Lupi 04 - Night Season

Cullen said gravely. “I like it.”
    â€œHow long does it get when—”
    Lily hushed her, McClosky sputtered, and the presidential aide snickered. Cullen was pretty sure it was her, anyway.
    He glanced at the clock on the wall. Seven minutes.
    Clock time was an artificial construction, but numbers resonate magically, especially when used with intention. After some discussion, he and the councilor had settled on 9:05 to begin the casting. The two primes separated by a null suited the parameters of the spell.
    â€œIt’s almost showtime, ladies and gentlemen,” Cullen said, taking in the scent of the room. A couple of those present were frightened, but that wasn’t unreasonable. They seemed to have it under control. “Any last questions?”
    â€œUh, do we need to clear our minds or something?” McClosky asked.
    â€œOnly if you’re hoping to contact the dearly departed. This isn’t a séance.”
    Marilyn Wright had a cool, dry voice that reminded him of Mika. “Are the rest of us likely to experience anything?”
    He shrugged. “It’s not my spell. Councilor?”
    â€œIf you is having a Gift, you is maybe having sight or feeling of shield. If no Gift, you seeing, feeling, nothing.” He turned a wormy smile on Lily. “For the sensitive, as energies raised, she is likely feeling them on skin.”
    One of the many things the councilor had promised to explain once they were shielded was how, exactly, he knew about Lily. Cynna thought that Earth’s gnomish elders must have learned about Lily’s Gift from Gan and passed that information to the gnomes in Edge.
    That was one possibility. Another was that the Edge bunch was in league with a certain goddess—the one who wanted to destroy the lupi, find the Codex Arcanum, and copy it onto Lily’s brain-wiped body and mind. Cullen didn’t consider that likely. Lily would probably have picked up Her taint when she touched them if any of them were closely linked to Her. But it remained a possibility.
    Dammit, Lily should not be here. Not that he expected anything to go wrong, and if it did, Lily’s Gift should protect her, but…never mind. He had to deal with what was, not the way he thought things ought to be.
    Cullen blinked slowly. Both types of seeing were always present, but physical vision was so vivid it normally drowned out the other. It took a moment’s concentration to shift his attention to his other vision. He checked the altar, its contents, and the three circles surrounding it—his, still unset but marked by four black and four white candles; the shield spell itself, drawn in white chalk by the gnome; and the circle of people sitting on the floor inside the first two circles.
    He also checked the silver pendant worn by the bald man and the stone set in the warrior woman’s sword. He’d recognized them yesterday for charms—quite sophisticated, not terribly powerful, and only intermittently active.
    As before, the power they did possess was directed at their wearers. He glanced at the clock again. And began.
    The concrete floor was rough and cool beneath Cullen’s feet. He limped heavily on the curled-up ball of his foot, but that was better than introducing crutches into the energy here.
    They’d pulled up the carpet yesterday, and two witches from Sherry’s coven had given the floor a seawater scrubbing…much to the gnome’s amusement. Smug little bastard seemed to think cleansing was some quaint local superstition, but dammit, Cullen knew better. He could see the energy, couldn’t he? An experienced caster of whatever practice didn’t need to physically cleanse everything for most spells, but for the big ones, yeah. It mattered. And this was ley line magic. Achieving anything approaching real balance would be a bitch made bitchier by sloppy prep.
    As he passed the first candle, he flicked a finger at it. It lit.
    Someone gasped. He continued to move, his attention on the energies he drew with him as he walked sunwise around the circle. He would make three circuits.
    The gnome had claimed Cullen didn’t need a spell circle. Cullen had ignored him. Were all practitioners in Edge sloppy? Or were they so impossibly advanced they truly didn’t need to set a circle to contain their magic?
    He wasn’t. The shield spell was supposed to keep things out. His circle would keep things in. Admittedly, he