Plague Cult (13 page)

Shawn ran through the woods, or rather, he blurred through them till he reached the edge of the containment ward Whitney had set around the compound. Since he now suspected she operated under Zach’s influence, he took it as the marker beyond which he had to move warily. He concentrated on the memory of Zach’s magic as he’d sensed it earlier, then entered.

The rain was heavy, causing any wild animals to huddle or hide. For Shawn’s purposes, the rain meant the fire he intended to start wouldn’t spread. It also hid some of his presence. Lightning cracked across the sky, followed by a boom of thunder back towards town.

A lightning strike would make an acceptable reason for the explosives to detonate. Fighting magic in a mundane, non-magical world meant that you also needed to know how to hide it.

Ruth!
A sudden overwhelming sense that she was in danger rushed through him. He turned to blur back to Rose House, and rocked to a stop as his hollerider nature surged. Suspicion surged with it. He took an agonizing twenty seconds to cast around for the scent of Zach’s magic, and found it centered on a bullet casing at the base of an oak tree. To a casual observer, it would be unnoticed, the discard of a careless hunter. But to Shawn, holding to the power of his hollerider nature, the bullet casing was enchanted. A compulsion blared from it.

Turn back. Those you love are in danger.

The power of the compulsion reminded Shawn that Zach had tapped a lot of death magic via Whitney. Shawn stood there, staring at the bullet casing, not seeing it, but the magic that surrounded it. Resisting the compulsion—and also resisting the temptation to crush the enchantment—he sought for any alert woven into the spell. However, it seemed Zach had set this enchantment to deter, and not to warn him of intruders.

As strong as the compulsion was, Zach was right to be confident in its repelling action.

Shawn reminded himself that Ruth was safe behind wards, had her own magic, and had a ghost intent on keeping evil from the house she haunted. Yet it was a struggle to continue on to the compound and not race back to Rose House.

And this was precisely why Collegium guidelines were that people on a mission should not get involved! Annoyed at the thought, and knowing that Ruth would blame them both if he gave in to his worry for her and returned to check she was safe, he pushed on.

Fortunately, the compulsion lessened as Shawn moved away from the bullet casing. His straining senses detected four more identical enchantments broadcasting from the perimeter of the compound, but no other touch of Zach’s magic.

Three of the cabins had lights on, and a third also had a television sharing canned laughter with the world. Shawn pulled on thermal imaging goggles, military-grade, and saw through walls. It was shocking how badly insulated the old cabins were, but it worked for him, now. The main building was a bit better insulated, and he augmented his vision with a touch of magic. Ruth would have identified Whitney’s presence by her aura. Shawn could only tell that there were two people in the Stirlings’ private wing: one already in bed and the other sitting in the living room. The rest of the building was empty.

Shawn translocated in plastic explosives, tucking them under the floorboards of the large conference room where the sacrificed bird was buried. A final double-check that everyone was safely away from the detonation point, and he sent a spark to it.

Boom!

The explosion was barely as loud as the thunder: a minor blast to warn everyone away. It shook the ground enough, though, that even civilians couldn’t mistake it for thunder. They poured out of their cabins and Zach ran out of the main building, Whitney stumbling behind him, wrapping a coat around her.

Boom!!!
The main building exploded.

Shawn blurred back to Rose House. As much as he wanted to capture Zach, now, in the confusion, Shawn needed to do things in order so that mundane authorities had a clear explanation of events and Zach’s culpability. The man mightn’t have stockpiled the explosives he’d be blamed for, but the plague would have been even worse.

God, I hope we can stop it.

“Pacing won’t help.” Carla popped into view by the fireplace with its lovely carved marble surround.

“It won’t hurt, either.” But Ruth stopped by the side window, looking towards the river and the Healing Hearts Ranch where Shawn was setting explosives. Her fingernails dug into her palms. He’d be safe as long as he wasn’t also setting off some enchanted trap.

She flinched as thunder rattled the window. Then leaned forward. Was it thunder or…? A second blast decided her.

Shawn had translocated in explosives and detonated them, as he’d intended.

She stared through the window. Sited at the side of the house, no porch protected it from the elements, and rain streamed down it, obscuring her vision. Inside, her own warm breath fogged the glass. She couldn’t see if a fire had started at the compound. Then again, she wouldn’t, not at this distance and with woods and the land itself in the way. Not unless the detonation released a fireball.

“Car keys?” Shawn’s voice from the hallway.

“You’ve done it?” She ran to him as he scooped up the truck key from the hall table.

“Yep.”

And he was safe, that was what mattered; that was why she was asking an inane question she already knew the answer to.

He held her coat for her and she shrugged into it. His own coat was already wet and his boots muddy. “We won’t be the only ones rushing to investigate the explosion. As an ex-marine the town would expect me to distinguish the blast from thunder.”

“And as a paramedic, they’ll expect me to attend,” she finished. Their cover story was solid.

They ran through the rain together to the truck.

“No one’s hurt, though,” Shawn said. “I made sure.”

“I knew you would.” Ruth had completely forgotten about Carla. Only as Shawn drove down the driveway, did Ruth turn her head.

There was a light on in the turret bedroom, one that Ruth had switched off. Carla stood guard against evil.

The truck’s windscreen wipers slowed as the rain momentarily eased. That only meant Ruth had a clearer view of the orange glow ahead as Shawn drove over the narrow bridge. Behind them, headlights indicated others were also responding to the noise of the explosions and the scarily lit sky. The fire seemed to reflect off the low storm clouds.

Ruth dropped her gaze from the outside world to the reassuring steadiness and strength of Shawn’s hands on the steering wheel, the glow from the dashboard lighting them red.

Not so comforting, after all. The red illumination lights on the dashboard reminded her of blood.

Shawn slowed the truck as its headlights revealed the “Healing Hearts Ranch” sign with its symbol of a sun dawning over cartoonish hearts. He turned into the driveway, travelling along it at a fair speed that put distance between them and the other folks from town.

Ruth felt the jolt of crossing the containment ward and being surrounded by the taint of death magic. She steadied her personal ward, knowing she needed to be clear and balanced. She was a paramedic and healer. Disasters weren’t new to her, but the journey to them was always tough. Adrenaline raced through her body, preparing her for fight or flight; and the fight was always to save lives.

But tonight, the fight would be complicated. Shawn would keep Zach away from Ruth while she extricated Whitney from the curse the witch had unwittingly set in train to become a plague. Ruth would have to ignore all other distractions: the fire, her neighbors rolling up to help, the other cult members.

They reached the compound.

Shawn’s explosions had been comprehensive, but tidy. Two walls of the large conference room had fallen inward. The other two stood, with flames crawling up them. Fire of this intensity had a visceral sound. It sounded hungry.

The cabins still had electricity, and light shone from their windows and open doors. The cult members milled around, some dressed, others obviously in sleepwear with coats snatched around them. Whitney was one of those. She stood with two of the women.

Ruth unbuckled her seatbelt.

Shawn parked back out of the way of emergency vehicles. He had an intent, focused look. “Zach is on the far side of the building.” The river side. “Go to Whitney.”

They opened their doors at the same time, and ran.

The rain had stopped. The flames of the fire flared higher and brighter, and people shouted in response. Ruth wondered if Shawn had sent a pulse of magic to the fire to distract everyone. Certainly it worked for the male members of the cult who ran without sense, dragging at hoses, shouting at one another, and cursing. As Ruth’s neighbors arrived, and then, the sirens of the fire crew and police, order emerged out of chaos, but by then, Ruth had used the initial confusion to dart through the crowd and tug Whitney away from her friends and into the shadows of the woods that surrounded the buildings.

“What’s happening?” Whitney asked. With shock and guilt, and without her usual make-up, she looked ghostly. Or rather, not ghostly. Carla looked far healthier. Whitney appeared distraught. She stared at the flames and trembled. “Is this something I did?”

“I need you to concentrate, Whitney. I need you to center yourself. Can you focus on your magic for me?”

“No! No, I’m shaking. There were explosions! Bombs. I need Zach. Where’s Zach?”

“It’s all right. The explosions are over.” Ruth put herself between Whitney and the burning building. The last thing Whitney needed was Zach. “No one was hurt, and we want to make sure no one does get hurt.” Ruth pitched her voice to a soothing tone as she slipped into mage sight and sent calming waves at Whitney’s ragged aura. Ruth couldn’t do a healing here and now, but she needed the woman to focus; not fall into hysterics. “The fire is burning up the bird you sacrificed. This is your chance to release the spell you cast.”

“I want to.” Whitney grabbed at Ruth’s hands. “I want to so much. But I can’t. I can feel it in me. It chews on me.”

It was a vivid, disgusting description of the corrosive action of death magic channeling through Whitney to her husband, Zach.

Shawn better have secured Zach.
Ruth held Whitney’s left hand and twisted off her wedding ring.

The woman howled.

Fortunately for avoiding attention, that was the moment a second fire truck arrived, its siren blaring.

Whitney collapsed to the ground, but at the same time, she clawed at Ruth’s jeans-clad legs. “My ring. Give it to me.”

The ring was definitely enchanted. To Ruth it felt awful; as if she held a slimy grub. That was the death magic. But the ring’s compulsion still held Whitney.

Ruth pulled out a pocket knife. She’d sterilized the blade earlier for just this emergency. This wasn’t the time or place for a careful unravelling of an enchantment. That would require purification and ceremony. This was emergency magic, a rough and ready means of replacing Zach’s ownership of the ring with her own—and that meant claiming it in blood.

Ruth sliced her little finger and rolled the ring against it. Evil pulsed around her, toxic and blossoming like a fungus releasing its spores. It felt deadly to breathe it. Her healer’s magic reacted to the attack in a blinding flash of energy. At least, it was blinding to anyone in mage sight.

Whitney fainted.

Ruth wiped the blood off the ring onto her jeans. The ring was just a ring, now. No longer enchanted. It was simply gold, inert. Only the memories that clung to it could do damage, now. She debated throwing it away, or into the fire, but that was Whitney’s choice. Ruth crouched, slid the ring back onto the woman’s finger, and contemplated the cold, wet ground. Whitney couldn’t be left there, but for the moment, leaving her unconscious was a kindness.

“Whitney! We couldn’t find her.”

Ruth glanced up and recognized Jared Hill, and rushing past him to kneel by Whitney was Erica, the waitress from the diner. Ruth sighed with tiredness and relief. She could trust these two. “I think we should get Whitney to hospital. She’s had a shock.” And the fire was the least of it. Released from the compulsion with which Zach had enchanted Whitney’s wedding ring, the witch would recall her husband’s betrayal in every detail. He had used her. He’d used her for death magic.

Which reminded Ruth that her reason for being here remained unfinished. The curse had to be cleared. Since Whitney no longer held it, bound to the spell by Zach’s will, Ruth reached reluctantly but determinedly for the death magic that crawled around the compound. The burning of the sacrifice had left the spell unanchored and far weaker. It sagged from cult member to cult member.

Ruth watched Jared carry Whitney to the ambulance with Erica trotting beside him. The magic was a dull grey cord between them. With her own magic, Ruth reached out and caught the cord. She pulled it to her, more and more, observing with satisfaction how it tore from Jared, then Erica, then free from each of the cult members. Finally, as the ambulance doors closed on Whitney, it tore from her.

The impact of the spell completely unanchored hit Ruth. It smashed into her, ugly with death magic, and she stumbled under the weight. She put a hand against a pine tree, and the cut on her left hand bled into the rough bark. That little link with clean, healthy nature seemed to help.

Ruth steadied. She would not leave the death magic here to taint the earth. She gripped the remnants of the spell and walked with it to the river, walking around the burning main building. A couple of her neighbors shouted to her, and she called back that she was looking for Shawn. Just forming the words was an effort. The death magic shrouded her like lead. How had Whitney survived channeling it? The fire was hot, fierce against Ruth’s right side, and then, at her back as she walked out onto the dock.

There she released the death magic to the river, that was filling and running fast with the storm. The water would dissolve the last taint of death magic.

She gasped as the pressure of it vanished. The air felt lighter, even though a steady rain fell again. Thunder rumbled nearer. Lightning flashed in the storm.

“Zach got away.” Shawn appeared next to her on the dock. The rain had soaked him. He was wet and grim. Although the fire crew had gotten control of the fire and was putting it out, the ruin behind Shawn seemed fitting for his mood.

“You’ll get Zach, tomorrow,” she said. “The curse is broken. The plague stopped. That was our mission.” She shivered, suddenly aware that she was soaked, too. Wet and cold.

Some of the distant chill, the frustrated predatory expression in his eyes, vanished. “You look like a drowned rat.” He put an arm around her.

“Such a lovely compliment.” She pressed into his warmth as they walked back to the truck. Her hollerider might be terror and fierce judgement for others, but for her he was kindness and support, and maybe something more and infinitely precious.

The sheriff stopped them at the edge of the large crowd that had gathered. “You sure you don’t want to press charges?”