Shattered Bonds

by Faith Hunter

  I had been in Louisiana, and was now, once again, in the Appalachians, two places where one of the biggest liminal lines ran. A place where Beast had once seen a young arcenciel and let the young one eat her dinner. That realization made my salted pelt stand up on end. I had been pulled back and forth between parts of the world touched by liminal lines. Coincidence? Or serendipity? Or the plans of a higher being? Hayyel. Dang it!

  “Beast. Beast?”

  I raised my head to see Savannah. “Sorry. Woolgathering.”

  Beast wants to gather and eat sheep.

  I laughed and the Elder glared at me.

  The session broke up moments later, as if Savannah Walkingstick could tell I had been pulled out of the necessary frame of mind to continue. We dressed in our clothes, mine damp, sour, and stinky from creek water.

  I walked her through the snow to her car and watched her leave, her four-wheel-drive making fresh tracks in more new-fallen snow.

  When I was sure she was gone, I went to the house, to Alex’s work area, and asked Alex to pull up a map of the liminal lines and ley lines. And to overlap them. There were way more than three lines of earth power. There were dozens of ley lines just across the U.S. And there were also a series of pentagrams across the U.S., formed by ley lines, perhaps the most clear one in the Southeast. One of the lines passed between southeast Louisiana and close to Asheville. “Well, dang,” I whispered. I was right.

  I touched my middle and investigated myself with Beast’s eyes, eyes that could see magic better than my own eyes could. I might not have cancer in this form, but my own pentagram magics were still clear and potent. “Do me a favor,” I said. “Start looking for any ley lines that run through this property, especially if it intersects this liminal line.” I pointed.

  “Why?” he asked, his voice dropping low, like mine.

  I had a possible answer, but I wasn’t ready to commit. Hey, we have a ley line on this land. How’s that for coincidence! Not. Because if we did have a ley line near here, then I had to assume that Hayyel was involved in the happenstance of . . . of everything, making sure I purchased this land and would be here to discover it. Worse, despite his surprise when he realized that I had a magical tumor, it might be possible that Hayyel had participated in my getting sick. I didn’t trust the angel. “Not sure yet. But it’s worth checking out, to see if something magical or odd is close by.”

  “Okay fine. But you need to shower. You’re”—his face took on an expression of glee, having caught me in a sin once often ascribed to him—“stinky.”

  “Yeah. I am.” I ruffled his curls with my too-big hand and ran out of the room and up the stairs for the shower. Fortunately for my enjoyment, Shiloh was no longer lying in my tub.

  CHAPTER 9

  You Are the Dark Queen of Holding Grudges

  I was trying to eat—my fangs made it hard to chew oatmeal—when a sleepy Alex brought my cell, his laptop, and three other tablets to the kitchen. It was as if he was moving his electronic HQ. He set the cell on the counter near my elbow. “Your brother,” he said.

  I glanced at the cell and at Eli. “Guess he doesn’t mean you.”

  “Negative. I’m not a timewalker. Can’t be here and on the phone to you at the same time. Take the call.”

  “Mmmm. Do I havta?”

  Eli’s lips did that twitchy thing that passed for a smile. Or gas. Or cramps.

  “Fine. Speaker,” I said. Alex tapped on the screen and the speaker came on. “Yellowrock here,” I said.

  “E-igido. Dalonige’ i Digadoli,” he said in the speech of The People. “I have received your message.” E-igido. My sister. “I have also spoken to Uni Lisi, our grandmother. She wishes to Nuwhtohiyada gotlvdi.” Make peace.

  I thought about the memory of the longhouse and the old woman and the outclan vampire. I started to reply and stopped. There was so much to learn. To remember. My silence went on too long.

  “You cannot avoid family and clan forever, e-igido.”

  “Whatever. I’ll just avoid you all as long as you avoided me.” I sounded snarky, like a teenager with few social skills and less wisdom. And I didn’t care. My gramma might have evil ends in mind. It wasn’t like she had ever baked cookies for me. Not by a long shot. I smiled, knowing it wasn’t a pretty one. “That means I can ignore you for a few years.”

  “Perhaps we deserve that. But your anger will eat at you from the inside, e-igido. I know this. I have dealt with my own anger. My own loss.”

  Littermate wishes to teach Jane. Beast was stretched out on a ledge in my mind, in the alcove that was her den in our soul home. Her tail snaked slowly back and forth, the gesture amused and irritated all at once, as only a cat can be. Jane is Beast. Beast is best hunter. Beast does not need male littermate to teach.

  I upended a liter of Gatorade, crushing the bottle with a crackle of plastic, forcing the liquid down my throat. It was empty in two seconds. I tossed the plastic in the recycle bin, where it rattled. “Usdiga,” I said, in Tsalagi, using a term I hadn’t known I remembered, one that meant baby boy, or little brother, a word that could be kind or insulting depending on circumstances and tone. Mine made it a faint insult. “I don’t have a lot of time right now. Family reunions will have to wait until I live or die. You got my message so you know the Son of Darkness Number Two, aka the Son of Shadows, aka Shimon Bar-Judas, aka Shimon Bar-Ioudas, aka the Flayer of Mithrans, is on his way to Asheville. You know I’ll likely have to fight him.”

  Ayatas didn’t answer right away. Maybe I was on hold. Maybe he fell asleep. I was ready to hang up when he replied, his tone all business, no longer family oriented. “PsyLED is tracking this vampire, as are a number of state and federal agencies and departments. The Flayer of Mithrans will not be a problem to you, my sister.”

  “Sure. Because they’ve done such a bang-up job so far, protecting the humans and me from the big bad uglies. I’m betting that with the exception of you, it’s a humans-only tracking team after Shimon, and not one single witch or vamp in the group.”

  “He will not concern you,” Ayatas ground out. “Stay out of this.”

  I rubbed my forehead, feeling a headache coming on. “I’m safe. Everyone is safe. The gov’ment is gonna protect us all. Forgive me if I have little confidence in any of you.”

  Ayatas sighed through his nose, a Cherokee breath that could mean so many things in different contexts. It brought an unexpected, but short-lived, sense of comfort to me. He said, “You do not have clearance for anything I might know.” He hesitated. I waited. “However, I know a great deal about the creature called the Son of Shadows. One of my units has done some digging and we believe a core group—or a splinter group—of his people have been in the States for some time. Several of my people are quietly tracking him.”

  Onscreen, the footage replayed, two vehicles pulled up in my driveway and the blond vamp ripped out the throat of my scion. They had known where I lived. I shared that insight with Ayatas and added, “You may be right that there are splinter groups here, or antagonistic groups here.” They had bled and read Shiloh and she had told them everything because she was weak and unprotected. I had left her weak and unprotected, when she could have been safe with Amy Lynn Brown and Clan Shaddock. She was part of my clan and she had been tortured on my watch. “They know where I am,” I said softly.

  He was silent, and I wondered if he was multitasking, not really paying attention. He asked, “Is your home defensible?”

  “Now, that was a good question, usdiga. I’m impressed. It isn’t defendable against rocket launchers or tanks, but we aren’t sitting ducks.” And one group of vamps might think we have two of their people, who might actually both be true-dead from Eli’s silver-shot. Didn’t say that. Nope. “Shimon officially arrives in town tonight at dusk for parley. I plan to do all the talking and chitchat at . . .” I stopped. “At an agreed-upon location, one where all the h
umans have been sent away, so no locals will become collateral. If there’s a war, with blood and guts and casualties, it’ll take place out here, at the winery, far from the tourists.”

  “Tell me where he will be. I can help. In my official capacity.”

  As opposed to his brotherly capacity. He was speaking in the voice of PsyLED, not whatever another option might be. And I knew that if the government was involved, they might just bomb the hotel and to hell with any human casualties. Or Edmund. I nearly whispered, saying, “No. If it comes to a fight, better hope I win, because if I die, he’ll become your official problem, little brother. And it won’t be fun and games, like the Sangre Duello. It’ll be war. You might want to have the National Guard on standby with rocket launchers and tanks just in case.”

  He didn’t reply to that one. And it let me know I had been right about the kind of help that was being offered.

  “Where is Soul?” I asked.

  “You haven’t heard from her?”

  Which wasn’t an answer. I hated it when people played games. It made me want to claw them, maybe draw a little blood, make a point.

  Beast is best hunter. Want to hunt with littermate. Track and eat big deer.

  I thought you were ticked off with him. And not right now, I thought back at my other half.

  “Soul took some vacation time, and she’s due back. She hasn’t checked in with HQ yet, which is unlike her. The director fears that something has happened to her.”

  I put his comments together and said, “You think she’s been taken by fangheads? Kidnapped?” Along with Edmund and Tex and Ronald and Derek, which I didn’t say aloud. Ayatas didn’t answer. Soul in the clutches of the Flayer would be bad. Very, very bad. Soul was the only creature keeping the arcenciels in check from changing the timeline. I remembered the visions of war I had seen in my soul home.

  I shifted my gaze to Alex. On his laptop, he was already tracking Soul through credit card use and cell phone. I did not want to know how he had that access.

  “I . . . do not know,” Ayatas said slowly. Which, again, was not an answer.

  “Or she’s tracking the Son of Shadows and is too busy to get back to you.” Or she’s doing arcenciel stuff. My bet was door number two.

  “I’ll be in touch, or one of my people will.” I ended the call without saying goodbye and ate two big spoonfuls of hard-to-chew oatmeal, thinking. The oats tasted strange in this form, and felt odd on my meat-tearing teeth; the sweet taste of sugar was barely there, but the milk was the elixir of the gods. I tilted my head to Eli. “You think I’m holding grudges?”

  “Babe.” His tone was reproving.

  “Janie, you are the Dark Queen of holding grudges,” Alex said.

  “Grudges and hate make you weak,” Eli said.

  “Is it justified?”

  “Oh yeah. But remember that Ayatas is under orders and can’t help freely the way your clan members can. He’s constrained by the law, his vow of office, and his own honor. Your Cherokee family is an asset you aren’t using, out of pique, when they could probably be helpful. Keep all that in mind.” Eli, being all strategy on me, suggesting I use my by-blood family as a tool instead of treating them as people who had hurt me. That was an interesting way of viewing things. Cold and heartless, but interesting.

  To Alex I said, “Update me on the liminal lines.”

  He spun one of his tablets to me, and on it, a map of the world spread out, crisscrossed by lines in reds and blues and yellows. “There’s more than three. One liminal line runs from NOLA through Hot Springs, to New York State. Another runs from the Bahamas and through the mountains of NC.” He traced blue lines that moved in arcs like trade winds. “They cross ley lines all over the place.” The ley lines were red, and they could be straight or curled or could follow riverbeds or other geological features.

  “How about interdimensional shift openings?”

  “For starters, the Bermuda Triangle. Maybe here.” He pointed to a spot in the Atlantic Ocean. “And here”—he pointed to Greece—“is a maybe. Here in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains could be another. And here.” He shifted his finger to a place under the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. “It’s close to where you were rescued by the arcenciels not so long ago. I’m guessing they were keeping an eye on the spot where they used to travel back and forth.” His eyes were sunken and there were dark circles beneath them. “All the rift openings were lost in some tectonic shift.”

  I wasn’t sure what any of that meant, but I knew Alex needed rest. The big bad uglies would be in Asheville at dusk. I patted him on the shoulder. “Get some sleep. That’s an order.”

  It was noon and the house was full of a hundred children all running and screaming through the open space. That was the way it sounded anyway, as I climbed the stairs and fell into bed. I was about to find out what would happen if I went to sleep in half-form. I closed my eyes and fell into slumber.

  * * *

  * * *

  I woke to the feel of my whiskers being pulled. “Ow. That hurts!” I said, grabbing the little hand.

  “Dis isna a How’oween costume,” EJ said. “You tolded me a lie.”

  “How did he get in here?” Bruiser asked from my other side.

  “He’s got magic,” I said.

  “Not good magic. Waymon dead. I hadda stick him in the ground. It made me cwy.”

  I checked to make sure all the private parts were covered or pelted and sat up. “Who’s Waymon?”

  “Him my tu-tle. Mama said you sick like Waymon. Are you gonna die? Can we bury you in the backyard with Waymon?”

  “Um, no. I do not intend to die and you may not bury me.”

  EJ pouted for all of five seconds. “You wanna see my maaarbal?” He pulled a marble out of his pocket. It was a large white one with a blue cat’s-eye swirl in the middle. I was groggy with sleep but something about it hinted that I shouldn’t touch the marble. In Beast-vision it was magicked, a small golden sparkle of power against the little boy’s hand. It was a version of a no-see-ums working. Maybe a no-touch-ums working. And beneath that was a tracking device working. It was a multilayered charm and it glowed with power.

  “Mama says I gotta keep it in my pawket all the time.” He put it back in his pocket and patted his jeans. “My sissy gots one too, but hers is purple.” He leaned in and kissed my cheek. “Don’ die tonight, Ant Jane.” He slid off the bed and out the door, his little feet stomping down the hallway.

  Bruiser reached out an arm and encircled my waist, pulling me close to him, my butt against his middle. He nuzzled my neck. And started snoring. It made me smile and I closed my eyes as sleep pulled me back under.

  * * *

  * * *

  I woke screaming. Fighting. Pain like my flesh being flayed from my back.

  “Jane! Jane, it’s a dream! Jane, stop fighting!” Bruiser’s voice, afraid. The smell of his blood on the air.

  I went still, chest heaving, unballed my fists. Tried to slow my breathing. Couldn’t. “Edmund. They’re skinning him alive.”

  From the doorway, Eli said gently, “We’re here, Janie. We’ll handle it.” A weapon made clicking noises as he safetied it.

  We’ll handle it. Because I couldn’t. “He’s in a bedroom. In the Regal. There was a parley there once. I recognized the room Grégoire, or maybe it was Leo, stayed in.” I looked at Bruiser. “You’re bleeding.”

  He gave me that devil-may-care grin he had worn when I first met him. “My fiancée packs a punch.”

  From the open door, I heard screaming. Angie Baby. The electric sensation of her magic swept through the inn. I threw back the covers and raced from the room, pulling on Beast’s strength and speed. The house was the dusky dark of heavy clouds and densely falling snow, lamps lit and tiny stairway bulbs glowing. Took the staircase in a single leap. Landed three-pawed and sped across the central magic area into the f
ar wing and the panicked screams and the smell of magic. I caught myself on the doorjambs and swung to a stop in the open door. Angie was on the floor, a coloring book open and crayons scattered everywhere, but she wasn’t coloring. She was on her back, her fingers stretched up, screaming. Her magic writhed and twisted, rising, tightening, trying to form a tornado of pure, raw energy.

  Big Evan stood over her, playing his wooden flute. Molly stood at his side, feet braced, arms to the sides, hands pointed downward, drawing power from the earth. She was sweating. On the bed, the baby had started to cry, a thin, demanding wail. Eli slipped in, sprinted to Cassy, rolled across the bed, gathering her up, his momentum rotating them both to safety. Little Evan was sitting on the bed, watching, a finger in his mouth.

  There was no circle. Nothing to contain the magics Molly and Evan were working with and fighting. I’d seen them trying to contain their daughter’s raw power before. That time she had ripped the roof off the house.

  Bruiser placed the Glob in my hand and le breloque on my head. The crown sealed itself to me. Freaky as always. I studied the Everhart-Trueblood magics.

  There was no circle. Nothing I would disrupt. I walked toward the three. Molly’s eyes snapped to mine. Her face was strained and desperate, and I could almost feel the death magics pushing against her control. Her mouth formed one silent word: Help.

  I circled to the side, so Evan could see me too. His eyes were tight, the skin at the corners wrinkled, face pale against his red beard. He worked to maintain a steady breath and soothing notes, watching me. I knelt by Angie and . . . stopped. Flying. Crap. It was okay to fly without knowing the rules if it was just me who got hurt. But—

  “Hurry,” Molly said, her voice hoarse.

  Eli disappeared from the room, the baby and EJ each over a shoulder, taking them to safety. I gripped the Glob so it didn’t touch anything but my hand. And placed my fist on Angie’s chest.