Shadow Rites: A Jane Yellowrock Novel (25 page)

“Being watched over by a teenager playing World of Killer-Death-Something, and a
werewolf
.” She sounded wry, as if her life had taken off on an inexplicable tangent and nothing made sense anymore.

“Can you find any other icons that might be on the grounds?” I asked, not adding,
Like Evan did.

“Yes, I think so.” To Lachish, she said, “I think he’ll sleep now. The ambulance is here. We should clear a path from the street to Evan first, and get him to the hospital, where the vampire can help heal him.”

“I wouldn’t let a fanghead touch my—” Lachish stopped. “Never mind. Things change. Maybe the suckheads have changed too.” More reluctantly she added, “And if it was my husband there, hurt, I’d strip naked and slow-dance with a vamp for the chance to get him help. You’re right.
We need Evan in a safer place so we can tackle the whole yard.”

“Good enough,” Molly said, tension leaking away, making her shoulders droop. “And by the way, you and Jane need to go over the list of witches who were at the cemetery when Jane was struck by lightning, and add a few last names. She has a right to personal protection. She has a right to see which witches might be responsible for the attack on her.”

“None of my coven would be involved,” Lachish said, her chin up and shoulders hunched in what looked like a pugilistic stance.

“You’re probably right,” Molly said, her tone composed and serene, “but it’s smart to consider everything. No stone unturned, you know?” she said.

Lachish didn’t like it, but she gave me a curt nod. She gave Molly a small
come this way
gesture with her fingers and said over her shoulder, “We can start at the ambulance and work our way to Evan. Then once he’s in the ambulance, we can clear the yard, beginning at the area where your husband entered the circle. We need to find out what attacked him and how he was able to enter without breaking the energies. The circle should have stopped him.”

Molly’s expression didn’t change, but her scent went to panic, fast. Lachish didn’t know that Big Evan was a male witch—whose magics had never been studied—and this wasn’t the time to explain it all.

Speaking loud, I said, “It could be part of the focals’ working. First disrupt a working and its ward, and then allow people in to attack. All you have to do is figure out how to defend against both parts. Or it might be because he was in the backlash of the same kind of magics today.”

Molly blinked and said, “Exactly,” maybe a little too emphatically, but Lachish was already on the far side of the patio, bending over a place in the grass, a spot of browned grass similar to the ones at my house.

Lachish said, “There’s something here—”

“Don’t touch it!” I shouted.

The explosion threw the witch across the grass, toward the ambulance. Dirt and grass and two tree branches blew
outward. Beast shoved me into action and I threw myself over Molly to protect her. Eli hit the earth. So did two of the uniformed cops. Jodi and all the other officers drew their service weapons. One raced to unlock bigger firepower and came out with a city-issued automatic rifle.

“Get off me, you big oaf,” Molly said, pushing at me. “I’m suffocating here.”

I rolled to the side and got to my feet, pulling her with me and running my hands over her and her baby bump, leaning in and breathing her scent deep. Molly wasn’t fine, but she wasn’t bleeding or leaking amniotic fluid from the concussive release of magic. Lachish, however, wasn’t moving. “Lachish is hurt,” I said. “Stay with Evan and keep his healing wards up. Don’t wander.” I spotted Bliss—
Ailis
—standing in the shadow of the back door, with a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide. The elegant hostess, Amalie, stood beside her, face pale and drawn. “Ailis,” I said.

“The explosion shut off my cell phone,” she said. “I don’t know how to summon yet, so I was going to call in some more of the circle to help, but the phone is fried.”

“I know. I need you over there.” I pointed at Lachish, whose blood I smelled on the air. I walked slowly across the lawn toward Lachish, my eyes on the ground. But it was getting darker and even pulling on Beast-vision I couldn’t see well enough to step safely. “Watch the ground for any indication of dead grass or magics.”

She came, feet uncertain, eyes wide, watching the ground, and followed in my footsteps to Lachish. The coven leader was bleeding from the mouth, her left arm looked as if it had an extra elbow above the wrist, and her lower left leg was deformed. Both leg bones were broken, not quite compound fractures, but close. But she was breathing and her heart was beating. “Don’t touch her until the paramedics can get here. Set a healing circle,” I said, “and”—I looked around—“where are the two aka witches?” I asked, meaning Butterfly Lily and Feather Storm.

“They took off the moment the circle was down.”

“Guilty or afraid?”

“Terrified,” Ailis said. “I have the healing circle up. I can hold it for a while alone, but I’m not used to using my
gifts, so . . .” She opened her lips to drag in a deeper breath, and finished, “So I can’t promise anything.”

“You didn’t run,” I said. “You could have. I’m proud of you.” Ailis sent me a smile that suggested I shouldn’t be proud just yet because she might still run, but she returned her attention to Lachish.

Carefully I walked to the side street. “Eli,” I said as I neared, speaking softly, “the magic may have been intended to interfere with communications too.”

“You think we set off a prepared working early. As in, this was probably supposed to happen after all the witches were gathered in one place. Which would mean the witches who set it weren’t on the inside of the plans.”

“I think so. Maybe. But multipurpose spells are difficult to craft, harder to power, and tricky to activate and deploy.” I lowered my voice even more. “I have no idea what the double exposure to the green energies will have on Evan, or have on the spells here, for that matter. But we need to get Lachish and Evan to Tulane.”

“Suggestions?”

“I find the icons, and you shoot them?”

“Anything with explosions—where people don’t get hurt—is fun. I’m in. I’ll tell Jodi, and she can tell the cops what we’re doing so they don’t shoot us.”

“Good idea. I always like not being shot at.”

“But the adrenaline rush is such a high.”

“It’s too dark to see, but I’m rolling my eyes.”

“Love you too, babe. I have a .22 target pistol in the SUV. I’ll be right back.”

It didn’t take Eli long to talk to Jodi and get his pistol, and bring the cop she insisted go with him up-to-date. The officer was a recently discharged boots-on-the-ground soldier, and the two army boys bonded immediately over weapons and blast radii and other weapons-porn, and discussed what they needed to take cover behind to be protected. I let them talk and make decisions and move the other cops back and generally handle all the details while I studied the grounds with Beast-vision.

The night grew deeper and artificial lights came on from all around, throwing long grayed shadows and shorter
black shadows, which interfered with my Beast-vision and made it harder to find the pale greenish energies I was hunting for, buried beneath the grass or in flower beds. I found three probable sites of unexploded focal icons in the backyard, one to the very back of the property, and the other two out to the sides of that one, positioned halfway between it and the exploded ones. There were probably more in the front yard, and since magic was mathematics and geometry, there would be a specific number and placement of them, oriented along specific lines and compass points. We had blown two, with injuries, at east and west, near the house. With three more in the back, that was five, and covered a shape that might be a triangle, which would intersect with similar shapes in the front yard. However, the front and side yards were minuscule as compared to the back. The mathematics were going to be either magnificent and complicated or overly simplistic and imbued with raw power. I was going with curtain number two, but none of the witches were available to help me with my speculations.

“Jane, we’re ready,” Eli said.

“Okay. Here’s how it will work. I’m going to walk up close to a location that looks likely to hold a focal item, point at it, and then I’m going to back away and you are going to shoot it. There may be an explosion or there may be nothing. If it explodes we’ll know we were successful. If it doesn’t we won’t know diddly-squat and we’ll have to figure out something else.”

“How come you can see the magic stuff?” Eli’s new partner asked.

“She’s Supergirl. She has X-ray vision,” Eli said.

“Rolling eyes again,” I said, checking out the cop’s name badge, which was P. Nunez. In any other part of the country, that would be a Latino name. In this part of the world, it was just as likely to be Cajun. “How close do you need to be to hit a target about four inches across?” I asked.

Eli said, “Distance on this property won’t be a problem, but the angle of shot might be, if the target is buried. If you can tell me how deep, I can make adjustments by climbing trees or on top of the gazebo.”

“Okay. Gazebo first.” I pointed to a place behind the ornate columned gazebo. “Maybe four inches deep. The apex focal is there. Nunez, we can boost him up.”

The cop’s eyebrows went up and Eli said, “She’s stronger than she looks. Supergirl, remember?” At the base of the gazebo, the guys put weapons on the patio tiles and I took off my jacket, laying it near the firepower. Nunez made a cup of his joined hands, boosting Eli up about eighteen inches. My partner caught a column to hold his balance and I stepped close and bent, hands to knees, offering my back as a step stool. He transferred his weight to me one foot at a time.

“Next time, take off your freaking combat boots,” I said. “The treads are getting grit on my shirt.”

“Such a girly comment,” he said as he stepped onto Nunez’s right shoulder and I stood, taking his other foot on my left. Nunez was shorter than I was and when Eli bounced up off us and pulled himself up to the gazebo roof, it was an ungainly leap, but it was sufficient.

I brushed off my now-dirty shirt and called up, “When you hand-wash my shirt, be sure to let it soak, you thug.”

“Yes, dear,” Eli said, accepting his weapons from Nunez, who clearly didn’t know what to make of us or our relationship.

“He’s my brother,” I said to Nunez. “You can see the resemblance in the jawline and the snark line.”

The cop shook his head and called up, “Target?”

“Acquired. Back off at least fifteen feet. That’s about ten feet father than Lachish and Evan were thrown.” We walked back and hunkered down, kneeling on the patio. Louder, Eli called out, “Everybody down. On one.” He counted down, “Three. Two. One.”

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?”