Blood Trade jy-6

by Faith Hunter

  I pulled the pocket watch from my pocket, and Bobby stepped back fast. “That is ugly and it stinks, Jane.”

  I turned it over. It was just a cheap pocket watch, base metal with a flying duck in bas-relief on its cover. As far as I knew, no human had noticed the spell smell. “Ugly how?”

  “Bloody magics, like rotten meat. Like dead things dug out of the ground.”

  Which was an apt description for a vamp, in many ways. “Do you still want to do this?”

  Bobby scowled and jerked his left hand at me, demanding.

  The plan was to test the waters by letting Bobby hold one pocket-watch amulet and see if he could pinpoint the witch circle that powered it. Then, if nothing happened, we’d try it with two pocket watches, then with three. Of course, there was no safe way to test my method, but I had been holding the watches and they hadn’t hurt me.

  I settled the watch into Bobby’s palm and he drew in a hissing breath, as if the thing burned him, but he wrapped his fingers around it tightly and closed his eyes. Instantly his hand lifted and he pointed, one finger rising from the watch. “There. I think—”

  Bobby fell, midword, midgesture. Only my Beast reflexes let me catch him before his head hit the ground. I grunted as I let him down gently. Eli rushed up, a vamp-killer in one hand, his small sub gun in the other, his eyes covering the street and houses and even up in the air. As if maybe vamps could now fly. Which gave me pause.

  I checked for a pulse and an airway. Bobby was breathing and his heart was steady and strong. I peeled back his fingers to reveal the pocket witch—and the blistered flesh beneath. I swore softly, and Bobby coughed out a laugh. “You gonna get in trouble, Jane.”

  Relief swept through me. “Yeah. Mouth washed out with slimy soap. Then put on toilet detail for a month.”

  “Crapper detail,” he said, laughing. “Owww. My hand.” He looked at it and his eyes went wide. “I’m hurt, Jane.”

  Eli knelt, opened a small med kit, and squeezed a packet of gel on the blisters. He popped a second packet and placed it over the gel, and closed Bobby’s hand gently around it. “Those are second-degree burns. We need to get him to a hospital, but this is a coolant. It’ll take out the sting for now.”

  I couldn’t see the writing on the packet, but I figured it was some high-tech military dealio. I had more immediate worries. As I helped him to sit up, I asked, “Bobby, has this ever happened before? Passing out? Getting burned?”

  He strained up and balanced on his unhurt arm. “No. But it doesn’t matter. Give me another watch.”

  “No way, Bobby boy. I’m not letting you get hurt again.”

  “Misha needs me. Charly needs me. I’ll get well later.”

  “When you two finish arguing,” Eli said, “I texted Soul. She said to put Bobby in a circle with the amulets and see what happens. It won’t hurt him that way.”

  “How do we make a circle?”

  “Do I look like a witch? Security expert here. You’re the magic-using part of the triumvirate.”

  “Bobby?” I asked. “Have you ever been put in a circle? Do you know how?”

  “Misha just draws a ring in the dirt.”

  “How about drawing one with a piece of chalk on the sidewalk?” Eli asked.

  “Nope,” Bobby said. “Those TV shows and books are wrong. It has to be a complete circle. Breaks in the circle let the power out or in, and the rough sand on the surface make it not complete. Chalk can be used on a clean floor, though, if there are no cracks in it.”

  Which was way more than I knew. As I watched, Eli started kicking a circle into the soil with his combat boot. I stayed kneeling and scooped the loosened soil out of the narrow trench. We quickly had a circle around Bobby, with a small area still open. He looked so alone sitting on the ground, his face pale in the moonlight, his freckles like dappled shadows.

  “I’ll take the amulets now,” Bobby said. “And will you open them so I can see the faces? Please,” he added, politely, the years of children’s home manners showing.

  Curious, I put the three pocket watches in the circle with him, opened the amulets, and turned the faces so they were easy to read.

  “Thank you. May I please borrow an ash stake, Jane?”

  I handed him two ash stakes. “The stakes are for what? Killing vamps while you’re . . . You can’t stake vamps while you’re in a circle.”

  Bobby grinned and folded his legs, guru fashion, and put his injured hand in his lap. “If I have to move the watches, now I don’t have to touch them, so I won’t get burned. And I’m a dowser, remember? Wood might help.”

  I felt like an idiot. Dowsers sometimes used wood to find . . . whatever they were dowsing for. “Oh. Yeah. Right.”

  With his right hand, Bobby took up an ash stake and positioned the watches in a line in front of his knees, each about an inch apart. He looked up at the moon, now partially visible between brightly lit, scudding clouds. “Okay. Close the circle, Jane.”

  “Then what? Without a witch to power the closing, nothing will happen,” I said, knowing I was procrastinating, worried that Bobby would be hurt worse.

  “I think I can do it. I’ve watched Misha do it.” He nodded once emphatically. “I can do it. I know I can.”

  I pulled a vamp-killer. “If something goes wrong, I can cut the circle with iron and silver and pull you out.”

  “It might burn you.”

  “To quote a friend of mine, ‘I’ll get well later,’” I said. Bobby gave me a thumbs-up. I closed the circle.

  He dropped his head back again, like he had done earlier. One minute went by. Then two. With Beast vision, I saw the circle in the torn soil begin to glow softly. Unbelievable. Bobby had activated the circle. He wasn’t a witch, but the little guy had more magic than I had thought.

  At Bobby’s knees, the pocket watches began to glow as well. I smelled the faint stink of blistering flesh, and Bobby hissed with pain. Bobby was being injured. I raised the knife, ready to bring it down on the circle, severing its ties to the Earth.

  “No, Jane,” Bobby said. He took a sharp breath of pain and raised his head to normal. “Not yet. I’m not finished.” As he spoke, the three pocket watches before him shifted slightly. My fist tightened on the knife handle but I held off the blow to the circle as the amulets aligned toward some point that I couldn’t name. It wasn’t the North Star, sunrise, or sunset, which meant—

  A hard smile thinned my mouth. The three watches were aligned with the source of their power. The number twelve on all three watches pointed toward the witch circle that might hold Misha. That meant searching as many as twenty buildings and grounds or maybe as few as five, which was way better odds than before. It meant we might find her tonight or tomorrow night. The smell of burning flesh rose on the air. Bobby was in trouble. I raised the knife to cut the circle.

  “No!” he said. “Not yet!” Bobby was breathing fast, the smell of burned flesh growing stronger. He lifted the ash stake and held it in both blistered hands, just like a dowsing rod, as he studied the amulets. He looked in the direction they were pointing and the stake aligned with the same direction, but more specific. He said, “That house. That one there with the purple trim. Misha is there.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Close Your Mouth, Girl. Mosquitoes Will Fly In.

  I brought the knife down, cutting the circle. The shock slammed me back as if a huge hand had swatted me, and I landed with a whoof on the sidewalk. Bobby moaned, dropping the stake and holding out his hands. I rose slowly and got to my feet as Eli knelt, his eyes still watching the streets, alert to any danger, and spread gel on the new wounds and more gel on the old ones, which looked much worse now. I inspected my knife. The blade showed no damage.

  Eli popped two new packets and placed them over the burns. “Good work,” he said to Bobby as he wound cling-wrap bandages around the injured hands to hold the packs in place. “That took guts, man.”

  Bobby’s back straightened and an unfamiliar look of pride covered hi
s face. I didn’t think I’d ever seen that expression on him before. He shrugged diffidently. “Thanks. I just did what I had to.”

  Eli gave that tiny smile and said, “That’s what all heroes say.”

  “Hero? For real?”

  “For real. I have a feeling that a medal is in order. I’ll check with headquarters.”

  “Wow. Cool!”

  I watched Eli in quiet surprise, his expression hidden by the night shadows. I had no idea he had that sort of kindness in him. “Bobby,” Eli said, “can you wait in the SUV while Jane and I check out the house?”

  “No.” Bobby shook his head hard. “I’ll go with you. I want to help save Misha.”

  “You don’t have body armor, so I can’t let you go in with us, man. I need you for a different job. Jane and I need you to sit in the SUV with a cell phone and call the sheriff if things go bad. We won’t have time if fighting starts. I’ll set the phone to a one touch and put it on speaker.”

  “I’ll have your backs? That’s what they say on TV.”

  “Exactly. And, hey. We couldn’t do it without you.”

  Bobby grinned, and I had to look away or get all teary eyed. Eli helped him to his feet and got my old friend settled in the SUV. I used the time to text the Kid to get our team down to Under the Hill to help rescue the witches. I also put away the amulets, careful to not let them touch one another. I still didn’t know what they would do, but I wasn’t going to chance anything.

  When he got back to me, Eli said, “Not many people would have been able to sit there and get burned in order to do their job. He’s a good man.”

  “So are you, Eli.” My cell vibrated and I checked the screen. “Our team is on the way. ETA fifteen. Let’s go reconnoiter. And then let’s go rescue some witches.”

  “And kick some vamp butt. And then I’m thinking pizza tonight.”

  My mouth fell open. “You? You are going to eat pizza?”

  “With sausage and pepperoni, double cheese, mushrooms, and heavy on the onions. I can taste it now. With a pitcher of beer. Close your mouth, girl. Mosquitoes will fly in.”

  • • •

  The house Bobby had picked out was freshly painted, white with purple gingerbread trim, one of many that had been recently restored. It had a new cement block-foundation, making it sit high off the ground, a four-room square house on a tiny lot with a picket fence. And not a hint of magics about the place. Until I stood back and viewed the house with Beast vision. Then the blackish-purplish, bloody-broken magics stormed up from the house in a writhing, heated swarm, like frilled snakes or flaming worms, magic so strong it was nearly sentient, yet broken like a battlefield still full of the dead.

  “Holy crap on a cracker,” I whispered.

  And Eli laughed. “That swear, I like.”

  We took a circuitous route to the house, and the closer I got, the stronger the witch stink got. This was the smell I’d found on the wind several times over the past few days, but couldn’t place. And it was no wonder. The spell covering and warding the house was strong magic, highly contained. It was based on a hedge-of-thorns spell, but a hundred times stronger; part of its makeup was a keep-away spell and another part was a containment spell to hide the magics. To get a more complete view, we circumnavigated the house, but made a point to stay far back, as the magics were hard and strong and burned when we got too close. The ward was a sphere buried below the surface of the ground that rose to cover the entire lot and nudge up against the taller buildings to either side. The structures on either side were each three stories tall, though the one on the left had a raised false front to look like a fourth story. Both were empty, with flat roofs and arched windows, and looked as if they were in original condition, unrestored.

  The house they dwarfed was in far better condition, but the only way in was a small opening at the top where the magics met. I had only one idea how we might get inside. And it wasn’t something I wanted to do.

  • • •

  It was closer to half an hour by the time the two cars arrived, Rick and his team in one, Bruiser driving solo. Soul hopped out of the car before it came to a complete halt, her gauzy clothes swirling around her like waves of water. She stood in the middle of the street, her eyes wide. Brute leaped to her side, snarling at her.

  Rick parked and got out of the vehicle more slowly. He was dressed in jeans and a button-front shirt and a windbreaker with the word PSYLED on front and back. And he wore a Kevlar vest under his shirt. Even money it was one of the new ones just hitting the market—Kevlar to stop bullets, a layer of some new plastic to slow even the sharpest knife blade, and a spell woven in to protect the wearer from attack spells. His earpieces were in his ears, music pouring out of them to hold the need to shift at bay.

  His eyes were glowing softly, his cat peering out at the world, and he looked tightly wound but in control. I’d sat through his first full moon with him, before he had the music spell, and it hadn’t been pretty. Rick didn’t acknowledge me at all but walked up close to the house, holding a device, a small black box. A psy-meter, or psychometer, that measured the strength and quality of magics. He walked back and forth in front of the house, holding the meter over his head.

  Bruiser stood at his car, studying the entire block, while Eli stood off to one side, his subgun at the ready, his mission look on his face, his body angled so he could see the house, the street, and the SUV with Bobby in it.

  “I walked these streets,” Soul said, frustration in her voice, “looking for magic. This was not here.”

  “It’s got a powerful ward,” I said. “Only when the moon came up did it become visible.”

  Rick swore softly and put his device away. “Too much ambient magic to get a reading. All I could get was a redline.”

  Soul nodded, blinking as if her eyes had dried out from staring so long. “Yes. It would show a redline. The ambient magics here are . . .” She shook her head, unable to find a word to express it. She settled on “astounding. We can’t get inside, not from here. It would take the magical equivalent of a nuclear bomb to get through that.”

  I sighed, hating what I was about to say. “I can get in.”

  They all turned to me, and an acute discomfort sank its claws into me. Beast snarled. No. Will not let you.

  You don’t have a choice. Not if you want a chance to save the kit’s mother, I thought back. “I can shift into a bird and fly over it, and dive through the hole at the top and land inside.” I thought Soul’s eyes were gonna pop out of her head, and I tilted my head in a wry shrug. “Only problem is that the magics I’ll be flying through might actually kill me. Or might force me to shift back while I’m in bird form, and I’ll lose too much mass and die. Either way—”

  “Mass transference is difficult?” Soul asked.

  “Yeah. Dangerous at every step along the way.” Which was all I was going to tell them about me, and way more than I wanted to tell them at all. If not for Misha maybe being trapped inside, I’d have never said anything.

  Bruiser, looking like a million dollars, rounded the car he’d driven and said, “I can see the shadows of the spell, but not how high it rises. Is it higher than the buildings to either side?”

  I pulled on Beast sight, and Soul stepped back to study the top of the spell. “No,” I said. “It reaches just above the top of the house’s roof, maybe three feet above the central roof beam. And as the spell curls down, the same distance above the chimneys.” The house was old enough to have been heated by wood or coal, and two brick chimneys were balanced at the front and back.

  Bruiser picked up some stones from the street, small rocks used in the paving, and tossed one at the front of the house. It bounced back with a sizzle of sound and a shower of crimson energies. The second stone went higher, and would have landed on the roof had the hedge not been in the way. He studied the entire structure and pulled back his throwing arm. With a careful release of strength and precision, he tossed the stone up. It arched over before dropping, and passed th
rough the energies escaping out the top. A shower of blue sparks rained down as the rock fell through, into the center of the sphere, and hit the roof before bouncing slowly down the incline and off the eave to the ground.

  “Yeah. That’s the hole I could get through,” I said. I hadn’t known until now that Bruiser could see magics. Most humans couldn’t. But, then, Bruiser wasn’t human. Not anymore.

  “If we could span a line over the house,” Eli said, “from the buildings at either side, we could reach the spell’s center opening and drop through, crawl to a chimney, and shimmy down it.”

  “We would still have to pass through the energies that are escaping from the opening,” Soul said, “and to me, it looks like enough magic to fry a human body.”

  “I’m not human,” Bruiser said, shocking me that he would admit it aloud. But, then, with humans and witches missing, a lot of things that were better left in the dark were being exposed to the light. “And neither is Jane. Soul, can you make an amulet of death strong enough to fool the sphere for perhaps twenty seconds?”

  I raised my brows. “Death? Oh. The sphere thinks we’re stones or bones or something and doesn’t react to us? Much?”

  “Precisely,” Bruiser said, his eyes on Soul.

  Soul went still, her body seeming to hunch in on itself before she straightened, looking poised for flight or fight. A silence stretched between them as they measured each other, Soul not at all happy that Bruiser seemed to know something about her nature that she hadn’t told him, Bruiser looking unmoved. He had access to the database of the biggest, baddest Master of the City there is. Heck, he had probably compiled most of it. Did she think he wouldn’t know something about her? But he hadn’t known about Leo’s own son or about me either, so he wasn’t omniscient. Finally she spoke. “And if I can do this?”

  “Then Rick and I will run a line from the roofs of the buildings to the side, and Jane and I will drop through.”