Anywhere else, and I would have been cautious reading the earth. I had learned the hard way not to dive into the land, but to touch it with a fingertip and ease into the ground. But this was Soulwood. This was home. I toed off my shoes and placed my bare feet on the ground. The soil against my soles was dark and rich, composed of organic compounds and minerals; this close to the rill of water and the broken stone of the hillside, it had rock chips throughout in dozens of browns and tans and blacks. I leaned against a boulder, cool and sturdy at my back, and let down my hair. It was sweaty and thick as a tangled ball of tree roots; it curled around my face and shoulders. I worked my fingertips into the soil, scratching with my nails until fingers and palms were below the surface of the earth.
Rootlets coiled up to my flesh as if inspecting me, but they didn’t try to grow into my skin. A simple nudge sent them into place, touching, but not drinking, not damaging me. Oak and poplar and maple, even a Douglas fir, shoved against my flesh, the soil rippling, quivering, and rising as the roots reached for me, dislodging the sediment. When they ran out of room, they rose above the ground and arched over my feet and hands like loose socks and mittens. I sighed in contentment.
Time passed. I sank into the land. Knew it. Knew everything on it. The coyote family down the hill. The small herd of does and young nibbling grasses. The smaller but more rowdy bachelor herd. Squirrels sleeping in the heat of day. Birds pecking at the ground, several at a small pond of water, bathing, splashing. A feral cat, ready to pounce on them. A bobcat watching them all, curious about the smaller cat but not hungry enough to take its meal. An owl nest with juveniles and two adults. A dozen turkey buzzards perched near the road at the bottom of the hill, ripping at a carcass, a deer hit by a car sometime in the last week.
I reached for the vampire tree, which was enormous now. The biggest part of the tree was at the original site, where I had pulled on the tree to heal me after I was shot and lay dying. The bole of the trunk was massive there, bigger than some houses, more than twenty feet across. The branches twisted and draped, so heavy they had settled to the ground like huge sinuous snakes. The root system covered the entire church land, having sent rootlets out in every direction, poking up a small stem and a few leaves every few yards, as if tasting the air, testing the world in that spot. The tree had formed a twenty-foot-tall hedge behind the chain-link fence at the church’s gates. It had even tested a few places on my own land, but it hadn’t claimed the ground as it had the church lands. The vampire tree was interested in something taking place at God’s Cloud, enough so that I could do what I wanted without attracting it to me.
I reached through the land to the bits of bloody tissue. Rick’s blood was easy to recognize and access because I had claimed him for the land as I healed him. He was a part of Soulwood. Not sure what I was looking for, I studied the blood, the twists and turns and things that didn’t feel human. I studied Loriann’s. I turned my attention to the blood I had collected from Jason, not to claim him, but to find him. I studied the blood, felt the ways it was different from Loriann’s, from Rick’s, and even different from my own. I hadn’t studied much biology beyond Paranormal Physiology 101 at Spook School, and I was curious. After inspecting all the blood samples through the power of Soulwood, and setting aside the ones that belonged to my land, and the one that had come from Loriann, I searched.
The blood guided me through Oliver Springs and Oak Ridge into Knoxville and toward the Tennessee River. And past the city into the countryside on the far side of the city. I didn’t know where I was at first. And then the feeling of the earth, of the soil, hit me, slamming solidly into me like a big fist. The sensation rattled my teeth. Magic. Blood. Death. I had been there today. The stockyard.
Jason Ethier was less than a mile away from his witch circle, sleeping in the arms of a vampire. Sex and magic and darkness. Need and rage. Sickness eating away at his body. Secrets and pain eating away at his soul. Dark and bloody and twisted things in his mind. Things I didn’t want to look at.
The sorcerer was protected by magical hedges so strong they raked along my consciousness like electric cacti, burning, stabbing, cutting. The hedges were tied to the vampires and the moon, the working powered by the blood of humans. I couldn’t touch his blood through them, couldn’t drain him into the earth. I tried. It was like trying to pick up sewer water in an open hand. Jason had tied himself to the thing beneath the stockyard and its foulness had coated Jason’s soul. The smoky fist of filth.
It was lethargic in the daylight, and from the safety of Soulwood, I studied the ring on its colossal finger. Engraved into the red stone was a stretched-out, flattened-looking X. Below that were the initials B, K, a lowercase u, and an L, like gang signs, except they glowed with what looked like black flame. B’KuL.
I slipped away from the thing in the earth, away from the sickness of Jason Ethier, out of the house where he slept. It was at the end of a long drive less than a mile, as the buzzard flew, from the Knoxville Livestock Center and all that putrefying meat and drying blood. And the wrong thing in the earth.
I started to tug myself completely free, back to my body, but contact with Soulwood had jarred something loose in my brain. I paused and tried to bring it to my conscious mind. Some little something. Some tiny inconsistency. A single question unanswered. What did Jason really want? He could have killed Rick at a calling circle. In the office with the gun. And he hadn’t.
I eased my hands free of the plant mittens and the leafy socks. We were missing something. Interpreting something incorrectly.
I stood and shook out my faded pink blanket. Yummy and Ming and the vamps didn’t give us an address because they wanted the op all to themselves. They didn’t want their hands tied when they killed everyone on the premises. They wanted medic primed to go into action just in case. But. If they killed Jason Ethier, that might set the demon free. How did one stop an almost-free demon?
I put on my shoes and stood, carrying my blanket to the house, thinking as I walked, carrying with me the peace I always felt when I communed with my land. Before I reached the edge of the trees and the grassy acres where my home and garden were, I stopped and found my cell phone and accessed a map. Located the land and house where Jason slept. It was a house on Roseberry Road. Dialed T. Laine.
She didn’t answer hello. She answered with a sleepy, grouchy, “This better be good, Ingram.” Clearly I had waked her.
“Two things. One, the demon hand was wearing a ring.”
“Already established, Ingram.”
“I just figured out what it looked like. It was an X, squished, so the sides were longer than it was tall.”
“Gebo, merkstave,” she said, coming awake, “well, not merkstave. Gebo can’t truly lie in merkstave, but it can lie in opposition. Gebo properly indicates balance in all matters like exchanges, contracts, personal relationships, and partnerships.” She fell silent.
“What happens when Gebo is in opposition?”
“Greed, privation, obligation, dependence.” She added, “Bribery, loneliness, oversacrifice unto death.”
I described the other initials and said, “Bukul?”
T. Laine said, “Son of a witch on a switch. Don’t ever say that out loud.”
“Why?”
“That’s its summoning name,” she said. “We can use B, K, L—just the initials. And I can use the summoning name to . . . do something. Good. Yeah.” She was fully awake, lit by excitement. “I’ve been reporting to the U.S. witch council, and they’ve been trying to adapt a shoot to kill working for this situation.” Her mouth clicked closed on the words as she heard them. Shoot to kill a kid with cancer. T. Laine took a slow breath, her excitement dissipating. She cursed softly. “Attempting to summon a demon is a death sentence.”
“Will they be here to help?” I asked.
“No. They can’t fight demons. They told me to evacuate. They say me killing Jason is the best they can do.”
“Why? I don’t understand.”
Lainie took a slow breath. “My species tends to run from demons. With good reason. A demon can run through a family blood line like lightning, using us all.”
I hesitated, thinking about what I had sensed when I found Jason in the arms of a vampire. He had been broken as a child. He had taken that brokenness and built a house of hate and fury around it. He had shaped himself into a creature of utter darkness. The brokenness had not been a choice. What he did with that brokenness was. And Jason was legally an adult now. Giving Lainie the address assured Jason’s death, and Lainie might have to carry out the death sentence herself. Alone. Not giving it meant a vampire war and Jason might get away in the battle and also free the demon. Or share his sister with it by accident. Like me, Lainie might have to learn to live as a killer. And then I remembered that one master vampire would be awake, the daywalker, Godfrey.
T. Laine could not take on a blood-witch and a master vampire alone.
I said, “The other reason I called? I know where Jason is. A house on Roseberry Road, under a hedge of protection, with a lot of vampires. Probably the rogue vampires and Godfrey. We know what he’s calling. He has to be stopped—now. We can storm the place while most of the vampires are asleep. Call the witch council and get your permission.”
Not that we needed it. If I could get close to Jason, inside his magical defenses, I could feed him to the earth. I had his blood.
“Later,” T. Laine said, disconnecting.
I still didn’t have an answer to my question What did Jason really want? Another possibility, half-seen from my communion with the land, crawled up from the dark and rooty recesses of my mind. I dialed Ayatas FireWind. He sounded alert and reserved, as always. “What can I do for you, Ingram?”
I told him what I had learned about Jason’s location and magical protections, and asked, “Do you know a lot about demons?”
“Too much.” The words sounded tired and beaten.
“In Spook School, I learned that when a witch calls a demon, they contact the demon, make a bargain, and slit the throat of the sacrifice. The blood frees the demon into the circle with the sacrifice and seals the bargain with the blood. When the demon drinks or absorbs the blood, the demon is then free. And that gives the witch rule over the demon and his powers for a specified time period. Yes?”
“More or less. Though the bargain Jason negotiated required a blood sacrifice to even contact the demon,” Ayatas said, his tone pedantic, impassive. “That contact and bargain was what you saw in the review working cast by Kent.”
“Who will be the sacrifice that gives the demon freedom?”
“Vampire prisoners dedicated to that purpose and Rick LaFleur.”
“What happens if Jason dies now? Before he frees the demon?”
“It would be a half finished summoning. Anyone could take over and free him, and the agreed upon bargain would no longer be in play. It’s what demons hope for in the first place—getting free, having access to the earth and the humans in it, unrestricted by bargains.”
“And if Jason is dead and the demon is still trapped in the circle?” I asked.
He hesitated, a slight hitch in tone. “There may be those in our government and military who think they can control a demon, can rewrite the bargain if Jason is gone and the demon is still trapped in the circle.”
“So we have to finish this fast, and tie up all the loose ends.”
“I fear so.”
“And if we take Jason out after the possession?” I asked.
“It will be difficult to kill Jason with the tools we have on hand once he’s possessed by the demon. That’s usually part of the bargain. Magical protection from attack for the duration of the contract.”
Tools we have on hand. That was an interesting phrase. I took a slow breath and said, “I know where Jason is. And our timeline window is small. We have to take him out today before Ming gets to him at sunset. Do containment vessels have a size maximum?”
There was a short, sharp silence on the other end of the connection as FireWind processed my question. “You think it’s a Major Power.”
“Yes. When I read the land, I got a good look at the ring on the demon’s hand. The red stone was embossed with a rune. T. Laine says it’s Gebo in opposition.”
The reserved, unemotional FireWind took a hissing breath.
“We have its calling name, based on the initials B.K.L. I think it’s huge and powerful and tied to the magma working its way up through the earth’s crust,” I said.
“Hmmm. There are hot springs and other signs of geological activity in the Appalachians. In answer to your question, yes, containment vessels do have a maximum suppression and restraint assessment, but no one knows how to measure demonic energy, so PsyLED labs haven’t tried the systems with anything larger than your garden-variety flesh-eating imp.”
“So we can’t contain it, and we can’t kill it, and Jason is under the magical protection of a powerful hedge of thorns until he lets it drop to free the demon. And we have to act before sunset and the vamps rise.”
“Yes. But until the bargain is completed, the demon’s power is fundamentally and effectively limited.” I could almost hear the frown in his voice when he added, “We thought Rick was being called for two reasons: revenge, and to power the working to call the demon. But something is off.”
“Right,” I said. “Why shoot Rick? Why try to turn himself into a werecat?”
“Best guess is blood spatter for the calling, and were-taint to heal his cancer. Jones found a diagnosis of leukemia in his history.” He made a ruminative sound. “Tonight is the total dark of the moon. The new moon rose around dawn. It is up but invisible all day, and will set around seven p.m., before sunset in Knoxville in summer.” He made the pensive sound again. “Since nothing magic happened when it rose, the curse must be timed for the interval between moonset and sunset. Thank you, Ingram. This is invaluable information. We have a great many logistics to work out, and our timeline to stop Jason may be a very narrow window.”
“From the time Jason starts the spell and drops the hedge, to the moment he’s killed enough sleeping vampires to free the demon, but before the demon is actually set free. And then we have to figure out a way to send the demon back,” I clarified.
“I suppose that’s correct. Anything else, Ingram?” FireWind asked.
“Has anyone thought about putting Rick on a plane for the Vatican?” I asked.
“Several times. It’s still in discussion.”
“Last question. What if the vampires with Jason don’t know what we do about the demon and its summoning? Godfrey is an old vampire who probably knows a lot about magic, but this is a brand-new curse-working. What if Jason is using them for more than we think?”
I felt FireWind’s attention narrow onto me. “I’m listening.”
“What if the curse part of the spell isn’t just for Rick, but also is directed at the other group that hurt him? What if the curse is directed at all the vampires in Knoxville? Or even all the vampires in the state? Or think bigger. What if the curse is directed at the life force, or un-life-force, of every vampire in the world all at once? Just causes them to bleed to death like the cattle did at the stockyard.”
FireWind went quiet and the silence stretched out. “What you’re suggesting is, or should be, impossible. But . . . a vampire kidnapped him and killed his grandmother in front of his eyes. Yet he’s working with a vampire now.”
“If Jason starts the curse after moonset and before sunset,” I said, “in the last ninety minutes of day, before the vampires rise, he’ll have sleeping vampires available to bleed into his curse, the way he bled the cattle at the livestock center. He wouldn’t even have to cut them. That narrows our timeline even more.”
FireWind muttered something that might have been cussing in another language. “He gets revenge on Rick, kills him, is healed by vampire blood or the were-taint, kills large numbers of vampires, and has a demon at his disposal for as long as their agreement lasts. The little sorcerer is brilliant.” There was reluctant admiration in FireWind’s voice.
“If we miss our window,” I said, “Jason will have the demon to grant him power for as long as he lives, which might be a long time as a werecat or a vampire.”
FireWind agreed thoughtfully. “Logistics will be a nightmare and we don’t have much time to prepare.”
“And that narrow window,” I said.
“The unit is exhausted. New-moon set is less than an hour and a half before sunset. This will be tricky. Get a nap. Be at HQ by four p.m. And, Nell, see that Mud is elsewhere. This will not be the safest place on earth.”
The connection ended. The safest place on earth. As far as I was concerned, that was Soulwood. I wondered if I could get the vampire tree to babysit. I needed sleep, but my family was more important. I needed . . . I needed to claim the church land. I needed a sacrifice.
I shook my entire body like a dog shakes its fur. No. I was not killing someone to claim the land. At my feet a tendril pushed through the soil, and a single thick, green leaf uncoiled, resting against my ankle.
In the yard, Mud screamed with laughter and rolled on the ground with Cherry. Overhead, a bird sang, long and sweet. I smelled wisteria and the grape Kool-Aid smell of kudzu in bloom. The vampire tree tendril coiled up my ankle and wrapped around it. Not trapping me. Just . . . making me aware. Reminding me, as if it had access to my mind. And maybe, on some level, it did.
Larry Aden had been wounded by the vampire tree. The tree had his blood. The tree could . . . sacrifice Larry, and I could claim church land through it.
And that would be murder. Not self-defense to protect myself. But premeditated, cold-blooded murder. An icy thrill rushed through me like a broken dam of glacial water. My body clenched. Goose bumps flew across my skin, pebbling my arms and legs and up my chest.
I looked out over Soulwood, over land that was almost holy. “I’ll find another way,” I whispered, staring at the sprig of the vampire tree on my ankle. It now had three leaves and was about six inches long. I bent down and plucked the sprig. I carried the vampire twig to the back porch and tucked it into an unused pot of soil.
Today was the total dark of the moon, and though the moon was up now, and would actually be above the horizon all day, it wouldn’t be visible at all. The darkness of the night sky would be brightened only by stars. And whatever curse and demon-summoning Jason had planned.
Inside the house, I showered and crawled into bed. I fell fast asleep. I still didn’t know what I’d do with Mud when I went back to work, but my brain needed sleep and I could problem-solve after some rest.
I dropped Mud off at Esther’s, though I didn’t get to see my older sister. Esther didn’t come to the door when Mud and I knocked. Jed opened the door, a man at home in the daylight, when by church codes he should be working.
“Jed,” I said.
Jed looked tired and angry and had a three-day beard. He didn’t meet my eyes. “Nell.”
I remembered Esther’s fingers at her hairline, so much like mine when my leaves were trying to grow. If being plant-women ran in the family, as I believed, Esther was likely to grow leaves too. But she hadn’t talked to me.
He pushed open the door, but I caught Mud’s shoulder. “If Esther needs my help keeping things trimmed back, you let me know.”
Mud laughed and skipped inside. Jed’s eyes flashed fire and he closed the door in my face.
“Hospitality and peace to you too,” I shouted through the door. I probably shouldn’t have stirred that pot. But if my sister was growing leaves . . .
I got back in my truck and took off for HQ.
It was just past four, and T. Laine was talking as Tandy put the last pencil traces on the sketch of the smoky fist of the devil trapped in the earth. “The New Orleans coven and I agree. The spell Ethier is likely using to summon his demon is a shared power spell. It can be called totality. It’s a bargain type of spell, one where a witch and a demon share witch and demonic strength and power at different times and for different purposes. For instance, the demon might use the witch’s strength and youth to power itself to the surface, in which case, the demon steals years, the witch ages, the demon gets free. Then the bargain reverses as the demon extracts more power from the deeps along his pathway, which he then gifts to the witch. The witch ages, but he ends up with one major power/working/curse/whatever. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.”
“Except that Jason isn’t aging. Rick is,” I said.
“Jason added levels in a working so complex I may never understand it. Jason sacrifices Rick—maybe from a distance, since Rick’s blood is now mixed with his own—and maybe sacrifices all the vampires in the house with him too. With such a big sacrifice, he survives handling and channeling the evil of a Major Power through his body and his circle. The demon possesses Jason, enacts the curse, and—if Ingram is right—destroys all the vampires everywhere. After that, unaged, healed from the leukemia, healed from vamp-blood-addiction, Jason will have whatever years are left to him, riding a demon—to use Ingram’s term. Perfect spell. And scary as hell.”
Tandy stepped back from his drawing, studying it.
T. Laine took a deep breath, her eyes on Rick. “The last DNA test results came back from the lab. One vial of liquid was your blood. I’m betting Jason has even more, which is how he’s draining you. It’s how he can reach you even inside the null room or a silver cage. Maybe the blood was drawn by Loriann during the inking. Maybe stolen from a hospital lab or something, prior to you being infected with were-taint. Security in hospitals is set up against humans, not witches. But how he got it doesn’t matter. Now he has fresh blood inside of him. I’m hypothesizing that with the blood, Jason added an extra layer to the curse. He has Rick’s human DNA. He’s been using Rick’s blood and life force to power the spells. Rick is aging fast. The demon, however, doesn’t know what’s happening. It’s a bait and switch with Rick’s life in the balance, made worse because Jason likely infected himself with Rick’s were-taint. Jason kills Rick and curses the vampires who hurt him in one fell swoop. If he loses his bargain with the demon, then the were-taint might heal his cancer anyway.”
Rick looked out the window at the western horizon. His silvered hair seemed awfully bright, the black strands fewer now, in spite of the were-taint, which was supposed to give him a much longer life span. Now it made sense. Rick was dying. The pencil drawing of Rick being tattooed was on the table. I spun the paper, studying the depiction. There was something—
T. Laine interrupted my thoughts. “Only after the curse is done will the demon realize that Jason hasn’t aged, isn’t old, and he’s been cheated. Then they live in powerful disharmony until Jason dies.”
Rick murmured, “Jason must really hate me.” He was rubbing his shoulder, the one with the mangled tattoos, tats that he’d accepted, a spelling that he’d suffered, to save Jason, the child. A good deed, horribly punished, proving the old adage that no good deed goes unpunished.
I couldn’t stand watching my boss’s face. I leaned to Tandy and pointed to his drawing. “The arms of the X were more squished. And there was a little hook right there.” I pointed. “Claws. I forgot the claws. The demon’s claws were hooked, like a cat’s.” Rick and Occam looked up at that. “Retractile.” The hand and the ring were coming to life on the paper, drawn by Tandy’s pencil. It was scary.
Rick asked, “What happens if we miss our deadline and we have to kill Jason after he’s possessed?”
“The last time that happened was December sixteenth, 1811, in New Madrid, Missouri,” T. Laine said. “It resulted in the largest earthquake in the history of the United States. It had an estimated magnitude of eight point six on the Richter scale. The earthquake raised and lowered parts of the Mississippi Valley and changed the course of the Mississippi River. A thirty-thousand-square-mile area was affected, and tremors were felt on the eastern coastline of the United States. Additional earthquakes went on for months. If that happens here? An earthquake that big? The entire river valley will likely suffer a substantial upheaval,” T. Laine said. “The U.S. witch council estimated an eight point five or higher. Every power plant and dam in the valley will be damaged. Some will suffer catastrophic failure. There will be flooding like we’ve never seen. Nell’s house might be safe as long as the hilly ridges don’t fall over. The rest of us will drown.”
“Power plant,” Rick said softly. “The nuclear plant?”
“Is not secure to an eight-point-five earthquake,” T. Laine said.
“So the spell of totality is tied to LaFleur’s tattoos,” FireWind said softly.
“Yes,” T. Laine said, just as softly. “I think so.”
“If I’m dead will the spell be broken?” Rick asked.
My head snapped up. Was Rick talking about suicide to save the city?
T. Laine made a sound that might have been laughter if laughter was mostly grief. “Gebo in opposition means a lot of things, boss. Greed, privation, obligation, dependence. In your case, because of who you are, because of your natural protective instincts, it also means oversacrifice unto death. You die and the demon will just take the vampires targeted by the summoning/curse spell. You can’t stop it by dying. Jason prepared for that possibility.”
Rick looked old, the lines in his face deeply engraved, his skin sallow and tired. He turned away, spinning in his chair, his back to us, staring out over the city.
T. Laine said, “We knew the local witches were scared. We knew there was a Circle of the Moon cursing, a blood sacrifice, the Angels and Demons tarot spread, and a summoning. We knew something bad was coming.”
“But not a major prince of darkness,” FireWind said, sounding wry. “Not a curse to bring all the vampires to true-death.”
“What about the Vatican?” T. Laine asked. “Are they sending an emissary or a cardinal or whatever?”
FireWind was leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed, watching us. He said, “I’ve been in touch with them, through a PsyLED emissary. They are assembling an entire team of exorcists, but they can’t be here by nightfall. And they aren’t willing to sacrifice a few local priests to assist us and keep the vampires alive.” He shrugged. “Undead. Their plan is to deal with the demon if the rest of us are dead and the demon is free.”
Rick shook his head. Rick was Catholic. I had no idea how he felt about FireWind’s statement. “We should have called them sooner,” he said.
“Yes. But we didn’t know, didn’t guess what Jason was really doing, until we saw the hand rise from the circle.”
“We have clues, but we still don’t know everything,” T. Laine said. “We weren’t clueless or too stupid to see the writing on the wall. It was just too big a curse to focus on. And no one expected a Major Power or Principality.”
“I’ve had encounters with demons,” Rick said.
“There is only the one in your records—” FireWind stopped. “Ahhh. The one at Spook School, when you were present for a demon who was taken into a containment vessel, and the one involving my—Jane Yellowrock.” He had almost said “my sister.”
Rick glanced at his supervisor. “The one Jane killed on national TV was summoned by the Asheville coven leader. It was called the Raven Mocker. And though I’m sure someone has left messages with her voice mail . . . ?” He glanced at JoJo, who nodded. “. . . We’re still not clear how Jane contained it or destroyed it.”
“I didn’t know you were there,” FireWind said.
JoJo, already pulling up footage of the demon’s death, said, “You can’t kill a demon.”
“Close enough,” Rick said.
The footage appeared on the screen overhead. We watched as a demon killed some humans. Then Jane, now the Dark Queen of the vampires, Ayatas’ sister, killed the demon. And the redheaded woman who had summoned it.
“Yowzers,” T. Laine said. “I had forgotten the sequence of events here.”
“Jane’s rough on her friends,” Rick said. Unspoken were the words “and her boyfriends.” “According to Jane, there was an angel present and only with that angel’s help was she able to stop it.” Rick looked as if he might say more but stopped.
“Was that demon a Major Principality?” T. Laine asked.
“No.”
“Anyone have an angel on speed dial?” Occam asked in dark humor. “Anyone try prayer?”
“Yes,” Rick said softly. “Jane’s angel hasn’t answered.”
Replaying the YouTube footage, T. Laine said, “I agree that this demon isn’t as powerful as the one Jason Ethier is calling. He’s killed two vampires and a buttload of animals in sacrifice and the demon’s still not free. If B.K.L. gets loose, we are screwed six ways to Sunday.”
I said, “The death of one wereleopard won’t be enough. How many vampires will he sacrifice tonight?”
“He’s in the lair with Godfrey and all his humans and scions,” Rick said.
“Jason would have seen the witch amulets on the prisoners they took from Ming’s. He would have known what they were. My money says Jason arranged for the local vamps to find out the address, bringing more vampires to them like lambs to the slaughter,” Occam said. Which was very twisty but made sense. “If so, then Jason plans to drain every one of Knoxville’s fangheads as sacrifice, including at least three master vampires, Godefroi de Bouillon, Ming Zhane, and Lincoln Shaddock.”
“Where’s Loriann?” Rick asked. “She was being treated at the hospital after Jason’s attack.”
FireWind said, “You are tattooed to be protective of her and her brother, so I have to ask. Why do you want to know?”
“She might be the only one in the world who could stop Jason. Or at least slow him down until the team gets to him. She and Kent could set up protections for us. Maybe something that could slow down the ascension of the demon to this plane of existence. If Kent is willing to work with Loriann.”
“I will not authorize Loriann Ethier to work with our people,” FireWind said, “though I will allow her to be on-site in case we have need for hostage negotiation. The wound in her chest was bloody, but the round just nicked a small artery, in and out. She’s patched up and is currently in the null room, repenting of her ways.” He raised his brows slightly and asked T. Laine, “Do you have the restraints ready?”
“Yeah. The level-five null cuffs are painful enough to fall under the Eighth Amendment’s ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ clause, but since the U.S. witch council approved of them, no one seems to give a rat’s ass. They’ll hurt like hell, but they’ll keep her power docile.”
“Level five?” I asked.
“Brand-new,” T. Laine said, her face grim. “They work by sliding minuscule silver needles under the skin and directly into the nervous system. I happen to have two pairs. Lucky me.”
FireWind’s cell chimed and he lifted it to see the screen. A look of satisfaction crossed his face. “If they get here in time, we’ll have additional reinforcements in the form of the National Guard and a big brass observer from the DOD.”
Relief pulsed through the room, but FireWind doused it with the words, “If. Moonset and sunset are awfully close today, about ninety minutes apart. If we are right about the timing of the curse, Jason will have to drop his hedge of thorns just after seven, and he’ll begin his blood sacrifices. We’ll need to take him before he’s finished. Gear up.” He added softly, “Every weapon at your disposal even if they grate against your morality. We will be joined by SWAT led by Gonzales, Special Agent Margot Racer leading a small FBI team, a team from the Tennessee Highway Patrol, and TBI.” TBI was the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. “I assume Ming’s and Shaddock’s former-military humans will show up prior to sunset and her former-military Mithrans just after dark. I’d like this operation in the bag when they show. Jones, you will handle communications from here. Dyson, you will be with me throughout the op. LaFleur—” He stopped. “Where is Soul? With the null room so easy to break out of, Soul is the only one strong enough to contain LaFleur.”
I said, “She disappeared when Jane Yellowrock never called us back about the Mercy Blade to try and cure Margot.”
FireWind cursed and studied Rick before shifting his yellow eyes to me. “Ingram, are you willing to drive your truck?”
I nodded.
“Is the truck bed empty?”
“Yes,” I said, confused.
“Any extra gear that won’t fit in the unit’s van will be transported in Ingram’s vehicle, along with the silver cage.”
I blinked. The silver cage? Rick’s cage?
“Kent,” he continued, “shackle Loriann Ethier. Since Soul is AWOL, she and Rick will ride with me.”
“You’re going to let Rick be there?” T. Laine said, frowning, her eyes narrowed in disagreement. “Close to Jason and the demon?”
“Loriann broke out of the null room. Do you really think it will hold a were-leopard?” FireWind asked.”If he’s with us and in a silver cage, Occam can shoot him in the leg with silver to stop a shape-change.” FireWind looked at Occam. “Do not let him free of the cage. No matter what.” Occam dropped his chin in agreement.
Feeling numb, I went to my cubicle and gathered my weapons. In my gobag I secreted extra magazines, some marked silver-lead, the others loaded with standard ammo. In a plastic zippered bag I placed the bits of bloody tissue. My secrets. In my truck was a shotgun and a plant in a clay pot—the sprig of the vampire tree.
Occam stopped at my cubicle. “Nell, sugar,” he said softly, “okay if I ride with you?”
“Fine by me, but you need to know that I’ll likely be doing some B and E this afternoon.” B and E meant breaking and entering and that statement made Occam pause.
After an uncomfortable length of time, he said, “You can take care of yourself, I know that. But . . . I’m thinking you might need backup if you’re breaking the law.”
I met his eyes, glowing a soft golden brown with his cat. “Oh. Well. In that case, I’d like you to ride with me, very much.”
We detoured to Rick’s house and found the new, hidden key. I didn’t have to resort to the threatened B and E and shatter a windowpane to get in. Unfortunately, I knew my actions were going straight to JoJo at HQ from Rick’s security cameras. All I could hope was that my illegal entry and theft would be forgiven. Or maybe the footage would disappear.
Later than we wanted, we cruised in to a prearranged address on Roseberry Road, at a small sign that said, FOR SALE. BANK OWNED. I motored down the drive, winding in until my C10 was deep in the scrub, well hidden from the street. At the back, there was a house, overgrown, ramshackle, windows and doorway boarded over. I got out, into the stifling heat, to overhear FireWind say to T. Laine, “We have the bank’s permission to use the property. Were you able to get any of the local witches to assist us with a working here?”
“No. They haven’t responded to texts, e-mails, voice mails, police stopping by with requests for help, or notes tacked to their front doors. They’ve gone to ground. I’m the only witchy woman on-site unless Loriann becomes suddenly trustworthy. And that’s not going to happen, so why don’t you tell me why she’s really here, and not some silly hostage-negotiation tale.”
FireWind glanced at the van. The side sliding door was open and Loriann was sitting on the bench seat, her legs dangling in the sunlight. Loriann was wearing a green dress with bright blotches of purple and red on it. Her hands were bound in front of her with dozens of thin twisted strands of silver wire. Among the strands were traces blood.
“The reason,” FireWind said crisply, “is that I was hoping to turn her over to the local coven until Jason is taken down. Loriann broke the lock on the null room. Jason destroyed the outer door. We can’t secure her in HQ. Jones will be alone handling comms and I don’t want her to have to step away from comms to shoot a prisoner during an interagency op.”
T. Laine blew out a breath. “Yeah. There is that. And we can’t leave Rick there for the same reason. Here you can shoot his legs full of silver if he starts to shift.”
“Precisely.”
I got out my gear. Per FireWind’s orders, I was going on a short hike, close to the house where Jason Ethier and a group of invading vampires laired. In the back of the C10, Occam snapped a blue tarp over Rick’s empty silvered cage. I made sure the shade covered my little vampire plant. It was cute, and if the tree didn’t eat puppies and try to take over the world, I’d market it.
It was still daylight, hours before the local vampires would show up at the address to attack the invading vampires. More unmarked cars and a few Highway Patrol cars drove into the deep, abandoned lot. A big SWAT vehicle, the shape of a bread truck, but heavier, bounced up the rutted drive. The bigwigs were gathering for the operation.
All across Knoxville and neighboring counties, Homeland Security and FEMA were on alert. The governor’s office was flying in an observer. The public had been notified that an unspecified threat had been detected and citizens were being asked to stay off the streets.
I thought about Mud. About my family. About leaving Mud with Esther. I’d had no other sensible choice. I’d just left my sisters there, together, protected by Jedidiah as best he could. If there was a major earthquake, no place in Knoxville except the heart of Soulwood would be safer than a compound full of hillbillies, supplies, and weapons.
I tossed my faded pink blanket over my shoulder and tied the laces of my field boots. I was going to read the land and see what I could see. And my cat-man was going with me. “That’s close enough, Nell, sugar.”
I stopped, the weeds up to my knees, beggar-lice all over my jeans, along with a few ticks. Beggar-lice were traveling seeds, hitching a ride on any convenient cloth or pelt or fur. I flicked them and the bloodsuckers away. “They’re vampires, cat-boy. With the exception of Godfrey, who would have to slather sunscreen all over himself to step outside, they’re asleep.”
“The witch might be awake. Demons never sleep.”
“Sure they do,” I said, before I thought.
“And you know that how?”
Oops. I didn’t answer, suddenly concentrating on a particularly insolent little tick who seemed to like denim. “I love every creature on God’s earth, except ticks and roaches,” I said. “Why can’t ticks drain roaches and roaches eat ticks? That would be perfect, don’t you think?”
Occam’s voice dropped, all silky and dangerous. “Did you read the land alone? Go looking for a demon? Alone?”
“I was on Soulwood. I was safe.” But even I could hear the defiance in my voice.
“When I’m hunting on Soulwood, you’re there to protect me,” Occam said. “I’m not trying to protect the little woman. I’m watching my partner’s back, not trying to keep you from doing your job. When an evil is in the land and you read the land, you need backup.”
Stubbornness welled up in me, not wanting to give in so easily, but . . . but, Occam wasn’t talking about being dominant over me. He was talking about being my equal, about mutual dependence. Feeling guilty, I said, “Yes. I did it alone.” I scowled up at him. “I promise not to do it again.” Occam raised his mismatched eyebrows in disbelief. I turned away and stomped off through the brush. It grew thick and green right up to the road, which I crossed to trees on the far side. The shade was deep here and the soil loamy enough for there to be a springhead nearby. I was on the same side of the road as the house where Jason was supposed to be, assuming he was still with the vampires. “Stupid man,” I grumbled.
“Say again, Ingram?” he said to my back, a hint of laughter in his voice. Ingram. Not Nell, sugar. He had heard me perfectly with his cat hearing.
I positioned the pink blanket on the slightly damp soil and sat on it. Touched a single fingertip to the ground, glanced once at Occam, and dropped deep and fast, like plunging a knife blade into the dirt. I was mad at my partner but still trusted him to have my back.
I didn’t look for the demon or the circle, but I knew they were both there. I could feel the filth in the earth at the livestock center, like used motor oil mixed with clotted blood and grains of rotted wood and rat feces. It was a nauseating sensation and I stayed away.
Closer to me, partially overwhelmed by the sensation of the demon, maybe three hundred feet ahead, I felt . . . maggots. Thousands and thousands of maggots. They were all over the property but mostly on the left side of the house, in the basement. Avoiding the hedges, using the smallest hint of power, I eased my attention up through the gravel and the concrete of the slab foundation, trying to see how many vampires there were. I couldn’t get close enough, but I hesitated, feeling something familiar. I pressed up just a bit. And touched wood in the walls. Local wood. The house had been built with local wood and I could feel through it, into the house. And I felt maggots. True-dead vampires. Undead vampires. Vamps in cages. Blood. Lots of blood. Rotting flesh.
Gagging, I heaved my mind away from the house. Accidently dragged myself through a mound of freshly turned earth. More rotting flesh. Human. I yanked away from the fresh graves. Seven of them. I wrenched myself out of the land and wriggled my cell from my pocket with shaking fingers. Called JoJo.
She answered with, “Ingram. Where are you? You and Occam aren’t with the others.”
“Looking for Jason. How many humans lived at the lair?”
“Five family members and two full-time help. The estate is forty acres of horse pasture and timber. The Blounts are a quiet, unassuming millionaire family who made their fortune in railroads and coal.”
“Were.”
“Huh? Were what?”
I said, “I just found seven graves.”
“Drink some water, Nell, sugar. You don’t breathe enough when you’re underground, and you might not know it, but you ain’t exactly yourself for a while after you read the earth.”
“What kinda ‘not myself’?”
He put a bottle of water in my hand and bent over me as if to speak quietly. Instead I felt him clip the leaves in my hairline. No need to advertise I wasn’t human to the local LEOs.
Chagrined, I said, “Oh. The leafy kind.”
Occam chuckled quietly, as he worked to slice through a vine on my thumb. “And the grouchy kind. And the bossy kind.”
“If I was a man, it would be called taking charge or alpha male or something else good.”
Occam tossed my leaves to the ground and squatted down beside me, his throat exposed in what might look like submission, but I knew better. His eyes were laughing. “You trying to lecture me about women’s rights and misogyny, sugar?”
“No. I’m trying to say being bossy or an alpha isn’t a problem if I’m right. I needed to be on that side of the road to read the house properly.”
“Why?”
“’Cause tar tastes bad.” I drank down the water, crushing the bottle.
His eyebrows went up again, his burned one a little lower than the other. “Oh. I didn’t know that. And maybe I should have.”
“Yeah. Let’s go find Rick and tell him.”
“You’re in charge.”
“Now you’un jist messin’ with me.”
“Pretty much,” he agreed.
Rick wasn’t surprised when Occam and I showed up, all hot and sweaty and covered in beggar-lice. I told him about the vamps and the graves. The sheriff’s department had shown up and launched an RVAC, a remote-viewing aircraft, one with advanced cameras and sensors, and had seen the turned earth. They had also skimmed around the house and acquired infrared images through all the windows, giving them a head count of the living humans—fifteen. He and FireWind put their heads together, muttering, and wandered away, toward a group in front of the abandoned house.
The brass were standing around a makeshift table covered with house plans (which were on file with the county) and the security system (which had been provided by the company once a warrant had been delivered). They included the sheriff, the chief of the Highway Patrol, a TBI investigatory agent wearing suit pants and a jacket, and six SWAT team members in camo and laden with gear, most of it lethal. All of them were sweating in the heat.
The SWAT captain—Gonzales—was former military and opened the discussion with the words, “Listen up, people.” He held up four fingers. “Ends, ways, means, risk. Strategy is like a three-legged stool, with ends, ways, and means balancing a plane of varying degrees of risk. We create strategy based on known variables and face risk depending on how we use our resources and what the enemy does. We have weapons, we have tools, we have floor plans, we have personnel. What we will not have is military backup before sundown. This is on us. Gather around!”
I yawned and ate an apple. SWAT and local LEO brass discussed ingress and egress and potential barriers and the proper times and places to use flashbangs, which were the perfect weapon against vampires, affecting their light-sensitive eyes and their better-than-human hearing. A well-timed flashbang was enough to knock an ordinary vamp on his butt for several minutes.
They also covered strategic choices such as bait and bleed, which would have meant letting Ming’s people attack and the vamps fight it out among themselves. This would have let the demon loose and maybe killed Rick. They decided to keep the local vamps out of the picture and go in before sunset, which was a good thing, as I’d have gotten myself fired warning Yummy. To no one’s surprise they decided on a blitzkrieg offensive with SWAT as the sole offensive wave.
Despite the fact that this was a paranormal crime scene, SWAT determined that PsyLED wouldn’t be going in until the scene was contained and the house was cleared, because the hallways were too narrow and the chance of getting in the way of people with lethal weapons was too great. I listened long enough before I shouted, “What about sleep spells?”
The SWAT captain looked my way and saw a skinny female in jeans and a T-shirt, with a pink blanket over her shoulder. He grinned, one of the patronizing expressions a big man sometimes gives a woman who he perceives as a lesser being.
I didn’t like his grin at all, and maybe I was feeling a little too prickly, but I scowled at him and said, “Kent, how many combatants did you take down last week with one spoken wyrd?”
T. Laine said, “I think it was twelve.” That got Gonzales’ attention. The captain looked from me to T. Laine and back, his grin fading.
“Magic keeps our side from getting hurt,” I said. “You walk into a magically protected site with mundane weapons and you may not come out again.”
T. Laine moved through the crowd, saying, “I’m Kent, a PsyLED witch. My intel says the vamps lairing in the basement have at least one very powerful sorcerer with magical protections and one daywalking vamp with superior mesmeric capability. Wyrd workings like the sleep spell are not the only offensive or defensive weapons in my arsenal.”
Gonzales asked, “How long for my men to develop proper techniques with your arsenal?”
“Tell me, Cap,” T. Laine said, halting in front of the group. “You go to an operation and turn your weapons over to someone with less training and experience?” Gonzales scowled. “I didn’t think so. I’m a witch. I’m not giving you my weapons.”
I glanced at Rick and FireWind, their faces carefully blank, observing.
“Your whole, entire plan,” she said, “is mundane weapons against paras. You want a dynamic entry, rush in, fire a few silver rounds, round up everybody, and toss Jason to us. You have no contingencies except Unit Eighteen to deal with paranormal defenses and combatants. What if there are magical workings protecting the entry to the basement? What if they’re prepared to repel boarders with any and all magical means? Godfrey de Bullion is a daywalker capable of clouding human minds. What happens if he stops your men cold? You guys ready to be munched on? What if the demon gets free ahead of schedule?”
Every eye was on T. Laine. Her head was back, shoulders back, her nearly black hair catching the light. “FireWind? You got something to say? You just came from an interagency confab to discuss exactly these types of problems.”
The SAC East moved smoothly to the front of the group. “SWAT-Knox are top-notch against humans. But our evaluation suggests there’s a blind spot in your training. All your previous military experience was in the Middle East, where there are very few witches due to ethnic cleansing of anyone with the trait.” FireWind stopped about ten feet out from the SWAT team, his business casual clothes contrasting with the single long braid down his back, and with the military-style uniforms on the SWAT team. “All your paramilitary training since has been directed toward human targets and human situations. Here you have a mixture of human and para and you need Kent and the rest of us to meet your objectives.”
“So what’s your strategy?” Gonzales asked.
“Limited incursion from front and back doors. Take it slow. Clear the humans in the upper part of the house before entering the basement. Let Kent detect any magical defenses. Take it slow. We have the time.”
Gonzales asked, “Former military?”
“In another lifetime.” That was code for classified.
Occam hummed under his breath, then said, “New boss man’s got him some style.”
“Listen to FireWind and Kent,” Margot said, loud enough to be heard across the grassy clearing. “Special Agent Margot Racer, FBI,” she said, still speaking loud. Margot sauntered to, and then past, Rick. Margot was wearing long sleeves in the heat, covering up her flesh wound, the one that might turn her into a wereleopard. She was trailed by four feebs, one of them my cousin.
Surprise slapped through me. I hadn’t seen Chadworth Sanders Hamilton, my third cousin from the townie side of the family, since before I was a tree. He looked different, but I didn’t have time to figure out how exactly because Gonzales was staring at Margot as she walked into the mix of the big boys. They stepped back. The . . . maybe I’d call it the “balance of power” shifted fast and hard. I had to wonder who Margot Racer really was in FBI lore.
Again drawing the attention of the group, T. Laine stepped up with Rick, Margot, and FireWind, the four making a neat row of authority. “Considering your plans and the flashbangs, I suggest we add three offensive weapons. A unidirectional null spell, to proactively knock out magical defenses and any wyrd spells he might throw, a sleep spell to put any humans to sleep, and, if we have to retreat for any reason, I have one omnidirectional spell in a grenade-shaped device that makes sentient beings dizzy in a radius of twenty feet from point of impact.”
“Do they work?” Gonzales asked our witch.
T. Laine shook her head, not saying no, but saying with body language that he was stupid. She put her fists on her hips and looked up a good twelve inches into the man’s face. “Your weapons ever jam, bubba? Equipment ever malfunction?”
Bubba, aka Gonzales, grinned, and his shoulders dropped, tension easing. “From time to time. It’s a pain in the ass.”
Occam snorted under his breath and repeated, “Bubba.”
“My weapons are just as likely as yours to fail when I need them the most. That’s why PsyLED Unit Eighteen has a wide variety of both mundane and magical weapons at our disposal. Against mixed paranormal and human enemy combatants, a combination of weapons and techniques is your best shot.”
“What about the dizzy weapon?” Bubba asked. “Omnidirectional means it hits us too, right?”
“Yes, if you’re stupid enough to detonate it while inside the twenty-foot radius. And it works on dolphins, whales, dogs, pigs, humans, witches, and vampires. And if you ask really nice, the local coven might make you a few. For a price.”
“It always comes down to money with women,” a voice called out. The group laughed.
T. Laine said, “No one’s paying me one silver dime extra to back up your sorry asses, though, are they?” That shut them up for just long enough for FireWind to step forward and introduce himself. Once again the dynamics of the group changed, bringing the meeting down to bureaucratic, political mode and police protocols.
By the time sunset was ninety minutes away, and the new, dark moon was beginning to drop over the horizon, the plan of attack was all worked out, with T. Laine joining SWAT in the first wave. Occam, Racer, and the feds were in the second offensive wave. The RVAC had done another flyover, a sniper in the trees reported no movement, and we needed to hit the place before the vamps died to power the demon spell. I made a bathroom break in the trees and picked another tick off of me. Nasty little buggers.
I ate another apple and geared up, adjusted my comms unit, and signed onto the para freq, utilized in this multiagency operation. I also untied my field boots. For me and the job I had in the offensive, shoes would be in the way.
The first wave of the assault team moved out on foot, into position.
Roseberry Road had been barricaded against all traffic. The nearest neighbors had been evacuated.
Occam and I got into my truck and downed bottles of water. The air-conditioning was like a blessing from heaven, not that I expected much of those these days. When the leaders’ vehicles moved out, we followed. Rick and Loriann were with FireWind, in the car ahead of us. A few clouds on the horizon were sunset golden.
Over the comms channel there was little chatter. I glanced at my gas gauge and wished I had filled up. Occam said into my earbud, “I have the vest cams live. Thanks, Jones.”
He held his tablet to me, and I tried to see on the screen, which was divided into small squares, one for each camera. I made out a man’s hand, part of an assault rifle, someone’s back, and what had to be T. Laine’s hand holding the null charm. It was a copper-colored ink pen, but the ink in the chamber was antimagic.
The words blasted in my ear. “Gogogogogogogo!”
I revved the truck and smashed the pedal to the floor. Along with the others who would be holding the perimeter, I raced down the road and into the Blounts’ yard, adding my C10 to the row of vehicles surrounding the property. Gonzales and his team were already inside.