I turned back and pulled Mac’s KABAR from his belt. My athame would be better, but I’d left it on base. This would have to do. “Blessed Hecate, Keeper of the Crossroads and Queen of the midnight hour, hear me in my time of need,” I cried as I moved to a point roughly north of Ramirez. I drew an invoking pentagram in the air and then plunged the steel knife into the soft ground.
“Protect us and shield us,” I continued as I started the arc towards the east. “Shelter us within your breast, Oh Night.” I passed the eastern point and felt the energy rising within me which I directed down into the circle I was cutting into the grassy loam. “Hide us from the sight of our enemies.”
When I reached the southernmost point, I risked a glance towards the truck, but there was still no sign of Nunez or Stevens. Silently, I urged them to hurry. Once the circle was complete, they’d be unable to cross without shattering the building energies. “Dark mother,” I continued, “grant us refuge. Safeguard your children within your moonlit halls.”
I passed the halfway point and continued toward the west. The energies were now buzzing inside me. I held my left hand toward the moon, gathering moonlight to weave into the growing spell. Ramirez moaned while the energies built around him, some part of his mind reacting to the magick.
“Grant us Sanctuary dark goddess.” I reached the western point when I spotted Nunez and Stevens emerging from the Humvee. Stevens looked injured, but mobile. Nunez had his arm around him as they limped in our direction. Dark smoke piled up behind them, building into a wave threatening to crash over them. Silently, I urged them to run faster.
The ritual was almost complete. The energies I’d raised screamed inside me, demanding release as I plunged into the final arc. Slowing myself as much as possible, I deliberately drew out the final segment. Nunez and Stevens jumped the last few feet, flinging themselves over the circle and crashing into the ground next to Mac. “Seal us from the wrath of our enemies, oh daughter of the night!”
With the last syllable still echoing in my head I released the energy into the circle I’d cut into the ground. Silvery flames leapt up, meeting the crashing wave inches from my head. Faces leered out of the dark cloud and shadowy claws scrabbled against the barrier, but nothing penetrated. For now, we were safe.
I turned to Nunez, “How’s that thing following you?”
“It can’t be,” he shrugged.
Outside the circle the pursuing wave of smoke seethed and boiled, filling the small glade. Shapes moved within it, figures only briefly illuminated as they thrust themselves repeatedly against the barrier of the circle. Silvery light flared with each attack, but it was dimming.
“I’m not sure how long this will hold,” I said. “I thrust as much energy as I could into it, but it’s not a proper defensive circle. It’s more of a prayer bound within the shape. Whatever’s out there isn’t giving up.”
“Will it last till sunrise?” Stevens asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
Mac’s our defensive mage, but he was out of commission. Even if he was conscious, I wasn’t sure if he could construct another circle inside the one I’d drawn. Sorcery and witchcraft aren’t compatible. Like oil and water, they don’t mix. It would be difficult under the best of circumstances to interweave our spells. Right now, it was impossible.
“Something led it here,” I said.
Stevens stepped over to Mac’s body, rifling through his pockets and pulling out the medallion. “Here it is,” he said. “It’s coming for this.”
The circle erupted in a frenzy of silvery sparks as if the sight of the medallion had driven whatever was inside the cloud into a frenzy. We might as well have chummed the water next to a circling shark. Dark claws scrabbled against the barrier which grew visibly weaker by the moment.
“We’ve got to shield it,” Nunez said. “If we can break the connection between this and whatever that is outside it may lose focus.”
“How are you going to do that?” I snapped. “You can’t bind the damn thing inside this circle.”
Stevens pulled the .45 strapped to his hip. “Lead,” he said ejecting the magazine. “I’m using hollow point rounds. Pry the bullets from the cartridges and we’ll encase it in lead.”
It was a crazy idea, but it might just work if we had enough time. Nunez and Stevens started prying the lead from the cartridges while I turned back to the circle. Time was the enemy now. The circle wouldn’t hold much longer, I’d have to reinforce it somehow to give them enough time to work.
It was failing fast. The silvery flames that had first leapt up to meet the darkness on the other side were falling into limp showers of sparks. We had a matter of minutes at most before the barrier collapsed completely.
If I could tap into the circle from the inside, I could feed it more energy, but I didn’t know how. Wiccan magick doesn’t pull from personal reserves like sorcery does. We tap into our connection with the gods to fuel our magick. But inside the circle I was cut off from the primary source of my power. All I had left was my personal energy and that was severely depleted.
I glanced back and saw that Stevens and Nunez had pried several bullets from their casings. Nunez was already searching for something to pound the lead together to make a sheet that could be wrapped around the medallion. It was up to me to provide them with enough time.
Turning back to the circle I was overwhelmed with despair. In the seconds that I’d already wasted the barrier had almost completely fallen. Only the barest flicker of silver responded to the continual assault. If I didn’t do something now, we’d be overrun within seconds.
There are two branches to Wiccan magick. There is the spiral dance of the Goddess and there is the blood path of our God, Cernunnos. The Horned God doesn’t care for the peace of the farm or your moral high ground. He is Nature, red in tooth and claw.
I’d called for the Horned God’s help before and people had died. I’d sworn I’d never do it again, but there was no more time. I didn’t have a choice.
Gripping Mac’s knife tightly, I slashed the blade across my left palm. Blood gushed from the wound filling my hand and ran down my wrist. The spirit mark pulsed darkly, rhythmically beating in tune with my racing heart. Turning to face the barrier I slammed my left hand into the ground, grinding the open wound into the earth. At the same time, I lifted my right and reached out to the circle.
Hear me Cernunnos, in my time of need! I opened myself to the earth and the barrier simultaneously. There was no warning, no tingling trickle of energy. There was a gong, a tolling bell, the heartbeat of the earth and then a flash flood. Energy on a titanic scale poured through me, impossible to focus or contain. It cut a channel through my body, erupting from my right hand, emptying into the dying circle of light.
In an instant I was unmade, torn apart, deconstructed, and rebuilt. The cool moonlit fires of the barrier were transformed to solar flares. Gouts of thundering light blazed along the channel I’d cut, lashing against the billowing dark, driving it back.
Howling, it fled, seeking refuge first in the grove of Dogwoods and then in the Humvee itself. There was no sanctuary. Flaming whips scourged the night. The Dogwoods burned. The truck exploded.
And then it was gone, but still the fires raged through me. I was howling now; mad with the power coursing through my veins, a symphony of destruction playing in my ears. The grasses around my hand smoldered, sending up wisps of smoke, but still I couldn’t stop. The beast I’d summoned wouldn’t be caged.
Stevens tackled me from the side, breaking my connection. The energy vanished, snuffed out once my hand left the earth. I think I thanked him before I passed out.
Chapter 8
Sunday 07:30
Somewhere along I-85
Morning revealed ruin. Smoke from the Humvee chased plumes cast by the smoldering Dogwoods, bruising the early morning sky. All around the circle the earth was churned and battered, looking more like a scene from war-torn Mosul than a Georgia highwa
y. I shuddered and turned my eyes.
Except for a charred patch of grass where I’d knelt, the inside of the circle was untouched by the devastation.
I hadn’t been out long, but long enough for Ramirez and Mac to wake. All four stopped talking when I coughed and rolled over. There’s nothing like a sudden silence to jumpstart your paranoia.
Fuck ‘em, I thought. We were still alive, weren’t we?
My stomach rebelled, churning like the downside of a ten-day bender. Fighting through the nausea, I struggled to sit, suddenly thankful that I hadn’t eaten since the night before.
Reaching up to steady my head, I noticed that someone had bandaged my hand. The torn strips of cotton were still sticky with blood so I couldn’t have been out for long. I went to nod my thanks, but the sloshing in my head nearly drove me back to the ground.
“Everyone all right,” I croaked, “What happened?”
“You happened,” Stevens said. “What was that? I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
“Reinforce the circle, Thorn,” Nunez chuckled. “All I asked was for you to reinforce your circle.”
“Who gives a shit?” Ramirez growled. “The witch finally kicked some ass, let it go.”
That would have settled it, I think, if it weren’t for Mac. He was sitting with his back against the only tree inside the circle, his head bandaged with the same torn strips of t-shirt that were wound around my hand. “I’m grateful for the Private’s aid,” he said, “but I’m concerned about the manner in which it was rendered.”
“Seriously, Sarge, you were out worse than me,” Ramirez said. “I didn’t see anything until after Nunez splinted my arm. By then, it was all over except for the fires.”
“There was a creature,” Mac said ignoring him. “I felt it, more than saw it, towering over Private Le Mort . . . big ugly thing,” he added, “long curved horns, like the devil himself.”
I had no idea of how Mac could have seen Cernunnos, but I had no doubt that he had. I hadn’t seen anything, but I’d been deep in the currents I’d drawn. The fact that the Horned God’s visage had been hijacked by Christians as a stand-in for their Devil had only widened the gulf between us.
Mac was a Christian Thaumaturgist. Every act of magick he worked was a benediction from his God. Each drop of power Mac wrung dripped from His thorny crown. From the beginning he was resistant about my inclusion in the unit and I was convinced that he hounded me harder than the regular recruits.
Ironically, he and I were the most similar, at least in how we worked our gifts. It was a shame he couldn’t see past his prejudices and recognize that. Doubt is poisonous in our profession.
Ramirez struggled to his feet, pushing himself up with his left arm, his right wrapped in a sling of bloody rags. “Fuck that,” he said to Mac. “If that was the devil then I’ll shake his bloody hand. You know there ain’t a whiff of the dark around Thorn. If it weren’t for him, we’d all be dead. Seems to me that devil of yours saved our asses.”
“But at what cost?” Mac asked.
“This isn’t the time to worry about our souls,” Stevens interjected. “I want to know what Thorn did as much as anyone. When you’re in the field you need to know what your unit can do, but more important right now is what attacked us and why.”
Mac nodded. “Good point. We’ll figure the witch out later. If I remember correctly, you recognized that medallion, Ramirez. What haven’t you told us?”
“I don’t know for sure,” he said. “That medal . . . it reminded me of something.”
Standing off to the side, Nunez crossed himself. “La Santa Muerte,” he whispered.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Ramirez conceded.
“You said that before, in the Hummer, I think,” Mac said. “What does it mean?”
“I grew up in a Tucson barrio, but we had a lot of family back in Mexico,” Ramirez said. “My grandmother, she was a bruja, more Indian than Mexican, you know? She used to come and stay with us sometimes. When I was a kid, she’d tease me about the Santa Muerte, tell me that she’d come to take me away if I wasn’t good . . . say my prayers every night, that sort of shit. You know, scare you the way Grandmothers sometimes do.”
“She would have liked Thorn,” he added, “Even if he is a Norte and too pale for her liking. I think she would have felt a kinship with him.”
“Your grandmother was a witch?” Mac asked.
Ramirez didn’t answer at first, probably wondering how much he should say. It pissed me off that even he didn’t want to admit to any witch blood, like it was a stain or something.
I growled deep in my throat, but a soft hand touched my shoulder silencing me before anyone noticed. Though no one was near, I knew the touch of my Goddess as clearly as my own mother’s. Whatever Ramirez was saying was of interest to her as well.
“Not Wiccan, if you mean that,” Ramirez answered. “Ask Nunez if you want a better explanation, but south of the border the distinction is blurred. She walked with her gods. They were never far from her, but that isn’t my point. Even when my nana was a little girl back in her village, there was talk of the Santa Muerte, the Saint of Death.”
“You know about this too?” Stevens asked Nunez.
“Yes,” he said after a moment. “Her cult’s been growing for years. She’s a favorite of the Narcos. Drug runners from South America,” he added. “They call on her to protect their shipments, punish their enemies, all the usual shit.”
“And you think that was her?”
“It’s her image on the medallion,” Ramirez said. “And the spirit Thorn described, that’s as good a description as my abuela ever gave.”
“Why would a Saint, help drug runners?” Stevens asked.
“That’s no Saint,” Mac said, folding his arms across his chest.
“Debate her sainthood later,” Nunez said. “It’s just a title. Call her a freaky ass, drug-running spirit, for all I care. The problem’s that she’s got our scent now.”
“Something about this doesn’t make sense,” I added. “When I first saw her in the jail she wasn’t threatening. She was ghoulish and macabre, scary as Hell, but not threatening. She was almost playful—
“Like a cat with a mouse,” Ramirez interjected.
“It could be,” I agreed, “but I don’t think so. She wasn’t there for us, so what changed?”
“I took the medallion,” Nunez pointed out.
“That explains how she found us,” I said, “but not why. She was there to kill Ortiz, why would she care if we took her medal?”
“Someone doesn’t want us to know,” Mac said.
“But know what, Sergeant?” I asked. “Know that drug runners are using the Santa Muerte to shield their shipments? Nunez already knew that. Besides, we’ve only been out of that jail for an hour, two max. That’s a pretty fast response time for South American drug lords. You need rituals for something like that. You can’t just phone Hell and dial up a hit. No, we’re missing something right here.”
“That makes sense,” Mac agreed. “There might be something about this medal specifically that might give us a clue, but I’m not peeling off the lead until it’s behind a wall of spells. Proper defensive spells,” he added glancing towards me, “no offense.”
“None taken, Sarge,” I said gesturing to the blackened circle. “This was hastily done.”
“But effective,” Ramirez laughed.
“Too effective,” Mac added. “Unless I’m mistaken, those sirens are headed our way.”
Off in the distance, still miles away, I heard the familiar warble.
“If we’re still in Fulton County, you’re talking to the Sheriff,” I told Mac.
Chapter 9
Sunday 10:00
Somewhere along I-85
Muscogee County ain’t Fulton. For one thing the Army’s got better connections with the local police. That didn’t mean we didn’t roll out without hassle, but we weren’t hauled off to the local station to answer uncomfortable questions e
ither. If it weren’t for Ramirez, we would have been out of there in record time.
Mac called for a ride from Fort Benning while the paramedics descended upon Ramirez like fleas. They don’t know about menders and they wouldn’t leave a man in a t-shirt sling. He was arguing his way into a psychiatric hold before they offered him a shot. Morphine overcame his objections. Twenty minutes later they’d finished a field set and Ramirez was clutching the brunette driver’s phone number.
“Injuries are sexy,” was all he’d say about it until we were back on the road. Once we were headed back to base, he wouldn’t shut up.
I was looking forward to a hot shower and a bed, but what I wanted hadn’t counted for much since I was seventeen. Come to think of it, my desires hadn’t carried much weight before then either. Once we were through the base gates, Mac directed the MPs to turn into Officer Country.
Officers whose positions were deemed critical for the operation of the base were housed on the North end. That included the command structure of the base itself and the various commanding officers of several different Special Forces units, Shadow Company included. Captain Reynolds good naturedly referred to it as his penance for working with the magick geeks.
Officer country was a pale imitation of suburbia in the outside world. Nice three and four-bedroom houses were scattered throughout a maze of twisting streets. Emerald lawns glowed in the front and back. The Engineering Corps had even gone to the trouble of using three or four different designs in an effort to fade the Army from the design. Their efforts were wasted however, since every house was painted exactly like its neighbor in a series of neutral beige and browns supposedly pleasing to the eye. What would have truly been pleasing were signs of normalcy; kid’s toys in the front yard, maybe a bike leaning up against a front post, but there was nothing like that to be seen.
The Dead Pools Page 5