by Faith Hunter
Woken from sleep by her ringing phone, Jane hears Tom telling her that in order for Katie to be healed, the other vamps are sending her to ground (burying her), and he wants Jane to go and observe. Jane knows that the vamps sense she was nearby, so she decides to shift into a non-Beast form so as to draw less attention. She chooses the form of an owl, which is tricky as it involves an animal of much smaller mass, which is why she has the boulders in the back yard. Unfortunately by taking this form Jane will submerge Beast, meaning Jane will not have the benefit of her guidance.
We Still Search for Absolution: In her form as an owl, Jane flies to the location of the meeting, and is surprised to find what appears to be an old chapel with many freestanding crypts surrounding it. She sees an old woman vampire, dressed in what resembles a nun’s habit, step out of the building. Then vampires begin to arrive, followed by a hearse containing a coffin. The two human drivers make a quick exit. When the ceremony begins, with the priestess, Sabina, making a call for blood donations, one vampire, Rafael Torrez of Clan Mearkanis, steps forward to challenge the call, saying it was Katie’s fault she got attacked. After a back-and-forth discussion between Rafael and Leo, Rafael withdraws his challenge. During the conversation, Sabina makes reference to the vampires’ sin of attempting to steal from God, which puzzles and interests Jane. All of the clan blood-masters offers blood from their arms into Katie’ coffin, and once again Jane is startled when she hears them chanting in Aramaic, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The coffin is shut away, the vampires leave, and then Sabina speaks to Jane’s owl form, wondering if she is an emissary from God, saying that they (the vampires) still seek forgiveness. After Sabina goes inside, Jane sees a figure come out of another crypt, recognizes the rogue, and watches him try to get into the Pellissier family vault. The rogue then begins to shape-change.
I’m Psychic: The rogue changes partway into what resembles a sabertooth, and then notices Jane’s bird form. Down too low and unable to gain height quickly, the rogue takes a swipe at Jane. hitting some of her feathers. Sabina come outside, and the rogue goes after her. Jane rushes at the creature, using her beak on the back of his neck. As she flies away, Jane sees Sabina wield a cross that exudes a bright light, which scares away the rogue creature. Jane follows him through the woods, watches him enter a house from which she soon hears cries, but sees another man, not the rogue/liver-eater, come out and drive away. Racing back to her house so she can change back before dawn, Jane comes back to her human form, feeling woozy and out of sorts. Angelina calls her, saying she was frightened when Jane was in bird form, asking her not to do it again. Jane agrees.
Waking once again to someone knocking loudly on her door, Jane finds Rick, who asks her to go horseback riding. Since she is starving, Jane says she needs to eat, and makes steak for both her and Rick. After they eat, Jane says she needs to ride her bike out to Westwego, the area of the chapel and the house where the rogue may have committed a murder. When they arrive at the graveyard, Jane and Rick see the damage done to some of the crypts. Since Leo’s security knows about their entrance, given the sensors at the gate, Jane calls Bruiser to warn the team on its way not to shoot and at her and Rick, and gives him some other information. Jane and Rick leave to go to the house the rogue disappeared into the night before.
Crap. I’m Starting to Like Vamps: Arriving at the house where Jane saw the rogue/liver-eater vanish, she calls the police, at which point Rick says he will be leaving. After he leaves, Jane walks around to find the place where the rogue came in, and she spots some very large prints, some part cat, part human. Despite Beast’s desire to cover them up, Jane leaves the evidence intact. While waiting for the police to arrive, Jane looks over the paperwork Rick gave her from the research he did on the property owners. It turns out that Anna, the mayor’s wife, owns a lot of land that borders on Jean Lafitte Park, something that sets off alarm bells for Jane.
After Jodi and her team arrive, they go inside, leaving Jane to speculate on what she has discovered. She thinks perhaps the man she saw leaving the house last night was actually the liver-eater, having taken on the guise of someone else after killing him. Jodi eventually comes back outside to talk to Jane, and after a brief discussion in which each of them shares information with the other, Jodi reluctantly allows Jane to enter the crime scene.
The Lord of the Manor: Despite her familiarity with blood and guts, what Jane sees inside the house sickens her. She asks Jodi what the psy-meter shows, and the readings go wild. Jodi uses the opportunity to aim it at Jane also, but though the readings are higher than what a human would give off, they are nothing crazy like those of the rogue. Jane heads back to her house, and after showering and eating, Jane heads over to Katie’s. Tom answers the door, and Jane knows that Leo is there—Tom says to feed healing blood to him, Miz A, and the girls. Suddenly Jane is attacked by a vamp, who turns out to be Amitee, who is about to marry Leo’s son. Jane uses one of her crosses, and Bruiser comes to remove the vamp after Leo has calmed her down. Since she had smelled Indigo on Amitee, Jane demands to see the girl to ensure that she is okay. Jane then questions Leo’s moving into Katie’s business operations, since it seems to her that Tom should be in charge. After looking at legal documents that say that very thing, Jane suggests that Tom knew all of this but needed Leo’s help so never brought the subject up. Jane leaves, irritated at Leo’s antiquated attitude but satisfied he is not abusing his position.
All That I Wanted: Learning that Anna plans to attend a social event that evening, Jane shifts into Beast that night in order to track her. Trailing Anna home, Beast and Jane overhear a phone conversation between the mayor and Rick, about land deals. When Anna’s small dog senses Beast in the backyard, Jane has to restrain the overeager cat from making a snack out of the pet. Jane placates Beast by telling her to hunt in the woods before returning to the house. Beast wants a bigger prize, however, and taunts Jane after Jane reemerges. Deciding she needs to hunt again that evening, Jane goes into the garden, and discovers that Beast has taken it upon herself to become a bigger cat, scaring Jane. She shares a memory with Jane, of the time she killed a liver-eater.
Mass to Mass, Stone to Stone: Big-cat Beast and Jane discover the rogue’s newest kill site—a homeless man living in a tent. Hitching a ride on top of a truck bed, Beast tracks the rogue, and Jane is puzzled by the primarily vampire scent it now has. Locating the house where the creature stopped, Beast and Jane see Anna pull up, and hear the conversation she is having on the phone with her husband. Shortly after she goes inside, Rick arrives and rushes in. Beast runs in to find Rick attacked by the partially shifted rogue, and the two big cats fight. The rogue gets away by changing into human form, first Cherokee, then another that Jane seems to recognize. After the rogue gets away, Jane begs Beast to shift, and then she puts on her clothes and goes in to help Rick. After providing some medical aid, Jane calls the emergency contact number in Rick’s phone, which turns out to be Jodi, positioning the phone so Rick can speak to her. Jane spots another area bleeding heavily, and then gets a clear look at Rick’s tatoos—a panther and a bobcat, her two cat forms.
You Should Have Come When I Asked: Hearing the approaching sirens, Jane has to decide whether to stay and face questioning, or leave and risk leaving prints or other evidence behind. With Beast’s encouragement, she makes the choice to stay, and talks to Jodi briefly on the phone. Jane knows for sure now that Rick is an undercover cop. While they are all distracted, Jane leaves, tries to wash the worst of the blood out of her clothes, and calls for Rinaldo to bring his cab and pick her up. Almost fainting from hunger from her shift, Jane needs to eat. After stuffing her face sufficiently and then showering, Jane thinks about the face of the rogue she saw in the car, and knows it is Grégoire, blood-master of Clan Arceneau. Jane calls Leo, to ask for the favor of healing Rick, who will not survive without vampire blood, and Leo leaves immediately. Heading over to the Clan Arceneau house, Jane knows something is wrong when the place is dark. A human servan
t greets Jane when she kicks the door in, and then Jane spots Dominique, a vamp she met at the big gathering. Jane quickly learns that Grégoire is not the rogue, but that the creature has been holding him prisoner for two months, and has now shackled Dominique and others living there. When she learns the name of the rogue, Jane takes off.
Witchy Power: Jane rides over to Leo’s, to kill the rogue—Immanuel, Leo’s son. Riding Bitsa inside the house, Jane comes face-to-face with the creature she has been hunting. When staking him doesn’t work, Jane realizes that what has happened is that a skinwalker/liver-eater killed Immanuel and took his place. In the midst of their battle, Jane and the rogue are both immobilized by a witch command: stop. Antoine and a woman come into the room. When Antoine approaches the rogue to kill him, one of Jane’s witch charms activates, negating Antoine’s spell. Freed, the rogue kills both Antoine and the female witch. He and Jane fight, with her the victor, but her arm is badly injured. Taking a picture of the dead creature, Jane leaves.
Untender Mercies of the Human World: Jane shifts quickly in order to heal her serious wound, and then convinces Beast to shift back after eating the steaks. After showering and eating, Jane calls Bruiser, who has a lot of questions. Jane carefully tells him as much of the truth as she can, without giving her away her own secrets. Jane tells Bruiser to search Immanuel’s room, and what kinds of things to look for, which he does find. Next Jane calls Jodi, inviting the detective to join her when she meets with the vamp council.
As she expected, some of the council members try to get out of paying her, since the rogue was not really a vampire, but when Jane tells them about the photographic evidence she posted on her Web site, suggesting that people may get the idea that the New Orleans council can’t be trusted, they agree to honor their deal. In fact, Jane gets asked to stay and investigate who is turning humans and then leaving them out on their own, like the two she faced with Derek Lee. Jane says she will think about it. When they are leaving, Jodi makes it clear she would like to get together over coffee sometime.
When she arrives home, Jane senses Leo in her house. She manages to reason with him, explaining the dead creature was not really his son. Though he backs down, Leo says she will pay for killing the rogue that wore his son’s face. Leo leaves.
A week later, Molly and the kids are on their way to visit Jane, and she is overjoyed.
Blood Cross, Book Two
I Like the Fire. Can I Come Play? Despite the inconveniences caused by Hurricane Ada, Jane is enjoying the visit from Molly and her two children, Angie and Little Evan. They have been there with her in New Orleans for a week, and even though nothing bad has happened, other than the storm, Jane is on edge, worried that Leo may come calling in his grief-stricken state over his son’s death, and how he will react to Jane’s perceived role in it. Molly tells Jane she needs to shift, knowing it’s been a week since she has done so, assuring her friend that she and the kids will be fine for a night. Molly also encourages Jane to go see Aggie One Feather to make use of the sweat lodge, and to find out more about her past. Jane worries that she won’t like what she hears about skinwalkers.
Thinking over her current situation, including the new contract for discovering what vamp is creating new progeny and then leaving them to fend for themselves rather than keeping them away from humans until they have settled out and become sane, Jane catches a whiff of smoke, and vamp. Jane goes out to her porch to find four vampires with torches and what might be kerosene containers. Leo appears at the front of the group, accusing Jane once again of killing his son. Suddenly the situation gets defused by the appearance of Angelina, who comes out to talk to Leo. After seeing there is at least one child in the house, Leo backs down. When he leaves, the vamps still there speak of the “dolore,” and that a decision must be made; then they leave, saying they will uphold the Vampira Carta.
Despite worrying about what Leo may ultimately do, Jane decides the best thing to do now is to get back to work on her current case so she can be done with it. She gathers her weapons and other gear and sets out on Bitsa for the part of town where she and a group of men took down the young vamps a few weeks earlier. When she gets to the location, Jane asks to see Derek Lee, and hears a shotgun being set into position.
Have Stakes Will Travel: Jane knows she has a laser sight aimed at her, so she continues to loudly identify herself, and finally Derek comes outside. When he asks Jane what she wants, she says safe passage to hunt for the sire making the rogues. Derek thanks her for the bounties for the two young vamps they killed together a couple of weeks earlier. They discuss Leo’s situation (including the fact that he told Derek he wanted him to kill him if he ever went rogue), and strike a deal that Jane will get the money for the six young vamps Derek and his men have killed since the last time she saw him, but will turn it over to Derek, as he seems to want to stay out of any involvement with the vamp council. Jane leaves, going to the scene of a vamp kill she made a few days earlier, catching the scent of the sire.
Following the trail to the New Orleans City Park, Jane comes upon a scene of pentagrams and crosses, a place that smells of both witches and vampires, which makes no sense since the two races do not care for each other. While there, Jane witnesses a young female vamp’s first rising. Rather than kill it there, Beast encourages Jane to run out of the area. Jane does so, and kills the young vampire. Jane takes the head to the vamp council headquarters, both to collect her bounty and to let them know where to send a cleanup team, since they like to keep their own dead to themselves so as to discourage curiosity from law enforcement. Jane sees Dominique from Clan Arceneau, and meets a new blood-servant security guard, whom she dubs WWF, and Ernestine, the council CPA.
Golden Eyes, My Daughter: After getting home, Jane thinks over the events of the night, finding that she is having some difficulty with having killed the young newly risen rogue. Unable to relax enough to sleep, Jane gets up very early and heads over to see Aggie, finally taking the elder up on her offer of the sweat lodge. Aggie does not appear surprised to see Jane, asks if she is ready, which means ready to meet her spiritual self. What Jane hopes to gain is insight into her childhood, the time before she absorbed Beast into her being. Aggie begins the ritual, burning herbs, playing drum music, and offering Jane water to drink, then pouring the remainder on hot stones. As Jane’s consciousness drifts, she sees those she knows to be her father and grandmother. She hears her father list animal names, which she understands as him telling her the forms she can choose from, and he also uses her name, which translates as Golden Eyes. Aggie then wakes Jane up and asks about her parents. Since there are so few actual Speakers left among The People (the Cherokee), Aggie is very curious about Jane’s parents. Unwilling yet to let Aggie know her secret or how old she believes herself to be (she remembers the Trail of Tears), Jane broadly answers but leaves some specifics out in her reply. Aggie seems troubled, and Jane leaves.
When she arrives back at her house, Jane sees Bruiser out front. She goes in through the back, and then opens the front door to speak to him. He has a very official-looking document from Leo. Bruiser said he did not know anything about Leo’s visit the night before until after the fact, and that if he had known, he would have warned her. Jane opens the parchment, and it states that as soon as her current contract with the vampire council is fulfilled, she is expected to get out of town immediately, and if she doesn’t, she won’t be able to leave at all. Jane closes the door in Bruiser’s face, and Molly makes the observation that Jane likes him. Jane asks Molly to check with some of the local witches to see if anyone is aware of why there would have been witch magic at the vamp rising site, and also shares her Cherokee name with Angelina.
We Invade Her Territory: Jane decides she may get some useful information from chatting with the young women at Katie’s Ladies, as she did before, so after verifying that no prying eyes were watching her, Jane hops the brick wall dividing her backyard from Katie’s and goes to the door. Tom/Troll answers, tells her the girls are in th
e dining room, making sure he emphasizes that Bliss (the one Jane feels pretty sure is a witch but may not be aware of it) is also there. Jane feels guilty at not having gone to see Bliss since the attack on her in the bar, not to mention having left her to chase after the young rogue in the first place (events from Skinwalker). During the conversation with the girls, Jane learns that a few different times some of them have seen a group of women using a glamour to disguise themselves. Jane asks to be notified if the women are spotted again.
Jane goes to the NOPD, to talk to Rick, whom she has not seen since she saved him from bleeding to death, because she wants to be given access to any files they may have on vamp rogues over the last few years. After some negotiation, Rick takes Jane to a room marked 666, the location for the weird cases. Upon entering, Jane and Rick are greeted by Detective Jodi Richoux, who seems to be trying to tell Jane something as she slips a file into a drawer. Rick tells Jane he will have to lock her in, which neither she nor Beast likes, but she agrees.
I Was Living in a Former Whorehouse: Jane’s research in the files proves useful. She learns that even prior to the big unveiling of vampires in the U.S. (when Marilyn Monroe tried to turn JFK), they were somewhat known in certain parts of the world—including New Orleans. She finds pictures of Katie from the early nineteen hundreds, and discovers that where she is living now used to be a house of ill-repute. Of great interest, Jane finds a partially translated section of the Vampira Carta, and some handwritten notes about Sabina, the priestess Jane observed while tracking the creature in Leo’s son’s body, someone named Bethany, and a group called the Sons of Darkness. Most disturbing of all, it turns out that witch children have been taken recently. Jane photographs what she can, and texts pictures to herself also, but since there is no cell service in the room, she has to pull a fast one on her guard when leaving and send the messages from the bathroom.