Ritual Magic

FORTY-ONE

THERE was no sound of fighting at Isen’s house anymore.

It had taken too long to put her plan into action. Lily was horribly aware that it had all taken way too long, and besides, this was insane. What had made her think this would work? No doubt she stank of fear to the lupi around her.

The guard who’d stopped them was named Rick. Rick was over sixty and had one grown son, two lupus grandsons, and a young daughter. A rich man, as lupi counted wealth. “He just came marching up with her, sir,” Rick said to Pete. “Says he wanted to help Miriam.”

Surely this hadn’t been her idea. That damn half-dead god must’ve put it into her head. He must be laughing his head off right now. But she’d follow through anyway. She’d stand here stinking of fear with her arms pinned behind her back and follow through. Cory wasn’t holding her arms tightly enough to hurt, but she had no chance of getting free.

Pete had come from the back of the house when Rick called. The floodlights were on, so she had no trouble seeing him. He was cradling his right arm with his left and his face lacked all expression. Normally Pete had one of those mobile faces that shows everything, but tonight he was as stone-faced as Benedict. “Cory. Why aren’t you at the gate? What the hell are you up to?”

“Someone called and when we were chatting she said Lily had gone to the store,” Cory said earnestly. “I knew Miriam wanted to see her, and I wanted to help Miriam, so I checked and sure enough, Lily was there.”

“You and Gene were told to call me if Lily showed up.”

“Yes, sir, if she came to the gate, but she didn’t. She was at the store.”

Pete’s gaze flicked to Lily without meeting her eyes. “And she just came along with you?”

“Well . . . not exactly.” Cory did a good job of sounding abashed. “And I had to take her gun. I didn’t hurt her, though. I was careful. I mean, it’s Lily.”

Pete sighed. “Better give me her weapon.”

Cory shifted his grip on her arms so he could free one hand. He gave Pete her Glock. “I hope I did the right thing.”

A longish pause. “I expect you did what you were told to do.”

“Yes, sir.”

And that was true, as was everything else Cory had said. When Lily coached him, she’d emphasized that he had to tell the truth. If Miriam were to ask him about his story directly, he’d have no choice but to answer, so they’d come up with a story that was, word by word, true . . . just not all of the truth.

Someone had called him to say Lily was at the general store. She had, when she arranged to meet him there. Cory had taken Lily’s weapon without hurting her—easy enough to do, since she’d given it to him. He did know that Miriam wanted Lily. And he wanted to—had to—help Miriam.

But what would really help a woman who’d been taken over by a god willing to destroy an entire realm in order to be fully alive again? That was what she’d asked Cory to think about. She’d let him work through it himself, come up with his own answer. He had to believe it or this wouldn’t work. He couldn’t not help Miriam, Lily had said to him, but, she added, “That dead god has taken away her free will, so she wants what her god wants. Should you help her get what she wants? Or would something else help her more?”

Cory had thought it over for a painfully long time, but once he decided, he’d spoken with real certainty: “She needs to be free of him. That may not be what she wants, but it’s what she needs. I want to help her get free.”

Now Cory held Lily firmly. Everyone had to see that she was restrained, not a danger. But when the time came . . .

“Lily.” For the first time, Pete looked directly at her. His face was stony. His eyes were anguished. “We’re all doing what we’re told.”

“I know.” She nodded, trying to tell him it was all right. This was all part of her plan—her insane plan that couldn’t possibly work, but somehow it hadn’t blown up in her face yet. “What happened to your arm?”

“Rule broke it. It would have been better if he’d—” Pete stopped and stood rigidly still, frozen by whatever internal cataclysm he wasn’t allowing—or couldn’t allow—to erupt in words. Abruptly he turned away. “Better bring her around back. I have to see what Miriam wants me to do with her.”

Cory marched Lily behind Pete, who led the way to the side of the house. They passed three more guards on the way. Two of them had been injured . . . or maybe the blood on that second man’s arm wasn’t his. But whoever had bled tonight—whoever had died—they were hers. Leidolf or Nokolai, compelled or free, they were hers to protect if she could, and to grieve if she couldn’t. But not now. She refused to count her dead until this was over, one way or another.

One she knew for certain had survived the fight. She knew where he was, too, as clearly as she knew her right hand from her left. Pete was taking her to him now, taking her behind the house . . . where Rule was, according to the mate-sense. Right by the node.

They rounded the corner of the house. The path they were on was higher than the lower deck; four stone steps led down to it. She could only see this end of the deck; the roof blocked her view of the rest. The upper deck was roughly level with her waist, supported along its length by a stone retaining wall. Floodlights lit it.

Lily glanced quickly at the upper deck, so brilliantly lit—and horror iced the blood in her veins, freezing her in place. It held bodies. Rows of bodies. Maybe twenty. Maybe more. A second later relief punched through the ice, leaving her dizzy. Some of them, at least, were alive. She saw makeshift bandages wrapped around chests, arms, legs. Four lupi moved among the injured—one with water, one with food, and a pair who seemed to be performing some kind of crude surgery on one motionless body.

She knew two of the men tending the wounded fairly well. One was Sean, a cheerful redheaded Nokolai who actually was as young as he looked. One was Mike. One of Rule’s Leidolf guards. Mike, who’d remembered a lot about crazy gods when she asked . . . a blood-soaked cloth was tied around his thigh. His head was bare. The garish green-and-orange knitted cap from Walmart was gone.

Pete stopped at the bottom of the stairs, looked at them over his shoulder, and made a come-along gesture, followed by the Nokolai hand sign for quiet.

No one was speaking, she realized as she obeyed Cory’s nudge at her back and started down the steps. No one made a sound. Even stoic lupi moaned in pain when hurt badly enough, but all of the wounded were silent, as were the men tending them. So were the four guards on the lower deck who moved aside to let Pete pass.

Under the roof were more shadows. For some reason Miriam hadn’t turned on the lower floods, just the small porch light. It was enough to see by. The French doors stood open as they so often did in the evening. On the other side of them, the decking was gone. The boards had been pried up, the support beams cut and removed, leaving a large swath of bare ground. Miriam crouched there in the dirt, shaking something from her palm onto the ground.

But Lily didn’t pay attention to Miriam. Her eyes went to the other side of the hole in the deck. That was where Rule lay, his eyes closed. And Isen beside him.

Both men were naked. Carl sat between them with a hand on each man’s chest. Rule’s head was bloody. His arm was, too. Lily couldn’t tell how badly he was hurt. She could barely see Isen, with Carl in the way, but he was as motionless as his son. Not as bloody, though.

Were they unconscious? Spelled?

Her breath was coming fast and jerky. She tried to steady it. Rule was alive. That was what counted. She’d guessed he was a prisoner when she knew where he was, so seeing him there—so still!—shouldn’t be such a shock. He was alive, and if he’d been hurt, he’d heal. If he’d been spelled . . . that was it. That was why Carl sat there with a hand on each man’s chest. He must be holding sleep charms to their bare skin.

If they needed a sleep charm to keep Rule knocked out, then he wasn’t wounded too badly. Lily’s breathing finally evened out.

Pete made the “halt” sign at her and Cory. Cory stopped, so Lily had to. Pete walked to the edge of the hole in the deck and stood there, saying nothing. Everyone must have been told to be quiet while Miriam did her thing.

Lily tore her gaze away from Rule to study the woman who held him prisoner. Whatever Miriam held in her hand was white and powdery. She was shaking it onto the ground to mark a large circle that seemed almost complete. Her hair was loose, a frizzy brown cloud hiding her downturned face. There were other marks on the ground inside the circle, though Lily couldn’t make them out. They’d been drawn in black and didn’t show up well. Lily also saw two objects familiar to her from all the times she’d worked with the coven leader: a small portable altar and a quilted tote. The tote held Miriam’s spellcasting supplies.

It was large enough to hold metal stakes, too.

“There.” Miriam stood, placing one hand at the small of her back and stretching. She wore something white, long, and loose that left her arms bare. Lily had seen the robelike gown before, and the woven belt Miriam wore at her waist, but the scabbard was new. Lily couldn’t see it clearly from this angle, but that was definitely a scabbard fastened to the belt. It must hold the knife. Nam Anthessa.

Miriam heaved a sigh. “Almost done. For goodness’ sake, Pete, what is it this time? No, unless it’s urgent, wait a moment to tell me. I need the dedicates brought into the circle.” She looked around, frowning vaguely. Her gaze passed right over Lily. “Oh, you figure out how to do it. Isen and Rule need to be laid in the very center of the circle with their heads north, feet south. Arrange it. Tell your men to be sure the sleep charms stay in contact, skin to skin, the way I explained. They must be very careful not to step on the circle itself. They can’t damage the runes, but they must stay off the circle. Oh—they should be barefoot.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Pete called four names and began giving instructions.

Miriam stepped up onto the deck and dusted her hands together—and seemed to notice Lily for the first time. “You! Oh, this won’t do. This won’t do at all. You don’t want to see this. Pete! What is Lily doing here?”

Pete finished giving his orders. The four men he’d addressed bent and took off their shoes. “Cory found her. He says he knew you wanted to see her, and he wanted to help, so he brought her to you.”

“I don’t want to see her,” she said crossly. “I wanted to know where she was. I wanted her stopped and held, but I did not want to see her.”

“Oh,” Cory said sadly. “I’m sorry. I thought . . . you asked where she was, and then Pete wanted us to let him know if she came to the gate, and I thought . . . I’m sorry. I thought I was helping.”

“You . . . oh. I did say that, didn’t I? He meant well, but what do I do with her?” Miriam tipped her head as if listening. “Yes, of course. Cory, why didn’t you call Pete like you’d been told?”

“She wasn’t at the gate. She was at the store. Someone told me she was there, and when I went to see, I found her and brought her here. I took her gun,” he added, hopeful as a puppy trying to wag his way past some misunderstanding about the puddle on the floor. “Pete’s got it.”

Miriam looked at Pete. “And you couldn’t just lock her up or something? You had to ask me?” She huffed an impatient breath. “I would have thought someone in your position would have more initiative. Well, you can just take her to—”

Lily could not let Miriam finish giving that order. “I want to stay with Rule.”

“That is not a good idea.” But at last Miriam looked at Lily directly. Their eyes met. Miriam’s were . . . odd. Too bright, too wide. A junkie’s eyes just before the crash. “I’m not at all happy with Rule right now, but you weren’t part of it. You don’t deserve to watch this.”

“Part of what?”

“He attacked his own people! Shot them! It was horrible. I wanted—I was trying so hard—and of course I needed him to come here, but not like that! Now all those people are hurt. Some of them died. I didn’t want people to die, but he made everything so difficult.”

“You don’t think he had reason to fight?” Lily said mildly. “Considering you intend to sacrifice his father and all. Him, too, it looks like. Hammer stakes through their hands and—”

Miriam flared up. “You should know me better than that! I am not like that man. That Robert Friar. There will be no torture, no . . .” Her mood switched as suddenly as if someone had flipped a switch. She giggled. “True. But I’m glad I don’t have to.”

“What don’t you have to do, Miriam?”

Miriam spoke slowly, as if to a rather dim child. “Use those nasty stakes. Friar needed them to bind my lord to his goals, which is why we’re here.” She waved widely. “It’s all Robert Friar’s fault. If he hadn’t bound Dafydd that way, I could have killed strangers instead of . . . I’m really very sorry about the clan, but we have no choice. The stakes, however, are obscene. I would never bind my beautiful Dafydd.”

She needed to keep the woman talking. “Tell me about Dafydd.”

Miriam’s face lit. “You’ll see,” she said eagerly. “Very soon now, you’ll see. He’s so beautiful, so much more than anyone or anything else. And he’s been so alone, so terribly lonely. He found me in my dreams. Or I found him. He . . .”

Miriam liked talking about the god she called Dafydd. Lily listened with half an ear as she babbled on about how wonderful he was. Was it time?

Pete was close, which wasn’t good, but he was watching his men. A pair of them carried Rule into the circle while another man held the charm to Isen’s chest. The fourth man waited beside Isen; Carl still had charm duty there. They were the only ones other than Pete who were close enough to be a problem. Miriam stood right in front of the French doors, about ten feet away—farther than Lily liked, but this might be the only chance she got. If she didn’t try to jump Miriam, but instead—

Around the side of the house, a husky baritone voice started singing: “‘We shall overcome . . .’” A second later, his voice was joined by others—a child’s high voice, and Cynna’s? Could that be Cynna singing? And a voice Lily knew intimately. Her mother’s soprano came in strongly.

Miriam jolted as if someone had shot her. “What’s that?” she cried. “What’s that singing?”

“I’ll find out.” And Pete set off at a lope.

Pete was gone, Miriam distracted. This was her chance. She’d arranged two signals with Cory for when it was time for him to release her—one spoken, one nonverbal. But she didn’t just want him to release her. She wanted him to throw her at Miriam. “Cory—”

Drummond popped into sight in front of her, more see-through than usual. And frantic. He was waving his arms, shaking his head, saying with every motion Stop! Danger! Don’t move! His mouth moved, too, but Lily couldn’t hear a thing.

Why? she wanted to scream. Every muscle was tight with the need to move, to act—but Drummond knew things she didn’t. He’d helped more than once, and he kept being right. She panted with conflicting needs and made herself stand there, just stand there, even as her mind screamed that this was nuts. She was losing her best chance.

Drummond faded out with his arms still waving.

Lily tried to look behind her, but Cory was in the way. He shifted and she could see the steps up to the path. She heard Pete’s voice faintly, and someone responding to him, and the singers continued to come closer. She waited, her body taut, wanting to act, to do—and then it was too late. Pete leaped down the four steps to the deck and ran up to Miriam to report.

“It’s Cynna, Toby, Lily’s mother, Li Qin, and that homeless guy who was staying with Isen,” he said. “They approached the house. When Dave and Mitchell stopped them, they said they wanted to see you. Orders are to bring anyone suspicious to me, and they thought it was suspicious for them to ask to see you. How did they even know you were here? They’ve been searched. No weapons.”

“What homeless man? Who’s Li Qin?” Miriam was baffled, tense, distressed. “No, never mind. Why are they singing?”

“I don’t know.”

“They need to stop. I can’t hear him. I can’t hear my lord. They’re singing too loudly.”

They weren’t that loud. Not loud enough to drown out a voice you heard with your ears, but maybe . . . maybe the singing was happening someplace else, too. A place that Drummond was aware of and Lily wasn’t. A place that a saint might know about.

Without thinking, she started humming along. A moment later Cory started humming, too. And others. All around them, lupi joined in, humming the old civil rights anthem: We shall overcome . . . we shall overcome someday . . .

And Miriam did nothing. Her face was as pale as the white powder she’d used to lay her circle and she swayed as if tranced or about to faint. But her lips were moving. She made no sound, but her lips moved: Deep in my heart, I do believe . . .

The singers came down the steps to the deck as calmly as if they’d been in a processional at church. Hardy held Toby’s hand; behind them Cynna and Julia walked hand in hand, too. Li Qin brought up the rear—and behind her were two guards, their guns trained on their odd assortment of prisoners . . .

. . . who didn’t seem to notice the guards, the guns, or the peculiar tableau they approached. Toby looked like he was concentrating the way he did when he played soccer or computer games. Cynna wore a small smile, grim and defiant. Julia seemed caught up in the song, and Li Qin might have been pouring tea, she was so matter-of-fact. And Hardy . . . Hardy looked utterly at peace.

“Stop,” Miriam told them. Her voice shook. “Stop now, all of you.”

The guards stopped. The singers didn’t.

“I forgot,” Miriam whispered. “Of course, I forgot to . . .” She fumbled at the scabbard and pulled out one wicked big knife—bigger than Benedict’s hunting knife, smaller than his machete. Maybe eighteen inches. And black. Whatever it was made of, it was all one piece from hilt to tip, and a dull, solid black. “Stop!”

They didn’t. And Lily knew why. As the singers had drawn closer she’d seen the silver charms they wore—charms the previous Rhej had created based on ancient spellwork from the Great War, workings no one alive today knew except those able to reach into clan memories. Charms that Nokolai clansmen had worn the previous year when they went to war against the Chimea.

Charms against the most potent of mind magic.

Her heart leaped in her chest. Of course! Why had none of them thought of that? Lily herself, Rule, Cullen—they all knew about the charms. It was blindingly obvious now, but she hadn’t once thought about them . . . Persuasion? Could that be used not just to plant ideas, but to keep you from thinking clearly, seeing the obvious? If so, nothing she’d done tonight was likely to work.

But it didn’t have to. The saint was winning this battle.

Lily and Cory stood near the house. There was plenty of room for the singers to pass them, and at first it seemed they would. But as Hardy and Toby drew even with her, Hardy stopped and made a patting gesture with one hand. Without a break in their song, the others moved to form a semicircle slightly behind Lily and Cory, facing Miriam. They kept singing . . . and Hardy kept walking.

Alone, he walked up to Miriam, who turned so she could keep her eyes fixed on him—eyes wide and wild, but now their brightness looked like tears, not mania. She shook as if she might fall over.

Hardy stopped in front of her. “What have I done?” she whispered. “What have I done?”

He held out his hand. He’d stopped singing. Lily wasn’t sure when, but it didn’t matter. His face was so full of compassion and love—it radiated from him like heat from a fire. He held out his hand and Miriam looked at the knife she held in hers. And shuddered.

A shredded and sorrowful calm descended on Miriam. Her face relaxed into it. She stopped shaking and stretched out the hand holding the knife, hilt first—then cried out in an anguished voice, “No!” Fast—too fast for Lily to react—she gripped that wicked big knife with both hands. And plunged it into her own chest.

Hardy cried out wordlessly. Miriam collapsed.

Lily gave the nonverbal signal. She stomped on Cory’s foot.

He let her go and she dashed forward, but Hardy—who’d fallen to his knees beside Miriam—held up a hand urgently, saying without words to stay back. Lily stopped. “I’m not going to touch it. The knife. I want to help her.”

Hardy shook his head sadly. He stroked Miriam’s face, crooning softly. Her eyes were open and staring. The knife must have gone straight to her heart. Lily wouldn’t have thought Miriam knew how to deliver such a tidy death stroke. But it hadn’t been her who did it, had it? That triple-damned god had directed her hands. She’d been about to get free of him, and it had pissed him off.

Hardy brushed her eyelids with his palm, closing her eyes, singing to her softly.

“Stop!” someone behind her called. One of the guards. “Cynna, don’t move, for God’s sake. I don’t want to shoot you. Pete, what do I do? She said to obey you, and you said—”

“Put your weapons up.” Pete’s voice was low and hoarse. “Lily, I can’t move. I still have to . . . she’s dead, but the last order she gave was for all of us to stop. Her other orders, too—they didn’t go away when she died.”

Shit. Miriam was dead, but the knife wasn’t. “Can you tell them to take the sleep charms off?”

“No.” He sounded agonized. “The others . . . she didn’t give them specific orders, except to obey me. She made her orders to me more explicit. I can’t give orders that counter hers.”

The knife was still enforcing Miriam’s orders, but was that all it would do? It was alive, in a sense. Able to act on its own. Any second now it might tell one of them to slit Rule’s throat.

Hardy had turned to listen to them. Now he cocked his head, then nodded. He turned back to the body that had been a woman moments before and gripped that black hilt. He grimaced as if in pain.

“Oh, shit. Are you sure you should . . .” But he was the saint. Lily had to hope he was getting instructions from someone who knew a lot more than she did. Maybe taking the knife out would cancel Miriam’s orders. Maybe if a holy person held it, it wouldn’t be able to compel people.

Hardy placed one hand on Miriam’s chest and pulled the knife out. It came free slowly, glistening with Miriam’s blood. He looked at it with the expression of someone holding a fistful of stinking, oozing shit.

A gun went off inside the house. Hardy’s eyes went wide in astonishment. His hand opened and the knife clattered onto the deck as a red stain spread across his chest. He toppled over.