Softly, his lips at my ear, he said, “What do you think Jason used as sacrifice?” He was asking if a human had been killed.
“I don’t know.” But mostly I just didn’t want to guess. Not yet. Minutes passed.
“Is he still at the curse circle?” Occam asked.
Bloodlust shuddered through me, but leaning against Occam eased the power of the spell. “Yes. He’s killing another... something. Someone?”
I hadn’t heard anyone return, but the quiet, crinkly sounds of a map being unfolded pushed back the silence. I opened my eyes and tugged one hand from the soil. I had slumped against Occam and he pressed on my spine, helping me sit up.
FireWind knelt on one knee and offered me T. Laine’s map of Knoxville. I thought about the rivers and the tributaries, the moon and attraction of magnetic north, which I could feel as a deep steady draw in the earth. I turned the map and placed a finger on the paper. It landed on Mascot Road in a bend of the Holston River. “Around here? Is there someplace he could use here?”
“Lot of places,” Occam said. “This area isn’t heavily populated. But it’s a lot farther out than before. Are you sure?”
“Yes.” There was no doubt.
“What do you feel, Ingram?” FireWind asked.
“Blood. A lot of blood. He’s sacrificing. I can’t say what’s dying. But he’s using the life force to call something...” I hesitated. “Filthyisn’t the right word. Neither isevil. But it’s maybe both and neither. The spell is calling vampires and Rick andit. Andit’strapped in the earth.”
“Demon?” FireWind asked, his voice a whisper of sound.
“I don’t know. The witches said a demon was being summoned, but it isn’t deep. Not hell deep.” And not as deep as magma, which was a lot closer than it used to be, thanks to lots of things, not the least Soulwood’s interference in the geology of Knoxville while helping me.
“Hell?” FireWind asked, surprised.
I knew, intellectually, that the hell where demons were imprisoned wasn’t under the earth, as in a physical place. But it was possible that some demons were tied to fire or attracted to fire, and that kind might associate with magma. When summoned, that kind might use the energies stored in the crust’s molten core to rise. The salamanders had done so, but this wasn’t a salamander. Was this thing a fire demon? I shrugged.
“To clarify,” FireWind said quietly, “you are stipulating that the sacrificial blood is being used to summon an intelligence or an entity up through the earth.”
“Just a minute.” I eased back into the earth, deeper, straight down through soil and broken granite, through layers of rotting limestone, and deeper still to bedrock. And deeper. I searched, moving slowly, sensing ahead, finding the sleepingpresencedeep in the earth. What I thought might actually be the soul of the Tennessee River valley. It was resting, somnolent, though not so torpid as it might have been a hundred years in the past, when white men began to dam the rivers and build power plants. Butthatpresence was not being called.
Before I could poke or prod the presence, even unintentionally, I eased away from the surface of the sentience. Back to my job. Back to the rooftop of the PsyLED building.
I looked at the new boss. I didn’t know why I was predisposed to dislike him. He had done nothing bad to me. Hehadn’t fired me or even said anything about a dog or a teenaged girl at HQ, though he had to be able to smell them both with his skinwalker senses. Maybe it was the deeply self-contained, reserved aspect of his nature. The sense that he was aloof, unapproachable, and arrogant. Arrogant, superior,righteousmen were irritating.
I dipped my head and thought carefully about my words. As a Cherokee, he might know things about the spirit of the land that white men didn’t. “The spirit that guards the earth is well. The thing that is rising through the crust of the earth doesn’t belong there. I can’t think of anything natural that might make the earth shudder with revulsion. It feels nasty but sentient. It doesn’t feel anything like salamanders. I think it’s something intelligent. Maybe a Power or a Principality.” I didn’t know his religious background so I added, “Powers and Principalities are how the Christian Bible refers to spiritual entities and authorities other than God or angels.” I watched his face in the night, as he processed my statements. Seconds passed as I measured the rising speed of the filthy thing, my hands buried in Soulwood soil.
“How long before this demon reaches the surface?” he asked.
I drew a sharp breath at the termdemon. “I don’t know. But the more blood Jason uses, the more likely the filth is to break free. I think. I’m not really sure.”
“Thank you, Ingram.” FireWind had been leaning against the low wall. He pushed off and went back down the stairs, silent on the night, leaving Occam and me sitting on my pink blanket, wrapped around each other on the roof in the muggy heat.
“You okay to get up, Nell, sugar?”
“I’m just great,” I lied.
Occam chuckled and said, “I know you’re fabricatin’ here, but it does feel good to not have to cut you free of roots and vines and branches and trim your bushels of leaves.”
“I never had bushels of leaves, not even in autumn. I think I’m more of an evergreen, and evergreens don’t shed.”
Occam snickered at my seasonal leaf joke. “Come on, Nell, sugar. Let me help you find your sea legs.”
•••
We parked in front of the Knoxville Livestock Center on Mascot Road. The stockyard was miles out of the city limits, in a farming area with lots of acreage dedicated to crops and sparsely populated by houses. On satellite maps, the stockyard itself was a large square of land, marked by unpaved roads and unpaved parking, a few corrals, outbuildings, some scattered farm equipment, a large roofed area, and a few acres of pasture. In person, the place was hot and stank of manure, cows, horses, and maybe chickens and goats, the mixed scents strong, even from the road in front.
There wasn’t time to reconnoiter, not with someone or some things dying, and the unit’s small drone was out of order, waiting on a replacement rotor. Op planning was supposed to include strategic, operational, and tactical elements. Ours was pretty simple. Move in. Locate the witch circle. Throw a massive null spell at the working. Take down Jason. Without backup. Not because we were all macho or full of hubris, but because humans were no match against witches and other paras, so local law backup was useless and probably presented more danger than assistance.
