Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4)

Elsewhere, the blood and the power, of the vampires were being spilled in the house. The ones in cages, the Green Knight and I ignored. The ones free and barricaded in the back of the room, those the tree and I went after. Roots and thorns grew into them. Living stakes. The vampires awoke and fought. But the tree, sentient and eager, would not be stopped. Taking a sacrifice. Just like the demon did, I thought.

From belowground, local vines pushed through cracks in the concrete slab foundation and into the walls, the wood once grown on nearby land. The wood in the walls, awakened by my blood, bloomed. Put out roots. Growing. They twined with the vampire tree. Roots and vines and thorns. Jason screamed in unearthly agony. Dying.

Using the vampire blood I fed the earth.

Loriann threw herself at the body of her brother, held in the demon’s fist, trying to save him. The fist and the tree both accepted her as a willing sacrifice. She was dead before she could scream. Her ashes scattered across Jason. Ashes and dust clogged the air; bits of dissolving vampire clothing, shoes, hair, and desiccated flesh fell and were devoured by the roots that broke up the concrete slab foundation. The tree tore apart the house and the vampires and their humans. Soulwood took its due, and sucked the remains into the earth. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Jason laughed, the sound all wrong. “I did it. It’s all mine.”

A different voice shivered through the ground and into the house. “I accept the bargain.” The power of the demon began to unfurl within Jason. The vampires in the cages began to bleed and to scream as the bargain was sealed.

My roots found the most powerful of the vampires and slammed thorns into him like wooden blades. Wood like stakes. The vampire tree drank his blood. I had never met Godfrey. I had seen him twice, as he tore out the throat of a store clerk and later killed a young boy. But he wanted to rule this hunting territory, drink down its people, destroy the life in the land. No one ruled here but Soulwood. I gave Godfrey to the tree. The Green Knight and I reached to the vampires still alive in cages and twined around the bars. Ripped them apart. The freed vampires raced away. Terrified of the living wood. The vampire tree was gaining strength. I didn’t care. Because Soulwood drank too, drank down the sacrifices that gave it power. Bloodlust was slowly diminishing.

I looked through the blood and the life and death all around me. Determined that Unit Eighteen and all our humans and cats were safe and free, standing in the perimeter of the yard, keeping Ming’s vampires from approaching. Good.

I found the fist inside of Jason, the demon fighting for its power, its freedom, Jason bargaining for his life. I looked back along the track to the circle. The magic was active, open. Clouds of power bloomed into the night behind the stockyard. The demon was rising. The earth shuddered, bounced, roiled like boiling water.

Earthquake.

The circle was open and protected. Any attempt to close it or break it was doomed. But … No one had ever tried to close a circle from belowground, using the power of life, the power of the earth. If I could break it before Jason was fully possessed or died …

I directed the vampire tree to find the witch circle. The roots tunneled through the earth, seeking the power of the circle. Seeking the dead flesh at the stockyard, so much not yet carted away. The tree and Soulwood found the bodies of the Blounts, buried in the yard, and together, devoured them.

B’KuL shoved through, rising into the night. The stench of sewage and plague and rot filled the air. It rose, an arm, a leathery wing, a brutal, muscled shoulder. I wasn’t going to be in time.

The tree roots and Soulwood found the circle in the same instant. They tore into the power structure belowground. The land vibrated. The demon saw the powers tearing into the mathematics of the circle. The fist opened, clawed at the power of Soulwood, but the magics were too dissimilar. The smoky fist caught nothing. It tore into the tree, but the roots were too thick, too many, and they began to siphon off the magics in the circle. And then the magics of the demon. The roots regrew, the Green Knight ripping the demon energies apart, sealing up the earth from below. Life cutting into the darkness and the filth of the demon’s passage, disrupting the bargain with Jason.

B’KuL dropped the sorcerer. The fist of B’KuL ripped away and traced its own power signature back to the witch circle. Inside. Fighting the unfamiliar energies, poisoning the roots with death and disease. But Soulwood healed the tree, destroying the death magics of the demon.

B’KuL, threatened on all sides, reached back to Jason, but the sorcerer, drained by sickness and demon magic, his blood a sacrifice to the land, stopped breathing. Too soon for the bargain. Too soon for the demon. Jason’s heart stuttered. Stopped.

The vampire tree tore apart the circle from below, from the center out. Trapping the demon in place. B’KuL screamed in fury. Inside the house, Jason’s body fell apart. Ashes to ashes.

The somnolent presence deep and deep in the earth rolled over in its sleep, uneasy, as if prodded by a bad dream. The earth shuddered. Foundations across the river valley cracked. Water in rivers and reservoirs rippled deep, where they touched the land. The sleeping soul of the land jolted.

B’KuL thrashed and fought. Trying to pull himself free. Trying to retreat into the earth, to safety.

The new moon was too far below the horizon. The sun had set. The curse had been strongest between the setting of the new noon and the setting of the sun, that sliver of time when everything was open, the sky a bright, wide, sunset expanse. I felt the power of the curse diminish. And then it was gone.

The circle closed over the dark power.

The earth shook and trembled. A single sacrifice would free the half-trapped demon.

A small quake cracked foundations and popped windows. A few dishes shattered.

And even that went still. Silence reigned in the land. The spirit of the earth, that presence in the deep, fell back into its rest. And slept.

All across Knoxville, up into the hills and down into the river valley, the earth was nourished.

Soulwood was satisfied. So were the new, gigantic trees on the Blounts’ property. So was every acre and square foot of land I had ever claimed. Trees that had been young now wore the girth of old growth. Where there was pasture, now was young forest; where the land had been spoiled by man, now there was the freshness of life.

More vampires had appeared on the land near the house. Yummy and Ming and Shaddock. Vampires left. Witches came, unknown witches, strangers, but Lainie liked them so I didn’t drain them. The land and I rested.

Hours passed. The stars moved through the blackness of the night sky.

In the new forest a mile away, I felt Lainie and four other witches make a new circle in the land. It surrounded and covered the blood-magic circle in the pasture that had become a deep wood. With magic, they sealed off the demon’s access. B’KuL would never get his sacrifice. His power remained locked away.

More time passed. The sun rose and circled the sky. The dark of the new moon set.

“There she is,” a familiar voice said. “Son of a witch on a switch. She still looks human.”

“Damn tree. Damn tree is everywhere.” Occam. I smiled.

“Can’t burn it. Can’t poison it. All you can do is cut it and hope it doesn’t kill you.” Sam.

Why was Sam here?

“Can you get to her?” Lainie. Worried.

Something furry rubbed against my shoulder and chittered. A grindylow. How … odd.

I felt the vines and the roots give way. Felt the tree give me up. Felt my body lifted and held against Occam’s chest. He was purring. I wrapped my arms around him and remembered to breathe.

“Got you, Nell, sugar. I got you.”





EPILOGUE




I pushed off with my bare toes against the wood decking of my front porch. My silky skirt brushed my calves as I toed the swing slowly back and forth. What with the heat and being a tree and the ways my life had changed, it had been almost a year since I sat in my swing. I had missed it.

The night air blew through the covered porch, cooler since the weather front had come through, a comfortable seventy-something. The temps wouldn’t last in summer in Knoxville. They never did. But for now it was pleasant in the aftermath of the slow-moving storm.

Mud and the new dog, Cherry, were staying with Esther and her husband tonight, as she would all three nights of future full moons. Jedidiah would drive her to school when the full moon fell on a weekday, and take her to church services when the full moon fell on weekends. I had refused when Jed first asked me to let Mud stay with them, but I’d changed my mind for several reasons.