Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4 )- Faith Hunter Page 0,155

really needed rain and it was hotter than the opening to hades. Lainie had thought to bring cold Cokes and some ice, and that made them best friends. I showed my ID, signed in to the official record, and moved into the heated, reeking stockyard, my paper uniform stifling.

It was still and silent in a locale that was probably usually loud with animals and machinery and the occasional worker. A hot breeze blew through, sweeping up dust devils. Flies buzzed like a chorus of buzz saws. Turkey buzzards were everywhere. A kettle of them soared overhead. I had no idea why a flock was called that, but all the names of buzzard groupings were bizarre. A committee, a venue, or a volt, they were perched on the rooftop, with the braver members of the scavenger pack sitting on the outer pen walls of the covered areas. A flock of feeding buzzards was called a wake, and three of the most brave, or the most dominant, were having a wake at the carcasses. It wouldn’t be long before the stench drew multiple species of predators and scavengers from everywhere if the cleanup crew wasn’t allowed onto the site.

Flies dive-bombed me as I approached the pens and walked into the shade under the metal roof. Buzzards perched on fencing. Dead animals were everywhere: three goats in the first pen, a miniature horse in the next, a sow and piglets. The animals had bled out from every orifice.

I dug out a small spiral notepad and walked down the wide aisles, beginning a listing of the animals with roman numerals. That was when I saw the man. Like the animals, he had died horribly—blood down his face, across his chest, dried and crinkled on his clothing. He was Caucasian, bearded; his blue eyes were clouded over, his light brown hair caked with dried blood. He was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, and, like the animals, he had bled from every orifice. I backed a step away before I remembered that this was my job. I stopped, swallowed acidic bile that rose in my gullet. Quickly figured it out. The man was lying on a sleeping bag, barefoot, half-covered by straw. A pack rested beside him, with a bag of canned goods, a twelve-pack of cheap beer, and a bag of trash. He was homeless. He had made the unfortunate decision to bed down yesterday in a pile of straw. And now he was dead.

“Nell,” T. Laine called out.

“Here! We got a DB.” Dead body. Not a homeless man, not a person with a past and a name and hopes for a better tomorrow. But a DB, to keep our souls distant from the awful part of the job of a cop.

T. Laine strode into the shadows and the buzzing of flies, saying, “Glove up. Check for ID. Then back away. We’re still waiting on PsyLED crime scene investigators.”

The stench grew and the clouds of flies buzzed like a speeding engine as they laid eggs. We ascertained that there was only the one human body, hunted for ID, and anything arcane or black magic. There was nothing. and we left the stench of the pens for the witch circle, sweating like churchwomen.

Lainie had been reading arcane texts and had brought along a version of a seeing working. She wanted to see if she could re-create a vision of the spell at its inception, as it was drawn and cast, and then determine what the circle was doing now. I was more interested in the bodies we had left in place in the circles. Vampires were known to burst into flame in sunlight and we’d had a lot of sun already today.

“The vamp bodies are gone,” T. Laine said, “and the circles are still intact. No one has been here but us. I don’t even see a pile of ash.”

Not that I intended to tell Lainie, but when I fed the earth, the ash was eaten by the land. There was nothing left at all. Jason had found a way to do that. If there had been vampire ash, it had soaked into the earth. Which meant that Jason might have used vampires in other circles and the remains were gone by the time we got there. That would explain the maggoty feeling. Ming had her scions locked down, but some might have gone missing in the months before we knew about Jason’s circles. And … maybe the invading vamps had donated vamp prisoners for