by Faith Hunter
Jane and Youngers,
From the book I am reading and interpreting I have deduced several things that might be of interest. The writer claims to be using oral tradition and ancient writings from before the time of the Sumerians, none of which survive today, so far as I am able to deduce.
After the flood, the remaining humans were in great disarray, having lost everything of a cultural nature, and being thrust into stone-age starvation and subsistence level standard of living. In the people of the west (this could be interpreted as the Americas), this destruction and re-creation of the entire landscape created a power vacuum which was filled by the tribal magic-users (witches) who had gifts that gave them greater chances of survival. They bounced back in the form of warriors, shapeshifters (skinwalkers?), wise men, war women, shamans, and healers, most with no mention of the immune problems suffered by preadolescent and adolescent witches of today, though that may mean nothing except that it was lost to time.
They survived in this manner until the Europeans came and many of them changed, growing sick and mentally unstable. My presumption is that of the majority of scholars: The white man’s bacteria and viruses killed them off, their scriptures and priests demonized them, and the white man systematically destroyed the tribal Americans in genocide.
In a place that I am deducing is the African states, the witches were feared and were often sold into slavery by their own tribal chiefs as a way of preserving their own power bases. Both Christian and Muslim proselytizers and missionaries later demonized them.
In Europe, which has a better-preserved oral history and tradition, the witches went underground, hiding what they were, except for the tribal Celts, who accepted the magic-users as the ancient gift of the gods and of God. Among the Celts, magic-users remained well respected, though carefully hidden from the Church, which proved a successful methodology from the other tribal peoples of time.
When vampires were created through dark magic and black arts (the original three were witches, if you recall) they increased their numbers by turning witches into vampires. Prior to the vampire wars and prior to the creation of the Vampira Carta, the Mithrans began to destroy the witches instead of turning them.
I have been searching the archives for information relating to the causative factor for their enmity. I suggest that you ask Leo or Grégoire for more information. I will send more as I am able.
Best,
George Dumas
Some of this info was new, and some was old stuff, and some was a new way of looking at it all. I remembered that Gee DiMercy had once told me about the Cursed of Artemis, the original name of the were-creatures. He had even proposed that my kind were part of the old story, goddess-born, whatever that meant. He wasn’t willing to share more, but he had suggested that I ask some of the older vamps. I had asked the priestess Sabina, who had told me about Lolandes, whose legend became confused with, and merged into, the earth goddess, who was common to all ancient tribal peoples. Lolandes had been a witch of sorts.
The first three vampires—the Sons of Darkness and their father, Judas Iscariot—had been witches too, made from the crosses of Calvary, also known as Golgotha, the place of the skull. The spikes of Golgotha were part of that event. Sooo . . . did the instigating event of today’s dangers go back that far? To the creation event of the vamps themselves? Was the spike of Golgotha that important?
Or did all of our current problems—the dragon, Satan’s Three, the attacks on my house—go back to Lolandes? There was something here, something lost among all the info we had already gathered, something important, but just out of reach, taunting me. Dang it.
I pulled up the old memory of the witch and told the guys, “Long before the Greeks named her Artemis, there was this powerful, long-lived mortal, a witch, though different from today’s witches in ways that I haven’t been able to determine. Anyway, Lolandes was the most powerful witch of her time, in a time when women were revered, when political and religious power was passed through the matriarchal line. She helped humans in childbirth and cared for wild animals.”
“So maybe preflood,” Alex said.
I gave an eyebrow shrug that said, Who knows? “Lolandes could have been a witch among The People of the Straight Ways. She could have come before, or after, the flood. Myth and oral tradition is sketchy at best. Anyway, Lolandes had a hunting bird, like a falcon, that loved her and came back to her after each hunt, bringing her the kills. She loved the bird.
“One night on the full moon, a wolf killed the bird, fighting over a doe they both had targeted. Lolandes cursed the wolf with disease, something similar to rabies, that affected mind and brain. It was the were-taint. The wolf ran into the woods and started biting anything it came across. The humans and the creatures it bit became were-creatures, but all were insane. Lolandes regretted the disease and found a partial cure, which she gave to all of them except the werewolves. They stayed insane as punishment for the death of her bird.”
Eli said, “No falcon would have been hunting a doe.”
It was the same dispute I’d had about the creation myth of the moon-touched, the weres. “I think the bird was maybe an Anzû.” Eli looked confused. I just sighed. “A storm god.” Which didn’t help my partner at all. “It’s my night off, but I have to get dressed and weaponed up. I have to talk to Big Bird.”
“Big Bir—?”
A knock sounded at the side door and Eli was instantly out of his chair, weapons drawn, his body bladed and protected behind the kitchen wall. I was on the floor, yanking the Kid out of his chair by his shoulder, and rolling our bodies across the floor until we were safe. He cussed softly the whole time, his pores reeking of fear and shock. I wasn’t weaponed up, which was stupid. I’d left the thigh rig on the table to roll Alex. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Eli bent and slid a nine-mil to me across the floor, the scraping sound loud in the suddenly quiet house. I grabbed it as I rolled off of Alex, taking a prone position, my lower body flat on the floor, upper chest raised, balanced on my elbows, gun in a two-hand grip. I checked it fast and triangulated our shooting positions. If Eli moved toward the door, I might shoot his legs. Using my toes, I repositioned, sliding myself over, which left more of me exposed, but decreased the chance that I’d hurt my partner.
I nodded and Eli leaned in, twisting the knob and throwing the door open all at once. Soul stood on the other side, a bag at her feet. She was holding a .45 aimed at Eli’s middle. A .45 slug would have blown a hole through my partner and blasted the wall opposite. Soul looked from Eli to me and smiled. “Am I in time for dinner?”
• • •
Soul had taken one end of the couch, her legs curled and feet tucked beneath her, pretty plum-colored shoes on the floor below. Sitting there, she looked a tiny thing, all voluptuous curves and gauzy purple fabrics. Her silver-platinum hair was up in a loose bun with tendrils that looked as if they had worked their way free hanging down around her face and to her shoulders. She appeared delicate and well-bred and weary and sensual all at once, as she held a salad bowl in one hand and ate with the other. “Peanuts and cola on the flight down, and a two-hour layover at Atlanta. I detest airport food. This is delicious,” she said, and placed a neat bite into her mouth.
I envied her ability to eat salad with such tidy little bites. I usually just shoveled lettuce in and wiped the dressing off my mouth later. I also envied the way Soul looked, so feminine and refined. I might be a girl now, with the dressy wardrobe to prove it, but I’d never be effortlessly sexy. Of course, Soul had looked anything but frail with the huge gun in her hands. Looks could be deceiving.
For now the gun and her luggage were all upstairs in the guest bedroom. We had another freeloader. I was getting them more and more often and didn’t know how I felt about my space being invaded so regularly.
When Soul was done with the meal, she leaned over and placed the bowl on the floor, picked up her tea mug
, and sipped. “Thank you, Jane. This is heavenly.” It was the tea Bruiser had brought, the Something Far Too Good for Ordinary People tea. Soul was not ordinary people, and I nodded. She said, “Do you want to debrief me on everything that’s taking place here?”
Soul was PsyLED, so not everything could be told, but there were a lot of things that affected the human populace, or might affect the populace. As succinctly as I could, I told her about the attack on me by the light-dragon, the appearance and fight of the light-dragon at vamp central, the bomb and the shooting. And the torture of Reach. It was disjointed because I had learned info about Reach—which had likely precipitated a lot of the things happening in New Orleans—later than the trouble started. Soul listened, and I finished with, “So what can you tell me about the arcenciel and why it’s attacking me?”
Soul leaned back over and gathered up her salad bowl and utensils, and carried them to the kitchen. Water ran and I smelled the soap we washed dishes with. I met Eli’s gaze and he gave me a microscopic shrug. “How much can she tell us?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
Minutes later Soul came back through the room carrying her mug. She bent and picked up her shoes, walking barefoot through the house. At the entrance to the foyer she said, “Consider that it isn’t attacking you at all. Then ask questions of me. Thank you for your hospitality. I’m tired and will turn in now.” Silent as a climbing cat, Soul disappeared up the stairs.
“Well, that was no help at all,” I said to Eli. “I’m going to vamp HQ and ask a few people questions. Maybe they’ll be more forthcoming than Soul was. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“I’ll catch some zees.” As it had been a while since he’d slept, I nodded and weaponed up, leaving the house by the side door.
• • •
I let myself into vamp central and logged my weapons in with security as per Protocol Aardvark. When I satisfied security, a headset hanging around my neck but not activated, I found out where Gee DiMercy was, and took the stairs up one level, to one of the libraries. I had been to the elegant room once, while carrying a vamp head in a carton. It wasn’t my best moment. This time I brought a bag of something else, a joke I hoped would go over with the Mercy Blade, the Anzû I was hoping to charm or fight, whichever got me the info I needed.
He looked up as I entered the library. No reaction showed on his face as he closed the book he was reading and pushed it across the desk. As if he’d been expecting me. Go figure. I strode across the short space, seeing from the corners of my eyes the deep piles of Oriental carpets, the leather sofas with silk velvet throws, the unlit fireplace, and the dark wood shelves filled with books. By the scent, and as far as I could see, Gee was alone. I reached the table and tossed the plastic bag across the uncluttered top where it landed and slid toward Gee. He caught the bag in one hand and laughed, a quick croak better suited to a crow than a man.
Eyes sparkling that odd, iridescent blue, he held up the bag and said, “I never ate birdseed. I eat meat on the hoof or wing.”
“Not denying it? Anzû?” I accused.
“I have been called many things, skinwalker. Including Storm God. Do you not kneel in my presence?”
The small man sat deeper in his chair, tossing the bag back and forth from hand to hand. I sat across from him, as if I deserved to sit in his presence. “Nope.”
Gee DiMercy laughed, this time a more human-sounding chortle. “Modern man is so vastly entertaining. But they still come to the gods to ask questions, to petition for miracles. What do you wish, little goddess.” It was more a demand than a question, and I propped my elbows on the tabletop, chin in hand. Looking defenseless, which I was, if he planned to hurt me. I was betting on the immortal’s desire for entertainment to keep me safe.
“I know the Sumerians and the Babylonians and the Chaldeans worshiped versions of the Anzû storm gods, which makes you, maybe, the oldest thing alive on this planet. I want to know about The People of the Straight Ways. I want to know about the flood. I want to know about the arcenciel. And I want to know about the thing in the basement.” Up until the last statement, Gee had looked blandly polite, the way people look when you act according to expectations, which meant that Gee had been waiting for me to put things together and come to him for info. When I mentioned the basement, however, he blinked. Either Gee was the best actor in the universe—not an impossibility—or he had no idea about the basement. “Start talking,” I said.
“And would I share my knowledge and wisdom for nothing, little goddess? Share with a brazen and insolent woman with nothing to offer me? In times past, those who petitioned us did so with gifts of gold and silver, offering their bodies for the delight of the heavenly beings, and the blood of their first born.”
“I gave you birdseed. Eat up.”
“I propose a hunt. The two of us, on the wing. Perhaps we shall hunt elk in the cold north.”
My mouth fell open.
Gee laughed again at what he saw on my face. “You did not think to get away for nothing?” It was half question, half amused statement. His eyebrows went up when I didn’t reply and surprise flashed across his face. “You did think I would share my knowledge exempt of sacrifice. You are much the child. Or the fool.”
“I pick fool,” I said. “I can’t hunt elk. The biggest bird I can shift into—” I stopped. I had been about to say was the Bubo bubo, the Asian eagle owl. But I remembered the feathers I had taken from the death site of an Anzû. I still had one somewhere. It likely had Anzû DNA on it. Could I shift into an Anzû? And what would I be if I did? Something like excitement but darker, colder, shivered through me.
“Okay,” I said before I could think it through or change my mind. “One hunt in return for answers to every question I can think of.”
Gee looked to the ceiling as if he searched for heavenly protection from my foolishness. “One hunt for four questions.” He grinned evilly. “Questions already asked.”
“Five questions. The four questions I already asked, answered fully, in English, now, and one question of my choosing, answered fully, in English, at any time I ask it. In return I’ll give you one hunt, to last no longer than twenty-four hours, to take place at a mutually agreed-upon time, no sooner than tomorrow, and no later than two weeks before the Europeans arrive.”
Gee chortled, delighted. “I am not Loki to demand such strictures upon an agreement. Done,” he finished, before I could comment. “Your questions were: knowledge about The People of the Straight Ways, knowledge about the great flood, knowledge about the arcenciel, and knowledge of what hides in the deepest scion room. Yes?”
“Yes.” And maybe knowledge about Peregrinus, though I didn’t say it aloud for fear it would become my unasked question by accident. We’d see.
“My answer to the last question, first. I am uninterested in the scion rooms. They all stink and are filled with ravening beasts in human form. You will have to ask the Master of the City, as the residents there are his, as are we all.”
Speak for yourself, I thought. But instead of saying it, I inclined my head in a “go on” gesture.
“The People of the Straight Ways were also called the Builders. They built with stone and unfired mud bricks, which were effective at the time due to the lack of rainfall in a glacial period. Their civilization flourished over twenty thousand years ago, at the start of the last glacial period, and they were destroyed at the end of that period, some seven to ten thousand years ago, when the earth warmed almost overnight and the glaciers melted.”
“Overnight,” I stated, careful to make the word a not-question.
He waved a hand at me as if waving away the word. “It took over a century or so for the glacial sheet to melt, and the resultant movement of the earth, as the weight of the glaciers vanished and the northern hemispheres rose, and the floods created as ice dams burst and millions of gallons of water rushed toward the nearest seas
, and the permafrost melted from stone-like ground. A hundred and twenty years of flooded hell. The floods were everywhere as cold, dry weather became hot, wet weather in only two generations. There were many series of floods. The final one, the largest and most destructive, wiped the last of the Builders’ civilization off the face of the earth. Earthquakes rocked the entire world. Whole mud brick cities sank beneath the waves, cities buried in the alluvial mud and many feet of ocean, all evidence wiped away forever. It is the survivors’ memories of that last flood that are memorialized in carvings and friezes and paint—the rolling waveforms, the stylized-squared forms, the doubled-over waveforms—on the archaeological sites, the world over.”
My childhood in the Christian children’s home flashed before my eyes. “Noah and the flood?” I asked.
Gee made a little fluffing motion with his hand. “I was not alive at the time, but I have been told by the oldest among us that Noah was obedient, but a boring and untalented preacher, a drunkard, and an egotist. His redemption came in the fact that he listened when the Anzû messengers spoke of the final destruction and built his ark. He was among the best of the Builders. He survived. Many more perished.”