Eileen Wilks - Ritual Magic

What happened when time was damaged? When the fabric of the realm was damaged?

What did the Great Bitch want to happen?

It was, maybe, a mistake to try to get inside the head of a being older than the cosmos, due to being impossible. Lily still had to try. G.B. thought her goal was noble. She wanted to save humanity from itself. Therefore, she didn’t want to destroy humanity . . . but anything short of utter annihilation might work for her. Might work out great. Knock everyone back to the Stone Age, flash some power around, start helping the survivors of the devastation you’d caused, and bingo. Before you knew it, you had everyone worshiping you, just like they ought to.

Maybe understanding that much helped, but trying to figure out what kind of damage might occur was a distraction. She didn’t need specifics to know it would be a heaping helping of world-class horrible. She didn’t need to prepare for the horrible. She needed to stop it. That meant stopping Friar. How did you stop someone if you couldn’t find them? If—

“Now I see something,” Cullen said.

Lily stopped, her arm flashing out to bar T.J., who’d already stopped. “What?”

“Leakage from the node. It looks . . .” He tipped his head to one side. “Well, that’s not good. Wait here.” He left at a run.

Lily tucked her flashlight under her arm, pulled off her shoes so she’d know if she hit a patch of icky magic, and jammed them into her purse. “Do like he said. Wait here.” She gripped the flashlight and set off the way Cullen had, only slower. Three footfalls later she added, “Dammit, Rule!”

“You’ll let me know if there’s contagion.” He ran easily just behind her.

“I could lie.”

“You won’t. Not about that.”

Wisps of power brushed her face as she ran—overflow from the node. Her feet didn’t touch anything icky, just rocks and sticks that jabbed. There wasn’t much brush at the crest of the trail, but the lookout was at a high point and it was dark. Lily didn’t see what waited there until she reached it.

A man’s body lay facedown on the flat, sandy ground. Near one outflung hand was a small wooden altar, tipped on its side. Near his feet was a small duffel bag. A large shape—a pentagon? No, a hexagon had been drawn or painted on the bare ground of the overlook. Under the beam of her flashlight it glowed a bright, cheery yellow. Six dark candles were distributed evenly around the painted shape, which enclosed the body and the toppled altar. Cullen stood in front of it, glaring at them. “Does anyone listen to me? Does anyone ever freaking listen to me?”

“There’s no contagion.”

“No, there’s a goddamn major working that got interrupted at the worst goddamn time possible, so instead of dissolving like it ought to, it jammed. Then it got fed a lot of blood. And it’s still tied to the goddamn node, and now it’s about to blow up. So sit down out of my way and shut up.” He began pacing around the hexagon, eyes narrowed as he studied the ground.

Sometimes you really had to listen to the experts. Lily sat on the trail. Rule dropped down beside her. After a moment, she turned off her flashlight. It might be a distraction.

Cullen made a slow circuit of the hexagon. There was barely room for him to stay outside it in one spot; the overlook was enclosed by a low pole-and-cable fence meant to keep idiots from straying off the trail or falling off the cliff on the ocean side. He crouched twice, tilting his head, and muttered under his breath now and then. At last he stopped, nodded briskly, and raised his arms. He began chanting too low for Lily to hear the words. All at once he snatched something invisible out of the air, flung it up, and shouted, “Ak-ak-areni!”

Fire shot up from the candles—fire as red as molten lava. It leaped from candle to candle, then inward to the center of the hexagon, where the six crimson flows collided with each other—and with a seventh, this one from Cullen’s other hand. Rainbow fire, that one, green-blue-orange-purple-yellow, every color but red. It merged with the lava fire and exploded into eye-searing white. White that shot straight up in a brilliant column three or four stories tall . . . and gradually dissipated, like the slow, shiny fade-out of fireworks.

THREEmiles away, a woman sat cross-legged on the beach, her head tipped back, her mouth round in a silent “oh” as the brilliant white light faded. It was time to go, and yet she lingered. The wind off the ocean was chilly. It felt good on her hot cheeks . . . hot cheeks, shivery stomach. She’d felt so odd ever since she picked up that knife. For just a moment longer she’d sit here and smell the ocean . . . brine and fish, the Mother’s moist breath. Only she wasn’t thinking of the Mother. She was wondering if anyone had died in that beautiful flash of light. If she’d killed people she didn’t even know.

You are sad, F’annwylyd?

“A little.” Apologetically she added, “I’ve never killed anyone before.”

They would die anyway. Does it matter greatly when?

It did to them. And to her, too, though he wouldn’t understand that. She hoped no one had been near when the node exploded. The others . . . no, she didn’t regret them. She’d been shocked by how loud the gun was, that was all. She’d owned the weapon for ages and dutifully took it to the firing range two or three times a year to make sure she stayed familiar with it, but she’d never fired it without the protective gear at the gun range. She’d never really thought she’d shoot it anywhere else.

You grieve. A ghostly warmth stroked her cheek. Though it is not the dead who grieve you. I wish I could put my arms around you. Comfort you.

Tears sprang to her eyes. Ah, look at her, indulging in melancholy when there were important things to do! Vital things. “Soon. Soon I’ll feel your arms—and all sorts of other parts of you, too.” She laughed, suddenly flooded with a wild, exuberant energy, and bounced to her feet. She had places to go, things to do.

People to kill. On purpose.

LILYwas still blinking bright spots out of her vision when Cullen plopped to the ground with a satisfied sigh. “Glad that worked.”

“So am I,” Rule said dryly.

“The node’s still not entirely stable. I think . . .” Cullen tipped his head, studying something only he could see. “Yeah, it’s settling down. Should be safe enough, but I’ll keep an eye on it.”

“My turn, then.” Lily stood. “I guess you don’t see any power radiating from an ancient artifact or you’d be rooting around, looking for it.”

“No, but if this Nam Anthessa is as good at hiding as Sam said, maybe I wouldn’t. If you see a knife, don’t touch it.”

“Sam made that clear. It’s safe to cross the line?”

“Sure. Not a whiff of power left in it. I may have damaged some evidence. Couldn’t be helped, so don’t bitch at me about it. But the missing blood isn’t my fault.”

“What missing blood?”

“There’s no blood on the ground inside the hexagon. Some outside it, but none inside. I think the übrik rune drank it.”

That was seriously creepy. Lily flashed her light over the ground. “I don’t see any runes.” Though there was a drift of ashy residue of some sort she hadn’t noticed before. And the once-yellow line of the hexagon was burned black.

“No runes?” Cullen stirred himself to come look. “Huh. That’s weird.”

“Meaning?”

“I guess my pyrotechnics burned them up.”

Lily decided not to worry about it. The scene was already thoroughly compromised—first by the rangers, then by the EMTs, and now by Cullen’s efforts to keep something—either the runes or the node, she wasn’t sure which—from exploding. “Rule . . .” She realized he’d moved. He was a little ways down the trail, talking to Scott. And when had Scott come up past T.J. and his two cops?