“Jane offered you a job?”
I stopped. Jane Yellowrock. “Yeah.” I opened the door and left the icy room that tried to melt my own magic in my bones. But... I noticed that the hunger, the bloodlust, was completely gone. Breathing was easier.
In the conference room, I told T. Laine our orders. “We’ll have to take your car because my truck is too small for the three of us and the dog.”
As we were walking down the hallway, I heard FireWind say to Rick, “You were a willing sacrifice when you were tattooed. Loriann used you, then also made you a slave to protect her brother and to track him. Would you be insulted if I asked you to stay near your cage for the duration of this case?”
“I’ve already addressed that,” Rick said. “And I’ve been bunking here.”
“I see. I think that was a wise move.”
I made a soft humph. Seemed FireWind could learn new tricks after all. I woke my sister and gathered her things and the dog, thinking about Rick and everything he had gone through. As we headed down the stairs, FireWind shouted to us, “Be back at four p.m. Full crew. We’re going to breach and contain the house where Jason and Godfrey and the vampires are lairing before the local Mithrans even wake up for the night.”
“Ten-four,” T. Laine said.
•••
We left Mud at Sam’s house, outside, playing with her dog and trying to stay out of the way of the new baby and the mamas and away from the virus that had gripped the church. She was alone, but in line of sight of my brother, as safe as she could be with Larry Aden free from jail and a danger. It wasn’t safe on church grounds, but it was safer than with me for now, despite the future possibility of her growing leaves and being burned at the stake. And that was a distinctly uncomfortable thought for me, who wanted to get custody and take her away from the church. Mud was in danger no matter where she lived.
T. Laine was driving and I was resting. I was way more tired than I admitted, and when I was tired, I went quiet. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation seemed to have the opposite effect on the unit’s witch, and Lainie was running on thirty-six hours with little or no sleep. She finished off a thirty-three-ounce coffee on the way to the stockyard and talked my head off, asking questions about me and what I’d said to FireWind off the record, none of which I answered. That didn’t stop her chatter.
She looked wide awake when she braked the car in front of the crime scene tape and got out to speak to the deputy guarding the site. I followed more slowly, my feet kicking up puffs of dust. I could hear the flies and, in the heat, the stench of rotting meat and blood was already strong. My bloodlust wasawake and eager, but more like a curious puppy than a slavering starving hellhound. So far.
T. Laine chatted with the lone deputy as we both dressed out in Tyvek uniforms, the onesies worn by evidence collecting teams. The two were gossiping, agreeing that guard duty was boring and we really needed rain and it was hotter than the opening to hades. Lainie had thought to bring cold Cokes and some ice, and that made them best friends. I showed my ID, signed in to the official record, and moved into the heated, reeking stockyard, my paper uniform stifling.
It was still and silent in a locale that was probably usually loud with animals and machinery and the occasional worker. A hot breeze blew through, sweeping up dust devils. Flies buzzed like a chorus of buzz saws. Turkey buzzards were everywhere. A kettle of them soared overhead. I had no idea why a flock was called that, but all the names of buzzard groupings were bizarre. A committee, a venue, or a volt, they were perched on the rooftop, with the braver members of the scavenger pack sitting on the outer pen walls of the covered areas. A flock of feeding buzzards was called a wake, and three of the most brave, or the most dominant, were having a wake at the carcasses. It wouldn’t be long before the stench drew multiple species of predators and scavengers from everywhere if the cleanup crew wasn’t allowed onto the site.
Flies dive-bombed me as I approached the pens and walked into the shade under the metal roof. Buzzards perched on fencing. Dead animals were everywhere: three goats in the first pen, a miniature horse in the next, a sow and piglets. The animals had bled out from every orifice.
I dug out a small spiral notepad and walked down the wide aisles, beginning a listing of the animals with roman numerals. That was when I saw the man. Like the animals, he had died horribly—blood down his face, across his chest, dried and crinkled on his clothing. He was Caucasian, bearded; his blue eyes were clouded over, his light brown hair caked with dried blood. He was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, and, like the animals, he had bled from every orifice. I backed a step away before I remembered that this was my job. I stopped, swallowed acidic bile that rose in my gullet. Quickly figured it out.The man was lying on a sleeping bag, barefoot, half-covered by straw. A pack rested beside him, with a bag of canned goods, a twelve-pack of cheap beer, and a bag of trash. He was homeless. He had made the unfortunate decision to bed down yesterday in a pile of straw. And now he was dead.
“Nell,” T. Laine called out.
“Here! We got a DB.” Dead body. Not a homeless man, not a person with a past and a name and hopes for a better tomorrow. But a DB, to keep our souls distant from the awful part of the job of a cop.
T. Laine strode into the shadows and the buzzing of flies, saying, “Check for ID. Then back away. We’re still waiting on PsyLED crime scene investigators.”
The stench grew and the clouds of flies buzzed like a speeding engine as they laid eggs. We ascertained that there was only the one human body, hunted for ID, and anything arcane or black magic. There was nothing. and we left the stench of the pens for the witch circle, sweating like churchwomen.
Lainie had been reading arcane texts and had brought along a version of aseeingworking. She wanted to see if she could re-create a vision of the spell at its inception, as it was drawn and cast, and then determine what the circle was doing now. I was more interested in the bodies we had left in place in the circles. Vampires were known to burst into flame in sunlight and we’d had a lot of sun already today.
“The vamp bodies are gone,” T. Laine said, “and the circles are still intact. No one has been here but us. I don’t even see a pile of ash.”
Not that I intended to tell Lainie, but when I fed the earth, the ash was eaten by the land. There was nothing left at all. Jason had found a way to do that. If there had been vampire ash, it had soaked into the earth. Which meant that Jason might have used vampires in other circles and the remains were gone by the time we got there. That would explain the maggoty feeling. Ming had her scions locked down, but some might have gone missing in the months before we knew about Jason’s circles. And... maybe the invading vamps had donated vamp prisoners for sacrifice.
“What do the vamps who are helping Jason get out of this?”
“Best guess? Jason’s such a blood junkie. They think they can control him and use the demon’s power vicariously, maybe even drinking the power down with Jason’s blood. All the power, none of the side effects of being demon ridden.”
“Oh. That makes sense.”
“Stay back and take readings,” she said.
I retreated to the shade and leaned against a tree, calibrating the psy-meter 2.0 and testing the readings against T. Laine. She read pure witch. But the circle didn’t. It read witch and vampire and fluctuating levels of one and four.
I didn’t have my blanket, but I touched a pinkie finger to the earth and yanked it away.Nasty. Maggots. Death.I wanted to gag and promised myself to never, ever do that again at a scene filled with dead animals and filth of demon.
At the circle, T. Laine walked sunwise around the circle, pausing every few steps, her eyes on the center. When she finished one complete revolution, she stopped and studied it, put an amulet on a silver chain around her neck, and removed a plastic zipped bag from a pocket. It contained blue powder. She opened the baggie and tossed a few grains of the blue stuff over the edge of the circle. They fell slowly and... stopped. They hung in midair.
