by Faith Hunter
It was all over when I finally remembered to take a breath.
All except the screaming. The grief. Molly wailed, clutching her sister to her. A reporter raced up to thrust a microphone at my face. I growled. Leo smoothly stepped between us before I coldcocked her. I caught a glimpse of Grégoire being helped into the hotel, the stink of burned vamp on the air. Derek handed me my weapons and put an arm around me. Shielding me. Steered me inside. Something crashed, and the light, so bright it had been blinding, went out. In my right hand was an elk-horn hilt and a melted blade. The chain of the blood-diamond was seared into my flesh, still so hot my skin blistered around it.
“Light?” I croaked.
“From the news van. They got the whole damn thing and sent it out live.” He pointed to a TV discreetly on the check-in desk. It was a close-up of Leo, looking urbane and elegant, even with the smear of blood on his cheek. And beside him was Lincoln Shaddock, looking shell-shocked and lost, staring at a body on the pavement. Chen. Naked. Dead. With runes cut into his flesh. I remembered the lump in the car next to Shaddock earlier. Evangelina had sacrificed him to the demon.
My back and Derek’s were in the background, something dangling against my hand. I tucked the pink diamond gem—the blood-diamond—into my pocket. I knew what it was now. A portal into hell. Guarded by an angel.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
A Marriage Ceremony with a Death Sentence at the End
Two days later, I stood beside the hospital bed, awkwardly patting Itty Bitty’s hand. The tiny woman was being released, her werewolf wounds healing with no trace of were-taint found in her blood. Gertruda, the Mercy Blade sworn to the service of Charles Dufresnee, the Master of the Raleigh-Durham area, sat at her other side, looking far more comfortable in the medical surroundings than I felt.
Gertruda still wanted nothing to do with me. She hadn’t looked at me once since she walked into the room to give the injured witch her final healing. Still silent, she left the room, managing to convey her disdain of me and everything I stood for without saying a word. I didn’t know what I’d done to the woman, but I was good at ticking off supernats.
And cops. I was real good at ticking them off. And men in general, even better. Itty Bitty’s boyfriend sat in the corner of the room and glowered at me as if the wolf attack had been my fault. Which it had been. Sorta. It’s hard to dodge well-deserved blame, and harder still to ignore the stab of guilt when I think about all the people hurt because I hadn’t thought about two werewolves in jail and how they might react when their pack was slaughtered. And hadn’t thought about the magical amulet locked in my gun cabinet in New Orleans. And hadn’t thought about Evangelina and how weird she had acted while visiting me in New Orleans. And just hadn’t thought at all.
I patted Itty Bitty’s hand again. “Like I said. The Party of African Weres will pick up any outstanding medical bills. The leader assured me personally.”
“Thank you for coming,” she said. “You didn’t have to.”
I managed a smile, but from the reaction on her face, not a good one. “Yeah. I did.” Okay. Enough social-small-talk. I waggled my fingers at them and left the room, fighting the urge to run. I’d rather face a pack of wolves than try to comfort someone.
Rick lounged against a wall in the hallway, his legs crossed at the ankles, looking long and lean in black jeans and jacket, and not trying very hard to discourage the two young women who were hanging around. They were dressed in brightly patterned scrub suits and one had a chest that Rick clearly found imposing. Maybe mesmerizing was a better word. “Come on, Ricky Bo,” I said, “before your eyeballs fall out.”
He grinned at me, his too-long hair falling forward, curling into his collar. “Sandra is Sam Orson’s nurse.” He nodded to the busty one. “She says the deputy’s going to be fine. He just took a ricochet off the magical ward into the meaty part of his thigh.” I hadn’t realized I carried the weight of the cop’s injury until it fell away. “You can quit worrying,” he added more gently.
I stuck my hands in my pockets and shrugged, not knowing how to respond.
Rick pushed off the wall and draped his arm around my shoulders, not an easy thing to do when there’s no disparity in height. “Come on. We need to talk.”
Oh crap. We need to talk as in, I bought a house and want you to move in? Or as in, I want to see other people, like the busty Sandra? Or as in—
“I had a call from Grizzard. And from PsyLed. I’ve got job offers from both.”
I thought about that as we entered the elevator and Rick pushed the button for the lobby. As the doors closed, I asked, “They know about you?”
“Yeah. They do. I told them. I’d be a detective with the sheriff’s department, with full moons off so I can listen to the spell music Evan made for me. The job PsyLed outlined is a kind of roving special agent with a territory covering seven Southeastern states.” When I didn’t reply he said, “I’m thinking about taking the PsyLed offer.”
The elevator doors opened and we walked out of the hospital into the fall sunlight. It was Indian Summer, temps in the high eighties and days long enough to pretend that winter and snow and ice would never come. But cold always follows heat, as night follows day, and sadness follows joy. Fang and Rick’s red crotch-rocket were parked close by the door, taking up one space. “You’re a good cop,” I said. “It had to help when you told the sheriff about the body in Evangelina’s house.” I had told him about the body after the battle with Evangelina, Shaddock, the angel, and the demon.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding, agreeing. “I’m a hero.”
I play-socked his bicep and he play-screamed and ducked as if injured. “Any word on what killed her husband?” I asked, grinning.
“Blunt object head trauma. Maybe a frying pan.” At my look he said, “What? She’s a chef. Anyway, ten years or so ago Evangelina whacked him on the head, rolled him in a carpet, and hid him behind the couch. She told her sisters he left her. Her daughter disappeared at the same time.”
I straddled Fang and helmeted up. “The twins are ready to deliver us and the steer to the grindy. You up for a helicopter ride?”
Rick waggled his eyebrows at me. “Baby, I’m always up.”
I rolled my eyes and keyed on Fang. Together we roared out of the hospital parking lot.
I was pushing Beast, like baiting a lion in her den, but so far, nothing had drawn her out. Beast was silent even as I strapped in to the helo and the engine’s whine rose in pitch. I hated the flimsy contraptions, but I had things to do in a limited amount of time and the helicopter would make it all possible. Brandon—or maybe it was Brian, it was hard to tell with the com-gear on—gave me a thumbs-up and the bird lifted off. Rick was having a ball, the two men up front, talking back and forth on the com-channel. I was sitting in back, beside the shrink-wrapped steer carcass that smelled of old cold blood and maybe brine, and had my com-gear turned off, wearing it only to mute the noise.
I stared out over the city of Asheville as the bird rose and careened toward the hills. Everything looked closer together up here, the folds of the earth that made travel so time-consuming becoming inconsequential. I could get used to this. I could. If I was going to remain in Leo Pellissier’s employ.
I had stuff to do. Decisions to make. Places to be. And still so many things unfinished, hanging over me like Death’s sickle. A sense of dislocation hammered at me. I literally had no home now. No one to call family. Molly had talked to me once on the phone, but she was grieving for her sister, and her sister’s killer was difficult to be around, especially with the funeral in the works, law enforcement combing through Evangelina’s home, and so much media attention focused on the Everharts and the Truebloods. All because of me.
The fact that Evangelina was a murderer and a blood-witch, spelling her coven, and keeping horrible secrets that would have come to a dangerous and deadly climax with or without me didn’t make Molly’s grief any less real or any less intense. Grief isn’t logical. I understood,
but it hurt. Life hurt. Angie Baby and I talked on the phone every day, often about her angel, but I hadn’t been allowed to see her. Big Evan had asked me, politely, to stay away.
My belongings were packed in the back of an SUV here in Asheville and in my freebie house in Louisiana. But I had no place to send them. And . . . Beast was still silent. Even with me in a helo again, the rotor noise like an animal’s roar.
The twins had reconnoitered the GPS location we were going to and found a landing site in a field nearby, but we flew over the cleft in the hills first. It looked different from the sky, flatter, muddier. The dammed up pond was gone, the logs and debris scattered downstream. But I got a glimpse of the cave, and the pile of bones, crows and buzzards on the limbs of trees in far greater numbers than before. At the helo’s noisy approach, the birds scattered, flying low. The B-twin hovered over the site and Rick unstrapped, joining me in the back. Together, we slid open the helo door and braced ourselves against the sides. Rick held up three fingers, lips saying, “On three.” His head jerked down three times, counting, and on three, we pushed. The steer carcass slid across the helo in its plastic wrap and tumbled out. The helo wobbled with the weight distribution and updrafts, before it stabilized and we stuck our heads out the open door.
I felt, more than saw, Rick laugh when the carcass hit the ground and bounced, right in front of the grindy’s lair. Rick pulled me back, shutting the door as the helo banked and soared away, to the clearing we intended to use as a landing site. After that it was a strenuous hike back, requiring a lot of sweat, some blood from scraped knuckles, a ton of mud, and way longer than a helo. The value of speed wasn’t lost on me. But Beast didn’t comment.
We stood between the pile of bones and the cave mouth, the reek of death suffocating in the heat of the September day. I had smelled some bad things in my time, but the charnel-house/abattoir stench was beyond awful. The bear was foul, slimy, maggoty, even though the bones had been stripped of most of the flesh. Gack, eww, ick.
The buzzards and crows had come back to their stinky feast quickly, and one brave buzzard hopped to the top of the pile and spread its wings, claiming it and warning us away. “Don’t worry,” I told the bird. “It’s all yours.”
Rick chuckled and took my hand, pulling me inside the cave. The dark and coolness of the grindy’s lair was a welcome relief. It smelled better inside, an air current I hadn’t noticed moving from deeper underground, from the back of the cave and out the mouth, as if the mountain breathed through the opening. The grindylow was awake, sitting on the ledge, her legs hanging down from her nest swinging, oddly like a child. She was wearing clothes, wrinkled and none-too-clean, but she was covered, the clothing making her look less like an animal. Peeking out from the leaves and limbs of the nest were four, little, green-furred faces—her children.
“Thank you,” she said, “for the gift. Food is welcome.”
My mouth dropped open and I shot a quick look at Rick, but it was clear he hadn’t known the grindy could speak either. She smiled, showing fangs in her green-skinned face. “Uh, you’re welcome,” I managed. “For your babies.”
She dipped her head, the nod of acknowledgment odd-looking on her. She studied us, her heels kicking, tapping the stone softly like fingertips on a drum. “Jane-cat, you are not were. You do not fall under my judgment.”
“No. I’m not.” Confused, I added, “And, okay.”
“But you, little cat,” she said to Rick, “you are mine to judge. Come.” She gestured with her three-clawed hand at him. I instinctively shifted, hands at my blades. “He is in no danger, Jane-cat. He has not tried to infect you with his taint.” She cocked her bald head, studying Rick as he neared. “You have not shifted, little one. You are cat, and not-cat. Your magic is . . .” She made a little chirping sound and Rick tensed as the baby grindys crawled out in a swarm of wriggling green fur, huge black eyes staring at Ricky Bo. A series of chirps came from them, high-pitched and raucous, and they jumped back and forth over their mother and one another, like circus animals in an act. Rick laughed and held out his arm. One of the grindy babies leaped to him and scampered up his shoulder to nuzzle at his face. He petted it, gently, smoothing its soft fur.
The grindy went on. “Your magic is in stasis, balanced on a claw-blade of choice. You may never shift, which may give you magic of another kind, greater power, as you grow in acceptance and control over your cat-self. Or full were-power, as you shift for the first time. The choice will be yours to make.”
The tiny grindy raced over Rick’s head and nuzzled his other side, sniffing at the area of his tattoos as if a morsel of treat awaited her there. She chirped and whistled a tune that sounded, oddly, both happy and inquisitive. “Pea says your magic melds with hers. She is the littlest of my get, and has chosen you. Do you accept her?”
“Grindy, I don’t have a place in my life for a pet,” Rick said, as the green ball of fluff stuck its nose into his ear. He laughed and caught the baby, shifting her to the crook of his arm.
“Pea is not a pet, little cat-who-is-not,” the grindy said gently. “She is your death.” The cave went silent. My hands tightened on my blade handles, palms sweating. “You have no choice but to accept one of my young. Lolandes has proclaimed that even in the Americas, all weres will have keepers. Three of my young will go to the werewolf-clan hiding in the north and one will stay with you. I will go back to the terrible heat of the jungle with the leopards, there to deliver another litter. Then I may go home.”
Lolandes was another name for the witch who created the first weres, and then condemned the werewolves to eternal insanity. She had been worshipped as a goddess by tribal peoples for centuries. That brought all sorts of questions to mind, like, where is home to a grindylow, and where is the werewolf clan in the north, and mostly, What?
Rick was having an easier time with it, clearly, as he didn’t pull his gun and shoot them. He said, “My death if I try to infect anyone. I accept that. I’d deserve it.” He looked at Pea, who raced back up his shoulder, but still spoke to mama-grindy. “Can she talk?”
“Not human language. Not until she loses her fur in two decades, when she may gain the ability to speak. Many of my young have done so, though it is rare among my kind. Do you accept the joining of Pea for the balance of your life, knowing that you will come to love her, and that she will kill you without remorse if you stray?”
“It sounds a little too much like a marriage ceremony with a death sentence at the end, but yeah. I do.” Pea chirped and raced around Rick’s shoulders, whistling delightedly.
“Your fate is not written in the stars. You will choose as you will, and your life and death will play out accordingly,” the grindy said. “Go now. Feed Pea as Kemnebi has taught you. And again, my thanks for the meat.”
Rick turned to go and I let him pass me, keeping an eye on the grindy as he left the cave. She ignored me, gathering her three remaining young close and snuggling down as if to take a nap. Out in the sunlight, Pea had leaped from Rick to the steer carcass and ripped off a piece of raw meat, eating it, moving like the three-way love child of a raccoon, a squirrel, and a cat. But green furred. I headed up the steep hill. “Come on, Magic-Boy, and bring your new pet. We have a helicopter to catch.” Rick caught up with me, Pea riding on his shoulder, a strip of raw meat in its hand as we climbed out of the gorge.
The grindy had said Rick’s future was his choice. The thought sat on my soul like a weight, pulling me down into my failure and loss. Grief was like dust and ashes in my mouth, despite my success in other areas. Evangelina was dead at my hand. Molly had withdrawn from me. Beast had withdrawn so far from me that I couldn’t even feel her. Big Evan was being Big Evan. And yet, despite all that, I had done everything I was supposed to do. I had done the job I was hired for. I had killed a murdering vamp preying on humans. I had killed a murdering witch. I had kept Grégoire safe. I had sent in my report. I had pleased my employer. And soon it would all be over. And it would be decision-making time.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Double-Dead Bodies
My last night as head of security, the last night of my contract, was spent in the reserved hotel dining room with fifty-five vamps, double that number human blood-servants, and not nearly enough security personnel, watching the final results of the parley fiasco. Everyone was in formal wear, including me, and for once I was wearing the clothes Leo had sent without making a scene. I was wearing sparkling, loose black silk pants, a low-necked, black silk shirt, gold and silver embroidered vest, and a jacket designed especially for me by Leo’s pet designer, with pockets and straps for my weapons and com-gear.
My hair was up in complicated braids, and I’d had a massage, a facial, and a mani-pedi in the hotel’s spa courtesy of Leo, a way of saying thank you for a job well done, but not yet complete. With the new duds and the new do, I was wearing the gold and silver mesh collars Leo had given me, the chocolate diamonds and citrines sparkling in the lights, and silver stakes stuck out from my braids, catching the light like a deadly fan. I looked fabulous, and I knew it because of the way the vamps in the room kept looking at me. Like I was dessert and a silver blade—sweet and deadly. Leo stood at the dais, looking like sex-on-a-stick in his tux. I touched my mouthpiece, alerting my boys. “Ready.” If there was going to be a vamp-riot with throats torn and double-dead bodies, it would be now.
Leo said, “Grégoire, blood-master of Clan Arceneau, of the court of Charles the Wise, Fifth of his line, in the Valois Dynasty, have you reached a conclusion in the petition of Lincoln Shaddock, master of the Shaddock Blood Clan, for rights to claim Asheville, North Carolina, and surrounding territory as Master of the City? To be granted hunting land and cattle and the rights to rule as Blood Master of the City?”