Eileen Wilks - Ritual Magic

Mike frowned. “Did she say wisdom, or truth? Or maybe I’m thinking about what she said about rainbows.”

This time it was Scott who quoted quietly. “‘Which color of the rainbow is the most true? Is red more true than green? Is blue the best path to understanding, and should you therefore outlaw yellow cloth and purple vases and the soft blushing sky awakening to day?’”

“Yeah, that bit. She was talking about how the clans are to respect each other, but it applies to lots of other stuff.” He paused, glancing at Miles sitting beside him. “I guess we haven’t always done a great job at respecting each other.”

Everyone got quiet. Nokolai and Leidolf were prime examples of clans not respecting each other. Lily decided to return to her question. “So you’re saying that the Great Bitch is the kind of crazy that doesn’t tolerate disagreement. My way or the highway.” This wasn’t exactly news.

“Pretty much,” Cynna agreed. “The interesting thing is that the other Old Ones considered that insane.”

Lily’s eyebrows shot up. “It is interesting, isn’t it? In a weird and startling way.” It also didn’t seem to help much. “If the Big B is acting rationally, however screwed up she may be, then she had a purpose for what she did today. Only I don’t see it. Sure, she’d like to wipe out Nokolai, but she didn’t. She didn’t even come close, however tight things seemed at the time. And she used an awful lot of power trying. And how come she can open gates that way all of a sudden? Last year she couldn’t.”

“Slow down, Scott,” Cynna said suddenly. “It’s just ahead on the right.” She frowned at Lily. “What are you saying?”

“Drummond thinks we have a second enemy. At least,” she corrected herself, “he thinks I do. He, uh, saw some kind of spiritual attack directed against me while we were fighting the dworg.”

“Shit. That’s not good.”

“It’s sort of what my other question was about.” More than one question, really, but with the guards here she wasn’t sure how to bring up the second one.

“Ask quick. We’re nearly there.”

“He thought that either the toltoi protected me or the mate bond. So I wondered . . . does the bond have some kind of spiritual component that could do that?”

“Yes.”

“That was a quick answer.”

“I should qualify that. The mate bond is a magical construct similar to an artifact, but it’s, ah . . . how do I put this? It’s fashioned around a spiritual component instead of a material one. I don’t know what kind of spiritual attack he saw—”

“He didn’t tell me, and I haven’t been able to get him to show up again. He’s having trouble manifesting.”

“Hmm. I think—I don’t know, mind—but I think the bond might be able to protect you from direct attack, like if something tried to take you over. I’m not sure it could help with the kind of spiritual interference that doesn’t rob you of choice, the sort the Church calls temptation.”

Lily had wanted to kill Santos. She hadn’t done it, but she’d been tempted, and it hadn’t been moral reasons that held her back. He’d been trying to rescue her at the time, however mistakenly. Did that mean—

“Stop,” Cynna said. But she wasn’t talking to Lily now. “We’re there.”

THEman who’d been staked to the ground and ritually murdered had lived in a brick-veneer ranch-style house in Alta Vista—a nice enough neighborhood, the kind where vacations were more likely to be Motel 6 or camping than anything involving airfare, but most of the time most of the people here could take a vacation. Like much of the city, Alta Vista had been hit hard by the foreclosure crisis, but it was beginning to come around. Not as many For Sale signs dotted the streets, nor were there many walkaways standing empty and forlorn.

This house hadn’t been abandoned. Someone had added a pricey metal roof in the last five years, and the landscaping was well tended, if uninspired. A wide driveway leading to the two-car garage left little room for the yard, which was all grass except for the kind of foundation plantings beloved by builders fifty years ago. The grass had been cut recently and looked like it got watered as often as the city allowed. “Anything?” she asked Mike, whom she’d sent to peer in the high window in the garage door.

“No car, if that’s what you mean.”

She nodded. “Head around back, keep an eye on that door.” There was a fence, but that wouldn’t slow him down.

No toys on the lawn or the drive, Lily noted as she headed for the small front porch. No potted plants or lawn ornaments, either. The porch’s only decoration was a slumped sack of fertilizer topped by a pair of dirty gardening gloves. The welcome mat provided the single note of whimsy. “Hop In!” it said in bold black letters surrounding a cheerful green frog.

She rang the doorbell.

“If anyone was here, wouldn’t they have reported your guy missing?” Cynna asked.

“You’d think so.” Lily rang again, to be sure. It wouldn’t be hard to get a search warrant, but it would take time, and—

“Lily!” Mike came loping from the side of the house. “Something’s wrong. There’s a window cracked open around back. I couldn’t see in because of the blinds, but I could smell it. Piss and shit and sickness. Not death—I didn’t smell decay, and I heard breathing. Someone’s in there, and it’s bad.”

Lily hammered on the door with her fist. “Police! Open up! We have reason to think someone inside is injured or ill, and will break in if you don’t open the door!” She let two heartbeats pass, then said to Scott, “Get me in.”

Scott stepped back two paces, eyed the door—solid core with a dead bolt—and said, “Mike! Get in through that open window and let us in.”

Mike spun and raced back around the house. A moment later she heard glass break. Apparently Mike hadn’t been able to just push the window up. She drew her weapon. Her heart pounded. She waited, waited . . . heard feet running on carpet, coming near. The click of the dead bolt being turned.

The door swung open. “She’s in bad shape,” Mike said. “No sign of anyone else inside.”

Lily decided to trust his senses and holstered her gun. She ran after him, gathering quick impressions—a small, neat living room flooded with light from the picture window, a darker hallway with four doors, where the sewer stench that had alerted Mike grew thick in her nostrils.

Mike turned into the second doorway on the left. She followed.

It looked like a little girl’s room, all pink and white, with stuffed animals on the shelves and a frilly bedspread on the double bed. But the woman lying in that bed, stinking of urine and feces, must have been at least twenty. Her hair was dusty brown and braided in twin plaits. Her eyes were closed. She lay on her back with her mouth open, one arm limply cradling a bedraggled stuffed dog, and she looked more dead than alive. She had the small chin, the broad, flat face, and the flattened nose of Down syndrome.

DRUMMONDcame to slowly. He was lying down . . . in bed. Yeah. He was in a bed, and he felt like hell—sick and woozy. A lot like he had that time he got concussed. That wasn’t the worst of it, though. His arm hurt like a mother. He’d taken a chance . . .

A foolish risk, someone had told him. Very brave, but foolish.

Yeah, that’s right. She’d told him that while she was patching him up. Had it been her who snatched him, pulled him away before—