I pulled Mother Earth into the diamond, hoping that doing so wouldn’t somehow provide the half-dog creature more power. My ring sucked in power like a vortex.
What had been a flickering flame from the ring flared into a white-hot stream. I gasped from the heat, only partially shielded from the diamond by the gold. The laser light hit the blue creature and smoked. Black blood spurted, a steaming mix of melting blue goop that puddled on the floor.
The dog-dragon howled a decree from hell, but released its bite on White Feather.
The weight of it toppled me backwards. The side of its mouth was still on fire, but it wasn’t done fighting. My grip slipped. I shouted a desperate warning, “White Feather look out!”
The tail whipped around, but White Feather fell between it and me, catching the creature with a blast of air that spun it backwards. The creature smacked into the wall hard enough to crack bones.
White Feather wasn’t done, either.
I rolled to my knees, watching gusts of air tear the construct into pieces, one scale at a time. Silver up and ready to burn, I searched the darkness for more danger, but the original dragon was gone. By the time my eyes circled back to the first mess, there was nothing left, not even a growl.
“What...White Feather? What happened to the other one?” I spun forward and then reversed. There was no puff of smoke, no lingering scream, nothing. I stumbled to my feet, my back to White Feather, searching the corners of the room.
The two creatures had disappeared as if they had never existed. Whatever nether hell spawned them had reclaimed them. I squinted in the light of the dropped flashlight. It was hard to be certain, but the homeless guy no longer appeared to be breathing.
White Feather eased to the ground, emitting a strange wheezing bubbling noise. He clutched his side. “Need...a bubble.”
How would his protective bubble help? I felt for the silver beads in the alleyway. The silver conveyed a sense of garbage on its way to decomposing and within the earth’s burrows, rats or mice scuttled.
I reached for the silver bead Lynx carried, but couldn’t find it. “Lynx?” I called out. I concentrated harder on the silver bead I had given him, but it wasn’t in the front or the back.
Time ticked by at an alarming rate. I knelt and examined the mess that was White Feather’s side. From the noises he made, his lung had been punctured, but the bubbling had stopped.
Something he was doing blocked air from leaving his lung.
When I would have put my hands over the wound, White Feather shook his head.
“Can you hold it? How long?” I asked.
He nodded at me, but stayed still on the floor.
Frantic and needing better light, I used the fallen flashlight to hunt for the light switch. Secrecy was moot. We needed help and fast. Racing back to White Feather, I focused again on the silver Lynx carried. I located silver inside a nearby shop, but it wasn’t the bead Lynx carried. “Lynx, where in moonlight madness have you gone now?”
There wasn’t time to find him. White Feather required medical attention immediately. “Lynx?” I yelled loud enough to bring the dragon and twelve of his friends back from the dead. I dug through my backpack for my phone, still probing the front and back for the missing silver bead.
Nothing. The kid was nowhere. What had gotten to him? He wouldn’t abandon us even if he had witnessed what was happening inside. Right?
I dialed my mom, rattled off my plea and the address, and then dialed 911.
“Lynx is gone,” I told White Feather. I could feel the silver in the alley and even move it, but that would be pointless. We were on our own.
Chapter 21
The homeless guy was dead. There had been no indication that he had controlled the creatures, but after examining the blood remnants on his arms, albeit from afar, it was suddenly obvious the designs resembled the dragon and the dog-dragon thing that had attacked.
I recognized the shape of the dog-creature mainly because of the long tail that went all the way to the man’s wrist and ended in a dripping, barbed point.
Blood still seeped from both of the tats, but there was no color of ink remaining on his skin.
My eyes flicked from White Feather’s wound to the tats, to the wall where the dragon had been torn apart before disappearing. Blood constructs, they had to be.
But who controlled them? More importantly, who created them and why? The dead guy had no reason to pay for a tat and release the constructs to rampage. There had been no sign of movement from him even when the things attacked.
Thinking through the problem kept me distracted from White Feather’s pain, but it didn’t stop me from hunting for vials of holy water inside my backpack. I emptied both of them into my water bottle. “Constructs are black magic.” I peeled back White Feather’s shirt. The bite was bad, jagged and bleeding profusely. The dog-dragon had been substantial enough to snap at least one rib and rip into White Feather’s lung. I sprinkled the holy water on the wound.
Like peroxide, it bubbled and frothed. “Moonlight Madness! I guess simulacra don’t like holy cleansing.”
Before all the water completely dribbled out, I refilled the bottle from the sink. Holy water was still holy water, diluted or not.
White Feather never protested; he concentrated on breathing.
Lynx had smelled magic, ink and a lizard-like scent at the other sites. The lizard smell must have been a remnant of the basic nature called to be the construct. But what purpose did the construct serve? And if it killed the originators, you’d run out of volunteers in a hurry. Of course the homeless guy hadn’t been a volunteer. He’d been lured here.
“Kidnap a victim. Punch a tat all over his arms. Power the tats. Rob the place. Shoot. Whoever was here had a key!” But they hadn’t necessarily had keys to the other places. And the lizard and tattoo smell had been on a broken window and under a door, indicating the tat constructs had entered without disrupting any alarms. The small chink in the window was barely noticeable. A lizard-creature sliding in under the jewelry store door might raise suspicions if caught on camera, but the lizard’s entry didn’t breach any alarms. Once in, the controlled creature or the humans who followed could erase the files that recorded the construct.
“Power a construct. Send it in ahead of time. Turn off the alarm?” Plausible.
The salon probably had a bottle of real peroxide, something I didn’t happen to carry in my backpack. A quick survey of the cabinet above the sink supplied both rubbing alcohol and peroxide. Too much of the alcohol would be bad. It would also burn like a cattle brand, which could be disastrous for a guy focused on controlling his breathing.
I did the best I could, muttering cleansing spells, but not about to pack the wound with herbs, not until he had a real healer examine him.
There was nothing more to be gained by waiting longer, so I called Gordon to report the body. He didn’t pick up, but I left the address and a cryptic message. My focus remained on White Feather. The front door was locked, but a quick check out the front windows showed nothing moving in the dark.
I returned to White Feather, lending him spiritual strength and a whole lot of worry. His brow beaded with sweat, but his concentration held. He squeezed my hand.
I examined the wound again, muttering another protection spell. Healer I was not, but he had lent me the power of wind magic at least once. Mother Earth was an energy source for me, and he wore my ring. Maybe a little silver from the ring into his system would kill any ill spells.
My help may have been negligible, but the moment I drew in energy, the silver at my wrist tingled a warning, a lingering connection to the silver balls in the alley. The current was a vibration, footsteps across Mother Earth. One of the beads was in motion.
“Lynx!” I jumped for the back door even though it was propped open.
Seconds later, he arrived with unexpected reinforcements. “Tara?” She might not be as experienced a healer as Mom, but then again, she was better than nothing. “He’s in h
ere.”
I probably should have warned Tara that “he” was White Feather because she stopped dead in her tracks when she spotted him.
I shoved her forward. “Hurry! His lung is punctured. The other guy is past helping.”
White Feather gasped for air. Blood and bubbles oozed from his side. “You...shouldn’t be—”
“Don’t argue,” I yelled.
“Ground for me,” Tara cried, clutching my hand. “I have to save him.” She faced away from me then, covering the wound with her hand. “I need my hands to work. Touch my shoulder or my head and ground!”
She hiccuped in complete panic, but placed both hands over the wound. Her breathing was as harsh as his was bubbly. Grounding I could do, not that it had done any good before. I put my hand on her shoulder, only to have fire race up my skin, scalding like steam. I tried to jerk away, but Tara grabbed my hand, sending even more pain slicing across my wrist.
“Please!” she begged. “You have to help me!”
The skin under my bracelet went red and then blistered, but even as my arm shook with the effort to escape, the electricity followed me. A hundred knives stabbed and then seared upwards.
I did what I always did when in danger. I linked to earth as if my life depended on it.
Tara didn’t waste any more time. She pressed her hand on White Feather’s ribs. Whatever she was doing hurt like hell, but if it helped White Feather, so be it.
My teeth clenched and nearly cracked from the pressure, but I stopped fighting the electrical charge that was Tara. If I hadn’t spent my entire life grounding I’d never have been able to hold the link. Mother Earth didn’t want the current surging through my arm. Her acceptance was a begrudging groan, a protest that accepted the flow and returned heat.
Steam rose through a tiny crack in the concrete, floating directly to my silver.
White Feather gasped a clear breath, but his eyes stared straight up, unseeing. My shoulders hunched from the strain of the odd fire traveling into my silver. My feet and legs gained the intimate experience of a lobster boil.
White Feather gasped again.
“I only know how to knit it closed,” Tara mumbled. “I can’t heal like some others can.”
Perfection when it came to stopping blood loss and closing a gap was hardly required at the moment. As long as she could seal the lung puncture, he’d make it. He hadn’t lost enough blood for it to be dangerous, but the lung injury could be fatal.
Tara rotated the pressure of her hands as if washing a plate. His blood didn’t suck back in, and the wound remained a mess of torn skin and muscles, but his chest started to rise and fall more naturally.
“I can’t—I don’t know how to fix it better.” She hiccuped, wiping one bloody hand down her jeans.
“Can I let go of you?” I hissed between my teeth.
Tara collapsed off her knees onto her butt, exhausted. “I don’t think I can do more. The rib might hurt it again too.” She glared at me with accusation. “You aren’t a decent ground for me. My God, your Mom said I’d have to work to find a good one, and that some people wouldn’t be able to do it at all, but that was horrible.”
“It wasn’t that great from my end either.” I settled next to her and checked White Feather’s side. The tear made by sharp teeth wasn’t bleeding anymore, but it still looked as if White Feather had been dragged across concrete. “That was the most awful grounding I’ve ever had to hold.”
“Healers can’t ground,” Tara said. “That’s why I was never able to do any side magic. I thought I was just stupid, but turns out the healing comes from within so we have to have an outside ground or there is nowhere for all the pain and suffering to disperse. We couldn’t live with all the buildup so we have to conduct it elsewhere.”
My mouth gaped, but no protest came out. My mother was at least part healer. Why didn’t I know she couldn’t ground?
Maybe because she’d never used me as one?
The answer was not hard to figure out. Dad was her ground. “Why can’t I ground for a healer?” I inspected the blister under my bracelet. As gently as possible, I moved the piece of jewelry to my other wrist.
Tara shrugged. “Earth magic and healing don’t mix. Your mom said fire burns off the pain so it accomplishes a grounding very well. I think I could use White Feather because he could divert it through wind. But the earth thing. Man. That hurt.”
“Yeah, I’ll say.”
“Well, I’m not that good yet at pushing it away from me. I’ve never had to do anything like this either. Your Mom taught me all the enhancements for first aid. Stopping blood flow was the first. But she said I’d need a different teacher to learn to knit skin, bone or muscles properly. OhmyGod this is such a mess. Your mom would totally freak out at the mess I made.”
The dragon had made the mess, not Tara, but when White Feather groaned, the thought fled. We both reached for him at the same time. I grabbed his hand and Tara soothed hers over the wound.
“I mashed things back together, but we’d better take him to the doctor.”
Doctors weren’t my favorite, but she was the healer. If she said he needed one, he’d get one. There was no need to check the dead man’s pulse, but once White Feather was sitting up, I did it anyway.
Gordon arrived just in time to escort Mom in ahead of the ambulance.
Chapter 22
White Feather was not an ideal patient. He was tense, moody and downright threatening as we prepared to transport him to a safe place. Since Mom would likely be more help than most doctors, we hustled out and left Gordon to deal with the ambulance and the dead guy. Besides, it would be impossible to explain to medical personnel that White Feather needed antibiotics for a dog bite. Tara had closed the punctures. And how would we explain the deep claw marks? Yes, sir, he’s been attacked by a giant chicken?
Tara went from saving the day to a ball of weep. My mother drove her to the house, while I drove White Feather and myself.
As we shuffled in the door, Mom said, “Healing is very emotional. Earth is excellent to draw from, but it doesn’t take emotion or human pain.”
Watching Tara sniffle and tremble, I wasn’t sure who was in worse shape, her or White Feather. White Feather was still in agony, and even though Tara wasn’t standing next to him, she was not only reacting to his pain, but the residual effects from the healing and the emotional baggage because he was her brother. “She’s a mess.”
“The healing, it tears you up inside. The pain is gone, but the after effects drain.” She turned to Tara. “Remember what I taught you. Take the emotions and transfer them to strength and happiness. Convert them.” She gave her a pat on her hand and bustled over to examine White Feather’s wound.
It didn’t take Mom long to deliver the bad news. “There is a spell here.”
“Aztec curses.” None of the spells we’d seen at the salon had been benevolent ones.
Tara let loose an agonized moan as if she were caught in the bad spell herself.
I lost patience. “Tara, get your act together. Transfer all that emotion into something useful.”
My mother shot her best witch’s glare at me for my attitude. We rarely clashed, but this was White Feather! We didn’t have time to stop and train Tara.
“Tara,” she said gently, “remember your exercises.”
Tara blubbered, “Ceeenter. Feeel. Bloock.”
It was painful to watch her hiccup and sob around the mantra. She was trying, I’d give her that, but the girl had enough emotional energy for an elephant, and she wasn’t the only one in the room panicking.
“Oh, for pity’s sake.” Since I couldn’t heal, my only usefulness was teaching Tara to ground. “Go somewhere else, like you did when we practiced the witching fork.”
“I can’t ground on my own!” she wailed.
“That doesn’t mean you can’t find a partial way to disperse the emotion. And just think, if it doesn’t work, I’ll ground for you. Then we can both hop to the hospital in case
there’s anything left of us that can be saved.”
She sucked in a huge gulp of air, and it came out a half laugh. “You’re so stupid.”
“Only sometimes.”
“Hang onto it,” Mom said softly. “Keep the laugh. Channel the rest there.”
As soon as she concentrated, Tara lost it again.
White Feather opened one eye balefully. His stress was as deep as my own; I didn’t even need the ring to feel it.
That jolted me. “The angst.” He was in pain physically and still angry about the attack. “Mom, can you soak up some of his emotion? Tara’s super-sensitive to him.” I positioned myself so that Tara’s view of him was blocked and asked her, “Where can you go that is calm? Take a deep breath and go there.”
“I can’t! My room is too boring! That barely worked for the witching sticks!”
People not tied to the earth and its huge pool of peace confounded me. Mother Earth was such a natural link for me, I couldn’t imagine being without her. If not earth, what?
Something to tame emotions...water. Mountains. Whoops. I was back to earth. “You’ve got to redirect. Think of your favorite book. Or a movie that makes you laugh.”
She hiccuped two quick breaths, filtering my suggestions. “Okay. But I hated Harry Potter. Everyone knows magic doesn’t work like that.”
“She always blames other people for stressing her out,” White Feather grumbled. He glanced her way and then sighed deeply, winced and grounded.
The vibes from him hadn’t particularly bothered me, but as soon as he settled himself, the difference was a breath of fresh air. My bracelet cooled. My ring had been tingling, but I hadn’t even noticed, maybe because I knew the source or was stressed myself.
I scooped up his hand. He squeezed my fingers. Emotional grounding wasn’t just for healers. The calm between us was a loop of comfort. Maybe we could help Tara if we understood it better, but the mere thought of dealing with her made my nerves ratchet up a notch.
Under Witch Curse (Moon Shadow Series) Page 12