by Faith Hunter
Sabina shouted, far louder than I had, “Enough!” Her power shot through the room like frozen lightning. Everything stopped. All the vamps, all the humans near the cars.
“This is finished,” she said more quietly. “De Allyon’s territory and hunting grounds are forfeit to Pellissier.” De Allyon’s heir and spare started forward, vamped out and bloody, but seemed to lose the ability to walk. Both settled slowly to the floor in ungainly heaps, the priestess’ cool gaze following them down. All de Allyon’s other vamps went still, immobilized by her power. They looked at the priestess with something akin to awe.
Sabina said, “Any practicing Naturaleza who is tainted with Sanguine pestis will be held captive until such time as a cure is found. Any Naturaleza not tainted with Sanguine pestis will put aside the evil and practice Fame Vexatum or suffer the penalty of the council and my wrath. All of de Allyon’s scions and loyal subjects who still adhere to the ways of the BloodCross will be accepted into Pellissier’s clans under his authority. So do I rule, and so shall I be obeyed.”
The icy wind dropped and disappeared. I searched out Leo in the crowd. He was standing with Koun, his back against a pillar at the edge of the Peristyle. At his feet were three dead vamps, staked and bloody. He watched as I walked to him, holding the head of my enemy out in front of me, his blood dribbling from the severed stump. The words that came from my mouth were stilted and formal, and sounded nothing like me at all, yet they were perhaps more like me than any words I had ever uttered. “Lucas de Allyon killed my people. He killed the Tsalagiyi—the Cherokee.” The people my kind had sworn to protect. “He enslaved us, killed us, and drank us down. He destroyed us. Despite the fact that you betrayed me and forced a binding, I am in your debt for the favor of his death at my hands.”
Leo took the head by the hair, accepting the gift. “In recompense of your debt and in honor of your service, you may choose a gift from among mine. Choose wisely,” he said.
I shrugged my acceptance. The Peristyle was a bloody battleground. Five vamps were lying dead, three of them Leo’s—Kabisa and Karimu, sworn to Grégoire and Clan Arceneau, had died fighting back to back. Koun was kneeling over the body of Hildebert, a German vamp whose name meant “bright battle,” and who had died fighting, still wielding a blade as his head hit the floor. Hildebert and Koun were the warriors of Clan Pellissier, and Koun bent his head low over Hildebert’s chest, bloody tears dripping, to run across his friend’s body.
In the far shadows, Rick walked out of the wood, along the path I had taken during my battle with the Enforcer and his human accomplice. I remembered the human Beast had savaged; her claws and killing teeth had marked his flesh. I had some explaining to do soon. I didn’t think it would be a pretty discussion.
I looked down at my hands, the blood drying and cold. It seemed I’d always had blood on my hands, from the time my grandmother had given me my first blade. De Allyon’s hair and blood were caught under my nails. The hair was coarse and black as the night sky. I took a breath at the sight of them, the action of my chest erratic, the muscles jerking and stabbing. Tears flooded my eyes. I curled my fingers under, the blood tacky on my skin. A sob rose in my chest, gathering a scream with it, tangling into some huge snarled pain, like roots twisting tight and choking. They were stuck, wedged in place, blocked by some organic dam that kept the agony of my soul from finding release. Tears gathered and settled inside, floating close to the surface, but obstructed, unable to find freedom. I clenched my hands, the blood sticky.
Ahead of me, Eli pointed a rifle at Sneak Cheek, the Tequila Boy we had suspected of being leak number two. During a debriefing, I’d have to ask what Eli had seen. Later. Much later. I nodded to two Vodka Boys and three Tequila Boys, talking quietly about getting good and drunk before dawn.
I passed El Diablo, standing by himself, and he gave me a small nod, touching his combat helmet, like some old-time Western cowboy. I lifted a finger at him, and though I didn’t manage a smile, I did manage to keep my sobs in.
When I passed the last marine, I took a breath, painful and coarse sounding, dropped my hands, and walked to Bayou Metairie, sliding out of my flip-flops as I went. I waded into the water, feeling Beast looking out through my eyes. She spotted the gator in the distance, nostrils above the surface, but it wouldn’t bother me, not with vamp blood on my skin. I looked up in the black sky and found the North Star, orienting myself to face east. There was no ritual for my kind of Christian who had faced battle and killed. Maybe the Roman Catholics had one. Absolution. Something. The Cherokee would have one, and Aggie One Feather would guide me through it some morning soon. But I needed something now, when the night and the blood of my enemies coated me, their deaths pressing on me.
In two steps, the water rose up my thighs. Without looking, I knew that Rick was standing on the bank, watching me, Leo and Bruiser and Eli behind him. Rick’s wolf and his Soul stood beside him. Something like pain cut through me, a steel blade of misery and grief, sharp and burning cold. But nothing in life was set in stone and nothing in life is promised us. Not happiness, not joy, not love. Everything was variable and mutable and inconstant. Perhaps Rick and I still could be together. Someday. But I couldn’t count on that. I couldn’t count on anything except God, death, and myself, and sometimes not even myself.
I looked up into the eastern sky. “I call on the Almighty, the Elohim, who are eternal. Hear me. See me.” I knelt, dropping slowly below the muddy surface, the cold water closing over my head, washing away the blood of my enemies. I stood just as slowly, letting the water run through my clothes and hair and over the drying blood on my skin.
The water trickled off me, into silence. Nothing moved now that Sabina’s magics had died away, the trees of the park motionless. Even the vamps had stopped moving, standing, all of them, friends and enemies alike, watching me.
I turned to my right, facing north, and whispered, knowing that the vamps and weres would hear, and not caring. “I call upon my Tsalagiyi ancestors, and upon the grandmother and father of my kind. Hear me.” I knelt and dropped below the surface of the water. When I rose, my skin felt cleaner, my soul less soiled. Cold prickles lifted my flesh and water ran from me, cleansing.
I blinked against it. When the water draining down my face cleared, I caught a glimpse of humans in night camo standing in the crowd of enemies over de Allyon’s clan, guns at the ready. The Tequila Boys. One stood beside de Allyon’s heir, now the clan leader. Another stood beside his secundo scion. Guarding. If we had enemies among our own, that was finished now. They were free of obligation and coercion. Leo was safe now.
I turned west. “I call upon my guardian angel, Hayyel. Hear me.” I heard the wings of a night bird on the far bank, but resisted the urge to look behind me. My human and vamp watchers were not alone. Not anymore. I knelt, letting the water close over me, cleansing me. Purifying me. When I gained my feet, the water pulled through my hair and it lay on the surface like a veil.
I faced south. “I call upon the Great One, God who creates.” A predawn breeze blew along the length of the bayou, growing harder, stronger, smelling of wet and leafless trees and water birds and the soil of the earth. I dropped once again below the surface, and as the water closed over me, it took the last of the blood with it, leaving me clean. Leaving me at peace. I stayed that way, kneeling in the mud, under the water, waiting, feeling the unaccustomed cleanliness of my unconventional baptism.
I stood, the water cascading from me, and turned right, facing east again. I felt the current swirl around me, and I knew the alligator was swimming close for a look, tasting the flavor of water and the strange blood in it. But I was still unafraid of the creature.
“I call upon the Trinity, the sacred number of three.” Beast growled low in my mind, the sound a rumble as I dropped below the water. I rose and said softly, looking at the night sky, “I call upon the Redeemer, the blood sacrifice, for peace and for forgiveness. I seek wisdom and strength, purity of heart and mind and soul.” In
the distance an owl called, loud and long, the hooting echoing. Nearby another answered, three plaintive notes.
I had survived the vamp blood-feud, alive and unhurt. I had turned that feud on my enemy and taken his head. Though the vamps now had better confirmation that I wasn’t human, they weren’t much closer to knowing what I was than they had been. I smiled up at the nearly new moon.
Rick stepped into the water, approaching me slowly, and I looked away from the night sky to watch him come. His face was hard, his eyes dark. Suddenly I remembered his words, lightly spoken on the bank of the Mississippi. I remembered the human with his side torn open by killing teeth. And I remembered his words. “Don’t make me have to kill you. Shoot you with silver.”
I opened my mouth to speak, to tell him that I hadn’t eaten the human. Rick’s hand came up. The night exploded. Pain hit me in the chest, left side, up high. The world went dark. I fell back. Black water closed over my head, filled my mouth, my nose. But I wasn’t breathing. I had no desire to. I could see under the water, Beast’s vision taking over, but the world was telescoping down into darkness. Rick, the cop, had done his duty, thinking I had gone U’tlun’ta, had become the liver eater, the evil of my kind.
Beast shoved at me, hard, her pelt abrading my skin, her claws tearing at my fingertips.
My heart isn’t beating.
Heart shot.
Shift! she screamed.
No time to shift.
I’m dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I Was Alpha. I Was Big-Cat. Wanted to Eat Gator
I woke to the taste of blood in my mouth, hot, spicy blood. My heart thumped once, sounding wrong, sounding mushy. My vision cleared to see Leo over me, his black eyes fierce, his wrist slashed and bleeding. Into my mouth.
“Vous devez boire, mon amour. Boire, et vivre.”
I had no idea what that meant, but I swallowed. Heat slammed through me. My heart beat again, sounding strange, broken. But its movement sent that heat into my veins, into my arteries. I took a breath and could hear the wheeze of blood in my lungs. I drank. My heart beat again. And again. And picked up speed. I dropped inside my own mind, into the dark, into the cavernlike place where I took my spirit journeys. It was . . . different.
And I drank.
The small dark cloud in my soul, the place where Leo had bound me, took strength from the blood. It rose from its place in my mind, as if alive. As if scenting.
My heart beat. I breathed. The black form of the binding seemed to breathe too. It solidified, smelling of old papyrus, black pepper, and metal. In the deeps of my mind, I reached out and touched the black form. It was frozen iron, so cold my fingers burned. It was solid. This is not good, I thought. It opened its eyes and stared at me. This thing was Leo.
I leaped back, away. Landing on the far side of the cavern of my mind.
From the binding, a black chain slithered across the floor of my soul, reaching for me. The links sounded like scales.
We are not prey! Beast thought at me. She smashed into me, through my mind, through my heart and lungs, and into my cells. Her pelt ground against me as if she rolled around inside my skin. Her claws pierced through my fingertips. “No!” In the real world, I pushed Leo’s wrist away. I caught sight of my hand. Golden-furred fingers, plump, with knobby knuckles and extruded claws at the tips.
I rolled away, landing on the floor of Grégoire’s limo. I fell into the gray place of the change. “No, no, no, no, no—”
The iron chain snapped hard, the sound echoing.
Far into the change, Beast did . . . something. The chain warmed. Silvered. And I was lost.
* * *
I pawed away from Leo and Bruiser and Rick. Clawed at them, at the leather of the car. I leaped. Twisted in midair, kicking free of Jane clothes. Landed. Looked back and met Rick’s eyes. His were golden green. Big-cat eyes. I snarled at him. At the woman beside him, her eyes wide. Not-human woman named Soul. Rick’s Soul.
I growled at Bruiser, his mouth open in shock. Hissed at Leo, who was staring, his fangs down. Good strong predator. Would take him as mate one day. To show my interest, I swiped at him, drawing blood. Then thrust from them, spiraling in midair, claws out. Landed in brush. Raced into night.
Hunger tore at me. Side ached, place where Rick gun bit me. Place that nearly killed me/us. Raced along bayou, scattering geese. Caught one. Crushed neck with snap of jaws. Dropped it. Caught another. Crushed neck. Leaped out over water, thick tail spiraling, front claws reaching. Caught neck of flying goose and broke it with single sling of big-cat claws. Landed in muddy water. Paddled in circle and swam to shore, carrying goose in killing teeth. Have three geese. I hunger! Will eat.
I dropped goose and shook pelt, slinging water. Settled to muddy bank and tore into dead bird. Good greasy bird, crunching bones, swallowing feathers and ugly webbed feet. Ate entire bird and bit into goose two. Ate it all. And goose three. Lay on muddy bank, panting. Belly full. Chest aching.
I yawned and licked bloody jaws and thought about Jane. She was not awake, but slept in mind. Thought about binding of Leo. It slept too, black form curled in corner of Jane spirit. The form looked like monkey. Monkey-cat. Ugly thing. Had metal chain that trailed across floor to Jane, asleep on floor of den place in mind. But chain to Jane was broken. Chain was lying on the floor of mind-den, not touching Jane. Chain also trailed across floor to Beast.
I snarled. Saw cuff on back leg. Sniffed at cuff. Ugly silver metal. Ugly smell of Leo and shackling. I growled. I had tried to stop binding during shift to Big-Cat. Used angel Hayyel power, but was not angel. Was big-cat. But did not work like I expected. Needed to think about cuff. Needed to think about binding. Long thoughts. Jane thoughts. Could not understand metal-cuff-binding in spirit den. Not now.
Heard vampires in distance. Pulled away from mind-den, away from dark place in thoughts. Looked-listened-scented at world outside mind-den. Vampires and werewolf were hunting Beast. I stood and stretched body, pulling at muscles and sinews. Stretched hard along spine and chest. Chest should not still hurt. Needed more shifting.
Would think about chain. Later.
I was alpha. I was big-cat. Wanted to eat gator. Wanted to hunt.
Looked out into darkness of night. Was near tree where Beast had ambush-hunted and killed human and big vampire. Could smell dead human and dead big prey on cool wind. Dead and dead again. Did not understand twice-dead things. Did not understand things that were alive and dead. Like Bitsa. Like vampires.
Could smell vampires on wind, hear vampires. Vampires were hunting Beast. Wanted to go far away from hunters. Wanted to think. I huffed and padded into dark.
At road, I climbed tree and lay on limb hanging over road. Jumped from limb over road to top of small truck and set claws to metal. Holding on. Truck was like bison, big and fast and stupid. But truck had no blood and bones. Truck was alive and not alive, like vampires were alive and not alive. Did not understand truck or vampires. But truck was moving toward city lights, toward place of Jane-den. Stupid truck turned away soon, and Beast jumped down to ground. Prowled on before finding other truck heading toward Jane-den. Changed trucks three more times. Less than five. Was good number.
In French Quarter, truck stopped at place of sleeping and eating. Hotel, Jane called it. Jumped from back of truck to street and padded into shadows. I moved through French Quarter place smelling of many more than five humans and man-food and man-spices and gasoline and many more than five vampires. Went to Katie’s place. Place where enemy of Jane had hunted Katie and taken Katie.
Could smell Katie and Derek and other humans inside. Derek had hunted Katie and brought her back to her den. Derek was good hunter. Wondered if Derek and Katie were mated now. Katie needed strong mate. But smelled blood. Much blood. Katie was wounded and drinking from more-than-five humans. Heard sound of pain from Katie-den.
I chuffed. Did not like smell of human blood. Did not like taste of human flesh. Remembered taste from fight. Jane was right. Should
never eat humans. Did not understand vampires—good hunters who ate humans. I turned and trotted into night.
* * *
I woke in a stinking alley behind a restaurant, lying on the pavement. Next to a wino so drunk he smelled like a brewery. I crawled to my feet and met his eyes.
“You’re naked, you know.”
“I noticed.”
“I got a blanket I’ll sell you.”
“It isn’t like I have any money on me.”
His eyes gleamed and he showed me broken, brown teeth as he looked me over.
I chuckled softly. “How about this? You loan me your blanket, and I’ll come back with fifty dollars and a brand-new blanket.”
He thought about that for a good half minute while I shivered. “And a pillow. And a waterproof tent. A tiny one I can drape over things when it rains.”
I was standing buck naked in an alley at dawn, bargaining with a wino for his flea-infested blanket. Which was stupid on so many levels. “Whatever it takes to get me the blanket.” The wino scratched himself and I didn’t look at where or at the sight of his black fingernails.
“Done.”
“How about I give you a hundred and let you live?” a soft voice said.
I froze. Rick. Who had just shot me. I turned my body at an angle, making a narrower target. But his hands were empty. His white wolf sat at his side, panting.
Rick saw my reaction and he opened his mouth, breathing in. He went dead-still for a moment, not breathing now, not doing anything, reading me like a cat might. His voice went dead, no tonal shifts or flex. “You think I shot you? You think I shot you?” he exploded. “I’ve been hunting you all night. Thinking that he had killed you, that you shifted too late and only Beast was left.” Rick ripped his coat off and threw it at me. I caught it, something heavy banging into my kneecap. “There is a nine-mil in the right pocket. Take it and shoot me, you crazy bitch.”