Blue Moon

45

They'd chosen the top of a hill that had once been meadow, but some time today they'd bush-hogged all the grass and meadow flowers so that the hill was bare and broken under the moonlight.

In the movies there would be an altar and maybe a fire or two, at least a torch. But there was nothing but darkness and a silver wash of moonlight. The palest thing in the clearing was Charlotte Zeeman's skin. She was tied naked to stakes driven into the ground. I thought at first she was unconscious, but her hands flexed and strained against the ropes. I was both happy to see her still fighting and sorry that she hadn't passed out.

Linus Beck was wearing the proverbial black hooded robe. I guess if it saved me from seeing him naked, I could live with it.

Niley stood by Linus. He was dressed in the same suit I'd seen him in earlier. They'd drawn a circle on the ground with something dark and powdery. Charlotte was inside the circle. She was food for the demon, bait.

Wilkes stood not eight feet from me, to my right. He had a high-powered rifle and was searching the darkness.

Linus's voice rose in a singsong rhythm that filled the night with echoes and movement as if the darkness itself shivered at the words.

Nathaniel and I lay on the ground at the line of trees, watching. Jason and Jamil were supposed to be on the other side of the clearing. A moment of concentration told me where they were. The marks with Richard were open and roaring. I'd never been so aware of the scent and sounds of a summer night. It was like my skin expanded outward, touching every tree and bush. I was liquid and barely contained within my skin.

I felt Richard and the others moving through the trees like a solid wind. The lukoi were coming. But they were miles away, and the spell was almost complete. I could feel it growing, swelling, like a dank, unseen fog. The evil was coming.

There were shots from the house, echoing up the hill. Wilkes turned towards them and I went to one knee and sighted down my arms. The first shot hit him in the middle of his back. The second shot took him a little higher up the back because he was falling to his knees. He stayed motionless on his knees for one of those seconds that lasted an eternity. I had time to put a third bullet in his back.

A bullet hit the tree next to my head, and I rolled back into the underbrush. Three more shots hit the bushes where I had been. Niley had a gun, a semiauto that might hold eighteen bullets if he'd modified the clip. Not good. Of course, it might hold only ten. Hard to tell in the dark from this distance.

I sidled up to a tree, leaned my arm against it, and sighted on his shape in the bright darkness. I pulled off one careful shot and he went down. I wasn't sure how badly he was hit, but I'd hit something. He fired back, and I hit the ground.

Nathaniel crawled to me on his belly. "What do we do?"

Niley yelled, "You ca

I risked a peek. Niley had taken cover. I could shoot Linus, but I wasn't a hundred percent sure what that would do to Charlotte. I didn't know what the spell entailed. I just didn't know that much about sorcery.

"What do you want, Niley?"

"Throw your gun out."

"You throw yours out, too, or I shoot Linus."

"What happens to Charlotte if Linus dies in midspell?"

"I'll take my chances. Throw out the gun."

He stood and tossed the gun off the side of the hill. I couldn't hear it hit over Linus's chanting, but he'd done it. I moved out of the trees and tossed the Browning away. I still had the Firestar.

"The other gun, too," Niley said. "Remember that Linus searched you earlier today."

I tossed the Firestar away into the broken grass. It was all right. This wasn't about guns anymore.

I felt the spell close. Linus's last word reverberated on the night like a great brass bell that had been struck slightly off-key, but it echoed for all the flatness of the note. It echoed and grew until the skin on my body tried to crawl away and hide, creeping as if every insect in the world were under my skin. For a second, I couldn't breathe or move. Then Niley's voice came, "You are too late, Anita. Too late."

Charlotte was screaming through the gag on her mouth. Screaming, over and over again, as fast as she could draw breath.

I stared across the meadow and found that there was something else in the circle. I wasn't sure if it was the blackness of it that made it hard to see, or if it was like smoke, never exactly one shape. It seemed to be about man height, maybe eight feet, not much more. It was so thin that it looked like it was made of sticks. Its legs were longer than they should have been, bent wrong somehow. I realized that the longer I stared at it, the more solid it was growing. The neck was a long serpentine, bent back on its shoulders like a heron, and it had a beak for a mouth. If it had eyes, I couldn't see them. The face looked blind and only half-formed.

"You are too late," Niley said again.

"No. I'm not." I stood and walked out of the trees. Niley seemed terribly confident now that the demon was here.

"Only Linus can send it back to whence it came. If you harm him, then it will certainly devour the fair Charlotte."

I ignored him because I knew the plan was for the thing to eat Charlotte. Let them think I believed they intended to save her. Let them think she was still useful as a hostage. I wanted to get close enough to see the circle of entrapment they'd put up.

Charlotte had stopped screaming. I could hear her voice trapped behind the gag, but she was speaking now, not screaming. A strong woman, a very strong woman.

The demon paced the edge of the circle, flicking a long, thin, whiplike tail. It was becoming progressively more agitated, moving around the circle like a prisoner trying its cell.

"The circle is complete," Linus said. "You are mine to command."

The demon hissed at him, and the sound made the inside of my skull ache. It turned and gazed at me, though it had no eyes. I was on the edge of the circle now. I could see that Charlotte had closed her eyes, and I knew now what she was doing. She was praying.

I dropped to my knees beside the circle. I didn't feel anything from it. Which meant it wasn't meant for me. Whatever it was meant to keep in or out, I wasn't one of them. "She's pure, Linus. She's pure of heart and soul. She isn't a fit sacrifice for this thing."

"The pure are a rare and fine treat for my master."

"No, you can't feed her soul to it, Linus. Her soul is spoken for, and this thing ca

The demon moved as far away from Charlotte as the circle would allow. It wasn't happy. "Give it its orders, Linus," Niley said.

"I offer you a sacrifice of flesh and blood and soul. Take this my offering and do my bidding."

The demon moved to stand over Charlotte. It snapped its beak next to her face, and she shrieked. The prayers stopped, and it laughed, a sound like grinding metal.

"It's a circle against evil, isn't it, Linus? Just evil."

"You're a necromancer," Niley said. "You are evil."

"Don't believe everything you hear or even read, Niley."

The demon raised fingers to the moonlight, fingers that ended in black knives. Charlotte opened her eyes and screamed. The Lord's Prayer would have been reasonable, but I blanked. All I could think of was Christmas. "And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over the flock by night." I stepped over the circle. It was nothing to me. It was meant to keep out and in evil. I wasn't evil.

"And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid."

The demon was chattering, snapping at me, razor claws slicing around me like fan blades, but it didn't touch me. "And the angel said unto them. Fear not; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people." I knelt and started untying Charlotte. When I pulled her gag away, she started to recite with me. "For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord."

I cradled Charlotte's naked body in my arms. She clung to me and cried, and I was crying, too. And I knew I had to get us out of that circle because I only remembered about three more verses.

"And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger." Charlotte couldn't stand, and I had to half carry her. We stumbled near the edge of the circle, and the demon rushed us in a wave of clattering, snapping, horror. "And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying … " I stared down at the circle as I prayed, that carefully constructed circle … "glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill toward men." I erased the circle with my hand. I broke Linus's circle of protection.

The demon threw back its head and shrieked. The sound was like a rooster's crow or maybe a growl or maybe something else. It was as if even hearing it, I couldn't hold it in my mind.

It rushed out of the circle and fell on Linus. It was his turn to scream and scream as fast as he could draw breath. Blood flew in a wash, sprinkling us like rain.

And suddenly, there were flashlights and men yelling, "FBI. Don't move." FBI?

The flashlights found the demon. The light glistened on the beak, and blood shimmered on it as if it had bathed in it. If they hadn't tried to shoot it, I think it would have left them alone. But they fired into it, and I pushed Charlotte to the grass, hiding her body under mine.

The demon rushed into the feds, and they started dying. I yelled, "Bullets won't work! Pray. Pray, damn it, pray!"

I tried to lead by example and found finally that I could remember the Lord's Prayer. A man's voice echoed mine, then another. I heard someone else doing the 'Bless me, oh, Lord, for I have si

The demon stood with a man's body raised to its mouth. The neck was cut and it was lapping the blood with a long, sticky tongue. But at least it wasn't killing anyone else.