by Faith Hunter
Trying to exert control over my life without killing, I had accidently bound Ed to me. I had bound Kemnebi to Rick LaFleur as his slave. Mistakes in judgment. The kind one makes with good intentions and not enough knowledge or wisdom, and then stupidly continues to make them.
That pretty much made me one of the monsters.
I hated that I had made mistakes, had killed humans who were bound and not acting under their own wills, had beheaded newly risen vamps when they might have been healed by Amy Lynn Brown’s miracle blood, or taken into a scion lair by a master vamp to wait through the decade-long curing process. So many of the people I had killed might have been saved. That knowledge made it hard to just lop the heads off my enemies, except when they attacked me or mine. Defensive battle was different. It meant death, but a death different from judgment and execution. This mental duel had been combat.
Yet I had not bound Monique. Whatever that snapping sound had been had happened in her brain. But it wasn’t my fault. She had attacked me. Right?
As a queen, I understood that Monique deserved to be executed for the crimes she was trying to carry out. I might be the only one who could stop this woman, and if so, then I had two choices: bind her the way Bruiser bound vamps and Monique bound everyone, or kill her.
But if I bound her, would that free her captives to continue to work their magic? Would the unknown European vamps just keep coming? Yes and yes. I needed to know the identities of the people she was conspiring with, where they were, and who they planned to betray. For now, Monique as my prisoner would have to be enough.
She was Onorio. She’d probably heal in a few weeks, but she wouldn’t be out in the world with her conspirators, fighting or binding anyone.
I stepped away from Monique. There was snot on her face where the wolf spit had been before. Her bowels had released. Her feet were still tied to the chair pieces, but her wrists were free, the tape bitten through where she had freed them. I stood guard between the schemes this woman and the Firestarter had in play. Because she couldn’t bind me, Monique would kill me if she could.
“I’m the Dark Queen,” I said, touching my crown, and poking at the tender places in my scalp where she had tried to pull it off. No blood, so that was good. No one could peel it off of me. And with her here, I could monitor her and stop her the moment I discovered the names and locations of the people in the vision, especially the French vamp whose voice had been so infused with power that it had caused Monique’s stolen energies to spike and cut, and the other one’s face, the one that was tied to Legolas/Melker. The memory of the man, someone I had seen in the past, someone I had met, was already fading like a dream after waking.
Until they all started to betray one another, the beings in her soul home were a real danger.
I added more duct tape to Monique’s bindings and rewrapped her wrists together, behind her back this time, so she couldn’t bite through the tape again and take off the cuffs. They seemed to work, but only if she couldn’t remove them. I also retaped her ankles and gathered up the chair pieces, tossing them into the other room. I texted Alex to have someone rinse the poo off Monique. I didn’t envy that person.
I had a lot to think about. I left the room, the silent, probably unconscious, maybe brain-damaged woman on the floor.
* * *
* * *
It was full daylight when I closed the cottage door behind me and leaned against it. Guilt wormed through me for the way I had treated Monique, but I quashed it. I was a monster, and monsters weren’t supposed to feel guilt. Besides. She was alive. She might heal. I took a breath and smelled smoke. Which was the only thing that reminded me. I pulled my cell and checked the time. I had company. I was late.
I still had the crown and Glob. I had Onorio blood on my hands and in my pocket. I was feeling uncertain and a little bit mean. I was also still in human form and might shift to another form at any moment. “Dang,” I muttered.
“Whoof.” It was a kind of doggie sound of Look at me, or I have to go out and pee, or It’s supper time. Brute was standing at the bottom of the cottage steps, staring up at me, his crystal blue eyes intent. He turned and looked at the cottage door and back to me.
“What? You think I shouldn’t have broken her brain?”
Brute, the three-hundred-plus-pound werewolf, showed me his fangs and snapped at the air, telling me I should have killed her and let him eat her.
“Not yet. She has friends in low places, and she isn’t working alone.”
Brute chuffed and wagged his tail.
“Do we have company in the sweathouse?”
Brute blew out a breath through his nose, a disdainful sniff that meant yes, and he didn’t like the people inside.
“I’m not fond of them either. And this means I’m gonna have to eat cold quiche.”
I walked through the lawn and into the woods down toward the creek. Eli had built my sweathouse early on, and I had used it several times lately to try to stop the unexpected shifting. It hadn’t worked, but then, I had been trying to force my magic on half-understood sweathouse ceremonies, and that wasn’t the way Tsalagi ceremonies worked.
Eli had set up this meeting last week. I hadn’t fought it very hard. Admitting I needed help was awkward and embarrassing, but not as bad as continually waking up in a different form and shifting unexpectedly from human to half-form or Beast form in public or in the middle of a fight. And since there were only two other skinwalkers that I knew of, getting help meant asking family. They had ignored me for decades. I hadn’t been particularly nice to either of them once they showed up. Yet Eli had asked and here they were. In my sweathouse.
I stepped behind the new privacy wall, removed my clothing, crammed it into a paper grocery bag, mudders on the bottom, and showered off beneath the icy water. Fighting the shivers, I opened the big plastic bin of supplies, shook out a towel, dried off, pulled on a linen shift, and tucked the Glob in the pocket. Le breloque was still stuck on my head when I opened the sweathouse door.
The fire in the firepit flamed bright and high and threw sparks. Heat and steam rushed out, the scent of rosemary strong on the air. Light flooded the darkness for a moment as I stepped inside and closed the door, thinking that rosemary was odd, not a traditional herb, but one brought over by the Europeans. Why rosemary?
The fire settled. My eyes adjusted to the dimmer light.
My Beast was interested, peering through my eyes.
Most ceremonies I’d taken part in started at sunrise or sunset. Not midmorning. Most involved fasting and drinking herbal stuff that tasted like rotten spinach. All involved fire, smoke, herbs, and lots of listening. I don’t really listen well. I’ve been told I’m confrontational.
Standing in the shadows, I studied my brother and the woman I called grandmother, fighting down the desire to be rude and combative. When I entered, Ayatas FireWind had been sitting in the guru position, knees crossed, and he stood slowly, his bare legs unfolding gracefully. It was really unfair. We were both skinwalkers, and he was graceful, while I was more often a klutz. He was also a senior special agent and the regional director of the Psychometric Law Enforcement Division of Homeland.
“Igidoi,” he said softly. Sister, the possessive form, as in my sister. It set the tone for this meeting. He was here as a brother, not as a cop.
There were many ways to respond, many different ways to say my brother. I had been studying the proper forms of address for the last week, but hadn’t been able to decide on one until now. I chose “Agidoi,” which literally meant my sibling of opposite sex, and was also possessive. No combative words here. Nope, nope, nope.
He nodded at my choice of address, and his braids swung forward. He wore two, both of them neat and spare and perfect. I wanted to toss my braid behind me to hide it. For the Cherokee, the state of one’s braids was indicative of many things, and mine was sloppy and careless. But I held still.
Ayatas was dressed in a breechclout, which he must have brought with him, because it
was colorful and not the undyed cotton of the ones in the bins. It was also a traditional Cherokee covering and was more conservative than the one he wore the last time I saw him wear one. This breechclout was a length of bright red woven cloth that passed between his legs, draped over in front to the knees, and was tied around his waist with a second piece of rust-colored cloth that also secured his medicine bag at one hip. It left his buttocks mostly bare but covered the essentials. It was appropriate attire for hard work, fishing, or hunting in hot weather, and for ceremony.
The flames flickered over his bare chest and face. Like me, he was yellow-eyed, tall, too lean, his musculature clearly defined. He was also beautiful, while I was . . . interesting. Striking sometimes. Never beautiful.
I transferred my eyes to the old woman sitting on the log seat in the place of honor, more or less at the point of north. It was low to the ground, and her knees were bent, relaxed. She was heavily wrinkled, her braided hair a mix of intense black and steel gray, streaked with pure white. Her yellow eyes sparkled in the firelight, her gaze tight on me.
The memory of the last time I saw her flashed through my mind and was gone. She looked older than the night the white man had tried to kill me on the Trail of Tears. To save me, she had forced me into my bobcat form and shoved me into a blizzard to live or die. To the child I had been, bleeding and broken, she had always been old, but that had been over 170 years ago. Now she looked ancient.
Like me, she was wearing a linen shift, one from the plastic box outside. Beside her was a small, traditional drum, a pitcher for water, and a basket of dried and fresh herbs with mortar and pestle. I would not be drinking anything she made for me.
“Enisi,” I said to her. It meant my grandmother, the possessive implied, though not stated. Cautious, informal, respectful.
“Vgilisi,” she said. It meant my daughter’s child, but was less specific as to relationships. It wasn’t my granddaughter. “Jaladi.” A polite form of sit down.
I sat across from her, at south, folding down as gracefully as I could. Aya sat as well, and there was an empty wooden cup at his knee. We studied each other. “I thank you for coming. I don’t remember much of the speech of The People. Do you mind if we speak English?”
Enisi, better known as Hayalasti Sixmankiller, gave a single nod, but her lips went hard and flat. “I understand you have adopted two men into your family.” She threw a fresh branch of rosemary on the fire. “You should have spoken first with tribal leaders. There may be disagreement with this decision.”
Ahhh. That was better. Provocation was something I could deal with. I gave a tiny shrug. “There may be disputes,” I agreed. “The elders have cared nothing for me for a hundred and seventy plus years. Tell me why I should care what they think now.”
“You want help.”
“My brother,” I hesitated and looked at Aya, “my adopted brother, not you, believes you can teach me to manage my skinwalker magics better.”
“Your shifting is uncontrolled,” she stated.
“It has become more difficult to control,” I hedged, which was true enough.
“We will go to ceremony—the ceremony of Full Circle—to heal families. You will participate. You will yield to me as did Tsu Tsu. I will teach you and govern you.”
Aya’s eyes shot to his grandmother. His expression didn’t change, but his fingers tensed the tiniest bit. Yeah, got it. Not acceptable language around a Full Circle firepit. Not a Tsalagi concept. And I didn’t know what a tsutsu was, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t like it.
“Full Circle is always voluntary,” I said. “My elders, Aggie One Feather, her mother uni lisi, and Savannah Walkingstick, would tell me that you can’t command me in this.”
“You would disobey me?”
“In a heartbeat.”
Hayalasti Sixmankiller’s eyes flashed again. My nose, which was better than human, caught a faint scent beneath the rosemary. Unpleasant. Then it was gone.
“You. Will. Yield,” she said.
Inside me, Beast hissed in displeasure, showing killing teeth.
I stole a sound from Leo Pellissier and laughed softly, letting the sound ripple along my skinwalker magic. Inside me, Beast’s ears perked up high. Outside me, silver and charcoal skinwalker energies scattered through the air, all laced with hundreds of darker motes of power. The magic of I/we. The magic of the creature we were together—Beast.
As my magic rose, so did my grandmother’s magic. I could only see magic with Beast’s vision, not my own, which meant Aya and Grandmother likely didn’t see energy at all. If she did, she would have hidden her power. Her energies were black, shot through with motes of red. The feel of her lightless energies sliced along my skin like tiny knives. Black magic . . .
“No,” I said. “I will not yield. I will, possibly, work with you. But I will not be ruled.” I touched le breloque. “And not just me. The Dark Queen will not yield.”
Hayalasti’s eyes flashed again, and I got a good look at them this time. The strange light in her eyes was the reflection of fire, but not the fire between us. In her eyes was a roaring fire that spoke of battle and war. I caught a whiff of the stink again, tantalizingly familiar, and then it was gone. Her power shaped into a long-fingered hand. It reached for me.
The Glob in my pocket heated, red hot and fast. Its energies were clear, crystalline, and spread like a net, like a flower opening. The energies met between us in a sparkle of light that even they could see. The black power spiraled out of shape and into a tiny black tornado, heading for my pocket. The Glob sucked down the power like flushing filth down a toilet.
Grandmother jerked back, pulling on her power as if it was a rope in a game of tug-of-war. Her power began to fray, split, fine threads breaking. The red motes whirled in a circle around her head.
She made an inarticulate sound, too loud for Cherokee speech, like “Dladladla!” She grabbed at her chest as if the loss of power hurt her there.
Aya looked back and forth between us, his eyes wide with shock.
“I yield to no one,” I said.
“Gigadanegisgi tried to buy you. I should have sold you to her,” she spat.
Aya jerked, a loss of control I never would have expected. “Gigadanegisgi?” he whispered.
I started, “Somebody tell m—”
“Gigadanegisgi means blood taker,” Aya said. “She would have sold you, her granddaughter, my sister, to a vampire.”
It should have surprised me. It didn’t. “Crap on crackers,” I said.
Grandmother stood in a single fluid motion and leaped over the fire at me.
CHAPTER 5
Spear Finger, Liver-Eater, and U’tlun’ta
As always, the world slowed, a strong battlefield readiness and that weird time shift of war. The world around me thickened, as if time itself had turned to cold molasses.
There wasn’t time to stand and meet her attack. Beast did . . . something. I raised my left arm in defense. Pain shattered along my spine, across my shoulders, arms, and through my hands. My fingers burned. My body shifted. Fast. To half-form.
She was still midleap.
I rocked back to my butt. Away from her. Caught her foot in a knobby hand and threw her over me, past me. She crashed into the east wall.
Beast screamed her challenge. I stood on my/our wide paw-feet. “I do not yield!” I shouted.
Grandmother twisted to her feet, limber as a teenaged gymnast, her linen shift pulled to the side. She stopped. Her yellow eyes were on me. Her mouth hung open. Grandmother had never seen such a thing as I had just become. We faced off, me hesitating, Grandmother frozen in shock.
I took a breath to speak and caught the strange scent, unmasked by the rosemary. Once before, the old woman smelled very faintly of witch magic. Now it was stronger. And beneath that, she stank of—
U’tlun’ta. Liver-eater. The creature skinwalkers became when they—when we—did black magic and took the life and the flesh of a living human.
Ranc
id as a battlefield littered with the fallen and the burned.
That was why the potent rosemary. To hide the stench.
There was an amulet tied around her neck, visible where her shift had twisted.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Aya slowly rise to a crouch, but he didn’t stand to fight. He wasn’t reacting to his grandmother smelling like a burning rotten corpse. It was as if he couldn’t smell the rancid reek. As if he was frozen in indecision and confusion. Or frozen in Sixmankiller’s power.
Grandmother’s magic attacked again, blacker than a starless night, cold as the depths of hell. The Glob heated. It wasn’t skinwalker magic. It wasn’t u’tlun’ta magic. It felt and looked like black magic, which was witch magic. Sixmankiller was not a witch. The power had to be stolen. More black power shot out, countered by the Glob in my pocket.
The attacking energies came from the amulet resting on her breastbone, tied around her neck. It wasn’t a medicine bag. It was something else.
The Glob sucked the attack down like a white shark swallowing prey. The amulet on Granny’s neck began to glow a dull red, like heated steel, then brighter. The Glob drained down the light too. Grandmother screamed. I smelled burned, rotten flesh.
The old woman dove at me again, shoving off with her right foot.
There was a knapped stone blade in her left hand.
She stabbed forward.
I ducked back and blocked her knife hand with my left, shoving up and around in a whirling motion.
She snapped at my exposed arm. Biting at me. Her teeth grazing my skin.
U’tlun’ta. Liver-eater. The evil of the skinwalker, to eat the living and take their form.
She wanted to be Jane Yellowrock.
She wanted to be the Dark Queen.
The Glob sucked the last of the amulet’s power away. Le breloque did . . . something. Grandmother froze.
I swiped her face with my claws. They caught the edge of her jaw. Down her throat. Caught the thong around Grandmother’s neck. I ripped away her charm. Her blood splattered across me.