Shadow Rites: A Jane Yellowrock Novel (23 page)

In a minute.
Jane watched Molly, Bruiser, and Eli roll Evan onto large board and drag Evan across street to house.
The focal items are set to magnetic north and east of north, with the house at south, the front door in a perfect ninety-degree triangle. The mathematics are excellent. Yeah. We need to tell Eli to try and burn them. Destroying them was a good idea.

Beast is good hunter.

Yes, you are.
Jane pushed Beast to feet and trotted to house.
Now let’s see how good you are at writing.

Beast cannot write.

Wrong-o,
Jane thought. Jane led us to Alex. He was sitting at kitchen table, eyes closed. We stared at young human male. He looked bad. Like sick prey, ready to die. Took Alex hand in teeth, gently, like Beast carried kits, and pulled toward living room.

“Whaddaya want?” he asked, trying to pull hand free. Tightened teeth. Alex yelled, “Ow! Stop that!”

“Do what Jane wants,” Eli grunted as he and Molly pulled Evan through open front door on wood. Bruiser pushed from other side.

Bruiser is strong. Good mate for Jane.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever.

“What?” Alex stood, smelling angry and afraid, but let Beast pull him to desk in living room. Pushed Alex to chair. He sat and Beast butted Alex with head, stood up on back paws. Licked Alex’s head.

“Gross. Okay. I’m awake. What do you want?”

Stayed on back paws and hind legs. Put front paws on table-desk. Scratched gently at keyboard. Alex frowned, using big brother’s frown. Jane tapped keyboard with claws again.

Alex’s eyes went wide and heart thumped into fast speed. “You want the system on so you can type something?”

Jane dropped head and raised it. Alex pulled keyboard out and system came on. Jane thought,
We did this once before, at Leo’s house, before it burned to the ground
. Jane pushed Beast away from alpha. Extruded claws. Touched key with claw. Another key. Another.

Alex shouted, “Eli! Jane’s typing!”

Not Jane. Beast.
But Alex did not hear.

Eli read over Beast shoulder, “Burn focals with fire. Torch.” Eli bent close to Beast face, met Beast eyes, but not in challenge. “Burn the metal things with a torch? Welder’s torch?”

Beast dropped head in human nod. Jane typed. “Hot.”

“Will that stop the spell on Evan?”

Molly said, “That’s genius. Yes. It should stop it. You have a welder’s torch?”

“Acetylene. Best I can do on short notice.” Eli patted Beast shoulder and said, “Steak on your plate. If this works, I’ll take you hunting.”

Want to hunt cow in Edmund car.
But Eli did not hear. Padded to kitchen, place where Beast ate cow meat. Steak was hot and stringy on outside and cold inside. But cow meat was good. Ate all of steak and licked plate clean. Satisfied, Beast trotted out broken door and into yard. Jumped into Edmund car. Car chairs were made of cow skin. Would hunt for more cow with Edmund and Eli, but would eat cow skin, not make chairs.

Turned around one time. Lay down. Closed eyes. Dreamed of hunting in car, chasing cows, many, many cows.

*   *   *

Beast woke up when bad burning smell stung nose. Stretched in cow chairs and slowly padded from cow-hunting car. Day was cool, good day to lie on rocks in sun. Padded around Eli to Jane’s rocks in back of house and climbed to top. Jane and Beast watched Eli with fire, burning iron. Eli in strange hat.

“It isn’t going to be hot enough,” Molly said.

“You want hotter temperatures, we need a two-tank
system, oxygen/acetylene,” Eli said. “Ambient air is less than twenty-one percent oxygen. Pure O² burns hotter.”

“You trying to tell an air witch about burning things?” Evan grunted, a low growl in his voice. He was sitting in a chair, dressed in human clothes. He smelled like iron and salt and sickness. Was spelled, but he could talk and move. His face was red and his body smelled of frustration, like big-cat hunting with no prey in territory. “No one knows burning things like an air witch.”

Jane laughed inside. Beast did not understand why Jane laughed, but she sat back and let Beast stay alpha.

“No,” Eli said. “I’m suggesting we get a different system or take the iron focals to a welder or to a structural steel fabricator.” Eli pulled his hat off his head, took his cell from his pocket, and punched fingers across surface like Beast sliding paws across ice, with fish swimming beneath. “Thanks to the port, there’s more than half a dozen iron fabricators in New Orleans, most within an hour’s drive.”

Molly was sitting in rusty chair, cold glass of tea in one hand. “What if you just take a sledgehammer to them?” she asked.

The men looked to her, smell of surprise on both. “I could create a ward that would let the sledgehammer in but not let magical energies escape,” Molly said.

“Yeah,” Evan said, his words slow with thought. “That would work.”

Molly nodded. “Evan, you’d make a separate ward. Add filters to the ward to allow only oxygen through the filter. Increase the outer air pressure, forcing the O² into the ward. Scientifically it might work.”

Eli said. “You set the ward. I’ll get the sledgehammer.”

“You got a sledgehammer here?” Evan sounded surprised.

“Never know when you might need a good sledgehammer.”

Mr. Prepared,
Jane thought.
Let’s sleep. Things might get rough tonight.

Beast closed eyes and slept in sun, waking only to see Evan break iron into tiny pieces, and magic smash against
ward like bomb going off. Fire, too bright to look at, was inside ward. Did not smell blood, did not smell iron or salt or Jane hair, even with men shouting and jumping around like kits.
Silly men
.

I rested and slept and ate raw roast and steak all day. Eli was best litter mate.

*   *   *

It was dusk when I changed back, hidden in my own room. I stretched, fully human, on the bed. While I was starving, needing to replace the calories used to power my shifts, I hadn’t felt so good in a long time. I had successfully shifted when my life was in danger, had stayed in Beast form all day, sleeping on heated rocks, had no new scars, and my old ones were faded to pale pink lines. And from beneath the door came the scent of the grill all fired up and loaded down with more beef. I dressed quickly in Bruiser’s wrinkled shirt and a pair of leggings and went to the table.

Eli had prepared me a fourth chunk of meat, this one a thick steak grilled to rare and bloody perfection, with beer-batter-fried onion rings, asparagus sautéed in bacon drippings, which was out of this world, roasted sweet potatoes, and green salad with crispy bacon on top and hot bacon dressing. “Holy moly guacamole,” I said, taking my seat and digging in. I was half finished with the steak when my hunger was satisfied enough to look up. And came to a total stop.

The whole family was eating together. Everyone but Bruiser was here. Tears filled my eyes and Eli passed me a bread basket, saying, “If you get all sappy and cry, it will ruin the ambience. Plus, all the girls will have to do a hug-hug, kiss-kiss moment and the food will get cold.”

I took three slices of Molly’s homemade bread and blinked back my tears. “No way am I stopping eating just to cry and hug my friends. But you know I love you all, right?”

They all spoke over one another: “Yes.” “Totally.” “Yes, Aunt Jane.” “Wessh A’ Ja’.” “Back atcha.” “Whiny girl stuff.” And Brute whuffed.

I stilled, turning to see the werewolf stretched out on the floor, two empty plates near his feet. One was Beast’s
plate. One was new. I thought back through the day. I remembered the claw marks on the floor at EJ’s bed. And Beast making nice-nice with the wolf. And the grindylow grooming Beast’s pelt. Around the table, my friends and family were deliberately paying attention to their food and not to me or the wolf. “He’s moved in?”

“He’s my werewolf,” Angie said.

“He’s ma wrolf,” EJ said, waving an asparagus spear in the air.

“He tried to save my son,” Molly said, taking the green spear from Evan Junior.

“The grindylow seems to think it’s a good idea,” Eli said.

“No,” Big Evan said.

I went back to eating, knowing that a family had to make tough decisions all the time and that, oddly, I wasn’t in charge.

“How much do you remember from today?” Eli asked, after an uncomfortable silence.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” I said. “I caught up on a lot of sleep today.” Which was how I heard what they had done all day, starting from the time Eli successfully beat the iron focals into small pieces and Evan’s working burned them to ash, releasing the last of the spell that was wrapped around Evan, which, fortunately, had been a simple knock-out spell, but had been geared to a human male, not an in-the-closet witchy man, allowing him to find consciousness and help with the spell-breaking.

Molly had done research on the witch names on her list. Alex had done research on Molly’s research. Eli had spent hours with Jodi Richoux, having missed the dawn conference call with Leo, and had made nice-nice with everyone on the security team, especially Derek and the men he chose to work with Jodi’s off-duty cops who would be on rooftops before, during, and after the Witch Conclave.

Evan and Molly had come up with what sounded like a contract with Edmund, to cover the blood vow given by their underage daughter to Edmund Hartley. I kept my mouth shut about that one, still bothered by the similarity
to what I had done as a child, when I took a blood oath to kill my father’s murderers.

And they told me about the package that had come while I slept on the rocks in the back. They all seemed eager for me to open it, but until I finished the food, I was going nowhere and doing nothing. Because the food was OhMyGosh too good for words.

After dinner, while the sun was setting in a red sky, I let my godchildren drag the package to me across the floor. It was huge, big enough to ship a chair in, but weighed little by comparison to the size. The box was postmarked in Louisiana and it had a return address I recognized. I ran a hand over the cardboard, feeling a hint of icy magic from within, and smelling the scent of leather.

“I haven’t ordered anything from this company in ages,” I said, “and I feel magic.” I glanced at Molly and said, “You didn’t feel anything?”

Evan answered for her. “No. Neither of us.”

“Open a ward over me and the box?”

Evan and Molly stood to either side of me, at north and south, and Molly said, “Inverted
hedge of thorns
.” The magic snapped over me and the box with a sizzle of familiar energies. The inverted hedge kept magics inside, rather than keeping an attacker out. Which meant if the box blew up, the family and the house were safe, though my insides might be splattered across the ward like some kind of gross, bloody artwork.

Feeling uneasy, I slit the packing tape open and pulled out long lengths of big green bubble wrap. My uneasiness was warranted: the feel of magic increased with a tingle that burned and ached along my skin. Beneath the bubble wrap was an envelope. Below that, I could see black leather, the soft gleam of the leather itself suggesting that it was high quality. I peeled back some of the plastic to reveal a set of fighting leathers, far nicer than any I had ever been able to afford.

Before I removed the last layer of plastic and touched the leather I opened the envelope and read the paperwork. The leather was described as top-grain, armored with
sterling silver-over-titanium chain mail and flexible plastic (to repel talons and fangs) and Dyneema (to repel blades), and it came with top-quality, heavy silk lining. More important, the leathers had been treated by the Seattle coven to repel magic. Just the jacket had to go for upward of two thousand bucks, and the box was way bigger than one used to ship a leather jacket.

There was a card with the paperwork and the leathers’ description. My trepidation growing, I placed the descriptions on the floor beside my knees and opened the card.

The leathers were from Leo, the card reading, “A gift for my Enforcer, that you may shine among the Enforcers of the Europeans, and that we might appear as worthy opponents.” And it was signed with Leo’s calligraphy-style siggie, all swirls and fancy curls.

This was vamp politics. Which meant I couldn’t say no to the gift. Not that I wanted to. Some girls want jewelry. I wanted stuff like this.

I peeled away the last layer of plastic. The leather itself put out an icy-cold magic, sparking blue and silver to Beast-vision. The texture of the magic meant the jacket was spelled for temperature control as well as being spelled against attack magic. I’d heard of such spelling. It was offered to the mundane world by the Seattle coven for mucho dinero. From outside the ward, Molly and Big Evan heaved oohs and aahs at the sight of the magic on the jacket.

These were the best leathers I had ever seen. I lifted out the jacket and the pants beneath. And the custom-made, matching leather combat boots, ones with expansion seams on the sides, held in place with leather straps. The boots would not be water-resistant at all, but they would break outward on the sides if I shifted to my half-Beast form. I had no idea how much these fighting leathers might cost. Ten thousand dollars? More?

Beneath the black leathers came a magical glow, and I realized that there was more in the box. I placed the black leathers on the floor by my knee and removed more packing paper. Below the paper was another set of leathers. My breath caught. This set was of dark gold leather, the color of
my eyes when I was human, an amber gold with darker striations, almost like a . . . like a pelt. I lifted out the jacket and the pants beneath. Instantly I could see the leathers worn with the fancy ornamental gorget Leo had given me. The boots beneath were black, exact copies of the other pair.

And there was more paper below that one.

“Holy crap,” I whispered. I pulled out the next layer of paper, to see a flash of red. The third set of leathers were scarlet, my favorite lipstick tint. The magical power signature on this set was brighter, hotter, and I knew without testing them that the magics in this set were particularly strong, maybe with double rebound magic, so that any attack spell that came at me rebounded on the sender. A third pair of boots was beneath the red leathers. In the bottom there were three sets of matching grips for my .380s and for the nine-mil handguns. There were also new stakes, wood, the handgrips burned with the new Yellowrock Securities logo, the tips all silver. The blunt ends of the stakes each had a cabochon gem in the end, blackstone, garnet, or citrine, matching the leathers, four stakes in each gem color, to wear like jewelry in my hair. Jewelry deadly to vamps.