Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4)

The dark of early night grayed everything, and my eyes began adjusting to the lack of light. The door opened and shut slowly, on its own gravity power, and I watched as Occam peeled back a tarp, revealing the soil. The air was heavy and muggy and my skin was already slick with sweat in the heat. Lightning flickered on the horizon, and I hoped that might mean rain soon and cooler temps.

I kicked off my shoes and blew out a hard breath. The pale gray-white roof felt odd and sort of slick beneath my bare feet, still warm from the day, and nasty. The roofing material was a modified bituminous membrane roofing. The name sounded like pure minerals, but the bitumen was contained in atactic polypropylene, a chemical that I was pretty sure was toxic to plant-people. I could feel my body fighting off the chemicals and curled my fingers under, hoping I didn’t grow leaves while up here, as part of my body’s immune response. I didn’t want the new boss to see them. He might know some things about me from reports, but that was a lot different from seeing me grow leaves. That felt oddly personal and intimate for a relationship that didn’t exist yet.

I stepped onto the dirt. It too was warm from the summer sun, and I wriggled my bare toes into the soil, sighing in happiness this time. I was home. I let go of all the tension that had squeezed my chest and hunched my shoulders and accepted the faded pink blanket Occam extended. I hadn’t thought about the blanket in my truck. I used the blanket when I read the land, and though I could likely read the land just fine without it, it was comforting to have. I dropped it and plopped to my backside on it. The loose soil gave and I sank farther before it compacted and I stabilized. I shuffled my hands beneath the surface of the dirt. Occam knelt beside me in the dark, his blade exposed and ready to cut me free.

Ayatas FireWind exited the door from the third floor, arriving last, probably after inspecting Rick and giving orders to the rest of the team. He took up a place behind me, his back to the waist-high wall that protected us from accidently falling and landing on the concrete below.

I closed my eyes and reached slowly for Soulwood. The land was here. And there. I merged myself from here into my land and followed it down and down, through the brick and steel and mortar and deep under the foundation. And out, seeking. There was broken rock to one side, a ridge of hills over there, and deep alluvial soil in the Tennessee River valley, left from ancient floods. There were buildings that had been dug deep, many stories down. Power plants that thrummed into the earth. Dams and tributaries and islands in the water.

Soulwood reached for the blood that was still being poured onto the land, an elastic and thirsty yearning. The blood-sorcerer sacrifice was still taking place. There. I was ready for it this time and I shoved down on the bloodlust that tried to grab me, tracking the blood. There. Only a few miles away. I was grateful for Occam’s presence. He seemed to mute the effect of the bloodlust. I could search in safety.

Something else, something darker than my land, reached out. Fast. Latched on to me. I knew it. The vampire tree. It too was sensing the blood from the sacrifice. It too felt a rising bloodlust. The tree sent its vision of the Green Knight into my mind, its armor made of metal in the shape of overlapping leaves. A crusading tree. And now there were two of us searching for the witch circle, which made it simultaneously easier to find and harder to resist. The witch circle was … there.

“Occam,” I whispered, a mere breath of sound.

I felt him sit behind me, encircling me with his arms, his legs out around mine. I leaned back against him, feeling his magic wrap around me, sigh through me. His magic was tied to Soulwood. Was tied to me. It hugged me like a warm blanket in winter.

There was a time when this type of contact would have been unpleasant, would have been a reminder of John and other things best forgotten. But it wasn’t, not any longer.

“Do I need to cut you free, Nell, sugar?”

“Not … yet,” I whispered.

“In that case, I need you to breathe.”

I took a breath, long and slow, and realized I hadn’t taken one in a while. Too long. I followed the blood, resting in Occam’s embrace, not giving in to the bloodlust that would make me claim the sacrifice for the land and then claim the earth there itself. And … thereby claim the curse for myself. Oh … that was possible. Care and care and greater care, I thought.

I placed the river bends. The direction of the flow. The position of the moon, still below the horizon. The hydroelectric power plants. The Watts Bar nuclear power plant, not so very far away, a beacon of heat and light. I also located the places where the earth was poisoned with radiation from the power plant and the testing at Oak Ridge. Classified places of poison and death and secrets. Secrets I could never share because there was no way I should know about them.

I let myself be drawn back to the sacrifice. To the blood.

And maggots.





SIXTEEN




“Vampires are being called,” I muttered. “Yummy hasn’t called me. Someone needs to contact the Master of the City. See if they’re being summoned this time too.”

I heard FireWind’s voice on his comms system, relaying the message.

“Occam,” I whispered, “I need a map of Knoxville. A paper map.” I meant most anything nondigital that magic wouldn’t ruin, remembering the paper map T. Laine had shown us once. Occam said something to FireWind and I felt more than heard his steps move away. Occam kept his arms around me.

Softly, his lips at my ear, he said, “What do you think Jason used as sacrifice?” He was asking if a human had been killed.

“I don’t know.” But mostly I just didn’t want to guess. Not yet. Minutes passed.

“Is he still at the curse circle?” Occam asked.

Bloodlust shuddered through me, but leaning against Occam eased the power of the spell. “Yes. He’s killing another … something. Someone?”

I hadn’t heard anyone return, but the quiet, crinkly sounds of a map being unfolded pushed back the silence. I opened my eyes and tugged one hand from the soil. I had slumped against Occam and he pressed on my spine, helping me sit up.

FireWind knelt on one knee and offered me T. Laine’s map of Knoxville. I thought about the rivers and the tributaries, the moon and attraction of magnetic north, which I could feel as a deep steady draw in the earth. I turned the map and placed a finger on the paper. It landed on Mascot Road in a bend of the Holston River. “Around here? Is there someplace he could use here?”

“Lot of places,” Occam said. “This area isn’t heavily populated. But it’s a lot farther out than before. Are you sure?”

“Yes.” There was no doubt.

“What do you feel, Ingram?” FireWind asked.

“Blood. A lot of blood. He’s sacrificing. I can’t say what’s dying. But he’s using the life force to call something …” I hesitated. “Filthy isn’t the right word. Neither is evil. But it’s maybe both and neither. The spell is calling vampires and Rick and it. And it’s trapped in the earth.”

“Demon?” FireWind asked, his voice a whisper of sound.

“I don’t know. The witches said a demon was being summoned, but it isn’t deep. Not hell deep.” And not as deep as magma, which was a lot closer than it used to be, thanks to lots of things, not the least Soulwood’s interference in the geology of Knoxville while helping me.

“Hell?” FireWind asked, surprised.

I knew, intellectually, that the hell where demons were imprisoned wasn’t under the earth, as in a physical place. But it was possible that some demons were tied to fire or attracted to fire, and that kind might associate with magma. When summoned, that kind might use the energies stored in the crust’s molten core to rise. The salamanders had done so, but this wasn’t a salamander. Was this thing a fire demon? I shrugged.

“To clarify,” FireWind said quietly, “you are stipulating that the sacrificial blood is being used to summon an intelligence or an entity up through the earth.”

“Just a minute.” I eased back into the earth, deeper, straight down through soil and broken granite, through layers of rotting limestone, and deeper still to bedrock. And deeper. I searched, moving slowly, sensing ahead, finding the sleeping presence deep in the earth. What I thought might actually be the soul of the Tennessee River valley. It was resting, somnolent, though not so torpid as it might have been a hundred years in the past, when white men began to dam the rivers and build power plants. But that presence was not being called.

Before I could poke or prod the presence, even unintentionally, I eased away from the surface of the sentience. Back to my job. Back to the rooftop of the PsyLED building.