by Faith Hunter
Tears gathered in my eyes at the truth of her words. Five was the highest number Beast understood. More than five was incomprehensible to her.
Beast is big. Bigger than big. Beast is . . . Beast is like hand of Jane’s God.
“We are not an angel.”
No. Beast is not angel. Can hunt and kill. Jane is war woman. Can hunt and kill. Can heal. Can love. Can . . . Can teach and learn. Can choose.
I considered what she meant. “Angels don’t have free will.”
Together we looked at the mangled DNA map. Beast wants to stay. Beast wants to live.
“Okay. So healing isn’t going to be fast or easy, but it’s possible. I don’t have to die right away. That makes it easier to keep going. Maybe I can heal a little at a time without losing you. Eventually. For now, I choose to never be completely Jane again, even if it means never being completely healed.” In my dreaming state, I reached down and scratched Beast’s ears, the way I had scratched Brute’s.
* * *
* * *
When I woke again, I was in Jane’s form. Human. Dawn was graying the sky, sending meager pale light through the small door I had opened in the gable. The fire was out, the ashes barely warm. Brute was stretched out beside me, his werewolf warmth enough to keep me from freezing to death. I stirred and Brute sat up. “I’m brushing your teeth when we get back inside.”
Brute chuffed and gave me a doggy grin, tongue lolling, as if to say, You wanna play? Bring it.
I touched my middle. The pain wasn’t so bad. The star-shaped tumor was . . . It was smaller. My breath hitched. It was smaller. I stood and stretched slowly and discovered that I could move without pain. I wasn’t well, but I felt better, even in human shape. As if I had a little more time. As if I could stay human-shaped for a while longer, maybe take fewer meds.
I gathered up my weapons and toys and tore open the door. Raced through the sleet, into the house, and up the stairs to our bedroom. Silently, I placed all my magical toys and blades on the dresser and used the bathroom as fast as possible. The relief was an intense pleasure. I showered off the salt and the stench of an all-night sweat and did all the girl things. Dried off.
I raced out of the bathroom and threw myself on our bed. On top of Bruiser.
He wasn’t totally asleep, and he came fully awake fast, recognizing me, my scent, my laughter. “Jane.”
“Hey, sweetcheeks.”
“Are you objectifying my bum?”
“Totally. Love me?”
“With all my heart.”
I kissed him, hard, scrubbing my human face against his scruffy bearded face, wrapping my arms around him. “Prove it,” I growled, pulling away so I could see him, so he could see me. “Love me.” He hesitated, questions racing through his eyes, clear as if I was inside his brain. “I’m not healed but I’m a little better. Well enough for this. Well enough for us.”
We hadn’t been together since I got sick. He had been so damn considerate, kind, gentle. I didn’t want any of that. I wanted wild and raucous and I wanted it now. I raked my human nails down his naked side, not breaking the skin but demanding.
Bruiser didn’t hesitate again. He rolled me over and under the warm blankets with him. He kissed me, gently, then slanted his face over mine, his mouth over mine, his tongue into mine. Something exploded within him. Onorio scent burst out. And he loved me. He loved me.
* * *
* * *
Dawn had arrived and moved into midmorning when we managed to get our legs working and stumble to the shower. The smell of Bruiser’s citrusy soap and sex and sweat rinsed away. Twice. Perhaps overly clean, we dried off, and I rubbed CBD oil and hemp oil into my skin. Bruiser helped. Twice. Which resulted in a third shower. Weak in the knees, we dressed, and, holding hands, walked down the stairs to the long bar that separated the two kitchens.
Thank God for the barstools. I barely had the energy to drape myself over the bar. The entire main level smelled of yeast bread and bacon and eggs and pancakes.
Molly had turned on the lights in the baker’s kitchen and fired up one of the commercial ovens. Sweating, her red hair in bouncy curls, she slid bread tins into the oven. She was liberally dusted with flour. Eli and Liz, Molly’s witch sister, were standing side by side at the big, six-burner stove in the commercial kitchen, Liz flipping pancakes, Eli moving a lot slower than usual, turning bacon and scrambling eggs with a spatula. But they looked cozy together. Maybe a little flirty. Eli had a type and Liz was fearless and powerful and maybe a little dangerous. Yeah. He’d like Liz.
Molly’s sister had been out of the dating scene for a long time. And she was cozied up to a hunk-a-hunk-a-hot-man. She was flushed and I didn’t think it was because of the stove top.
The baker’s oven closed and the scents of yeast bread and oatmeal and eggs and pancakes floated through the air. And bacon. I had missed bacon. My human self was hungry. Starving. As if he heard that thought, Eli turned and found me sitting at the bar, his eyes dark and intense. He placed the spatula handle in Liz’s hand and walked slowly around to me. His feet were encased in wool socks and he wore jeans and a heavy, loose sweatshirt. He stopped just outside of my personal space, holding my gaze. Bruiser glided off the barstool beside me and stepped into the kitchen, toward the commercial coffeemaker, giving us privacy.
“You look better,” he said.
“You look alive. I was worried there for a while.”
“Janie,” he said, reproof in his tone.
I chuckled and held out my arms. Eli stepped closer and we hugged. It was a bro hug, all back patting and awkwardness. And it made me want to cry with happiness.
He stepped away before it could get too girly and said, “Want pancakes?”
“And bacon. Lots and lots of bacon. Pounds of it.”
“Let’s start with four pieces and move up from there,” he suggested. “Not interested in cleaning up bacon puke. You’ll have to trust me on this one.”
“Spoilsport.”
* * *
* * *
After the best breakfast in ages, I dropped on the sofa in the TV room/office. I called Soul, expecting to get voice mail, prepared to leave a snarky message. Instead, Soul answered. “Assistant Director, PsyLED.”
“Oh. Ummm. You’re back. Not missing. Not kidnapped.” Out of touch for days and taking three weeks of leave and now suddenly back on the job? Like that wasn’t weird?
“Why would I be—Never mind. Spit it out, Yellowrock. I’m on a crime scene.”
“Since when does the ass director do fieldwork?”
“You think I haven’t heard that one? Try harder. And I’m here because an arcenciel was spotted in Knoxville killing a local farmer’s beef cattle.”
“Oh. Ummm. We got a problem in Asheville. A nasty foreign vampire—”
“Is in town and ICE is handling it,” she interrupted. “ICE and PsyLED do not play well together, and when things got contentious, a meeting was called. It wasn’t pretty and it pitted my boss and the director of ICE against each other in front of the secretary of defense. She sided with ICE. They kicked us out of the meeting. I have nothing to offer you, Yellowrock.”
“Info exchange?”
“You first.”
“The vamp is the Flayer of Mithrans. The other Son of Darkness. In the recent past he had, or currently he has, witches in a time circle somewhere nearby. He’s wearing, well, growing, an exoskeleton.”
Soul whispered a curse and I heard a car door close. The ambient noise on her side went soft, and I figured she had gotten in a car. “We have dealt with this in Natchez. I’ll see that my people refresh their memories on the reports. As I recall, exoskeletons are the result of genetic changes that force vampires into insectoid forms. It happens when a vamp is trying to alter or bend time with witch magic. Correct?”
“Yeah. ICE can’t handle this.” The only
thing that might—assuming they could find Shimon—was extreme force. Rocket launchers. Guided missiles. “They have to have a time circle somewhere.”
“Any idea where the circle is?”
It was likely that Soul was going to give me nothing. But I took a chance. “No. But I did find a rift, down deep in a cleft of stone. And an arcenciel flew out of it. Juvie, maybe ten feet long. Lavender and purple wings and charcoal body.”
Soul was silent for a little too long for my comfort level and I was afraid she was going to hang up. She was breathing too fast, her voice strained, when she said, “You know where a rift is? A new rift? And active rift?”
“Yes.”
“In return for its location, you want help, under your command.”
Relief made me sag against the sofa. “Anything you can swing my way. I also want to know everything you have on liminal lines and liminal thresholds.” No one knew much about how they worked or even what they were. No one except arcenciels and maybe the Anzu.
“Most of what I know is what your kind refers to as theoretical physics. However, my kind came through a rift. We were worshipped as gods for eons by the primitive humans. We taught them mathematics, the positions of the stars, geometry, farming, and how to build with wattle and daub and then with mud bricks. Later with rough stone. How to use hydrodynamics for farming, plumbing. How to build canals. The art of stonemasonry and lapidary.”
“The People of the Straight Ways,” I said. “Canal builders, long before the pyramids were even conceived of.”
“Yes. Then the climate changed very suddenly and floods were massive, accompanied by earthquakes and the loss of human civilizations all over this world.”
“I got that part. The indigenous people who survived said the bones were piled so high that when the wind blew, it was the sound of bones dancing.”
“The portals between worlds were lost in the tectonic shifts. We need access to a new rift.”
I said nothing, waiting, enjoying my new talent of forcing people to talk while ticking them off, all at once.
Soul ground out, “My people are trapped here. Jane. Don’t play stupid games that could get people killed, yours or mine. You know where a rift is?”
“Yes. There’s a new rift. Or it looks new. And it’s definitely an interdimensional opening.”
Soul hesitated. I had learned to bargain and she had figured that out. As if saying the words hurt her, she asked, “If I try to get you military help, you’ll take me there?”
“No. Not just try. I need guaranteed help fighting the Flayer and help finding the witch time circle so we can shut it down. This is to be under the command, or with shared command, of the Dark Queen. Quid pro quo. And I also want clarification and info.”
I could almost feel Soul grinding her teeth. Her dragon-of-rainbows teeth—big pearly fangs. The tension on the cell connection ached with potential violence. “Clarification on what?” she nearly whispered, as if to keep from shouting. And I knew I had won.
“Back last fall, I freed an arcenciel and destroyed the geode she was trapped in. In return, you and the other arcenciels pledged to help Leo and the city against the Europeans.” I stopped. Soul said nothing. “In the Sangre Duello, your people waited to help until Leo was dead. Even after I gave you a spell to keep your people from slavery, forever.” Carefully, I added, “I want to know why the arcenciels didn’t help keep Leo alive.”
Soul laughed, bitter humor. Arcenciel laughter was usually like bells and gongs and woodwinds playing, but not this time. Now there was nothing but discordant notes. “I’ll play your little game. I fought my own people to keep the vampires alive, you stupid cat. I’m still fighting them to keep them from going back and destroying the Sons of Darkness before any vampires were ever made. It’s battle in the skies, three of us and the little bird against all the others.”
I remembered the arcenciel war I had glimpsed in the water droplets in my soul home, and fought to keep goose bumps from rising along my neck. Was I on the cusp of everything deadly I had seen in the future? “Because the human timeline would alter drastically if the first vampires are destroyed before they can achieve undeath,” I stated, seeking the clarification I needed.
“Yes. I fought them into stalemate. In return for them allowing you the time to destroy the Sons of Darkness, I had to let Leo die. I had no choice. I did the best I could to honor both commitments.”
She had changed history just enough for Leo’s head to not fly off into the distance, as I had seen in one timeline, but to be still attached by a remnant of flesh in the current timeline. Dead, in a mausoleum in the fanghead cemetery. I had hoped that thread of flesh was also a thread of hope, but Leo hadn’t risen. He never would. I had gone to the graveyard and caught the stench of rot from his tomb.
Carefully, I said, “Your best? No. You were foresworn. Foresworn to the Dark Queen of the Mithrans.” I had just accused Soul of breaking an oath brokered in an interspecies parley, a deadly insult if she disagreed.
“Son of a bitch,” she spat. “I’ll see what I can do to get you help and information.” She ended the call.
I set my cell on the table beside me, beginning to feel the tiredness in my muscles and my gut. I’d been human too long. But Soul still owed me. I wondered when she would figure that out.
* * *
* * *
Alex stumbled into the TV room, where I sat, alone, staring out at the snowy world. He carried a tall, canned energy drink and took his seat at his empty desk chair. He smelled horrible and he looked worse. “Too many energy drinks?” I asked.
“Go away, Janie.” He looked my way and did a double take. “You’re human-shaped.”
I chortled. “Yeah. For a little while. I found a way to slow the progression of the cancer. Temporarily.”
“Everything in life is temporary. Even life itself.”
“That sounds very fatalistic.”
He said something under his breath and punched keys. Opened a laser-light keyboard on the desk. Tapped the desk there too. He was using multiple keyboards at once. Screens came to life everywhere.
I moved up behind him, my eyes taking in the screens. Nothing looked out of place. Nothing looked unexpected. No invaders. No big-cats. “Alex?” I asked softly. “What’s wrong?”
He stopped, his fingers clenching under the laser light. “My brother nearly died. Again. It’s hard.”
Softly I said, “If you can get him to sign the proper papers, and if he dies, and if I can get him to a fanghead in time, I’ll make them turn him.”
“Lot of ifs in there. What if it’s an enemy fanghead?”
I laughed, and it was a nasty, awful sound. I remembered Klaus, the vampire I had claimed and bled to save Eli in the snow. Claiming was evil. Was a type of slavery. I had set him free, but it had been an afterthought, not something I planned, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat. “I’ll force any fanghead I can find to turn him. And then, if necessary, I’ll kill the vamp to keep him from claiming Eli. And I’ll bargain with my own life to get Amy Lynn Brown to feed him, exclusively, for a year.”
Amy Lynn had special blood that helped vamps through the devoveo—the ten years of madness after being turned—in record time. Her blood, exclusively, would mean a clean, fast, sane transition. Hopefully. And as the DQ, I could make it happen. “And that goes for you too, now that you signed the papers. We’re family.”
“Promise?”
“Pinky swear.” I held out my pinky finger. He reached back without looking and stuck his pinky finger in the air. I hooked mine through his and we squeezed. Pact made.
“Ant Jane! Ant Jane! Ant Jane!” EJ hurtled from the kitchen into the TV room. “You gots Jane face!”
I lifted him up into the air and tossed him high. When he landed in my hands, a twinge of pain slanted through me. I’d already been Jane too long. “Not for long, though. I�
��m about to put on my Beast face.”
“The better to eat you with,” Angie Baby said from the doorway opening. Her face was set in disapproving lines. Or—
“Jane?” Alex said. “We got problems.”
I had wandered toward Angie and I returned to Alex, EJ over my shoulder, me leaning over Alex’s shoulder, looking at the screen that held his attention. Instantly I whirled back to the doorway and picked up Angie Baby. I shielded her from the view of the screen and carried her back to Molly. Angie was shouting, “No fair, no fair, no fair, no fair!” as I carried her and her brother back to the kitchen.
My BFF took one look at my face and shushed her child. “You need doors on the office,” was all she said.
“Yeah. I’ll put it on the list.” Back in the office, I gestured for Alex to put the camera feed on the main screen.
“It’s the feed from inside . . . maybe a church or a fancy spa,” he said, “and it’s being sent to me. I can’t track it. Not yet.” There was a lot of wood and stone and the vision of a trickle of water falling softly, like an ornamental fountain in the corner of the screen.
Center screen, the Flayer of Mithrans was killing his interpreter. There was no sound. Only the awful footage. The female vampire was clothed only in blood. There was no flesh left on her arms, hands, calves, feet, neck, or face. She was a limp and empty vision of dripping crimson, held upright, clasped close to the chest of Shimon Bar-Judas, one arm around her waist. Her eyes were open, staring, blank, human, human as she likely hadn’t been in . . . decades? Centuries? I had no idea of her hair color. Her head was scalped. She was a broken, skinned doll. And the Flayer was facing her at the camera, chatting to it through her mouth as if there was volume.
“What’s he saying?” I managed, sounding calmish.