by Faith Hunter
“Did Ka age more rapidly than me, and therefore that made her become u’tlun’ta sooner? Will I age more rapidly now that I’ve been through the rift? Or maybe stop aging?” I looked down at myself. When I came back from the rift, I looked eighteen. I still did.
“We need Ka’s DNA to compare, but I’m thinking your DNA was repaired more than we thought during your trip through the rift.” His tone said there was more.
“Okay. I can kinda wrap my head around that. How does Grandmother’s DNA fit into all this?”
“Hayalasti Sixmankiller’s DNA is in seriously bad shape. A batch of replicated genes on the X chromosome is tangled like a hairball.” He glanced at me. “Similar to, but a lot worse than, yours pre-rift. It looks like someone added DNA with an ice cream scoop and tied it together with yarn. That could be because of someone she ate alive, and the black magic that pulled their DNA into hers. Or not. We don’t know.”
“Question. Will you ask Wrassler, on the QT, what happened to any samples of Immanuel’s blood after I killed him? Maybe blood-stained carpets or rugs or cleaning cloths?”
“If he’s got any, you want it tested?”
“Yeah. Let’s find out what we have.”
“Meanwhile, keep this in your pocket.” He handed me a small brown paper bag. “It’s a scrap of your granny’s sweaty shift. Dr. Northern returned it, and Eli thought you might need it someday.” He glanced at me, and I must have looked confused because he added, “Le breloque uses blood as a weapon. Maybe it can use sweat too.”
And maybe Grandmother could track me by it. But I shoved it into a pocket anyway.
Alex called security. “Alex Younger here. Heading back to the queen’s personal residence.”
The car in front took a right. We followed.
* * *
* * *
After the attack that wasn’t an attack, I was tense, so I made a pot of strong black tea. While it steeped at the kitchen table, I dragged the trunk of journals close and pulled out an armload I hadn’t looked over yet. I flipped open five before I found one in English. I read the first page, handwritten in that old calligraphy style of the classically educated human of European descent. It was simply a name and a date in immaculate penmanship. Immanuel Justinus Henri Mainet Pellissier, in the year of our Lord, Seventeen Ninety.
This journal was written by Immanuel.
I closed it, a finger holding my place on the page. This journal was one of the last ones handed down to me by Derek while we were raiding the storage room on sub-four. He had given me this one on purpose, knowing I had killed Immanuel or, rather, the creature masquerading as Leo’s son.
Hardly daring to breathe, I reopened the book and turned the page, staring at the words and lines of a diagram, a lineage, vamp style. On one side were physical children—children of the body—written in black ink. On the other side, written in a browning grayish ink, was a vampire lineage. I dropped my nose close to the page and sniffed, getting a whiff of what smelled like old fanghead blood and funeral flowers and ashes. The ink had been made from vamp blood.
Immanuel. The name was like a talisman and a curse. His death had been the origin of everything that had happened in this city since the day I first arrived.
I had killed him.
This man, Immanuel, with blondish hair, an elegant demeanor, and the stink of scorched flesh and rot, was the reason I had come to New Orleans, hired to track and destroy a vampire murderer. Saving the witches was the reason I stayed. And now I was stuck here, queen of the beings I used to hunt and kill. Holding the journal of Leo’s son.
There could be DNA on the pages. I got up and went to my room, returning with a pair of gloves. Three-hundred-plus-year-old blood, spit, and sweat from turning and touching pages was probably not useful for DNA, but I wasn’t taking a chance.
I turned the pages, reading names here and there. Shopping lists. Descriptions of parties. Names of beautiful human women he slept with. Beautiful vamps. On page 3, Immanuel described himself as a man of leisure, an unashamed womanizer, a rake, a dilettante, and a man of style, which in my time meant he was lazy, a player, and a fashionista. A name jumped out at me, feeling vaguely familiar, as if I had heard the name before. Tsu Tsu Inoli. Russian? Asian? Scandinavian? Probably phonetically spelled.
The cell rang and I flinched just a bit. My honeybunch’s face was on the screen. I glanced into the living room to see Alex’s feet hanging off the end of the sofa. I hadn’t even noticed his soft snores. The Kid didn’t sleep enough, so this was either a power nap, or he was crashing and would be down for hours. I picked up my teacup. My voice soft, I answered, “Hey.” And sipped. The tea was strong and fragrant, and a sense of well-being moved through me with its warmth.
“Hello, my love,” Bruiser said. “Did I wake you?”
“No. I’m just having tea and holding Immanuel’s journal. I just found it. It’s like a treasure.” There was a long silence. “Bruiser?”
“I heard you. Who packed the trunk for you?”
“Derek.”
He was silent again, but this time I could hear a chatter of voices in the background. “Derek is missing,” Bruiser said. “He was providing a blood meal to Signy, a Scandinavian Mithran who came to HQ this past winter.”
A quiet thread of fear twined through my heart. “Go on.”
“The furniture is overturned and there is a pool of blood in Signy’s room, with droplets here and there in the hallways. Two other Mithrans confirmed by scent that it is both human and Mithran blood. Nothing was on the standard digital security cameras, and it appears there was an obfuscation working in use. Wrassler is tracking via the laser monitors and FLIR cameras, but so far we can’t prove if he left willingly or not.”
I said, “When we were fighting European vamps in Asheville, we knew they sent some fangheads here, hiding among the Mithrans who came for sanctuary. Was she one?”
“It is possible.”
“Do I need to come?”
“No. I’ve called Tex. He’s bringing his dogs. One has a nose and he’s trained to track. If you see Brute, ask him to come to HQ too. I called because I found the iron witch circle, or where I think it is. Meet me at the Damours’ warehouse.”
It took a moment for me to place the iron witch circle. We hadn’t talked about it since I saw it in the vision of Ka, Adan, and Bethany. I didn’t like where this was going. Anxiety wormed under my skin like electric snakes.
The Damours were a vamp blood-family with a witch family linage that had been intwined over too many generations; they had survived the vamp purge in the late 1700s and ended up in New Orleans, where they continued blood-sacrifice of witch children, the most foul of black magic, right under the noses of two of the masters of the city. That magic had involved the blood diamond. Which had been incorporated into the making of the Glob.
“Jane?” he asked, quiet worry in his tone.
I pulled myself back to this moment. “I’ll be there in a bit.”
“Okay. Be safe.”
I hung up. Sipped my tea. My hands were shaking slightly.
Go to place where vampire witches killed kits? Beast asked.
To the place where lots of people were killed, I thought. We thought we had rooted out all the black magic from that place. Maybe we missed something.
Take killing steel and white man weapons. And weapons of magic.
Exactly what I was thinking.
I tossed back the tea and silently went to my room to change.
* * *
* * *
It felt amazing to kickstart the old bastardized panhead Harley and ride through the streets fully human-shaped, alone, the way I had come to this city. Or almost alone. My security team were all around, riding the white crotch-rocket bikes that Leo had bought before he died the second time. I heard the bikes’ high-pitched whine all around me, but I could almost pretend they weren’t there. Because of traffic, I beat Bruiser to the warehouse and rode around it, taking it in. The front of the
place had been subdivided into three businesses, but all the leases had changed since I was here last. I pulled Bitsa off the street into the back parking area and killed the Harley engine, the rumble echoing off the nearby walls.
Setting the kickstand, I swung my leg over, adjusting the hip rig and the nine-mil. I was wearing jeans, a heavy T-shirt, and a leather riding jacket, the Benelli in its original spine holster. Unzipping the jacket, I slid it off, tossed it to the seat, adjusted the fit of the old spine holster, and strapped the helmet to the seat over the jacket. It all felt so normal. So me. I opened a saddlebag and pulled out a set of stakes, shoving three wooden ones into my hair and three silver ones into the stake sheath on my thigh rig. I added a glass bottle of fresh holy water, ready for throwing. Shoved the Glob deeper into my pocket, which was jury-rigged with padding against potential magical heat.
I was ready for most anything.
Out of the night, a white blur trotted down the street. Brute. The angel-touched white werewolf stuck in wolf form was showing up, out of the darkness, his movement slightly out of focus with my current reality. Timewalking. I didn’t take my eyes off him, but suddenly he was beside my thigh, sitting, looking up at me, panting slightly, tongue hanging out a little to the side of his mouth.
“Crazy wolf,” I said. “How did you even know to be here?”
He huffed at me, smiling.
Together we turned and looked at the building. We were at the back-alley entrance off Iberville, and this time there was no vamp scent, no smell of dead human bodies. “I don’t think you’ve ever been here,” I said to the wolf.
The warehouse had windows on the lower story at the back and sides, and wide, arched windows on the two top floors. Renee Damours and her husband/brother had used the back half of all three stories; one had been for storage for her long-chained children and her businesses, and the other two floors for living. Unlike in the vamp-owned days, the windows were no longer draped in heavy cloth but blank to the night. No lights shone inside. There were a half dozen security cameras, a single heavy-duty steel garage-style door, and a brand-new steel entry door with a keypad lock.
I wandered up to the door and checked it. Locked. I sat on a low brick wall and waited, Brute stretched out beside me, my security team all around, Quint in the shadows behind me, watching everything. Ten minutes later, Bruiser’s SUV and his two-SUV-security team turned in and parked. Bruiser stepped out of the passenger side door and walked up to me, his long legs in an unhurried stride. He took in the bike as he passed it, his eyes raking my clothes and weapons. A tiny smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “Ready for war?”
“Entering this building has never been easy.”
“True.” He handed me a headset. Our men surrounded us, four in front at point, two behind at our six. The crotch rockets patrolling the streets moved in closer, the whine piercing.
Brute leaned against my leg, almost as if in comfort.
I put the headset on and heard Bruiser both beside me and through the earbuds, “Clear the building. Reconverge at the lower level.”
There were a series of “Roger that” and “Copy” comments as Bruiser punched in a code, and the door unlocked. Four of the unit moved into the dark, two wearing low-light / IR goggles, marking them as human, two vamped out. From the outside, more humans, Kojo, and Thema joined the crew, their low voices letting me know this had been planned, all without me, on the fly. I could console myself that I had helped design the protocols, but in reality, it just let me know how far behind I’d left my Enforcer duties. An unexpected sense of longing filled me about that.
I waited, listening, Bruiser on one side, tense and stiff, Brute on the other, probably getting white hairs all over my jeans. Beast lent me her vision, turning the world silvers and greens, allowing me to follow the action as the point men moved through the dark building. They repositioned with military precision, checking everything with goggles and vamp-eyes, giving reports as they advanced. I knew this building. It was imprinted on the back of my eyelids, the memories full of the dead, the long-chained children, the vamped, and all the horror that had been the Damours. Oddly, Beast wasn’t worried. Brute was pressed against my leg. Quint was at my back, covering our six. The security team gave quiet updates as they progressed, and with each statement, my worry increased, though everything they said should have lowered it.
“Hallway, clear.”
“Left room one, clear.”
“Right room one, clear.”
“Entering door at hallway end. Going silent.”
“Stairway, clear on this level. No bogeymen noted on first landing. Starting up. Going silent.”
I said, “In the Damours’ private quarters there was an entrance to a hidden stairway that ran from the top of the building to the garage, providing a secret passage for vamp slavers to move their human cargo. Entrance is in a closet or a wardrobe, if I remember right.”
Sweaty Bollock said, “Copy that. Voodoo and I’ll check it now.”
Thema said, “Checking garage. One interior door for entry to garage is unlocked.”
Kojo said, “Garage is clear. No vehicles. Garage exterior door is locked and secure.”
Koun said, “Outside fire escapes are clear. No doors or windows open. No movement. Leaving two outside guards and entering level-one door.”
Koun was here. Good.
From upstairs I heard, “Stairway clear. Second floor hallway clear.”
Sweaty said, “Found entrance to hidden stairway. Going silent.”
Then the guard who had entered the room at the end of the hallway said, “Room at end of first floor hallway, clear.”
I felt Bruiser relax at my side, and an answering relief washed through me. That room. That was where we had found the long-chained—the insane vampire children shackled to their cots . . .
I didn’t smell vamps, except the long-ago stink of the Damours and the Rousseaus. No fresh blood. The building was empty except for New Orleans’s ubiquitous roaches and rats, which I could smell, even with a human nose. Fast, the team took up firing positions at the landings, the door, the garage, on the roof, and outside.
Sweaty Bollock said, “Hidden stairway down, clear.”
Blue Voodoo said, “Stairway up to roof, clear.”
Thema stepped up close and scratched Brute’s ears. “The building is safe, My Queen.”
I was watching her hand on Brute’s head when the words “My Queen” penetrated. Slowly I raised my eyes to Thema. She never called me queen. Never offered me her loyalty. She was doing that now. A possibility entered my mind, and I quashed it, not because it was without merit but because now wasn’t the time. Yet the possibility was there, nonetheless.
She turned her gaze to Bruiser. “I am the Dark Queen’s personal security. You may have chosen another, but I will be the one who keeps her safe.” She turned her black eyes on me and her fangs clicked down. The silver piercings in her ears caught the light. “You will stay behind me, My Queen.”
It was not a request, but an order. Quint stepped in front of me, between us, weapons out. Beast bristled at the smells coming off the two women, but I held her down. Thema’s powerful, I thought to my other half. Let her lead.
Beast is not kit to be led. Beast is not prey. Beast does not like where Jane’s thoughts go.
Too freaking bad. We’re neck deep in quicksand.
Beast does not understand sand that moves fast.
Yeah? You’re keeping secrets about our lives. You share all the secrets, and I’ll explain quicksand.
Jane is mean.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever.
Bruiser said, “Quint, take our six. Thema, take point.”
Instantly Quint backed up. No reaction this time. No scent change.
We moved forward. Inside, into the dark.
I saw the room as it had been and as it was now, the present overlaid with the past. The windowless room was fifty by forty, give or take, with a fifteen-foot-tall ceiling. The walls w
ere still painted soft coral, but there were no rugs, no leather furniture, no tables or lamps scattered in small groups, as if for playing cards or chatting or drinking tea. The far corner was empty too, where the concrete floor sloped gently to a drain. The ten blackened steel cots that had once held the shackled long-chained vampire children were gone. The room was empty.
There was nothing left to hide any part of the wide concrete floor.
Beneath the spot where the rugs had lain was a black marble square with three concentric circles that touched, like a witch circle made of three parts. The outer ring was twenty feet in diameter, made of wood, the middle was iron, the inner was also wood, sandwiching the iron. The circle was marked along the outer perimeter with symbols that resembled runes, and these were made of stone. The Glob remained inert, not pulling energy into itself, which was a good sign. But Brute went rigid, his body vibrating with a fine tremor, so tight I could feel it through the spot where we touched. He growled low, the sound rumbling, so dangerous that even the vampires went still as statues.
A grindylow popped into view, landing on Brute’s neck, chattering. Its steel claws were out. Not a good sign.
“What is it, Brute?” I asked.
And then I remembered another ring in another floor, in the basement of a witch’s home, where she had called and trapped a demon. That demon had been eating the two sacrifices. One of the chewed sacrifices had been Brute.
I knelt beside the white werewolf and said softly, “It’s okay Brute. You’re safe. We’re here.”
Brute tuned pale eyes to me. He growled low, the rumble like a freight train coming closer.
The grindy put its claws against Brute’s neck. It no longer looked like a neon green kitten. It looked like what it was—the executioner of were-creatures who passed along the were-taint.
Inside, Beast tensed. Madness in Brute brain. Like rabies.
No. It’s fear, I thought back. “Is it a demon circle? Smell it. Do you smell brimstone?”
Brute turned his gaze from me back to the ring. He snarled, his lips curling to show his fangs before he huffed, sniffed three times, and sneezed.