sacrifice.
“What do the vamps who are helping Jason get out of this?”
“Best guess? Jason’s such a blood junkie. They think they can control him and use the demon’s power vicariously, maybe even drinking the power down with Jason’s blood. All the power, none of side effects of being demon ridden.”
“Oh. That makes sense.”
“Stay back and take readings,” she said.
I retreated to the shade and leaned against a tree, calibrating the psy-meter 2.0 and testing the readings against T. Laine. She read pure witch. But the circle didn’t. It read witch and vampire and fluctuating levels of one and four.
I didn’t have my blanket, but I touched a pinkie finger to the earth and yanked it away. Nasty. Maggots. Death. I wanted to gag and promised myself to never, ever do that again at a scene filled with dead animals and filth of demon.
At the circle, T. Laine walked sunwise around the circle, pausing every few steps, her eyes on the center. When she finished one complete revolution, she stopped and studied it, put an amulet on a silver chain around her neck, and removed a plastic zipped bag from a pocket. It contained blue powder. She opened the baggie and tossed a few grains of the blue stuff over the edge of the circle. They fell slowly and … stopped. They hung in midair.
T. Laine called to me, “Keep measuring and film this on your cell. If I explode, see that my family never learns I was stupid enough to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Measure!” she demanded.
I set my cell on a tree limb and focused the video on the circle. I tapped the small button to film Lainie’s activities. Then I extended the psy-meter’s wand and hit record. “Go.”
T. Laine took a fistful of the blue dust and tossed it high. It went up and out and was caught by the breeze; it swirled and settled across … the hedge. Nothing happened. She tossed another. Then another. She finished by upending the baggie and shaking out the last of the blue dust. It didn’t spread out perfectly, but enough settled that I could make out the form of the hedge of thorns. It looked exactly as if someone had upended a massive, shallow, splotchy blue bowl.
T. Laine held out her arms and leaned down. Gingerly, she touched a patch of blue dust. I saw the magics as they were enacted. From the circle’s point at the south, a line of blue raced around and back to the beginning as the circle was cut and chalked into the earth. The energies sparkled for a moment, then moved down the spoke closest, to the center. They sparkled again, growing in intensity, and shot out the spokes to meet the outer circle. The vision dimmed.
A red circle rose inside it, concentric, smaller than the blue one. It too dimmed. A small smearing of blue energies at the north point led to the center of the circles. Another smearing. And two more. They faded. And then the red circle sprang into place, followed by the blue one. They stayed in place, visible to human eyes in the daylight, stable and unwavering. I understood that it was an image of what had been, created by Lainie’s working. It made no sense to me at all, but T. Laine was grinning like a cat with a bowl of cream.
She called to me, “The circles were two spells in one. The inner one called the vampires and a black cat, and imprisoned them in the center. The outer one—”
A black light burst from the ground. T. Laine jumped back. Something long and smoky and dark moved from the earth. Two more, then two more. They were … fingers and a thumb. An amorphous blue-ish hand reached out of the pit. It was wearing a ruby ring. It made a fist and withdrew into the land. The red circle winked out. The blue one blazed up high, sparkling in the sunlight.
T. Laine raced away from the edge of the outer circle. Dropped flat to the ground. As if—“Get down!” she screamed at me.
I dropped, clutching the psy-meter to me. The blue circle glared so bright I had to look away. I duck-walked behind the tree. The blue energies exploded. Brilliant. Silent. They evaporated. I peeked out from behind the tree to see a ring and spokes of bluish powder. There had been only light, nothing kinetic.
T. Laine rose from her crouch. She was breathing hard. Panicked. Sweat ran down