by Faith Hunter
Eli grunted in worry, propped a hip on the large oak desk, and pulled out his phone, probably to text Bruiser to get back to the house. My honeybunch was out in the vineyard, checking the youngest vines and the new trellis and the stability of the terraces down the hill from the house. Beast had smelled him on the wind as we raced inside and located him reliably. Bruiser wasn’t alone. He was with Brute, the white werewolf, and Pea, the grindylow. Not things I had consciously noted until I needed to.
Alex slanted sharp eyes at us and went to work, minimizing two of his screens, searching through private vampire sites he was able to access because of my position in Mithran hierarchy, and other sites that were open to the public. Beast dropped to the floor as he worked and pulled the ceramic water bowl to her with a paw. There were water bowls placed strategically throughout the house, all ceramic, since she refused to drink out of metal bowls, preferring toilet water to the taste of steel. Which had been gack until I was able to explain to the humans what was wrong. She lapped water.
The house had been an inn and vineyard that I bought before I left New Orleans. I’d needed a place to lie low while either my human body died from magically induced cancer or I decided to stay in Beast’s form forever. I hadn’t known what I was buying, not exactly. I was just hunting for acreage and I bought a property that had gone into foreclosure after the original owners’ costly divorce. Now it was territory for Beast and a house big enough for my family and clan to live with me. If I survived.
Eli asked. “Did you hear Ed psychically through the binding?”
Beast stopped drinking and looked up at him. I/we nodded once. Deep inside, my thoughts plundered the empty place where Ed had been, a place that was now raw and bleeding and broken. He had been here, inside of us, all this time, bound to me as his mistress. Now he was gone. I needed to help him. I needed to help him now. And I couldn’t.
Beast will hunt for Ed, she thought.
Ed is far away, I thought back.
“You’re all wet,” Eli said. “What’d you do, fall in the creek?”
Beast snarled.
Eli’s face seemed permanently creased with mixed emotions, complex weavings of fury, despair, anger, grief. He seldom laughed these days, and I was the problem. If he could heal me by shooting something, I’d be healthy and happy, because he was going through ammo as if it grew on trees, in the outdoor shooting range he had set up. But he was helpless in the face of a magical disease that no one knew how to treat. A rare moment of amusement lit his face. “You did,” Eli said. “You fell in.”
Beast snarled at him and thought at me, Do not like water. Hate water. Hate cold water. Water helped deer get away. Water stole deer.
I let my thoughts riffle through Beast’s memory and saw her landing in the icy water, plunging beneath. Inside, I laughed but said nothing.
Beast is best hunter. Water stole deer, she insisted.
Okay, I thought.
I hunger. Want to hunt bison in Edmund car.
There were at least three bison ranches within driving distance of Asheville, and we had this conversation multiple times a week. I figured that this time it was to cheer me up, to put my fear for Edmund to the side, but it was more distraction than comfort. I mentally counted to ten.
Ten is more than five. Hunt in Ed’s car, Beast thought, observant and yet cat-adamant all at once.
Ed’s in trouble. Ed’s in danger. So no, that ain’t happening.
Beast hungers. Will Eli give dead cow?
I’m sure he will.
My cell chimed. Beast and I followed Eli to my gobag in the mudroom, the small bag hanging on the rack with other winter gear. He swiped the screen, tapped in my security code, and started back to the office, saying, “Molly, it’s Eli—”
Angie Baby screamed, “My Eddie is in trouble! My Eddie! No! No!”
Beast growled, showing killing teeth. My/our heart did a fearful, arrhythmic bump-and-pause, and then raced too fast. Again, I searched for the connection to Edmund. Gone. Severed. As if it had been cut out with a knife. It was a strange sensation, as if a part of my own body had been instantly amputated and I kept searching for it, feeling something but . . . not the missing part. Ed was mine. Ed was gone.
Molly’s voice came over the phone and my attention swept to the cell. “Sorry, Jane. Angie woke up screaming from a bad dream about Ed. We’ve been trying to calm her down, but she grabbed my cell and called.” In the background, we heard the sound of Angie Baby’s screams diminish in volume and the crooning of her father’s flute magic, soothing her.
“Eli here. Jane’s big-cat at the moment. Angie may not be having a dream.”
“What’s happening with Ed?” Molly asked, a trace of fear in her tone.
“We don’t know, except that Jane heard Ed through the vamp-binding. Alex is searching for him.”
In the background Angie’s screams crescendoed, the pitch so high it hurt Beast’s ears. She turned her ear tabs down against the noise and thought, Kits . . . Kits in trouble. Ed in trouble.
“Eli, I—This is . . . Has Ed been killed? He and Angie have a blood bond. I don’t know what to do if . . . ?” Molly’s voice trailed away, uncertainly.
I/we nodded Beast’s head up and down, then back and forth, an uncertain yes/no gesture. We stared at Eli, snarling and licking our jaw, hoping he would understand that this was really not right.
“Jane and Beast are upset too,” he said.
“I think we’ll come visit,” Molly said.
“We have the room,” Eli said.
“Yeah. I’ve seen the sales brochures,” she said wryly.
In the background, the screaming stopped. Evan said, “She’s asleep. Pack fast. More snow is coming.”
Into the cell, Molly said, “We’ll probably have to keep her in magically induced sleep, but expect us after nine tonight.”
“The county brined the street but the drive is frozen,” Eli said. “Call if you get stuck.”
“Will do.” The call ended.
From the office, I heard the Kid’s voice in quiet conversation with Grégoire, Blondie’s and Alex’s voices barely loud enough to pick out, even with Beast’s ears. Grégoire was in France with Edmund. Good. That meant up-to-date info. I/we trotted to him.
“Send me everything you have,” Alex said.
“Oui. My people do so now. Dieu vous garde en sécurité.”
“You too, dude.”
I heard a connection end and felt a smile tug at my puma lips. Only Alex would call a royal-born, centuries-old, powerful vamp dude.
“Do the Everhart-Truebloods know how sick you are?” Eli asked me as we reentered the office.
Beast snorted. Louder, Alex said, “Yeah. They know.” The younger Younger had been putting out the word, asking about magical treatments or cures for magical cancers. That meant talking to witches and revealing everything to Molly, my BFF, and her husband, air witch Big Evan. Witch boy children got magic-induced cancers often. Fighting the cancers meant a lot of study had gone into the magical and mundane cures. However, I wasn’t a witch. My cancer was different.
Molly had mostly given up on finding a cure for me. She wanted me to drink a lot of vampire blood and cross my fingers that the healing of vamps would work on me. The only problem with that cancer treatment was that Ed was my first choice, my only safe choice, and he was in Europe. Any other vamp would see how sick I am and might challenge me to a blood duel on the spot to get my lands. And besides. I knew in my heart, no amount of vamp blood was going to heal me. My DNA had doubled, folded, multiplied, shredded, and knotted itself when I bubbled time. Vamp blood wasn’t going to fix that.
My partners and I had been looking for a permanent cure. I wasn’t dead. Yet. We still had options. Sort of.
Eli placed my cell phone on the big desk. His face was intent, the expression he wore when he was st
rategizing, ideas coming, undergoing scrutiny, being filed or discarded. To Alex, he said, “Yeah. Okay. We can do this. A house full of magic-using kids.” He smiled slightly as if he was anticipating it. “This will be interesting.”
Alex tapped keys, scanned screens, grunted, and swiveled to us. “I got something,” he said.
Beast and I sat beside his chair and wrapped her long tail around our feet. The tail was warm with strong blood flow, thick, deeply furred, heavy, and cozy on our paws.
Alex leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees. That made us eye-to-eye level and brought his scent strongly to our nose. He smelled of testosterone and garlic and coffee and aftershave and worry. Beast butted his hands, which were laced and hanging between his knees in a posture that was very Eli-like. Alex’s mouth twisted into a parody of a smile and he scratched Beast behind her ears. “I’ve been in FaceTime conversation with Grégoire. Things have been happening fast in France, and there’re things Grégoire hasn’t told us, not wanting to worry you.”
Beast snarled. So did I. Blondie knew I was sick. Blondie had been keeping secrets.
“Ed,” Alex said gently, scratching, smoothing our lips back over our teeth. He looked into our eyes as if he was about to break my heart, “Was stolen from his lair in France at midday, five days ago.”
My heart stuttered.
Ed? Beast asked.
Eli’s lips twitched. On another man it would have been a scowl like thunderclouds. “We weren’t notified,” Eli said. “Why?”
“There was a fight,” Alex said, even more gently, “in a farmhouse in the wine country of France. Four of Ed’s people were killed. The house where they were laired burned to the ground.”
Ed? Our lips moved but no sound came out. Our eyes burned. But Alex didn’t appear to be grieved or as if he was about to tell me—
“His surviving people thought Ed had burrowed under the hearth, into a small safe-room lair, with three others. His vamps had been sharing blood and so they knew he was alive, but that was all they knew until they got the safe room excavated.” Alex sounded so grown up. So adult. So much like Eli in his delivery, but with his own touch, that gentleness I would never have expected when I first met him. His fingers scratched deep and Beast closed our eyes in bliss. “Because of the heat of the fire and the presence of the local law,” he said, “that rescue took place only a few hours past. Ed wasn’t in the safe room. Grégoire now assumes that Ed was taken by the attackers the day of the assault.”
Ed in cage? Beast thought, opening our eyes.
“Once his people started looking, they discovered that Pellissier Clan’s Bombardier Learjet 85 flew out of Paris four days ago with Ed and four other vampires aboard—none of them Ed’s. The aircraft landed in the Bahamas and Ed’s passport was marked. Then he disappeared. They were getting ready to inform us when I called them first.”
Beast hissed deep inside me.
We pulled away from Alex and turned to face Eli when he took up the narrative. “What we haven’t discussed with you is that there’s been a vamp war in Europe and in other parts of the world between several Naturaleza and the Mithran factions. It’s been simmering for centuries and the emperor had controlled the violence with an iron hand, but with Titus gone and Ed not yet having a loyal base, things were getting dicey. With Ed gone, I’m sure they’ve gotten worse.”
Alex said, “According to Grégoire, the local fangheads are rising and fighting between themselves.” Alex captured my attention with his eyes.
Beast didn’t like the direct stare. I held her still, waiting.
Slowly, he said, “There is no emperor. No Dark Queen. And you aren’t in any shape to fight duels. Getting you well has been and still is the goal, not fighting duels or dealing with fanghead politics. So this is not your fault. In any way. You got that?”
The Kid knew I had a guilt complex a mile wide, but I’d been working on demolishing it. Since I got sick, I hadn’t felt guilty about anything at all. Except being sick. And that was totally my fault, even if I hadn’t known I was doing it to myself at the time. I snorted in disgust.
“What’s happened?” Bruiser called from the front door. He was taking off his peacoat and pulling off snow-covered boots. Eli filled him in as my honeybunch crossed the wide space, as succinct as the former ranger could be. Three sentences, max.
“Which faction burned the house where Ed was staying?” Bruiser asked, his eyes lighting up. The former primo would know all about the political problems in Europe, and if the gleam in his eyes was an indication, he was already engrossed.
Alex said, “Things are bad over there. From what Grégoire was saying there are five key European factions, major infighting, and some of the European Mithrans have begun looking for new land to conquer. Two factions headed west, including the one that stole Ed and the Bombardier. That means that things are about to get bad in this hemisphere.”
They’ve been hiding things from us, I thought to Beast.
Jane is sick. Jane cannot help. Why tell Jane?
I’m still interested. They should have told me.
Jane is Dark Queen still? No. Jane gave up alpha among vampires. Walked away to find new territory to hunt. Jane is silly kit who does not know what she wants. Does not even know if she wants to live or die.
It isn’t that I want to die. I just don’t think I can live. And I’m nosy.
Beast swiveled her ear tabs back in disgust. She was disgusted a lot these days.
Alex said, “Grégoire debriefed me. Most of it’s bad.” Alex made eye contact with each of us, one by one, staring through the ringlets across his forehead before continuing. “Shimon Bar-Ioudas’s faction is one that headed west. His passport shows he entered the British Virgin Islands two weeks ago, with an entourage, and then disappeared. But Grégoire thinks Shimon’s people may have spearheaded the attack on Ed. He thinks Ed is now in the hands of Bar-Ioudas.”
“Bar-Ioudas? Jane killed him and fed him to the werewolf,” Eli said, frowning.
“Shimon Bar-Ioudas,” Bruiser said, “Shimon Bar-Judas, if we use the modern vernacular, is the name of the younger Son of Darkness, and according to what I know from my time as Leo’s primo, he is far worse than his older brother.” His voice was toneless and yet somehow still full of dread. “He’s gone by many titles over the years. Flayer of Mithrans, Son of Shadows, Son of Night, Soul of Darkness, Son of Deception, among others. It’s said that he was the brother who personally sacrificed his younger sister on the wood of the crosses of Calvary in the act of black magic that brought their father back from the dead and created the first of the blood drinkers.” He hesitated. “The records suggest that he ate her body while she was still alive, piece by piece, while she screamed.”
CHAPTER 2
Grégoire’s More a Lover and a Dueler Than a Politician
Beast growled. I went very, very still inside. Among my kind that was the blackest of black magic. Even hearing about it made my pelt rise in hackles. Alex’s hands went dead still and I backed away from the Kid.
“Yeah,” he said to me. “Okay. So here’s what we have on Shimon Bar-Judas,” Alex said, spinning back to his computers, his fingers flying over the keys as he accessed the files amassed by Yellowrock Securities. “The SOD Two. For a thousand years, his traditional territory was Western Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and India. With all the political unrest everywhere, he’s had to move around, and indications are he isn’t happy about that. With Leo in the grave and Titus true-dead and mostly eaten, he had two choices: challenge Grégoire and Edmund for Europe—and they might actually be better with edged weapons than he is, considering the fact that he hasn’t actively dueled in centuries—or come here and take over Leo’s lands from a woman who hasn’t forcefully claimed them.”
“Kidnapping Ed and coming here was not a strategy I expected. Or even understand,” Eli mused.
; “The Dark Queen has been silent,” Bruiser said, thinking it through. “She hasn’t raised an army or claimed more territory. She hasn’t made a show of strength. It might appear that she’s injured from the Sangre Duello and healing human-slow. Therefore, she may look like the easier conquest. He may think she is still licking her wounds, making it easier to claim her lands.” He propped his chin on a hand, the beard hair making a soft scrunch, a sound that was new in our relationship. I loved his beard. So did Beast.
“If Jane looks weak . . . Alex,” Eli said, “what’s the MOC of New York doing?”
New York had been paying tribute to Europe for centuries. If he was part of the attack in some way—
“New York lost a challenge from Rosanne Romanello of Sedona,” Alex said, glee lacing his tone. “He’s headless. Rosanne is composing formal letters of fealty to Jane, writing as the MOC of Sedona and New York. The letters will be hand delivered by messenger in a week or so, according to proper Mithran protocol.”
And no one told me. I had walked away from my responsibilities and they had let me. Eli should have slapped me upside the head and forced me back to work.
Bruiser’s brows drew together, making vertical lines on his forehead. “Once Shimon has the Americas and Edmund firmly in control, then he could turn his attention back to Europe, which by then would be headed by Grégoire. But a Grégoire without a Dark Queen backing him would be easy prey. Grégoire, for all his grace and charm and fighting ability, is not a ruler. His grief over Leo’s passing has made him into a dueling, fighting machine. Creating alliances takes a heart of stone, and Grégoire’s more a lover and a dueler than a politician.”
I’d seen Blondie duel when his emotions were involved. There was no mercy. He’d strip the flesh from his opponent before he’d stand and talk.
Alex stared at Beast. “Jane? You listening?”
The last Son of Darkness is in this hemisphere, I thought.
Ed in cage. Taken, Beast thought, thinking with me instead of thinking about deer and bison.