by Faith Hunter
“It’s okay, Aunt Jane.” My heart did a twisting backflip of shame. It wasn’t okay. Angelina stood on the couch seat and put her arms around my neck, leaning her small body against mine. “I love you.”
I hugged her to me.
“Here. Watch this one too,” Amelia said, dropping Little Evan on my lap.
I couldn’t help my gasp and her eyes were drawn to my thigh. “You’re bleeding all over Big Evan’s couch,” she said, taking the toddler back. “You are dead meat.”
I looked up as a shadow darkened the doorway to the kitchen, Big Evan standing there, filling the opening, scowling. Thankfully wearing pants. “I tried to find Evangelina to make her take the hex off Molly, but she’s gone to ground, like she vanished off the face of the earth.” His voice dropped in pitch, “Did she spell my whole family?”
I nodded once, slowly. His glower darkened. Likely trying to find a way to make me responsible.
Regan said, “You mean she spelled the whole family? Siphoning your power and using your gifts against your wishes?”
“That’s against witch law,” Amelia said. “Against every protocol witches have.”
I shrugged and Angie’s fingers tightened around my neck.
“Tell them everything,” Evan said, nodding to the sisters, “from the beginning.”
I started with the hedge of thorns-like spell and the werewolves trapped in Evangelina’s basement. Leaving Regan to take mental notes, Amelia took the children to bed as I talked, rightly thinking that they were too young to hear all this. I finished just as Molly joined us, her hair wet and braided down her back. “And there’s something dark, a shadow with wings, trapped in the hedge.”
Molly drew in a horrified breath. Evan’s face darkened. “My sister-in-law is consorting with demons.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Bloody, Damaged Jeans and Nefarious Intentions
“Can you take photographs of the spell in Evangelina’s basement?” Molly asked. “That will tell us what kind of spell—”
“And what kind of demon,” Evan interrupted.
“—she’s using,” Molly finished. “And yeah, that too. You should be safe enough from the demon as long as you don’t set it free.” My eyebrows went up.
“Just keep back from the ward containing it,” Evan said.
“Uh huh. Ducky,” I agreed and headed out, having learned one important thing before I drove away from the Trueblood house—never kick a hornet’s nest. The witches and their human sisters were making battle plans, gearing up to rescue the other members of their witch family. Once everyone was safe from the power-draw, they would meet to discuss what to do about Evangelina. Battle by committee. It would take forever. The girls still didn’t want to believe that their elder sister was the cause of the sleeping spell, but with Big Evan on my side (and hating every moment of knowing I was right) and the other witch sisters not answering their phones, they were coming around.
First I had to shift and heal the wound in my thigh. The pain was now a constant throb, and I was feeling light-headed from blood loss. I needed to shift and heal, hunt, shift back, get some food into me, and check in on Grégoire, Rick, Kem, and Derek—a lot to do in the few hours left to me before dawn. I didn’t like it when my personal life and my work life overlapped; it just complicated everything. But there it was, a perfect description of my life—complicated—and Evil Evie was using my job of guarding the parley to make it worse.
I pulled my vehicle off the road onto an overgrown track I had spotted several times while making the run from Asheville to Hot Springs. The fog was more dense than before, sending down splatters as rain condensed out of the clouds. I stripped in the front seat and slid naked from the SUV to the ground, my body instantly wet and chilled, as the mist curled cold fingers around me. I found rock easily and lay out on it, shivering, blood loss making me feel the cold with an unaccustomed intensity. I didn’t have my fetish necklace, but I had my emergency cat tooth. I lay my head on my arms, closed my eyes, and thought about Beast. The pain hit.
I shook pain away. Growled low. Jane did not leave cold dead cow meat. I hungered. I sat up, front paws together, head high, and listened/smelled/looked, tasted the soggy, white air, felt it wet my pelt. Night was silent. Empty of prey. Heard only mice moving in grasses. I tilted ear tabs from side to side. Far away, heard dogs moving in night, loud, chasing away prey, following a female who was in heat, too focused on mating to hunt.
I lay on stone, hungry, angry at Jane. Licked at healed wound. No blood on pelt. No scar on Beast-leg. With head bent back, heard faint sound of chewing down mountain, away from dogs. Rabbit? Mouth watered, stomach gripped in claws of hunger, hurting. Empty. Many rabbits. More-than-five rabbits. Rabbits are good food. Silent, following sound, I moved down mountain, pawpawpaw. Angled into slow breeze to keep big-cat smell from rabbits. Beast is good hunter.
Later, I sat in grassy field, parts of three dead rabbits at my paws. I licked hot blood from my jaw and muzzle. Good taste after good hunt, chasing, killing rabbits. With killing teeth, picked rabbit paw up from ground. Crunched hard and swallowed. Good hunt. Belly full. I put a paw on rabbit ribs and licked, rough tongue pulling bits of flesh from bones. Good hunt.
Yeah, and the gardener will be happy you ate his pests, Jane thought at me. Can we shift back now? I have work to do.
Jane needs to mate. Play with Ricky-Bo was good, but Jane needs mate who is big and strong. Will take Bruiser. And Leo.
Jane made stuttery thoughts, too fast for Beast to follow. And what about Rick?
Will take Rick too. I stood and padded into trees while Jane thought about that. Back to car that was truck. Ess-u-vee. Silly name for truck. Liked Bitsa. Liked Fang. Ess-u-vee was ugly.
The fog was starting to thin and dawn was close when I came to myself sitting in the front seat of my vehicle, buck naked, shivering, starving, the mountain lion tooth jabbing my thigh. I dressed and drove back into Asheville, checking my messages as I maneuvered the road. One was from Bruiser, “Call me ASAP.”
I was sleepy, tired, no longer in pain, and starving. One thing I missed about Louisiana was the little mom-and-pop eateries scattered everywhere throughout bayou country, serving fried delicacies like boudin balls and fried squash and fried green tomatoes. Beer and colas. Spicy fries. Here, if I didn’t find a Mickie D’s or one of its nationwide contemporaries, I’d have to wait until I was back in the hotel for room service. Luckily, I found a Cracker Barrel open early and pulled in for a pre-sunrise breakfast with the truckers. Triple orders of pancakes with sides of eggs over easy, sausage, bacon, and ham filled the ache in my belly. I pretended not to notice the sidelong glances of the truckers at the quantity of food I ate. It was hard work keeping up with the caloric needs of shifting, but the energy of shifting had to come from somewhere, and I didn’t have access to magic, so food it was. Lots of food.
Over my fourth cup of tea, I returned the call to Leo’s line in the New Orleans’ Clan Home. I was pretty much living on the cell and the Internet these days. I was becoming a modern kinda girl at thirty. Or however old I was.
“Jane,” Bruiser answered, warmth in his voice. “How are you?”
Beast, sat up inside my mind, attentive. Interested. “Bruiser,” I said. I should have done the obligatory small talk about health and the parley situation, but, despite sounding like an ill-bred heathen, I got to my point. “I got your message.”
“Yes. Leo has given me permission to tell you about Evangelina Everhart.”
My tone careful, I asked, “How is Leo?” We both knew that my question referred to Leo’s state of mind. Since getting his Mercy Blade back, everything indicated that the dangerous dolore state of grieving had passed for the Master of the City of New Orleans. And though he had sounded perfectly sane when we chatted, with vamps, I always have doubts.
“He is well. He sends you his best.”
Uh huh. Sure he does. I made a noncommittal sound.
“Lincoln Shaddock did
not arrive for tonight’s parley,” he said. “Do you know where he is?” When I didn’t reply. He went on. “Do you remember the defensive spell the witch sold Leo as final protection for his day-lair?” I grunted in the affirmative and poured more tea, Evangelina had provided a spell of protection to Leo, the odd-shaped hedge of thorns, during the witch-vamp parley that she had walked away from. The fact that Bruiser was bringing this up, indicated that he, too, was beginning to think that Evie was a big part of our current problems.
“It was defective,” he said. “It should have been spherical, but it was cylindrical.” I had noticed the unusual shape, and sipped my tea, thinking about Evangelina and the witch/vamp problems in New Orleans. “For reasons unknown, it appears that Evangelina was working with the werewolves in their campaign to destroy Leo. He banished her from his city and the negotiations are ongoing with the local witch covens.”
Leo banished her . . . ? I sat up slowly. “That is something I should have known before ever coming to Asheville, before I agreed to head up parley security.” Dang vamps and their secrets. “How did you discover she was working with the wolves?”
“When Leo found that you were going to attack and take down the wolves to save Rick LaFleur.” Bruiser’s voice went empty, as if he knew I was not gonna like what he had to say next. “He instructed me to contact Derek privately.” Derek Lee and his men—my men, supposedly—went with me to save Rick. I felt cold all over, as if I’d fallen into a snowmelt stream. “Once they had LaFleur safe, and you were on the way to the Clan Home, they captured a wolf. They brought him to us. Leo . . . convinced him to tell us everything.”
They had taken an injured wolf to Leo, and no one had told me any of this. “Convinced him,” I said, the word grating. Bruiser didn’t reply and I knew that the convincing hadn’t involved happy drugs and good liquor. It had involved painful coercion. Maybe much worse. “Is the wolf still among the living?”
“No.”
No. And no apology for torturing a werewolf to death, either. I breathed out slowly. Yeah, the wolves should be put down, but not like that. “Do we know why she was after Leo?”
“No. Our wolf didn’t know why, only that she was willing to work with the pack.”
“Thanks for the information.”
“Come home, Jane. When this is over. Come back with Grégoire. To m- . . . To us.”
To Leo the torturer and Bruiser, his secret-keeping helper. I closed the phone and drank my tea, staring at an old sign for shaving cream, hanging on the wall. Not really seeing anything.
Foolish kitten, Beast thought at me, superior and insulting, as if she swiped a paw at an importunate kit. Bruiser would be good mate. Strong.
After dawn on Friday morning, I parked down the road from Evangelina’s, studying the old Everhart place, when I saw her shadow against the curtains. Heat zigzagged through me like lightning, and I pulled a vamp killer. I could go after her, right now, and take her down, tie her up, and haul her to Grégoire. I would have to hurt her, maybe hurt her bad, to get her immobilized before she called a demon onto me. If she could even do that. I didn’t know. Maybe if I cut her, a leg wound. Yeah, that’ll stop her. Not.
Indecisive, I hesitated a moment too long, and the lights inside went off. Evangelina left the house, looking about twenty, slender and curvaceous, wearing a floaty, diaphanous dress in a maroon floral print and little three-inch heels, red, with open toes. Not clothes for working at Seven Sassy Sisters. Her wardrobe had once been conservative. Now there was no hint of the matronly, stern woman she had been. Evangelina got in her little red sports car and drove off. A sports car? When did she buy a sports car?
I waited long enough to be sure she hadn’t forgotten something, before leaving my vehicle, my camera and cell in my pockets. I stuck my hands in my pockets with them, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, for a six-foot-tall Cherokee girl with bloody, damaged jeans and nefarious intentions. But I passed no one before I turned down the narrow street and melted into the greenery. I studied the witch circle in the ground and the lines that marked the inside. There was no pentagram, just the odd broken lines, lines that looked half familiar but meant nothing.
I snapped a few pics and stepped onto the porch, expecting a ward to be up at the house to keep out intruders, but I felt nothing until I touched the lever handle at the back door. The desire to go inside hit me like a padded baton. I wanted to go inside Needed to. I pushed the door open.
Beast pressed claws into my mind and growled. I paused, and she bit down with her canines, the pain like knife blades inside my skull. I gasped at the sudden headache and was able to pull my hand from the lever. But it was hard. As soon as my fingertips cleared the metal, the compulsion left me and I remembered to breathe. I took a step back. “Crap,” I whispered. The door, already open, swung inward in welcome, a pretty little trap for anyone wanting to steal. Getting inside was gonna be easy. Getting back out might be a problem.
Good thing I hadn’t rushed in to try to take down Evangelina. It was possible that I’d have been inside too fast for Beast to save me. A chill sank talons into my spine at the thought.
I walked back to my vehicle, head down, scrutinizing my boots. Thinking. I remembered the scarf folded so neatly on the floor of the SUV. Blood magic—likely two different spells with the same power source, the blood-diamond—was being used against the two-natured and against the Everharts. And unless the helpful valet had shaken the scarf, I had some red hairs from Evangelina’s head at my disposal.
I carefully unfolded the scarf and found twisted hairs caught in the weave. I refolded it to keep from losing them, and carried the scarf back to the house. Standing on the back porch, I could hear the gurgle of the creek at the bottom of the hill, see the sunrise brighten the garden. The dogwoods were already turning, leaves tinged with crimson. Using the scarf, I opened the door. I felt nothing of the compulsion. “Sweet,” I murmured.
I entered the house and stood inside the door, closing it after me. Magic danced along my skin like static electricity, hot and pinging, as if the air was too dry, superheated just to the point of pain. Though humans might not have been able to see it, the interior of the house was illuminated with a soft pink glow, magic permeating the walls, floor, and furniture. Careful to touch nothing that might be holding a magical charge, I gripped the scarf in both hands, using it to open the door to the basement.
The lights weren’t on downstairs, but a bloody glow lit the walls of the stairwell, and illuminated the painting at the bottom. It seemed to move, as if it were a TV screen, with active participants instead of a static surface painted hundreds of years ago.
I turned on the lights and made my way down. Stopped at the bottom. The hedge of thorns trap was still glowing with red and pink energies, scarlet motes bounding around it, the magic smelling tart, acrid. Black and scarlet sparks fluttered through it, but now they were stronger, more numerous, racing over the surface of the ward. Some areas of the ward were totally black, like heavily smoked glass, with no trace of the red energies. The demon was more substantial, easier to see, half man, half bird, or half man, half fallen angel. He had human calves and feet, torso and sexual organs, with a bird chest, wings with fingers where they might have been had the wings been arms, and a half-human, half-bird face. Human eyes over a raptor beak, but pinkish, with red lids. And inside with him were the two wolves.
I had no idea how Evangelina had kept the demon in the ward while she put the wolves in with him. But considering the compulsion spell, maybe they just walked inside without disturbing the outer ring. Like a one-way valve, allowing in anything that wanted to cross, but letting nothing inside cross back out.
The demon had been eating the wolves. While they were still alive. Gorge rose in my throat. Blood coated the floor of the circle with a gummy, gelatinous residue. The wolves were smiling about it, holding hands, staring into one another’s eyes like goofy teenagers in love. The big guy, Fire Truck, was missing chunks of thigh and buttocks. Th
e little guy was missing an arm and chunks of muscle, but the lethal wounds had healed. Sort of. Which meant they had shifted, even with the silver wounds from Evangelina’s ceremonial knife. The wolves clearly hadn’t been given food or water to make up for the caloric drain, and they were emaciated, loose flesh hanging on their frames. I stuffed the scarf under my arm and took a dozen digital photos of the trap and the thing inside with its dinner. I didn’t know if it would photograph at all, didn’t know if digital cameras would go all pixilated near witch magic. I checked the shots, and was gratified to see that most came out, and tucked the camera back in my jeans. I took some more shots with my phone, and sent them to myself.
This close, I felt the compulsion of the come-to-me spell and gripped the scarf tightly. The demon stared at me through the scarlet and black energies. I knew not to talk to demons. I knew that to engage them in discourse was stupid, but I did it anyway. “She’s making you solid, isn’t she?”
He gestured, a tossing motion with his human-looking hand, as if what his captor wanted was unimportant. He had talons on the end of his fingers, black as a raven’s and twice as sharp. “She thinks to control me.” His voice was guttural, as if he didn’t speak often. And his accent was odd, as if he came from elsewhere, or from nowhere, mangled by the beak. “She thinks to use me for her vengeance.” He breathed in, the action like a man inhaling an expensive perfume.
“You are Tsalagi,” he said. “You are of the blood of The People. I have fed upon the Tsalagi for many centuries. No one controls me. Not even . . .” he breathed in again, as if scenting me. “Not even your grandmother, little yellow-eyed child.”
I jerked, the muscles of my shoulders twitching, my hands twisting the scarf. He smiled, which was just plain horrible. There was dried blood on the beak. His tongue darted out, like a sapsucker, tasting the air.