by Faith Hunter
The smoke was scentless, which was strange with my improved Anzu nose. From this angle, the cave appeared to be empty, but its floor had been swept clean, and deeper inside, I could make out only a quarter of an arc, perhaps a witch circle on the bare stone, the border made from salt. I spotted a small perch, too small for my feet, but I jumped there anyway. Caught my balance with wings that were too noisy, banging against the stone. Bruising what would be my wrists in human form. Ignoring the pain.
At the edge of the circle was EJ.
Kit! Beast shouted in our mind.
The boy was still. Unmoving. Until his chest rose and fell. Shock slashed a path through me. My heart beat so hard, it felt as if it would fly out of my chest. My godson was only asleep. Drugged or compelled or in stasis. Not dead.
My godchild was alive.
If the Flayer was timewalking, he’d had plenty of time to find this cave, prepare this cave. Do whatever he wanted in this cave. And he could come back and forth through time anywhere. Except for the fire, I had no idea if he was here, now, in this cave. And if he discovered me out here, if he took EJ back or forward through time with him, I’d lose my godchild.
Fear shivered thorough me. I hopped to a better perch, glad for the darkness of the crevasse, glad for the firelight in the cave, which would conceal my presence.
Beside the fire was a flayed vampire, blood tacky on the stone floor, half-dried across her exposed flesh. In the corner lay another vampire, partially skinned, a male. Beside him was a human, female, her wrists and the crown of her head wrapped in silver wire. Her throat was flawless, but her clothing was drenched in dried blood, showing she had been fed from and then healed. A witch? Bled and rolled? Immobilized with null amulets? Over her stood Shimon Bar-Judas. The mouth of his bleeding spokesperson—the female vamp—was moving as she spoke to the witch. I heard nothing, but no matter what words Shimon Bar-Judas spoke, they wouldn’t be good.
I couldn’t hear a thing, not a peep. There was some kind of energy thingy over the mouth of the cave, not allowing out scent or sound, but letting in fresh air, if the flickering flames of the fire pit were an indication. It wasn’t a proper ward, not a proper witch circle, because it seemed to cover the entrance only, and it wasn’t round. The energies were strange too. This was something I hadn’t seen before. My brain went immediately to Star Trek shields. If the shield let in air, it probably let in sound too. I’d been anything but silent. A tiny stem dropped from above and landed on the shield. It made a soft popping noise and gave a small tone of sound, like a dented brass bowl tapped with a fork. No one inside looked up. There were dozens of such bits of detritus on the shield, the noise of their falling having made the people inside deaf to exterior noise.
A shield meant I couldn’t get in.
Unless it was permeable to other things besides air. Maybe not branches or stems or rain or humans or skinwalkers or weres. But the Flayer had gotten in. Maybe . . . I studied it closer. The shield wasn’t a modern hedge of thorns. In Anzu vision, the energies were orange and blue, netlike, with ropes of power, thicker in some places than others. Shields were created to let in and keep out specific things. Maybe it would let in vamps. Maybe it would also let in creatures like me. Like an Anzu. But Anzus had weaknesses, for instance, a lethal allergy to being cut by iron and iron based metals.
I couldn’t see anything made of metal in the cave, no steel or silver, no athame for a sacrifice. But Shimon had his own weapons—talons and teeth. If he was here, and if there was a rift in the possession of the EuroVamps, then he had to know what the pool at the bottom of the crevasse was. And he might know that arcenciels came through rifts. And it was likely the Flayer wanted to capture rainbow dragons. Arcenciels, to old vamps, were like chocolate and diamonds were to humans—there could never be too many. My thoughts and Beast’s came fast, overlapping.
Had an arcenciel come through the rift and flown by the vamps Eli had arrow-shot and alerted them? Had Shimon put the presence of rainbow dragons and me together and begun looking for the rift? If he could timewalk, then he could have followed me here the first time I came in Beast form, found the rift, prepared the cave, gone into the future (or the past?) to the Regal, left himself a message of the location, and then returned to his own time and place. Somehow or some-when, he had gotten all these people and supplies here. I hadn’t seen a car anywhere when I flew in. Or maybe the Flayer could do that Star Trek thing and transport, using magical energy and his mind instead of tech. The possibilities and dangers made my head spin.
I tilted, falling, wings flailing. I leaped back to the other side and settled on the tree.
Only one thing mattered. Shimon Bar-Judas, the Flayer of Mithrans, the Son of Shadows, was at a rift, was going to sacrifice EJ for some purpose, maybe to gather power for a new time circle. He was going to capture a dragon, and with captured arcenciels, he could do anything, even perhaps keep the arcenciels from killing him and his bloodline two thousand years ago.
Maybe.
It was as a good a guess as any other for a magic that had been created and refined for two thousand years.
The first time I ever saw vampire witches was in a witch circle with a sacrifice. With EJ and Angie Baby. Back then the witch-vamps had been trying to bring back the long-chained. Or . . . Or they had been going to timewalk? Maybe change the past to somehow save the long-chained? Do something special to make their scions’ transition through the devoveo work?
It was important and equally immaterial. I didn’t have time on my side. What I had was the memory of being Bubo bubo, owl, but bigger and far more formidable. And I had my own timewalking magic.
Beast?
Beast is best ambush hunter. Beast bird is best ambush hunter from sky. Beast will save kit.
Dang skippy.
Will save skippy too.
I made a tock of laughing agreement that echoed softly in the crevasse. The sound reverberated into silence. Across the way, the Flayer of Mithrans bent to pick up EJ. We need to timewalk. Now!
Yesss. Beast tore through the Gray Between. My skinwalker energies burst out and, just as fast, merged back inside, sliding into the star-shaped magics, the scarlet star in my abdomen, visible even in Anzu form. I reached into the Gray Between and bubbled time. Inside the shield, everything stopped: the Flayer had half lifted EJ and was now frozen, unmoving. I had done it!
Pain sliced through me. My bird heart beat fast, too fast, a pounding, racing agony. My wings drooped. My breath strained, not enough to fill my lungs. “Crap,” I whispered. I’d been in Anzu form all day, adding Anzu magic to my own, and therefore to any remnants of Dudley. The pain spiked.
Beast dropped time. Inside the shield, the Flayer repositioned EJ on the stone floor.
Jane is sick even in Anzu?
Looks like it. Holy crap on a cracker. This makes it a lot harder.
My skinwalker energies misting around me like a silver veil, I thrust off the tree and flapped my exhausted wings, gaining altitude, banked in a tight circle. Set my eyes on the Flayer of Mithrans. Before reason could suggest I stop, I bent time and folded my wings tight to me. Aimed my beak at the back of the Flayer’s head. And dove toward the cave.
Pierced the shield. It shocked across and through me. A blinding glare as if lightning had hit me again, sparking and flashing. Sizzling along my beak and face. Pulling on my feathers in hot tugs of power. Pain like a spear through my middle. And then I was through. Dropping fast. From above.
I dropped the bubbled time.
Slammed into the Flayer of Mithrans. Beak rammed into the back of his neck. At the base of his skull. Perfect raptor kill.
Still moving forward, my wings went out, claws swung up. Gripped his head. Crushed down. Sweeping him forward. Wings spreading.
I crashed him against the back of the cave. Back-winging, sweeping hard, I hammered his head into the stone. Crushing his skull in cl
aws and rock.
Dropping, I slid down the uneven stone wall, taking him down with me. I landed on the stone floor on top of Shimon Bar-Judas, his body a bloody heap beneath me. Twitching. Still alive. Healing even as I looked. Because the Flayer of Mithrans was truly immortal.
I settled beside him, wings folding, claws holding him steady. Setting my beak in the middle of his neck, I ripped off his head, tossed it high, and caught it in my beak, holding him by one ear. Blood pulsed hard from the ragged stump just above the exoskeleton shoulders, slashing across the cave wall, painting swathes that almost glowed to my Anzu eyes. The body twitched, the hands clenching and unclenching, the feet pointing like a ballerina’s. The pulsing slowed and stopped.
I tossed the head against the far wall. Gray matter was visible in the openings I’d made in the crushed skull. The body kept twitching but there was no control, no intent behind the movements. It was like a decapitated snake twitching its tail. I figured it would take a long time for the Flayer’s head to heal and figure out what had happened, and—horror movies aside—since his head wasn’t attached to his body, I didn’t think his parts could go independently searching for each other and put himself back in place.
Hopping around, I checked out the skinned vampire and the witch. The vamp was familiar. I stared at the skinless, unbreathing, but undead corpse. It was Tex. I stopped. Tex had been missing, taken from New Orleans before Shiloh, probably by Legolas-Melker. I hadn’t even thought about him, neither him nor Roland, also taken. I needed to find out the whereabouts and condition of all my people. I was a terrible clan leader. I sucked. Later. I’d be a better person later.
The witch was an unknown.
Both of them were silent, eyes empty and haunted. Neither reacted to the presence of a hundred-plus-pound sapphire bird. Threats eliminated or ineffective, I stared at my godson. He lay in the center of a witch-type circle, sealed with an ongoing working. The dome of the circle was low, and I hadn’t disrupted it when I dive-bombed Shimon.
I wanted to race in, breaking the circle working, grab EJ, spread my wings on the far side of it and leap through the shield as we fell into flight. But at some point, Shimon had closed the circle. Because it was still active, it might explode if I broke it improperly. The ward would surely react to EJ trying to get through. Anything I tried or did might kill the little boy.
I didn’t have hands to help him, either, and though claws were nimble, mine were huge and I hadn’t exactly practiced using them. I was unwieldly on the ground.
I could change form. But if I did, I couldn’t get back through the shield. My hindbrain figured out what I had felt when I pierced the outer shield, incoming. The magics of ley lines. Brittle and sizzling and electrifying. Powerful enough to keep me inside the cave, in any form but Anzu. Ley lines and rifts were part of the same power structure, and as an Anzu, I could—clearly—go through them. I should have thought this through before I bubbled time and dove in. Flying by the . . . feathers of my hindquarters, literally. But now, bubbling time again might kill me, and if I was dead, I couldn’t save EJ. And in human form, I couldn’t get though.
I couldn’t just sit here. Help was likely many hours away. Eventually one of the vamps would wake and the mind of the Flayer would take him or her over. I’d have to dispatch whoever it was, even if it was Tex, my friend. And then there was Dudley. The sickness I had felt earlier grew. I had to finish this, had to get EJ out of here.
I needed a safety net and time to figure out my next move, and since bubbling time was out of the question, then gore would have to do.
With wings and claws, I attacked the Flayer’s torso and tore through his left shoulder joint. Using the arm, I batted the bashed head farther away, against the far stone wall. I tossed the arm at the mouth of the cave and it flew outside, flashing as it passed through the energies. Interesting. The Flayer could get out without dropping the shield. I hopped atop the body and tore off the other arm, throwing it too, though it landed inside the shield.
I reared back and slammed my beak into the exoskeleton, once, twice, the sharp cracks reverberating through my head. On the third bone-breaking peck, my beak pierced through, stabbing into blood and viscera. I grabbed the exoskeleton in claws and my beak. Straining, I separated it, ripping it along the cracks my beak had made.
Good meat. Strong vampire blood, Beast thought. She shoved me down, hungry. Faster than I could think, she pecked out a lung and tossed it up. Opened her beak and took it all in at once.
Gack! Stop!
Beast ignored me and stuck our head inside the cavity, ripping into the heart and liver, tearing them free and shredding strips off with our beak and claws. One by one, she ate them. With each gobbet of gore, I felt better. And grosser.
Gack. Ewww. Stop.
No. Good vampire blood, Beast thought.
I’m eating rats. Eating sentient beings, and not for the first time. I’m a monster. I’m gonna hurl.
Inside me, Beast flicked her ear tabs and exerted pressure against me, pushing me down, taking alpha place. Is like Beast giving milk to kits. Will grow back if Jane lets it. With one eye on Shimon as I ate, I glanced with the other eye at the unknown vamp. The vamp was pretty much out of it. The witch was immobilized. No one was watching me binge-eat an insectoid vamp.
My queasiness faded slightly as I realized that Beast had a point. The Flayer was immortal. He’d grow back all his parts if he got the chance. With one independent eye, I looked over the cave, finding that EJ was still asleep and wouldn’t be forever mentally ruined by my dietary habits.
I closed my mental eyes and let Beast feast. When hunger no longer slashed me like knives, Beast withdrew, flopped down on the floor of our soul home, and let me take back over my Anzu’s body. Bloody, needing a bath if I stayed in this form, I hopped over to a dark corner and shifted shape, hoping to achieve my half-form this time. The shift took a long time.
It hurt. A lot. And it didn’t work like I’d hoped.
* * *
* * *
I was human—shivering and naked, wanting to toss my cookies. Pain was a deep ache, as if bruised all over; I was weak as a newborn kitten. But I wasn’t starving like usual after a shape-shift, just ordinary hungry. Shifting into or out of Anzu used energy from elsewhere, not my disease-ridden body. I guessed the elsewhere was the nearby ley lines, this time, but it was just that. A guess.
The ward flashed overhead, but when I looked I saw nothing. No one. Likely it was a rock or stick dropping from the crevasse above. The cold of the cave pressed into me. Curls of dried blood and blood dust littered the stone around my bare legs.
I had eaten part of the Flayer of Mithrans. Gack. Just gack.
Holding on to the cave wall, I found my feet and my balance, to study the circle with human and Beast vision. It looked like a simple ward, one a child might create in witch school. I walked across the rough, frigid floor of the cave to the arm of the Flayer and lifted it. Breaking the circle as a human, Anzu, or any other form might have made the circle explode, but I was ninety-nine percent certain that Shimon himself could break it. He was a control freak, and no way would he allow a circle he couldn’t manipulate. Still, that one percent chance that I was wrong was a scary one percent. And I might yet kill my godchild.
The exoskeleton was heavy but far more flexible than I had expected. I carried the arm to the north point of the circle and stopped, staring at the sleeping little boy. If I was wrong . . . Dear God, if I was wrong, I’d kill him. But if I waited, the Flayer’s reinforcements might arrive and EJ would remain a prisoner of the Flayer of Mithrans. I hadn’t prayed much recently, but I said a silent prayer and listened for an answer. There wasn’t one.
Carefully, using the strange-looking hand of the Flayer, I leaned in and touched the cold, dead exoskeleton fingers to the edge of the circle. Nothing happened. I pressed into the energies, seeing the spark of magics as I brushed away th
e salt. There was life enough in the hand that the circle recognized it and fell. There were no explosions. EJ had survived me pants flying. I swallowed past a fear-dry throat and remembered to breathe. I tossed the arm outside with the other one.
I spotted a bundle of discarded clothing in the corner. On top was a length of emerald green velvet that turned out to be a cape, the fabric warmer than my icy hands. That seemed a dangerous sign, not that I had time to worry about the condition of my human body. Staggering, I knelt beside EJ. He was as cold as I was, so, likely hypothermic, spelled asleep, but his pulse was steady and his breathing was even. I hoped that was a good sign. I wrapped him in the emerald velvet and, clasping the hem of the cape, pulled him across the stone floor, close to the fire. It burned in the slight depression of a fire pit, circled with rounded, blackened stones. The stones were warm and I shoved several close to EJ, nestling them around his small body. I had to stop and breathe for a while, and wished I had achieved half-form. But there was that old adage about peasants and horses flying. Or riding horses. Or maybe it was pigs. Whatever.
Sitting on a warm stone near my godson, I added wood to the fire and rested. My legs were skin and bone, and though I hadn’t checked my weight, I wasn’t certain how I was managing the mass change when I shifted forms. Pain snaked through me. I could almost feel the tumor growing, as if the magic of being Anzu had given it power.
The jesses on my ankle were painfully tight in human form, especially with them slung around to keep them out of the way. I removed the ties and the marble, pulled off the gobag, and dressed in the clothing inside it. The sweatpants and shirt were amazingly comforting. I hung Soul’s crystal and the marble around my neck, next to my own golden nugget and lion claw. I pocketed the Glob and pulled on socks and the thin-soled shoes. There was no cell service underground; I’d have been surprised if there had been.