by Faith Hunter
I looked at Eli, who had his emotionless fighting face back on. I chuffed. Power ran through me like a live wire, the sensation heady and potent. “Take ‘Rrrrasssler. Go.” To Wrassler, I said, “Live. Or I beat your butt.” It came out “heat your hut,” but he seemed to understand because the ghost of a smile crossed his face.
“You can try, Li’l Janie.” He used his good hand to pull at a pocket. “More rounds for the Judge. Put a hurtin’ on ’em for me.”
I chuffed in agreement, bent, and took the rounds from his pocket, five more, and tucked them into my own pocket. Hoisted Wrassler up and over Eli’s shoulder. How the big man managed not to scream was beyond me. I picked up the Judge. And covered the two as Eli trotted from HQ and into the night, the wolf at his side.
Clacking my oversized teeth together, I said to Bethany, “Go. I follow.”
Bethany moved like the wind in the night, swirling around corners, gusting down steps, the air popping as she moved. Vamp speed. I kept up with her. Somehow. And suddenly we were in unknown and unexplored parts of the interior of the old building—unknown and unexplored by me, though Bethany had no problem making her way through them. Narrow, dank, damp corridors raced by, walls constructed of old brick on one side, newer concrete block on the other, the rare, rotting stud and bracing beam between the walls, clay and pooled water beneath our feet. Black mold on the walls. Bethany, like me, ran barefoot, splashing through puddles. There was only the sound of my breathing, the splash of water, our feet drumming on clay. Dark, darker than the underside of midnight. Even Beast’s eyes failed me, and I followed by sound and feel.
We raced down a flight of old concrete stairs, slippery with mildew and water. Made a left through a brick passageway. I stumbled over something in the dark and felt dry, rotting wood beneath my paws and my thick fingertips when I righted myself.
Ahead I saw a faint light, an outline of a doorway. I stopped when Bethany did, in front of the door. I was breathing hard, my heart pounding. She wasn’t even breathing. No heartbeat. So weird. I chuffed at the differences between us.
“We are on the records floor. There is a way down into the darkness,” she said. “Down into the prison, the dungeon, the place where, long ago, Amaury kept his scions safe and his enemies chained. Where Leo imprisoned my gift to him.” She was talking about Amaury Pellissier, Leo’s uncle and the previous MOC. And she was talking about the dark scion lair, not sub-four, where I thought we were going, but sub-five. Her lips stretched into a smile, which looked so wrong with her eyes vamping out, shining with madness.
“We must move as silent and fast as moonlight. And must leave Grégoire where he lies. No pity for the fallen. No surcease for their pain. Do you understand?”
“We sssurprizzz,” I said through the teeth and fangs that mangled my jaw.
“Yes. First we must stop Batildis. Then you will engage the Devil. She will not tire. She will not be slowed. I will ride the arcenciel.”
My mouth wouldn’t say what I needed it to. It came out, “D’rrreeenhious?”
“Peregrinus will be otherwise engaged.”
Which meant nothing to me, except that we were two against the Devil, two vamps, a dragon who could skate through time, and no help from the hostages. No help from anywhere.
Just me and a dance with the Devil. We were supposed to have help.
“Where humanzzz?”
“They are close, but slow and broken. We may not tarry.”
It felt like part of a lie, that last part where help was nearby but not in time. But really, what choice did I have?
I looked at the door, ancient wood with dozens of raised panels and carved swirls and dimples. It had a vaguely Persian style, metal button-like things, like nipples on each raised panel. Iron strap hinges. Three iron bars holding it all together. And no doorknob.
Bethany was already vamped out. With the talons of her right fingers, she stabbed into the wood and ripped a section of door out. Again and again, until she had torn a hole near one of the hinges in the door, a hole large enough for a small child to crawl through. Then she rammed it. I could feel the force of her strike, vibrations passing through the wood beneath my paws. Which meant that anyone close enough, anyone with ears, would hear it and feel it too. The door broke, a long crack through the splintered hole. Two rams later, it fell with a massive crash. Katie leaped through. A spot of brightness leaped to the broken door.
I pivoted on my oversized paw to see Brute, a pale shadow in the black of the subbasement. He snuffled at me over his shoulder and raced after Katie. It was stupid, but seeing the werewolf thrust relief through me like a spear of happiness. And now we were three.
From somewhere far off I heard words, chanting, sounding like some foreign language. Perfect scary-movie sounds, the kinds with Satanists, big twirly mustaches, and stupid teenaged blondes in tiny bikinis going downstairs into the basement. Soulless big-bad-uglies. Human sacrifice couldn’t be far behind. Too bad I didn’t have a bikini. I leaped through the door after the wolf and the mad vampire priestess. Mad. We were all mad.
Laughter started in the back of my throat. We raced past the records room I had seen from the elevator, a room I recognized by the smell in the dark—old paintings, papyrus, vellum, heavy cloth paper. Inks. Wood. Bethany was right. The bad guys hadn’t spent any time on sub-four. We tore down stairs I couldn’t see. I saved myself a nasty fall hearing the echoes of bare feet slapping and the click of Brute’s claws leaping down several feet. Holding the Judge in my right hand, the wall against my left palm, I followed, falling behind. Ahead, my enhanced nose caught the stench that had nearly buckled my knees the first time I smelled it, a combination of decaying blood, rotten herbs, vinegar, sour urine, and sick sweat. We were near the boo room.
Bethany rounded a corner. There was a huge crash. Another. Light stabbed into the dark. Light and dust and the sound of voices chanting and sobbing and the stench of blood. And silver. I rounded the corner only half a second behind Bethany. Air popped around me. The wolf was racing through the door, his body a gray-and-white smear on my retinas, fast as a vamp. Faster than me.
I had seen this sight before, the wolf racing-leaping into battle. Stupid dog. Yeah. I had thought that before. Stupid dog. And stupid me to race in after him. But I did. Screams sounded as I leaped through the opening. Screams and laughter. And the pong of something rotten and burning. The stink of ozone.
The light of dozens of candles stabbed my eyes. I squinted to protect them, seeing the room in front of me through Beast-lashes. Time slowed, stuttered, stopped. I was in midair, midleap, hanging as if gravity no longer existed. From this vantage, I took in the room as if I had all the time in the world. And maybe I did.
Chained to the wall to my right was a skeleton, a blackened thing, like twigs held together with twine. It had skin like rotten cowhide, hair in tufts, limbs splayed out like a bug. It was wrapped in heavy, tarnished, silver chains. Pocket watches dangled from smaller chains interwoven through the larger ones. Which seemed important, but something for later. The creature was fastened to the wall with spikes. It had been crucified. Silver spikes at its widespread wrists, a spike through its crossed feet. It was naked.
It was alive.
Its mouth was open with laughter, or a scream. It was bleeding from a hole in its right side, nearly black blood, thick as tar. Its eyes glittered with horror and insanity.
Beneath the thing on the wall lay Grégoire. I was pretty sure he was dead or would be in seconds. Across the way, entering from another door, was a bloody apparition, teeth bared, body in midleap. Derek. Forms were behind him. I counted three. The cavalry was here. Between us, as if in a pincer move, lay the rest of the players. Everyone, including me, was halted in midaction.
Three yards or so from the feet of the chained being lay Leo and Katie, naked and bound, bodies posed toward the ceiling but their faces turned to the thing crucified on
the wall. All of the downed vamps were bleeding at necks and wrists, and their torsos had been split from neck to groin—wide, gaping wounds, slick with congealed blood. Skin pale in the candlelight, bodies unmoving, unbreathing. Undead, close to true-dead. So close. From my vantage point near the rough ceiling beams, I could see their eyes were open but glazed, their veins flat and dark like blue tracks drawn on parchment-thin, too-white skin. Weak, watery blood had dried on their white, white flesh.
Above them stood the vampire known as Peregrinus. He was dark haired, dark eyed, with a bloody mouth and three-inch-long fangs, hugely big around, some of the largest-in-diameter fangs I had ever seen. Power emanated from him like from a live wire, a glowing, humming power that lit him up from within, like a lantern in a window on a moonless night. His very skin glowed. Peregrines were tattooed on his wrists, wings out and up, legs and claws spread and reaching, beaks wide and screaming.
Peregrinus was wearing a plain loincloth, the front and back draping, much like the men of the plains tribes of North America wore theirs, but without decorative porcupine quilling or beads. And I knew the moment I saw it that it wasn’t animal hide, not deer hide. It was made of skin, though. He was wearing human skin. Or vamp skin. Yeah. Vamp skin. He had tanned the skin of an enemy and was wearing it around his privates. Something told me the skin had once belonged to a female vamp who had insulted him in some way, but maybe I was projecting. Behind him lay a pile of bodies. The human soldiers he had brought with him. Looking dead.
In front of me, fixed in the moment of attack, was the white wolf, Brute, jaws wide, all three hundred plus pounds of werewolf in midleap, going for the human woman who was fighting Bethany. The Devil was dressed in black, so dark and matte that no light reflected anywhere except from her spinning blades. Though time seemed frozen, I could make out motion on the part of the human’s weapons, this time the long and short swords of the Duel Sang. They were moving faster than I was, the swords coming together in one of the scissor motions Grégoire had tried to teach me. The movement was a stepping-forward, crosscutting, kill-move that was intended to behead or cut an opponent in half. Neck or waist, either body site was a way to die.
The swords and the fighting method had one purpose, according to Grégoire. They were made for killing Mithrans. And Bethany was about to be beheaded. Faster than I could shove either of the opponents out of the way. Faster than the wolf could stop it. At least in regular time.
Batildis stood to the side. Close to the action. Watching. Expressionless. Her fists on her hips, arms akimbo. She wasn’t dressed for fighting. She was dressed for something else entirely in a long dress with full skirts, pale petticoats beneath and showing at the hem, full sleeves on a peasant blouse that left her breasts partially visible in the candlelight. Just three of them against the entire vamp HQ. Their magic and the arcenciel’s were that strong.
The Devil’s swords moved again. This time nearly six inches. Then another half foot. Time was speeding up. I wondered if—
There wasn’t time to figure it out or to determine the chances of it working. And I had no way to calculate the physics of the possibility, even if I had taken higher maths in school. Beast, on three, I thought.
Beast can count to three, she chuffed.
One. Two. Three.
Still in midair, I pushed through time, reached up, and removed the fishhook-shaped amulet. Hooked Batildis with the small charm, passing it through the flesh of her neck above her gorget. Time sped up for a moment, with a crash of sound, movement, and a blur of candlelight. Still in midair, I whirled and kicked the vamp. Hard. Paralyzed by the charm in the fishhook, Batildis fell toward the Devil’s blades. And all hell broke loose on earth.
Batildis fell into two pieces with a fountain of blood that shot toward the unfinished beams overhead. Horror crossed the Devil’s face. The swordswoman hesitated for a fraction of a second. Just long enough for Bethany to fall on her, fangs buried in her throat. The blood-servant and fighter of legend fell back, dropping her arms, her swords pointing to the clay floor. Her mouth opened to scream. Brute leaped over them, raced to the thing on the wall, and bit its foot.
Derek, coming through the doorway, raised a weapon and shot Peregrinus. Like a hundred times. With an automatic gun that crushed the silence, that echoed against the walls. Rounds missed and ricocheted. I landed, my back paws firm and stable on the clay floor. But Derek hadn’t seen me enter, leaping through a bubble of space and time given to Beast by an angel.
I took a round midcenter, just right of my navel. Another penetrated my left shoulder. Beast screamed. I fell at Derek’s feet and he leaped over me, still attacking Peregrinus, firing the weapon that shattered the stillness of the room and boomed against my eardrums. Bethany rose from the Devil, the priestess’ face and clothes covered with blood. The Devil stared sightlessly at the beams overhead, her swords out to the sides, her legs bent and limp, like a fallen angel of death on the clay of the earth. She no longer had a throat, just the bones of a spine. She was no longer a threat.
Bethany stood beside me, her arms out to the sides, screaming. Or, I was pretty sure she was screaming. Her head was back, her mouth was open, and her eyes glittered with fury. But the gun ripped into the air, stealing the sound, and then there was a flash of light, the scintillation of smoky wings, a flash of blacked snake tail. Peregrinus pulled reality around him in a wash of flashing energies. He was gone, the bodies of the Devil and Batildis with him, shadows on the move. Derek raced after, his men chasing behind.
I lay on the floor, cradling the Judge, the weapon that I hadn’t even fired yet, as Derek’s men raced after their boss. I was feeling too weak for the wounds—unless a round had hit something important, had bisected or ruptured something. Like the descending aorta or the big artery that feeds the liver. Funny. I couldn’t remember the name of the artery. The cramps that resulted from playing with time hit me and I curled tight in the fetal position, gasping.
Beast? I said.
She didn’t answer, which could mean something good or could mean something bad. I was facing the front of the room, and I saw Bethany stop screaming. She ripped the silver chain from Leo’s wrists and ankles and picked him up, placing him below the thing on the wall, holding the MOC’s head like a baby’s or a lover’s. As she raised back up, she paused and tore the thing’s leg open. With her teeth. A trickle of black blood fell from the fresh wound into Leo’s mouth. He shook as if an electric pulse had hit him. He vamped out and swallowed.
Bethany wiped her thumb through the black trickle and placed it into Grégoire’s mouth. He didn’t respond and she slapped him hard, rocking his head, before adding another trickle. And another. He took a breath, a wet, grinding sound like rubber over sand. She repeated the action with Katie. All three vamps were stirring. Bethany then ripped her own wrist and offered it to Leo, who latched on and drank. Grégoire, looking like an ill, bloodless child, took her other wrist. Katie crawled up Bethany and bit into her throat. Three mostly naked and blood-smeared vamps, all with their torsos cut open and gaping, feeding on the priestess. Ick. If I’d had breath, I might have said so, or laughed. Instead, the candlelight fluttered and telescoped down into a pinhole of vision, centered on the thing on the wall. It was staring at me. And I had a bad feeling that it knew what I was and that it wanted me. For dinner.
My last sight was of gray and black motes rising to obscure my vision. Took you long enough, I thought to Beast.
Beast was busy, she thought back.
And then I remembered the arcenciel. It had been here. Bethany hadn’t taken her or ridden her or whatever. But the pocket watches that were hanging on the crucified thing . . . Yeah, pocket watches. I’d last seen them in use in Natchez. And all the ones I’d managed to get hold of were in my safe-deposit boxes.
Now some were hung on the wall in the dungeon of the Master of the City of New Orleans and most of the Southeast. I had to wonder, as the last of
the light shriveled down to a bright pinprick, where Leo had gotten his pocket watches. From Natchez? Or from my bank? Which would imply that the MOC had way more power in the human and financial world than I had known. I needed time to check all that out. Because if Leo had gotten into my boxes . . . that would totally suck.
The last of the light disappeared.
CHAPTER 21
A Bucket Full of Snakes
I came to in a room I didn’t recognize. A chandelier hung over me, one of the expensive ones, lead crystal and real gold gilt, polished and so brilliant that the light reflecting back from each facet hurt my eyes. The ceiling overhead was painted like the Sistine Chapel, or another fancy cathedral in Italy, with angels and humans sitting on clouds, faces etched with ecstasy. Vampires with wings flew among the happy group, fangs out. Weird. Vamps were weird. Their art was weirder.
I took a breath. It hurt so bad that I groaned, then coughed, which hurt even worse. I wrapped my arms around my middle, feeling cold blood on my flesh. Oh yeah. Right. I probably died. Again. This was getting old. Cats had nine lives, but I had already pushed that score into unknown territory and I had to wonder how many times I could die until the one time I didn’t get shifted in time.
Time.
I blinked, remembering. Beast had done something with time. Not just speeding me up, but taking me outside of time. A time bubble that let me do stuff inside it while the world didn’t go on without me. Folded time. My guts twisted into a knot and then yanked tight. I pressed into my middle, kneading, but the charley horse only seemed to get bigger.
I tried to stretch out and thought my insides would rip in two. Beast?
Jane must lie still. And wait.
Wait? I can’t breathe. I’m dying here.
Breast chuffed at me. Jane is not dying. Jane has air. Jane should think of time.