Plague Cult (4 page)

Tomorrow would be better, she promised herself. Tomorrow she wouldn’t be distracted by family, but would concentrate on the mission.

She got out of the truck and rubbed at her arms as he reached back for the shopping bags. “Loneliness,” she said. “I felt it like the echo of a howl. If I’d been concentrating, maybe I could have tracked it.”

“What do you mean by loneliness?”

They climbed the back steps. Turning to look at him, she saw the dark river beyond. “It’s something healers can sense, a sickness of the soul. Loneliness isn’t the same as being alone. It’s not even the same as a passing sense of loneliness. That sounds idiotic.” She unlocked the back door and held it open for him to enter carrying the shopping. “I mean, loneliness where a person feels their soul is locked in solitary confinement. It’s a wound of the spirit.”

“And you felt that in town?” He put the shopping bags on the kitchen table.

Its sturdy pine construction made it one of the few things she wanted to keep in the outdated room. “Wisps of it. I couldn’t work out who it came from. It was present in the diner and supermarket, and a hint of it was fading on the street.”

“Hmm.” He stood to one side as she put things away.

“I guess I should have expected it if the Moonlit Hearts Club is a collection of lonely hearts. People with lonely aching hearts…they’re vulnerable.” She ducked her head, concentrating on putting the food in the fridge that was humming and already felt cool. Everything else went into the large pantry that held some cleaning gear like mops and buckets, brooms and such like from earlier visits to the house.

Shawn waited till she was back in the kitchen, its overhead light starkly revealing the worn out cupboards, sink and ancient cooktop, as well as his serious expression. “I don’t want to ask, Ruth, but I think you’d better tell me what the situation is with your family.”

She folded an empty shopping bag scrupulously, only to put it aside on the table and watch it unfold itself. The plastic rustled. “Not here.” She cast an unhappy look around the dismal kitchen. “Would you mind walking down to the river?” Outside, and not having to look at him, her confession would be easier. She wouldn’t have to see his reaction to the story of her failure.

“Suits me. I’d like to stretch my legs.”

She winced. It was just a saying, but it reminded her of all Mason had lost.

The path down to the river was a faint trail through the overgrown garden. Roses that had survived decades of neglect stretched out brambly arms in the darkness. Along the back fence, fruit trees twisted in fantastic shapes, their gnarled old branches silvered with lichen in daylight, but now seeming black. The back gate had been propped open years ago, and honeysuckle grew through it, anchoring it in place. The sweet scent of the last of summer floated on the air as they passed. The land sloped gently down to the river bank, rough and uneven underfoot.

A person in a wheelchair could never take this path.

“You met Mason at the diner.” Ruth plucked a dried seed head from the tall grass and shredded it, plucked another. “He’s my cousin, Aunt Peggy’s son. His father died when Mason was six. I don’t remember Uncle Louis. He was my dad’s brother. Mom and Aunt Peggy opened the diner about then. Mom took some breaks. My two brothers are younger than me. But the diner and Mason are Aunt Peggy’s whole life.”

Shawn abandoned the faint trace of the path and simply walked beside her, ducking under an occasional pine branch.

Ruth watched the country and her footing rather than look at him. “Mason is three years older than me. When he was seventeen he was driving Aunt Peggy’s car and crashed. It was a strange night. A haunted night. We’d had Halloween a couple of weeks before and my friend’s dad, a farmer like my dad, had set up a hay bale maze in one of his fields. Then he’d gotten distracted and the maze was still there. We think Mason decided to drive out to it.” She paused. “He’d been drinking. Mom left a bottle of whisky in the diner. She intended to soak dried fruit overnight to make Christmas cakes, but then, she forgot to buy currants. She decided to wait till the next day, when the supermarket opened, and soak all the fruit at once. Mason saw her put the bottle on a shelf.”

“He stole it,” Shawn guessed, and put his guess bluntly.

“He wanted to impress his friends,” she defended her cousin, who’d been young.

“Was anyone in the car with him when he crashed.”

“No, thank God. He hit the oak at the edge of Penny’s farm. I was sleeping over that night. We were in pajamas, talking. Somehow, I knew I was needed. I was only just coming into my magic.”

“You were fourteen? Puberty’s when magical ability strengthens.”

Ruth paused at the riverbank. She dusted her fingers together and the seed heads she’d been tearing at drifted away. The water glimmered, merely a shallow stream. It needed the winter rains to raise it. “I’d always been able to sense sickness or broken bones, but from thirteen, I started to be able to heal. It was all instinct, raw and untrained. No one in Bideer has any real magic. What I have came from Dad’s line of faded magic workers.”

“Difficult for you.”

She shrugged. “I was a teenage girl. I could have embraced my magic, liking that it made me different. Instead, I tried to ignore it. I wanted to be like my friends. Ordinary. Which meant that when Mason tore himself open in the crash, I had no idea what to do. My magic was there, going crazy, built up like a frenzy.” She shook her head. “Penny and her parents thought I was hysterical. They’re mundanes. They have no idea of magic. Still don’t. But they left me there, my hands pressing on the gash across Mason’s stomach and willing him to heal.”

Ruth plunged down the bank and walked along the river’s edge. The dirt crumbled a bit under her feet. “The blood gushing out of him stopped. Looking back, without me being there, he’d have died. His liver…” She looked at her hands, but they were clean. Only in memory were they dark with blood. Hot blood. Life blood. “His back was broken, too. If I’d known what to do, or if I’d pushed my magic a bit more—if I hadn’t panicked—Mason wouldn’t be in a wheelchair. He’d be walking.”

“Without you, he’d be dead.” Shawn stared down at her, his face shadowed.

“Mason wished he was.” She looked at the moon as the clouds parted momentarily. “In hospital, that’s what he said to me.” She swallowed convulsively, swallowing old tears and grief as jagged pain. “He was family. He knew that I had healing magic. He said that if I wasn’t going to do the job right, I should have let him die.”

Shawn caught her arm and pulled her around to face him. “Mason was seventeen, scared and angry. He shouldn’t have lashed out at you. You were only a kid. But it’s understandable. What I don’t get is the strain with your family now.”

She stared at him, unsure what he was asking. “I just explained it. I failed Mason.”

“You’re kidding.” The moonlight showed his expression: blank, stunned. “Your parents can’t possibly have let you go on believing…” His voice trailed off. “That’s rubbish. The only person to blame in this whole sorry mess is a teenage boy’s bad decision and worse luck.”

No.
She didn’t get absolution for her failure. She pulled to be free of his hold. “Mason can’t walk because of me.”

Shawn swore under his breath and released her arm.

She had to hurry to catch up with him as he strode away. “If you’d prefer a different partner on this mission I can leave and the Collegium will send in someone else. I’ve introduced you and established your cover story. You could take it from there.”

“I don’t want anyone else.” He stopped so abruptly that she had to catch her balance with a hand against his arm.

She stared up at him. Clouds again covered the moon and hid his face. She resisted the temptation to slip into mage sight and read his aura. Knowing her story, was he truly not rejecting her?

He touched her face gently. “I’ll see you in the morning.” And he was gone.

She blinked into mage sight to see him through the obscuring spell he’d suddenly wrapped around himself.

He ran along the river till he reached the ford. One, two, three leaps and he was across the stepping stones and on the far bank, running up it and lost to view among the trees.

“Good night.” Her quiet words were swallowed by the gurgle of the water, the frog and insect noises, and the wind in the trees and swaying the grass. She was grateful and relieved. Despite what she’d said to Shawn, she couldn’t have left Bideer with her hometown facing even an infinitesimal threat of plague. She’d have stepped aside so as not to interfere with the official Collegium mission, but she’d have kept watch.

Except, she didn’t have to step aside.

Shawn was willing to work with her. He’d sounded angry
for
her, not
at
her. She didn’t think she needed or deserved defending, but…his response warmed her.

She turned back to the house, and her heart jolted. On coming home, neither she nor Shawn had gone upstairs to turn on a light, but there was a light now in her bedroom window, in the turret section. “Shawn?” But he couldn’t have turned on the light. He’d run the opposite way, across the river, away from the house. “Shawn!” There was no way he could hear her. A shiver ghosted over her skin.

Rose House was warded. Only a strong magic user could break the perimeter spell to enter. If one had, then the sensible action was to phone Shawn who was the physical and magical muscle of this mission.

She looked back at the house, and the light was gone. “Don’t tell me I’m imagining things now.” It had been a stressful day. She rubbed her forehead. The thought of just how stressful made her hesitate to call Shawn. She really could be imagining things. “And wouldn’t that be wonderful? He’d definitely request a new partner.” Phone in hand, and stretching her senses and magic to scout for any intruders, Ruth walked warily back to the house.

Shawn ran. He’d felt—and indeed, tested—the strength of the ward around Rose House and knew Ruth would be safe within its boundary. True, she was currently outside it, but not by much, and given her sadness, left alone, she’d return inside. She was tired and upset and would want to hide. Meantime, his combat-trained instincts were tingling.

The wind carried a whiff of decay. Death magic held that stench. But it was such a thin thread of magic, that he couldn’t quite snare it. Couldn’t quite see it to commit its maker’s signature to memory. Death magic could set a powerful curse.

So he needed to be closer. He ran roughly east. He’d studied the map that morning, and knew what lay just a few miles in that direction: the headquarters of the Moonlit Hearts Club.
Club or cult?
The briefing he’d read suggested a cult. It met so many of the criteria: its leader was charismatic; the group had established itself just outside a small town; and members’ families complained that members had cut contact, claiming they needed to “free themselves of their old lives”.

On the other hand, they could be what they proclaimed: a self-help group taking a break from city life to heal their hearts.

He shrugged off the question. Time to worry when he knew if the death magic came from their compound.

It felt so damn good to be outside. Free. He had his personal wards active and alert for an attack or a stirring of magic, but running alone through the woods meant he could drop the constraints he typically used to mask his own power. It stirred around him like a cloak.

The thin thread of death magic he was pursuing snapped.

Damn.
The fever of the hunt ran through his veins, but years of training at the Collegium had taught him to override it. He caught at an overhanging branch and swung to a stop. His breathing was even, his pulse only slightly elevated. Over the years, he’d come to a compromise with his instincts. When a scent of evil was there, he could follow it. But he couldn’t cast around for a trail without specific preliminaries. A hunt had to be authorized.

“Tomorrow,” he promised the waiting, empty country and whoever hid out there. “I’ll find you, tomorrow.”

Three bats flew off to the left. He watched their graceful, eerie flight, shadows against the night sky, while waiting. Nothing else stirred.

Returning to Rose House, he saw lights on upstairs and down. Too many. He ran hard, and found Ruth sipping hot chocolate in the kitchen. He tamped down his emotions, worry and relief, and closed the back door behind him. She was safe. “I thought you hated this room.”

“I’m waiting for you.”

“Oh.” Belatedly, he realized that the calm expression on her face was a lie. Her green eyes were furious, their color darkened to emerald with anger. He ventured cautiously. “Down by the river, I caught a scent on the wind. The stench of death magic.”

“Death magic?” Her fingers tightened on the mug of hot chocolate. “You should have told me before you ran off.”

No.
He’d made a command decision, and it was the right one. He was the combat mage, and more. She was a healer. She had no place chasing evil through the night, and he hadn’t wanted to waste time arguing about leaving her behind. So, he’d purposely not told her about the death magic. But how to phrase his reasoning to an angry woman?

He walked to the sink and got himself a glass of water and a breathing space to think. “You’re not a guardian. I needed to act. The threat wasn’t here. It was to the east. You were safe, so I thought to keep explanations for later.”

“There was a light in my bedroom window.”

He put the glass of water down, half-drunk. “Someone was in the house? But there’s a ward.”

“The ward isn’t broken, but there was a light in the turret half of my room. It flashed on as you ran off.”

“And?” he prompted.

“I wasn’t imagining it. Out in the darkness, I doubted myself, but…I don’t imagine things. I thought of shouting for you, but you were gone.”

“I had my phone on me.”

She shrugged, hugging her anger.

“I’m sorry you were scared.” He thought of the lights on all through the house. Ruth must have walked through it. So would he, but his instincts were attuned to this sort of hunt. “Stay here.”

“Why?” She’d taken a sip of hot chocolate, and choked on it and her question. Possibly on her indignation. She’d been brave and foolish to search the house alone.

He looked at her steadily. If he didn’t answer her honestly and completely, the trust they were building between them would die—and he wanted her trust. Unfortunately, giving her the truth would destroy it.

Better now than later, when her turning away would hurt more.

Apparently, it was a night for confessions. She’d trusted him with the truth of her family troubles. He’d give her his secret. “William mentioned it in the office this morning. I can mask my magic. Unmasked, I’m a huntsman.” From the way her eyes tracked the air around him, he knew the instant when she slipped into mage sight to observe his aura. He let a smidgen of his power flare—and shut it down fast when she flinched.

There were stories about his kind of magic. It was rare. Huntsman was the polite term.

Hollerider was the truth.

There was a reason people feared him.

“I’ll just look through the house.”