Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4)

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 to 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 in the next twenty-four hours, 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. In the ninety minutes between new-moonset and 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.”