True Dead

by Faith Hunter

  “Edmund,” I whispered. He had been attacked, and the house where he stayed had been burned to the ground. Edmund Hartley, who was the titular Emperor of Europe and my primo, in a complicated relationship engineered by Leo. More of Leo’s machinations.

  Betrayal is everywhere, Sabina thought at me, her words now booming on my brain, her claws digging in. Ka, vengeance in her soul, filled with hatred of all the ones who had harmed her in her life. Ka led them to me to kill me and to steal my relics.

  “What does she want?”

  Ka wants what you have. You, who are the first non-Mithran to be Blood Master of a clan and Master of a City. You, who are the first Dark Queen in centuries to live longer than a few days. If you can do all of these things, then Ka, the skinwalker who studied with Adan, who willingly swore her loyalty to Adan for so many years, while she was lost to me, believes that she can take all this from you. She is powerful and her anger has broken her reasoning.

  Pain spiked into my head. Pain like an ice pick driven through my skull. Again I thought I might hurl.

  Ka was working her own long game. But why attack now?

  Another memory that was not my own sliced into my brain. Sabina hiding, watching Adan Bouvier and Ka. They were standing on a concrete floor set with a twelve-foot black square. Just inside the edges of the black square was a witch circle formed of wood and iron. Witch circles were almost never made of iron. The group were in clothes from the turn of the previous century, Adan wearing a vest and a white shirt and holding a sword, Ka dressed in a revealing spaghetti-strapped sheath nightgown.

  Ka was gripping a narrow iron spike about six inches long. I knew instantly that she was holding a length of the iron Spike of Golgotha. She was . . . Ka was trying to bend time.

  Adan stepped back once, still inside the circle. He stabbed Ka with the sword.

  She screeched. Blood gushed from her. Betrayal and horror filled her expression.

  Sabina, hiding in the darkness, tears on her face, watched as Adan caught Ka and the spike. Holding them both, he sank his fangs into her throat, into the carotid. He drained her even as she tried to fight, even as the life bled from her. Ka went limp. Yet Adan kept drinking. And drinking. In the lamplight, Ka’s flesh went pale. Then ashen.

  Adan laid her across the floor and cut her clothes from her, moving fast, his blade catching the light of candles I hadn’t even noticed until now.

  Bethany stepped from the darkness on the far side of the circle. She was naked. Adan did something with his hand, and the circle of power dropped. Bethany stepped into the witch circle, and Adan stepped out and closed it, raising the power again. Bethany lay across Ka’s dead body.

  I had seen this before. Bethany was starting Ka’s transition into Onorio.

  “You knew,” I whispered to Sabina. “You knew what they were about to do, and you let it take place anyway. Did Ka even know you were about to put her in danger?”

  Instantly the images swirled again. Pain pierced my skull, the mother of all migraines. I had a feeling that whatever Sabina was doing to me was bad for my brain. When the pain receded, there was a vision of the NOLA graveyard, with broken stone angels everywhere. It shifted again, and there was a vision of a pile of broken cherub wings and angel wings. They were burning. The stone flashing black and cracking.

  And then there was a vision of de Allyon, a vamp I had killed. The vampire who had killed all the skinwalkers. But here, in this memory, he was facing others, their backs to me, all wearing modern clothing. This was recent as vamp timelines went. Maybe five years ago, before he left Atlanta and crossed into Leo’s territory to kill the strongest vamp in the States. One of the vamps with him shifted position and I saw his face.

  “Shaun MacLaughlinn,” I whispered. He had been the mind-bound anamchara of Dominique, who had been sentenced to burn with the dawn. If he was alive at all, he was likely brain-dead at this point. “Holy crap.”

  “Holy. Yes. The most holy. This last you must see so that you will understand.” Sabina shoved a memory into me. A blast of pain followed it, intense, flaring. “The moment I became undead. The moment when I was turned so very long ago. I share this with you.” There was a bright light. Flashing white and green and intense blue. A man walked toward her, his arms out. The redeemer, she thought at me. The moment I lost my soul.

  The vision went blinding. A feeling of utmost joy suffused through her and by extension, through me. Heaven, she thought at me. Not gates of pearls and streets of gold. But light and dark and love and forgiveness. Heaven.

  In her memory, the man stopped, dropped his arms. Turned away. She was thrust back into her body. The light went out. Aloud she said, “Every Mithran sees this vision. This is why we mourn. Once turned, no vampire, whether Mithran or Naturaleza, anywhere has ever seen it again, even the thrice-born. Only at the moment of first death while being turned do we ever get a glimpse of heaven. And this, this is why we grieve. This is the cause of the devoveo, the grief that destroys our minds.”

  I remembered then the few times that Mithrans had told me about fame vexatum, the practice of not drinking to the full, not killing humans. They were earnest, intent, and full of . . . belief? Was that because of the way the first vamps were made, with the wood of the crosses and the iron of the spikes of Golgotha, and the blood of the sister of the Sons of Darkness? The death of the girl child who became the shadow of the Flayer of Mithrans? Fangheads always said they had no souls. This was why. Everything in their entire world was about three things: time and death and resurrection.

  The Mithrans and Naturaleza did not have an afterlife. They could not be redeemed.

  This was why they grieved. For that one memory of utter peace, forever lost.

  I pulled away, processing what I had seen from Sabina’s memories. I slid off the beam and nearly sucked in a lungful of the water. Sabina caught me again, holding me above the surface.

  Ka had been sold, nurtured, and groomed to try and timewalk, and had been betrayed by Adan, a vamp she had come to love. And then Adan had been taken by a stronger vamp and put into servitude, catching arcenciels, trying to timewalk, and bringing storms to New Orleans. And I had interfered with those plans. Where had Ka been during Adan’s captivity? Who had controlled her? What had she suffered?

  The vamps had records of the Firestarter’s life. The timelines of both women were full of huge holes, times and places where Ka and Aurelia might match up. And since Ka was both skinwalker and an Onorio, what powers did she have? How did she meet up with the Firestarter? And Monique. After I freed Adan and gave him to Leo?

  Pain like a sword cleaved into my brain. I could feel Sabina drawing back. I had questions. Too many questions. Before my head split in two, I asked, “What relics are there?”

  “Many. I have lived long and collected much. And this.” She put a piece of metal in my hand and dove under the water. “No—” I started. But water flooded my mouth and choked me.

  I caught myself on the slick beam. Felt Sabina stroke and kick as she swam away into the dark. Coughing, I stared around at the small space, placing where I was in relation to the light. I tucked the piece of metal into my waistband and pulled off my heavy, water-filled boots. Dropping them into the water, I grabbed the pinkish globe of light and ducked under the surface, using the light to determine which way was out. While under there, I searched for the bag of relics but found nothing on the block floor except a little sludge and my former fancy boots. I broke the surface. Treading hard in the too-heavy water, I took and expelled several breaths. Then I started swimming back the way I had been dragged, the globe lighting the way. Every stroke was harder than it should have been, as if I was swimming through oil.

  The tunnel wasn’t nearly as long as I thought when I had been choked. And—literally—there was a light at the end of the tunnel where I had broken through. I kicked harder.

  The globe went out.

&
nbsp; Darkness hit me, cold and shocking. The water, so heavy only a moment before, went liquid and soft, and I flailed before my limbs caught up with the difference. Breath tight, I kept swimming for the light. A huge splash altered the brightness ahead, and bubbles darkened the hole as someone jumped in, shone a light around, and focused on me.

  Too-bright light blinded me. Bruiser. His body movements both strong and frantic, he swam toward me.

  He was at me, one arm going around my throat in a drowning-swimmer save. I wanted to shout, Stupid man! But I’d have to take a breath, and there was only water. He pulled me up into the light, and I breathed in clean air. Wrassler reached down and heaved me out of the water, still Wrassler-TV-strong even with the prosthetic leg and other damage.

  “You’re half-form-shaped,” Wrassler said, midsaving yank. “How—”

  “I talked to Sabina,” I interrupted. “I shifted. There’s an air pocket.” I landed on squishy ground. Icky water flowed out of my clothes.

  “No,” Bruiser said from the water. Wrassler pulled him up too. Water went everywhere, cascading off of him. “I jumped in immediately after you.”

  “No way. I—” I stopped. Remembering the feel of the heavy, thick water. Remembering how hard it had been to swim until the small light in the globe went out. The way the water seemed to change, growing lighter, easier to move. I looked at the globe. Inside was a small pink stone. I twisted and slammed the globe on the foundation wall. It shattered. The pink stone fell out and hit the mud. I picked it up. Instantly I knew what it was. What it had to be.

  It was a piece of the original chunk of rough, uncut, blood diamond, the stone that had been used to gather the death energies of the witch children sacrificed to bring the long-chained to sanity. Part of the same stone that made up the Glob.

  “Jane?” Bruiser asked.

  I held up a finger, not wanting to lose this thought, remembering the magic I had felt when Sabina grabbed me, that sensation of thick water as she swam. Sabina had been warping time with this amulet. With this, she had created a time bubble. I had to make sure it didn’t get close to the Glob. No telling what would happen.

  I pulled the metal thing Sabina had given me from my waistband. I had thought it was iron, but it was made of gold and other metals, long and slender and curvy. It was a tiny dragon creature with wings partially furled. Like a metal replica miniature arcenciel. A cold chill raced through me. I tilted the amulet to the sunlight and saw all sorts of tiny things embedded all over the dragon: small dull dark gray metal disks, tiny shimmery somethings tinged red, and some with little bubbles beneath. They were placed so the amulet looked striped and so it shimmered when the light hit it, just like a real arcenciel would. I turned the amulet back and forth, and the bubbles moved. Whatever was beneath the shimmery discs was liquid.

  “Why would anyone put . . .” I stopped.

  “Janie?” Wrassler asked.

  Gently I touched a fingertip to a single metal disc. Power met my touch. I touched one of the reddish, iridescent, transparent things. It had a sheen to it, and magic tingled beneath it too, the touch sensation oddly, similarly iridescent.

  Little bits of things I knew, had seen, or had heard about came together.

  I knew what I was seeing, what I was feeling. The imbedded metal was from the remnants of the iron Spike of Golgotha. The shimmery things were bits of arcenciel scales. Beneath each scale was a single drop of arcenciel blood, which—the one time I had seen their blood—looked like molten glass.

  I peeled down the waistband of my soaked pants and looked at my skin where it had rested while I swam. My flesh was dimpled and red in the shape of a flying lizard. I touched my skin. I didn’t feel any foreign energies. Didn’t feel as if anything had been done to me. But still . . .

  “Holy crap,” I murmured.

  “Jane?” Bruiser asked.

  “It’s an arcenciel-based magic amulet.” I held it up for him to see. The sunlight hit the scales, and it was obvious that most were red. Red scales. In stripes . . .

  It looked a lot like Longfellow, Gee’s lizard. The one he had taken from a dead vamp, whose blood it had been sipping for who knew how long. Under Gee’s care, it had grown wings and gotten much bigger. It was as big as a thirty-pound dog now. Was there a connection? Coincidence? Me reading into it something that wasn’t there at all?

  Holy crap. Did arcenciels hatch small and wingless and grow bigger? Did they develop wings as they aged? Had sipping vampire blood brought on Longfellow’s transformation? Holy crap. Was Longfellow a miniature or baby arcenciel? But that timeline didn’t work. So maybe Longfellow was a species related to the rainbow dragons, in the way that burros were related to horses, or wolves were related to dogs?

  Gee had called me little goddess. It was a similar title to the name he called the arcenciels, who could timewalk. I had once been able to timewalk. No way was I time-traveling again.

  But maybe I was supposed to be able to use this some way? To do something? And the diamond in the globe of water?

  “Holy crap,” I griped again. “Why don’t these things ever come with an instruction manual?”

  I could feel the power in the metallic lizard—the same kind of energy that emanated from a crystal containing a trapped arcenciel. The kind that vamps used to time-jump, to bend time, to travel back or forward in time and remake history. I was betting that it could be used to assist in a time-jump, the way vamps did it. The spike was said to be able to control vampires. The blood diamond was powerful no matter what kind of energies it was used for. No wonder Sabina could bubble time, or time-jump. Remembering the bracelet with the jangly charms she had worn, I had to wonder what other trinkets and relics she had taken with her when she went to ground. I raised my eyes to Bruiser’s and then out over the sloppy foundation and pointed to the far corner she had mentioned.

  I turned on my Queenie voice, my tones stolen from Leo. “We dig there. By hand. No big equipment except to suck up water. We’re looking for a burned gray bag about this big.” I showed the dimensions with my hands. “If you find it, stop digging and call me. It’s probably dangerous. But we need to find it before the Firestarter does.”

  “Is that bag why someone burned the cemetery?” Wrassler asked. “To get the bag?”

  “Partly, yeah. And then someone stole Leo’s body. And no. I have no idea why. But I’m going to find out.”

  Wrassler started issuing orders to the men present and pulled his cell to call for strong-backed reinforcements.

  “Wrassler?” I interrupted. “Put someone you trust in charge here; I want you with us.”

  “You got it, Legs.”

  * * *

  * * *

  On the way home, we stopped at a Popeyes, and I got a bucket of chicken to pay for the underwater shift. As we dripped muddy water all over the leather seats and the floor, and I crunched my way through a ten-piece box of heaven, I told Bruiser what had happened. We studied the lizard amulet and discussed all the paranormal creatures who might want Sabina’s relics and why. And what her buried icons could do.

  “I need a safe place to keep them,” I said, “away from the Glob and le breloque. I don’t know what would happen if they all came in contact.”

  Quietly, Bruiser said, “Set the world on fire?”

  “I doubt it would be good, whatever it is.”

  Back at the freebie house, Eli put the new amulets in the gun safe, and Bruiser and I cleaned up, Bruiser showering upstairs and me showering in my en suite. It always took me longer than it did Bruiser to shower in half-form because of the pelt and the long hair. It gave me a lot of time to think and to remember what Sabina had shown and told me.

  The vision of God walking away from Sabina didn’t match the God I thought I knew. Her vision was one of a God who punished people that had evil done to them. Sabina had been turned by one of the first few vampires, witho
ut knowing fully what life as a vamp would mean, perhaps even against her will, yet according to her, she had lost her chance for an afterlife, lost her chance to see heaven, beyond that one brief glimpse. Had vamps like Molly’s niece, Shiloh Everhart Stone, lost their souls? If so, it was the punishment of an Old Testament God, not the “sinner can be redeemed” spirit of a loving God. So . . . maybe they were wrong? Maybe there was a way to give them back an afterlife. Like, maybe their souls were in a pocket universe somewhere, waiting for the power to either reunite with their bodies or move on. I had seen a pocket of time/space once, with a vamp and a witch stuck inside, caught in the moment of death, like a mosquito in amber. Maybe vamps’ souls were like that. In some weird stasis instead of snuffed out.

  The vamps could ask God . . . Right. Sure they could. Did God hear the prayers of a vamp?

  I sucked at being a theologian, but even theologians disagreed on this one.

  I thought about calling Shiloh or Koun or Tex and asking about the loss of their souls, but that was a weirdly personal question. Would it be considered the height of offensive disrespect? Probably.

  When my hair was clean and braided, and my pelted parts were finally dried off, I dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. I didn’t normally wear shirts with sayings on them, but Alex had bought me a Mardi Gras T-shirt, silk-screened with a drunk alligator wearing a party mask and beads, carrying a champagne glass and a magnum bottle. A woman’s foot wearing a five-inch red stiletto was sticking out of his mouth. It was not queenly. Or fancy. The cloth was a little scratchy. But it said something about who I really was and how I felt today. And maybe how I’d continue forward.

  As I opened the door, I could hear the guys talking in the living room: Eli, Alex, Bruiser, and Wrassler. I glanced out the windows and saw guards walking everywhere. Good. Operation Cowbird was in full force. Barefoot—bare pawed?—I padded into the kitchen and chose a mug for tea. I picked one with an alligator on it. The sleeping gator was upside down, drunk of course, and a naked woman was sleeping beside him, also drunk. Vodka bottles were everywhere. The caption said, “What happens in NOLA stays in NOLA.” It was crass. Kinda like me. And the gator matched my T-shirt.