by Faith Hunter
“She has been . . . excommunicated,” he said slowly. “That is all I may say.”
“When was the last time Big H drank from his sons?”
“Four days,” he said. “Why—” He stopped quickly. “Narkis and Zoltar have not betrayed their father.”
And if he drank from them, he would know. Drinking from a scion or a blood-bonded servant involved a sort of mind reading. I knew that from personal experience. Francis had said the ones closest to Big H had turned on him. Zoltar and Narkis were not the ones closest to Big H. I had assumed, and Francis had let me. I hung up, spun out of my chair, and pounded up the stairs, feeling Bobby’s eyes on me as I ran. Behind me, I heard him say, “She can run fast, huh?”
Eli grunted. Mr. Conversationalist.
I brought down the papers and the electronic tablet the Kid had given me, both filled with research into the vampire family trees in Natchez, sat at the table, and ran through the list of authorized kills in Natchez. Lotus wasn’t there. I wasn’t supposed to kill her. So where was she?
I scrolled through the tablet to Lotus’ personal info and history, as compiled by Reach, the Kid, and Bodat. Under Lotus’ known acquaintances I found Esther McTavish. And Silandre. I sat back with a satisfied smile. Lotus’ name wasn’t on Hieronymus’ kill list, yet she was involved with all this craziness. Either Big H was in love with her or he didn’t know how far she had gone to the dark side. So unless she attacked me or a human or I could prove she had drained and killed a human, I couldn’t kill her, though she was, maybe, now in charge of the Naturaleza in Natchez.
Like usual, vamp problems and troubles went back decades, sometimes centuries, and untangling the skein of old injury, torment, and conflict was impossible. After a time, old pain became like a living being, with breath and self-determination.
“First we finish the guns,” I said. “Then we nap. Then we go back to Silandre’s Saloon. Tell your brother to concentrate on relationships between all the vamp females.”
Eli shrugged. Bobby smiled happily, his joy like a beacon of contentment in the room, satisfied because I was satisfied. I had forgotten how his inner happiness could radiate and fill up an empty space. Or an empty, lonely heart.
CHAPTER 19
I Look Like a Well-Dressed
Street Person
I woke when Charly climbed on the bed with me. “Not now, Charly,” I mumbled.
“It’s Sunday. We have to go to church.”
“Not today, Charly,” I mumbled again. I touched my lips. They felt numb.
“Yes. Today.”
The covers were yanked off my shoulders and down to my waist. Chilled winter air followed it, covering me, and I was glad I had put on a T-shirt and leggings to sleep in. “No.” Blindly, I shoved to push her away, hitting only air while simultaneously grabbing for the covers. And hitting only air again. Cold air. “We’ll go to church another day.”
“Yes,” Bobby said. He grabbed my flailing hand and pulled it. Colder, smaller fingers took my other hand and yanked. Insistent.
“Noooo.” I was head and shoulders off the bed when I finally opened my eyes. “I don’t want to go to church.” It sounded whiny even to my own ears. “I want to sleep.”
“And Charly needs to pray.” Bobby said.
“I have to pray for my mama and I have to pray to God to make me well. Mama made me promise.”
Which went straight through to my heart like a silver-tipped stake and woke me up. “Crap,” I mumbled. I wrenched my hands free and braced myself on the mattress, shoving my hair out of the way. “I didn’t bring a dress. All I have are my fighting clothes.”
“Miss Esmee has a skirt you can use,” Bobby said. “She said it’s purple. And you can wear a T-shirt. Like you did in Bethel.”
Bethel. The children’s home. He’d used the Bethel card. I blew out a breath. I knew when I was beaten. “Okay. Get dressed. I’ll find a church.” The kids left, and I groaned out of bed and to my feet. I braided my hair in the bathroom and smeared on a bit of red lipstick.
Out of curiosity, I peeked into Bruiser’s room; it was empty and—by the lack of fresh scent—had been for some time. The chores for his master were time consuming, even though the relationship had undergone a fundamental change. I closed the door and looked over my meager clothing. “Black, black, and more black,” I said, putting on a bra and black tee and green Lucchese boots over the leggings. I’d look stupid. But Charly needed to pray. And maybe I did too.
Still, I packed a nine mil in its box, loaded, safety on and no round in the chamber. Locked the box. Carrying it, I stopped and looked at myself in the mirror hanging on the back of the bathroom door. Black hair, amber eyes, copper skin, black circles under my eyes to match the black tee, the black leggings. The only colors were in my irises and the green snakeskin boots. Which clashed. And I didn’t have a Bible. I hadn’t brought it. I couldn’t remember the last time I hadn’t brought a Bible out of town. I was going to church, and I packed a gun. How sick was that? I was so going to hell, and not for my sex life or the vamps I killed. But for the slow wandering away from God, from prayer, from any kind of spirituality. I hadn’t even remembered it was Sunday. Yeah. Hell.
I went online and found a nondenominational church in town. It was way bigger than any I’d ever attended, and from its Web site, it looked like a male-dominated church, probably one where the little ladies sat with their hands primly clasped and wore little tatted head coverings. But it was the only one close by that looked like something Misha would want her daughter to attend. I saved the directions on my cell phone and left the room, making my way down the stairs.
Esmee met me at the bottom of the stairs, dressed in paisley silk pajamas of a particularly hideous green color and a sunflower-yellow silk robe and matching ballerina bedroom slippers, holding a decidedly plain—for her—purple skirt. It had two layers; the underlayer a heavy, dark purple cotton, and the upper layer a lighter shade of purple, full and gauzy. The waist was elastic, and when I pulled it on, the hem fell to the tops of my boots. On Esmee, it must have dragged the floor.
“It looks lovely on you, dear,” she said, patting my hand. “But you’ll need some color. This amethyst necklace and the matching bracelet will bring out the darker colors of the underskirt.”
I tried to say no, but she drew my head down and snapped the amethyst choker to my throat, and opened the cuff bracelet and slid it onto my wrist. Both were ridiculously heavy and probably cost a fortune. “They go beautifully with your coloring,” she said. “You are such a striking girl.”
She patted my cheek, her eyes glowing with pleasure at my wearing her baubles. I felt my heart go all mushy.
“And this black shawl will keep you warm in the church.” She wrapped me up in the knitted shawl as if I were a little girl, and I let her, feeling all teary-eyed. I am such a dweeb.
I smiled down at her, bent, and kissed her forehead. “Thank you, Miz Esmee. I’ll take good care of them.
“I know you will, dear. Here’s a Bible.” She placed a worn Bible in my hands, her name in gold gilt lettering on the embossed leather cover. I was deeply touched that she would share her own Bible with me. “You are full of woe and darkness and anger,” she said, her tone sad. I snapped my eyes to hers. “So go to church and give all that to God. He’s big enough to take care of it all.”
I shoved down my reaction. I got my best advice from the tribal elders I’d met in my life, and while Esmee appeared to be a dotty old woman, tottering around in a big empty house, hoping for interaction from the outside world, she had seen the darkness inside me as clearly as Aggie One Feather, my Cherokee elder. Esmee wasn’t tribal, but she was a woman rich in years and likely rich in wisdom as well, and had insights I hadn’t considered. “Ummm,” I said.
“It’s very simple,” she said, reading my thoughts on my face. “It isn’t hard or painful or violent or learned or scary. It’s just you and the Almighty talking.”
Something bright and icy shiv
ered through me. “Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“The children are waiting in the car, which that nice young man has turned on and gotten warm for you. Go pray, my dear.”
I leaned down and kissed her forehead again before leaving the house, a gun in one hand, a Bible in the other. Charly and Bobby were in the backseat; Eli was sitting behind the wheel in the SUV, drinking from an insulated cup and reading a newspaper—another paper one. It was odd seeing real newspapers twice, like a glimpse back in time. Another cup was in the cup holder in the dash, and when I opened the door, it smelled of tea and spices and milk. I was tired, and more tears pooled in my eyes at his kindness.
Eli took one look at me and his lips quirked up ever so slightly.
“I know,” I said. “I look like a well-dressed street person.”
“A twelve-year-old playing dress-up. Get in. I’m driving.”
I didn’t protest. Unexpectedly emotional, I didn’t want the responsibility of driving and parking a vehicle larger than a two-wheeler. Balancing three people on Bitsa was out too.
• • •
I’m not a big organized-religion person. I was a baptized Christian, dunked in a river one night, and I’m a Cherokee too. I had taken Bible classes all through my time at the children’s home, and a comparative-religion course in high school. I’d learned a bit about Buddhism and Taoism and Islam and several other major religions. I’d even taken a course about the Greek and Roman gods. But I was raised to put all that comparative stuff aside and just read the Bible, and if something differed from the Bible to not let it offend me and just to walk away from it. Nothing in that philosophy was offended by my Cherokee spirituality, which was something other than and different from organized religion. It was about the health of the spirit, the body, the home, the clan, and the tribe, more so than about God. So I can be Cherokee and a Christian and go to church anywhere, at least for a while. Or almost anywhere.
But . . . this church was huge. Not huge like some Roman Catholic places of worship. Not huge and painted and gilded like Saint Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square, but way bigger than any church I attended when I was a kid. Or since, for that matter. The building was brick, the windows and the doors were pointed arches—Gothic, I think they’re called—and though the windows weren’t stained glass, they were etched glass and made the interior look removed, isolated, and sequestered. We arrived just in time for the early service, and the man at the front door didn’t look askance at my odd clothing or at my companions, but instead guided us to an empty pew and gave me a paper with the scriptures and the music and the theme of the day’s sermon photocopied on it. The preacher’s name was on the bottom. Preacher Herman Hosenfeld, which made me smile for no reason that made sense.
We sat midway back, and I studied the cross that hung high on the wall at the front. In this church, two smaller crosses hung, one to each side, to represent the thief and the murderer who died with Christ. Ever since I had learned the origination story of the vamps—how they were created with the wood of the three crosses—it had struck me as strange that Christians would hang three crosses, of which only one was holy, in their churches. Somehow now three crosses felt wrong, as if vamps should worship the three and Christians only the one. It also felt strange that vampires and Christians shared the same origination event, the yin and the yang of sacrifice and deceit, of hope and death and life eternal.
The service started off simply with a call to prayer, and I lowered my head. Beside me, Charly took my hand and bowed her head and closed her eyes. I watched her through the prayer, and she listened to the preacher with a focus that was unusual in one so young, her lips moving with his words, her head nodding in agreement.
After the prayer, the Lord’s Supper was given, and we took the unleavened cracker and the grape juice, even though I wasn’t sure I should. I’d been taught I should be right with God to take it, and . . . I wasn’t. Not at all. Uncertainty crawled through me on slimy little feet. I shouldn’t be here. I don’t deserve to be here.
After the ritual, I relaxed back against the wooden bench and let my thoughts meander, not listening. Until I realized that Charly was up and moving to the front of the church, Bobby trailing behind. “Charly!” I hissed. But she was already at the front of the church, and I shuffled around in my brain for the last thing I’d heard before the kids moved. Preacher Hosenfeld had called for prayer needs. “Crap,” I muttered under my breath, frozen in my seat.
The congregation shifted and strained to see. This was something out of order and unexpected, and they were intrigued. Many of the curious looks fell on me and I lowered my head, keeping an eye on my charges. What was I supposed to do? Having no idea, I stayed put, my eyes on the children as Charly pulled the preacher down and whispered into his ear.
Hosenfeld’s face changed, and he nodded, dropped to one knee, listened, spoke, and listened again. Then he raised his eyes to the congregation and said into the mic, “This little girl is a visitor in God’s house today, and she has a need. I’d like her to say it to us all.”
“Crap,” I muttered again. I put one hand on the pew in front of me, ready to pull myself to my feet and grab Charly back to her seat.
“My mama is missing,” Charly said, holding the mic like a pro. “We think she’s been kidnapped by vampires. And I have leukemia and my hair is falling out, and I need to be healed. So you got to pray. Thank you.” She handed the mic back to the preacher and pulled Bobby back down the aisle by the hand.
Preacher Hosenfeld blinked back tears. “Let us pray,” he said. Charly and Bobby retook their seats and Charly took my hand, her other one still holding Bobby’s. Her fingers were icy and ashen and a tremble quivered through her like a cutting pain, her pearl ring sliding around her slender finger. Getting up in front of the church had taken too much out of her. I removed my shawl and wrapped her up in it. Then pulled her on my lap and dropped my head into her hair. No more was loose. No more clumps. But I could see patches of her scalp through what was left.
The preacher’s prayer was heartfelt as he addressed his god for the sick and needy in his church. When he reached Charly’s requests, his voice lowered, softened. “Almighty God.”
And I remembered Miz Esmee’s words at the front door earlier.
“Heal this little girl,” he said. “And bring her mother home safe from the clutches of the blood-drinking evil in our town. In his holy name. Amen.”
I was glad it wasn’t one of those long, flowery prayers full of thees and thous and names of God. This one felt real and somehow potent. It was how I prayed—just talking. And I realized I had been praying with him, for the first time in a long while. I took a ragged breath.
Charly was exhausted, fighting to stay awake, and I shifted her on my lap to cradle her better, and stood. As I walked out of the church, the preacher told the congregation that there was to be a baptism in the font at the front of the church immediately after the service. I smelled water, then, and knew it was to be an old-time dunking.
• • •
My eyelids were glued together when I woke in the afternoon, and I knew someone was in the room with me. I sniffed and smelled . . . Rick. And he smelled like cat. Too much like cat. I mentally reviewed the time until the three days of the full moon and realized we had only a little more than twenty-four hours. Inside me, Beast woke and stretched, yawning and showing me her teeth.
Black leopard big-cat. Want as mate, she thought.
You said you wanted Bruiser, I thought back, still smelling him on my sheets where he’d sat as we chatted.
Want more. Want both. She parted her lips and panted at me. Want Ricky-Bo.
And the full moon was nearly here, a time when Beast was more in control than I wanted. Not good. Rubbing my eyes, I managed to open them, pushed up in the bed against the pillows and headboard, and found him sitting in the corner, in a beam of slanted sunlight that had made its way between the blinds. He had been there a while.
Feeling no overt threat, my
eyes traveled over him, my mouth opened to take in his scent. Beast leaned close and studied her former and prospective mate. One knee was up, Rick’s jeans as black as the coat of his were-animal, his feet bare in the shadows. His eyes were glowing softly greenish gold, his black hair falling over his forehead, far longer than when I’d first met him, and forming ringlets at the ends that nearly brushed his shoulders. He was shirtless, his chest that wonderful olive shade from his French and Cherokee heritage, marked with a perfect triangle of fine black chest hair trailing down into the low-riding waist of his jeans. His mangled tats no longer looked like a mountain lion, a bobcat, and mountains, the scarring of his torture by werewolves twisting them into shapeless masses and white scars, all except the four glowing gold spots of cat eyes. I knew if I touched the eyes, the golden tats would be hot beneath my fingers, part of the spell that was still working in his body, the spell that kept him from changing into his were-cat form, and might keep him forever in cat form if he did ever shift. My fingers curled into the covers to keep from reaching for him.
Rick closed his eyes, taking in my scent. Minutes trickled by like sand through a glass. He didn’t attack. He didn’t do anything except breathe, until he said, “I see the way he looks at you. I smell his scent in this room. Have you taken him as mate?”
I flinched. “What do you care? You have Monica.” My tone was childish and laced with hurt, and I wanted to cringe. It also sounded as if I’d slept with Bruiser, which I hadn’t.
He opened his eyes and a smile pulled at his lips, a real smile, not a heated or resentful one, as I’d expected. “Monica? You mean Monkey?”
I looked away, trying to place the name. And then I remembered. Monkey was one of Rick’s sisters, the only name I’d ever heard him call her. “Monica is Monkey? Oh, crap,” I breathed.
Rick’s smile spread. “Yeah. You are jealous of my baby sister,” he said, sounding pleased. I wanted to crawl under the covers and hide. “Do you remember a talk we had about boyfriends, the morning after the first night we were together at my place?” he asked.