I trudged from the relative warmth of the cottage, Molly at my side, to the back door and mudroom of the inn. I kept a hand under her elbow and wondered what the baby thought when she looked up at me. Would the nebulous memory of my Beast-face stick in her deep unconscious brain somewhere, to come back as nightmares in her future?
“What’s that?” Molly asked, pointing to the west. I followed her finger and spotted the colors and light show of a magic working. I remembered the earthquake and bright lights Beast had thought werewhite-man lights.
Something tugged at the back of my mind, like a fish on a line, vital, as if I knew it was important. The lights looked like a bright witch circle. Then I remembered the exoskeleton on the SOD.Ah. Yeah.“Moll, could there be a time circle there?”
“Not out in the open. Time circles need to be underground, in a cave or a windowless basement, someplace where the sun and moon can’t interfere.”
Beast thought at me,There was earthquake and brighter lights there, after.
Yeah. Lights were there before the earthquake, but dimmer.“Molly, is there a ley line near Evangelina’s old house in Hot Springs?” Evangelina was Moll’s sister, the opposite of Glinda the Good Witch. More like the Wicked Witch ofOzfame.
“Yes. Not a big one. But a line leading to a stronger one we can draw through. And not too far away is a liminal line, but we don’t usually draw power from that. It’s in the Nantahala National Forest, on land claimed by the Cherokee tribe, up near Robbinsville. Everharts are polite about borrowing earth power.”
“Do liminal lines lead to thresholds?” Liminal thresholds were locations where the borders between worlds were thin, where things could crawl or cross through. I wasn’t in the mood to fight some big bad ugly from another realm.
Molly yawned, her jaw cracking. “Sometimes. But there isn’t one near here.”
“Okay. So nothing magical over there.” I pointed.
Molly cast aseeingworking with mumbledwyrd. “Probably a showy circle to impress human customers. A small clan of weak-as-well-water witches moved in over that way. The Shookers. They take human customers, put on a show with lots of lights. We checked them out. There are no indications of dark magic or blood rites on them or on their property.”
Molly knew her business, but I made a mental note to get someone to check on the Shookers come morning.
Walking into the heat of the inn/house was like being smothered by a heated blanket. Brute, who had not made the flight back with us, raced in between our legs, nearly toppling the two bipeds. I caught Moll and offered to pull her boots off. Baby at her shoulder, she sat on the small bench near the door and lifted a foot. I pulled off her boots and placed them to drip-dry on the rack.
“Thanks, Big-Cat,” Molly said, levering herself up before I could help. “I’m going to change a diaper, put all my babies into the bed with me, and get some shut-eye.”
“You sure you’re okay?” I meant with death magics, and she nodded. “Thank you,” I said. “I doubt we’d have made it without you. I like having a Glinda on my team.”
“Of course you do.” The rest of her words filtered back as she padded for the elevator. “Glinda had horrible fashion sense and awful hair, but she had good timing, and that ‘click your heels three times’ thing is legendary.”
With a claw, I dug the snow and sleet out of my toenail pads and out from my foot fur, dried my pads, and pawed my way to the office. I needed to get out of the red armor, but I could stand it for a few more minutes. “What’s so almighty freaking bad in NOLA?”
“This,” Alex said. He hit a key. “Footage of Sabina.”
Sabina was the only outclan priestess in North America. She had been withUni Lisiin my toddler memory of a war dance.
“I am badly damaged,” she croaked. On the recording, her throat made a horrible noise that might have been acough as she tried to breathe. “Near true-death. The larger fragments of the Blood Cross are destroyed.” She coughed as if she was breathing blood. “My mausoleum is on fire. I dig through the earth... with the last sliver of the cross in the Americas.”
The audio cut off.
CHAPTER 11
Is That a Royal Decree?
“I lost the call,” Alex said. “Haven’t been able to get it back. I’m thinking Sabina’s underground. Or true-dead. And we have this.” He punched a key on the keyboard and three video feeds came up on his oversized monitor, but I had no idea what I was looking at. As I puzzled out the video, Alex went on, “Isn’t her mausoleum inside a church? And made of stone?”
“Yeah,” I said. “What am I seeing?”
“The vamp graveyard. It’s on fire. Everything is on fire. Every single thing. All the stone.”
“All.” I leaned to the screen, picking out the crypt where Leo was buried. It was in flames, fire licking up and down the stone, eating through the door. Tears gathered in my eyes. “Don’t let Bruiser see this when he gets back,” I said softly.
“Copy that,” Alex said. “I got Wrassler on cell. HQ was under attack too, but they’re handling it. The big problem is at NOLA PD, Eighth District. Bloodsuckers have attacked there too.”
It took a moment for me to figure out what he meantand even then I didn’t believe it. “Vamps attacked NOPD? The human police?” A sinking feeling rose from my toe pads to the top of my head, making it hard to think. Vamps didnotattack human law enforcement. It wasn’t done. Ever. Except that there was a war among vamps in Europe and they were attacking humans there. And now here. I watched the screen as multiple recorded events played out on it. Everything was changing. “Who are the attackers?”
“They didn’t leave calling cards,” he snapped. “The witnesses and the security footage indicate they’re speaking some language I don’t recognize. I’m trying to ID them with facial-rec software, but that’ll take forever if I can’t narrow it down to country of origin.”
