Under Witch Aura (Moon Shadow Series) (16 page)

She nodded, her gaze on the
painting
and her foot on the hose.

I hopped up the steps.

“Adriel?”

“What?” I spun around,
terrified the picture had grown horns and started to attack.

“Is White Feather going to
be
okay?”

My hand clenched the porch
rail. “Yes!”
I didn't have time for her insecurity. I yanked the front door open,
determined to make my declaration right. I grabbed fresh roots,
willow sticks--a bomb would be nice. I settled for a pair of
clippers and my portable butane torch.

Halfway across the living
room on my
way out, the fireplace brought me to a halt. The logs were mostly
for decoration. “Logs or fresh juniper?” I grabbed a log,
set it down and extracted the cache of arrowheads from above the
mantel. We definitely needed something to protect against witchcraft.

Juggling clippers, logs,
and everything
else, I raced outside and dumped the logs onto the ground. “Make
sure the wood gets good and soaked.”

Fresh juniper boughs from
the trees in
the yard weren’t that easy to cut with small clippers, but I
was motivated.

Just as I finished, Lynx
drove up the
dirt driveway with White Feather in tow.

White Feather jumped out of
the Mustang
looking perfectly normal. He strode over to the sand painting. His
jaw was already tight, and the muscles in his cheek jumped. “Claire.”
He said it like a swear word.

Tara gulped, “I took it
from the
trash.”

“How much did you tell
him?”
I mouthed at Lynx.

He gave me his cat grin, no
teeth.

White Feather answered. “He
told
me you had a rune and were worried it had me by the balls. I assumed
he was exaggerating.” Each word was concise and filled with
rage. His neck was flushed a deep maroon.

“Oh,” I said.

“
Oh
?”
The heat of
his gaze went from me to his sister and back again.

Tara avoided the accusation
by keeping
her attention on the stream of water from the hose.

I waved my juniper branch.
“We
need to dismantle it.”

White Feather raised a
threatening hand
as if he would blast it to kingdom come with a wave of wind. The
problem was that he was the least useful person in destroying it. His
power would probably only bind him tighter.

“Lynx.” My voice trembled
slightly. “Help me lift the painting on top of the wood.”

“Burn it,” he declared.

“It’s stone. Sand doesn’t
burn well. We have to erase the links and diffuse it.”

White Feather reached for
the painting,
his magic causing the hair on his arms to stand straight up. I
clamped my lips shut against a warning scream. He wasn’t a
child; he knew magic. His home had blown apart when he attacked with
the wrong timing. If he went to battle with it, there was no way to
know who would win, but odds were not in our favor.

“White Feather.”

He bared his teeth in a
soundless
snarl.

I stood perfectly still, my
eyes
pleading, but not daring to say anything more.

The veins along his arm
bulged. There
was no wind, almost no air at all.

Then, in a burst of heat,
my hair
lifted. Like a storm, electricity ran along my skin, racing up my
face. Tara’s white makeup clotted in sticky creases, forming
premature wrinkles.

White Feather clenched both
hands, but
never took his eyes from mine.

I willed him to keep his
wind, to save
it, to control it.
Don’t give it to the runes.

The electricity across my
skin
prickled. Tears stung my eyes from forgetting to blink.

With an audible snap, as
though I had
rubbed my feet on a rug and then touched metal, the energy on my skin
faded, sucked away as quickly as it had appeared. A breeze stirred,
but it was from behind me.

I let out the breath I was
holding.

His eyes still flashed
dangerous green,
but he stepped aside, allowing me to approach the painting.

“Wind...isn’t the right
weapon,” I said softly.

One fist flexed, but his
talent
remained quiescent.

“Lynx?” I set the juniper
branches across the top of the logs. My hands stung where the
juniper pieces had dug into my skin.

I knelt in the dirt and
picked up one
of the forked willow branches.

Lynx wasn’t eager to offer
assistance, but he eventually positioned himself at the other side of
the painting. “You already tried to burn it?”

I shook my head. “That
melted
mess was part of a plastic pot. The painting
did
the melting.”

White Feather’s breath
hissed
between his teeth.

“Shit,” Lynx said.

Tara nudged him from
behind. “No
cursing!”

I almost grinned. That
particular word
wasn’t likely to call anything evil, but at least she had taken
my advice seriously.

“We have to erase the
painting.”
The confidence in my voice was fake, but even illusions had their
purpose. I handed Lynx one of the willow sticks. “Let’s
flip it up onto the wood.”

“If it melted that plastic,
won’t
it burn the wood?” His tail, had it been out, would have been
jerking nervously.

“The wood is wet and the
juniper
boughs are fresh.” I slid the branch underneath the painting,
pushing it through the sandy mud. If he helped, fine. If he didn’t,
I would reposition it myself.

“I can move it,” Tara
volunteered softly.

The sleeping beast had been
wakened. No
way was she going to touch it again. The painting was armed and
dangerous. “Keep the hose steady,” I said.

Lynx gave a sub-audible
growl. “Why
do I always gotta be messin’ with witches? Can’t stick
with nice, safe thieves and professionals, gotta be messin’.”

We lifted it halfway up and
then
dropped it. I held my breath, expecting the thing to explode, but
Tara quickly directed the spray from the hose onto the top of the
painting.

On the second attempt, we
were more
coordinated.

As soon as we dropped it in
place, I
closed my eyes in relief, but White Feather interrupted my respite
with questions. “Is now a good time for you to tell me exactly
what this rune is designed to do?”

It wasn't the most coherent
delivery,
but I shared my suspicions about the design and how she had left the
wrong side opened. “In short, Claire set this thing up to call
something from the west to do her bidding, but other than binding
you, I couldn't interpret all her intentions.”

“Sounds like opening the
east
side would be a good first defense,” he said.

“Honestly, I’m not sure. We
need an expert shaman, but we're in short supply.”

“Claire didn’t have magic.
She must have hired someone who didn’t know what they were
doing.”

Our eyes met over the
painting. “I
think they knew what they were doing. Binding magic isn’t
generally considered a return to balance. Since the holy people
weren’t likely to answer her plea, I’m guessing whoever
she hired was spelling from some other direction.”

His hand reached out again,
but this
time he caught himself immediately. “You have a point.”

“A sacred feather is the
tool of
choice for scattering the sand, but this thing is lacquered down, and
I’m short such a feather.”

“Bust it,” Lynx said.

“Not a bad idea. But we
should
make sure we break the links in the right order.” I dug in my
pants pocket and came up with the arrowhead. “Let’s open
up the east and get some protection on our side.”

Malachite was used to
prevent witchery.
Being a witch, I found it a nuisance, so I never stored it in my lab,
but as an arrowhead it combined several magics suited for blocking
evil and witchery.

I asked Tara for some of
the sage
leaves she had collected and palmed one and put another in my mouth.
Centered through my silver and protective turquoise, I sawed at the
edge of the rainbow on the east side. It didn’t take long. The colored
layers of sand were not deep.

For my trouble, I ended up
thoroughly
soaked from sitting half in a puddle and getting splashed while
working. The painting didn't react to the damage I inflicted. “What
next? Should we seal the other side or smash the entire thing?”

“Let me,” White Feather
said quietly. I hesitated, but it was his right to fight. I handed
him the sage and the arrowhead.

He scraped the male
figures, chipping
bits and pieces of them away. When he aimed at one of the butterflies
I stayed his hand. As near as I could tell, they represented Claire
or at least her desires. “Not you. Not me. Too personal.
There's no point in giving this thing any of our emotions. Lynx?”

He growled low. “I ain’t no
witch. Why you guys can’t clean up your own messes—”
He caught the crushed expression on Tara’s face and snapped his
lips into a thin line. With another sub-audible snarl, he snatched
the arrowhead from White Feather. He jabbed a section of one
butterfly. On the second stab, he cut the butterfly in half.

A hissing like a broken
fissure in
Mother earth spilled into the silence. I jumped back, but not before
the stench of rotted meat permeated the air.

Before I could stop him,
Lynx had his
claws out. With the speed of a bobcat, he raked sharp spikes across
the painting.

“Lynx! Get back!”

He ignored me. With a heavy
swipe, he
embedded the arrowhead in one of the lines and smashed it through the
painting, snapping the sandstone in half.

Smoke poured out as if it
was on fire.

I grabbed Lynx to drag him
away, but he
was faster than I’d ever be.

The smoke headed right for
White
Feather.

He blocked, creating a
barrier of
non-air like he had done before. He wasn’t breathing. Neither
was I.

Water poured across the
pieces. The
smoke could have been dissipating, so thin were the tendrils. But
bits of darkness rose slowly, searching along a straight wall of
nothing.

The smell of blood told me
we weren't
free of this thing yet.

White Feather didn't wait
to be saved. His bubble slid where he commanded it, allowing him access
to my
butane torch. He fired it up and blasted the pieces of the picture.

Lynx rushed forward and
kicked a piece
of the painting my way. “Bust it!” he screamed,
attacking a piece of the burned painting with a large rock.

When he didn’t immediately
get
blown to bits, I snatched up a nearby rock and started smashing. Back
to earth where it had started. Back to earth where it was
nothing--not a picture, not a spell.

Tara joined us, crushing
bits and
pieces into the dirt.

In less than a minute the
painting was
reduced to nothing larger than a single piece of sand; some melted,
some scorched, all of it very, very small.

Cautiously I sniffed.
Burned ozone.
Scorched log. Even burnt hair, but no smell of offal and blood.

I ached all over and was
soaked.

Lynx, still breathing
heavily, dropped
his rock and replaced it with Tara's hand. “We’re gonna
go eat.”

When no one protested, they
made fast
tracks to his car. I wasn't sure the painting was finished with us,
but if it wasn't, I had no idea what to do next.

Neither White Feather nor I
stirred. We
sat there, staring at the remaining piles of dirt.

The torched glassy dirt
reminded me of
Sarah's cabin. “Melted sand.” The grit was not completely
melted and was more clumped, but my torch wasn’t as hot as the
explosion at Sarah’s cabin. “There was melted sand around
Sarah's cabin. And a sand painting inside. I wonder if it had
anything to do with this one.”

White Feather shook his
head. “I
doubt it.”

“This painting wanted you
to stay
at home. What if Sarah's painting kept her at home until Claire acted
out a sand painting ritual? Do you think Claire wanted you at home to
act out this painting?”

He shook his head. “Maybe.
But
if Sarah had a painting that kept her at home, she wasn't being lured
as a love-interest, at least not by Claire. I don't see any real
connection.”

“Hmm.”

Quiet settled in around us.
The silence
was comforting; mother nature offered a hug through the twilight.

After a few moments, White
Feather
reached for me. He put his arm around me and we stood. “Eating
would be good.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“Claire didn’t have any
magic.”

“That’s what Tara said.”

He kicked at the pulverized
dust,
scattering bits into the wet juniper branches.

He held my hand as we
headed inside,
but I wasn't completely reassured. There were pieces to the puzzle
missing, but Claire must have known Sarah somehow.

We argued for almost an
hour, minus the
time I was in the shower. My focus was off. I avoided anything but
the discussion about the sand painting because I didn’t want to
sound like a jealous shrew. On top of that, eye contact was almost
impossible. I could only steal the occasional glance in White
Feather's direction because he was dressed in a t-shirt and a towel.

His pants were in the
dryer, and they
weren’t drying quickly. I usually hung my clothes out on the
line because the dryer lost most of its heat to the hallway. It was
imperative to my sanity that his pants get dry as soon as possible.

We were both hungry and not
just for
food. Most of me was exhausted. Certain other parts said to hell with
food or sleep. All I needed was right in front of me, perched at the
kitchen table where I almost couldn’t tell he was half-naked.

His black hair was
wind-blown, curling
on the ends. His green eyes were tired, but bright and focused. My
largest t-shirt was a guy’s medium. His chest and arm muscles
were going to split the seams.