by Faith Hunter
Once at the top, I saw the lights of Natchez in the distance and thought about calling a taxi. Instead I called Eli, who answered on the first ring. “’Sup?”
“I need a ride and some clothes. I’m about a mile upstream of Natchez. I can see the city lights in the distance. And I see a car running parallel to the river, maybe a thousand feet from the river.”
“Clothes? You want me to bring you clothes?”
“I’m not naked; I’m just underdressed for the weather. And bring boots and weapons. I have a place we need to check out. And stop and get some burgers. Maybe six.”
To his credit, Eli didn’t waste time with inanities like “Why?,” “How?,” or “Are you insane?” He said, “Google says Cemetery Road parallels the river. Get to the road. I’m not coming in the woods to find you.”
“And socks,” I added, but he had hung up. I started for the road in the distance and learned real quick about the burr grasses that grew offshore. The round, spiked seeds hurt like a son of a gun, and stuck fast to bare skin or clothes until pulled out. I said some more words I’d not repeat to a housemother, but I made it to the road in under an hour, which felt like good time, except that I could see an SUV parked on the verge in the grasses. He saw me waving and limping and was sporting nearly a full-sized grin by the time I got in and slammed the door.
There were no overhead lights, and so I demanded, “Flashlight.” Eli passed the oversized torch into my hand with a splat, like a tech with a surgical instrument. I used the bright beam to examine my sore feet. They were bloody, and several long slender thorns were deeply embedded. “If you make fun, I’ll hurt you,” I snarled.
“Me?” It was said with an attempt at innocence and a stifled snicker.
I slanted my eyes at him with a look that promised pain, and picked out the splintered thorns as Eli made a three-point turn. I remembered the street name of the church we were going to, though not the number, and I gave Eli directions before climbing into the backseat and changing clothes. I was relatively sure he didn’t watch, but I smelled his amusement and practically felt his stifled desire to mock. We were back in town, stopped at a traffic light, when he said, oh, so casually, “So, you shifted and went hunting?”
I thought about not answering, but the cat was out of the bag, literally, and there was no point not sharing. I climbed back into the front seat, pulled on my old, scratched, worn, Lucchese boots. I started braiding my hair and said, “Yeah.”
A weight fell off me, so heavy it moved like a landslide, thick and full of dangerous debris, a rumbling that I felt from scalp to toes. I took a breath and it felt just the opposite, weightless and softly lit, as if by candlelight. I blinked into the night, seeing but not seeing old houses and businesses as we motored past. All I’d said was Yeah, but it was like I found something that had been buried for eons. A smile formed on my face, all unwittingly, and to hide my reaction, which felt deeply private and personal and stupid too, I said, “So. Burgers? I smell ’em.”
Eli handed me a paper bag with golden arches on it and I chowed down, putting away three of them in less than a minute, describing the church remembered from the photo between swallows of half-chewed bites of burger.
“Your mama nev—” He stopped abruptly, and I breathed out my laughter through my nose.
“I’m sure my mama taught me to chew my food. Right after I brought it down and ripped out its throat.”
Eli laughed with me, a chortling snicker, soft but explosive. “Yeah. Okay.” He pointed. “That the church?”
“Yeah.” Eli pulled over and I got out, smoothing my palms on my jeans. I wasn’t nervous. Not really. Or not totally. But my palms were sweating. Eli appeared beside me and I jumped. I hadn’t heard him get out or walk to me. Okay, so I was nervous. “You mind waiting outside?” I asked.
“You mind taking a weapon?” He extended two of my own semiautomatics snapped into their leather holsters: the matching Walther PK380s. The handguns were lightweight and ambidextrous, with bloodred polymer grips loaded with standard rounds, in the event of a human or blood-servant attack. Normally, one went under my arm, its twin at the small of my back. “That is why you had me bring them, right?”
“No. Not right now.” I wiped my palms again, this time feeling the damp of sweat through to my skin, chilled by the night air. “That’s for later, if we need them. I can’t take weapons into the church.”
Eli shrugged and locked the guns in the case in the back of the SUV. As he came back toward me, I said, “Eli? The church may not really be there. Okay?” To his credit, Eli merely wrinkled his forehead. I headed up the white walk. It started to rain, soft, heavy splats that fell straight down and left marks on the white concrete shaped like the burrs I’d pulled from my flesh. It seemed significant somehow, that the bloody burrs and the raindrops left similar imprints. I reached the church doors, narrow and twelve feet tall, painted the color of old blood. Lightning flashed and hit with a sizzling crack that brightened the world, and the door turned color for a moment to teal green. I pushed both doors open and they felt oily and damp beneath my hand, the dark of the church ahead, the dark of night behind. They stayed canted open as I entered, the night breeze and scent of rain following me inside.
The interior of the church had oiled wooden floors composed of boards twelve inches wide, walls painted white, and benches stained a dark brown. Lightning flashed again, and the sound of raindrops began on the roof overhead, a muted water on stone. I heard a scratching sound and a light appeared ahead under the cross at the front of the church, a lantern lit by a woman’s hand with a paper taper, her body oddly obscured by shadows. I walked forward, my boots echoing off the walls.
The old woman from the river appeared out of the gloom, lit by the tiny flame, still wearing the blue-and-yellow-flowered dress. I sniffed and smelled polishing wax, wilting lilies, the smoke from the match, and another person—a witch—but the scents were faint, as if left over from a long time in the past, and there weren’t enough of them. Even if the church wasn’t still used for worship, there should have been the scents of human tourists, paint, mold . . . but there wasn’t.
The light grew as I approached, and I looked back at the sound of a ringing thud. My shadow reached out behind me, darkening and lengthening as I kept walking forward. The doors had closed behind me, shutting off my escape. Little fear critters latched onto my spine, clinging to the fine hairs there. My breathing went deep as my heart sped. I turned back to the light and to the old woman from the riverbank.
She was American Indian, but I was less certain of her tribe as I got closer, and I didn’t know how to approach, exactly, except as a petitioner. That was why I’d left my weapons behind. She was sitting on the small podium, her feet dangling off the edge, soft-soled boots barely scraping the floor.
“You came,” she said, her accent not quite what I had remembered; less Louisianan or Mississippian, more Texan, maybe.
“I came,” I said. “My father was ani gilogi, Panther Clan of the Tsalagi. My mother was ani sahoni, Blue Holly Clan.” She nodded for me to continue, and I said, “I am called Jane Yellowrock, or Yellow-Eyes Gold, Dalonige i Digadoli, in the tongue of The People.”
“Yellow-Eyes Yellowrock. A strange name for a child. But the people of my mother were always a little pretentious, a little bit touched in the head. Not right since the nunna dual tsuny, the time of the Trail of Tears.” She must have noticed some small reaction at the insult because she laughed, not unkindly, and waved the words away, saying, “Don’t take offense. It’s just the words of an old woman who has lived too long and forgotten how to be careful of her tongue. No offense was meant.”
One did not take offense at the capriciousness of the very old. I tilted my head in acceptance, waiting.
She pursed her mouth as if thinking. “I am half-Cherokee, part Choctaw, a small part Natchez, and some white man, but we all have that.” When I didn’t reply, she went on, “Call me Kathyayini. It means ‘Goddess of Power’ in Ch
erokee. Like I said, a pretentious people. You know why I called you here. Yes?”
I shook my head. “Not entirely, no.”
“My son married an Acheé woman. He does not know his wife is a witch or that his mother is a spirit walker.” When I looked puzzled, she said, “A wise woman with the power to walk in dreams.”
Kathyayini rocked back and forth as if she were in a rocking chair, giving me time to absorb her words. The smell of the candle was filling the chapel, a sharp herbal scent like rosemary and lime. The power to walk in dreams. Like Aggie One Feather, back in New Orleans? I remembered the dreams I’d had in the sweathouse, and the forms Aggie had taken in them. Could she walk in dreams too? “Okay,” I said.
“Okay,” she repeated. “This old woman wants her secrets, and the secrets of the women, kept secrets,” Kathyayini said. “The men, they are no good with secrets. They freak out.”
I breathed out my laughter at the modern word on the old woman’s lips, and Kathyayini laughed with me. “I think it’s a bit late about the witches and Acheé men. They know. I’m sure the cops told them.”
“Stupid cops.” She shook her head. “No good comes of men knowing secrets. They do best when protected.
“I can see your soul, you know,” she went on. “Old soul. Older than me. Skinwalker soul. I only ever see one like it, and she was even older than you. Long time ago, in another place,” she said before I could ask. “You also coated with magics: magic of skinwalker, magic of a mountain lion, magic of blood-charms. Dark magic, blood-magic charms. You should throw them away. They no good for you.” I remembered the charms in the boot box back at Esmee’s and on the table with our files, and the blood diamond, hidden in a safe-deposit box.
“You also carry the shadow magics of one who should not walk the face of the earth,” she said, emphasizing the phrase with nods of her head, “drinker of blood. All that is bad. All of it. But the shadow magics of the blood drinker, that is the worst.”
Her talk sounded a lot like Aggie One Feather’s mother’s chatter, half incomprehensible. “Okay,” I said, not meaning that I understood, but an acknowledgment that she had spoken and that I was listening.
“Blood drinkers are like U’tlun’ta,” She pronounced it differently from hut luna of the Eastern Cherokee. “Stone finger,” she clarified, in case I had missed it. “Skinwalkers like you, but old. All stone fingers go crazy sooner or later. Then they should die true death. So should vampires, like the shadow one in your soul house.”
And then I understood. She could see Leo in my soul house. If she could see him, maybe she could get him out of me. My heart thumped hard.
CHAPTER 14
Try Not to Poison Me
Before I could ask, Kathyayini continued, “I don’t got so much time, so listen. Long years past was cold iron, blood, three cursed trees, and lightning. Red iron will set you free.” Which made no freaking sense. She rocked some more, her blue dress emerging from and falling into shadows, the crevices of her face deepening and softening, like the way the moon shadows show the folded hills and valleys of the Smoky Mountains—the Appalachians. Kathyayini added, “All that is for later, not for today. Today is for this: shadow and blood are a dark light buried beneath the ground.” Neither riddle made sense, but I had learned that they weren’t meant to. They were simply meant to light a path into a possible future.
“The one you seek,” Kathyayini said, “she is bound to the earth. She didn’t mean to be bound, but she cannot get away now.”
“Uh huh. Okay.” My phone buzzed like a hornet in my pocket, but when I reached for it, it wasn’t there. Yet I still felt the buzzing in my pocket, against my thigh.
Something was very, very wrong. I had told Eli that the church might not really be here in our reality, but I hadn’t considered what that might mean about where I’d be if I went inside. “Kathyayini, where am I?”
She waved her hand as if waving away my question. “Neither here nor there. Nor any place in between.”
“How do I get back?”
“You done asking questions of me?”
Not really, but I didn’t want to stay wherever I was. “For now. Thank you.”
Kathyayini tossed me something and I identified it as I caught it. A coin, larger than a penny, heavier than a quarter. The metal felt cold, the engraving smooth and ancient. “You want me again, you come here at night and put that coin on the ground. I’ll come.” She waved the back of her hand at me, like shooing a fly. “Go now. We talk later, if you need.”
Behind me, the church doors opened, allowing in a strong breeze that swept through, making the candle flame flicker and sputter. I backed slowly toward the old church doors, my eyes on Kathyayini. When the door appeared in my peripheral vision, I turned and went out into the night and down the steps. And remembered to breathe. A fog had roiled up outside, moving on the breeze in fitful gusts of shadow and white, and I couldn’t see anything except the old trees just to my sides, which I was sure hadn’t been there before.
The church doors slammed shut, making me jump and turn. Behind me, the church was gone. “Crap. Crap, crap, crap,” I whispered.
“Jane?” a voice called, sounding muffled and distant, directionless in the heavy air.
“I’m here,” I shouted.
“Where? Say again!” Eli appeared in the mist, both hands clutching weapons, a nine mil in his right hand, his shooting hand, and a vamp-killer in his left. He brought up the gun, centering it on my chest, finger resting gently on the trigger. I had no doubt the gun was ready to fire.
I raised my hands. “Easy there, Eli.”
“Prove to me you are who you look like.”
That was a weird request, but no weirder than anything else had been lately. “I want a steak, still mooing, hold the salad.”
“And?”
Weirder and weirder. “And your brother, the computer geek criminal, wants ravioli. What about you?”
“I eat the steak and the salad. With beer.”
“I’m guessing these were identifiers. What’s going on?”
Eli approached slowly, growing firmer out of the fog. “Open your mouth.”
I frowned but opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue. “You want me to say ah too?”
“Nope.” He sheathed the knife and ejected the round from the chamber before he holstered the weapon. “Just looking for fangs.”
I tucked my chin uncertainly. “Say what?”
“You are the third Jane Yellowrock I’ve seen in the past two hours, and the others had fangs. I staked them both and took their heads, but when I did, they vanished, body and head. Illusions, but with tactile stimuli.”
“You staked me and killed me.” My tone went flat.
“Yeah. It sucked killing you too. Especially the first time. It was easier the second time.”
I wanted to laugh, but I knew he was serious. The fog rolled in thicker, as if trying to separate us, and Eli stepped closer, until his sleeve brushed mine. “Stick close. This way out. By the way, where are we?”
“An old Indian woman I saw said ‘neither here nor there.’”
“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
Which seemed a little strange, but fit the evening so far. Around us, the fog thinned and the wind that caused the white to roll and billow fell still. And suddenly we stepped to the curb and into the street. I looked back and saw only an empty lot, narrow and filled with saplings. No fog.
“I want to go back to Miss Esmee’s,” I said.
“Yeah. And have a good, stiff drink.”
I said nothing to that as we got in the SUV and drove sedately away. I looked back once and saw a hint of white fog, but that was all. Then I faced front and said nothing, studying the coin by the streetlights we passed. It was blackened, but I could make out the head of a dragon on one side, a dragon with huge spiked teeth. I turned the old coin over and over in my fingers as the sun rose, ending the strange night with a wash of pale pink, shrimp, and soft persimmon clouds a
gainst a golden sky.
• • •
Back at Esmee’s, I knocked on the Kid’s door. When he opened it, he was wearing a sheet and the stink of garlic and sweat; he needed a shower. Badly. I handed him the coin. “Shower and get logged on. Tell me about this—everything you can find. What it is, where it came from.”
“Breakfast,” he croaked.
“Shower. I’ll whip up some eggs.”
“Try not to poison me.” The door closed.
“Funny guy,” I murmured. In my room, I toed off my boots, tossed my clothes on the bed and pulled on a stretchy tee and soft sweater, with clean jeans and fuzzy socks with half boots against the cold floors. Louisiana might not have what I think of as cold winters, but the house was chilly. Downstairs, I didn’t have to worry about poisoning the Kid, because his brother was already frying eggs and bacon, making toast, and percolating coffee. He even had tea steeping under a padded tea doily. “You’re not worried about taking over Jameson’s kitchen?” I asked as I poured a mug of strong black tea and added a slice of fresh lemon.
“I asked permission. He wasn’t thrilled,” Eli said as he slid a pile of scrambled eggs onto a plate, “but I promised to keep Esmee away from the battlefield, and we reached an accord.”
“Ah. So. What’s today’s schedule?”
“Sleep. At least eight hours. Then I say we chase some Naturaleza vamps and take a few heads.”
I hid my smile behind my cup and sipped. “You got any idea where we should look?”
“Yeah. Alex collated the addresses of properties owned by the fangheads on Hieronymus’ kill list and compared them to properties owned by Silandre and Esther. They’re on my bed, listed in order from most likely to least likely. I say we pick one, go in a few hours before sunset, and clean house.” He dished up a rasher of bacon and put my plate in front of me before filling two more. Knowing I should wait for the rest of the expected diners, I dug in. Good manners were never my strong suit. I was better at killing things.