Shadow Rites

It hurt like heck, but I got my head to turn on my neck and focused on Gee DiMercy. The small man was sitting on the chair farthest away from me. He was no longer bloodied and beaten. No bruises. No cuts or abrasions. The Anzu could heal others of most were-bites, if he got to them in time and was given enough time to work his magic, but he couldn’t heal himself. Someone had fed him vamp blood to heal.

“You look better,” I said.

His eyes flashed to my left hand and away. I still hadn’t looked at it.

I said, “When we first met, you tagged me with a magic something-something. And I took it for my own somehow. Tell me about that spell.”

“It wasn’t a spell,” Gee said. “It was part of the goddess’s power, the remnants of her curse that touches all weres and the remnants of her personal power, the energies that generated all skinwalker archetypes and all shape-shifters. That you made my magics your own said only that you were of her get. That she was responsible for your being. It made you easy to track, to follow, and to offer assistance had you needed it.”

“The one you call a goddess. Artemis. Was she, like, an angel?” I had a feeling that she had been an arcenciel, but I had never gotten evidence to back up my hunch.

“No. Angels are all male, in every scripture and history. No females existed. Ever. Despite the pretty sculptures in graveyards and paintings that Christians hang on their walls.”

Which I knew. I wanted to ask how angels procreated with only one gender, but that wasn’t germane to this discussion. “So she was, what? And this time, don’t blow me off, Gee. I need the answer.”

The slight man shrugged. “She belonged to the tribe that eventually became the Greeks. She was a prototype to modern-day witches but with the ability to charm and control any animal on Earth and in the sea. She was a legend who was elevated to the status of goddess by the worship of foolish humans around her. She was grace and beauty and power and wisdom.”

I said, “Was. She. Arcenciel?” I enunciated.

“I do not know, Enforcer.”

My title, being used to call attention to his purpose. I asked, “How did something get hold of your magic and make you attack me? Who has that kind of power?”

He looked at me from the corner of his eyes. “There are few who might wield such might. Perhaps you, skinwalker?”

This was getting me nowhere. I felt like I was dancing around the rim of a fire pit, almost on the edge of being scorched, almost on the edge of nothing at all. And the pain in my hand was growing steadily worse. I could smell my blood on the air. Eli knelt beside me and placed a linen tea napkin below my hand to absorb my blood. “You told me once to ask one of the Old Ones what it meant to be goddess-born. What is an Old One?”

“One of my kind would do. One of the old arcenciels would do. You might ask Thales, Arcesilaus, Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle. Even Hegesinus of Pergamon might know.”

Recognizing some of the names, I said, “They’re all dead.”

“True. The oldest of the weres might know. Alas, I do not. I am only a few thousand years in age, not as ancient as the maker of were-kind. But the witches of old were different from the witches of this day. They were the first of the magic users, and they”—his head tilted from side to side as he searched for a word—“are our forbearers. The term goddess came from them, the women of power.”

I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the sofa. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fine. I accept that your magic is something more intrinsic and less ritual-based than modern-day witch gifts.” I opened my eyes, focused on Gee, and said, “Tell me about the spell of watching that you put on my palms and in my soul home when you healed me of the were-taint.”

Gee sat bolt upright and I caught a hint of blue flaring light, like an aura, the action of his magics, the layers of glamours that hid what he was to the world.

“Tell me about the blue eyes and handprints that claimed me as your own. Molly Everhart Trueblood said I stole your watching magics. Then I burned them off and out of my soul home. And then I used the last eye I had scraped of the walls to track you down.”

Gee stared at me, his face unreadable. A waiting silence stretched between us before he said, “You should not have been able to find me through my own magics. You should not have been able to burn them away. No one should. No one but Artemis.”

I gestured with my right hand to Eli and the small carved wooden box on the table near him. “The person who used the magic on the brooches used a form of the watching magics to spy on me, to read me. I think they got to me so easily though the remnants of your original spell. I think that because they used the same seeing eye on my palm, but greenish, not your woad blue. We’re going to open the box, and you are going to tell me what you can about the energies on the brooches, and how their magic worked on your spell.”

“Should we take the box elsewhere to open it again?” Bruiser asked.

“No,” I said. “He should see what happens if it happens again. He can maybe tell us something about it.”

Slowly, as if he was defusing a bomb, Eli opened the box. The stink of iron, salt, and burned-hair magic filled the air, nose curling even to Eli. The energies of two brooches were far more than simply the sum of their magic. It felt like the magic squared. I wanted to take them home and have Molly and Evan inspect them. But for now I watched as Gee DiMercy sniffed the brooches, then extended a hand over them, as if feeling for radiant heat. Finally he picked one up and hefted it, as if checking the weight, held it to the light overhead. Then he placed it back in the box. “It is unlike my magics. It is purely witch magic, but a working that draws from many doctrines and follows more than one set of principles. It is my feeling that it was constructed specifically for you, not me, Enforcer, and that you are correct in saying that it passed to me through the old healing I performed when we first met. Its purpose is to read and understand. To control. To pacify. And to enslave.”