Night Season

CHAPTER NINE

Shortly before nine o'clock the next morning, Cullen was back at the big, ugly block of a building in an underground office with an old metal desk for company.

No one had threatened him with a strip search this time. He'd taken his clothes off all on his own.

Cullen's original training was Wiccan; he felt more comfortable going sky-clad when working a powerful spell. He could have worn a robe, but the bloody things were a pain to launder properly since they had to be cleaned of more than physical dirt. Naked was easier. If the sight of his bare ass upset anyone… well, a man had to take his fun where he found it, didn't he?

God knew he didn't expect much else to be fun today. Bloody ignorant government drones.

That so-called gnome expert had given away half a million in gemstones without getting any explanations for the shield spell. Zip, zilch, nada. They had the spell, sure—the gnome had drawn it last night. They didn't know what half the glyphs meant, much less how the overall design was supposed to work. The wrinkled runt had refused to part with one word of explanation, and the government had let him get away with it.

Cullen had damned near refused to cast the spell. Brooks had persuaded him to go ahead, mostly because he was right, dammit. They'd just have brought in someone else. Also, Brooks had a strong feeling Cullen needed to be the spellcaster.

So did Cullen.

On one point the councilor had been defeated, but he didn't seem to realize it. When told that Lily would not be going to Edge, he'd smiled and insisted she be present today anyway. He thought they might change their minds once they understood the situation.

Of course, he didn't know about the mate bond. He wasn't going to learn, either. That was none of his business.

Cullen might have been trained as Wiccan initially, but he had little patience with tradition for tradition's sake. He'd long since learned that full immersion wasn't necessary for full cleansing. Instead he washed his hands, his feet, and the major chakras—a mingling of Eastern and Western practices that would have appalled traditionalists in both hemispheres. But it worked.

He dipped his fingers in the bowl of salt water and touched the crown chakra at the top of his skull. A pulse of awareness prickled over his scalp; he both saw and felt the violet energy of that chakra flowing into balance with the other energetic centers of his body. He waited, letting that communion complete itself, then opened his eyes, grabbed his crutches, and swung over to the door, wearing a small diamond around his neck, a big one on his right index finger, and nothing more.

The hall wasn't empty. Two Secret Service types in dark suits eyed him. Give them points for professionalism—neither of them stared at the bits that were normally covered in public. One muttered something into his headset.

Cullen gave them his best professional nod and headed for the door they were guarding. Earlier he'd spoken with the presidential adviser who was the reason for their presence. Marilyn Wright was fond of perfume, but otherwise seemed sharp and relatively unburdened by preconceptions.

A nice contrast to McClosky from Commerce. Unfortunately, it was McClosky who'd negotiated for the shield spell with help from that misbegotten gnome expert.

Parked beside the door was Ruben Brooks's wheelchair. Cullen left his cructhes beside it, opened the door, and limped into what used to be a conference room. It no longer looked the part.

The gnome had fought to limit the number of people present. After serious dickering they'd agreed on the ten people in the circle, plus Cullen. Six humans and four other types of people sat on cushions on the cement floor like a kindergarten class playing hot potato. Every one of them turned to look at him. It amused him to see where they looked—or avoided looking.

Not that there was much to see at the moment, given his recent application of cold seawater. Later, with the magic surging through him like honey and storm, his fifth member would put on more of a show.

Lily kept her gaze determinedly on his face. The presidential assistant lifted her eyebrows. McClosky bounced a glance off him before returning to an in-depth study of his shoes, and Steve Timms was more interested in who had weapons than who wore clothes. Steve was very conscious of his increased responsibility today. He was body-guarding both Brooks and Marilyn Wright.

Cynna gave Cullen a grin. She sat between Gan and Lily with that huge bag of hers on her Lily side. It held a supply of Hershey's Kisses to bribe the little not-quite-demon as needed. On Lily's other side, Brooks sat on a padded stadium seat instead of a cushion. He had a nod for Cullen. The gnome and the other guy were indifferent to nudity, and the tusked woman… interested. Definitely and sexually interested, which he found surprisingly disconcerting.

Gan said, "Hey! Nice cock."

"Thank you," Cullen said gravely. "I like it."

"How long does it get when—"

Lily hushed her, McClosky sputtered, and the presidential aide snickered. Cullen was pretty sure it was her, anyway.

He glanced at the clock on the wall. Seven minutes.

Clock time was an artificial construction, but numbers resonate magically, especially when used with intention. After some discussion, he and the councilor had settled on 9:05 to begin the casting. The two primes separated by a null suited the parameters of the spell.

"It's almost show time, ladies and gentlemen," Cullen said, taking in the scent of the room. A couple of those present were frightened, but that wasn't unreasonable. They seemed to have it under control. "Any last questions?"

"Uh, do we need to clear our minds or something?" McClosky asked.

"Only if you're hoping to contact the dearly departed. This isn't a seance."

Marilyn Wright had a cool, dry voice that reminded him of Mika. "Are the rest of us likely to experience anything?"

He shrugged. "It's not my spell. Councilor?"

"If you is having a Gift, you is maybe having sight or feeling of shield. If no Gift, you seeing, feeling, nothing." He turned a wormy smile on Lily. "For the sensitive, as energies raised, she is likely feeling them on skin."

One of the many things the councilor had promised to explain once they were shielded was how, exactly, he knew about Lily. Cynna thought that Earth's gnomish elders must have learned about Lily's Gift from Gan and passed that information to the gnomes in Edge.

That was one possibility. Another was that the Edge bunch was in league with a certain goddess—the one who wanted to destroy the lupi, find the Codex Arcanum, and copy it onto Lily's brain-wiped body and mind. Cullen didn't consider that likely. Lily would probably have picked up Her taint when she touched them if any of them were closely linked to Her. But it remained a possibility.

Dammit, Lily should not be here. Not that he expected anything to go wrong, and if it did, Lily's Gift should protect her, but… never mind. He had to deal with what was, not the way he thought things ought to be.

Cullen blinked slowly. Both types of seeing were always present, but physical vision was so vivid it normally drowned out the other. It took a moment's concentration to shift his attention to his other vision. He checked the altar, its contents, and the three circles surrounding it—his, still unset but marked by four black and four white candles; the shield spell itself, drawn in white chalk by the gnome; and the circle of people sitting on the floor inside the first two circles.

He also checked the silver pendant worn by the bald man and the stone set in the warrior woman's sword. He'd recognized them yesterday for charms—quite sophisticated, not terribly powerful, and only intermittently active.

As before, the power they did possess was directed at their wearers. He glanced at the clock again. And began.

The concrete floor was rough and cool beneath Cullen's feet. He limped heavily on the curled-up ball of his foot, but that was better than introducing crutches into the energy here.

They'd pulled up the carpet yesterday, and two witches from Sherry's coven had given the floor a seawater scrubbing… much to the gnome's amusement. Smug little bastard seemed to think cleansing was some quaint local superstition, but dammit, Cullen knew better. He could see the energy, couldn't he? An experienced caster of whatever practice didn't need to physically cleanse everything for most spells, but for the big ones, yeah. It mattered. And this was ley line magic. Achieving anything approaching real balance would be a bitch made bitchier by sloppy prep.

As he passed the first candle, he flicked a finger at it. It lit.

Someone gasped. He continued to move, his attention on the energies he drew with him as he walked sunwise around the circle. He would make three circuits.

The gnome had claimed Cullen didn't need a spell circle. Cullen had ignored him. Were all practitioners in Edge sloppy? Or were they so impossibly advanced they truly didn't need to set a circle to contain their magic?

He wasn't. The shield spell was supposed to keep things out. His circle would keep things in. Admittedly, he could set a circle a lot more simply, but this was one of the few things within his control, and by damn, he'd do it right. Besides, the FBI would be pissed if any magic leaked and crashed their computers.

He passed Cynna's leather-clad back in the third circle. She smelled faintly aroused, which made him smile. The fine webbing of energy covering her took the smile away.

Not that it wasn't a damned good spell. Sherry and three of her coven had spun an excellent protection spell on the leather coat. Those subtle filaments should tangle up any spells before they could touch the woman wearing it… any that weren't too powerful, that is. Enough power would burst those strands.

Feelings rambled in him like distant thunder, assorted and strange. A web-spelled coat wasn't enough. He didn't want Cynna here.

But the gnome did. And the gnome kept getting what he wanted.

No one spoke while Cullen completed his three circuits over the complaints of his unfinished foot. Spell circles were set in two dimensions, but the protection they cast was spherical, so when he finished, he saw a ghostly dome over the lot of them, anchored by the candles.

Nice and uniform, he decided with a nod. He crossed the blank space left in the glyphs, heading for the altar. "I'll invoke the elements now," he told the others. He looked at the gnome. "Close the door."

The councilor sniffed, but he rose and moved to the unchalked portion of the circle readily enough. With quick strokes he drew a symbol Cullen knew: the kryllus, an Etruscan symbol for closure or completion.

Maybe the runt was on the up-and-up. Cullen wasn't taking bets on it.

The altar was a two-foot-square slab of granite borrowed from Sherry's coven. They'd used a trolley and four men to move it here. It held Cullen's athame, a glass chalice filled with water, a dragon's scale, a small oil lamp, and a double fistful of herbs sprinkled over a bed of damp earth in a stone saucer.

Two of the herbs had been beyond Cullen's resources, so the Feds had pulled strings. The yohimbe came from a lab in Canada; the aashringi had been flown in by Air Force jet from India. There were advantages to working for the government, Cullen acknowledged as he knelt in front of the altar. Not many, but a few.

The gnome had specified the components, but the manner of invoking the elements was up to him. He kept it simple, whispering the familiar words as he held his hand over each item in turn, moving clockwise or sunwise: herbs, dragon's scale, lamp, chalice.

The others would see the small flame spring into being on the lamp's wick. They wouldn't see the colors that danced into life beneath his hand, or the single spot of uncolored intensity that was his diamond. Cullen picked up his athame. He drew a channel from color to color, connecting them—then touched the tip of the blade to his chest and pressed.

Blood trickled down, warm and liquid. And the colors streamed inside him.

Rocks fell down the slope of his spine. Wind blew through his skull. Water flooded his lungs. Fire burned his throat and mouth. His penis hardened and his lips pulled back from his teeth as power shuddered through him.

Dimly through the physical cacophony he heard Lily ask quietly, dubiously, "This is a blood spell?"

"It's okay," Cynna said. "The blood isn't for the spell. He's balancing the elements before doing the actual cast."

The councilor piped up, so shrill he sounded like Gan. "You is not saying you balance this way! Is—is primitive!"

You didn't tell me a few things, either, buddy. But Cullen was too caught up in sensation and sorting to speak.

Cynna again: "Physically balancing the elements is an ancient and effective tradition, and he's a dancer. He knows his body."

"But he is not telling me he does this! He is keeping secrets!"

"And you aren't? Right. Now shut up."

Cullen grinned.

"His foot," Brooks said quietly. "Look at his foot."

Hey, he was standing on his feet, wasn't he? Both feet. Flat on the ground. With his eyes closed. So he opened them.

The infusion of elemental energies had heightened and altered his other vision. Eyes open or closed, he saw color—wild, crashing color. His circle was a sheet of orange flame; the second circle was dull, inactive. And his feet… he looked down. The left one still ached a bit, but looked entirely normal, the parts properly situated.

Who knew swallowing the elements could accelerate healing? He'd figure out how later. Time to check out the others.

The gnome's power hugged him like a dun-colored blanket, as if hiding what lay beneath. Gan's magic was as in-your-face as she was—a shriek of orange punctuated by cerulean blue. A dozen shades of pink lapped over the tusked woman, glimmering into grape near the chakras. The clay-colored man's magic matched his skin—earthy, with ribbons of green and lavender.

Cullen checked the Edge party's charms and nodded. They glowed with faint, pastel lines, just as he'd expected.

Human magic was usually more translucent than that of those of the Blood, and more uniform in color. Power rose in a silvery fog from Ruben Brooks, sprinkled with sparks of black and violet. Rare colors, those. The silver was no surprise, of course, being the color usually associated with all types of clairvoyance, and Brooks was a strong precog. But the other colors…

Speculate later.

Cullen's eyebrows rose when he saw McClosky from Commerce. Magic hugged the man's ribs like wet moss, turgid and still—a Gift dammed up and denied.

Lily was the exception to the Technicolor display. Her magic looked much as it always did—like ice, colorless but reflecting hints of the colors around her. Beside her, Cynna sat with her long legs folded, the protection spell a fine net overlaying her own magic. Which danced. Like a lively sunrise, it sparkled in the pale palette of Air. Except…

Cullen stared. Over her stomach—her womb—a haze of lavender rested, cool and quiescent. He'd never seen magic coming from a developing fetus this early, but he'd never tried looking after in-blooding the elements. The energy was diffuse, the color pale, but it was separate. It didn't dance with her other colors.

Lavender, a soft purple. The color of those of the Blood.

"Cullen," Cynna said, "you breathing?"

No. He'd lost the balance. Flame licked at his fingers, roots twined up his calves, and his lungs sloshed with ocean, leaving him light-headed. Panic flickered at the edge of thought already dimming. He needed to move.

No. Air. Fire's first impulse was action, but it was breath he needed—to pull in air physically and locate the energy of Air inside him. It was there. He knew it was, however little he felt it. He dragged in a slow breath, belly-deep and ragged.

The next one came more smoothly as the sparkle of Air returned to his blood and Earth subsided back into bone and sinew. By the third breath Water had seeped back into his soft tissue, clearing his lungs. He continued to heed his breath, settling into the balance once more, and walked to the chalked circle and the glyph he'd been directed to use as entry.

Then Cullen reached for the ley line beneath his feet.

He couldn't see it. Too much earth lay between him and that wild current. He'd be working as blind as any other practitioner, reaching by guess and intention. But he felt it, oh, he did—keenly now, with the elements in him, a prickling beneath the skin and a drawing in his gut, power calling to power. His penis dipped like a dowsing rod.

He pointed his athame at the ground. "Venio!"

The word was a focus, a tool for his intention and will, which commanded the power to come. There were no real words of power—or rather, all words held power, but most practitioners preferred to use a language other than their everyday tongue. Still, it should be a language they knew. To match will with words, one must feel the words.

Cullen spoke to power in Latin, and power answered. Quickly.

It rolled up, up, through the earth faster than he'd expected. Faster than the thrice-damned gnome had warned him to expect, and stronger. The whole damned ley line answered his call.

No time to kill the little worm. No time even to hurry—if he lost the balance now, he'd die. So he spoke slowly, even softly, pronouncing each word with the fullest force of intention, quite as if his life depended on it:

"Res aqua repleo—

Res terra repano—

Res aero respiro—

Res ignus retorqueo.

Resero! Resero! Resero!"

[[[Res is the usual salutation for the elements; it means everything from matter, relation, or condition, to the world or the universe. Thus, Cullen addresses the condition of Water or universal Water, not a specific puddle. The rest of the verse translates roughly as "Water, fill this; Earth, lay up here; Air, here exhale; Fire, twist and alter this—unblock, unclose, begin!"]]]

With the final repetition, Cullen touched the blade of his knife to the glyph the gnome had directed him to use. And all hell rolled up and smashed through him.

He didn't channel the entire ley line. No corporeal being could. But the power roared past him—firestorm, earthquake, tornado, flood—following the bend of his body, the aim of his blade. There was no way, no possibility of balancing this much raw energy.

The backwash was a bitch.

His muscles spasmed. He couldn't stop them, couldn't keep his blade touching the entry glyph. Power spilled—into him, the spell, the room.

Cullen collapsed to the floor, sinews shrieking, body convulsing. Vision stopped. There was only blackness, pain, and the roaring in his bones. He screamed—maybe not out loud—and Fire answered. There, go there—! He found the entry glyph again and stabbed it with his blade, and the portion of the wild energy that was Fire fled down the knife into the spell.

Then Earth: Yes, go where you're told, yes. Repano, he told it, and the rest of the earth magic shouldered past him to sink into the glyphs. He called Water and it answered, a turquoise flood rushing into the spell.

But Air—fractious, rebellious Air—was beyond him. It rushed around the room, lifting shrieks from the others, tossing hair and clothes, dancing itself into a vortex. He gulped it down and his muscles spasmed again, but weakly. His heart spasmed, too, a hard, hot knot in his chest as his body tried to give up. Which he would not allow. He got an elbow under him, grunted, pushed up—

"Goddammit!" Cynna screamed, on her feet now, her hair whipping around in the interior gale as she pointed at the entry glyph. "Go! Do as you're told!"

Air swirled around her once, twice, knocking her back a step. And did as it was told.

The silence shocked Cullen. He hurt. His right knee was the worst, almost enough to drown out the other aches. Apparently he'd wrenched it while flopping around like an electrocuted fish. His muscles felt like jelly. Slowly he turned his head to look at the spell.

"Cullen?" Cynna was halfway across the circle.

He waved her back. "Hold on a minute."

The brilliant colors of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water whipped around the gnome's spell circle, the lines of power weaving around each other so quickly he couldn't find the pattern… yet it seemed familiar.

"Are we in danger?" Brooks asked, as if the question held only mild interest for him.

"No, no," said the gnome, standing. "Danger over."

"You deceived us," Marilyn Wright snapped. "You said the spell was safe."

"Should have been safe, but the Cullen Seabourne called up whole entire ley line. I not knowing how he is doing this. But spell is excellent—swallowed all magic very good." He spread his skinny little arms wide. "Danger over."

As the power zipped around, twining in and out of itself, the colors were blending. Blurring. Turning back into the piercing, near-solid intensity of node energy, which wasn't possible. Magic did not return to its raw state, but this was. "Something's wrong."

"Not wrong," the gnome said happily. "Is working well. Whole entire ley line is much power, very thank you. Kirelashidah!"

And the power shook itself and melted out from the spell, ribbons shooting out to lock with other ribbons in a pattern he suddenly recognized. "Son of a bitch!" Cullen shoved to his feet, staggering as his banged-up knee tried to buckle on him. "Get out, get out! It's a gate! It's a fucking gate!"

The gnome shouted something unintelligible. Cullen slashed at the nearest power ribbon with his athame, sundering it. The loose end whipped around like a fire hose jetting water, and the center of the floor vanished.

So did the altar. And Cynna, who'd been standing next to it.

Cullen howled, gathering himself to leap across the widening chasm and kill the gnome. The clay-colored man tackled him.

The guy was strong and agile enough to crack his fist against Cullen's jaw as they fell. It cleared his head wonderfully. Cullen, too, was strong and agile—and lupus, and very fast, though with a bum knee and jellied muscles. Not good for jumping ten feet or more.

He belted the guy in the head with the heel of his hand.

Cullen's hand damned near exploded, but he'd knocked his opponent dizzy. A shot rang out, then another, hugely loud in the enclosed space. He shoved the man off him in time to see tusk-woman toss Steve Timms into the churning brightness that used to be a floor.

The gate was still growing, and he was kitten-weak from his battle with the loose ley line magic. He couldn't handle the diamond's energy, not in this state. With a flick of his hand he extinguished the candles. His spell circle evaporated.

The room spun for a second as Cullen reabsorbed the magic—Fire energy, and his. His vision cleared in time for him to see the two Secret Service agents, who'd responded to the chaos by flinging open the door and drawing their weapons. "Get them out!" he shouted "Don't shoot! Just get everyone out of here!"

Tusk-woman dropped Brooks into the bright chasm, and one of the idiots fired anyway.

The lights went out.

In the darkness someone screamed. "Back up!" he called to those who couldn't, like him, see the shining disaster spreading toward them. "Get your backs to the wall! The gate should stop at the glyphs!"

Large, strong hands seized his shoulders. The scent told him whose hands. He snarled and drove his fist where her stomach ought to be, Connected.

It hurt like hell, since that was the hand he'd bashed against her partner's thick skull. She bloody ignored the blow. He didn't even get an oof out of her, and she was wounded, too. He smelled the blood and knew Steve must have hit her at least once with that gun of his before she tossed him into the hole in reality.

Didn't seem to inconvenience her. She shoved him, and oh, Lady, but this woman could have arm-wrestled a demon.

Good thing he'd latched onto her arms. His legs went out from under him, but he held on with all the strength he had, and together they stumbled to the edge of the boiling chasm. Her own strength saved him—she jerked back before they could fall in, dragging him with her.

Cullen tried to trip her. She slapped him, and while his ears were ringing, she pried loose one of his hands. He used the other one to jab at her eye. She grunted and lost her grip, so he dropped to the floor and rolled, colliding with a pair of legs.

He knew that scent, too. "Get back, dammit!" he yelled at Lily. He staggered to his feet and made sure she did as she was told for once, dragging her past the roiling lines that marked the boundary of the gnome's spell. He pushed her against the wall. "Stay!"

Having done all he could, he turned, took four running steps and dived into the screaming whiteness of the gate.