Ravensong’s voice rang out: “The circle is closed! So mote it be!”
I echoed her: “So mote it be!”
The circle closed with an almost audible pop as if the pressure inside it was denser than the outside world.
“Can’t . . . hold,” Lila said through gritted teeth.
“Shut down, we’ve got it,” Ravensong said.
Lila didn’t argue, just stepped away from the table and let us have a clear view of the enchanted bottle, because that was what it had to be. You didn’t find many enchanted items in modern times, things where the magic had been forged into each piece of its making. Most of them were old, the art of their making lost centuries ago, and they were all powerful.
The stopper unscrewed itself, tittering at the mouth of the bottle, balanced to fall. Something dark moved up the side of the crystal bottle. There wasn’t time to cross the distance, but we stood within sacred space and there were other ways to move. Ravensong reached toward the bottle with her hand, but it was her totem, a phantom raccoon, that raced across the floor to climb the table and try to grab the stopper. It should have worked, but as the totem reached for the bottle, reality flickered in a way that I’d never seen happen inside a circle before, and when the raccoon reached the bottle, it had moved just out of reach. The stopper fell and the bottle was open. Ravensong yelled, “Bridges, get down!”
Lila dropped to the floor, covering her head as if she was tucking for an explosion. It might help protect her, or it might not. I stayed at Ravensong’s back, feeding her energy as she raised her hands and did a spell without a word or a rune, or anything but her faith and the pentagram she always wore, but she had the Goddess and the God like weight and presence inside the circle. Her raccoon had run back to her side, and I saw her other mystical companions begin to manifest around her, and my Guardian Angel began to grow at my back, and then something exploded. Ravensong and I were thrown backward into the wall. I had a choice to save myself or cushion her when we hit; I chose her, she was my priestess in that moment, and as her acting priest one of my jobs was to protect her. My head hit the wall and all the light, all the magic went away, swallowed by the darkness as I lost consciousness. My last thought was God, please keep them safe.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Hands on me; I grabbed them, fought them. Someone screamed and it wasn’t me. A voice I should have known yelled, “Havoc, they’re trying to help you.”
“Detective Havelock, stand down! That’s an order!” I knew that voice, too. It made me blink and try to look at who I was fighting. There was a paramedic crumpled on the floor beside me. Charleston loomed over both of us standing so that he looked like a giant, as tall as the ceiling. The moment I thought that, I knew something was wrong with me. Was I hurt?
“Do you know who I am?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, but my voice sounded too low, so I said it again.
“Do you know your name?”
“Havelock, Zaniel Havelock, Havoc.”
“Do you know where you are?”
I looked around the room. “Interrogation room.”
He almost smiled. “What city are you in?”
I frowned at him. “The City of Angels.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“Charleston, you’re my lieutenant.”
“Yes.”
“What happened? Why am I on the floor? What happened to the medic?”
A woman’s voice said, “You happened to him.”
I looked toward the voice, but I couldn’t see her past Charleston. “Who is that?”
She peered around Charleston’s side, looking child-sized compared to him. She looked angry. “I’m his partner.” She pointed down to the paramedic on the floor.
“What happened to him?”
“I told you, you happened.” She knelt beside her fallen partner and she looked even tinier that way. Was she really that petite or was I more out of it than I thought? Charleston was a giant and she was doll-like. It was like everything was all funhouse mirrors.
Her partner groaned and started to push his way up from the floor. She started trying to examine him, but he said, “Look at our patient first, not me.”
“Our patient knocked you cold and may have broken your nose,” she said, her voice warm with anger.
Her partner turned his head enough for me to see the blood all over the front of his face and shirt. “Did I do that?” I couldn’t remember doing it, or maybe I did. I remembered hands on me, and I hadn’t wanted them to touch me.
The female paramedic glared at me. “Yes, for the third time, you did this.”
“He’s hurt, Becki,” her partner said, and I realized he was trying to make excuses for me. That seemed really sporting of him since I’d just hit him in the face.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know who was touching me,” I said.
“He got attacked by demonic energy, Becki; anyone would fight.” He leaned against the wall and used the dressing she gave him to press against his still-bleeding nose, but that was all he’d let her do for him. He insisted on her looking at me first. I might owe him a drink later if he kept being that nice about it.
Becki grumbled, but she knelt beside me and again she fit between me and the closest chair. I wasn’t hallucinating, she was just that tiny.
She looked at my eyes with a flashlight, then told me to use just my eyes to follow her finger as she moved it back and forth. Her frown softened a little. I didn’t know if that was good or bad, or just meant she was calming down.
“Neil was trying to put a brace on your neck when you clocked him,” she said, and was back to sounding angry, maybe it was just her default.
“Can you wiggle your fingers and toes?” Neil asked, his voice muffled from holding the dressing against his nose.
I looked down my body to try moving everything and noticed there was fresh dressing and medical tape across my stomach. I ignored it for now and tried to move my fingers and toes. “Everything moves,” I said.
“Good,” he said.
“Why are there fresh bandages on my stomach?”
“The wounds on your stomach started bleeding again,” Neil said.
“If they’d put stitches in at the hospital they wouldn’t have started bleeding again,” Becki said, frowning her disapproval.
“It was already healed closed, so the doctor didn’t think it was necessary. Did the wounds reopen?” I asked.
“No, but there was still blood coming through the wounds when we got here,” Neil said.
“The attack was just earlier today, though, right?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“But angel magic healed it,” Neil said, and his voice sounded wetter, as if more blood was going down the back of his throat. That was not a good sound. It meant I’d really done a number on his nose. I might owe him more than just a drink.
“You told them what happened at the hospital,” I said, looking up at Charleston.
“I told them what I could, but I’m a Voodoo Priest, not an angel worker, so I could only give them the magic I could sense and what you said was happening.”
“Why didn’t the angels heal it completely?” Becki asked.