Under Witch Curse (Moon Shadow Series) (30 page)

Patrick stumbled back, his clawed hand and arm smoking. He shook it violently, flicking off chunks of disgusting flesh.

I lofted another fire packet. White Feather directed it, faster this time. Lynx dragged Roberto further away while the two of us crept closer. The ghoul was already healing. Its dance with Patrick should have warned us. If we didn’t finish it off before it attacked again, we didn’t have a chance.

I was wrong. We didn’t have a chance anyway. The bottom of its jaw still dripped black blood when there was suddenly nothing but teeth in front of me.

“Damn you to the nethers of hell!” I tossed a silver ball filled with holy water, explosive powder, nettle and Granny’s spider poison right into its jaws. The fire might not kill it. The curse might not follow him across whatever barriers kept him in cross-existence.

A strong wind pushed against and through the howling mass of death. I felt the silver in White Feather’s sword plunge straight into what would have been Joe’s heart.

The ghoul barely shivered. It reached back a clawed appendage and ripped the sword free from White Feather’s hand.

I smashed another packet and hooked it on one gleaming fang as the ghoul swung the sword. The blade flashed down towards White Feather. It hit wind, but that only slowed it. My pull on Mother Earth against the silver screamed, sparking the diamond into a white hot stream of light aimed between the sword and White Feather’s flesh.

I could move silver. The silver sword...would. Not...hit...
White Feather
!

The blazing fire from my ring slapped the silver back and up, smashing it into the shapeless head of teeth. The maw opened into an unearthly scream. Pain vibrated across my skin as though it had touched me. A swipe from one clawed appendage shredded my coat.

Mother Earth fed through me, enraged at the abomination. Where the light touched, the ghoul smoked, but if the creature experienced any hurt, it ignored the pain. A melting, smoking arm flashed through the center of the light, pushing soul-sucking darkness. The enraged evil was determined to extinguish my link to earth.

I lost my sense of self; there was nothing but raw earth power erupting through me across the planes of diamond. The stink of putrid smoke may have killed me off had White Feather not added his weight to the fight. The force of a tornado burst through the ring.

I sucked in air that wasn’t tainted with sulfur and rot. My head cleared barely in time to spot the ghoul feeding parts of itself into a new, lengthening arm that reached around the wind and light. The other arm fought and burned without respite.

I shrieked the word of power to ignite both fireballs. The entire graveyard, dead and alive, heard me. White Feather didn’t have wings, but he managed to fly backwards without slowing the power pushing against the ghoul.

For a heartbeat and another breath of fresh air, nothing happened. If anything, the explosion expanded the darkness of the shapeless monster. Then, its head burst into a mist of ghoul spray.

Like any good witch, I ducked.

The rest of the dark mass stretched as though it might contain the fireball it had swallowed. The beast flickered, an attempt to wink out of existence, but a huge chunk tore loose, releasing a soul-sucking screech that must have been the gates of hell opening.

Ghoul ichor just missed me as I rolled to the right.

The glint of a silver sword sliced through the night, cutting and slashing at pieces of a black hole.

I forgot about the empty grave behind me until my second roll met nothing but empty air.

“Aaagh.” The bright glow of the diamond blinked out when I hit.

From above me, I heard a whimper and then a groan.

Chapter 41

The absence of any light coated me in deep darkness. The smell of the earth was that of damp desert sand. I did not like the idea of damp, but in the dark, I wasn’t sure whether I was face down or face up.
Do not think about the grave.
I sat up so suddenly, shooting pain at the back of my head caused stars to float across my blinking eyeballs.

The hard ground beneath me trembled, little whispers of dirt shifting. I stilled, willing Mother Earth not to bury me here and now. Had the dead person who owned this grave been eaten by the ghoul? What if there were body
parts
left over?

“And this is why I tol‘ you I am going to stop hanging with witches,” Lynx said from somewhere above me. “Can you even believe this shit?!?”

“Adriel?” White Feather sounded calmer than Lynx.

“‘Trick, are you gonna die? Because if you are, what are we supposed to do with a dead vamp?” Lynx demanded.

I forced myself to my knees. Given Lynx’s litany of complaints, and a lack of one about a ghoul, maybe we’d live after all.

“Is it gone?” I whispered.

White Feather’s arms had hold of mine before I even knew I was being lifted. He had the advantage of finding me with his talent, while I fumbled about in the dark before remembering to scan for people by way of silver.

White Feather was obvious; my soul had known he was intact because his ring still breathed with our connection. Had I searched for gold, I might have found Lynx before finding the other packet, but my quick skim stopped short when I recognized my own magic in the silver shards that rested next to an amethyst and red garnet.

“Birthstones,” I murmured. Roberto was the client who had ordered the matched packets. Since his hobbies included socializing in graveyards, maybe he wanted the packet so that he could be located easily if something went wrong. Or smarter yet, maybe he left the other half outside the graveyard so he could find his way
out.

White Feather held me close while I shivered. “Okay?” he asked.

“Okay,” I breathed against his shirt. He smelled of scorched leather. “You?”

“Good thing I knew you were planning to use fire,” he said. “Although, I wasn’t expecting that laser flare you threw.”

“Me either.”

We separated. There were bits and pieces of ghoul still burning along the ground. Two larger chunks smoldered, but the pile was eating away at itself, dissolving.

Roberto apparently carried a flashlight and decided to use it. The light wasn’t as bright as the one from my ring, but I was far too tired to light the way. On top of that, I was done linking until we high-tailed it out of this place.

Lynx beckoned us over. “‘Trick is hurt.”

I stumbled forward on leaden legs.

Patrick rested against a gravestone as though he might meld with it at any moment. He was quite possibly the most pathetic gargoyle I’d ever seen, although my sightings of such were very limited.

There wasn’t even a glimmer of glamour about him and his skin, which had been leathery before, was stretched now as if the supple muscle underneath had disintegrated. Rather than death and decay, he was more like instant petrification. Without some kind of help, he was headed for fossil land.

“Can we assume that blood would help?” I asked.

Instead of speaking, he emitted a weak groan. It was several seconds before he managed to grate out, “Don’t know. Never been here before.”

Surveying the leather that was his skin, I said, “Hooking you up to an IV would be impossible. How did you find us?”

“Followed you.”

“Didn’t you say you were rounding up help?” My skin crawled at the thought of other vamps hanging at our back, but Patrick had been the only one who had taken a stab at the ghoul.

Patrick closed heavy eyes. “It was determined...that it was my problem to solve.”

None of us said anything for thirty seconds. White Feather finally growled, “And if you failed, I guess then it would be someone else’s problem?”

He had no answer.

We did the only thing we could. Lynx volunteered to escort Roberto back to the school. We called Mat, and luckily, she had returned home.

“Gordon twisted his ankle. We didn’t even make it halfway up the canyon. Never found Martin. I’ll meet you at the back door of the hospital. I can get the blood easier than he can.”

I didn’t want to know how.

We delivered Patrick to his own help ward. Near as I could tell, he wasn’t bleeding. His arm was shrunken as if it had burned and failed to heal. There was a spot on his chest that had been splashed with ghoul blood and that wound did everything but continue to smoke. Something in ghoul blood was lethal to vamps. Or gargoyles. Or was that...I squeezed my head with both hands to keep my head from exploding.

Did the injuries mean that Patrick had been infected with what had been Zandy’s blood?

He showed no signs of manic hunger. He barely kept his head up. Even though the ichor from the ghoul had burned through the leathery skin, the areas looked scarred and...dead.

He would not allow any of us to touch him. It was one hell of a limping crawl to the jeep.

Mat met us at the back door of the hospital with the key and four pints of blood. She held one of the bags over Patrick’s lips in order for him to drink, but he barely accepted two swallows.

Whatever injuries he had sustained had not turned him rogue or feral—yet.

He shifted his feet carefully out of the car and rested on the edge for the longest time before standing. White Feather offered a hand again, but Patrick grunted him off. In slow motion, he stumbled to the open door.

How many vamps had Patrick helped? How many shifters?

And now, here he was, the caretaker with no one. Our motley crew of two witches and a warlock was hardly worth counting. Not a one of us knew how to help, and I wasn’t even sure we were supposed to.

We were three steps down when White Feather stopped. “Vamp.”

I swallowed hard and raised my silver crucifix, letting my remaining stock of hardware dance in front of me. I was so not in the mood. Any vamp who dared to attack us now had better be prepared to eat every silver ball I owned.

Patrick called out, “Who has welcomed you here?”

Technically it wasn’t his home, but it could certainly pass as his lab. But whoever was here was already here, so what was the point in asking about being welcomed?

Vamps and their crazy rules.

The lights in the hallway slowly illuminated. A female vamp stood near the open doorway, a concrete doorway I was very tired of seeing.

“You did.” She was short, slim and beautiful except for the shimmer that revealed something with impossibly long ears, leathery wings and fangs. Her human form wore business casual, khakis and a silk tee.

“Tina,” Patrick acknowledged. “You shouldn’t have come. It’s been made perfectly clear I am persona non grata.”

She hissed. I aimed. Patrick held up his hand. “Wait. If she comes to harm any of us, she is not welcome here.”

“Oh, save it, Patrick,” she snarled. “You’ve forgotten your manners. Welcome me and let me help. Perhaps you can even offer to share your dinner.”

“They are friends. Not dinner.” Patrick leaned heavily against the wall.

She rolled her eyes, showing all white instead of black pits. “I meant the blood the little witch carries.” Tina kept her hands up and showed no teeth. Unfortunately for her, my witch sight honed in on her otherness.

Slowly, hugging the wall, Patrick eased down the steps. His clawed feet scraped the concrete, rasping in the silence. Balancing precariously, he tottered forward. One wing dragged, but he kept moving.

Tina was a full vampire with no injuries. She was no more than a blur when she flitted halfway to him.

Patrick snapped, “No!” bringing her to an instant, motionless halt. She could take Patrick out in one swipe and reach us. White Feather could keep her back long enough for me to stuff silver down her throat, but while vampires avoided silver, it wasn’t all that deadly for them unless attached to a stake or used to cut their heads off. My silver crucifix was my best missile, but I only carried the one tonight. Only one of the silver balls rotating in front of us contained a lethal explosive packet. The collection might or might not be enough.

Tina smiled and raised empty hands. “Here to help.”

“My friends...are leaving now. They are not the cure. Set the blood down, if you will.” His politeness was for Mat. “If I cannot use it, Tina can claim it in payment for offering to help me against what was, no doubt, the wishes of every other self-vested vampire in the area.”

“Every other selfish, arrogant, and stupid vampire,” Tina corrected.

Mat complied, setting the bags on the steps.

I kept the beads and crucifix hovering protectively in the air and backed up, one step at a time. White Feather stayed right beside me, his wind forming a protective vortex between us and them.

From one blink to the next, the lady called Tina carried Patrick down the hall away from us. The bags remained on the steps, but she could retrieve them after we were gone.

Mat locked the door on the way out.

Chapter 42

Four days later, Lynx and I agreed on payments, and I signed the papers to sell the house to him. If it hadn’t been for Patrick and the possibility that he could still enter uninvited, I’d have made Lynx rent it from me until I was sure it was the right thing to do or until I turned eighty, whichever came first. Even though I was ready to move in with White Feather, it was still difficult to sell my home.

Of course, even though Patrick had acknowledged the rescinded invitation, and he was probably trustworthy, what if he got really, really hungry? What if he went rogue from his injuries?

That was assuming he made it through his injuries at all.

Ah, well. It was time to move on. Ready or not.

After all the signing was done, I showed Lynx the hidden space in the fireplace. It was empty now, but he could store the paperwork in there.

“You really should apply for a birth certificate,” I told him. “Things like buying a house would be easier.”

“I don’t like papers or being traceable. You don’t use your real name,” he pointed out.

I knew he was referring to my birth name, the witch one gifted to me by my parents. Names were powerful tools. No way did a witch flaunt her name. The wrong entities with dangerous knowledge could attempt to capture a witch’s magic or her soul. “I use one of my birth names. Just not necessarily my spirit name. It’s not needed for something like this.”