by Faith Hunter
In the other room were dozens of dead and dying vamps. Some were mine.
“Shaun?” I asked.
Koun said, “His own people turned against him, My Queen. They left their blades in his body, yet he still has his head.” Koun pointed to the body against the wall near the bottom of the stairs. It was pinned there by a couple dozen blades. Koun asked, “Will you take his head or shall I, as your champion?”
Bleary, I looked around the room again. The cameras were still rolling, this crazy scene going out to the vamp world and showing us our own actions on the big screen. I had to make this count. For Eli. For all the people who had died here tonight. Beast? I thought.
Beast is here, she thought back. The I/we of Beast is here. Still has some strength.
We need to behead that vamp.
Deep inside, we growled. The reverberation sounded though the room. I/we forced ourself to our feet and shoved our shoulders back, head high. Padded through the blood and gore to the body pinned upright on the wall, pulling my vamp-killer.
I reached him and he blinked at me. Once. Twice. Focused on me. His mouth moved. He couldn’t talk because his lungs and throat were pierced with blades, and he couldn’t draw breath.
I turned so I was facing a camera. My image was front and center on the big screen. I was dripping blood. My pelt stood on end. My eyes glowed. My fangs were longer than most vamps. I was as scary as I had ever been. “There will be no more parley. I challenge the enemy who has been pulling strings. I challenge the vampire Mainet Pellissier. Not to Sangre Duello. But to war. I will kill your vampires and destroy any humans who remain sworn to you. I will take your head as I took the heads of the Sons of Darkness. I will feed your head to an angel of the light and your dead body to the sun. Come for me. I will be ready.”
I turned and managed not to fall down. I braced my feet and secured the balance of my body. I swung the blade back. Forward. And I took the head of Shaun MacLaughlinn. Bending, I picked up the severed head from the floor and held it in front of me. Darkness spun around me and white pinpoints of light fell in front of my vision like snow.
Bruiser, equally as blood soaked as me, stepped to my side. “Behold,” he said to the cameras. “The enemy of the Dark Queen.”
“Bruiser,” I whispered as all energy left my body. I wavered.
“Cut the feed,” Bruiser said. “We are done.”
And the darkness took me.
* * *
* * *
I woke in a strange bed. It still smelled of factory and outgassing, the scents almost hidden by the smell of my blood. So much blood. I was freezing to death, teeth chattering, muscles shuddering. Glorious heat of an electric blanket had been wrapped around me. On either side of me, I smelled vamps—Kojo on one side of me, Thema on the other. Leo’s scent was fainter but close by, parchment and pepper. Florence was near my feet. Bruisers’ scent came from near my head where he slid my loose crown away. He gently peeled a wad of matted hair off my forehead. Pulled it back behind my ear. Started on another batch. It wasn’t necessary. He just needed to be touching me. For a while I just breathed, knowing I hadn’t done enough of that lately.
My heart was beating too fast, fluttery, a little weak. I needed to shift into Beast to heal. I hadn’t. I tightened one fist, feeling the knobby knuckles. That was the arm I had cut. Yeah. Still half-form-ish. When I released my fist, I felt blood and gauze crackle. But there was no pain. It was healing without shifting. Full of vamp blood.
I managed to get my mouth open. It was so dry my teeth felt like they were wrapped in the bloody gauze, and my tongue felt like a strip of jerky. On the second try, I managed to say, “Eli?”
Bruiser said, “He’s in surgery at Tulane. Two Mithrans are standing by to donate blood should it become necessary. Should the change into Mithran need to be finished, Koun is also there. Eli is as safe as we could make him.”
“Finished?” I whispered.
“Eli was halfway to Mithran when his human heart began to beat,” Thema said from behind me. “It will take little to bring him over.”
I thought about that. Decided it was the best that could be done. “The Glob?”
“Koun was delivered a bloody stone from the surgical suite,” Bruiser said. “The surgeon said it bit him when he touched it. Koun said he will bring it before dawn.”
“Okay. I’m going back to sleep,” I whispered.
“And when you wake again, you will shower off the stench of rotting blood,” Thema ordered. “You are disgusting.”
“Whatever,” I breathed. And slept. My last thought was the feel of my heart beating. A little out of sync. As if I heard an echo beating in the background.
CHAPTER 20
Undead Life Sucks
Fall in New Orleans meant that the weather had changed. Again. It was now mideighties, humid, and it was raining, a steady downpour that left puddles everywhere.
Eli and I were sitting on the back porch, alone for the first time, in the old squeaky metal chairs, our feet up on an ottoman from inside the house. We were wrapped in blankets we didn’t really need but that were soft and comfy. We had downed two pots of tea, neither of us discussing that Eli was drinking tea and not coffee. By choice. We had chatted a bit about the weather. Mostly we were contemplating being alive, watching the rain fall, not talking much, but knowing we had a lot of ground to cover.
Eli had been home for less than twenty-four hours. His leg was bandaged and swollen. He had things poking up through the bandages. Metal things holding his femur together. There were more metal things inside. He would forever set off metal detectors. He had spent four days in the hospital. He had been given eight units of human blood-bank blood. He had drunk from more than a dozen vamps while in the hospital, several worried vamps lining up each night to donate. Florence had made regular trips to feed him her blood.
Liz had flown to NOLA for five days, bringing healing charms and other Everhart magics. She would be back, also worried about her former Ranger.
I had a feeling that Liz wasn’t the only Everhart who would descend on NOLA with the intent to protect Eli and probably tear me a new one at the same time.
Alex delivered a third pot of tea. He was checking on us every fifteen minutes, hovering, even though he could see us from his table-desk. There was good reason for the concern. Even with vamp blood, Eli had nearly not made it.
The doctors had told Eli that with a lot of therapy, he would eventually walk. That he’d limp for the rest of his life. Probably hurt for the rest of this life. That he’d never run again. Eli had raised his eyebrows at the docs and requested to be released. Eli knew about rehab. He also knew about the healing power of vamp blood. He and Florence had come up with a dosage and rotation for vamps that would keep him from being blood-bound or changed. But he’d had so much it was likely he was something other than blood-servant strong, something other than Onorio, but maybe close.
His bed had been moved into my room, so stairs wouldn’t be a problem. I had been sleeping in Eli’s old room, and would until Bruiser came back and we decided where we’d stay. Bruiser and Koun were off tracking down enemy vamps, unaligned rogue vamps, and taking heads, starting with the most recalcitrant vamps in HQ’s basement.
Mercy was a dead concept in my heart right now. Either vamps agreed to be bound to one of mine, swore loyalty, and accepted very junior status in one of my clans, where they could be monitored, or they were beheaded. My executioner had appointed helpers. The Dark Queen had three ax wielders. They traveled with portable chopping blocks, which they didn’t bother to clean between uses. Bruiser had opened the trench where Sabina’s chapel used to be, drained the water out, and my people were filling it with vamp bodies on a regular basis. No fancy funerals. No nothing. Just unmarked bodies in a pit, the heads tossed into a different pit. My humans watched them burn in the sun with each dawn.
I sipped my tea. As I moved my arm, the charm bracelet tinkled. It was drained of power. The bracelet, her feet, a pile
of bloody bones, and a bloody white habit were all that was left of Sabina when they found her. I figured I would give the bracelet to my goddaughter when I saw her again, but for now, I wore it in honor of the priestess.
“What did we do about Derek?” Eli asked.
My heart clenched, which he surely felt. “We had a funeral. A big one. Marching band through the streets of NOLA. Dancing and wailing.” Tears gathered in my eyes. “He was in a white casket in one of those glass sided carriages, drawn by white horses instead of the traditional black horses, because his mama wanted them. We gave his family a significant gift. We . . . We grieved.”
Eli nodded. Time passed. We sipped, enjoying the quiet and the rain. “So,” he said.
“So,” I repeated.
“We gonna talk about how I know when your heart beats? When it speeds up and slows down? That our hearts are beating in sync now?”
“We could. Or we could just let it lie and see if it goes away.”
Eli made a ruminative sound. “And if I want to talk about it?”
“Stop being such a girl,” I said.
Eli chuckled. “Okay. How about we talk about Leo’s presence in the city and his change in status. The priest’s collar was a shocker.”
“He’s outclan.”
“I got that part, babe. I’m more interested in how that came about and what it means for the future.”
“I only know what Leo told me, half of which he guessed about.”
“Better than nothing.”
“Okay. After the fire, Sabina swam back. It was nearly dawn. She busted through into Leo’s mausoleum. The heat had woken him, and he’d been trying to get free, but he wasn’t strong enough yet. Or coherent at all. Sabina fed him, but she didn’t have much to spare. She was burned badly. She got him to safety in the water pit. She fed him and brought some humans to feed him. At some point, she disappeared and never came back.”
I looked down at my hands on the oversized tea mug. The saying on the side read “Undead Life Sucks” and showed a vamp with bloody fangs. It wasn’t funny, but the mug held more tea than most. I said, “Grandmother must have trapped Sabina shortly after we were at the Damours’ warehouse. According to one of the now true dead vamp prisoners, the u’tlun’ta ate her piece by piece while she screamed.”
“Not your fault, babe,” Eli said.
“Yeah. Right.” But we both knew I was blaming myself. Old life patterns, like accepting guilt not my own, were hard to break, no matter the evidence. I picked an easier subject. “I’ve been reading Immanuel’s journal while you lazed around and drank vamp blood,” I said.
“And?”
“All the troubles in New Orleans went back to my Grandmother and to Immanuel. To the time in the 1800s when Tsu Tsu Inoli—Mark Black Fox, a skinwalker of Grandmother’s lineage, and nearly as old as Gramma—ate him.”
“And do you know why?”
“Yeah. And it’s the reason Grandmother ate Sabina. To get the artifacts that were in vamp hands. Artifacts, amulets, made with arcenciel blood. So they could change time to suit their needs, and use the powers in the amulets to save the remaining Skinwalkers and bring back skinwalker power. I’m figuring Gramma blamed all vampires for the destruction of our people and wanted vengeance. Instead she and Ka are imprisoned in null rooms.”
“Changing time. Seems to be the theme of your life.”
I snorted. “And the ringleader—puppet master—is still out there. Leo’s my master, Mainet. He has a title. The Heir. Which is scary because it means the heir to the Sons of Darkness”
“Leo’s outclan now,” he said, “and since the outclan can’t be bound, technically, Leo has no master, unless it was firmly established before Leo rose again.”
“Mmmm.”
“The Heir? You challenged him to war.”
This time I flinched a little.
“Yeah, I know all about it,” Eli said. “Alex showed me the footage. You were pretty pissed off.” He gave me a side-eye grin. “You missed an amazing battle while you were saving my life, but that ending was appropriately gruesome and bloodcurdling. Did you know you had blood dripping off your hair? Bet you scared the pantaloons off the old EVs.”
“I saw.” I had seen the footage too. Once. But I had turned away when Eli died, and I still couldn’t talk about him dying on the floor at my knees. Not yet. Maybe not ever. “Leo visited you once while you were in the hospital,” I said, changing the subject.
“I remember. Outclan priest,” Eli mused. “Never been one of those has there?”
“No,” I said. “He had already claimed outclan status, but . . .” I stopped.
“Out with it.”
I huffed a breath. I hadn’t told anyone this yet. “When we were trying to save you, Leo accidently ended up with me in my soul home, with the angel Hayyel.”
Eli frowned. “So that made him a priest?”
“He thinks he was a priest from the time he rose from the dead for the second time,” I said, my tone saying I wasn’t so sure. “Thrice born does mean extra power and gifts, but Leo doesn’t want his blasted city back, and being outclan means he’s outside of fanghead political structure, and the fact that he saw an angel in my soul home means he’s more special than the usual outclan, soooo—.” I stopped, not sure what to say next.
“Lucky you, Queen of NOLA.” Eli was way too calm for all this. I was freaking out.
I blew out a breath. “Whoopie. The amulet Shaun was wearing disappeared off his beheaded body in the carnage at the clan home. I’m guessing that one of his people took it when they stuck him full of knives and pinned him to the wall like a bloody butterfly. And there’s worse.”
“Always is.”
Alex stuck his head out the side door and said, “Ayatas is here.”
“Send him back here,” Eli said, before I could answer.
“Copy.” Alex disappeared.
I glowered at Eli and continued, “Hayyel is chained, or partially chained, wherever he is. I’m guessing partially chained, since he still manifested in my soul home. There’s a silver and iron ingot chain around his waist. He says my enemies are on the way and intend to do something to him. Use his power somehow.”
“And you have how many of the amulets with arcenciel blood in them now?”
“A flying lizard, a locket, and one the diggers found at Sabina’s chapel.” I pulled the ring out of my pocket and extended it to him. “It’s a crystal, sealed with silver, with arcenciel blood sloshing beneath. It has power in it.”
Eli touched the crystal and yanked back his finger. His mouth turned down just the tiniest bit. “Is this as powerful as I think, or did I get something else from your blood?”
“Beats me. Maybe it’s arcenciel blood you feel, something you got from Leo’s offering.”
“Rule of three,” Eli said. “You have three arcenciel amulets. They have one. You have three brothers. They have one—Maniet. So when do we go hunting the location of the chained angel?”
Ayatas stuck his head out the door. “Did someone say chained angel?”
“When?” I asked Eli. “Soon as you can dance, my bro. Soon as you can dance.”
CLAN PELLISSIER, ORIGINAL BLOOD-FAMILY HISTORICAL CHART
Judas, the Eldest Son of Darkness. Sire of:
Claudia Acete, a former slave of, and freedwoman of, Nero. Turned in Rome in A.D. 50. Dame of:
Rufinus Agricola, a centurion in Hispania, turned in what is now Spain in A.D. 125. Sire of:
Cesar and Ordonius Frunimius, turned in Spain in A.D. 400. Traveled to what is now France. They created a large blood-family and returned to Rome, where they fomented a blood feud against the Sons of Darkness in A.D. 950 and were destroyed. Dual sires of:
Alazais Chevalier, turned in France in A.D. 900. Was taken by the Eldest Son of Darkness and forced into his blood-family as a slave in reparation of the blood-feud that killed Claudia Acete. The son felt a strong attraction to the boy and took him as companion, sharing his scions, hi
s bed, and his own blood. This gave Alazais great strength. When his time of servitude was up, he left Roman territory and returned to France, where he became the sire of:
Mainet Pellissier, turned in France in A.D. 1200. Was given rights to start a blood-family in A.D. 1450. In the years following, he turned several of his decedents, including Rudolfo and Amaury Pellissier. Rudolfo did not survive devoveo.
Amaury Pellissier turned his sons and nephews, including Leonard Eugène Zacharie Pellissier, in 1525. Together they came to the Americas and started the Pellissier blood-family under the proprietorship of Clan Pellissier and Mainet Pellissier in France. They became one of the earliest independent clans in the colonies in 1724, and Amaury quickly became Master of the City of New Orleans. He took over the hunting territories of the Louisiana territories. Under Amaury, the territory spread and gained power.
Leonard Eugène Zacharie Pellissier became Master of the City of New Orleans and most of the southeastern United States in 1912.
Immanuel Pellissier was Leo’s heir but was sworn to Mainet.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to:
Teri Lee, Timeline and Continuity Editor Extraordinaire. Thank you for keeping track of all the characters and if they are still alive . . . -ish.
Mindy “Mud” Mymudes, Beta Reader and PR.
Let’s Talk Promotions, at ltpromos.com, for managing my blog tours and the Beast Claws fan club.
Beast Claws! Best Street Team Evah!
Carol Malcolm for the timeline update for The Jane Yellowrock Companion.
Mike Pruette at celticleatherworks.com for all the fabo merch!
Lucienne Diver of the Knight Agency, as always, for guiding my career, being a font of wisdom and career guidance, and the woman who pulls me down to earth when I get riled and mouthy.
As always, a huge thank you to Jessica Wade of Penguin Random House. Without you there would be no book at all!