by Faith Hunter
I stared out at the circle, glowing palely through the snow, trying to fit things together, like puzzle pieces. “So we think this is a version of a time circle. Can you tell which body died last? And if that body is a vampire? And if it has white hair? And if it was flayed alive?”
“Yes, little goddess. To all of those things. That one.” He extended his wing, pointing. “That Mithran, died true-dead, last. He had white hair.”
Sooo. Legolas was dead. That meant . . . “When Edmund was—” I stopped, remembering the bloody body of my friend, and had to force myself to go on. “When Edmund was being used as interpreter, we know he was possessed. Ed said the Flayer had access to the far reaches of his mind.”
“Yes, my queen. He was able to keep little in reserve.”
And the FOM had flayed Legolas. “Lego knew a lot about me, about my people, and most importantly, he had known how to time-jump, using the crystal with the trapped mer-form, Soul. Not a smooth walk like I did, maybe a training version, or a version that used the mer-form instead of the dragon-form, but it served the same purpose.”
Gee threw another wrench into my thoughts. “What if . . . My mistress, there are no known missing witches. Perhaps the circle is composed of vampires who have been flayed? Perhaps humans who have been spelled?”
“Humans who have . . .” I remembered the bright witch circle over the Shookers’ place. I opened my mouth, sucking in air through nose holes and across my tongue, as Beast might do when scenting, double-checking for witch scent. But there was nothing. “Alex,” I said, over the open phone line, “what if the Shookers were spelling and powering humans and giving them to the vamps? To be used in this circle. Some witches have a lot of built-up anger over the way they’ve been treated. Would they—”
“No,” Evan said over the connection. I gave a bird grin. Hearing his voice meant that the crew was all back at the inn and safe. “George and I went by there on the way home, the morning we were stuck in town at the church. The Shookers hate fangheads. It was almost palpable in their voices.”
“We’ll check them out again,” Molly said, “but I don’t believe it.”
“Even if the Flayer has one of their children like he has yours?” Molly fell silent. Evan said, “We saw three adult witches. All there. But we’ll check again.”
“Okay. I’m trusting your read on them, but something’s wrong here. We’re missing something.”
“The Flayer has a time circle but it’s nearly empty of power,” Molly mused.
“What if he has another time circle somewhere,” I said. “What if he not only learned how to time-jump from Lego but he learned everything Leo knew.” A slow fear began to bloom in the back of my mind. The soft ding from the tracker marble sent a shock of relief through me.
“What’s the helo ETA?” I asked Alex.
“Ten minutes. They’re flying above the storm but you should be able to hear it soon.”
“Sleet just stopped. Tell them to step on it. Gee, let’s fly so we can keep an eye on everything.” I leaped from my tree and into the air, straining my tired bird body, searching for height. Gee stayed off my tail this time, for which I was grateful. Moments later, as I circled low over the arboretum grounds, I heard the helo. I needed to shift to half-form. We’d attack the building as soon as the helo landed.
Before I could act on that, the insectoid Flayer of Mithrans stepped from the door into the snow. He was carrying a pack on his back and EJ was draped over his shoulder. Unlike his brother, Shimon was well nourished and strong enough to go outside before dusk, at least when there was sufficient cloud cover, without burning. We hadn’t seen him daywalk, but here he was. “Ahhh,” I whispered to myself. That was why he had wanted a carapace, so he could gain the light of full day. I circled, losing sight of the Flayer for a half second.
Between one bell tone and the next, the tracker marble fell silent.
I looked back to the ground. The Flayer of Mithrans and EJ were—“What? What happened?” I demanded. “Where are they?”
“I do not know how he did it, little goddess,” Gee said, “but . . . I believe he is gone. EJ and the Flayer of Mithrans.”
“How? We’re right here. No cars got by us. No trucks, no helo, nothing.” Shivering, beak suddenly clattering with cold, I understood. “Oh crap. He timewalked. He took EJ with him and he timewalked right out of here. Right under our wings. EJ’s gone.” But where? Where had the Flayer taken him?
CHAPTER 20
Gack. Ewww. Stop.
The answer was there, in my own last thought. Shimon had had access to the mind and memories of Legolas.
It was a feeling, only a feeling, but that was better than nothing.
Gee could follow my Anzu magic, so I didn’t have to explain. “Gee, check out the Shookers’ place and make sure they aren’t doing something with a time circle. Make sure they aren’t being forced to assist the Flayer in some way. Then find me.” I wheeled and stroked my wings, hard and hard and hard, rising, searching for a thermal that might lift and carry me. I was already so dang tired and so very hungry. But I could rest later. Hopefully.
I reached an altitude with a slightly warmer layer of air, one sandwiched between two colder ones, which was just weird. They were things I could actually see with Anzu eyes, sparkling in warmer and cooler colors. Aching, exhausted, I stretched out and soared.
Hoping the cell and charger were still working, breathless, I said, “Alex.”
“Yes, Janie.”
“Inform Eli to follow my cell as long as it’s safe. If the helo starts icing, set down immediately.”
“Copy. Wanna tell me where you’re going?”
“A place I can’t describe and can’t explain,” I said, stretching out in a long glide. “Tell him it’s near the coordinates where he got to play with his new toy, but maybe . . . half a mile away? It’s a crevasse in the rock. I’ll get there a lot faster than he will and I’ll take off the cell phone and hang it in the trees if I have time. If I don’t, then he’ll have to figure it out from where my cell signal disappears. Climbing gear might be smart.”
“Climbing gear. Copy.” But Alex didn’t sound happy about it.
The daylight died and night fell. I flew into a rainsquall, warmer winds buffeting me, then directly into a crosswind that froze the rain and cut me with sleet. Shivering, wet, starving, and miserable, I was a hundred twenty pounds of wretchedness. I fought to find warmer air and when I finally did, I aligned my course according to the mountain peaks shrouded in the low-lying clouds and by lights from the city behind me. If I was right about his location, and if Shimon had timewalked, he could have arrived at any time. If he even went where I was guessing. And I was only guessing because he’d had access to Legolas. The lovely white-blond vamp who had been injured near the rift. Whom I had left not-true-dead.
“Tell me about Legolas,” I said, my bird croak almost unrecognizable.
“I had to go back into some of the older files, Reach’s stuff, to find him. He’s of Swedish ancestry, turned in 1602. Until a few months ago, he was the MOC of Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, and Helsinki. He decided to make use of the instability among the EuroVamps and attempted to take over Berlin, I’m guessing to get longer periods of night in summer.”
Vamps in the extreme North and South had almost no active time six months out of the year, nights lasting only a few hours. “And?” I asked.
“Berlin had just been defeated by the new upstart, Grégoire, Blood Master of Clan Arceneau, the Master of the City of Paris, Berlin, and assorted other hunting territories. Lego was defeated and barely escaped with his undeath. His name is Melker, no surname. Apparently he escaped and came to NOLA. I have confirmed hotel security cam footage of him checking in to the Rose Manor B and B Inn, a five-star hotel near the river. I also have footage of a small group of vamps taking Ronald Roland outside of the clan home. One person in the ca
r seemed to have white hair, and the car was registered to another guest at the inn. I’m guessing ‘borrowed’ for the kidnapping and returned, as it wasn’t reported stolen. I haven’t found any record of the others being taken.”
“Melker. He doesn’t look like a Melker,” I squawked, thinking. What if Legolas had gone back to the place he had been injured, and backtracked Beast’s trail to the rift? I hadn’t looked to see if that had happened. It hadn’t crossed my mind. What if Lego knew where I had been? If Lego had found the rift, and if its location had been clear and bright in his mind when Shimon took him and flayed his body, then Shimon knew about the deep blue pool. Lots of ifs. But I figured the Flayer knew everything Lego did. What if the Flayer guessed that the watery opening into the earth was a rift? What if one of them had seen another arcenciel emerge from the pool of water?
Crap. Crap, crap, crap.
I crossed hills and dipped out of the near-balmy rain, into ravines, the colors of night vivid in Anzu eyes. The mountain ridge I was looking for came into view in my Anzu eyes, the crests shrouded in clouds below me. I dipped my flight into the cloud cover. The roads in were unplowed and now buried beneath more snow, showing no tracks. To follow the road, I soared lower, into the layer of freezing rain and sleet. It struck my eyes and buried sharp-edged barbs in my down, gathering and freezing on my wings and the feathers of my face.
“He has the senza onore?” I asked.
“That’s my best guess,” Alex said.
I dropped even lower, skimming the tops of pine and dead fir, and lower again until I was angling along the roadway. The turnoff came up quickly and I whipped left, over the small clearing where we had parked, back what seemed a long time ago. My wings stroked the air higher, now climbing hard to my right, searching for the rift. But tired. So very tired.
The rift had been left unprotected—not that I could think of a way to keep it safe—when I carried Eli back for healing. I had left Legolas arrow-staked and bleeding in the snow, but any vamp, once the arrow was removed and he was healed by drinking lots of blood, would have been able to trace Beast’s scent or tracks back to the crevasse. I had been so focused on the Flayer that I hadn’t considered where Lego-Melker fit in. I was an idiot.
He had challenged me when he ripped out Shiloh’s throat, but before that, he had bled and read her. He had known all about the witches in Asheville from her. He’d had the senza onore, the pyro, and somehow he got her to work with him and burned down Molly’s house, and yet, even with all he knew, all the alliances he had made, he had still ended up in a circle, flayed and true-dead. Once I took care of the Flayer, I’d track down the woman, the senza onore, but first things first.
Ice was building up on my wings. Feathered birds are not built to fly in snow and sleet. The part of me that would have been shoulders had I been human ached with exhaustion, burned with overuse. I was growing clumsy. If I was wrong about my interpretation of events, I wouldn’t have time or energy to regroup and search for EJ anywhere else. I needed water and food and—
I glimpsed a glow that disappeared just as fast. I circled that way, the tops of trees brushing along my chest and belly. The glow didn’t reappear. But the chasm in the ground materialized below me, black in the snow, as if a huge blade had ripped into the earth.
I folded my wings and plummeted, a heart-wrenching nosedive between branches, to spread my wings just above the earth and align myself above the narrow cleft, looking for the best entry point. Wings providing a slight draft, I slowed and dived into the crevasse.
The air instantly warmed, heated by the earth itself. Little snow or ice clung to the rock face as I dropped into the dark, green ferns clinging to the cracks between rocks, moss in a dozen different shades of green cleaving to the rock itself. Even partially folded, my wings brushed the rock faces to either side. I dodged downed trees that braced across the chasm. Dove beneath fallen rock that spanned the width of the cleft. Gaining speed, too fast. Not easily able to brake and slow.
The air seemed to brighten. The glow reappeared and intensified. Grew closer. The chasm widened and I spread my wings, the temps still rising, the change giving me lift. I was silent, eyes on the bend ahead, the curve where the glow originated. I back-winged. Reached out with my claws. Gripped and settled onto a stub of rock.
The temperature was probably fifty degrees in the microclimate of the rift, but it felt like a sauna after the hours aloft in frozen air. I fluttered my feathers, shook my wings, sending droplets in fine sprays. Another outcropping was just ahead and I hopped, robin-like, to it and perched. I held my wings wide, letting the ice melt and drip off, giving myself a whole minute to thaw. I fluttered my plumage, shaking water off of me, breathing and dripping and trying to gather myself. I ached all over. With all my senses, I searched for Shimon. For EJ. My nose and eyes found nothing except the mineral scent of heated water and the life scents of birds, lizards, mice, and rats, hibernating. Not another thing. No scent of my godchild. No scent of vampire. Nothing new or different from my earlier visit to the crevasse.
I was wrong. EJ wasn’t here. Grief boiled up in me, hot and scalding, my eyes full of tears that burned like acid, too long unshed. I didn’t know where to go now, yet I had to keep searching. Somewhere.
Exhaustion pulled at my bones and burned through my muscles. Hunger ached inside me from the calorie loss of flight. I didn’t know how to draw power from ley lines like a real Anzu, and I hadn’t fed. And . . . I had lost my godson.
I screamed out my rage, an Anzu shriek of fury and grief.
He was gone.
Jane will not give up, Beast thought at me. She shoved power into my wings. Jane will fight.
Right. I swept down, trying to gain lift. I won’t give up.
I landed on a third outcropping of stone. A cave rat poked his head out of a slit in the stone. Faster than he could move, I whipped right, struck, and grabbed him in my beak. Yanked him from the slit in the stone. Crunched down to kill him. Tossed the rat into the air and gulped him down, headfirst. He weighed a good three pounds. I needed more food than that to keep searching. Keep flying. I needed twenty or thirty pounds of meat. I’d be forced to hunt deer or boar when I got back to the surface.
And then it hit me. I’d just eaten a rat.
My stomach roiled at the thought.
I pecked at the gobag, which had twisted in my daylong flight. In the deeps of the earth, I had no cell signal, and in my tired, starved flight, I had forgotten to leave it at the rim of the crevice. Gripping the gobag in my beak, I slid it around me, out of the way.
From ahead, I heard soft sounds like sleigh bells ringing, a half tone off pure, both flat and sharp. Not a sound nature made. I sniffed again. Smelled nothing.
I hopped to the next protuberance, a downed log, moss covered. I had forgotten about the tracker tied to my leg in jesses, and the device made a soft tonk as it impacted the log. I froze. But nothing changed, nothing happened, and since there had been no reaction to the anzu scream, I wasn’t sure why I thought there might be. No one came to look. The bells didn’t sound again. I heard only the odd vibration of the heated pool of water rising and lapping. Had another arcenciel come through the rift and made that odd sound, like bells laughing?
I flipped the tracker up around my ankle, once, twice, so it hung higher than my foot on the perch. Satisfied, I hopped to the next spot, this one higher, fluttering my wings. Which freaking hurt. My pecs were aching. My underarms were aching. In fact, everything was aching.
And I had eaten a rat . . . I’d never tell Eli that. Never.
Beast chuffed deep inside, amused.
The next outcropping of rock was higher. As was the next. Half winging, swearing inside my head, I made my way from perch to perch. Closer to the bend and the glow of the rift.
I landed, the water of the rift blue and brilliant just ahead. A layer of hoarfrost glittered on the moss above me, in c
revices and across the upper side of fallen logs. Below me, heavy mist rose from the surface of the water, to bead when it reached cooler temps and plink back down as if from low-lying rain clouds. The air here was at least another ten degrees warmer. A gust of colder air blew through, carrying the rain made of melted sleet and snow. The drops created a plink-tap-rat-a-tat-tat rhythm, the music of nature. The place smelled green and alive, strongly of minerals and water, of warmth. This was a primeval scent my bird brain recognized and knew. A world my Anzu memories and instincts identified by its fragrance. It was something that had been unfamiliar to Beast’s brain. This . . . this was the pathway to home.
But. The area around the pool of water was empty. I could have screamed in fury. EJ wasn’t here. No one was. And I hadn’t seen a vehicle at the parking spot, a fact I hadn’t wanted to think about until now. I shook my wings in grief and fury, ready to leap high and fly home. Get food. Change back to my human form, help the clan think of the next move.
The next protrusion was on the far side of the rift, higher, too far to hop. Not a place I had gone when I was in Beast form. Another gust of colder air spun through the crevasse. As it blew through, I raised my wings and leaped, winging across the pool and up, ready to take advantage of the rising warmer air there. I wing-swept down, across to the far side, to a downed log lodged at an odd angle, roots caught between rocks, the tip balanced in a cleft. I landed. Turned. Prepared to shove off and fly home.
Across from me, below where I had perched before my last hop, some twenty feet down, was another opening in the rock. It was a cave mouth, thirty feet high and twenty feet across at the opening. On the floor of the cave a fire burned. My wings folded as if of their own accord. I went still as a vamp.