Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4)

by Faith Hunter

  • • •

  Occam was on the phone to someone in local law enforcement. He looked tired, despondent, and sounded frustrated. He was focused on his call and lifted a hand to me when I came by, but didn’t try to flag me down. I got a small potted rosemary plant from my cubicle and brought it to him. I placed it on his desk and when he looked up at me, quizzically, listening to the masculine voice on the other end of the phone, I captured his fused fingers and guided them to the soil. Soulwood soil.

  Occam took a slow breath and blew it out. He focused on me as if he had never seen me before and said, “Hold on.” He tapped his cell, set it down, and reached for me. I placed my fingers into his unscarred hand and he closed it around mine. He was werecat-warm. “That’s … Thank you.”

  I bobbed my head, slid my fingers free, and left him to his call, satisfied that I had helped.

  I was late leaving work and Margot Racer drove up just as I got into my C10. She lowered the window of her car and waved a listless hand at me. I was pretty sure she was wearing the same shirt from the day before.

  I walked over. “You just left the Blalock girl’s crime scene?”

  “Yeah. It was bad. Crimes against children always are. Now I’m heading to talk to Jim Paton again, after letting him stew in a cell all night.”

  “He was watching the girl?”

  She nodded. “There was a lot of porn on his PC, and a lot of it was photos of young girls he had taken himself.” A look of sly, repressed fury settled on her face. “Then someone took her.”

  “She was his,” I said softly. “He couldn’t stand that. That’s why he got involved. Why he reported it.”

  “Yeah. I can’t see any evidence that he physically abused girls since the one time he was caught, but I’m still on him. If he has secrets, I’ll find them. And I’ll find the vamps who killed Raynay Blalock.” Margot sped away, her tires screeching on the pavement. I wasn’t sure why she had come by, or why she hadn’t gone inside HQ. Unless she had been looking for me. Like a friend might. That made me feel oddly warm inside.

  I went home to a house that was already miserably hot. Mud was staying with her half sibs and true sibs, these last weeks before school started. Knowing I wouldn’t be interrupted, I took a short shower and fell into bed. But sleep was elusive so I grabbed the computer and stretched out on the hammock on the back porch. It was stiff and covered in cat hair, but the porch was cooler than the stuffy house. I made a few calls to my local bank and started filing information online for a loan, for what turned out to be a line of credit on the house and land. When I was done, I closed my eyes. I was turning into a townie. Mud and me together. Sleep took its own good time finding me.

  • • •

  To make up for the two donuts, I made a sizable fresh veggie and greens salad from the garden, enough to share, if a certain cat-man happened to stay over for a while after he got off work. I got to work early and put the salad in the break room fridge, beneath Rick’s takeout and on top of a pizza box. The entire second floor stank of fast food, and the sound of voices, both from video footage and from the office cubicles, was everywhere. I locked up my gobags and my weapon and eased into my seat for the end-of-day debriefing, listening to catch up on where everyone was.

  Occam slid into his chair, cat-fast, finishing off a burger. Rick’s hair was tangled and flyaway and his clothes were wrinkled. He looked tired and poorly groomed and irritable again. Everyone took places for the meeting except for Loriann Ethier and Margot Racer. Loriann was due in an hour. Margot was busy with the Blalock investigation. Rick pointed to the overhead screens and I saw footage of Margot and the sheriff giving a news conference on the body they had found. There was no mention of vampires as the killers. Not yet.

  Rick said, “Clementine, record.” He gave a list of the agetns present and then said, “Occam, report.”

  “At some point, Nell should talk to Ming of Glass in person, since I can’t get past the human security team without Maggot.” He grinned at me, teasing. I tried an eye roll and wasn’t sure how successful I was. It wasn’t a gesture I’d grown up making, since it showed a lack of respect. He went on. “For now, the humans at her compound say that Ming and her fangheads did not leave their lair yesterday or last night. After the attack at her council chambers I tend to believe them. Ming’s had all the locals locked down tighter than a drum, to keep them safe.

  “We do have an update on the van used in the kidnapping. Local sheriff’s deputies—who are going to be calling us personally in future with anything paranormal related—found the van in a drugstore parking lot between Kingston Pike and Old Kingston Pike. They found Raynay Blalock’s sneakers in it. It was a bloody mess and it’ll take time to process all the blood spatter.

  “One of the local ‘humans only’ hate groups has promised lethal retribution to the local vamps. Other right-wing wack-job hate groups are joining in. It ain’t pretty. Seems Detective Hamm—former detective Hamm—was a member in good standing with one. His face was plastered all over social media today, attending a meeting. It cost him his job.”

  “We’ll send flowers,” T. Laine muttered.

  I raised my hand, more to get attention than to ask permission to speak. “Ming of Glass has people looking for Godefroi de Bouillon.” I stumbled over the foreign pronunciation. “His humans could be, possibly, the ones who took the Blalock girl. A source identified that the people who took the Blalock girl smelled like Ming’s enemies,” I said, speaking of Yummy’s reading of the abduction site. “I’ve texted Ming’s security, requesting that they send us all the info they acquire on invading vampires and the location of their lair when and if they discover it. I told Yummy that if the local vamps take out the attacking European vampires, it will be the word of one vampire trying to convince the public that the bad guy is down, but that if SWAT and PsyLED take them down, it will be believable. I haven’t heard back.”

  “Good move, Ingram,” Rick said. “Let’s hope Ming agrees. Jones, Kent, bring us up to date on the circles and Loriann Ethier. What did you find?”

  JoJo said, “Circles first. Nothing on the photos. Once I got them big enough to see small things they were too pixilated. But when Lainie went back to the most recent circle”—Jo’s lips widened into a grin that somehow said gotcha—“she found something.”

  T. Laine leaned in and took over. “Kent here. The storm that came through was spotty and didn’t affect it, and the dry weather is good for preserving evidence. There are … let’s call them slits in the soil, narrow, hair-thin slots or slashes beside every single rune, so small they aren’t visible without getting on my knees, my nose a foot from the soil. I stepped on some doing the workups, but most are still there. The slits are uniform in size, and in the same placement in regard to the runes. I’m theorizing that they held something the witch took from the circles when she left, something more important than the focals and runes in the circle.”

  “Which leads us to Loriann,” Rick said, sounding grim.

  “I took Loriann to one of the circles,” T. Laine said, “without telling her about the slits. And she got on her knees. She was looking for the slits. She’s paler than a vamp to start with, but she visibly paled when she saw them. And then she acted as if nothing was there. Said not one word about them.”

  “So, she knows more than she’s saying,” I said.

  “Correctamundo,” Tandy said. He glanced up at me. “Old, out-of-date slang for ‘that’s a big yes’.” To the group he continued, “After T. Laine let her off at her hotel, Loriann drove to three other sites, locations listed on the sheriff’s reports. And then she went to the medical examiner’s office and had a long discussion with the forensic pathologist who was working up Blalock’s body. She asked some very pointed questions, and the main one was, ‘Were the vamps who attacked the Blalock girl feeding responsibly or in a feeding frenzy?’ She explained the difference to the ME and even provided photos of a victim dead from a feeding frenzy.”

 
“Photos we did not have in our database,” JoJo said, “until the ME sent them to us. It’s pretty graphic. On screen three.” She punched a button and a photo of a body appeared on the screen. It had been ripped to shreds, almost as if the body had been attacked by wild animals. But his face looked peaceful and happy. Vamps could mesmerize. Vamp saliva took pain away.

  “Did the Blalock girl’s face look so peaceful?” I asked.

  “Yeah. But her body wasn’t torn to ribbons, just well bitten,” JoJo said, her voice hard.

  Rick brought it all together for us. “Early on, we knew that vampires were being called to the circles at some point in the working. It seems that Loriann drew that same conclusion, but based on the slits in the soil, instead of a maggoty feeling.” He looked at me and took a slow breath. The lines in his face grooved deep, as if carved by a steel chisel. “The spell Loriann used to ink me …” He stopped, as if saying the words hurt. “The spell—” His words cut off. When he tried to speak again, his voice was raspy, and pained.

  Occam sniffed as if there was something wrong with Rick’s scent. Tandy watched them both, his face lined with worry and what I thought was compassion.

  Rick swallowed painfully and went on, his voice harsh. “The spell relied heavily on the presence of a special deck of tarot. One that had been in her family for generations. It’s possible that it was an original Blood Tarot deck.” Rick looked down at his hands, which were folded on the table, fingers laced together.

  “Blood Tarot?” I asked. “What’s that?”

  “Halfway mythical decks created with blood sacrifices and black magic, the ink in the drawings made with the blood of witches, were-creatures, humans, and vampires, long before the general public knew that paras existed,” T. Laine said. “Among witches there’s oral history about the tarot decks, claiming the cards contain long-forgotten workings and spells and curses in the artwork. In this century, covens have been searching for old magical relics, icons, and amulets, along with any remaining Blood Tarot decks.”

  “Why remaining?” I asked. “Were they destroyed?”

  “There were claims that the decks had been confiscated in the Inquisition and used by Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada, to lead his assault against Jews, Muslims, witches, pagans, were-creatures, and other paranormals and ethnicities.”

  “And anyone who owned property he could confiscate in the name of the Roman Catholic Church,” I said. T. Laine looked surprised. “I know my church history, especially the evils done in the name of God.” God’s Cloud of Glory Church had been eager to share with its conservative congregation the “evils” of other religions, without looking at the sins perpetrated by its own members and lifestyles. I frowned. “The leader of the Inquisition used black magic to track down light-magic users? That sounds like fighting a campfire with a wildfire.”

  “The oral histories suggest he was using magical amulets and other items, yes, and that most of the items he confiscated are still stored in the Vatican,” T. Laine said. “It’s also suggested that the apparent psychopathy he presented was demon based.”

  I thought about the summoning part of the witch circles. “A witch summoned a demon?”

  “No one really knows except the Vatican, but we know he tortured witches and there are reports that sound as if he got his claws into some vampires and were-creatures too. And he got their estates. Ergo, he got magical grimoires and amulets and blood from paras.” She punched a button on her laptop and said, “And there are some reports that suggest he became a vamp himself.”

  I frowned, pulling up a Wikipedia entry and memories gained by the education provided by the church. Thomas Torquemada had been a Castilian Dominican friar, and the first grand inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition, established in 1478 by Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic monarchs of Castile. Thomas had started out a perfectly normal priest of his time but quickly developed a psychopathology that was deeply steeped in torture and death. Because his methods had enriched the Catholic church and the ruling monarchs of Europe, the church itself had embraced the cruelty and barbarism. If Thomas had been using magic and had taken vampire blood, then he might even still be alive.

  T. Laine looked up from her tablet and said, “I’ve done a search on Blood Tarot decks. I’ll have to talk to some coven leaders to affirm it, but a few histories indicate that three of the decks still survive.”

  Tandy asked, “What would it mean if the witch who is working the Circle of the Moon is using a Blood Tarot deck?”

  Rick made a small sound and closed his eyes. One hand massaged his tattooed shoulder as if reliving the pain. I looked away. It was impossible to watch.

  T. Laine tapped the table with a fingernail. Quietly, she said, “Nothing about Blood Tarot would be good. But that would explain why the calling on Rick is so specific and so powerful. He was tattooed with a tarot working. With a Blood Tarot, a witch could probably easily cast a curse, maybe something worse, maybe several somethings all at once. That would explain why the local coven has run like scared cats. Pardon the pun.”

  “What about …” I stopped, knowing I was drawing on church scary-tales from when I was a child. “Someone mentioned a demon? Summoning a demon?”

  T. Laine’s forehead wrinkled into horizontal lines and her lips pursed as she thought. “We read the circles with the psy-meter 2.0. We got one and four. So far as we know, no one has ever actually read a demon with the updated psy-meter model—only the space a trapped demon occupied before he was banished. We don’t know what a new psy-meter reading would show. Maybe it’s a one and four. Maybe not.”

  The churchwoman in me shivered. “According to Spook School gossip, PsyLED’s got a demon in a containment vessel.”

  T. Laine swiveled her head to Rick. “I heard that too. Some say that Rick LaFleur was in school when the demon was called. And was part of the crew who captured it.”

  I had heard gossip about my boss at Spook School. I’d also heard about the demon that had been summoned on school grounds and had been fed students as dinner and sacrifice. It was redacted in his sleeve. No one here had mentioned it and so I had thought it was rumor.

  Rick pinched the bridge of his nose with finger and thumb and laughed, a cynical, injured, grieved sound that spoke of old wounds that still bled, though the roughness of his voice had eased. He dropped his hand. “Yeah. I was involved. But I only saw it feeding, and this looks nothing like that. I was also there when the demon was contained. But that’s it. And this is not then.”

  “Can the psy-meter 2.0 read a demon through a containment vessel?” I asked.

  “Not that I’ve ever heard,” Rick said.

  T. Laine shook her head, her eyes on Rick. “I’ve never heard either. There’s only one person might know the answer to that. Soul. She was a teacher at Spook School when you were there. Her meeting you is the reason she left teaching and went back to fieldwork. And before you say it, no. I am not going to talk to her about a demon. That’s your job,” she said to Rick.

  We had watched Rick as we discussed the possibilities directly involving his past and present. He looked despondent. Grief stricken. But he wasn’t totally down and out. His voice heavy and coarse, he said, “I didn’t know much about … tarot when I was inked, but I researched after I got free. I think the cards Loriann used were ancient. Something special. If Loriann used a Blood Tarot deck on me,” he said, addressing the pink elephant in the room, “and if the witch calling and cursing me now is using a Blood Tarot deck …”

  He fell silent for several breaths and the lines in his face deepened, dark grooves of pain. He stared at his hands as if they contained all the wisdom he needed in life but he couldn’t reach it without cutting them off. “Because the decks are so rare,” he said, his voice gravelly and hoarse, “then it’s possible, even likely, that it’s the same deck used on me when I was inked.” He looked up from his hands, to each of us around the table, and back down. “Loriann knows more than she’s telling us. Which means she’s hidi
ng information necessary to a law enforcement investigation. Even before I knew all this, I’d spoken to Soul and FireWind. We got our warrant. When Loriann arrives, she’ll be stripped of all her amulets.”

  T. Laine’s head came up. “And how do you want that accomplished?”

  “When she gets here, she’ll be taken into the null room,” Rick said. “I’ll be waiting for her there. If she wants to work with us, she’ll agree to having her bags and her person searched. She’ll answer our questions with full transparency.”

  “But why the null room?” T. Laine asked.

  Rick said, “I want her in a position where she can’t use magic of any kind. And I want to make sure that anyone who is tracking her can’t find her.”

  “You think she’s being monitored? Tracked magically?” Tandy’s mouth opened in a faint O. “You think she’s the witch cursing you?”

  “Not Lori. But I have a guess. No evidence to back it up.” Rick didn’t look up from his hands, grief and resolution warring on his face. “If I’m right, I want to make sure that witch can’t hear us.”

  Ruminating, I said softly, “You forgave Loriann for inking you. For spelling you. You got her a job in law enforcement. But … The witch trait runs in families, an X-linked genetic trait. Her grandmother, who was killed by the vampire, was a witch. And another family member was being forcibly drank from by the vampire. Who was that? You never said.”

  T. Laine had placed her moonstone bear amulet on the table and was watching Rick with an active seeing working. Occam was leaning forward, his body tense, as if he was about to leap into battle over territory. Something was happening and I didn’t understand.

  Rick’s hands tensed tight, forming fists. He was staring at them as if he was afraid they’d be stolen if he looked away. He took shallow breaths and finally managed, “Isleen killed Loriann’s witch grandmother.”

  Leaning forward, reaching out a hand to Rick, I said, “You think Loriann’s sister is the witch cursing you. She’s here in Knoxville. Loriann’s sister is targeting you?”