Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4)

“I don’t know. I’m going deeper.” I closed my eyes.

I heard the sound of a knife being drawn from a Kydex sheath, a snap/slide/plastic/steel sound. Without opening my eyes, I knew that Occam had drawn his blade. Just in case. Sometimes the ground got a little too excited when I was around and the earth had been known to send up vines and roots and tendrils to stick into me, to tie me to it, to pull me down. “So far so good,” I muttered.

I dropped slowly through the layers, past the sensation of maggots on the surface, where I encountered the black magic that permeated an inch below. It felt icky, slimy, like burnt motor oil and something I might scrape out of my compost pile. Underneath the magics, I slipped through soil poisoned with pesticides where modern farming had been continuous for decades. Below that was disturbed soil with evidence of earlier farming methods: an iron tip from an old tiller; bits and pieces of metal and old diesel fuel in one spot that felt as if some machine had broken and been repaired on-site; a refuse pit with rusted tin cans and broken bottles.

Below that were bones, the memory of blood and death. A battle had been fought here once, in the distant past. My bloodlust wandered through the bones, the evidence of blood spilled, and violence. The memory of blood and terror and—

“Nell! Nell, wake up! Come back to the surface.” Occam. Upset. Excited. Worried.

I felt his ravaged hand on my shoulder, hot and shaking me, more claw than fingers. I eased my mind back from the battle and took a breath. Blinked. Occam was cutting me free of the ground. My fingers were buried in a tangle of rootlets and leaves and vines. Occam cursed when one extruded a thorn and bit his wrist.

From somewhere in the dark, Rick snarled. “Why is the circle attacking Ingram?”

A woman’s voice said, “It’s not the circle, boss. That magic has been expended. This is Nell’s magic.”

Occam sliced me free of the last rootlet/vine and picked me up, stepping away fast, holding me like a child. It was nice. I was suddenly cold and he was cat-heated. I rested against his hard chest, his arms holding me easily.

Rick yanked and ripped my blanket free of the vines. Cursing. Mad. His Frenchy black eyes glowing cat-green. I didn’t know if he was still reacting to the magic or to an attack on a member of his team. Both probably.

“Don’t mess up my blanket,” I said. “I need it.”

“I’m not messing up your blanket, Ingram,” he growled.

“We were afraid of you going all woody and branching out,” the woman said.

I swiveled my head to her. “Hey, Lainie.”

“Hey, Tree Girl. You got all leafy again.”

“I did?” I lifted my hands in the light of her shielded flash. My nails were greenish brown and leafed out, the skin of my fingers nut brown. I put a cold palm against Occam’s unscarred cheek, which was scruffy. His eyes were glowing gold. “You cut me free again.” Occam growled softly. I smiled up at him. “Thank you. You can put me down now.”

Occam’s arms tightened on me.

“Or not.” I rested my head against his chest, watching the action in the field. Kent was doing some kind of arcane measurements with a stick and the psy-meter 2.0 and recording numbers on a pad in the light of her flash.

“Levels one and four are redlining, which is not typical for a witch circle or a witch.”

“What is it typical for?” Occam asked.

“Nothing I remember from the databases. But with the cat and the strangeness of the circle, I can agree with your evaluation. It’s black magic,” T. Laine said, the words sounding as if they tasted bad. “It’s a strange spell. I’ll know more after I finish analyzing it.” Lainie was the unit’s witch and her analysis would be arcane as well as mundane.

Rick—properly referred to as LaFleur on the job—said, “When you get back, open a file on this, Kent. Run it through the local law enforcement databases and see if there’s anything similar.”

T. Laine asked, her voice carefully emotionless, “What do you want me to say about how you ended up here?”

I shifted in Occam’s arms at that question. The query may have sounded simple, but it was loaded with intricate potentialities. If Rick had been summoned by the spell, it made him a liability to the unit. If we left mention of him out and it was later discovered that he was a liability, then we’d be in trouble for not including it. Internal Affairs would be all over us.

Rick turned his head so he was looking back over the circle; I couldn’t see his eyes. “Say exactly what happened. I was attracted to the working after it was over. Make the file PsyLED Unit Eighteen eyes only for now. I’ll call the up-line bosses and report.” Which was walking a very fine line between the prospective problems. I was impressed despite myself.

“I’m taking Nell home,” Occam said. “She’s growing more leaves. She needs to be back on Soulwood.”

I held up my hands and studied my fingers. “Mighty leafy.” Then I laid my head on Occam’s chest and fell asleep, hardly noticing when I was placed in his car, and waking only when he picked me back up. I sighed and stretched and yawned and pushed away from his body to look up at his disfigured face. But he was still Occam. And he had become a safe haven for me.

That thought coiled through me, foreign, alien. Except for Soulwood, I’d never had a safe haven before.





TWO




“I can walk, you know. I ain’t broke and I ain’t a young’un.”

“True,” Occam said. But he didn’t put me down, just rubbed his jaw on the top of my head like a cat, scent-marking me, carried me up the steps to my door, and leaned down so I could open the lock. Then he carried me through the dark to the tiny bath and placed me on the toilet seat, which was all kinds of uncomfortable even with both of us fully clothed. “You’re cold. Get a shower. Get warm. Put on your winter pajamas. Get in bed. I’ll add wood to the stove and let the cats in.”

“That sounds nice, you bossy cat, but the stove’s cold so there ain’t no hot water. I don’t burn wood in summer. I take cold showers and use the AC window unit upstairs and the fans downstairs to keep the place cool. I cook on the brazier outside or use the microwave.”

Occam hesitated in the doorway, watching me with golden eyes. He hadn’t been around long enough to know how people living off the grid survived the heat of summer.

“Get on outta here. I can take care of myself.” I couldn’t see him well in the dark, but I knew he wasn’t happy at the thought of leaving me. I could feel his disquiet through my connection to Soulwood and that disturbed me. I shook my head at my land, more than at Occam. “I’m good. Go on,” I said more gently. “I can tell you need to shift and run and hunt, and I’ll feel better knowing you’re here, close by. Just don’t take a doe. All the does on the land have fawns. There’s a small bachelor herd to the north, and one is too big for his britches. Take him. He’s young enough to be tender but old enough to make trouble. And I think we got a family of coyotes skirting the property. If you find them, be careful. They’re shifty and tricky and they might get the drop on a big-cat.”

Occam shook his head at the impossibility of a canine species getting the drop on him. Without a word he slid into the muggy darkness. I heard the back door open and felt more than saw the mousers race in from the back porch. I heard the lock click and knew he was gone to shift and hunt and watch over me. I sighed and let go of the tension that was holding my shoulders tight.

While Jezzie, Torquil, and Cello wound around my ankles, mrowing for kibble and voicing their displeasure that the big-cat was gone, I made it to my feet and stripped off the clothes I’d worn to date Occam. Rinsed, shivering, under the tepid shower water. The house was muggy and sticky hot from the day’s heat, even with the single window unit struggling to cool it down, but my body was cold as an oak in winter. I padded to my bedroom and dressed in pajamas, then called Mud, my baby sister, who was coming to live with me soon, to see if she was all right for the night. Somewhere in there, I poured out kibble and ate a leftover sandwich from the picnic. Finally I crawled into bed with the electric blanket on a two-hour timer and cats settling in on top of me.

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