Shadow Rites

The shot and the explosion seemed to happen simultaneously. A frisson of magic spiked the air and shivered across me. I was expecting it this time and I was holding my left hand open. An eye appeared there for a moment, green lid closed, green lashes resting along the skin over the metatarsal of my little finger. And then it faded. I was still marked. Now I had to worry about Evan. And Lachish.

There were emergency vehicles gathering, blue and red lights creating a stained glass effect on the nearby buildings. A fire truck pulled to the curb, brakes hissing. Voices called; people raced here and there. I hoped that the paramedics standing at the ambulances had sufficient skills to work with witches. Not all the city’s EMTs had taken the specialized training.

Nunez and I accepted Eli’s weapons, and before we could raise hands to help, he found a good handhold, slid off the top, flipped over and through his arms and into a swing, dropping free and landing in a crouch.

“Showoff,” I muttered.

He gave me a self-satisfied grin and brushed his hands together. Eli seldom deliberately displayed his skills and combat readiness, but he was having fun, his body odor heavy on victory pheromones, which were musky and acrid, but he didn’t swagger. Uncle Sam’s best didn’t need to swagger.

He had to climb a tree to get a firing angle on the next focal item. Once he was settled into a firing stance, I moved to Evan and took both of his hands as Eli counted down.

“Three. Two. One.”

The explosion was intense, stronger than the others, as if they got worse as more and more of them went offline. I ducked but kept my eyes open, watching Evan’s palms. Green eyes appeared in both palms, for half a heartbeat. The lids were partially open.

I didn’t know what it meant that both palms were marked. It could be that he was under the power of the two witches. Or was a target they were intent upon attacking. Or that they had spelled him already, as they had me. There wasn’t a single good reason I could come up with for Evan to have witchy eyes in his palms.

Molly had said I was free of latent magics, but my palm had displayed green eyes. I had to think the eyes were linked to me, through the first scanning spell. But how could the witches turn it off and on? Good question. Were we all a danger to the conclave? Better question. Should we stay away? Best question. And the answer was no. Together, we could defeat anything a spell could throw at us. Yeah. That.

Keeping my worries and conclusions to myself, I went to help Eli down from a perch much higher than the gazebo. He stretched down and gave Nunez the pistol, then motioned us two feet apart and dropped down. He landed, taking the fall on bent legs, a hand on Nunez’s shoulder and one on mine. I stumbled, not expecting him to drop that way, and bit my cheek. Just a nick, which I ignored. I didn’t even flinch. How could I in the presence of so much testosterone?

When my partner was in place for the third shot, I dropped to the ground by Lachish, who was struggling to resist Ailis’s healing magic, struggling to break free of the painkilling sleep. I took both of her hands, turned them so I could see the palms, careful not to jar the broken arm, and whispered, “It’s okay. It’s a healing working. You broke your arm and leg. You’re in pain. Let Ailis help you until I can get an ambulance.” Oddly Lachish stopped struggling and relaxed.

“Thank you,” Ailis said, her shoulders dropping.

“This explosion may be worse that the last one,” I warned. “Can you cover us all in a ward?”

“On one!” Eli called out.

Ailis cursed with great force and even more imagination about donkeys and male body parts. I stuttered in laughter as a ward opened over us.

“Three.”

I opened Lachish’s fingers so I could see her palms.

“Two. One.” The explosion was shocking, and I felt a concussive blast knock into the ward at the same moment that two green eyes appeared in Lachish’s palms. Staring at me. The ward Ailis had raised shivered and shook, the energies blasting up in a shower of purple sparks. The eyes seemed to look around me and I closed the palms, fast.

The tree branch where Eli was stretched out in a shooter’s stance fell with a crack. My partner rolled backward along the limb, tucked, pushed off with one foot, and rolled to the side. Another branch broke. Both limbs hit the ground. He leaped and landed, rolled again to his feet, the target pistol nowhere in sight, and a small subgun I hadn’t even noticed on him, held at firing position. Above me, Ailis’s palms were marked with staring green eyes. She squeaked and the protective ward spluttered and fell.

I motioned to Eli to hold his open palms out. There was a faint gleam of green in both. His eyes held mine in the darkness as I heard what might have been laughter in the air. It wasn’t his. And while it wasn’t mad, maniacal laughter, like something from a serial killer TV show, it wasn’t ordinary giggles from girls’ night out either. It left a bad taste in my ears. So to speak. I opened Lachish’s palms, and the eyes were gone. I smelled a hint of iron and salt and I knew that the witches responsible for this working had been watching, though from nearby or with the witch equivalent of a crystal ball, I didn’t know.

Molly shouted, “The wards are all down! The offensive working is no longer active.”

The paramedics trotted over, one with an oversized orange supply kit. They started to Evan first, but a man appeared in front of them with a small pop of sound and said, “See to the lady first, if you please.” I felt the power of vampiric compulsion flow through the damaged yard. “I’ll see to the gentleman. I’m a doctor,” he added, sounding and looking perfectly human, probably to keep the human paramedics relaxed and calm.