx. The kid was a bobcat, not a Lynx. Maybe he had chosen his name because he wished he were the bigger cousin. He changed again, reverting to human.
"Why are her feet glowing?" White Feather asked.
"She stores stuff there," Lynx yelled back.
I giggled. How had Lynx guessed?
It didn't matter now. I would ride the storm into the heavens, flying, really, truly flying. Everything would look better from the sky, lighter, freer. The black that crowded me now would disappear--
Whomp!
I spun dizzily, swirling wildly. The roar wasn't gone from my ears. I still couldn't see, couldn't breathe. The cold wet of water soaked my back.
I wasn't flying higher, I was flat on my back. Someone sat on my lungs.
"There's no air to push out," Lynx said.
The weight went away. I had an urge to cough, but I couldn't. "Swoooooo!" I tried to tell them I was dying. Could they see me if I waved goodbye?
Instead of a sky filled with stars, there were only two bluish green ones.
"Adriel? Take a breath again."
Again?
He was so close I could feel his breath on my face. He was so…earthbound. His hand grabbed mine. Where my fingertips touched his, they tingled. He squeezed. "Breathe, Adriel."
I forgot how.
He kissed me. I sucked in a breath, and he helped, his lips touching my face gently, my cheeks, my eyes, my lips. I must have been breathing, but I wasn't sure. His air was my air, a scent that wasn't the lab. It wasn't the earth either, it was pure White Feather.
"Don't you two think we should get the hell outta here?" a crabby voice asked.
I blinked. White Feather's face got further from mine. Everything went blurry. "I'll carry her."
"Whatever, let's blow this place!"
White Feather set me on my feet. They were cold where previously they had been so very hot. I looked down. My shoes were gone. "What--" I croaked.
White Feather pointed. A mass of smoking leather lumped over melted rubber. "The power seemed to be worst at your feet so I took your shoes off and knocked you away from the wind. The power sucked back through your shoes."
The sneakers still had a strange glow. "Magnets," I said. "Earth back to earth through earth."
White Feather gripped me tighter.
I looked around the room. Where the rat creature had been there was nothing but a burned blotch. It, along with several other spots in the lab, was still smoking. Where Sheila had been standing, there was now a strange burnt shadow dusting the floor in the hazy outline of skeleton. The power she had called had burned right through her body. "The amulets?"
"Couldn't find them," Lynx complained. He kicked his feet around scraps of tables and a few pieces of metal that used to be cages. "Nothing left over there but dust."
Indeed, the pot Sheila had been using, the chemicals, and the entire table were dust. Whatever she had had of mine was gone for good. Thank God.
"What happened to the vamp?" I asked.
White Feather shrugged. We all looked around, but there was no sign of him. "I don't think vampires need to breathe. Maybe he fought his way through the edge of the storm down one of the tunnels. We were close enough to you that we managed to keep breathing."
"I was trying to ground her power," I explained.
"You did that. After you called a bunch of power of your own."
I shook my head. "I don't even know how to link to the earth like you do to the wind."
He slanted his eyes at me. "Right." He took my arm and tugged me toward the stairs. Lynx hightailed it across the debris, scampering ahead of us.
When we reached the kitchen, Lynx headed for the door. I stopped him. "We still need to empty the safe upstairs."
He looked back, his sudden eagerness held in check. "Good idea." He changed direction.
White Feather and I followed. By the time we got up to the bedroom, Lynx had the safe wide open.
"I guess we probably can't get paid for this, huh?" Lynx flashed me a big smile.
"You thinking about holding these items hostage?" My disapproval was obvious.
The smile disappeared. "Anything else, yeah. This shit." He shook his head.
"You take the papers. I'll get the box." My shirt had some good tatters again. I ripped a strip off. Like before, the amulets were lined up across the velvet, only this time, there was an extra one thrown carelessly to the side.
I frowned. When we were here last, I had taken one from the middle. There had been seven, now there were eight total. "Harold maybe?" It would do the man a lot of good to destroy the object of his captivity.
Using the edge of my shirt, I took the whole box without touching any of them. "Let's get this stuff burning."
Lynx found a cigarette lighter in a kitchen drawer on our way out.
We burned the papers first. When they were gone, I looked at the box of amulets. "One of these might belong to Harold." I looked at White Feather. "He deserves to be the one to destroy it, to know it's gone."
Lynx snarled, "Burn them all, and then he'll know."
I swallowed. It would be easier. And faster. I pushed the box toward the fire with a stick. "It would help him heal," I said, stopping before the box actually reached the flames.
Lynx frowned mightily.
I looked from him to White Feather and then used the stick to push the box away from the fire.
White Feather walked to the side of the house and turned on the hose. He doused the fire.
Using sticks, we cobbled the box over to the car. I forced each of the amulets into a water container in the trunk. The water would hold the evil at bay. Hopefully.
Being a witch wasn't easy. Being a responsible one was even harder.
I felt pretty bad about it until White Feather reached out and grabbed my hand.
Together, we got in the car. On the way home, he didn't let go of my hand. I had a feeling he would be helping me with the amulets until we were both satisfied that their aura was dead and gone.
Chapter 41
I was half asleep and aching all over when we got back to my house. White Feather and Lynx didn't look much better than I felt. Unfortunately, the items in the trunk of my car were like a disease. As long as the evil cache existed, it was hurting someone. We couldn't leave the amulets in existence any longer.
While Lynx raided the fridge, I limped to my bedroom for some moccasin slippers. No way were my burned feet getting squeezed into shoes.
On the way back to the living room I stopped in the lab to make sure that I still had a strand of Harold's hair. Thankfully, it hadn't disappeared from the silk-lined box where I had stored the papers with his signature.
White Feather joined me and handed me some Gatorade. "Can we do this testing outside?"
I took a much needed drink and then shook my head. "We can't test for his aura while they are all sitting in water." I handed a silk wrap to White Feather. "We may as well bring them in the lab." Every pore in my body protested. "Let's find his if it's there. We can save it for him and destroy the rest."
While White Feather retrieved the jug, I pushed the DNA samples aside and stacked the willow from that experiment off to one side. From my untouched stash of willow, I cut another fork.
Lynx came in and took my stool, keeping his distance. While I set the willow fork with Harold's hair, White Feather used tongs wrapped in the silk to fish out the amulets.
One by one, he laid them on the workbench.
I was lucky I was facing him when the fifth amulet came out. It was the greenish
stone, the one I assumed was Harold's, but it wasn't the fork in my hand that twitched.
The forks on the table fell over with a clatter as one of them swiveled around to point at the dangling amulet that White Feather had yet to lower to the table.
I stared. "Did you see that?"
White Feather stood frozen in place. Lynx scooted the stool backward, while I stepped forward. "Which one was it?" I scanned the pile of willow forks, but while the samples were coded and marked, the forks weren't. I wasn't positive which one had moved. Even if I had been, I no longer knew which fork belonged to which sample.
White Feather set the amulet down. "Should I get the rest out?"
I nodded. "I'll make more forks."
We started fresh in order to be sure. We laid out the DNA samples, redid fresh forks for each, and traced the aura.
"It's the guy," I said. "The one whose aura is on each of the female victims."
"Sheila was controlling him," White Feather said.
Lynx spat, "Experiments."
I turned to him. "She wanted to use you to replace a shifter she lost, right?"
He showed teeth, and they didn't look like human ones. "That's what Zandy said. Take a few injections, and we could go."
"And come back now and then for an appointment. She used the amulet to make certain that the wolf came back."
"Until it didn't anymore," White Feather said. "Who killed it? There was no foreign DNA. The body was torn to pieces."
"Maybe he did himself," Lynx said sourly. "Maybe he didn't want to answer the call no more."
"Maybe Sheila did it." I shuddered. "On purpose or by accident. The way she spelled things, she might have pushed too much too fast and the guy exploded." I thought of the shifter in her lab and the rat creature. The bear creature had been missing a hand. The rat creature lost its eye even as it was forming. The creatures weren't normal--or healthy.
"One too many shots." Lynx made a cutting motion across his own neck.
White Feather and I exchanged glances. "I hope Gordon finds Zandy soon," I said on a hard swallow. "What if whatever she gave Zandy makes him kill?"
"This guy was under her control longer," White Feather said. "More experiments."
I shuddered. "Yeah." I moved away from the workbench. I stared at the mess for a long while before I finally got up enough nerve to test the rest of the amulets for traces of Harold.
We didn't find his. I didn't know whether to be relieved or dismayed. "Maybe Sheila only put amulets in the safe after the subjects were dead." I had another evil thought. I took Lynx's fork from my backpack and tested it. His sigh of relief matched mine when it didn't react to any of the amulets. I then tested the things for my own aura, although I think I would have known. It appeared she had only made one amulet for each of us and those had both been destroyed in her lab.
Sheila had never had a piece of White Feather, but we tested that too, just to be certain.
When we were done Lynx hissed, "Burn'em."
I agreed. "But not in here. I don't want smoke or any other trace of this crap in my lab."
White Feather put all the amulets back in the original box. I wrapped the willow sticks we had used, all the silk that had come in contact with the amulets and Harold's hair.
We took everything out back. I hated to contaminate my yard, but the soil could be moved and spread elsewhere.
Lynx produced the cigarette lighter. Using wood pieces from the lab, we started a fire.
I set the box on the flames. Because it was very old, it had been oiled well. It ignited easily. "It needs to be hotter."
White Feather nodded. "Dropping it in a volcano would be good."
"I've heard amulets can withstand that kind of sudden heat. It has to be controlled. Like over a flame until they burst. Hot enough to shatter glass."
We stared in dismay because the amulets, while blackening nicely, weren't likely to burst because of a few burning chunks of wood.
Lynx solved the problem nicely. From behind us, he darted forward. Bam! The rock he threw hit and bounced. "It counts if you break'em with a rock, right?" He stepped on the rock with his foot, mashing it into the glass.
I stumbled backwards and slapped at a piece of ash that had spattered onto my shirt. "Geez, Lynx, some warning, would you?"
"You witches take too long. You start thinking spells, how to heat a fire, all that crap." He waved his hand. "If they ain't busted up enough, I can drop it on there again."
White Feather rolled the rock away with his foot.
I peered into the smoke and flames. "You cracked the glass on at least three of them."
White Feather picked up the rock and dropped it again. We used a stick to push the fire back together. "More wood," I suggested.
Lynx complied. The fire went from fizzling to burning nicely.
We did the rock routine six or seven times, pounding the metal parts flat and destroying the glass, letting whatever was inside burn. I threw in some sage to help purify the mess. The glass and metal were melting, but not as much as I would have liked.
"Hang on. I have a portable torch." I went back into the lab to get it.
When I brought it back out, White Feather asked, "What do you use that for?"
"Sometimes I need to take it with me to mold glass."
He looked at me funny, but the torch worked nicely.
We kept at it until the entire pile was melted, mixed, purified and generally destroyed. When we were done, it was impossible to separate any pieces from sand. We doused everything with water. Lots and lots of holy water.
When I reached for White Feather's hand, he met me halfway. Two good people could undo a lot of bad that existed in the world. It didn't hurt to have the occasional shape shifter and vampire on our side either.
Chapter 42
Time was full of magic, although I had never met a witch who could control it. On its own, with no help from mortals, it came in and soothed. Like a river grinding down rock, it wore away the jagged edges of trauma and left a smoother surface. Time swirled around emotions, remixing them. It wound through chaos and left pieces small enough to be re-arranged and handled.
Over three days, I slept a lot, ate my mother's tamales and worried a lot. White Feather promised to take care of our auras at Sheila's place. Lynx promised to burn the place down. I wasn't entirely certain about the compromise, but White Feather swore that after the vamp made Sheila's tunnels and labs his new home, auras were not a problem.
Lynx seemed satisfied that nothing was left living that should have been dead. That totally creeped me out.
White Feather also assured me that Gordon was building a case against Arturo. It wasn't the murder case I would have preferred, but proof of him siphoning off charity money for his own use would still land him in jail. Proving he was running a werewolf pimp operation would have been a lot more difficult.
We still had one important project that I had to take care of even though Sheila was gone. Thankfully, White Feather went with me. We went in the dead of night, of course. Unlike the last time I had visited, San Miguel gave off a peaceful essence. This time I could feel it without trying. White Feather wasn't so sanguine, and even with the peaceful vibes, he was nervous.
I was so excited about getting my wig back that I couldn't contain a whispered "Yes!" when he used a key to unlock the church.
"Shh."
On the way through the gift shop, he absconded with the chair behind the cash register counter. He carried it through to the church and placed it below the loft. "This should get us high enough. You ready?"
"No." The chair looked spindly and unsteady.
"Come here." He grabbed me close, moving his hands down my body to my waist, threatening to graze a few parts in between--a tease. He lifted me onto the chair. "Onto my shoulders," he commanded. There were candles still burning even though it was almost midnight. His eyes glinted, but I couldn't tell if it was the light or because he was laughing.
I put a leg on his
shoulder, but lost my balance. We both nearly toppled over. "Eeek! This is never going to work."
"Sure it will. Climb up. Steady."
I nearly smashed his head when he stepped onto the chair. He had to climb up first on his knees and then to a standing position. "Okay, now you're going to have to stand on my shoulders. Use my hand to help you balance."
"You're tickling my feet," I protested.
"I'm not touching your feet."
But my feet were touching him. And anytime I touched him, there were shivers of him. I wasn't sure if it was because he was a warlock of earth power or if my feet were still ultra sensitive after the incident at Sheila's.
"Hurry up," he hissed. "We only have four or five hours to get this done!" He held my ankle, while I tried to get enough balance to get the other foot onto his shoulder.
"Here I go," I said, forcing my knees straight in a single move. My fingers caught the ledge.
For several seconds, we both stood there and breathed. I almost stopped feeling like I was about to topple off his shoulders.
The chair creaked a warning.
"Hurry up," White Feather added his own counsel.
I made sure the railing wouldn't give way, dug my fingers around the beam and heaved myself up. My feet grappled for a spot.
Once I had one, I was up and over with no injuries.
It was dark in the loft of San Miguel.
"Do you have a flashlight?" I felt my way around the floor.
"In the car. Don't tell me you want me to go running back and forth."
What I wanted was for him to have brought the flashlight inside or for me to have thought of it before I got up in the loft, but I didn't say so.
I stretched across the floor with my feet against the rail and my hands above my head. I rolled across the loft. Twice. I did it from the other end too before peering over the rail. "It isn't here."
It took a moment for him to answer. "At least we can be certain that Sheila doesn't have it."
Small consolation. "What if there's someone else who does?"
Under Witch Moon (Moon Shadow Series) Page 27