True Dead

by Faith Hunter

  I melded it together into a strong net of power that glowed so bright it ached. And it showed everything I was and everything I ever could be. I shoved healing into my brother. But my power was made for war. Nothing happened.

  Twisting my power again, I raised my head and screamed, “Leo! Come to me!”

  Nothing happened. I applied pressure with my big knobby hands, laying my body across the horrific wound. “Leo!” I screamed.

  Nothingnothingnothing.

  Except Eli dying. I tried the healing again. And again. “Eli. Come on Eli,” Tears and snot ran down my face.

  Florence forced her blood down Eli’s throat, massaging to trigger him to swallow.

  Time and space shivered. Gray and green and red-hot power burst out in front of me. A split like the center of the rift I had fallen into once. I nearly drew back.

  Brute wavered into the split in time and space and stepped aside. A hand was on his head.

  Beside the white werewolf, Leo appeared.

  His black eyes took in everything at once, and he vamped out. His fangs ripped his arm from wrist up to mid lower arm, through his clothing, tearing them away. He bent over Eli, shoved me aside, and poured his blood over the bandages wrapping the wound.

  I saw everything at once.

  Florence was dribbling her powerful blood down Eli’s throat, massaging it.

  In the other room, screams, shouts, ululations, gunshots rang out. Positioned over us was Quint. Her short sword dripping. Her nine-mil firing. Precise. Deadly. I didn’t have to look to know each shot was a head shot. And that she was using silver-lead rounds.

  “Remove the bindings,” Leo said to me.

  I slipped the tiny blade between blood-soaked fabric and swollen flesh. Slid it gently up, the gauze separating. I heard/felt/knew as Eli’s heart skipped a beat. Another.

  Leo laid his cut arm on the flesh, his blood flowing. Florence added her blood to his and I bent over as well, letting the blood from my head wound merge and mingle with the vamps. Eli’s flesh began to heal. But we were in a spreading pool of blood. So much blood. Too much . . .

  Eli’s heart . . .

  Stopped.

  Stuttered.

  Beat.

  Our blood flowed.

  Beat.

  Beat.

  Stopped.

  “Change him!” Alex demanded over the earbuds.

  “Leo?” I whispered, begging.

  “I am now outclan.”

  I looked at Florence.

  “I am outclan.”

  Leo said, “You are Dark Queen. You have the power to heal him.”

  “I tried,” I said, weeping. “I tried.”

  Brute padded through the wide pool of blood and stopped inches from my face.

  Stinky dog breath, Beast thought. Good wolf. Follow good wolf.

  Holding Eli’s body together with my left hand, I put my bloody right hand on Brute’s white head. My magic rose. It shivered and trembled, silver energies whirling and spinning, darker motes whirling. A single red mote coiled and looped. The red mote of evil magic I had thought was gone, not seen in months, was still here. Or was back here, released by the Glob when I opened the tiny pockets of power. The Glob blistered my flesh at my hip where I had somehow tucked it when Eli fell. The red mote circled the Glob, but wasn’t sucked into it.

  Was I still evil? Or were power and magic just that—inanimate—energy tools needing only the will and might, to be focused and used, making magic not a force with a conscience and principles and morals. Just a tool. Was magic less the might and more the compassion and humanity of the wielder? Even the Glob?

  Suddenly we were in my soul home. The temps dropped. The stone walls of the cave were cold and wet. The walls were gray and pale yellow and shades of white. No fire burned in the firepit in front of me.

  Eli wasn’t here. Was that important? Did it matter? Was he dead?

  On my right side, Brute stood. On my left, stood Beast. On the other side of Brute stood Leo. He was looking up. Into the dome overhead. His eyes widened, his mouth opened, his fangs clicked closed on their little hinges. His eyes bled back to human. He dropped slowly to his knees.

  I followed his gaze and saw the angel wings draped over and against the stone dome, where they offered protection to my soul home. Hayyel keeping watch.

  “Angel,” Leo whispered. “Never have I thought to see such a being again.”

  In my vision, I was female but dressed as a warrior of my tribe and clan—leggings, long tunic to my thighs, long belt wrapped around my waist. I wore my father’s medicine bag on a thong around my neck. “How do I save Eli?” I asked of Hayyel.

  “Open the wound,” the angel’s voice said. The dulcet tones reverberated around the stone room, and Hayyel appeared in front of me. Like a few other times, he was in winged form, but this time his wings were closed over him, hiding his body.

  Leo fell to his face on the stone floor. Brute stretched out, belly and head down. Beast chuffed.

  “Place your stone of office within his flesh. Pour your blood and all of your power over it. This may heal him,” Hayyel said. “Your strongest Mithrans must feed him. Leo, you must use your magic, though it will call to your master. Hurry. And then find where I am. You don’t have much time to free me. Your real enemies are close.”

  “Huh?” I said.

  Hayyel looked like he did when I first saw him, black skin, darker than the night sky, and golden eyes. He opened his golden wings, the brown and red spots among the feathers seeming to catch the light. He was wearing a white tunic, golden brown robe, and sandals

  Around his waist was a silver chain, bright and glistening and studded with bits of dark iron. Instantly I knew the iron was formed from ingots of the Spike of Golgotha. Somebody had chained an angel.

  “Go,” he said, snapping his wings over his body.

  I was back in the kitchen. “Feed him,” I screamed. I yanked the Glob from my pocket and pulled back the avulsed flesh, the heavy part of Eli’s thigh. I shoved the Glob inside. I was still holding the small knife and I sliced lengthwise along my arm, as Leo had done to his own with his teeth. My blood pulsed out into the wound. It pulsed and pulsed. All over and into Eli’s wound. Hands tried to pull me away. Tried to bind my wound. “No.” I stabbed the little knife at the hands. They withdrew. Quickly.

  My blood pulsed. Again and again. And nothing happened.

  When the world started to go dim, I fell back. “Okay,” I said, laying on my side in Eli’s blood. I allowed the hands to wrap a bandage on my arm and apply pressure. Other hands wrapped Eli’s leg with more gauze, the Glob still inside.

  I was laying on the floor with Eli, in his blood. I couldn’t hear Eli’s heartbeat flutter. His skin was that deep ashen of the dead. I heard ambulances out front, sirens wailing.

  Koun landed beside me. He flipped Eli over. Ripped his own flesh with his fangs and fed Eli, massaging his throat. Florence was still bleeding over Eli’s bound wound. Leo knelt on Eli’s other side, vamped out. He gently bit into Eli’s neck. Blue magic flashed out from Leo’s fangs, from his hands on Eli’s chest. It was a rhythmic cadenced magic, not vamp magic, not the magic of the gather. It was like and yet unlike any magic I had ever seen.

  The closest parallel was outclan magic. Like when Bethany changed Bruiser from primo to Onorio.

  When he appeared, Leo had said he was outclan.

  How did that even happen. What the heck did it even mean?

  I felt something happen inside Eli. The Glob did . . . something. Le breloque did something too, burning my head. Eli’s body jerked the tiniest bit. Leo withdrew his fangs. Koun and Leo turned Eli to his side and Koun slapped his back three times. Blood drained out of Eli’s lifeless lips. They laid him face up. Leo bit in again and Koun ripped his own flesh again, feeding Eli, forcing down the blood,
his fingers near Leo’s fangs.

  It wasn’t going to be enough. I knew it. I was a breath away from telling Koun to change him.

  But I reached up and put both hands on le breloque, bloody and sticky and cold with all the blood mixed there. I thought about the Glob, its power warm and unexpectedly open and giving, inside Eli. Inside my brother of choice. And I called Eli with all my magic. With everything I had. All that bright and shining power. All that I was. And all that I may ever be. I gave to Eli.

  Come back to me. Come back. You will live. Live. Your heart will beat. Beat. Beat. I willed him to live, willed his heart to beat along with mine. Beat. Beat. Live. Live. Live!

  Inside me, the new magic rose, bright and glowing. Dark Queen magics. Wrapping around my own skinwalker magics, prism-bright, shining like rainbows, echoing like brass gongs and cathedral bells ringing, brilliant as light through scarlet glass. Warm, sweet smelling, soft as silk yarn. Harder than steel. Blazing forge hot. I focused all that magic, all my own power, and all that power of the Dark Queen onto Eli.

  “Live,” I whispered.

  I heard a heart thump. A long time later, I heard another. More. Eli’s heart began beating steadily.

  Tears gathered but no longer fell. Couldn’t. I didn’t have enough fluid left in me to cry, not even for joy. I was empty of blood, cold enough to be dead myself, and exhausted. So tired I could scarcely hold myself off the floor. I didn’t have to look up. My power crawled out, snaking into every creature in the building, knowing them all—who lived and who had died.

  In the other room were dozens of dead and dying vamps. Some were mine.

  “Shaun?” I asked.

  Koun said, “His own people turned against him, My Queen. They left their blades in his body, yet he still has his head.” Koun pointed to the body against the wall near the bottom of the stairs. It was pinned there by a couple dozen blades. Koun asked, “Will you take his head or shall I, as your champion?”

  Bleary, I looked around the room again. The cameras were still rolling, this crazy scene going out to the vamp world and showing us our own actions on the big screen. I had to make this count. For Eli. For all the people who had died here tonight. Beast? I thought.

  Beast is here, she thought back. The I/we of Beast is here. Still has some strength.

  We need to behead that vamp.

  Deep inside, we growled. The reverberation sounded though the room. I/we forced ourself to our feet and shoved our shoulders back, head high. Padded through the blood and gore to the body pinned upright on the wall, pulling my vamp-killer.

  I reached him and he blinked at me. Once. Twice. Focused on me. His mouth moved. He couldn’t talk because his lungs and throat were pierced with blades, and he couldn’t draw breath.

  I turned so I was facing a camera. My image was front and center on the big screen. I was dripping blood. My pelt stood on end. My eyes glowed. My fangs were longer than most vamps. I was as scary as I had ever been. “There will be no more parley. I challenge the enemy who has been pulling strings. I challenge the vampire Mainet Pellissier. Not to Sangre Duello. But to war. I will kill your vampires and destroy any humans who remain sworn to you. I will take your head as I took the heads of the Sons of Darkness. I will feed your head to an angel of the light and your dead body to the sun. Come for me. I will be ready.”

  I turned and managed not to fall down. I braced my feet and secured the balance of my body. I swung the blade back. Forward. And I took the head of Shaun MacLaughlinn. Bending, I picked up the severed head from the floor and held it in front of me. Darkness spun around me and white pinpoints of light fell in front of my vision like snow.

  Bruiser, equally as blood soaked as me, stepped to my side. “Behold,” he said to the cameras. “The enemy of the Dark Queen.”

  “Bruiser,” I whispered as all energy left my body. I wavered.

  “Cut the feed,” Bruiser said. “We are done.”

  And the darkness took me.

  * * *

  * * *

  I woke in a strange bed. It still smelled of factory and outgassing, the scents almost hidden by the smell of my blood. So much blood. I was freezing to death, teeth chattering, muscles shuddering. Glorious heat of an electric blanket had been wrapped around me. On either side of me, I smelled vamps—Kojo on one side of me, Thema on the other. Leo’s scent was fainter but close by, parchment and pepper. Florence was near my feet. Bruisers’ scent came from near my head where he slid my loose crown away. He gently peeled a wad of matted hair off my forehead. Pulled it back behind my ear. Started on another batch. It wasn’t necessary. He just needed to be touching me. For a while I just breathed, knowing I hadn’t done enough of that lately.

  My heart was beating too fast, fluttery, a little weak. I needed to shift into Beast to heal. I hadn’t. I tightened one fist, feeling the knobby knuckles. That was the arm I had cut. Yeah. Still half-form-ish. When I released my fist, I felt blood and gauze crackle. But there was no pain. It was healing without shifting. Full of vamp blood.

  I managed to get my mouth open. It was so dry my teeth felt like they were wrapped in the bloody gauze, and my tongue felt like a strip of jerky. On the second try, I managed to say, “Eli?”

  Bruiser said, “He’s in surgery at Tulane. Two Mithrans are standing by to donate blood should it become necessary. Should the change into Mithran need to be finished, Koun is also there. Eli is as safe as we could make him.”

  “Finished?” I whispered.

  “Eli was halfway to Mithran when his human heart began to beat,” Thema said from behind me. “It will take little to bring him over.”

  I thought about that. Decided it was the best that could be done. “The Glob?”

  “Koun was delivered a bloody stone from the surgical suite,” Bruiser said. “The surgeon said it bit him when he touched it. Koun said he will bring it before dawn.”

  “Okay. I’m going back to sleep,” I whispered.

  “And when you wake again, you will shower off the stench of rotting blood,” Thema ordered. “You are disgusting.”

  “Whatever,” I breathed. And slept. My last thought was the feel of my heart beating. A little out of sync. As if I heard an echo beating in the background.

  CHAPTER 20

  Undead Life Sucks

  Fall in New Orleans meant that the weather had changed. Again. It was now mideighties, humid, and it was raining, a steady downpour that left puddles everywhere.

  Eli and I were sitting on the back porch, alone for the first time, in the old squeaky metal chairs, our feet up on an ottoman from inside the house. We were wrapped in blankets we didn’t really need but that were soft and comfy. We had downed two pots of tea, neither of us discussing that Eli was drinking tea and not coffee. By choice. We had chatted a bit about the weather. Mostly we were contemplating being alive, watching the rain fall, not talking much, but knowing we had a lot of ground to cover.

  Eli had been home for less than twenty-four hours. His leg was bandaged and swollen. He had things poking up through the bandages. Metal things holding his femur together. There were more metal things inside. He would forever set off metal detectors. He had spent four days in the hospital. He had been given eight units of human blood-bank blood. He had drunk from more than a dozen vamps while in the hospital, several worried vamps lining up each night to donate. Florence had made regular trips to feed him her blood.

  Liz had flown to NOLA for five days, bringing healing charms and other Everhart magics. She would be back, also worried about her former Ranger.

  I had a feeling that Liz wasn’t the only Everhart who would descend on NOLA with the intent to protect Eli and probably tear me a new one at the same time.

  Alex delivered a third pot of tea. He was checking on us every fifteen minutes, hovering, even though he could see us from his table-desk. There was good reason for the concern. Even with vamp blo
od, Eli had nearly not made it.

  The doctors had told Eli that with a lot of therapy, he would eventually walk. That he’d limp for the rest of his life. Probably hurt for the rest of this life. That he’d never run again. Eli had raised his eyebrows at the docs and requested to be released. Eli knew about rehab. He also knew about the healing power of vamp blood. He and Florence had come up with a dosage and rotation for vamps that would keep him from being blood-bound or changed. But he’d had so much it was likely he was something other than blood-servant strong, something other than Onorio, but maybe close.

  His bed had been moved into my room, so stairs wouldn’t be a problem. I had been sleeping in Eli’s old room, and would until Bruiser came back and we decided where we’d stay. Bruiser and Koun were off tracking down enemy vamps, unaligned rogue vamps, and taking heads, starting with the most recalcitrant vamps in HQ’s basement.

  Mercy was a dead concept in my heart right now. Either vamps agreed to be bound to one of mine, swore loyalty, and accepted very junior status in one of my clans, where they could be monitored, or they were beheaded. My executioner had appointed helpers. The Dark Queen had three ax wielders. They traveled with portable chopping blocks, which they didn’t bother to clean between uses. Bruiser had opened the trench where Sabina’s chapel used to be, drained the water out, and my people were filling it with vamp bodies on a regular basis. No fancy funerals. No nothing. Just unmarked bodies in a pit, the heads tossed into a different pit. My humans watched them burn in the sun with each dawn.

  I sipped my tea. As I moved my arm, the charm bracelet tinkled. It was drained of power. The bracelet, her feet, a pile of bloody bones, and a bloody white habit were all that was left of Sabina when they found her. I figured I would give the bracelet to my goddaughter when I saw her again, but for now, I wore it in honor of the priestess.