Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4)

Ming said, “We have learned all they know about our attackers. And we have a name.” She looked at me. “Maggoty. Have you or your people ever heard of Godfrey of Bouillon? In French, he is called Godefroi de Bouillon.”

I started searching on my cell, texting that name with possible spellings to JoJo and Rick. As I worked, Ming kept talking. “There is a vast power vacuum in the world of Mithran and Naturaleza politics since the two strongest of us—Titus, the emperor of Europe and Leo Pellissier of the United States—are dead and the Dark Queen has gone to ground. Many attempt to fill those voids. Godfrey is here to claim my city and all its cattle as his own.”

“You got that, JoJo?” I muttered into my mic.

“Got it. Searching databases. Good guess on the spelling, Ingram.”

Ming went on, “His people have attacked your lands tonight, my friend, Lincoln. He has claimed your clan home as his own. We do not know that the Dark Queen will fight him for this.”

“We don’t need her, Zhane,” Shaddock, said in a local accent. “We defeated his people here. As soon as things are secure here, we can take back my lands. We will exact revenge, my love.”

“Yessss,” Ming said. “And now we know where they laired the last nights. In this neighborhood, among my neighbors, draining them. This too will be avenged.” Ming looked at me and then at Occam. “How long will this local parley last? Will PsyLED Unit Eighteen fight beside the Mithrans of Knoxville, or will you allow the city to fall into the hands of the Naturaleza of Europe, Godefroi de Bouillon?”

My cell rang, and the area code and number were both unfamiliar. I answered anyway. “Hello?”

“Give the cell to Ming of Glass,” FireWind said.

I handed my cell to Ming. “It’s my boss, Ayatas FireWind. He wants to parley with you.”

“I do not know this name,” Ming said, still refusing again to talk to people she didn’t know.

“If he lies, you can take it out of my hide,” I said quickly, stepping back, leaving the cell in her hands.

Ming took the cell and said into the microphone, “If you treat with us without honor, we will take the life of your Maggot.”

Across the distance, I heard the voice of my newest boss say, “I always speak with honor and honesty, Ming of Glass.”

Take the life of your Maggot … Ming had just threatened my life. Which meant she would kill me and also kill my family if it suited her. She thought I was important, of value, but powerless. Well. She was wrong on both counts. I had a feeling that I’d have to show Ming of Glass I wasn’t someone to be trifled with, and soon. Shotguns wouldn’t scare her. But Soulwood would.

? ? ?

Around four a.m., the moon hidden by trees or the hills ringing the plateau, the killing battleground had become a crime scene, with all the dead being carried off for postmortems and the living either healed or sent to area hospitals. Occam and I left the site of the battle between Ming of Glass and Godefroi de Bouillon, and went back to HQ to file reports. Rick gave Occam another assignment, leaving me on my own. By five twenty, I was on my way to God’s Cloud of Glory Church to pick up my sister and to talk about child care. My bloodlust had gone unsatisfied but had at least quieted.

? ? ?

I sat in the truck for a bit, reading through my messages to see an update on Larry Aden. He was in jail, awaiting a bond hearing and a psych eval. That was good. I didn’t want to have to shoot him this morning. It was Sunday and I was here for one of the sermons I had agreed to attend as part of getting custody of Mud, not murder.

I didn’t knock, just slipped from the truck cab and in the door of the Nicholson house. No one noticed I had arrived and it gave me time to watch everything and everyone.

Sam, his heavily pregnant wife, SaraBell, my sister Esther and her husband, Jedidiah Whisnut, and Mud were all there, gathered around Daddy’s rocker, chatting with him as the patriarch drank the first of what would be many cups of coffee today. Esther was my true sib, and I remembered her touching her hairline like I did. I studied her from my hidden position and thought her hair looked more red, like mine. Over the din I heard talk about greenhouses.

There were ten or twelve young’uns—some of them neighbor kids, I was certain—running around yelling some church song about Noah and the ark and the animals that came to him to be saved from the flood. If there was a tune, I couldn’t discern it. I wasn’t sure where they had heard about SpongeBob SquarePants, but I was pretty sure he hadn’t been on the ark and I had no idea how he had been worked into the song.

A group of teens and preteens were sitting around a small table, sipping coffee and talking politics. It was boys on one side and many more girls on the other, but there was still some interplay between the disparate groups. Four older boys sat in the far corner, alone, with their heads together. They were dressed for outdoor work and had likely just finished chores. I knew Zeke, Harry, and Rudolph, my half brothers, and one who was not a Nicholson boy. All four looked troubled. Resentful.

There were three girls in the kitchen with the mamas, cooking. One was making coffee in the ancient thirty-five-cup percolator. One was working dough in a huge wooden dough bowl. One was setting the table. The mamas were cooking bacon, eggs, grits, biscuits, and pancakes on the wood-burning stoves.

That many people in the Nicholson house, with the woodstoves burning high, was unbearable hot, even with the summer fan in back dragging air through all the open windows and outside. I stood in the foyer of the big house, sweated, and watched the homey, happy commotion.

Sunday breakfast and lunch were a multifamily, multigenerational event in God’s Cloud of Glory Church, and while I didn’t agree with much of nothing the church taught, I did think getting together with family once a week was a pretty great thing. I didn’t want to deprive my sister of the Nicholsons, of the love and social discourse and interaction that a huge family could provide. In the church, all the kids were well socialized. It was a survival necessity and a skill she needed, even in the townie world.

The women and girls were in summer wear: long bibbed dresses over loose cotton shirts and, oddly, cloth sneakers. That was new. Anything new in the church was a good sign, but seeing Mama in red sneakers was surprising. Mama Grace was wearing sunflower yellow sneakers that matched the yellow plaid in her bibbed dress, and Mama Carmel was wearing sturdy, dour, navy blue sneakers to match her navy dress.

Daddy looked quiet and happy. SaraBell was propped in a chair nearby, feet up, rubbing her belly in slow steady circles, looking big enough to pop and utterly miserable. Her ankles were swollen and she seemed to be having trouble breathing deeply. I hadn’t asked, but it was possible that she was having twins. Or maybe a litter.

Sam glanced questioningly at his wife, smiled at her so sweetly, so gently, a look so full of love that it made my heart clench. She shrugged. He turned back to Daddy and asked, “When are Ben and Bernice getting married?”

“My courtin’s none a your’n beeswax,” a girl setting the table yelled at him.

Bernice was one of my half sisters. She was sixteen and old enough to be considered a woman by the church and old enough to wed in Tennessee. The only churchman named Ben I knew, who was old enough to marry, was Ben Aden, a college-educated man who had courted me before I turned into a tree. Ben was blue eyed and dark haired and pretty as a model in a fashion magazine. We wouldn’t have suited at all. But it was a surprise to hear he was courting my half sister. I didn’t know how to react to it.

“Nell!” Mud flew across the room, arms outstretched. I caught her and nearly fell back against the door. She wasn’t the skinny waif I had first seen only a few months past. Before she had become a woman grown, she had put on inches and height. But her hair was bunned up again. A tight, braided, twisted bun that had Mama’s handiwork all over it.

For a good two seconds my brain struggled. I wanted to fight this. I wanted to make a scene and tell the Nicholsons that they had no right to bun up my sister, not even as a social consideration or to fight the heat. But I didn’t have custody yet. They did. And if I wanted custody of Mud, then I needed to keep my blasted mouth shut and save this battle for another day.

I managed a slow breath. Then another. And gently set my sister aside with a slight smile and the words, “You look pretty.” Because I’d be hog-tied and set on fire before I put her in the middle of a battle she was too young to comprehend fully.

Mud touched her slicked-back hair and asked, “You’un okay with this? It’s hot.”

I muttered, “‘And damn’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’”

Mud’s eyes went wide and she froze at my cussing.

“Shakespeare. I meant that we aren’t finished fighting this battle. We’ll pick our fights and now is not the time.”