House of Earth and Blood

Hunt emerges from the temple to report to Bryce and Ruhn. They speculate about how the Horn might be repaired since the Oracle insisted that this is possible. Ruhn intends to ask a medwitch with healing abilities about it. After he leaves, Bryce tells Hunt about her own encounter with the Oracle. “When the Oracle looked into her smoke, she screamed. Clawed at her eyes […] I heard later that she went blind for a week” (330). Rumors of this evil portent get back to Bryce’s father, who was expecting a favorable prediction. He feels that his daughter has disgraced the family somehow and sends her packing. Bryce tells Hunt that she was never able to learn what the Oracle saw but concludes that her destiny must be horrible.

That evening, Hunt has arranged for the duo to meet with Briggs in prison. They want to learn if his people were behind the bombing at the White Raven. He presents a harrowing image since he is tortured every day and then stitched up by magic each night. He denies responsibility for Danika’s killing but thinks his people might have managed the club disaster. Surprisingly, he reveals that Danika may have been a sympathizer in the cause of human liberation.

As they leave the prison, Hunt broods about his own past experiences as an angel revolutionary. He begins to identify with Briggs until Bryce says, “Briggs is a bad person. He might have once gotten into the human rebellion for the right reasons, but he is a bad person. You aren’t. You will never be. End of story” (345).

Later that evening, Bryce and Hunt go to a shooting range in Moonwood, where they find Ruhn and two of his Aux friends at target practice. Bryce, who was taught combat skills by her stepfather, demonstrates her ability with a gun, which both surprises and pleases Hunt. He matches her accuracy as a gesture of camaraderie. She interprets his actions to mean, “I see you, Quinlan, he silently conveyed to her. And I like all of it. Right back at you, her half smile seemed to say” (352).

Bryce asks Ruhn and his friends to check the video footage from the temple on the night that the Horn was taken. Perhaps something has been missed. Before they leave, a call comes through that another murder has taken place.

As Ruhn and his friends go to the murder site, Hunt hangs back. He is protective of Bryce and asks if she’d prefer not to visit another crime scene. She insists that she needs to push through the experience. This time, the victim is a guard from Luna’s Temple who happened to be on duty the night when the Horn was taken.

Bryce notices a pattern in the location of all the murders. They connect to an invisible grid of ley lines that runs beneath all the city’s major streets. She surmises, “Maybe whoever is summoning this demon is drawing upon the power of these ley lines under the city to have the strength to summon it. If all the murders take place near them, maybe that’s how the demon appeared” (359). She asks Hunt to have someone in his unit check for temperature drops in the vicinity of each crime, which would indicate a demon summoning.

Later, the pair receives the news that the video feed from the temple has been tampered with. A segment has been patched in to conceal activity in the temple during the time the Horn was stolen. The person most likely to have swapped out the footage was Sabine—Danika’s mother.

Bryce and Hunt speculate that Sabine might have stolen the Horn. Doing so might weaken Micah’s regime and allow her to ascend into a power position among the shifter clans. If Danika saw her mother take the artifact, Sabine might have killed her own daughter to cover up the crime. Bryce thinks she might have orchestrated the bombing as well. “The bomb at the club was probably a way to either intimidate us or kill us while making it look like humans were behind it” (371).

Ruhn goes to a medwitch clinic and questions the witch in charge. She is attractive, and he finds himself drawn to her. Although she says that there is no way that traditional magic could repair the Horn artifact, more recent strides in science and magic might be able to do so. The object needs to be treated as a living being and might be healed using such procedures. The witch suggests that Ruhn consult the new witch queen—Hypaxia. This is the woman his father is eager for Ruhn to marry.

Hunt’s team member at headquarters, a wraith named Viktoria, is able to detect temperature fluctuations in the areas where the kristallos was summoned. Its signature could be detected all over the wolf district of Moonwood, looking for someone or something.

That night, Bryce and Hunt return home in the pouring rain. It occurs to Hunt that the kristallos might be moving about in the sewer tunnels that run under the streets because these parallel the ley lines. Over Bryce’s objections, they investigate the filthy sewers but find nothing.