Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4)

In the field behind the stockyard, the fist began to open, drawing power from the deeps of the earth, hot and glowing. Magma. Soulwood turned its attention to the new energies, intrigued. From deep and deep in the earth, the somnolent power that resided, motionless and waiting, stirred. If it woke, there would be earthquake. Flooding. Destruction. If the demon got free as Jason died, there would be earthquake, flooding, and destruction. Those six minutes might have cost us everything.

Loriann stopped beside the bed of the truck. I could feel Occam as he moved to block her access to the back of the truck, to Rick’s cage, and to me. Gunfire rattled from inside the house and through our comms. Blood splattered on the walls and concrete floor. I felt it. Soulwood snapped its attention to the blood. Hungry.

Bloodlust, that simmering need, woke. And grew. I was tied to the land. I began to retreat, but the smell/feel/sense of the blood in the house was growing. Bloodlust reached toward it.

Occam ordered, “Get back. Get on your knees.”

“Keep her talking,” JoJo said.

Loriann said to Occam, “You’re not gonna shoot an unarmed woman, so listen to me.” I felt the power in the word listen. She had used a wyrd on him, forcing his compliance. “They’ll kill Jason. They won’t care. He’s just another blood junkie to them.”

I pressed on my bloodlust, forcing it down, wrapping it tight. I drew away from the blood and the need and concentrated on Loriann’s voice. “If you go in, if Rick goes in, they’ll be careful. You can keep Jason alive. Put the gun away. We’re just talking.”

JoJo cursed. “Sending help, Ingram. Hang on, Occam.”

“Not interested in going up against SWAT,” Occam said, sounding marginally himself. There was a soft clatter on the tongue of the truck. “See that? That’s Bubba killing a blood-servant. Just broke his neck. Snap.” I figured Occam was holding the assault rifle, trained on Loriann, and had placed his tablet on the truck, but I didn’t risk a look, my attention on the house and the fight, my bloodlust snared by the violence.

“I can unbind the spell on Rick,” she bargained, her words soothing. “As soon as Jason is safe. But you have to let him save my brother first.”

“And we should believe you? On anything?” Occam said, still fighting her attraction. His words echoed in my earbud. JoJo was recording all this.

Her tone waffling between desperation and threats, Loriann said, “He’s being forced through a shift right now, even in the cage. You know how that feels, don’t you, the need to shift while trapped in silver. You have to help Rick and he has to save my brother. Rick has no choice.”

I wanted to hit her. Or drain her.

My fist clenched in the pot of soil, my fingers closing on dirt and the sprig of vampire tree. Four fingertips of my other hand were touching the soil beneath me. The land had tasted her blood. I heaved back and back on the bloodlust. It turned to me. And then to Loriann, whose wrists were bleeding. Small splatters fell to the earth near me. Eyes closed, I knew blood. I could feel each drop, could hear them pass through the air and hit the soil, even over the cacophony of the comms. Could taste them through the ground. Blood inside the house. Blood near me. Souwood reached for the blood, wanting.

Over comms came the sound of screaming. Someone was hurt. One of ours. More blood fell.

The feel of magic rose through the earth, a wave of dark power. Jason had set off a magical attack. Something prearranged. A wyrd spell. Others of our crew began to scream. T. Laine was shouting in Latin. It was her sleep spell.

“Rick’s shifting. He’s in pain,” Loriann said, cajoling. “Let Rick loose and he’ll finish the shift and the pain will go away.”

“And then he’ll trot off and save your worthless piece-of-crap brother,” Occam growled, “thanks to your blood magic.”

“Hurry,” I whispered into my mic to JoJo, eyes tight against the growing bloodlust.

“Once Jason is free,” Loriann said, “I’ll break the spell in Rick’s tattoo. I put in a backdoor. I can do it.”

“Don’t believe you,” Occam snarled, sounding too much like his cat.

Through the earth, I felt someone coming closer, as subtle and graceful as a cat. FireWind. Notified by JoJo.

“Listen to me,” Loriann growled, almost sounding cat herself, furious, attacking. “It’s not too late. I can help Rick get in and back out.”

Over the earbuds, on the para freq, I heard Gonzales say, “What the hell is that? Open fire!” His words were drowned out by weapons fire.

“Kill it!” someone else shouted.

T. Laine screamed to be heard over the firing, “No! It isn’t real. It’s just a magic construct! Stop firing! Stop! Cease fire! Cease fire!”

Someone else screamed. Female. Vampire. The ululation of true-death.

“Too bad. I gave you a choice,” Loriann said.

Magic slammed into me. Ripped thorugh flesh and bone. Occam screamed, a cat cry of rage. Rick screamed. I grunted as my muscles gave way. I slid flat to the ground, biting my tongue, blood and spit spattering as my face landed on the dirt. I’d have been bruised if I had been standing. Occam growled. Loriann had somehow coerced him into a shape-shift. A hard, brutal, fast change. Rick screamed again. I couldn’t get my body to move, much less stand and fight.

Metal clanged. Loriann had opened Rick’s cage door. Leaves erupted from the ground in the spots of my blood. In the spots of Loriann’s blood as the earth responded. Tendrils of fresh vines reached for my bare skin. My bloodlust reached for Loriann. I hauled back on it, struggling to not take her for the land. Because what if she really could unbind Rick? I forced open my eyes. Saw Loriann, her back to me.

Numb, clumsy, I pushed away from the earth. Stood. Grabbed Loriann, my fingers on her bloody wrist. Hunger flooded through me.

Rick, in black cat form, and Occam’s spotted cat lunged past us, toward the house. Grindylows raced in from somewhere, following. Claws out. I was too late.

Pulling on Soulwood’s strength, I wrenched Loriann’s fingers back and straight-armed her to her knees. “I felt magic,” I said. “That was a spell! You’re manipulating the tat spells on Rick. Right now.”

Loriann laughed.

“She’s using the tat binding,” I said into my mic. But it was covered in my blood and I didn’t know how clearly JoJo would hear. “She sent Occam and Rick to save Jason. Two grindys are after them.” I could feel the magic coursing through her, following Rick.

FireWind finally arrived, silent. He clubbed Loriann to the ground, a single, vicious fist to the head. It knocked her unconscious. He strapped the silver blood-cuffs back on Loriann’s wrists. With hands that were far stronger than a human’s, he untwisted the wire of a second, similar cuff and wrapped it around her head. Her wyrd magic stopped. Like a clean slice through the air. But Rick and Occam were already inside.

FireWind was cold and brutal, his expression blank ferocity. “Can you call them back?” he asked me.

“I can try.” I dropped down and curled my legs onto the blanket. “But you might have to cut me free. Use steel.” FireWind ordered someone to watch Loriann Ethier and he knelt beside me.

I dug in the gobag, fingers finding the broken piece of black stone from the time of Rick’s original inking. Stolen from Rick’s house in my B and E. I had no idea why he kept it. I didn’t care. It was part of the spell that had bound him. I had stolen it to use in a last ditch effort that might help him. I dropped it in my lap. Put a fingertip on the earth. Shoved my hand into the pot of Soulwood.

I reached for my land. And for Rick. There was strange power in the ground. A swirling miasma so thick it was like heavy oil and clotted blood. Light and dark energies, swirling, struggling. The fist was uncoiling, its dark energies anathema to the life of the earth. The fist shoved up through the stockyard ground, reaching for freedom it could only gain as the dark of the moon fell below the horizon. Magma boiled behind the fist, full of power.

The massive sentient sleeping presence beneath the earth, the soul of the land, stirred. The earth trembled. Demon, Soulwood, and the spirit of the earth were about collide. This would be very bad.

Closer to me, magics clouded the air and beat against the surface of the ground, contained but powerful. There was blood everywhere. I called to Soulwood and through my land I called to Occam. My spotted cat answered with a growl, always human enough to know me. I called to Rick. And … there. There he was. I found him.

His magic was hot and cold and prickly and furred. Burning bright. He was different from the last time I touched his power. He was more … more were-creature. He was magic. He was power. Flaring, intense. He was an alpha, one who carried magic in every cell of his body. Yet that magic was constrained, packed down, restricted. Unfocused. Inward turned. Trapped.

His magic was trapped.

As if in a net.

The tattoos were the trap I sensed, the magics holding him back.