by Faith Hunter
There were no ashes. No bones. No body.
Leo’s body was missing.
I wasn’t sure what I felt about that, my emotions frozen and contained, as if I held tightly to them. I opened the casket fully and inspected it with the light and with my fingers, gingerly, not touching the old blood, but moving fast, before the sunlight could set it aflame. The char in the bottom wasn’t scuffed, as if Leo had moved around. There was only the impression of a body in the bottom layer of burned blood.
On the inside of the casket was a long slide latch, a way for the thrice-born to get out of the coffin if they came back with sufficient strength. This one was still latched, though badly damaged by the crowbar.
Something caught my attention. Scratches on the metal, all along the length of the slide latch. I touched them with my fingers. They were fresh, with no blood caked in them.
Something in the back of my mind whispered that vamp fingernails were tough enough to scratch metal. But Leo had been completely covered in the pooled blood. It would have been all over and under his vamp claws. These scratches were clean.
Had someone stolen his body and then staged it to look as if he had come back from the dead a second time? I went back over the entire casket and found nothing significant. Satisfied that I would accomplish nothing more, I laid the casket lid down and duckwalked back out.
The day was much brighter than when I went in, and I squinted as I handed Bruiser the flashlight. “Better see for yourself,” I said.
He hesitated, then crawled into the dark hole. I could hear shuffling and Bruiser moving around. Wrassler questioned me with his face, eyebrows going up.
I shook my head. “Let him make up his mind what he’s seeing.”
Ten minutes later, Bruiser crawled back out. There was dust and ash all over the knees of his pants, smudged across his face. His fingers were coated with a grimy, oily, rank layer of old blood. As he stood in the sunlight, the blood flamed and was gone. His skin seemed unharmed, which was weird because I could feel the heat where I stood.
Quietly, Bruiser said, “If this is real and not staged, then Leo was awake and could not pull the latch. But I have my doubts.”
“Me too.”
“No blood in the scratches?” he asked me.
I nodded. “Yup. Come on. Let’s check out the chapel before we leave.”
Sabina, the outclan priestess, had either lived in the chapel or used it as a storage place for the relics she kept hidden in her crypt. Now, however, there was nothing left of the chapel or the crypt. The Firestarter had destroyed everything.
Like a punch to the gut, I remembered the first time I had come inside the chapel. I had been with Rick LaFleur, and we both came close to being dead. The memory of that event bled through me.
The chapel had been one long room: white-painted walls and backless wood benches in rows. It had been nighttime, and moonlight had poured through red-paned stained glass windows, tingeing everything with the tint of watered blood. At the front was a tall table with a candle and a bowl of smoking incense filling the air with the scent of rosemary, sage, and bitter camphor. There was a rocking chair beside the table and a low stone bier carved with a statue lying faceup, marble hands crossed on her chest. The stone woman was Sabina.
Bending and drawing on Beast’s strength, I pushed the stone cover, and it moved with a heavy, grating sound, stone on stone. It weighed several hundred pounds, and it took work to move it even a few inches. Behind me, Rick lit the candles with his cigar lighter. Holding one, he joined me, and we looked through the narrow opening into the crypt.
There was no coffin in the bier; the stone was lined with tufted white silk and boxes. I pulled three boxes out of the narrow crack I had made, exposing a bit of parchment from a scroll. It was so old it crumbled, flaking away. I closed the box and opened the next one. Inside the velvet-lined interior was cradled the largest pieces of the Blood Cross in the Americas, the ancient wood sticks wire wrapped, shaping them into a cross.
“You would dare to steal from me?” Before I could turn, Sabina was on me, fangs at my throat. Claws tearing my flesh.
Even now, my heart was pounding. I had never met such an old, powerful fanghead.
“Thief,” she’d hissed. Rick had drawn his weapon and prepared to fire. But the outclan priestess had immobilized him with her mind. He couldn’t even breathe. I knew what it felt like to be held like that. The adrenaline-spiked terror.
We had survived. Barely.
I pulled myself away from the terror-memory and stared at the space where the chapel had once stood. I swallowed hard.
Then I recalled the front porch. When Rick and I had walked across it, had our boots sounded a little more hollow than the rest of the chapel flooring? I leaned over the foundation and looked into the muddy mess of standing water within the low walls. The area where the porch had once stood was wetter and sloppier than the rest. “Wrassler? You got a shovel?”
“I do. But the Dark Queen won’t be shoveling this muck.”
“I need the exercise,” I said. “Shovel.”
Bruiser and Wrassler exchanged glances, and both shrugged.
I pointed to the foundation and said, “Sit.”
Amused at the dog-trainer-style command, they did.
I gave my nice waterproof boots a workout and ruined the fancy work clothes in the first fifteen minutes. From now on, I was going back to jeans and casual clothes. I really was not made to sit around and let people do things for me. On nonformal days, I needed to dress for who I really was, not what Leo and fate had made me. The men sat on the wall watching, entertained at me strong-arming a shovel and waterlogged earth.
The mud kept caving in, but I finally got below the surface of the water table, and my shovel hit rotten wood. Wrassler and I exchanged tools, and I hefted the pickax. I liked it. Well balanced and heavy enough to brain an enemy. I lifted the ax in both hands and brought it down on the wood. Putting my back into the blow. The wood split and parted. Two more strikes and water appeared, along with an underwater brick wall. The water was murky-muddy as any bayou. I stepped back, sweating but feeling really good. More like myself than in ages.
“Tunnel,” I gasped.
“No mold, no mildew, no slime on the brick,” Wrassler said, staring into the hole I had made. “Fire scorched the stone to the ground level, but not below it. Maybe this is where Sabina dug her way out?”
“I don’t think so,” Bruiser said, looking over the muddy area. “It doesn’t look disturbed.”
Wrassler said, “This looks like a water witch working, like in subbasement five. Maybe a stasis working and a spell to keep it dry. Looks as if it failed or was deliberately destroyed.”
I tossed the pickax out of the short pit and asked, “Can we get some divers?”
In a sequence that was too fast to follow, the black water erupted. Something wrapped around my throat. Claws dug in. And pulled me under.
CHAPTER 8
You Got It, Legs
In a split second I knew. Sabina. A burned, charred husk, her claws at my throat just like the first time. I remembered the burned crispy critter who had ripped off the unknown vamps’ heads.
Swimming strongly, she pulled me along a water-filled tunnel, blacker and colder than the pit of hell. The water felt thick and heavy, and my body moved through it oddly. I hadn’t gotten a breath and I needed to inhale. My lungs burned. I tried to pry her fingers off, but I might as well have been gripping titanium.
I needed air. Panic built. I struggled, my body whipping back and forth. Though there was no way I could drown, because my throat was clenched shut. My stomach roiled. I might vomit and aspirate, drowning on my own breakfast if she didn’t—
She yanked me up through the thick water and shoved my body high. She let go. I sucked in air. Rank, dank, horrible, wonderful air. My feet kicked, the water feeling
so heavy it felt like treading in oil. I gripped my throat, coughing. Breathing. Coughing. Gagging. Breathing.
“Yellowrock,” she rasped.
Sabina.
I wanted to ask how she got from the Garden District to here, but she was the outclan priestess. She had some sort of witch magic and training from before she was turned. There was some evidence she could timewalk. And there was magic in the water, sparking on my skin. Too much magic.
My body began to shift. Nonononono, I thought. If I became Beast, I might drown. My skinwalker magic rose, silver with darker motes of power. My bones snapped and popped, and something in my spine twisted in agony. But the transition stopped at half-form, a form much stronger than either of my natural forms. If Sabina came at me again, I might have half a chance. Right. Sure I would.
She lifted me by the throat and sat me on something. Like a beam under the water or a half wall. She let go of me, and I nearly fell, sucking in another gasp of stinking air. I grabbed on to my perch with both legs and one hand. With the other, I wiped water from my eyes.
“Yellowrock,” she said again. Behind her head was a pale pink light inside a water-filled glass globe. The pinkish light came from an amulet in the bottom, and it waved and sparkled as if the water moved, though it appeared motionless.
Still gagging, the pain of the shift and the fight-or-flight chemicals raging through me, a different pain ripped into my belly. Hunger.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice nearly as rough as her burned vocal cords. “Thanks for nearly drowning me.” I focused on her. She was charred and skeletal, her eyes huge and black, her fangs down on their little hinges, vamped out. Hairless. Naked so far as I could see. Like bones covered with black cracked leather.
“I saved the relics,” she said. “All are buried here, beneath the chapel, in the mud outside this tunnel.” Her other hand rose from the water, gesturing at the walls of the tunnel and the mud-soaked earth beyond. Her claws were fully extended, black as obsidian, sharper than steel knives. Woven around her fingers was a gold chain, dangling with a dozen tiny charms. “You must protect them.”
“Okay. But I have questions about Bubo bubo—”
She reached out and placed her palm on my forehead. Her fingers stretched along the top of my head. Her claws dug in, holding me in place. My vision changed.
My mind was filled with images, memories, something that might have been concepts and emotions, but all rambling and confused and demented. I began to slide off the low wall into the water. Sabina steadied me. Again I wanted to hurl as my brain spun around.
Glimpses of the Firestarter, Aurelia Flamma Scintilla, through Sabina’s memories. A hard woman, a stone statue chiseled from a block of anger. The priestess wore black robes, a silver cross on her chest. A vision of the woman throwing a fireball at a group of vampires. Old memory. Old death. Old friends, burning. The stench of vamp flesh on fire. The piercing ululation of vamps dying.
A vision of Ka N’vsita, a child with black hair down to her hips. Yellow eyes. Ka, who was a skinwalker, like me. Ka, related in some way to Grandmother. Ka, who, rather than me, was . . . sold . . . to Sabina by my grandmother. The sound of amulets and money clinking into Grandmother’s palm. Sabina and Ka, walking out of a longhouse and into a forest with the child’s hand clasped in the vamp’s. Tenderness filling the old vampire. Love. Protective instincts as old as time. Ka, dozens of memories of her, all flashing by. Ka, learning how to ride a horse sidesaddle as the white women did. How to dance while wearing a corset, petticoats, and a heavy dress. Standing in a witch circle, trying to work magic. Ka, grown, standing with Adan Bouvier, looking at him with love in her eyes, while fear grew in Sabina’s heart at the thought of losing her.
One of Sabina’s memories solidified. It was of Ka, standing with the Firestarter, Immanuel, and a blond man whose face was turned away. They stood in a cemetery with no crosses, no angels. It reminded me of the Jewish graveyard in NOLA. The women were talking, wearing clothing from the 1950s. Ka took Aurelia’s hand. In the trees was an owl.
A Eurasian eagle owl, Bubo bubo. Grandmother . . . Sabina. In the same place.
The memories whirled again. I saw the images of a more recent cemetery, peaceful, the moon hanging in the trees. Ka stood in the moonlight near a mausoleum in the vamp graveyard.
My heart leaped in my chest. Ka. Wearing modern clothing, jeans and a T-shirt with running shoes. Sabina walked out to the porch of the chapel, waiting to see what her guest wanted.
Ka looked up and saw Sabina. Their eyes met. The connection was electric. Unexpected. Wrong. The skinwalker rushed toward her. Tackled her. Fighting. Claws and fangs. Blood and speed. The stench of foul things and fury. Sabina had not fought a duel or hand-to-hand in decades. Perhaps centuries. But she was strong. She threw Ka off and raced into the chapel. Slammed the door and dropped the beam over the entrance.
Ka was alive. A wave of shock washed through me. Alive, or a really good illusion of her. Was that possible?
Through the scarlet windows, Sabina watched what happened next. The Firestarter appeared out front, standing on the far side of the cemetery. Aurelia raised her arms. I realized when this entire scene took place. It was the night of the fire in Leo’s graveyard, eight or nine months ago.
Ka, as I had feared, was working with the Firestarter.
Orbs of flames roared out from Aurelia’s hands and then in from everywhere. Fire tornadoes swirled high, fire devils, lifted on the rising wind. Trees exploded in the background. The stone of mausoleums charred and split. The statues on top of each one breaking and melting. One shattered, raining molten metal and shards of stone everywhere. She targeted the chapel. The heat like magma, so hot everything was afire instantly. The pews, the lectern, the small table. The rocking chair rocking as the flames blasted across it. Sabina. Her white robes on fire. Her hair on fire. Her skin burning.
Magic in the fire. Hatred in the fire. Curses in the fire.
Burning, screaming, Sabina slid the lid off her crypt and gathered all the relics she kept hidden there. Boxes and bags and books in sealed containers, all tossed into a larger fireproof bag and tossed into the back of the crypt even as she burned. Into the space she had made, Sabina crawled and pulled the heavy stone top over her. The fire in the chapel was cut off. Using something that didn’t burn, she batted at the flames consuming her body.
I could feel her pain, hear her screams, the ululation of a vampire dying. Except she wasn’t dead. She wasn’t consumed.
But the heat from the burning building was growing. The temperature inside the stone was rising. She crawled through more stuff to the bottom of the crypt and felt along the base until her fingers found a small niche. Inside was a tiny metal ring. She turned it. Straining against the base of the heavy vault, she began to shove a hidden doorway open, across the floor. But even with her vampire strength, it took too long.
Heat penetrated the stone, fissures formed, fine cracks. The rock fractured, splintered, and exploded. Superheated stone shards pierced her. Again, her body was enveloped in flames. Sabina howled with pain, the sound drowned by the roar of the fire.
I was screaming with her. Her pain, my pain.
The crack in the floor widened. Sabina and the bag of relics dropped into the darkness. Hit the dirt beneath. She pulled the stone back over her.
Rolling in the dirt beneath her crypt, she put out the flames on her body. Rolling, rolling, the flames dying. Breathing hard, she pulled the crypt’s stone floor closed until the metal ring in the vault’s stone base clicked closed. She had told me once that she would not live through another burn. This one was much worse than the last. Sabina dug into the soil as if digging her own grave. Searching for a hint of magic. It should be here. Just here, she thought. Four feet from the right corner of the foundation wall. But the wood was on fire only inches above her. The floor beneath the stone vault and above her head began to give way. H
eat broiled down.
And then she felt a tingle of magic and dug with all her might. Dug and pulled the bag of relics after her. Covering herself over with the dirt, she clawed into the earth. Away from the heat. Into the tunnel she had prepared centuries ago. The fire above was magical, burning hot enough to crack the stone foundation and break the last of the old water working in the tunnel. Water from Louisiana’s high water table began to seep in and the dirt beneath her turned to mud.
There were only a few inches of water that night, but it was winter cool, and Sabina rolled in it, trying to ease the horrible heat in her body. Crying. She wept with pain and failure because she had lost Ka so long ago. Lost her skinwalker to Adan Bouvier amid proof of black magic. She had been unable to keep the child safe. “Ka,” I whispered, one hand holding on to Sabina’s scorched arm, the two bones feeling hard as steel beneath my fingers.
Sabina’s memories fell into me again. The night the cemetery burned, Sabina buried the relics in the foundation and crawled away through the mud, even as water in the tunnel continued to rise. Then she was elsewhere and else-when. I saw an image of a human cemetery inside New Orleans. Broken stone angels were everywhere.
Sabina’s hand tightened on my head, her vamp claws cutting into my scalp. Blood, warm but cooling, ran down my scalp and dripped into the dank water.
There was a vision of a letter written in a language I didn’t know. But from Sabina, I knew what the message told her. Ka was alive. She had been found living in a chateau outside of Paris. The letter was official notification that Ka, an Onorio herself, had joined forces with a senza onore.
Together the two had burned down houses full of vampires in France not so long ago, hoping to kill Mithrans she considered her enemies. Ka had failed. The letter was unsigned but dated, only a year past. I knew who had been attacked by fire in France, as he slept.