Rick said, “It’s just a circle.”
Brute huffed, his head jutting forward.
“A witch circle,” Rick said. “The witch circle at the crime scene. You found the coven leader. Here.”
Brute nodded once, slowly.
“She’s been here all along?”
Brute nodded and turned back to the door, his eyes, nose, and ears focused on the wood.
“Someone I’ve never had contact with.”
Soul said, “Call backup, Ernest. Now.”
The guard didn’t bother to reply, but murmured into his mike, “Backup to admin. Silent, armed approach.” To Soul, he said, “I’m carrying only standard ammo.”
Soul pulled up her skirt to reveal a thigh holster. She handed Rick a Smith and Wesson .22, still warm from contact with her body.
Holding a weapon, Rick instantly felt better. He released the magazine and checked the ammo. “Silver shot,” he said. He slammed the magazine back into place, pulled back on the slide, injecting a round into the chamber. Rick stepped into the shadows beside the door and slowly turned the knob. It wasn’t locked.
He pointed to the wolf and held up one finger, then to himself and held up two fingers, then to Ernest with three fingers. The guard nodded, pointed left. Rick nodded and pointed right. He turned off his music and opened the door. Brute flowed in like a white cloud, hunched down, silent. Rick followed to the right, and felt, as much as heard, Ernest and Soul move left.
Inside the entry was dark, lit only by the green glow of computer battery backups. Brute didn’t need more light; neither did he. They moved through the entry, around the counter, to the doorway in back. It opened to a hallway, offices on either side. Music flowed through the air, the mellow sounds of wood flutes, familiar and calming. His music, stolen from his quarters, the music that Chief Smythe had been so interested in.
The frame around one doorway was bright, and Brute padded down the hallway, nose down, to that door. Rick followed, and the music grew louder. He expected the office to be Chief Administrator Liz Smythe’s. Instead, it was Mariella Russo’s office, her name in gold leaf on the wood. Mariella Russo, who was on call the night he went to the crime scene.
He stood back and let Ernest take his place. The man reached out and took the knob in hand, turning it slowly. The door didn’t creak as it swung open. Light flooded into the dark hall along with his music, amplified, and a stench like rotten cabbage, rotten eggs, and burned matches. Rick covered his nose. Brute padded inside two paces and halted.
The office furniture had been pushed back, exposing the wood floor, painted with a witch’s circle and pentagram. In the circle was a dark cloud and a body, human, Caucasian, female. Blond. Rick felt the shock of recognition. Polly. He didn’t have to wonder if she was dead. Her abdominal cavity had been ripped open, and the cloud was feeding on her. A demon. Mariella Russo was sitting at her desk, staring into the witch circle, her cupped hands in front of her, holding something that glowed yellow green.
Soul leaped for the desk, her body leaving the floor in one smooth, sleek movement. Agile. Inhuman. Both Ernest and Rick lifted their weapons in two-hand stances. Fired. Two taps. Ernest’s slammed Russo midcenter of her body mass. Rick’s shot hit her forehead.
A half second later, the concussion of the shots still echoing, Soul was standing behind the desk, holding Mariella’s hands in hers. She eased the thing, whatever it was, from the dead administrator’s hands. “Call for a containment vessel,” she ordered. But Ernest was already doing so, his voice soft and in control.
Brute woofed and growled and ended on a faint whine, his eyes on Soul. Yeah, Rick thought, remembering her speed, like a time jump of movement. She wasn’t human. No way, no how. Not with that leap. He walked to the circle and stood beside Brute, one hand on the wolf’s head, scratching gently at the base of the upright ears.
The demon raised up out of Polly’s naked body and hissed at them, showing a mouth full of sharp, pointed teeth. Ernest turned up the volume of the music and the demon closed its eyes, settling back to the corpse, as mellow as Rick felt when the music protected him from the moon call. He thought back to the spell at the crime scene. They had called up a moon demon. Soul lifted her eyes to Rick. “Please go back to your quarters.”
Rick ejected the magazine of Soul’s .22 and put the safety on before setting the gun on the desktop. He and his unit backed out just as four men rushed into the room, one carrying a cylindrical canister with a rounded top.