Shadow Rites

Along with Eli and Jodi, I raced for Big Evan. But the working hadn’t completely fallen and I caught the others, holding them back. “It’s not down yet,” I said. Eli jerked free and sped into the dark, for what, I didn’t know. I pulled Jodi away, and signaled to Derek to keep his men away, watching helplessly as Evan rolled in the grass, trying to put out the flames. Roaring with pain and anger.

I could enter the Gray Between and crawl through the falling energies, but at the thought, my belly wrenched with what I hoped was only phantom pain. I might die before I ever got to Evan. I ground my teeth against the fear and reached inside myself to touch my skinwalker magics, gathering them. Just in case.

Jodi pulled her radio and identified herself and her twenty, which was cop-speak for location, as she gave the Elms’ address. The witches in the working struggled to hold the degrading circle, trying to keep it from exploding or imploding or whatever was trying to happen.

Molly shouted her husband’s name, but didn’t move from her place as she and the other four witches gathered the energies of the circle and the incipient ward, as if pulling huge cables, coiling them on the ground, lowering the power into the earth, grounding the energy. From Evan, broken energies sparked and sizzled and flew into the air. Though he had to be in horrible pain, he was trying not to use his air magics to put out the fire, which would have been a snap. But not today, not in front of witnesses, and not against the green flames.

“—Medic!” Jodi demanded, and I realized she was still speaking into her official police radio, words fast and clipped. “We need an ambulance at the Elms on St. Charles and Eighth. Single burn victim. Paranormal injury, accidental or criminal, unknown. I want marked cars at Seventh, Eighth, and Harmony streets to keep the public back.”

Someone said, “Ten-four, Detective.” There was a click and to me Jodi said, “Did you see what happened?”

“Something went wrong with the circle, and then Evan jumped inside it, which is either the height of stupidity or something heroic,” I said, trying to figure out why Evan had thrown himself into the ward. He had to have seen something dangerous inside, but I couldn’t spot anything.

Evan was still rolling, and with Beast-vision, I could see gold energies cocooning his body as he drew on his personal protection magics, but the flames weren’t going out. Green flames. Green magic, attacking Evan. “The fire has weird green tints,” I said. “It isn’t an ordinary fire. It’s magic.” And it was attacking Evan.

“It’s a targeted spell,” Jodi added grimly, drawing the same conclusion.

I pulled my skinwalker energies out, a gray and silver cloud of my magic, the Gray Between, laced through with darker silver-gray motes of dancing power. I wasn’t planning on bubbling time, but already my guts twisted, a taste of blood in the back of my throat.

The ward fell. Molly dropped the powers she had been holding and raced toward her husband, her hands doing something, too fast to see. Eli sprinted in from the side carrying his medical gobag, a blanket, and a fire extinguisher. He tossed the bag and extinguisher to me and shook out the blanket on the run. He threw it on Big Evan and rolled the much larger man in it, applying his own body weight and slapping with his hands to smother the weird green flames. The purely mundane remedy was working. I let go of my own power, swallowed back the vile taste of blood, pulled the pin on the bright red extinguisher, raced forward, and aimed carbon dioxide at the burning grass, the white cloud suffocating the last of the fire. It took longer than it should have to kill the flames on the grass, and the stench of ozone mixed with iron and copious amounts of salt hung heavy on the air by the time the last flame died.

Molly and Eli were kneeling beside Evan. Lachish stood at his head and Bliss/Ailis at his feet, already working to dampen his pain and speed healing, which was Ailis’s special gift. I could see the brilliant energies, blues and purples, blending into a dark but vibrant working.

Big Evan sighed as the working descended and his pain began to ease. Tears and mucus glistened on his face. “I’m okay, Mol. Let me see.”

“No! Don’t look.”

He caught both of her hands in his one unburned, catcher-mitt-sized hand, and the blanket slid down. “You know I’m going to look,” he said with a pained version of his old smile. He did. The shreds of his clothes were charred; his left arm and both legs looked like raw meat; the red body hair and outer skin were gone, as if blisters had formed and burst, exposing cooked muscle and blackened, ropy veins. “Well, dang. I won’t look so pretty at the beach next summer, but at least I still have my limbs.” He let Molly go and touched his face, sounding mournful. “It burned off part of my beard.”

“Evan!” Molly was crying, but not tears of fear or worry. Molly was mad. Which was dangerous on all sorts of levels. Molly had death magics to control and hide, and being angry tended to bring them to the surface.

“I’m fine, sweetheart,” Evan said. “Breathe.”

“You breathe!”

Evan laughed, the sound pained and a little wild. “I am. That’s the important thing to remember. I’m still breathing.”

“Nothing a little vamp blood won’t heal,” Eli said. Four of the witches whipped their heads to him, clearly scandalized. “Not that your spells aren’t great and all, ladies, but I know this vampire? And he’ll be happy to heal. He even swore an oath to do anything necessary to help.” Eli gave me an evil grin. “Perfect time to test out that primo promise.”