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He prowled as they talked, prowled, she thought, and considered options, directions.
“We’ll try one of the nearby towns, see if we can find some sort of communication. Or people. We hit three cabins, Lana, and found no sign of anyone. We need to figure out how to self-sustain first, and yeah, you’re right, try to find out what’s going on.”
“Eddie found something.” Lana lowered her voice, glancing back to make sure they were alone. “When he walked Joe this morning, he found some sort of circle of stones back in the woods, and the ground in the center was burned. Not like a campfire. Something off with it, he told me. And Joe wouldn’t go near it, and that he felt, well, he said it wasn’t right, wasn’t natural.”
“It’s easy to get spooked,” Max speculated, “but we should take a look.”
“I didn’t say anything to the others. There’s no point in raising alarm.”
Absently, he brushed a hand down her arm. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”
“Promise. In fact, I feel less dragged out than I did this morning. Making soup’s therapeutic.”
“Then let’s get Eddie, go check this out. Anybody asks, we’re getting some air.”
“More firewood,” Lana suggested.
“Even better.”
She’d never been much for winter or tromping through the snow, and Lana could admit without shame she preferred urban hiking through Chelsea or the old Meatpacking District to a hike through a mountain forest.
But there was something astonishing about walking through snapping crisp air, the scent of pine and snow, the somehow majestic silence while an energetic young dog leaped and bounded.
An enormous buck stepped out of the trees to stare at them fearlessly, making her gasp.
“That’s a lot of venison,” Max commented, killing the wonder of the moment for her. “Sorry, but we have to think in practicalities. We found a rifle and a shotgun—both with ammo—in the cabins we went through. Kim suggested stowing them in the garden shed for now. It seemed like a good call.”
“We have enough food for a couple of weeks” was all Lana said.
“You can see where me and Joe broke the trail through here.” Eddie gestured. “Shaun’s folks got some nice land. The going gets pretty steep that way, and I didn’t feel all the way up for that much of a hike, so we headed off here. Hey, Joe! Dude! Come on back here.”
The dog came back, but bellied through the snow to stick close to Eddie’s side.
“He’s figured out we’re going back to the weird. Gives me the bumps of goose right with him.”
“Way out of sight of the house,” Max observed. “Did you see footprints?”
“Didn’t, but it was snowing pretty good when we got here, so if whoever was back here was back here before that?” Eddie spread his hands, then lowered one to rub Joe’s head. “Not gonna let any boogie shoes get you, doggie dude.” Murmuring to Joe, Eddie continued to stroke and soothe. “He’s shaking some.”
“It’s this way?”
“Yeah, up and around that bend—see where we went through before?”
“Yeah.” Max nodded. “Why don’t you wait here with Joe?”
“Don’t mind using my pal here to wimp out. But if you need help, give a shout and we’ll come.”
“You stay with Eddie,” Max said to Lana. “I’ll go check it out.”
“We’ll check it out.” She took his hand. “If it is magickal, two witches are better than one.”
When she took the first step forward, he didn’t argue.
As they approached the bend, she tightened her grip on his hand. “It’s colder. Can you feel it?”
“Yeah. And the air feels thinner.”
He saw it then. He’d expected to find some sort of botched amateur campfire—something like a survivor as inexperienced as himself might attempt. But he knew now what lay ahead hadn’t been the result of an amateur attempt to provide heat and light.
What lay ahead was cold and dark and deliberate.
“Dark.” Lana’s murmur echoed his thoughts. “Max, what dark ritual would have done this?”
“We don’t know enough. We don’t even know enough about what’s changed in us, what’s growing in us. But someone knows about the black, and twisting the Craft to the dark.”
“Out of sight of the house, but still, too close.” She felt her skin shudder as they approached the circle.
Rough stones laid in a perfect circle, as if set on a line drawn by a compass. Within it the ground was spread black and slick as tar. And that, too, was spread in a perfect circle, without a trace of the snow that had fallen on its surface or the stones around it.
“I … Do you smell blood?”
“Yes.” He kept her hand firmly in his.
“Do you think this was a blood sacrifice?”
“Yes. But for what purpose? For what power? Lana!” He tried to jerk her back, but she had crouched, reached out, touched a stone.
It jolted through her, that dark, grasping power. It stung her fingers, even through gloves. And in its flash, she saw blood pour into the circle, heard a voice raised in triumph call out.
“A deer. A young deer. Its throat slit.” She turned into Max’s arms when he yanked her away. “I could see it, and the way the blood pooled into the circle. Then the fire—ice-cold, consuming all. I heard…”
“What?” He held her more tightly as she burrowed against him. “What did you hear?”
“I couldn’t really understand it—it was like a roar more than a voice. But it called for Eris.”
“Goddess of strife. We need to try to purify it. The ritual’s done, and we can’t turn that back. But this thing still has power.”
“And it’s pulling power, I think. Or will, in the dark.”
He opened the pack they’d filled with items from their supplies. Three white candles, his athame, a small container of salt, a handful of crystals.
“I don’t know if it’s enough, if we’re enough.”
“We’ve done pretty well so far,” he reminded her.
He set the candles in the snow outside the circle while Lana scattered the crystals between their points.
“We don’t know what to say.” Still, she poured salt into his palm, then into her own.
“I think we need to call on powers of the light, ask for their help in basic purification.”
“This isn’t basic.”
As she spoke, she heard the cries, looked up.
Crows circled in the hard winter sky. Something pulsed inside her that was both fear and knowledge.
“I dreamt of crows, do you see them? A murder of crows come to gloat, come to feed.”
“Lana—”
“Light the candles white and bright, and their flames will turn this right. Spark the crystals, clean and pure, and their power will endure. Call to the north, the south, the east, the west, unite and from evil power we wrest.”
The wind whipped as she spoke, sending her hair flying. Her eyes went opaque as she turned to him, lifting her arms.
“Call!”
He felt her power—the sudden flash of it—burn into him. Lifted his athame. North, south, east, west.
Above them, the crows screamed. Around them, the air pulsed.
Eddie came on the run, breathless, a hand pressed to his healing wound. “Holy fuck.”
“Candles light.” Lana held out a hand, and the three candles flamed. “Crystals spark.” She threw it out again, and the crystals glowed as if lit from within.
“Here is light against the dark.” Bending, she picked up a burning candle. “Take one.”
“But I’m not—”
“Take one,” she ordered Eddie again. “You’re a child of humanity. You’re of the light. Light burns through the dark.” She tossed her candle into the circle. The ground rose up, writhed.
With a shaking hand, Eddie threw in his. Blood bubbled to the surface, fouling the air. Max tossed in his.
“And here is faith against fear
.” Lana scooped up the crystals burning against the snow, poured them in.
Smoke billowed.
With an audible swallow, Eddie plucked crystals from the ground, dropped them in. Then Max.
“It fights, it seethes, it snarls, and its creatures scream for blood. It will have blood, both good and ill. But it will never win. Now salt to smother what evil sought to free.”
She stepped over, poured some into Eddie’s hand.
“As I will.” She threw salt into the pit. “As you will,” she said to Eddie. “As we will.” She looked at Max. “So mote it be.”
Three scant handfuls of salt expanded and spread over the black in a white layer. Thunder shuddered from the sky, from under the earth. Then the circle filled with a white flash.
When it faded, the ground inside the stone lay bare, its scarred earth quiet. Overhead a single cardinal winged, and vanished scarlet, into the forest.
“It wasn’t me, exactly,” Lana managed.
“It was you.” Max strode to her, pulling her close. “I felt you. I felt you in me, over me. Everywhere. Power awakened.”
She shook her head, but didn’t know how to explain. Now that what had risen in her had ebbed, she couldn’t see any answers.
