Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4)

JoJo said to Rick, “No wonder you had such trouble talking about the tats and the Ethier sibs. You were bound against testifying.”

On-screen, it looked as if steam was coming out of T. Laine’s ears, but she forced it down. Her face smoothed and she said, “Tell me about the curse spell Jason is using. What effect is the curse having on Rick?”

“I don’t know. The circle is Jason’s design and he never talked to me about it. But I think … I think Jason is stealing Rick’s years. Using his life force to power a multipurpose working.”

“So you think the curse part is secondary to whatever the circle’s real purposes are.”

Loriann didn’t answer, still keeping her head down. I glanced at Rick, who was now sitting in his chair. He had gone still as stone, his silver hair bright against the black strands in the overhead lights. Jason. Jason was responsible for Rick’s aging.

“Okay. I’m taking a break,” T. Laine said. “I’ll see you get coffee and bathroom break in a bit.” Without waiting for a reply, T. Laine rose and walked from the room, shutting the door and securing it with the numeric punch code. She laid her head on the wall and cursed softly, over and over again.

“Get in here!” JoJo called to her.

T. Laine’s movements were stiff as she covered the distance to the conference room and practically fell into her chair. I poured her a fresh coffee and JoJo pointed up, saying, “We have an incident. City cops are on scene now and uploaded a vid to us.”

On the screen overhead was footage of a vehicle, similar to the one the vamp’s humans used to kidnap Raynay Blalock. The van was turning into a convenience store, parking beneath a high, flat-topped, metal roof. The passenger door opened and Jason Ethier stepped out. The sliding side door opened too. The footage was grainy and coarse and there was no audio, but the man with Jason was, without a doubt, a vampire. He was vamped out, his eyes flashing black, his fangs long and curved, his skin pasty, glaring white. This was the first time I’d seen a modern photo of Godfrey, who wore dark pants and a light-colored shirt. And he was walking outside. In daylight. The old and powerful ones, like Ming could stay awake in their lairs in daylight. But this was something more. Way more.

It had been posited that the very old ones could go about in daylight if they had heavy oxidized zinc or titanium oxide sunscreen on and stayed out of direct sunlight. Now we had proof of that.

I watched as the vampire and Jason entered the store. Jason walked up to the clerk at the checkout counter, and they seemed to be speaking. Godfrey walked around the long counter and behind it. Up to the clerk.

She was a pretty woman, African-American, well rounded in all the right places. She smiled at Godfrey as he walked to her. He bent her head to the side and casually ripped out her throat. Blood shot out everywhere. Godfrey unhinged his jaw, the way the old ones do, and placed his mouth over the pulsing wound. And drank. Jason went to the cash register and emptied it of cash. He also picked up a six-pack of beer and some Slim Jims. Godfrey dropped the woman. The two walked away and got into the black vehicle. Shut the doors. It drove away.

In sunlight. My mouth was so dry I couldn’t swallow.

Jo said, “I can guarantee we just got leeway to take out that son of a bitch. With prejudice.”

T. Laine turned and walked away. Moments later PsyLED received a message on the public info e-mail. It included a video that JoJo put on the overhead screen, a video of Jason. “Hey, PsyLED, see this?” He angled the cell phone away and we saw a vampire behind him, dancing with a naked, limp, human teenager, holding the boy up, drinking from him. It was Godefroi de Bouillon. He was killing the teenaged boy.

The reaction washed through HQ and through all of us. Horror. Shock. Fury. Helplessness.

Jason said, “Tell Ricky-Bo LaFleur that his cowardice did this. And that when he’s mine, he’ll suffer like I did. Like this boy did.” The video ended.

I watched the footage again. And again.

? ? ?

Before I left to get some sleep, I read the EOD and SOD reports, paying close attention to everyone’s summations. Tandy’s read: Through the witch Loriann Ethier, the two different aspects of our case have collided: LaFleur and vampires and the eighteen-year-old male witch Jason Ethier. We need teams tracking each group. I recommend Jones and myself track Jason. LaFleur and Occam track the movements of the European vampires and Godfrey of Bouillon, while staying close to the silvered cage in case Rick is called again. I also recommend Loriann be kept in the null room until Jason is in custody or otherwise neutralized.

The words otherwise neutralized sent a chill up my spine. They meant dead. And keeping the witch in a null room when she had not been convicted of a crime, was illegal, a painful punishment.

JoJo had created a file on Jason Ethier’s backstory and her summation read: At seven years of age, he went into therapy. He was diagnosed with cancer—acute leukemia—at age nine due to the fact that he was a male witch. Loriann went to Katie Fonteneau (whose scion drank from the child and sexually abused him), and Loriann pressured Katie into saving her brother from the cancer. But Jason’s vision of vamps was blood and sex and this treatment set his addiction deeper—blood and sex violation, blood and healing, both felt good. Jason, in therapy, was fine for a while. It didn’t last. In her “Comments” section, JoJo had written two things: How did Jason find Godfrey? and ‘LaFleur deserves a commendation for maintaining a security and confidentiality protocols while under a working.’

T. Laine had already typed in a comment. There is a working for vampires. It isn’t very specific, but if you have a little vampire blood you can search for it.

T. Laine submitted her summation as I was reading the others: Jason and magic. Blood Tarot magic was part of the Ethier family. Loriann had her grandmother’s deck, said to have been owned by Torquemada himself. Per Loriann Ethier, Jason stole the rare deck. Using tarot, Jason practiced the Circle of the Moon and ways to alter it for unknown purpose. Note: Blood Tarot decks can be used in demon worship and demon summoning. Note: LaFleur’s binding likely contained what witches sometimes refer to as a confidentiality clause, keeping him from talking about the tats or the experience. The working might have even kept him from remembering much of his experience. I’ll be turning this all over to the witch council for evaluation and judgment. Loriann deliberately put a protection order and a restraining order against speech into the flesh of a human being, neither of which was part of the working she was forced to ink by the vampire Isleen. She did that of her own volition. And her brother is now, possibly, summoning vampires, which may be how he ended up with Godfrey.

T. Laine’s summation ended with two conclusions, Jason’s one goal seems to be to find and kill Rick LaFleur, who—according to his sister’s lies—didn’t want to save him, or was willing to sacrifice Loriann and Jason to save himself. And, ‘Now that Rick has learned he had a mute compulsion inked into his skin, he seems to be able to force himself to speak through it. I hold out hopes that he can overcome the other bindings too. I see no indication of security breach in LaFleur.’

My teammates were working to protect their boss and his job.

Here, just like in the church, everything evil seemed to have its feet planted in secrets and lies, control and abuse.





FIFTEEN




I went home, got some rest. When I woke, Sam was at the door with Mud and Brother Thad, the boxes of equipment behind them. I wrapped a robe around myself and opened it. “Hey. Is it a party?” I asked.

“Nope,” Mud said. “I’m here for the next two nights, me and Cherry. I got nowhere else to stay.” Mud seemed awfully pleased about that.

I spotted the dog in the yard on a long leash, racing back and forth and up and down, smelling everything, peeing and marking territory everywhere the leash would reach. I hadn’t had a dog since the churchmen had shot and killed my three. A strange thrill raced through me at the sight, not one I’d have predicted. I was unexpectedly happy to have a dog here again. Cherry was long-haired, liver, white, and tan, as agile and fast as a racing dog. I turned my gaze back to Mud, who was not mine yet, according to the courts. “You can’t stay here, sister mine. I don’t have anyone to stay at the house with you yet.”

Sam pushed Mud through the door. “At the Nicholson house, Mama and Mama Grace’s got the stomach bug, along with five of the littles. Projectile vomiting. It’s spreadin’ like wildfire. Esther and Jed have it too.”

“And I can’t stay with Sam on account of SaraBell jist gave him a boy.”

“You’re a father?” I squealed and grabbed Sam, hugging him, the first time I’d hugged my brother since before I left the house at age twelve.

Sam laughed in delight and hugged me back, his blue eyes sparkling. “Eight pounds, seven ounces and a head full of dark hair. SaraBell named him Sam Junior.”