by Faith Hunter
I took a step to pound on the wall and my boot hit something solid. I aimed the flash down. It illuminated a handle in the floor. A trapdoor.
“The one you seek,” Kathyayini had said, “she is bound to the Earth. She didn’t mean to be bound, but she cannot get away now.” The three pocket watches had been transported with me, and were aligned in a semicircle around the handle, all open, all set for twelve noon. Or midnight.
I opened my mouth to call out to the guys, and snapped it closed with a clack of teeth. If I called to the men on the other side of the walls and they broke them down, would that dislodge whatever magics had brought me here? I’d hate to go boom when I’d finally found something that might be useful. I tucked the fatter disc into my pocket, zipped it closed, and gathered up the pocket watches. The minute this thing was over, I was busting the watches and dropping the discs into a bucket of sulfuric acid.
I reached down, grabbing the handle in the trapdoor. And pulled.
CHAPTER 24
That Was Before I Killed Her Sister
It opened silently, not with the hair-raising creak I expected. Nothing jumped out at me. Nothing moved. Nothing made a single sound.
The smell from the crawl space was the fetid stench of a mass grave. I aimed the flash down to see bare, sandy ground and what might have been ankle bones with two leg bones sticking out of it. The angle wasn’t good enough to see anything more, but I was just happy not to see hundreds of rats squealing away. Dead bodies, I was getting used to.
Seven small steps led down, like a ladder, open and rickety. I got a firm grip on the weapon and the flash and paced carefully down them. I stepped onto the ground, finding it firm and dry and sandy. The floor above me was not insulated, just bare boards, and I could hear people up there walking around, muffled voices through the wood and sheets of old linoleum.
I flashed the light around the crawl space. I didn’t know what I was seeing at first. Then I realized it was a head. Human. Witch. Sticking out of the sandy earth. It was also alive. The head was female, upright, and I could see a slow pulse in the neck, maybe forty beats a minute.
I scanned my light to the right and saw another head, this one less buried, with a neck and shoulders and one arm free from the ground. Female. She was wearing clothes over her thin skeleton, skin and bones showing at wrist and collar, and her hair was matted into a slimy mess. She had a chain around her neck and an amulet hung from it, open, set to three o’clock even. A little farther to the right was another woman. Only her face was visible, the rest of her buried, her head tilted back, her mouth open like a drowning victim gasping for a last breath. Witches, all. All glowing with witchy power in swirling, oily, foul shades of energy, like the death energies of everything that had ever been alive.
I moved the light again. And again. The seventh woman was Misha. She was sitting up, her legs partially buried in the sandy soil, her hands free. She still wore traces of lipstick, mascara smeared below her eyes in the bruised hollows. She had put up a fight. She had a black eye and a puffy lip. That was not like the passive Misha I had known as a child. “Good for you,” I whispered.
The light caught the gleam of metal. A cell phone rested on her lap. The amulet on her chest was open, the clock set at ten even. I wanted to rush to her, but I had no idea what to do for her and no idea if I would kill her if I tried to pull her from the dirt. I moved the flash around the rest of the circle. All of the women were buried to some extent or another. None of them were the Acheé women.
The floor was low and I bent, studying the witches. All of them were alive except the ones at my feet. I shone the light down and saw a skull with some connective tissue left, some hair, her teeth showing the black of old fillings and metal dental work.
Beside her was another skull, less preserved. They appeared to be laid out in the beginnings of some pattern I didn’t yet understand.
I moved the light around the witch circle and realized that the witches and dirt they were buried in looked . . . wrong. As I watched, something moved over Misha’s knee. And I realized that the women hadn’t been deliberately buried. The earth of the circle was instead swallowing them. I picked out the women who had been buried the least amount of time. And I studied the witch who was the most buried. She didn’t have long. The dead witches at my feet were probably the ones who had died in service and been replaced, though I didn’t know if someone had dug up the dead and dragged them here or if the earth spit them out when it was done with them. I figured the Acheé witches were hidden elsewhere, intended as replacements for the ones nearly buried.
I had no idea how to get the witches out of the ground. No idea how to stop the spell they were powering. No idea what would happen if I interrupted a working full circle and pulled a witch to safety. But I knew who might know.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when my private cell buzzed in my pocket. I flipped it open to see Eli’s icon. “Jane,” I said.
“Where are you? Alex said you disappeared inside the vamp bar.”
I looked at the low boards over my head. I could almost make out his words through the floor as well as through the cell. “Would you believe about twenty feet from you? And down a level?”
“How?”
“The black arcs painted on the floor in each room are a witch circle. Don’t ask me how they go through the walls. I don’t know. But in the center of the house is a small square place without a door, like a tiny hidden room. I think the walls are spelled, so don’t try to break in when you find it. Whoever is accessing the witches belowground is using the circles to zip from other places to this tiny space.”
“So no one sees them coming or going,” he said. “And you, being so smart and all, stepped into the witch circle in the refrigerator in the bar. Just to test it out, right? Without a witch with you to tell you where you might end up.”
“Pretty much.”
“You’re an idiot.”
I felt the tension ease away from my shoulder and spine. “I love you too. Our witches are sitting down here, under the house, directly under the circle on the floor, half-buried in the ground. Misha’s here too. They’re locked into whatever working they’re being forced to do. I have no idea how to stop the working or save them, and one witch looks like she may be near death.”
“So, how do we get you out of there?”
“I don’t know that either. If you break through the walls, you may trigger a latent defensive spell and blow yourselves up. If you come through the floor, you may trigger a spell. I don’t know how we blew up the roof without blowing up all the witches.”
“What do you know?”
“You can try to send Soul through the witch circle at the bar. Maybe she can figure out something. Meanwhile tell Rick to call Evan Trueblood and tell him to take my call.”
“Okay. Done. Five on the call to Trueblood, ten on getting Soul to the bar.”
I hung up and checked the time. I had a few minutes, so I climbed the steps and pulled the trapdoor closed, sealing me in with Misha and her new pals. I didn’t want to be stuck down here with the stink and the decomposing bodies and the silent, half-buried witches, but I didn’t want Soul to materialize halfway inside me either. I also didn’t want Soul coming through the witch circle and falling through to the ground.
I walked around the circle again as I waited for time to go by, my light settling on each witch as I passed. The pocket watches were all open, each set at an even hour. I realized that each witch was buried at a point on a clock, and the position of the witch was the time on the clock. So far so good. The dead bodies in the center, near the stairs, were also laid out in a pattern, like spokes on a wheel. I had a feeling that the patterns made by living and dead witches were intended to increase the magical working, adding a layer of complication, another part of the outcome, whatever that outcome might be intended to accomplish.
I found the woman who had the magical number 12 on her amulet. She was elderly, with sagging skin and gaunt features. She had be
en here long enough to be sitting up to her waist in the soil. I wondered if the parts of her that were hidden belowground were dead already.
Misha hadn’t been here for long. I held the light over her legs, watching for a hint of human movement—a skin twitch, anything—but I could detect nothing. I wanted to feel for a pulse on the top of her foot, but touching her seemed dangerous for us both.
Dissatisfied, I returned to the steps and sat. When my five minutes were up, I hit speed dial for Evan Trueblood, husband to Molly Everhart Trueblood, once my best friend. Of course, that was before I killed her sister.
“This better be good,” Evan growled into my ear.
I almost smiled. “I’m in Natchez, Mississippi, standing below a witch circle painted in black on the floor of a single-story home. On my level are twelve witches, all buried to some extent in the earth, involved in a working that is sucking them down into the ground and killing them. Is that good enough?”
“If you stayed away from bloodsuckers, everybody would be safer.”
Which was mostly what I had been thinking not that long ago, but I was feeling obstinate. “Yeah, because you witches take such good care of your own problems. Like a dead body rolled in a carpet, and a witch using the death magics of dozens of dead witch children to get revenge and make herself beautiful and young again,” I accused, speaking of secrets the Everharts and Truebloods once kept. “So, yeah, go ahead. Blame me. It’s so much easier than taking responsibility for your own problems.”
I could almost feel the fury vibrating through Evan, but I wasn’t going to say anything nice to make it better. This had been a long time brewing. “Now,” I said, making it clear I was changing the subject back to relevant topics. “Do you want to bitch about it, or do you want to save some witches? Because if you don’t help, I’m going to try to free them, and we might all blow up.” The silence after my tirade was almost palpable.
“Tell me everything you know about the spell,” he snarled.
And so I did, starting with de Allyon, adding in Kathyayini’s riddle, the bloody iron discs, the crosses and spikes, and ending with witches on the points of the clock. Evan asked succinct questions and listened without further comment. When I was done, he went silent. After a long moment, I heard him take a breath. “Why do you always end up with death magics to undo?”
“Just lucky?” But that wasn’t what Kathyayini had said. She had told me that I was the root cause of everything. Just like Evan had said. Which could be casual cruelty, or a way to teach me something about myself or make me face some hidden flaw. Or it could be the simple, unvarnished truth. Either way sucked.
“At least now I know why Leo hired me,” he said.
“Hired—?”
“I got a gig at the Darkness Is Forever Bar in Mobile, Alabama,” Evan interrupted, “paying me a small fortune to do an update on the lighting and sound systems. I had no idea Leo owned the joint until yesterday. He knew I wouldn’t hang around to help you, so he kept me close in case you needed my help. And because the MOC is paying me so much money, I did what he said.” Evan snorted softly. “I’m a bigger whore than you are, taking money from the chief fanghead of the U.S. Arguably,” he added. “I guess it’s possible that the MOC of New York has more scions, but not as much territory.” He fell silent, seeming to have run out of things to say on that odd note and leaving me to understand that the arguably did not refer to whether I was a whore. But I held in the snarky comeback.
“I have to study on this,” Evan said, “and make some calls. Don’t discuss us with PsyLED officials.” He disconnected.
I closed the phone when I heard something bump overhead. “There’s a handle in the floor. Pull it up,” I shouted. And only then remembered that someone other than Soul might arrive. Adrenaline rushed through me, and I shivered with reaction. I can be so stupid sometimes. I pulled a vamp-killer and a handgun, then put away the gun. I might hit one of the witches.
But when the trapdoor opened, it was Soul’s hand I saw and Soul’s feet. She had tiny feet in tiny little black boots. I put away the blade, shone the flash onto the stairs, and waited as Soul slowly descended the steps.
“Oh,” she breathed softly as she turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. “Are they wearing iron?”
“The clocks on their chests each contain an iron disc coated with blood. I’m guessing it’s de Allyon’s blood,” I said, not adding the part about skinwalker blood being in the mix. I wasn’t going to share unless I had to. “The blood-donor vamp is very, very dead. Does that make a difference in breaking the spell?”
“Even if he were here, I have no idea how to break such a powerful spell. But without his blood, I fear we are hamstrung.”
“Maybe this will help. ‘Long years past,’” I quoted Kathyayini, “‘was cold iron, blood, three cursed trees, and lightning. Red iron will set you free. Shadow and blood are a dark light, buried beneath the ground.’”
Soul’s eyes went round. “Where did you hear this?”
“An old tribal woman said it to me. She also said, ‘The one you seek is bound to the Earth. She didn’t mean to be bound, but she cannot get away now.’ Neither riddle made sense at the time. But now we have the blood-iron discs, possibly made from the iron spikes of Golgotha, and the buried witches.” I stopped, remembering the scene in Big H’s house, all that white and fancy furniture and silk and satins and one butt-ugly necklace around the neck of the blood-master. He had dangled it outside his clothes, as if proud of it, though it didn’t mesh with anything around him. He wore it as if he wanted it to be seen. By me. As if drawing attention to it.
“And the Master of the City of Natchez wears a copper chain on his neck with something made of corroded metal, wrapped in copper wire, hanging from it. I thought it was just ugly jewelry, but why would he display jewelry so different from anything else in his taste? What if it’s the same iron?” I tried to find sense in it all, but it was like trying to untangle a snarl of copper wire or a skein of yarn after a cat had played with it. And so much for Evan’s order to say nothing to PsyLED.
“I don’t know if he’s bound like the witches or took it as a trophy or using it now himself. But—I know you said it had to be something big, like a boulder or a tree—but what if the necklace is the focus we’re looking for? The amulet.”
“It should be something large,” she started. “But this is something I’ve never heard of before. I shouldn’t base my conclusions on old experience,” Soul said.
“I think the thing Big H is wearing is something from de Allyon, the maker of this circle, and Kathyayini’s riddles were meant to light a path into a possible future. I think he’s wearing blood iron.”
“It is still daylight. You can find Hieronymus’ lair and take the necklace. Find a way to undo the working. But you don’t have much time if we are to save that one,” she pointed at the woman whose face was nearly under the sand.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, baiting her, herding her where I needed her to go. “All we need is the location of his lair. Easy-peasy. We’ll torture his primo, Clark, for the location. And then I’ll break and enter and steal the necklace.”
Soul’s face underwent a change as she got what I was saying. “I will not give up the lives here,” she said fiercely. “And, yes, I’m willing to turn a blind eye to stop them from dying.”
Soul’s eyes latched onto me with claws, the feeling of being under her regard much like the feeling of Beast’s claws in my brain. “You have a plan.” Again it was more an accusation than a statement.
“Maybe I do,” I said. “But to make it work and not go to jail, I need PsyLED to stay out of my way for a while. Maybe keep the local cops away.”
“Are you going to kill anyone?” she hedged.
“Not if I can help it. At least no one human. And I’ll have the Master of the City of New Orleans’ approval for it.”
“Legal papers signed with Leo Pellissier’s official seal?”
“Eventually.”
Soul looked at the woman whose head was nearly buried by the sand. As if memorizing the witch’s features and her expression of total horror, Soul said, “I can do what you are asking. I can look the other way. But I do not think that Rick LaFleur will allow you to go without him.”
“We’re not gonna tell Ricky-Bo.”
“I think that is wise. His attachment to you is deep. As is his pain.”
“Ummm . . .” I stopped. That was all I had. And I had no idea what kind of pain Soul was talking about. Rick had a lot of pain every day of the full moon, but I didn’t think that was what she meant.
“Do you love the primo?” she asked.
Shock zinged through me at the question. “Bruiser held me down while I was forcibly bound to Leo Pellissier.” My words hung on the air like a bell rung in an empty tower. Soul’s eyes were appalled at the violation. I sucked in a painful breath. “We done here?”
“Yes. Go break the law, Jane Yellowrock. But be careful. If you kill humans, all bets are off.”
“I plan to kill only the ones trying to kill me.”
“That is difficult and will result in far too much paperwork, but it is acceptable.”
“Are we bonding here?” I asked.
“I would love to have tea with you sometime, when lives are not in danger and when I am not doing something that goes against all the rules of law that I hold dear.”
“Ditto. Café au lait and beignets at Café du Monde. Except that we’ll have tea.”
Soul’s eyes traveled around the witch circle, her body flowing in a balanced pirouette. “Excellent. I’ll follow you out soon.”
I pulled my weapon and, hoping I wouldn’t be transported to some distant place, I bounded up the steps and closed the trapdoor. My stomach wrenched at the transition. Happily, I landed back where I started.