by Faith Hunter
“Telling Rick he had a teenaged stalker would have been nice,” T. Laine said. “He could have protected himself.”
“What would I have told Rick? That my brother is mentally ill and fixated on him? I had Jason in therapy and … I thought he was getting better.”
“Until he left twelve months ago. He’s a blood junkie, Loriann,” T. Laine said gently. The words hung in the air like a note tapped on a warped brass bell, ugly and flat. “A magical blood-junkie who has created a spell for things we can only imagine. All of them bad. His magic involves Blood Tarot, just like yours does. And Jason’s been tracking Rick, showing up on the banks of rivers, laying a blood-magic curse on Rick. Rick. Who saved him. A federal officer. Creating a spell that calls Rick and then leaving before Rick arrives, which we don’t yet understand.”
Loriann gave a tiny shrug. “Jason’s deepening the blood bond in the tattoos until he’s ready to use it.” Loriann waved that away as if it was unimportant. “I know PsyLED is the agency that will find Jason and stop him. That’s why I’m here. To help you bring him in. Alive. That’s the price of my assistance.” Loriann’s face took on a hard cast, demanding, “I want my brother alive.”
Rick and Occam appeared behind us, silhouetted by the hallway lights. I didn’t know where they had gone, but I was glad they were back. Occam flashed his cell at me and I realized that JoJo had sent the live feed to Occam’s cell and the two cat-men had been following along. Smart move. Rick said, “Jason is a sick little fucker.”
It was coarse language, words that made me cringe, but he was right. I turned my chair to study him standing in the doorway. Occam stood behind Rick, not touching, but close, like a mouser cat offering comfort, and maybe using his cat magic to keep Rick calm.
I said, “So is Loriann.”
“Yeah. She is,” Rick said shortly. “I never saw it. I never realized any of this.”
JoJo said, “Jason’s eighteen. He’s a legal adult. He’s already helped vampires kidnap, torture, and drain a teenaged girl. There’s no way to return him to his sister. She knows that. No matter what happens, Jason goes into a null room for decades. If he survives the vampires.”
“So we get him first,” Rick said. “We get him help.”
JoJo shook her head. “Do-gooder.”
Rick smiled slightly. “Yeah. I’m trying to be.”
“Is it the tats talking?”
Rick shrugged. “I’m not sure it matters at this point.”
On the screen, T. Laine said, “That’s not all, is it?” Loriann’s eyes flashed down, hiding her expression. “Tell me the rest,” Lainie said.
Loriann dropped her head, hiding her eyes and her expression. “I had to protect Jason, even from Rick,” she whispered.
“While you were being forced to ink Rick with a binding to a vampire, you also, voluntarily, inked a restraining order and a protection order into Rick’s flesh,” T. Laine clarified.
JoJo said to Rick, “No wonder you had such trouble talking about the tats and the Ethier sibs. You were bound against testifying.”
On-screen, it looked as if steam was coming out of T. Laine’s ears, but she forced it down. Her face smoothed and she said, “Tell me about the curse spell Jason is using. What effect is the curse having on Rick?”
“I don’t know. The circle is Jason’s design and he never talked to me about it. But I think … I think Jason is stealing Rick’s years. Using his life force to power a multipurpose working.”
“So you think the curse part is secondary to whatever the circle’s real purposes are.”
Loriann didn’t answer, still keeping her head down. I glanced at Rick, who was now sitting in his chair. He had gone still as stone, his silver hair bright against the black strands in the overhead lights. Jason. Jason was responsible for Rick’s aging.
“Okay. I’m taking a break,” T. Laine said. “I’ll see you get coffee and bathroom break in a bit.” Without waiting for a reply, T. Laine rose and walked from the room, shutting the door and securing it with the numeric punch code. She laid her head on the wall and cursed softly, over and over again.
“Get in here!” JoJo called to her.
T. Laine’s movements were stiff as she covered the distance to the conference room and practically fell into her chair. I poured her a fresh coffee and JoJo pointed up, saying, “We have an incident. City cops are on scene now and uploaded a vid to us.”
On the screen overhead was footage of a vehicle, similar to the one the vamp’s humans used to kidnap Raynay Blalock. The van was turning into a convenience store, parking beneath a high, flat-topped, metal roof. The passenger door opened and Jason Ethier stepped out. The sliding side door opened too. The footage was grainy and coarse and there was no audio, but the man with Jason was, without a doubt, a vampire. He was vamped out, his eyes flashing black, his fangs long and curved, his skin pasty, glaring white. This was the first time I’d seen a modern photo of Godfrey, who wore dark pants and a light-colored shirt. And he was walking outside. In daylight. The old and powerful ones, like Ming could stay awake in their lairs in daylight. But this was something more. Way more.
It had been posited that the very old ones could go about in daylight if they had heavy oxidized zinc or titanium oxide sunscreen on and stayed out of direct sunlight. Now we had proof of that.
I watched as the vampire and Jason entered the store. Jason walked up to the clerk at the checkout counter, and they seemed to be speaking. Godfrey walked around the long counter and behind it. Up to the clerk.
She was a pretty woman, African-American, well rounded in all the right places. She smiled at Godfrey as he walked to her. He bent her head to the side and casually ripped out her throat. Blood shot out everywhere. Godfrey unhinged his jaw, the way the old ones do, and placed his mouth over the pulsing wound. And drank. Jason went to the cash register and emptied it of cash. He also picked up a six-pack of beer and some Slim Jims. Godfrey dropped the woman. The two walked away and got into the black vehicle. Shut the doors. It drove away.
In sunlight. My mouth was so dry I couldn’t swallow.
Jo said, “I can guarantee we just got leeway to take out that son of a bitch. With prejudice.”
T. Laine turned and walked away. Moments later PsyLED received a message on the public info e-mail. It included a video that JoJo put on the overhead screen, a video of Jason. “Hey, PsyLED, see this?” He angled the cell phone away and we saw a vampire behind him, dancing with a naked, limp, human teenager, holding the boy up, drinking from him. It was Godefroi de Bouillon. He was killing the teenaged boy.
The reaction washed through HQ and through all of us. Horror. Shock. Fury. Helplessness.
Jason said, “Tell Ricky-Bo LaFleur that his cowardice did this. And that when he’s mine, he’ll suffer like I did. Like this boy did.” The video ended.
I watched the footage again. And again.
• • •
Before I left to get some sleep, I read the EOD and SOD reports, paying close attention to everyone’s summations. Tandy’s read: Through the witch Loriann Ethier, the two different aspects of our case have collided: LaFleur and vampires and the eighteen-year-old male witch Jason Ethier. We need teams tracking each group. I recommend Jones and myself track Jason. LaFleur and Occam track the movements of the European vampires and Godfrey of Bouillon, while staying close to the silvered cage in case Rick is called again. I also recommend Loriann be kept in the null room until Jason is in custody or otherwise neutralized.
The words otherwise neutralized sent a chill up my spine. They meant dead. And keeping the witch in a null room when she had not been convicted of a crime, was illegal, a painful punishment.
JoJo had created a file on Jason Ethier’s backstory and her summation read: At seven years of age, he went into therapy. He was diagnosed with cancer—acute leukemia—at age nine due to the fact that he was a male witch. Loriann went to Katie Fonteneau (whose scion drank from the child and sexually abused him), and Loriann press
ured Katie into saving her brother from the cancer. But Jason’s vision of vamps was blood and sex and this treatment set his addiction deeper—blood and sex violation, blood and healing, both felt good. Jason, in therapy, was fine for a while. It didn’t last. In her “Comments” section, JoJo had written two things: How did Jason find Godfrey? and ‘LaFleur deserves a commendation for maintaining a security and confidentiality protocols while under a working.’
T. Laine had already typed in a comment. There is a working for vampires. It isn’t very specific, but if you have a little vampire blood you can search for it.
T. Laine submitted her summation as I was reading the others: Jason and magic. Blood Tarot magic was part of the Ethier family. Loriann had her grandmother’s deck, said to have been owned by Torquemada himself. Per Loriann Ethier, Jason stole the rare deck. Using tarot, Jason practiced the Circle of the Moon and ways to alter it for unknown purpose. Note: Blood Tarot decks can be used in demon worship and demon summoning. Note: LaFleur’s binding likely contained what witches sometimes refer to as a confidentiality clause, keeping him from talking about the tats or the experience. The working might have even kept him from remembering much of his experience. I’ll be turning this all over to the witch council for evaluation and judgment. Loriann deliberately put a protection order and a restraining order against speech into the flesh of a human being, neither of which was part of the working she was forced to ink by the vampire Isleen. She did that of her own volition. And her brother is now, possibly, summoning vampires, which may be how he ended up with Godfrey.
T. Laine’s summation ended with two conclusions, Jason’s one goal seems to be to find and kill Rick LaFleur, who—according to his sister’s lies—didn’t want to save him, or was willing to sacrifice Loriann and Jason to save himself. And, ‘Now that Rick has learned he had a mute compulsion inked into his skin, he seems to be able to force himself to speak through it. I hold out hopes that he can overcome the other bindings too. I see no indication of security breach in LaFleur.’
My teammates were working to protect their boss and his job.
Here, just like in the church, everything evil seemed to have its feet planted in secrets and lies, control and abuse.
FIFTEEN
I went home, got some rest. When I woke, Sam was at the door with Mud and Brother Thad, the boxes of equipment behind them. I wrapped a robe around myself and opened it. “Hey. Is it a party?” I asked.
“Nope,” Mud said. “I’m here for the next two nights, me and Cherry. I got nowhere else to stay.” Mud seemed awfully pleased about that.
I spotted the dog in the yard on a long leash, racing back and forth and up and down, smelling everything, peeing and marking territory everywhere the leash would reach. I hadn’t had a dog since the churchmen had shot and killed my three. A strange thrill raced through me at the sight, not one I’d have predicted. I was unexpectedly happy to have a dog here again. Cherry was long-haired, liver, white, and tan, as agile and fast as a racing dog. I turned my gaze back to Mud, who was not mine yet, according to the courts. “You can’t stay here, sister mine. I don’t have anyone to stay at the house with you yet.”
Sam pushed Mud through the door. “At the Nicholson house, Mama and Mama Grace’s got the stomach bug, along with five of the littles. Projectile vomiting. It’s spreadin’ like wildfire. Esther and Jed have it too.”
“And I can’t stay with Sam on account of SaraBell jist gave him a boy.”
“You’re a father?” I squealed and grabbed Sam, hugging him, the first time I’d hugged my brother since before I left the house at age twelve.
Sam laughed in delight and hugged me back, his blue eyes sparkling. “Eight pounds, seven ounces and a head full of dark hair. SaraBell named him Sam Junior.”
“But Mud can’t stay here.”
“Sam Junior is too little to be exposed. SaraBell has him in quarantine. And Mama Carmel’s got her hands full. Sorry, Nell, but you’un get her back.”
“I’m a big girl,” Mud said. “And now that I got me a watchdog, I’ll be right as rain here alone.”
Mud could not stay here alone, but I wasn’t going to argue in front of guests. “And Brother Thad?” I asked.
Brother Thad held out a hand to Sam and introduced himself. I had a feeling that Sam hadn’t known that the Brother Thad I talked about being my friend and who had asked me to attend his church was a black man. “Pleasure to meet you, Sam. Nell says kind things about her brother.”
“Mr. Rankin,” Sam said.
Brother Thad dropped Sam’s hand and extended a folded sheet of paper to me. “Your estimate, with breakdowns. There’s one for the upstairs bathroom and water heater, a separate estimate for a redesign of the downstairs bath, and a third detailed estimate of central heat and air. There’s a labor quote at the bottom to install the solar panels. If you do all the upgrades, there’s a discount, but the estimate doesn’t take into account any problems we might find when we tear into the walls and plumbing.”
“And there’s always problems,” Sam said. “Nell, Mr. Rankin, I’d love to stay, but I need to get home. Nell, let me know if you want me to look over the numbers.”
“I’m pretty capable of looking over numbers on my own, brother mine, despite being female and too dumb to understand basic math.”
Sam caught the sarcasm. “Not what I meant, Nellie.”
“Hmmm,” I said, wrenching my robe tighter. “All I need from you is the cost of the supplies to build the greenhouse Mud asked you about. Then I can go to the bank.”
“Mindy has the estimate of the construction materials in her bag,” Sam said. “I gotta go. You’uns have a good night. Mr. Rankin, nice to meet you.”
“Mud can’t stay here alone and PsyLED isn’t safe right now,” I said.
“Not my problem. The mamas said to bring her.” Sam waved me away and thumped down the steps, the rubber treads of his summer work boots echoing under the porch.
The mamas said to bring her. Pushing me back into a traditional female churchwoman role? Or showing me how hard my plan to keep Mud would really be? No. They knew Mud would always be in danger on church lands. This was exactly what it appeared to be. A kerfuffle.
Brother Thad followed, saying over his shoulder, “You call me when you know something, Nell.”
I stared after them as Brother Thad followed Sam down the steps and the two trucks went down the hill in line. I looked at the dog. And my sister. Thought about a blood-witch in the null room. Wondered if the vampire tree would make an acceptable babysitter.
And hoped Rick LaFleur wouldn’t get all picky about a dog in the workplace. I had to figure this situation out. Soon.
• • •
The three of us got to HQ before the start of my shift, when the sun was still high but the daytime moon, invisible at this part of the lunar cycle anyway, had set. The dog was a maniac, racing up the stairs on her adjustable leash. Springers were never yappy dogs, but Cherry was even more silent than most. She was all nosy, nose to the stairs and then the door, sniffing, racing back and forth, up and down, trying to get all the smells. Her nails clicked and her tail wagged like mad, the long tail hair, called feathers, whisking the air.
My arms loaded with my gobags and dog supplies, I used my ID card to open the door at the top of the stairs. As the door opened, Mud dropped Cherry’s leash. I lunged for the strap, but she rushed through like a tricolor whirlwind, dashing silently down the hall. And leaped high into the air, onto Rick LaFleur’s chest.
My boss caught her, his eyes going wide. Cherry wrapped her legs around his neck like a human would and hugged him, that tail still flapping madly, her entire back half a crazy waggle. The dog clearly had no problem with cat scent. Rick’s eyes went soft and he knelt so he could support the dog and pet her too. “Well. Hey there,” he said quietly, one hand stroking her back. Cherry slobbered a half dozen dog kisses over his face and Rick started laughing. “Okay, okay. I love you too.”
Somethin
g about the scenario seemed a bit … off as it replayed through my mind. And then it hit me. Mud had dropped the leash on purpose.
Mud raced after and took Cherry from Rick. “Sorry, Mr. Rick,” Mud said. “She’s a little excited.” To the dog, she said, sternly, “Cherry, you behave.”
“It’s … okay,” he said, sounding surprised and pleased all at once, scratching the dog behind the ears. “Cherry?” Cherry shoved her snout into his ear. Rick laughed and rearranged, so he could stroke the dog again.
I explained about the dog gift and the stomach bug on church grounds and Mud being with me for the next few days. Rick said, “I don’t like it, Nell. Jason presents a dangerous situation and I’m not so sure but what his sister isn’t just as big a threat, and she’s on premises. And a wereleopard might think Cherry looks tasty. I wouldn’t want her hurt.”
“Me neither, ’cause then we’d haveta shoot you,” Mud said.
Rick spluttered, laughing.
“No one is shooting the boss. I’m sorry,” I said, apologizing for my sister and for me.
Deliberately obscure in front of Mud, he added to me, “Time’s getting close.”
To the new moon. I understood that, but I didn’t know what else to do with my sister. I put Mud in my office and arranged my window plants around the desk to keep her company. Cherry curled up at her feet on a dog bed I brought from the truck. I found a bowl for water and another for dog food. I had forgotten how expensive dogs were. When I had my sister settled, I gave the puppy an oversized, soft Nylabone to chew and went looking for the rest of the crew, none of whom were present except for Rick, who was in his office, the silvered cage in the corner.
“I’m sorry about Mud and the dog,” I said. “I can’t leave her at the church.”
My boss gave me a tired, backhand wave as if it was just another awful on top of a truckload of awful. Rick was distracted, one hand on the amulets at his neck, his fingers worrying them like worry beads or one of those spinner things people use. If I listened closely I could hear a few notes of his woodwind antimagic music playing in his newfangled earbud. It ran on Wi-Fi, was powered by a new generation of batteries, and was smaller than a hearing aid.
