Wicked Circle (21 page)

“Later. Let’s just do this.”

“Any last-minute messages for the men?” Johnny asked as he picked up the other block.

She considered it. “Stay together.”

Johnny opened and propped this door as well.

Atop the main building were two structures other than the one they were emerging from. The others were also brick and glass-block and, additionally, they bore colorful graffiti. In the center of the roof was a big formerly black water tower—formerly because it
too wore the spray-painted lettering. The building was tall enough that drivers on the highway wouldn’t be able to see them, and far enough from downtown that people in the taller buildings wouldn’t be able to either.

Three dozen men stood gathered around the base of the water tower. William, half formed, was sprawled at the edge of the group, unconscious.

“There’s more of them than I expected,” Seph said.

“The Omori all wanted in on it.”

“They know their man-minds won’t be immediate? It’ll happen with their next cyclical change?”

“They know.”

She glanced up at the sky scattered with gray clouds. “All right. Have them gather in that far corner so the water tower doesn’t block the beam.”

Johnny directed them where to stand, then had Gregor and Kirk move William. Johnny wasn’t standing with them, however. When they were in position, one man noticed and asked, “You are still going to go through it with us, right?”

Johnny blinked. “Yup.” He’d promised to go through it with them to assure them that it was not some witch trickery.
I can handle it. I’ll just change back when it’s done.

“Of course he is,” a voice from the back said. “He won’t let his woman see all of us naked without putting himself front and center of her view.” The men chuckled.

Johnny stood at the front with his best men: the Omori, Kirk, and the men who’d volunteered to stand with him and face the fey on the shores of Lake Erie. While they undressed, Persephone used her broom to sweep a huge circle enclosing them all. She called the elements and used candles
in tall beakers of colored glass. Then she said,

Persephone and Isis, goddesses whose names I bear,

Artemis, Inanna, and Ishtar, your lunar purpose I share.

Hathor and Hera, be present here this hour,

Hecate! Come now, lend my rite your power.

Encourage the elements to participate

As we seek their man-minds to liberate

Reward the courage these men have shown

I beseech you, O wise and wonderful crone.

With her arms over her head for the last line, she formed a triangle with her thumbs and index fingers. She lowered her arms so she could see the moon through that open triangle, and remained thus for a long minute. Then she sang strange words.

Energy stirred around them and Johnny detected the men shifting uneasily behind him. He saw second thoughts betrayed in some eyes. “Steady, men. I feel it too,” he said to them calmly. “This is normal. She must call the power and contain it away from us until there is enough to fully change us all. Only then will that power descend.”

He saw one man’s mouth open, ready to ask for reassurance, then he clamped it shut, thinking better of letting his peers know he was worried.

Johnny added, “She is able to hold that much power, and more. Otherwise I wouldn’t allow this. I stand with you.”
But I will change back as soon as I get you all to your kennels.

His skin abruptly itched, like he’d been dipped in icy water and coated
in sand.
She’s tapped the ley.
He remembered that when she’d transformed him and Celia and Erik and Theo, she’d sung this hauntingly beautiful song, and her power had erupted as her voice had found the high note of the melody’s crescendo. She was building to that note now.

He rolled his shoulders. “Relax, men. Don’t fight it.”

“Look up,” someone whispered.

Everyone turned their faces skyward, where, ten feet above their heads, a mass of energy was forming. It swirled, shimmering like glitter on waves of heat. As the mass developed color, four arms stretched downward, one to each candle. When the energy-arms reached the candle flames, the center above them exploded, and that energy snapped into the candles like a tape measure recoiling.

Then, except for the single note Persephone was sustaining, there was silence.

Johnny remembered what Menessos had said during the first spell. He’d whispered, “Rise cone of power. Rise to our call. Deliver lunar energies, to one and all.”

In the sky, the exposed moon flashed, and a focused beam of reflected lunar light fell, encompassing Persephone’s circle. Her voice wavered. Her knees gave.

Johnny felt his skin crawl, felt it scrub against his raw muscles like coarse sandpaper. His beast growled savagely, exultantly, as it burst through his flesh.

His change was fluid and fast, and he stood on all fours in a beam of cold light, while the others’ transformations were more prolonged. He felt electrified and invigorated, yet a hunger gnawed at him, a hunger that had nothing to do with his stomach.

Change back.

He sniffed the air.
He could smell well with his human nose, but with his wolf nose—it was like every molecule in the air was amplified, akin to a blast from an aerosol spray. So many compelling scents mingled at once.

Change back.

Nostrils flaring, he stared down his elongated black nose and sorted through the smells.

Human. Wolf. Sweat. Rooftop. Brick. Metal. Cotton. Candle wax. Fire. Car exhaust. Lavender.

Persephone was on her knees directly ahead and leaning to one side, unsteady in the buffeting wind. Her hair flapped about. She pitched forward—caught herself on her hands.

Change back.

He could smell her sex. He recalled their shower, the bubbles cascading over her ass, the water dripping off her tits. He’d made her writhe and scream when he’d been inside her. He’d made her wear his scent. He could smell that too.

Change back now.

The beast whimpered, stationary and ready to withdraw . . . then a new scent filled his nostrils. A scent that seduced him. A scent that seized his ambiguous hunger and made his jaws drip saliva. A scent that stupefied his man-mind, silencing his thoughts and leaving only the beast that quavered with a raging appetite.

He smelled blood.

T
he charm Beau had given me made a real difference.

When I’d held the lightning energy, I’d felt ready to explode. The volume of ley energy I’d briefly contained was threefold—ley energy scalds in the first instant and settles into a heady buzz, like an addict’s high. The ley and lunar energies had swirled within me, rather like oil and vinegar refusing to mix. Stormy and volatile. I’d tried coaxing the powers, folding them together like cake batter and foamy egg whites. Still they had resisted. So I’d gone bully. I’d used the Reese’s Cup-size charm like a blender, cramming that energy through the charm, whipping it into a frothy force, and then I freed the energy, refiltering it through myself.

A witch releasing energy was like any human body expending energy. In about twenty seconds, my body was convinced I’d just finished a hundred-kilometer marathon and celebrated by going a couple rounds with Rocky Balboa. Containing the power, filtering it, targeting it, and releasing it used nearly all of my own energy, and after my already stressful midday, I felt woozy and weak.

I collapsed to my knees in exhaustion. The dizziness made me pitch forward. The rough rooftop tore at my palms, ripping runnels that filled with warm blood.

I was so tired I didn’t care. I just wanted to sleep.

The beam dissipated to a chorus of wolf howls.

Beau’s son?
I checked where the half-formed wolf had lain. A full-formed wolf lay
there now, unconscious.
I did it.

A pony-sized black wolf stood stiff-legged at the edge of the pack. Beyond that dark wolf that I knew to be Johnny, I saw wolves begin padding away from the group, spreading out.

I sat back on my heels, fingers curled to favor my wounded palms. Softly, I said, “Keep them together, Johnny. Lead them to the kennels.”

The black wolf’s yellow eyes remained steady, and he persistently sniffed the air.

Wolves loped around me, circling. There were so many of them. . . .

“Johnny.”

The black wolf lowered its muzzle. It shook itself.

“Johnny?”

He stepped in my direction.

I swallowed. Hard.

Slowly, I put my knuckles down and very, very cautiously pushed to get my feet under me. Very, very cautiously I stood. The black wolf kept easing forward. I stood my ground for a heartbeat or two, then I couldn’t suppress the need to retreat.

The black wolf paused, sniffing where I’d fallen. Its pink tongue licked where my skin had torn. Where I’d bled.

Oh shit.

Behind me, a wolf growled.

Before me, the black wolf continued licking the roof. I trusted the Domn Lup to rule his pack and protect me, but the growl to my rear came again, nearer. Still the black wolf did not react.

I dared a quick scan
behind me. The other wolf was gathering itself, preparing to leap.

“Johnny!”

The black wolf’s nose came up, but his head stayed low, nostrils quivering and yellow gaze locked on me. Its posture was entirely animal-on-the-hunt. “What’s wrong with you?” I whispered.

He eased forward with deliberate, stalking steps.

Heart pounding, it took everything I had to not run for the door. “Domn Lup! Herd your pack down the stairwell. Do it now!”

Behind me the other wolf snarled. The black wolf viciously snapped its jaws at the other wolf, which then whimpered and retreated from me.

Thinking—hoping—that he was sending me down the stairs first, I shifted my retreat toward the door he’d propped open.

The black wolf made the same jaw-snapping growl at me, lunging and forcing me away from the safety of the room beyond that door.

As I quickly backpedaled, I tripped over the duffel with my spell supplies. As I fell, even as I thought to brace against the fall, I saw the black wolf leap.

Time slowed down. Instead of throwing my arms back to catch myself, I reached forward and buried my fingers in the fur on the sides of its head. With a feral snarl, the wolf’s hot breath blew over my cheeks. Those long fangs were just inches from me, and we hadn’t hit the roof yet.

I had only one choice: I called on the ley.

Stinging energy answered. It ripped into me as my back hit the rooftop, and I rammed it down my arms, ejecting it right into the
black wolf. Unfocused and unpurposed, the energy was raw and shocking.

The wolf yelped in pain, jerked and leapt away from me; tufts of black hair stuck to my bloody palms. My head bounced on the rooftop, hair catching in the rough texture and yanking out.

The wolf landed a few yards away and twisted back, a wicked rumble rising from deep in its chest. My hands went to the rooftop, ready to launch me up again, but I felt the smooth broom handle. Gripping it, I rolled, straddling it as I said, “Awaken ye to life.” It boosted me into the air and shot forward as the black wolf closed in again.

Johnny.

What have you done?

The wind over the city tore the tears from my eyes before they could spill to my cheeks.

Johnny had attacked me. Attacked
me
.

What’s wrong with him?

But in my heart I knew. I’d ignored that nagging little fear, and it had been right.

His beast is loose.

If I hadn’t burned up the
in signum amoris
, I would have known that something was wrong before Johnny’s man-mind had been highjacked by the beast, caught in the throes of bloodlust.

He’d broken my trust in his beast, and I wasn’t sure this could ever mend. My tears flowed faster.

Miles away, something else hit me: His best and bravest were with him, and for now, they were all feral and would follow the dominant male among them, even if that wolf was leading them to trash
their own den in order to get out and find meat.

No one was supposed to return to the den for roughly another half hour. What if they weren’t in their kennels when the other wæres showed up? The others would know something wasn’t right with their Domn Lup.

Worse, what if the pack was able to break the barricades? If the three dozen fully formed wæres escaped the building and were loose in a city completely unprepared for them—right before the Domn Lup was supposed to have his prestigious press conference—it would mean disaster for Johnny.

His disaster would mean the ruination of our trio
and
the failure of me and my destiny.

I couldn’t allow that to happen. No matter what.

My speed slowed. My phone was in my purse, locked in the car. My keys were in the duffel on the rooftop. There was no one I could call and no time to wait for someone else to go and make sure this didn’t escalate into a multilevel tragedy.

I circled around and headed back.

I
circled the Cleveland Cold Storage building and saw only one wærewolf on the rooftop. By the placement of this wolf, I knew it was Beau’s son. Still unconscious, he hadn’t moved so much as an inch. It was cold, so, despite his being covered with fur, I collected the other men’s piled clothing and covered him up with several T-shirts, topping that with layers of jeans.

I spiraled down the building and flew into the parking area. The guys in the Audi were still asleep.

At the stairwell, I could hear grunts and snarls of wolves, far, far up. The sound wasn’t getting closer or louder. Only two questions remained: Would the gates continue to detain the thirty-some wæres tearing at it,
and
could I coerce them to their kennels? If the others figured out Johnny’s man-mind wasn’t dominant, they’d suspect this whole thing was my wrongdoing.