The Rege lurched through the entryway—it was his shoulder that had broken the door. He held a gun. His eyes locked on Johnny and he took aim.
“No!” I shouted, calling energy from the ley.
I heard movement to the side behind me.
The Rege got off two shots before the power of the ley enveloped him, but when he was wrapped in that dangerous energy, it required his full attention. The barrier around him, his own shields, blocked the magic. The barrel of his gun shifted toward me. My fists clenched, rising up before me as if I dared fight him, but in truth, I was squeezing that ley power down, crushing him with its weight, until his shields were pulverized and every pore opened as if his skin was perforated with tiny funnels.
Weight pressed down on my shoulders as the Lustrata’s mantle appeared on me, glowing soft white light.
I could never guess how many women he had ever raped, abused, and broken. But I was thinking of them, his faceless victims as I rammed ley power into him, violating his body with it.
His eyes bulged. His hands shook like he had palsy. “No!”
Ley line power lifted him into the air and his body warped, sprouting hair and teeth.
I wasn’t just stopping him. The Lustrata was administering justice. I was doing what I never wanted to do to any wærewolf.
With a gasp, I loosed my fists, dropped the power, and stepped back. My mantle faded and disappeared. The creature dropped to the floor in a tangle of misshapen limbs, snarling and writhing. It flopped and groped, reaching toward my sentinel.
I pitched forward. “Zhan!”
At her name, she stirred. Seeing the inhuman thing so near her, she reacted swiftly. Before I could cross the room, she put four rounds into the thing’s head. She pulled the trigger three more times before she realized she’d spent her bullets. I dropped to my knees at her side.
The sudden silence—inside and out—was deafening.
The Rege fired two shots at Johnny, who lay helpless.
I didn’t want to look.
But I had to see. Slowly, my numb body responded. I saw a splash of red on Johnny’s face. My heart sank into my stomach.
Then Lance surged forward, screaming, “Mom!”
Nana grabbed Lance before he could break the circle.
Eris moaned. “Fuck that hurts. Shit, shit, shit.” Panic elevated her voice with each word. Behind me, Zhan got to her feet. I glanced at her. A trickle of blood ran down her face and her forehead was bruising. She checked the door even as she reloaded her gun.
Ignoring the mess that had been the Rege, I focused on the circle. My mother was bleeding, scraping her heels over the floor as she shouted another f-bomb.
And I found myself staring at Lance, who was trying to remove Nana’s grip from his arm. “Young man, get a hold of yourself,” she was saying.
Mom. He’d shouted “mom.” Shouted it at my mother.
The world swayed. My knees hit the floor.
Johnny may be dead. My mother’s been shot. And I have a brother. A brother she kept. And raised. And didn’t leave.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The next minutes were a blur. I was completely numb until Nana’s voice reached me. “Persephone, Johnny is not hurt.”
My mind snapped back into working and I clamored to my feet.
“Eris blocked the shots,” she added.
“We have to call an ambulance,” Lance pleaded, cheeks wet with tears.
“Don’t break the circle,” Eris said, gritting her teeth.
“Mom, no …”
At that, Nana let go of him, finally catching on to what had torn through me like a hurricane.
Eris drew on the ley line—I felt the surge as she sucked power into herself. Even so, with great difficulty and much yelping, she twisted herself around and reached into the box with her left hand rifling around and coming up with the dagger. She clamped the sheath in her teeth and drew the blade. After spitting the sheath to the floor, she stabbed the black-handled dagger into the air. “Cut now the door, without breaking my circle.” She dropped the dagger. “Persephone. You have to finish.”
“You need medical attention!” Lance begged.
Zhan left the doorway, sliding her gun into her shoulder holster. “I have medic training. Let me in.”
Nana jerked on Lance’s arm. “Do you have an emergency kit?”
He blinked, seemingly as numb as I had been a moment ago. “Downstairs,” he said. “In the shop.”
“Go get it,” she said.
He grabbed keys from a peg by the door, then stepped back as Kirk and Todd swarmed in with Gregor and two other Omori, all of whom had their wrists bound with zip-ties. Gregor dropped to his knees beside the grisly mess on the floor, saw a swollen hand with an identifying pair of rings. “The Rege! What have you done?”
Lance took to the stairs.
To shut Gregor up, Kirk whacked his head with the butt of a pistol.
“Is the Domn Lup—” Kirk’s words stalled as he saw the same splash of blood that had distressed me.
I stepped through the door my mother had cut in her circle, feeling the static kiss of power as I entered. My hands roved all over Johnny, smearing blood but finding no wound. “He’s unconscious but unhurt,” I confirmed.
“Magic,” one of the Omori cried, realizing what was happening on this side of the room.
“The energies are contained within the circle. For now.” But we’d have to stir some more to finish this.
“The police are coming,” Kirk said. “What do you want us to do?”
The wail of sirens was getting close. Damn it, we have a spell going on, a dead half-formed wære, and—
“This magic must not be stopped,” I said. “Free the Omori and tell the—”
“What?” Kirk demanded.
I affixed the Omori wæres with as threatening a countenance as I could muster. “Your Rege is dead. All you have is your Domn Lup. Swear to me that you will go along with this, or I’ll half-form you and have you shot where you are.” I hope they believe me. I don’t know that I could harm anyone being submissive.
Gregor’s wide, despairing eyes shut. His mouth twisted in grief and fear. “And the witch strikes… .” he growled.
I moved as close to him as I could without breaking the circle. “If you prefer to die rather than see the new age your Domn Lup will usher in, so be it. I will give you that honor.”
He looked up, eyes widening.
“But if you have any shred of hope inside of you, any desire to live in a better world, swear your allegiance now.”
Gregor bowed his head. “I shall.” He fixed his comrades with his stare. “And so shall you.” They bowed their heads.
“Swear it,” I demanded.
“On Ninurta’s Hallowed Grave,” Todd clarified.
Gregor lifted his chin. “On Ninurta’s Hallowed Grave, I swear my compliance for now and my loyalty to the Domn Lup.”
I breathed deep, sighed it out. “Tell the police this stranger attacked and broke in during the ritual, got too close, and it caused a transformation. He had to be put down. That’s what the shooting was about.”
Todd’s head bobbed up and down. “If we’re all guards of the Domn Lup, we have authority to protect him.”
Lance rushed through the doorway with the emergency kit. A cell phone was pressed to his ear. “Come quick, she’s been shot twice,” he was saying. He’d called 911.
“Let me.” Zhan took the kit from Lance and approached the circle. “May I come in?”
I indicated where Eris had cut the door in the magic circle. “Through here.” Nana shoved a pillow and the crumpled blanket from the couch into Zhan’s arms. She stepped over the salt circle and moved toward Eris. “Sealed again is the door.” I visualized the circle whole once more.
The zip-ties were cut. “Let’s get out there and figure out our positions and our story,” Todd told the wæres. They headed out.
Zhan continued her examination of my moaning moth
er, murmuring to herself, “One shot to the arm. Passed through. That’s how blood got on Johnny.” She gently searched Eris’s back. “No exit wound from this. Here.” She ripped into a gauze pack from the kit and pushed the sterile fabric at me. “Hold this to the shoulder wound. Apply pressure.”
When I did, Mom cried out.
“As much pressure as she can stand,” Zhan corrected.
While I did that, Zhan wrapped an elastic bandage around Eris’s upper arm. Eris’s teeth chattered as she cried out again. Zhan grabbed up the athame to slice through the bandage. Black-handled ceremonial blades weren’t to be used for actual cutting and were usually dull, but this one was sharp.
“I cannot leave the circle until this is done,” Eris insisted.
Zhan dropped the blade and wrapped the remaining length of the bandage around Eris’s ribs to keep her arm in place. “Then let’s finish it,” Zhan said, adjusting so she could hold Eris up while applying pressure to the shoulder. I covered my mother with the blanket, tucking it around her body.
Beyond the broken door, I heard the arrival of the police cruisers.
“What do I do?” I meant with the magic, not the police.
“You have to unlock the foo dog. He needs to be on his stomach.”
Zhan had to abandon her patient temporarily to help me roll Johnny over without dumping him on the floor. The massage table had a cushion-edged hole in it so we could align him properly, and I checked underneath to make sure he was breathing normally.
“Light the green candle. Place it with the others.”
I did so as Zhan returned to my mother.
“Take the lilac and vetivert, cover the red foo dog and only the foo dog, and repeat after me.” She waited while I scattered the herbs. “I invoke the socialization of the planet Venus, whose duality in love and war finds harmony. Symbolized perfectly in this creature, that is not only a devoted dog, but a defender ready to make war to protect its own.”
Though her words were harsh and fast, I repeated them slower. Then I took up a stone. “Jade?”
She nodded.
“Trace the edges and all details as smoothly as you can. Don’t rush. Imagine the lines are strings, bindings that you’re erasing.”
As I did so, Eris murmured of Venus, of love and war and balance. Her brows furrowed in pain and concentration.
“I’m done.”
“Is there any aspirin in the kit?” Eris asked Zhan, who was taking her pulse.
“Yes, but it would thin your blood. You can’t have it.” Zhan shifted slightly as if taking Eris’s pulse at the wrist of her wounded arm.
“Fuck,” Eris groaned. “Press the jade into the dog’s mouth. Hold it there firmly. Pour your will into the foo dog, through the jade. You have to let the ley energy travel through you and that is going to hurt. It’s sorcery and—”
“I’m no stranger to sorcery.”
That statement cut through her anguish and she stared for a moment, then forced a weak, brief smile. “That’s my girl.” She swallowed. “Let it fill the foo dog and bring him to life. You have to feel his heart beating. You have to tell him to give Johnny back his wærewolf instincts. All of them. When the dog relents, you have to make it transfer that energy from within itself, back into Johnny.”
“Got it.”
“The dog won’t give it up easily.”
“Got it.” I put the jade over the foo dog’s mouth and positioned my hands.
“Repeat after me and mean it.”
“I will.”
When she spoke, I shut my eyes and repeated each line after her.
“Divine and auspicious,
Restraining motives vicious,
Dignity once suppressed you
Power now arrests you.
Unleash his instinct
Unleash his nature
Unleash his instinct
Unleash his nature.”
As the chant continued, an alpha state filled me and a wave of ley energy rushed through me. I could feel the foo dog, feel it as if it were a real, three-dimensional, furry creature under my hands. Live. Come alive.
I squeezed, urgent to feel that heartbeat.
Live! Live!
With ley power I jolted the dog—and Johnny—as if my palms were the pads of a defibrillator. The next thing I knew, the foo dog was trying to bite me.
“It doesn’t know you,” my mother said. “Make him obey!”
Down boy! You have to give Johnny back his instincts!
The beast continued to snap at me. The edges of its teeth scraped at my palm. It couldn’t get a bite of me because its nose was stuck against my palm and, apparently, it could not move its head.
Give him back his instincts!
Ley power dripped down my arms and into the dog in more moderate jolts, as if from a shock collar. Still, the animal snapped and growled at me. I imagined the flow stockpiling until there was a surplus in my shoulders. After holding it back as long as I could, I enveloped the foo dog’s head with it like a muzzle and thought, Give him back all his wærewolf instincts, now!
The dog yelped as if struck. Though it had ceased snapping at me, it continued to whimper. I loosed my grip on the muzzle and put my fingers around its head and petted it gently.
Taking that it allowed me to do this as a sign the dog was ready to surrender the contained instincts, I thought: Release what is Johnny’s back into him. Return to him what you once held. Relinquish your duty and rest.
For a full half-minute, it felt like kernels or pebbles dropping from the foo dog’s mouth to bounce off my skin and tumble into Johnny. When that sensation ended, the dog licked my hand.
Instead of getting a wet palm, however, it knocked me back a step as if the dog had just shoved me back and jerked from me all the power that the ley had given me in one fell swoop.
I dropped down on one knee. My body was drained, my shoulders ached, and yet my soul felt electrified.
“Difficult?” Eris asked, gritting her teeth.
I realized there was a police officer in the doorway. He must’ve showed up while my eyes were shut.
He saw my surprise. “Just securing the scene, ma’am.” He had placed markers around the Rege’s body and around the weapon he’d used.
In answer to my mother, I said, “Yeah. Difficult.”
She gave a quiet laugh. “The next one’s going to be a real bitch.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The paramedics arrived. Nana met them at the doorway. The sun would set soon; evening was rushing up on us.
“Are any of you wærewolves?” Nana demanded, placing her hands on either side of the doorframe.
“No, let us by!”
Nana snapped, “There’s a spell going on in there and we’ve had one partial transformation already. I’m just protecting you.”
“We received a 911 call. We were told there’s an injured woman in there.”
“That’s right, but she’s inside the circle.”
To their credit, the medics pushed past the barricade that was my Nana and lined up just inside the doorway like mannequins in dark blue uniforms. Silent and still, the two men and one woman took in the scene, including what was left of the Rege on the floor. The woman moved closer to Zhan, but stayed back from the salt circle.
Zhan said, “She was shot twice by that man before his transformation set in. One broke her arm; the bullet passed through. I’ve bandaged it and bound it to her chest so it won’t move. The other entered at the shoulder. I’m keeping pressure on it. The bleeding is minimal.”
The woman had carrot red hair held back in a frizzy ponytail. “Did that bullet pass through?”
Zhan shook her head no.
“Then it may have bounced around causing internal injuries we can’t see. We need to get her out of there.”
“No!” Eris insisted.
“How’s her pulse?” Frizz asked.
“Thready,” Zhan answered.
Frizz nodded. “She may be going into shoc
k. Is there a pulse in the right arm?”
Zhan shook her head again.
Lance came to the edge of the circle. “Mom. Let them take you now! Please.”
Eris defiantly shook her head. “I have to finish the spell.”
Frizz said, “Cut a door and let me take you out. The others can finish.”
“You’re a witch?” I asked, surprised.
“No. My aunt’s a witch. I spent summers with her. Picked up a few things.”
Eris held up her left hand, index finger vertical. “Just one more. One more spell and we’re done.”
“Your needs are more urgent, ma’am.”
“Mom, please!” Lance begged.
“Lance, you know how much it means to me to earn Persephone’s trust. I. Must. Do this.”
I had been about to ask her to leave as well, but that shut me up. I’m important to her?
“I don’t want to lose you,” Lance said.
“I know. I love you, too, bitch boy, but if I fuck this up, I won’t want to be here anyway.”
“Ma’am. Your fingers look dark; that’s not a good sign. You should get to the hospital immediately.” Frizz’s voice was more authoritative.
“If I leave, both that man and I are fucked.”
“How so?” Nana cut in. She was pale, strained, her hands wringing. She was as worried as Lance. The prospect of watching her estranged child die wasn’t a welcome one.
“I took something from him with the last tat. I have to give it back or all of this will be for nothing.”
“What did you take?” I demanded.
“You’re probably going into shock, ma’am,” the medic announced firmly and loudly. It was a signal that she was about to forcibly take control of the patient. “This is irrational. Let us take you to the hospital.”
“Everyone … just stop fucking talking.” Even as she spoke, the hair at the nape of my neck prickled; she was calling the ley again. With her left hand and a scream of blinding pain, Eris snatched up the athame that had been discarded on the floor. She twisted and held it at Zhan’s throat. To the medic she said, “Stop pushing me. Let us finish this. Then I’ll go.”
For a tense second, no one moved, not even to breathe.
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