by Faith Hunter
“I’ll do my best.”
I removed the sliver of the Blood Cross and gripped it in one hand. I tucked the iron discs in a Velcro pocket at my right hip. Overhead, the rumble of thunder sounded. Wind whipped through the cemetery, smelling of ozone and rain. Shorter strands of my hair were yanked loose from the bun, stinging my face, tangling in my eyelashes. While watching Molly, I tumbled the blood diamond from its lead-lined pouch into my palm. Her eyes found me instantly, and the stone went from icy cold where it touched me, to a pleasant warmth in my hand, to fiery, as if it had been heated by a flame. It felt as if it wanted my attention, even as I watched Molly. It was just a stone, but it felt like more. It felt . . . interested.
Curious.
Alive.
So very wrong.
CHAPTER 26
Dressed Like a Man of My People
Sitting in a witch circle—again—felt like a really bad idea. We had tried something similar once and it had ended badly. Unfortunately, I had no better ideas. And humans were dying. The fifty-two were dead. Pinkie was dead. Homeless people were disappearing. Humans were close to rioting in the streets. My choices were limited. So I stood close to the inner ring with the others, and across from Molly.
Four witches sitting inside the largest circle spoke softly, the words in unison. “Surgent in terra,” in Latin instead of the Gaelic I was accustomed to hearing from Molly’s kin. The large outer circle rose with a brownish light and a thrum of power that I felt through the earth. They blessed it with a second spell, “Benedictionibus lucem,” and the color of the ward lightened into a rosy hue, like flower petals.
The witches of the middle circle sat and spoke their spell, “Arma, mediante circulus.” The pale green energies of the middle circle rose as I figured out the meaning of the wyrds as arm the middle circle, enclosing them, an answering pulse that I felt in the air as an updraft rising toward the clouds. The sky grumbled overhead. A crack of lightning hit the ground deep in the tree line, close enough to brighten the scene in flickering uncertainty. Instantly the boom of thunder sounded. “Benedictionibus lucem,” the witch sitting at true north, in the outer circle, said.
Dangerous wyrds, my Beast whispered at me.
Blessed light? I thought back.
Dangerous spell. Cannot tell what will happen with witches and storm. Overhead, thunder rumbled, far off and rolling closer. Storm is drawn to power.
Yeah. I swallowed, my throat dry and painful. I got that too.
Sabina rose to her feet inside the middle circle she had just helped to raise, removed a small box from her sleeve, opened it, and took out something that crinkled, a plastic Baggie, saying, “Ad esca in captionem.” Something about a trap. Baiting a trap? Even before I saw her open the Baggie I smelled it. Raw and scorched at the same time. But not exactly rotting. Sabina had found the gobbet of flesh Santana tore out of his body at our last attempt. Yeah. Or I could use the hairs in Bruiser’s pocket. I had forgotten he carried them. A little late now. I looked to him and patted my pocket. Even across the distance I saw his eyes widen.
Sabina placed the stinking flesh on the ground inside the center circle, which was all of four feet across. She pointed at me to step into the circle. I looked at Bruiser and lifted one corner of my mouth. He was holding KitKit and the small envelope containing three scorched hairs from the head of the Son of Darkness. And he was smiling at Molly. It was a really nasty smile.
I stepped into the inner circle but I didn’t sit. No way. I stood, bent kneed, relaxed, balanced, with the gobbet of flesh between my boot heels. And this time I was armed to the teeth. If the weapons made the spell go wonky, they’d have to think of something else. Sabina didn’t remark on the metal I carried, her eyes flickering over me in what looked like approval, before she returned to her position and sat. Wind gusted through the cemetery, the wards being air permeable. The candle flames, protected in glass globes, wavered and stuttered.
Molly looked up at me from where she sat and shivered, her eyes on my hands holding the power her death magics desired. She was sitting in guru position, her legs in full lotus, back straight, arms relaxed. She took a slow breath, her smile widening. All by herself, like a solo portion of a concert, she said, “In carceribus incarcero. In carcerem condidit ignis.” Something about fire and jails and—
Scarlet fire shot up from the inner concrete trough in the earth, so hot it blazed against my skin before it settled into simply uncomfortable. I started to sweat. Usually wards weren’t hot, but this was a different kind of spell. Stronger than any I had seen before and reaching up to the heavens and the storms that brewed there.
Danger, Beast murmured to me again.
Yeah. I noticed. From every corner.
Are no corners. Circles.
I didn’t laugh, though she hacked at her own humor. My big-cat had a point.
Overhead, lightning flashed and broke apart into splinters of power. It quaked across the sky in fractals of energy, throwing the cemetery into stark white and night black.
Several things happened in a single instant. The vamp-angels atop the mausoleums seemed to move and shift in the lightning light, feathered wings lifting. Illusion—eerie, but illusion. The air smelled of ozone and force, as if gathering to be used.
The blood diamond I was holding in my left fist took on the color of the circle, glowing the shade of blood. This was the moment I expected Molly to try for the diamond, but instead, she blinked and fell back, catching herself on her hands, palms flat to the earth and arms locked. She looked surprised, but I didn’t know why.
Power from the diamond expanded and shivered through me, unexpected, shocking, prickling like a thousand needles into my flesh. I gasped as the pain went deeper, and my right hand and arm began to quiver, the hand that had been burned and scarred by the wyrd of Joseph Santana. The lightning faded as I switched hands and shook the diamond in my left palm like dice, to keep the gem from burning me.
Over her shoulder, Molly said to Sabina, “I’m ready.”
Beyond the outer circle it started to rain, the drops splatting and drumming and sliding down the outer ward where it closed overhead. Not that it mattered, but I had never figured out how magical energies were constructed to allow air for the witches to breathe and light for them to see by—which was energy and would seem to be an interference—but not allow anything else through. The witches had created the concept of semipermeable in their wards long before science had discovered it. Outside the wards, Bruiser was getting soaked. And so was the cat in her cage.
Sabina nodded to me. I juggled the sliver of the Blood Cross into my right palm, held the diamond in my fingertips, and pulled out a small throwing blade, one so pointed-sharp it would pierce flesh before I knew it had touched. “I hate this part,” I muttered as I rearranged the diamond again, careful to keep a firm grip on it. I didn’t want to see what might happen if I dropped it and it hit a witch circle. I stabbed the tip of my thumb. In the same instant, lightning slammed down. Hit close by, a white flash of light as pain shot through me, an electric shock that skittered along my skin, up my neck and across my scalp, down my spine to my toes. I flinched at the dual sensations. Blood welled. I wiped the knife off on my leathers and sheathed it, taking the diamond in my right hand, holding it out of the blood.
My blood slid down the pad of my thumb, stretching into the creases of the inside of the knuckle, where it pooled, welled up, and slid down my proximal phalanx, toward my palm and the sliver of the Blood Cross. My blood spread through the creases of my palm to puddle in a growing pool. When I had about a quarter-sized pool, I nudged the sliver of ancient wood into it.
Nothing happened. Five seconds went by. Then ten. Twenty. At half a minute I said, “Nothing happened.” Since it was supposed to harm or kill vamps, were-creatures, and even my species, I had expected the sliver of the Blood Cross to react to my blood. I looked up from the bloody pool to Molly, who shook her head in confusion. I transferred my gaze to Lachish. “Suggestions?�
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“None. Sabina?”
“None,” the priestess said. “Clean the weapon and secure it safely.”
Meaning keep it handy to use in case the SoD showed up, but not so close that I dropped it. Making sure I didn’t get my blood on anything important, I threaded the sliver through my gorget, hooking it in the links. I’d worn it that way once before and it worked fine.
Wind swirled through the circles, sending the candle flames jumping and dancing, like captured djinns. The wind smelled wet, clean, rainy, and strongly of the ozone of lightning.
From my right pocket, I pulled the iron discs and carefully set them into the congealing, cooling blood of my left palm. A jolt of energy passed through me, too fast to analyze, a sizzle of icy heat, like mainlining pure menthol, potent and prickly. And just as quickly as it passed over me, the sensation died.
Lightning blasted into the earth close to the Rousseau mausoleum, and I closed my eyes against the glare for a moment. Glanced up to see the outline of Eli still in place, being pounded by the rain. He lifted a hand to show he was fine. Bruiser stood just beyond the outer circle, soaking wet, in his leathers. He was holding KitKit in both hands, as close to Molly as he could get without breaking a circle.
I took two slow breaths to settle myself and lifted the iron discs out of my blood. Heedless of smearing my own blood on my fighting leathers, I stuffed the discs into a pocket. Keeping my head up and half an eye on Molly, so I could see every threat possible, I took the blood diamond in my right hand and dropped it into my palm, into the blood pooled there. Time changed. Slowed. Stretched. The raindrops hitting the ward seemed to move like warm honey instead of water. And I wasn’t causing the time shift this time. The diamond was. I felt a distinct tug back across the Mississippi River, in the heart of New Orleans, a pull so strong I could have followed it like a dog with a scent. Santana. A moment later, time sped up again and Sabina nodded.
Yeah. It had been suggested that I could sense Santana, that we were connected by way of the diamond in my hand and the crystal on his bracelet. Well, it seemed that was true, though whether I could call him to me was another matter. I was bait or I was useless. And if I was bait, I might be dead. I blew out gathering tension and tried to relax.
Together the witches called out in unison, “Voco, Yosace Bar-Ioudas! Joseph Santana, excieo!”
Directly overhead, lightning struck.
I saw it crackle down, reaching for the ground right in front of my toes. A bolt wider than my waist, shivering with power, blinding white-blue-black. Searing my eyes. A smaller bolt reached up from the ground, a thin trickle stretching high. As if guiding the greater energies down. They connected. The bolt from the heavens rammed down on the smaller thread. Hit, slamming against the earth. I heard the explosion begin, a roar that beat against my eardrums. Felt the power lift me. Saw my boots leave the ground. Saw them cross over the edge of the wyrd spell. Above me, I saw the impression of wings, one pair black and sooty, shadowed by the lightning, one pair white, reflecting it.
Multiple energies encased me, shocked through me. Witch magics. Lightning. Not pain exactly, not yet, but sensation—heat and cold all at once. Smaller, but distinct, I felt a sear of pain burning in my closed fist. In my palm. Where the blood diamond was resting in my blood. Maybe that hadn’t been such a good idea.
I didn’t hit the ground. I think I was still in the air. Flying. Stuck in time and space. The world went black. Silent. The way it might if I was dead. Or dying. Or if I did hit the ground, maybe I was dead before I landed.
A second pain followed, suggesting that I was still alive. This pain was in my chest. Over the place where the sliver of wood from the Blood Cross was snagged in my gorget, pure heat as it tagged the titanium. Oh yeah. Three bad ideas together—witch magics, lightning, and magical artifacts. The pain pulsed through me, increasing but still muted, as if stuck in balls of cotton. As if, when they released, I was going to suffer, and badly. If I survived at all.
Beast? I thought. She didn’t answer.
Time had stopped for me. It had done that before. Each time I nearly died from my body’s reaction. Maybe if I was dying, time would stop automatically, time and my body’s perception of it, my consciousness slipping into the Gray Between. As if the two were related in causality—death and time.
I reached outside of me, and inside of me, searching for the Gray Between, the space/no-space of matter/energy where my power rested. Nothing happened. Not for a long beat of no-time. And then I felt it answer me. Sluggish. Cold. A silver mist that lifted and swirled slowly, shimmering, touched with black and silver and blue motes of power that trembled and quivered and tried to move like the dancing motes of energy they were in real time. But there they couldn’t quite seem to twirl and pirouette like they normally did.
I was stuck outside of time, hanging in the air in the middle of a lightning strike. Probably dying.
Light flashed at me. Sound thudded at me. Pain lanced through me from my hand and my chest. Pain like fire and blades and glacial ice all mixed together. An ache in my heart and lungs and every nerve ending in my flesh, like poison spreading.
As fast as it hit me, the sensation was gone again. A moment of real time in the real world. Separate from the world I was inhabiting right now. Bad. I was hurt bad. If I’d had access to my own lungs, I would have gasped and screamed and groaned.
Jane?
Beast! Where were you?
Jane is hurt. Jane is dying.
Kinda guessed that. Getting used to it.
Come.
Instantly I was in my soul home, the cavern deep beneath the Appalachian Mountains, and I gasped in air. Cold and damp and fresh air. I was crouched, arms wrapped around my knees, breathing hard in this nonreality, as if I’d been running and needed to catch up on oxygen, though I probably wasn’t breathing in my physical body, back there, in linear time.
There, in that cavern, I was safe. It was the place where I first was led into my wesa form, my bobcat form as a child of five, and watched edoda, my father, shift into his tlvdatsi form, his panther, one so unlike my Beast. Edoda’s panther had been a black panther, the rare melanistic coat color of the species. My first shift had taken place in the cavern that was the physical manifestation of my soul home. I had memory of the cave in the natural world, though I had never been back to it. It was a real place, perhaps lost to humankind again, since the nunahi-duna-dlo-hilu-i, the Trail of Tears. It may have fallen into disuse with so many of The People gone. It might be forgotten entirely. But there in the Gray Between, the cavern was a real place again. Real to me.
A faint light came from my right fist. I was holding the blood diamond, but there, it was glowing a pure white light, as bright as the sun. I tucked my hand beneath my thigh to protect my eyes from the brightness, but the glow escaped from between my fingers, shining through my flesh, illuminating my bones. I could feel no blood on the gem. There I was unwounded, hadn’t pricked myself with the knife.
Keeping my fist hidden, I rose to my feet in the cave, in the dark, smelling something burning, unidentified, but inorganic, the scent acrid and dry, like hot metal and acid. There was only the light escaping from my fist, but I knew the cave as well as I knew my human form. I moved through the dark and knelt at the fire pit, one knee on the cold stone floor. Found the matches that had never been there before—matches being a white man’s invention, the easy way to make fire, even with one hand unusable. But they were there then, when I needed them. I struck one, looking away from the flame to protect my night vision. Beside the circle of stones there was a pile of wood shavings and sawdust. Small, dried-out branches. Larger logs, split by an ax. I lit the tinder, starting a fire. Coaxed it to grow and spread. Added little strips of wood, and then the larger branches, until it was crackling and putting out heat.
To the side, in the widening glow of the flames, I saw Beast, curled in a tight ball, her tail wrapped around and covering her front paws. Her eyes were glowing, reflecting the flam
es, staring at me.
“Hey,” I said to her, aloud.
Jane is dying. Must decide.
“Decide what?”
Decide.
“Not very helpful,” I admonished. Beast huffed, watching me. “Dying is getting old,” I added.
I looked down at myself. I was wearing moccasins, plain and unadorned, tied at my ankles with thongs. I was dressed in a cotton shirt that hung over my leggings, a fringed cloth around my waist as a belt. A medicine bag hung on a leather thong around my neck to dangle over my heart, the leather dyed green on one side and black on the other. An empty knife sheath was belted at my hip. I was dressed like a man of my people, a hunter. A warrior. A War Woman? Had we dressed as men when we went to war? Was I at war right then? My hair was braided to either side of my head and the hair swayed with my motion.
In that reality, the sliver of the Blood Cross had been run through my shirt like a needle, keeping it in place. I pulled the sliver with my left hand and hefted the two weapons in my hands as if measuring their weights, sliver in one fist, glistening diamond in the other.
Near the fire was a shotgun and a pistol and a knife I recognized. Edoda’s knife, the bone hilt crosshatched for a good grip. Beside that knife was another knife I knew, the curved blade sheathed in the red velvet. Bruiser’s gift. I was surprised to see it there. And then again, I wasn’t. Were my father’s weapons part of the decision I had to make? Was Bruiser part of it? Clothes of a War Woman. Weapons of a warrior from my father’s time. Arcane weapons from my own time. A killing weapon from Bruiser. What else?
I looked up from the weapons lit by the steady flames into the arc of the smooth cavern roof with its hanging stalactites, and down where the ceiling curved into the walls. Shadows moved where the stalagmites rose from the floor, wet and glistening. But the stone that composed my soul home was different. Where it was once pale, it was now dark.