by Faith Hunter
Crap. I breathed in a slow, relieved breath and the witch-light fluttered. It looked like I was going to have help after all.
Molly said softly, “Jane, we’re aware that you’re tied in some way to Joseph Santana. The sun’s down and he’ll need to feed. Soon. He may already be hunting humans to drain and kill. Are you willing to be bait for us to track him and possibly lure him here and capture him?”
I knew why Molly was saying it all aloud. Stating the obvious and getting permission were part of the ceremony, making certain that it was clear to all assembled that I was a willing . . . sacrifice was the wrong word, but it was close. Closer was her word choice and Eli’s. Bait. But there was something in her eyes, some warning, that told me Molly hadn’t yet informed Lachish about the blood diamond, which happened to be in my gobag. I wasn’t sure how to deal with that, but I had trusted Molly all my adult life, so I nodded to let her know it was okay to tell if and when it was necessary. “You’re going to try to make him come to us, here,” I said, tapping the gobag so she would know I had the gem with me. “Yes, I’m willing.”
Molly hesitated, then nodded. We were good to go.
Less than two minutes later, I found myself in the middle of an inner circle, sitting like the witches, cross-legged, Eli’s and my gobags between my knees, our weapons and metal equipment—knives, stakes, guns—still in a pile outside the biggest circle. Not having them near me made me more than uncomfortable, but Lachish assured me I would be safe in the warded circle. Yeah. Right.
Sabina, the old outclan priestess, was watching me through the dark, her gaze piercing and steady, as cold as a block of ice. At her right knee was the black velvet bag holding the sliver of the Blood Cross, the greatest weapon the vamps owned. It struck me as odd that she had it, as there was no silver cage to herd Joseph Santana into, and Leo wanted him alive-ish. Heart removed, of course, however dead-ish that left an old vamp. I formulated that question aloud to her, but more along the lines of, “I was hired by Leo to take his heart. Do you plan to kill Santana true-dead?”
Lachish answered for her. “Sabina has informed us that our prey is a truly powerful vampire. It’s possible that no steel or silver cage will hold a vampire that strong; therefore, we’ve devised a cage of energy. We’ll place you within, call him here through your tie to him, and pull him to the boundary of the outer circle. The moment his flesh touches those energies, we can cage him in the inner circle, within the snare of thorns, the ward devised by the Everhart sisters and granted as a gift to us.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I’m inside the cage meant for Santana?”
“Yes,” Sabina said, her tone placid, “at first. And if he cannot be held in this cage, and if I cannot best him one on one and keep him there in a test of our joined power, then I will use the Blood Cross sliver and send him to the light.” Which was vamp for killing him true-dead, which went against Leo’s proscriptions, and her own, and Bethany’s, for that matter. “As you would say, I have planned for all eventualities, even the most dire.”
Worst-case scenario, I thought.
“It’s okay, Jane,” Molly said. “The circle you’re sitting in isn’t activated. The moment that Santana touches the outer circle, you’ll feel it. We all will. Then you just have to roll over the inner circle, on the side away from him. You rolling over the circle wall will activate the snare of thorns, and the energies will then pull Santana inside.”
Yeah? No. “I don’t like being inside a cage, even if the door’s wide open.”
Sabina said to me, “You have agreed to be our lure. You brought the stains of his life force, the fluids that were hung upon the wall with him?”
I hesitated. This sounded too simple. And too dangerous. Though not as dangerous as what the fifty-two humans had experienced. What choice did I have? “Yes,” I said, after the pause had gone on too long. “I brought it.” I opened Eli’s gobag and dug around for the gauze. I reopened the packet and set it on the grass between my knees, making sure it wasn’t touching me, or the chalk of the inner circle, and that there was plenty of space for me to roll or somersault over it if needed. I didn’t like this. Not one bit. I didn’t like that witches I didn’t know were in charge. I didn’t like that Sabina was involved—a fanghead so powerful she could probably do what Santana had done and immobilize us all—and who was a witch herself. I didn’t like that Sabina and Lachish seemed so chummy. I didn’t like that two very weak witches were finishing out the circle, instead of five strong witches. New Orleans had plenty. Why two weak witches? Was I missing something? Yes, of course, I was flying by the seat of . . . of someone else’s pants, which was stupid and dangerous. Mostly, I didn’t like that Molly was there. I wanted her safe at my house. Dang it all.
I hung the gobags around my neck and made sure I had ash-wood stakes within easy reach in my bun. If it came to a physical fight, wood wouldn’t kill an old vamp, but it might immobilize him long enough for me to break the circle and get my weapons. If the cage I was sitting in didn’t hold him. I looked at Molly, my misgivings clear even by witch-light. She gave me back a look that said she was worried too. Great. Just great. I mouthed, Does she know about your magics?
Molly shook her head, the motion tiny, to keep others from noticing. Crap. She hadn’t told Lachish that her magics had gone to the dark side, from strong earth magics with a hint of moon magic, to death magics. “Molly—”
“I’ll be fine,” she interrupted.
I compressed my lips together, holding in the words I wanted to say.
Lachish looked back and forth between us, but when neither of us spoke up, she indicated that all the witches should sit and take up their implements for a working. As an air witch, Lachish took out a necklace of feathers: hawk, owl, and one long, golden eagle flight feather. The two weak witches already had theirs on the ground—the moon witch using a fist-sized moonstone, polished and bright in the night; the stone witch using a dark green stone the size of her own bony knee, smoothed by water. Molly laid a gnarled stick of wood in front of her knees. A whole, small tree, based on the way it twisted off at both ends. I sniffed and recognized the scent of the plant. Rosemary. The last time I’d seen Mol cast in a group working, she had used a live rosemary plant, and she had killed it with her death magics. Now she used the root, trunk, and branch of a rosemary plant, and I had to wonder if the aromatic dead plant was the one she’d killed that day.
“What do I do? Just sit here?” It felt like time-out at the principal’s office when I was growing up. Except the scenery was nicer than the principal’s tiled floor and army green walls, and the outside air was better smelling, even in the middle of the city at night.
Good food smells, Beast thought. Want to hunt.
“Pretty much,” Molly said.
I just smiled, stretched my neck, rolled my head, and rotated my shoulders, getting ready for . . . anything. But mostly to move fast. I was sitting so that I was facing the two weaker witches, and so that Molly was at my back. She’d had my back at workings before and I trusted her to smack me with her magical root if I needed to do something, a thought that made a titter tickle in the back of my throat. Nerves.
“Breathe in,” Lachish told the witches, “and breathe out.” Her witch-light fluttered and went out. “Again. Slowly. And”—she lifted her hands into the air—“we are together and we are separate, as the circle of power that binds us rises, making of us like-minded family.”
There were several kinds of workings witches could do, from manipulated energies that changed human perceptions—like glamours and obfuscation spells—to wyrd spells, where the energy for a working was prerecorded into a single word or phrase. Hedge of thorns was a protective shield spell that Molly and her sisters had created, and which combined a warding and a modified wyrd spell. Santana had used offensive battle wyrd spells against me, and he’d nearly killed me. There were also summoning spells that called a specific person, and communication spells that allowed witches to talk over long distanc
es, though with the advent of cell phones they were little used these days. There were also the off-the-hip workings that accomplished something new, but they came with inherent dangers and outcomes that were often difficult to predict. This spell started pretty simply, with the witches matching one another’s breath patterns, even Sabina, who didn’t need to breathe.
The outer circle began to glow again, that pale moonlight color, silvery gray, opalescent and feathery, a soft sheen of energy. Beast pushed into the forefront of my mind and the circle changed color, glowing brighter, but now with dark green shadows that moved, as if the wind pushed forest leaves against the surface, as if vines crawled up from the ground to meet at the center overhead, a dome of protective power. In the distance of the park grounds, I caught a glimpse of white, flowing like a mist, or perhaps a ghost, across the lawn. Then the magics brightened and I lost sight of it.
“Begin,” Lachish said.
Molly said, “We are protected here. We ward our space with the power of the air, the moon, the earth, the stone, and the power of fire. All power gifted by the Creator, spirit gifted by the Great Spirit, who moved over the dark waters . . .”
I jerked in surprise as fire flickered up, golden among the moonlight gray and the green of the leaves. There was something pagan and elemental about Molly’s wording, unlike the workings that she usually performed, and I had to wonder how acceptable it was for me, a Christian and a Cherokee and a skinwalker, to be sitting in the center of the witches’ working. It occurred to me that since I was part of the working, my spirituality might cause glitches in the functionality of their joined magic. Maybe I should have thought about that beforehand. And I had stopped listening as my thoughts took me into potential, unexplored problems.
Lachish said, “I call Joseph Santana. By the fluids of his undeath, by the bodily soil of his captivity, I call him. I summon Joseph Santana. Come, Joseph. Come.” Nothing happened.
Sabina took up the working and said, “Joseph Santana, you seek the power of the Lost Diamond.”
The gem in the gobag grew hot against my skin. I whipped my head to Sabina, eyes wide. And then to Molly, who stared at me in horror.
Sabina said, “She who holds the Lost Diamond is here, among us.”
I had agreed to being used as bait, but Sabina somehow knew that I had the blood diamond. She was using it to power the spell, bringing Santana there. To us. And from her expression, Molly hadn’t known any of this was going to happen.
Sabina said, “You are called, Joseph San—”
In a single instant everything went wrong. The air split open with a burst of wind and a flash of light. Thunder cracked. Power sizzled through the ground, stinging me where I sat. The grass along the outer chalk circle flared with flame. The fire whooshed, creating a wind, and roared up along the dome of the witch circle, stealing my breath and making my ears pop. I roped the gobags close to me, the one with the blood diamond painfully hot, but at least not yet on fire. The fissure in the air was like a gaping wound spilling ropes of light, tongues of fire, and gusting wind instead of blood and viscera. I could hear Sabina still calling, though her words were lost beneath the clamor.
I placed my hands to either side of the gauze, flat on the ground. Lifted my weight up and forward, toes beneath me, ready to somersault away.
The air thundered again. Something dark and opaque appeared in the cleft of light. It grew in size as if it approached at great speed. Thunder crescendoed. I narrowed my eyes against the brightness. Joseph Santana emerged through the rift of light, on the far side of the outer circle. Hanging in the air. Dangling. He screamed and dropped something. I felt the thump through the ground.
The outer circle split as though cut by an athame. The night wind and the stench of burning grass blew in. So did Joseph Santana. I had an instant of warning and Beast slammed through me, pushing me up and over the chalk line, like a gymnast over the vault horse, hands on the ground, body rolling high. Beneath me, the grass caught fire, scorching my hands. I tucked and rolled, over and through the grass fire. Heat blasted my thighs and hands. I tumbled, hit the earth jaw first with an oofing grunt, and rolled, grabbing at the ground to stop my momentum before I damaged the outer circle.
Predator! Beast screamed, her power shooting through me.
The space where I had sat was now much more than a small chalk circle drawn on the ground. Walls were rising from the soil, energy growing up like vines, becoming solid, energy that glowed and tremored with power.
This looked dangerous for the nonmagical nonwitch. Sweat adhered my clothes to my body like some kind of slimy glue. Heat radiated from the gobag like I’d stuck a burning piece of charcoal in it. My heart raced like a broken drum. My breath felt scorched on the heated air. Yeah. This officially sucked.
CHAPTER 16
Silver Motes of Power Slo-Mo-ing
The inner circle blazed fire like a flamethrower. An inverted hedge of thorns, built to work like a trap of power, turning a witch circle into a prison and a cage. Snare of thorns was an apt name. Heat broiled out, reaching for the vampire hanging in the air. The clap of thunder was so strong it shook the earth, and I squatted, my weight distributed on toes and fingertips. The gobag smelled like burning cotton and plastic, but the heat against my side began to dissipate. The inner circle glowed the color of crystalized blood, from the burning grass up to the top of the dome of the outer circle, like a noose tightening on the inverted ward. Inside was Joseph Santana.
He was crouched as well, our eyes on a level, one knee up near his chin, one hand on the burning ground. The hand wearing the bracelet was held in the air, fingers fisted. Flames licked at his skin and clothes. The bracelet was fully exposed on his wrist. The crystal in the setting spit a mixture of shadowy and clear motes of power, darting in a complicated spiral. Beside the clear crystal, the empty horns and claws looked dark, a hole waiting for the twin of the stone. In the same instant, I felt an answering heat in the gobag. The stench of burning fabric again increased. Santana’s eyes fell on the bag at my side. Oh crap . . .
Joseph shouted, “Glaciem!” Power like lightning shivered through the air. Abruptly the flames on the grass inside the snare went out. There was no smoke, only charred grass, the stink of old fire, blackened pants legs, and singed shirt cuffs to indicate the flames had been there at all. And now a ruff of frost lined the ground and coated the singed grass inside, the ice crystals taking on the color of the trap and cage. The ground looked like frozen blood, sparkling.
Santana was partially vamped-out, his eyes blacker than the darkest hells, the sclera looking like gelled and clotted blood. But his face was purely human, his fangs not visible. His long black hair fell in waves to the ice and covered his hand, his spread fingers already healed of any burns. He was dressed in a tuxedo, one so impeccably fitted that, even as he crouched, it conformed to his body perfectly. Yeah. He had helpers out there, and not just Juwan.
Joseph Santana himself, however, gave no appearance of having ever been human; rather, he looked like something carved by a master sculptor. His skin was the white of a marble gravestone, as slick and smooth and glowing as polished moonstone, and he gave off an aura of power that seemed to crackle through the air we breathed. Through the veil of the snare of thorns, his eyes settled on Lachish. He looked way too calm for a guy trapped in a cage. And my weapons were outside the circle.
Something’s wrong, I thought to Beast.
Predator . . . Beast gathered my body in tightly, flooding me with adrenaline. My eyesight sharpened again, the world growing brighter. Danger . . . My heartbeat and breathing sped, scents taking on a sharper intensity.
The fingers of Joseph’s upraised hand snapped, a sharp popping sound. Softly, he said, “Strangulo.” The power of the wyrd spell pulsed through the ground. Lachish grabbed her throat and fell to the side, her mouth open and eyes wide in terror. Over the magics and the burned earth I could smell her fear, like the stink of castor oil and burning fennel.
“Sabin
a,” I whispered, a warning in my tone. “Molly?”
“Working on it,” Molly said, breathless. “Lachish, ward yourself! We can hold the cage.”
Joseph pointed at the two weaker witches and said, “Dormio.” Again I felt the spell as it rippled beneath the earth, and instantly they both fell asleep, toppling to the side. As they fell, Lachish managed to raise a pale blue ward around herself, the energies flickering and unsteady, but they were enough. She gasped in a breath, crying and shaking, hyperventilating. I realized that the magics Joseph Santana was using were strong enough to pass through the ground beneath his fingers, under and through a warded circle, and still be deadly. I wondered how the ice he’d placed on the ground might be helping that, but it was an isolated thought in the midst of thinking, My weapons are outside the circle!
Sabina raised one hand toward Molly, who reached back; energy crackled between their hands, blue and red electricity arcing between them in the air. Sabina held her other hand toward the trap and said, “Solidus. Profundus.” The bloody energy of the inner circle’s snare went brighter, richer, as their combined strength supported the existing working. The walls now looked like plasticized safety glass running with blood. “Stabilire,” she said, a heartbeat later. Her spell somehow put out the last of the flames in the large circle, and a wind blustered through, blowing away the stench before it died.
Even as the priestess said the words, Joseph turned the bracelet toward Molly and said, “Demorior.” And nothing happened.
Molly whispered a curse. “Son of a witch on a switch. That was close.” She was sweating, the vivid scent notes of terror on the air.
Without looking, the prisoner lowered his hand and picked up the gauze that had helped to bait the trap; it was burned to a crisp. He sniffed it, his nostrils moving delicately, before dropping it back to the ground. He stood, moving like a trained dancer, loose and balanced, but with something off, something not quite right, not quite human, in his posture and the movement of his joints. He raised both hands like a mime on a street corner, but far more mesmerizing. Pressing his palms against the trap the witches had set for him, he ran his hands up and down, along the walls of power, as if testing their strength.
