Blood Moon Eclipse (The Shadow Lands Book 2)

by Lloyd Behm II

  “He and his brother Sinfjotli were both noted werewolves of the Volsung clan,” Jed said, voice dripping with exasperation. “Sigmund wanted to take revenge on his enemies, and his brother wanted to help. But Sigmund thought Sinfjotli was too weak, so they had a contest to see who could slay the most men.”

  “I’m with you so far,” I replied.

  “Sigmund slew two at once. Sinfjotli slew eleven.”

  “Oh, I see,” I said. “The dwarves aren’t taking the loss of power into account.”

  “Yeah, they still think it’s the twelve hundreds and the woods are full of skin changers and hamr,” Jed replied. “Unfortunately, unless we convince Herself that things have changed, we’ve got to work around that attitude.”

  “That’s the tricky bit, isn’t it?” I replied. “Anything else?”

  “Obie woke up while you were lying about,” Jed said.

  “Really? That’s good news,” I replied.

  Jed’s face said it wasn’t.

  “What happened?”

  “Obie isn’t Obie. Well, that’s not a hundred percent true,” Jed said. “He’s Obie from when he was about four years old or so. Keeps asking for his mother.”

  “Oh, that’s fucking wonderful news,” I said. “They’re sure it’s him, not something else playing at being him?”

  “First thing Sola checked. Then Henry sent in the company exorcist,” he replied. “They’re sure.”

  “Looped or regressed?” I asked.

  “Regressed, they think,” Jed said. “There’s no organic damage to the parts of his brain where the memories should be, and all his brain activity is normal.”

  “Normal for a four-year-old or?”

  “No, normal for a forty-year-old. It’s like he can’t access anything past four, though,” Jed said with a shrug. “Hell of a thing to happen to a man.”

  “You can say that again,” I replied.

  “Sola’s looking into it,” Jed said, puffing on his cigar. “They’re even calling in a couple of healing mages from Europe to see if they can help.”

  “Will wonders never cease?” I asked. “Sola allowing someone else into the lab?”

  “Yeah, that was my first thought as well,” Jed said. “Thing is, one of the healers is an elf.”

  “Oh, shit, Sola must be completely out of his depth then,” I said. “He won’t even let the local elves into the lab to clean. They’ve got to use the ‘alternative complex,’ or whatever he’s calling it this week.”

  “They’re supposed to be here next week. Should be fun times,” Jed replied. “And by the way, you set a new record.”

  “What kind this time?” I asked, with some trepidation.

  “Distance,” he said, laughing and slapping me on the back. “They found the head from the akaname that was sitting on your chest on the other side of the stop and rob.”

  I replied by giving him the finger. It was appropriate.

  My phone started playing “Gallows Pole,” so I checked my text messages.

  “Well, frag. I just got out of medical, and now Medical R&D wants to see me,” I said, putting out my cigar.

  “They probably want to check you for performance-enhancing compounds or something like that,” Jed replied, tossing his cigar butt into the can.

  “I doubt it,” I said, replying to the text as I walked toward Medical R&D.

  It was going to be one of those days.

  Medical R&D is a wing of its own in the R&D building, with its own special wards and considerations. Diindiisi was waiting by the entrance when I arrived.

  “S’up?” I asked, hugging her.

  “Not sure,” she replied as we went through the doors. “I got a text to report here as soon as possible.”

  “Ah, Jesse, you’re here,” Cathe said when she saw us. “Obie’s asking for you.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Jed just told me he’s regressed to being four years old.”

  “That’s true,” Cathe said, grabbing my arm and dragging me into the building, “but he’s repeating your name, so Sola thought it best to bring you in.”

  “Wonderful,” I said as we passed into the warded section of the building.

  Obie was sitting in a standard-issue hospital bed, looking wan after spending months relying on an IV drip for nourishment. A gaggle of doctors and nurses were standing outside the room, and I watched Sola back slowly out the door.

  Sola turned around, and for a moment, his face showed the entirety of his age.

  “Ah, good, you found him,” Sola said, motioning me forward.

  “Elf, what the hell is going on?” Fred roared, charging into the area, his followers in tow.

  “Obie spoke this morning,” Sola said simply. “He requested Father Salazar, and we are complying with that request.”

  “That doesn’t explain why my rune priest started howling at the ceiling and running in circles like he was chasing his tail,” Fred thundered back, trying to slip a double-bitted battle axe back under his belt as unobtrusively as possible.

  “All will be made clear,” Obie said from the room. “I must speak with the one known as Father Salazar.”

  Except it wasn’t Obie. It was his voice, sure, but I’d worked with the man for the last few years, and it wasn’t his intonation and diction. Obie would never say something like “the one known as Father Salazar.” I looked at those around me.

  “Well, that’s plain enough,” I said, reaching back and pulling the pistol and holster from the small of my back and handing them to Diindiisi. “I’d say avenge my death and all that, but I’m pretty sure you’ll do that either way.”

  She kissed me.

  “Definitely, my love,” she replied, “but I’d rather not have to do it today. Scalping someone can get so messy sometimes.”

  “You’re not going in there?” Sola asked. “Whatever is present forced me from the room.”

  “The only way we’re going to get answers is if I do,” I replied, tapping the collection of medals on a chain around my neck. “Besides, if there were real issues, I’d know about it.”

  I whispered a quick prayer to God—something along the lines of George Carlin’s ‘Hail Mary as you go under the bus’—and stepped through the door. Obie looked good. The old man sitting next to him, on the other hand…

  “Simon Peter?” I asked, dragging over a chair.

  “Not quite,” the old man said in a rich voice with a hint of an accent, “although he and I have been, what was the word, syncretized by the Church.”

  He was dressed in blue and yellow, and a cane leaned against his chair. He took out a pipe.

  “I have forgotten modern prejudices. May I smoke?” he asked.

  “I have no problem with it,” I replied, “although it might set off the smoke detectors.”

  “I think I can prevent that from happening,” he replied, removing his hand from Obie.

  Obie sighed and went to sleep.

  “The child has been through much,” the old man in yellow and blue said. “Know, Father Salazar, that he will recover his faculties fully.”

  “That’s good, and I’ll pass it along,” I replied, trying to get comfortable in the chair. “You asked for me, Mister…”

  “Papa Legba,” he replied now that his pipe was going.

  “How can I help you, Papa Legba?” I replied.

  “It is nice to hear someone of your time answer with politeness,” Papa Legba replied. “Your world stands at a crossroads, priest of the Desert God, and you are the key.”

  “The obvious question is ‘why me?’ but I’ve been asking that a lot recently,” I said, sighing.

  “Know that you were chosen because of your faith,” Papa Legba responded. “It will be tested in days to come.”

  So far we’re in standard-prophecy-gibberish land, I thought. The thought must have shown on my face, because Papa Legba threw back his head and roared with laughter.

  “They told me you weren’t a weakling,” he said when the laug
hter subsided.

  “Yes, well…it’s a weakness of mine, sarcasm,” I replied, grinning like a shark. “I’ve asked God for help, but he works in mysterious ways.”

  “Most assuredly,” Papa Legba agreed, his eyes twinkling with laughter. “Even though I am the great elocutioner, even I am bound by the rules. If the loa told man all, man would never learn.”

  “True,” I replied. “So I am to be tested. Is there anything else?”

  “Not all the spirits you think laid to rest are laid to rest,” he replied, fading from the room, leaving behind a hint of pipe smoke.

  Obie grunted and opened his eyes.

  “Jesse?” he croaked. “I thought you were in the Shadow Lands.”

  “I’m back,” I replied as doctors and nurses flooded into the room.

  Sola couldn’t bully the doctors to get readings from Obie, so I got to be the guinea pig. Since I’d spoken with he who intercedes between mankind and the gods, it also meant another meeting. Which was why the command staff and a few selected others were in one of Sola’s labs, holding a meeting, while Sola and Cathe probed me and wired me for sound, again.

  At least they gave me a couple of sheets to cover my dignity.

  “I really hate prophetic bullshit!” Fred thundered, punching a wall.

  Either the construction held or he pulled his punch.

  “Well, at least we know why your rune priest was howling,” I said, wincing as Sola moved an electrode pad.

  “Why’s that?” Fred asked in an icy voice.

  “Papa Legba’s got a thing for dogs,” I replied innocently.

  “Bjarni’s mother, Fred,” Ozzy said, smothering a laugh.

  “I don’t think we’ll tell Bjarni that the loa of communication thinks he’s a son of a bitch,” Fred rumbled back. “That doesn’t change the fact that we’re dealing with the usual prophetic bullshit.”

  “It’s not like my faith isn’t tested on a daily basis…Ow!” I said, wincing as Sola stuck a needle in my leg and ran a current through it. “Why are we testing nerve function again?”

  “I need to compare it with the last tests to see if there were any changes in nerve conduction since you spoke with Papa Legba,” Sola said piously.

  “And here I thought you were just a fucking sadist,” Jed said from a corner.

  He and Goodhart sat glued to a laptop, watching the video from Obie’s room. In the footage I was talking to thin air, so there wasn’t much to watch. The only things Papa Legba had said or done that came across on the video were the standard operational prophetic gibberish. Papa Legba had burned his message into the footage. Someone wasn’t being subtle in the least.

  “We did figure out one thing, though,” Goodhart said, closing the laptop. “The therianthropes are going to do something big on the twenty-first of January.”

  “Why that date?” I asked, jerking as Sola shocked the other leg.

  “It’s a ‘blood moon eclipse,’” Goodhart said. “According to the legends, that’s the one night they’re in full control of their powers and forms. Something about the blood moon eclipse overrides the normal limbo state of an eclipse.”

  “Which means what?” Cathe asked.

  “They have all the benefits of their transformed form when human, and vice versa,” Sola said, jolting me with the needle again.

  “Oh, that’ll be just peachy,” I said. “We doing something about it?”

  “All-hands push to cover Bever’s Cave-O-Rama during that time,” Goodhart said. “The thought is they’ll try to force the cave so they can pay for their full powers.”

  “Oh, goody, werewolf hunting during an eclipse,” I said, with visions of dollar signs in my eyes.

  “About that,” Goodhart said. “You and your team will be staying in Austin.”

  “All-hands push?” I asked/protested.

  “All hands that haven’t been on the far side of a portal to the Shadow Lands,” Jed said. “Sorry man, them’s the orders from on high in Dallas. You and yours get to cover Austin while the rest of us are down in San Marcos.”

  “At least I’ve got the equivalent of three teams to do it,” I said, thinking of the dwarves. “I’ll need drivers, though.”

  “We’ll pull some folks over from the technical side who know the town,” Goodhart replied. “We’ve got a couple of weeks to work things out, after all.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Thirty

  Two weeks flew by in a welter of minor missions, training, and paperwork. Goodhart snuck the other teams out of Austin one by one, and Dallas moved assets into the area. We watched all the known troublemakers in the therianthrope community. I’d like to say we kicked in doors and made threats, but that was verboten. Instead, we scryed and hoped.

  The only big change around the office was the sudden departure of the Buschgrossmutter for Crockett in the Big Thicket. She’d found a spot over there she liked, so with little fanfare and much to Sola’s relief, she moved, black stone and all. Her departure gave me a little hope that things were going to work out in the end.

  The twenty-first was supposed to be a typical day for late January in Austin—low in the forties, with a projected high in the sixties. According to all the local talking heads and their supporting weather casters, it was going to be a beautiful night to observe the blood moon eclipse, and, if you could get away from Austin’s light pollution, it would truly be something to see. The memory of a lifetime, if you will.

  Then, just like in every bad movie ever made, things got quiet. Too quiet. All the troublemakers went to ground, most of them either shaking our spells or breaking them by moving away from their normal habits.

  “There’s a moot planned,” Harvey the wererabbit reported the morning of the twenty-first. “Word is, it isn’t in San Marcos.”

  “That’s good or bad, depending,” I replied, sipping my coffee.

  “How do you mean?” he replied, trying to suck his smoothie through a straw.

  I’d never understood grinding up vegetables and drinking them through a straw. Then again, I didn’t grow long ears and a fuzzy tail every time the moon went full, either. Must be hell to be a wererabbit who’s allergic to carrots.

  “If they’re not gathering in San Marcos or in driving range of the city, it means they’re not going to try to do a ritual in Bever’s Cave,” I said. “On the other hand, if they’re going to do a ritual, we don’t know where they’re going to do it.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out,” he said, rising from the table.

  “Hey, Harvey?”

  “Yeah?” he said, pausing.

  “Thanks for the help, man,” I said.

  “Look, I know you probably think it’s weird, the Rodent Liberation Front being against the werewolves in this,” he said.

  “Not really. I figure the fuckers would probably try to eat you guys if they were on top,” I interrupted.

  “Something like that, yeah,” he replied with a shrug. “There’re a few who’d think about eating what are marginal humans when we’re not transformed and lose their lunches over it, but most of them? We’re just another bunny to them. And bunnies are for chasing.”

  “Something tells me that’s how they view most of humanity,” I said to his back as Robert Plant started enjoining the hangman to wait.

  We had a call. I gathered my team from the coffee shop and we rolled—to an empty lot.

  “Dispatch, this is Malone.”

  “Send it, Malone,” Dispatch replied.

  “Are you sure about the address you gave?”

  “Roger that, why?” Dispatch replied, icy tones sending shivers down my spine.

  “It’s an empty lot,” I said.

  “Hold one,” Dispatch said.

  Singh was quartering the lot. He found something and waved. I trotted out into the winter green field of knee-high buffalo grass.

  “Whatcha got?” I asked Singh.

  “Some sort of decoy,” he replied, gesturing.

  There was a
small cleared spot encircled by a stone casting ring. Suspended in the center were various small objects—feathers, small stones, shells—all floating about six inches off the ground. They gave off a very hedge-magic vibe.

  “Malone, Dispatch.”

  “Send it,” I replied.

  “Team Tyrion reports their location is a bust, also,” Dispatch said.

  “Roger. Ask them if they’ve found a decoy,” I said.

  “Hold one,” Dispatch replied.

  I poured holy water on the circle, then broke it with a stick, releasing the power of the circle. The objects fell to the ground, and I gathered them into an evidence bag. We should be able to trace the caster of the spell through the objects, if nothing else.

  “Dispatch to Malone, Roger, they have a decoy,” Dispatch said as I scooped the last of the miscellanea into the bag.

  “Right. Tell the teams we’re probably going to be chasing decoys all day,” I said.

  My team had run down eighteen by lunch. All the decoys were on or near locations where they could draw power from ley lines, including Gracywoods Park, where we’d had the fight with the werewolves earlier in the month.

  I called all the teams in for lunch. We met at the company compound so we didn’t have to wait to eat.

  “Notice anything?” I asked Diindiisi when she sat down at the table.

  “Yes,” she said around a mouthful of sandwich. “All the components we collected show signs of being enchanted by the same hand.”

  “Bjarni says the same thing,” Fred said, tossing back a cheeseburger. “Someone is running us ragged with these things.”

  “Problem is,” I said, opening a Coke, “the first one we don’t treat like the real thing will bite us in the ass.”

  I just had the bottle to my lips when the ‘raise the dead’ siren went off in the building. I spilled Coke all over myself and jammed the earpiece of my radio back in.

  “…repeat, all hands, all hands, we have a major breakthrough reported near US 183 and Breaker Lane…this is a Class Three event, all available personnel report to the scene as soon as possible…repeat…”

  I pulled the earphone out for a minute and signaled for everyone to mount up. There was a brief rush, and we all headed out the door. I looked at the time.