by Faith Hunter
Occam ordered, “Get back. Get on your knees.”
“Keep her talking,” JoJo said.
Loriann said to Occam, “You’re not gonna shoot an unarmed woman, so listen to me.” I felt the power in the word listen. She had used a wyrd on him, forcing his compliance. “They’ll kill Jason. They won’t care. He’s just another blood junkie to them.”
I pressed on my bloodlust, forcing it down, wrapping it tight. I drew away from the blood and the need and concentrated on Loriann’s voice. “If you go in, if Rick goes in, they’ll be careful. You can keep Jason alive. Put the gun away. We’re just talking.”
JoJo cursed. “Sending help, Ingram. Hang on, Occam.”
“Not interested in going up against SWAT,” Occam said, sounding marginally himself. There was a soft clatter on the tongue of the truck. “See that? That’s Bubba killing a blood-servant. Just broke his neck. Snap.” I figured Occam was holding the assault rifle, trained on Loriann, and had placed his tablet on the truck, but I didn’t risk a look, my attention on the house and the fight, my bloodlust snared by the violence.
“I can unbind the spell on Rick,” she bargained, her words soothing. “As soon as Jason is safe. But you have to let him save my brother first.”
“And we should believe you? On anything?” Occam said, still fighting her attraction. His words echoed in my earbud. JoJo was recording all this.
Her tone waffling between desperation and threats, Loriann said, “He’s being forced through a shift right now, even in the cage. You know how that feels, don’t you, the need to shift while trapped in silver. You have to help Rick and he has to save my brother. Rick has no choice.”
I wanted to hit her. Or drain her.
My fist clenched in the pot of soil, my fingers closing on dirt and the sprig of vampire tree. Four fingertips of my other hand were touching the soil beneath me. The land had tasted her blood. I heaved back and back on the bloodlust. It turned to me. And then to Loriann, whose wrists were bleeding. Small splatters fell to the earth near me. Eyes closed, I knew blood. I could feel each drop, could hear them pass through the air and hit the soil, even over the cacophony of the comms. Could taste them through the ground. Blood inside the house. Blood near me. Soulwood reached for the blood, wanting.
Over comms came the sound of screaming. Someone was hurt. One of ours. More blood fell.
The feel of magic rose through the earth, a wave of dark power. Jason had set off a magical attack. Something prearranged. A wyrd spell. Others of our crew began to scream. T. Laine was shouting in Latin. It was her sleep spell.
“Rick’s shifting. He’s in pain,” Loriann said, cajoling. “Let Rick loose and he’ll finish the shift and the pain will go away.”
“And then he’ll trot off and save your worthless piece-of-crap brother,” Occam growled, “thanks to your blood magic.”
“Hurry,” I whispered into my mic to JoJo, eyes tight against the growing bloodlust.
“Once Jason is free,” Loriann said, “I’ll break the spell in Rick’s tattoo. I put in a backdoor. I can do it.”
“Don’t believe you,” Occam snarled, sounding too much like his cat.
Through the earth, I felt someone coming closer, as subtle and graceful as a cat. FireWind. Notified by JoJo.
“Listen to me,” Loriann growled, almost sounding cat herself, furious, attacking. “It’s not too late. I can help Rick get in and back out.”
Over the earbuds, on the para freq, I heard Gonzales say, “What the hell is that? Open fire!” His words were drowned out by weapons fire.
“Kill it!” someone else shouted.
T. Laine screamed to be heard over the firing, “No! It isn’t real. It’s just a magic construct! Stop firing! Stop! Cease fire! Cease fire!”
Someone else screamed. Female. Vampire. The ululation of true-death.
“Too bad. I gave you a choice,” Loriann said.
Magic slammed into me. Ripped through flesh and bone. Occam screamed, a cat cry of rage. Rick screamed. I grunted as my muscles gave way. I slid flat to the ground, biting my tongue, blood and spit spattering as my face landed on the dirt. I’d have been bruised if I had been standing. Occam growled. Loriann had somehow coerced him into a shape-shift. A hard, brutal, fast change. Rick screamed again. I couldn’t get my body to move, much less stand and fight.
Metal clanged. Loriann had opened Rick’s cage door. Leaves erupted from the ground in the spots of my blood. In the spots of Loriann’s blood as the earth responded. Tendrils of fresh vines reached for my bare skin. My bloodlust reached for Loriann. I hauled back on it, struggling to not take her for the land. Because what if she really could unbind Rick? I forced open my eyes. Saw Loriann, her back to me.
Numb, clumsy, I pushed away from the earth. Stood. Grabbed Loriann, my fingers on her bloody wrist. Hunger flooded through me.
Rick, in black cat form, and Occam’s spotted cat lunged past us, toward the house. Grindylows raced in from somewhere, following. Claws out. I was too late.
Pulling on Soulwood’s strength, I wrenched Loriann’s fingers back and straight-armed her to her knees. “I felt magic,” I said. “That was a spell! You’re manipulating the tat spells on Rick. Right now.”
Loriann laughed.
“She’s using the tat binding,” I said into my mic. But it was covered in my blood and I didn’t know how clearly JoJo would hear. “She sent Occam and Rick to save Jason. Two grindys are after them.” I could feel the magic coursing through her, following Rick.
FireWind finally arrived, silent. He clubbed Loriann to the ground, a single, vicious fist to the head. It knocked her unconscious. He strapped the silver blood-cuffs back on Loriann’s wrists. With hands that were far stronger than a human’s, he untwisted the wire of a second, similar cuff and wrapped it around her head. Her wyrd magic stopped. Like a clean slice through the air. But Rick and Occam were already inside.
FireWind was cold and brutal, his expression blank ferocity. “Can you call them back?” he asked me.
“I can try.” I dropped down and curled my legs onto the blanket. “But you might have to cut me free. Use steel.” FireWind ordered someone to watch Loriann Ethier and he knelt beside me.
I dug in the gobag, fingers finding the broken piece of black stone from the time of Rick’s original inking. Stolen from Rick’s house in my B and E. I had no idea why he kept it. I didn’t care. It was part of the spell that had bound him. I had stolen it to use in a last ditch effort that might help him. I dropped it in my lap. Put a fingertip on the earth. Shoved my hand into the pot of Soulwood.
I reached for my land. And for Rick. There was strange power in the ground. A swirling miasma so thick it was like heavy oil and clotted blood. Light and dark energies, swirling, struggling. The fist was uncoiling, its dark energies anathema to the life of the earth. The fist shoved up through the stockyard ground, reaching for freedom it could only gain as the dark of the moon fell below the horizon. Magma boiled behind the fist, full of power.
The massive sentient sleeping presence beneath the earth, the soul of the land, stirred. The earth trembled. Demon, Soulwood, and the spirit of the earth were about collide. This would be very bad.
Closer to me, magics clouded the air and beat against the surface of the ground, contained but powerful. There was blood everywhere. I called to Soulwood and through my land I called to Occam. My spotted cat answered with a growl, always human enough to know me. I called to Rick. And . . . there. There he was. I found him.
His magic was hot and cold and prickly and furred. Burning bright. He was different from the last time I touched his power. He was more . . . more were-creature. He was magic. He was power. Flaring, intense. He was an alpha, one who carried magic in every cell of his body. Yet that magic was constrained, packed down, restricted. Unfocused. Inward turned. Trapped.
His magic was trapped.
As if in a net.
The tattoos were the trap I sensed, the magics holding him back.
“Ethier!” FireWind coming to his feet. Shouting. Blood in the house. Gunfire. The sound of a body falling and the drumming of running feet. Loriann getting away.
I reached out. Soulwood reached out. Rootlets and leaves burst from the wood in the walls of the house. I placed Soulwood over the net that constrained Rick’s power. Soaked Soulwood into the fibers of the spell that controlled him. It burned. The cold burning of witch magic, wrapped around and into the hotter magic of the wereleopard. Geometry and mathematics in every tiny, microscopic witch strand. Soulwood stretched and sprouted, like rootlets seeking water. And grew into the witch magic . . .
The strands were . . . the tiny punctures that once punched ink and magic into his skin. The pigments of the tattoo. And the vampire blood. There. That frozen, clotted bit of magic. Soulwood found the blood and took it. Broke it down. Whisked it away and into the earth. Ate it. And more foreign blood there. Cat blood. Easy to use, a useful sacrifice for the land. And . . . Jason’s blood.
Rick screamed. Occam screamed. Silver. Silver was everywhere. Silver and blood and burning. My magic was ripped away from the tattoos.
Occam’s leopard took him over, an emotional reaction so fast, so full of fear, Soulwood couldn’t follow. It was fear-flee-death-flame-burn-run-death . . .
I reached through Rick’s eyes. Saw the cats had been caught in a silver mesh trap, one with spines that shoved through their pelts and into their flesh. Jason had set a magical and physical trap to capture Rick. He had instead caught both cats. And both grindys.
Black cat blood. Spotted cat blood. Both of them magic. Two grindylows. Surely magic too. Their blood on the magical cuffs Jason wore.
The new moon below the horizon.
The spell in the earth.
The ground beneath me quivered. Shook.
Earthquake.
The fist in the circle, in the stockyard, beat against the power that had imprisoned it in the dark eons ago.
Light. Might. Purpose. Some unimaginable power holding it trapped.
The fist beat that cage. Cracks began to form at the point of impact. The witch circle fed power to the fist’s battering. My mind was open and aware of everything the magic touched, everything and everyone.
Rick screamed. His cat in agony. The fist hardened. Solidified by the power in Rick’s cat blood. Trapped in Jason’s spell. The silver net stealing Rick’s life. The fist hit the boundary of the power holding it in stasis.
It burst free. The earth at the circle erupted, rock and dirt flying into the air. The fist opened into the evening air. B’KuL’s open hand, reaching for the curse, reaching for the blood that powered the spell.
Jason summoned B’KuL, the sound of the name vibrating through the land. I felt blood flow. The blood sorcerer had cut the throat of a waking vampire. Calling.
Dark power blasting, the open hand of B’KuL flew through the night. Into . . . into the house where T. Laine and SWAT were. Where Occam was. Where Rick was. Where Jason was.
The hand of power wrapped itself around Jason. Jason’s spell reached for Rick.
I might kill my boss. My friend. But—
I concentrated on the broken black stone. And I shoved the entire might of Soulwood through the stone into Rick’s tattoos. Shredding the magic in the ink. The magic that held him, bound him, used him. The magic that tied him to Jason and, through the blood witch, to the demon. And maybe tied all the magic to Rick’s soul. The broken chunk of black marble shattered.
Rick’s were-magics sizzled. Exploded. Magic like a flashbang. But bigger. Hotter. The magical mesh constraining Rick’s tattoo magic erupted. I yanked Soulwood from him. Freeing Rick from the tattoo magic. And from Soulwood. Rick tore himself from the tatters of the old spell that had trapped and tortured him.
His power burst free, burning through the last strands of the tattoo magic. But he was still trapped in a silver net with a raging, panicked Occam-cat and grindys. He opened his mouth and I thought he said my name.
Soulwood and I shoved a single vine of our might against one tiny spot on the silver net.
I thought of life. Of the roots of trees that broke apart boulders. My land, my tree, forced a hole through the silver net that held the cats and grindys, and attacked it from within. Growing, wrenching, ripping the silver needles from the cats’ flesh. Tearing into the spell set within it. Cleaving the spell. It fell into shavings and strips and strands of silver that tinkled to the concrete beneath the cats. I ripped Soulwood away.
The demon needed a sacrifice to push more of his power to the surface. B’KuL’s hand curled around the blood witch, evaluating the life and years and time in the cells of his summoner. Jason made a gurgling sound. “Your sacrifice is there. Take his years,” he pointed at Rick.
Rick and Occam were free, but disoriented. Weak. The cats were staggering away from the silver wire, crawling to the doorway behind them. The grindys rode the cats’ backs, holding on, cat fur in their cute little hands. The cats pushed through the vines waving in the air and headed for an exit.
B’KuL dropped his host to the floor, into a springy mass of leaves. But instead of reaching for the cats, the demon shifted his attention from Jason to the explosion of power that was Soulwood. I yanked myself away. But the fist of demon power opened and reached for my land, running its metaphysical fingers through the energies of life, through the leaves filling the basement, as if entranced.
I rolled away. Or tried to. I opened my eyes. Saw that the roots along Roseberry Road had grown up and trapped my feet. “Cut me!” I shouted. “Cut me free!”
The steel blade slashed through the roots anchoring my feet to the land. But my arm was rooted to the pot of Soulwood soil. The vampire tree had grown a cage around me. Trapping me to itself.
“Stupid tree! Fine. I’ll use you. Cut my feet free!”
“I’m trying,” FireWind snarled. He hacked through the roots tying me to the ground. His single black braid whipped back and forth with his effort. The pressure fell away. My feet were unshackled.
I thrust upright, grabbed my gobag, and raced to the house. Fell against the wall, to the ground, cracking the pot and dumping the soil and the sprig of the vampire tree against the house. It had grown roots, a twisted mass of them. I landed on the gobag. From my pockets I yanked the baggie with the smear of Jason’s blood and tore through it with my teeth. Dumped it onto the soil of Soulwood and onto the vampire tree.
“This one,” I said to the tree. “Stop him. He’s yours.”
The roots sent me an image of the Green Knight. Leafy armor. Pale green horse. It tunneled through the ground. Growing faster than was possible except for the power that was Soulwood. I fed my land to the vampire tree. It was eager. It was hungry. So was my land. Blood. It wanted a sacrifice.
So did the demon. But the earth power of Soulwood slipped through his clawed fingers.
The boy who called the dark power cut a still-sleeping vampire. Jason whispered, “Not enough. Not enough. I need more.” The vampire woke, screamed in terror, and bled. The dark fist wrapped around the vampire and sucked the undeath from him. The vamp disintegrated into ash.
SWAT retreated from the dark power and T. Laine threw up a hedge of thorns to protect them.
B’KuL’s hand whipped back to Jason. Its forefinger sliced the skin of Jason’s chest. Reached inside. Jason made a strange sound, strangled, shocked, full of terror. The demon was attacking him. Possessing him. The bargain Jason had planned to betray was instead folding back onto him, devouring him.
And I had given that same boy to the Green Knight. I followed the tree through the earth and up through the openings in the walls made by the local flora as it burst into leaf. Soulwood and the vampire tree unfurled; vines and thorns and reaching tendrils wrapped themselves around t
he blood witch. The tree extruded thorns and jammed them inside him. Blood splattered. Feeding the earth. I had a momentary fear that the demon would turn on the tree, but it seemed that the fist of B’KuL had no frame of reference for the vampire tree that was stealing its prey. The demon didn’t even notice.
Jason writhed in agony. But the tree wanted more, cutting into the life and undeath of humans and vampires in cages, even as it claimed the blood witch. I hauled the tree back from the cages. Consumed with its own needs, its own bloodlust, it almost refused my call to save the prisoners.
The sun set. The power of the curse grew.
Through the vines and leaves and thorns I felt/saw/tasted/knew the energies of the blood sorcerer. And Loriann, racing into the fight to save her brother.
Elsewhere, the blood and the power of the vampires were being spilled in the house. The ones in cages, the Green Knight and I ignored. The ones free and barricaded in the back of the room, those the tree and I went after. Roots and thorns grew into them. Living stakes. The vampires awoke and fought. But the tree, sentient and eager, would not be stopped. Taking a sacrifice. Just like the demon did, I thought.
From belowground, local vines pushed through cracks in the concrete slab foundation and into the walls, the wood once grown on nearby land. The wood in the walls, awakened by my blood, bloomed. Put out roots. Growing. They twined with the vampire tree. Roots and vines and thorns. Jason screamed in unearthly agony. Dying.
Using the vampire blood I fed the earth.
Loriann threw herself at the body of her brother, held in the demon’s fist, trying to save him. The fist and the tree both accepted her as a willing sacrifice. She was dead before she could scream. Her ashes scattered across Jason. Ashes and dust clogged the air; bits of dissolving vampire clothing, shoes, hair, and desiccated flesh fell and were devoured by the roots that broke up the concrete slab foundation. The tree tore apart the house and the vampires and their humans. Soulwood took its due, and sucked the remains into the earth. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.