by Faith Hunter
There were also white man symbols, brought here since we had lived in the modern world, diamonds and stars, signs and ciphers, and an image of a cross that burned. And of course, there had been the blue hands in circles of white, and white hands in circles of blue. Pigments, signs of ownership applied to the walls of my soul house by Gee, who had thought to use me.
Cleansed by fire.
“Mine,” I growled. “My place.”
Until I had been hit with a spell by the Son of Darkness. Then I had seen above us, in the dome of the roof, red lines, like blood vessels, veins, and arteries pulsing with silver and black and red motes of power and full of blood. Magic that hurt us was black magic. Blood magic. Like the magic of witches turned to darkness. Like blood magic stored in stone. The blood diamond had such magic, magic that sent out red pulses and motes of power. But in my soul home the vessels had looked clogged and bruised, full of clotted and dying blood, and they had been leaking. It was what I understood a soul might look like when under attack from vampire blood.
Later, the walls had appeared blackened as if by fire, the smell of sour smoke hanging on the damp air. It had smelled unused, had sounded silent, had felt cold and empty. My cavern had been damaged, as if fire—or lightning—had left soot and char all over it, black and gray and dirty, with the undamaged wall showing through in places, white and the palest of greens and creamy grays in what looked like strange symbols, nonpatterns that I didn’t recognize at first. I had walked around the pit, studying the shapes, and they had resolved into hundreds of representations of the Blood Cross scorched into the walls at every angle, as if the lightning and the cross had been spinning around, engaged in a dance—or some arcane form of combat.
More recently there had been a vision that had worried me more than any of the others, even more than the burned, lightning-struck vision. The cavern had no longer looked sooty and burned, its walls creamy gray, tinted with greens, but directly overhead had appeared the shape of wings, white wings and dark wings, as if a snowy owl and a crow fought there. It had seemed a symbolism of danger, as if forces of light and dark engaged in combat for my soul.
And lastly, there had been wings, possibly angel wings draping across the roof of the world. And there had been that black mote pulsing beside it, like a heart of darkness, full of power. The angel wings were still here, in this peyote dream, draping across the roof and down the walls, the flight feathers resting curled on the floor. The dark mote was still there, where Angie Baby had pointed it out, up high, near the joining of the angel wings, where the heart of the angel itself should be.
I stared at the place overhead, straining to see the dark mote clearly. Where the angel wings joined together, the mote was shackled with a large blue ring the color of woad, and from the other side of the ring fell a triple-linked chain, in style like an ornate necklace chain. The links draped along the wings, following the shape of the roof, until it came to a stalactite, thick and strong, one that had been forming for millennia, long enough to meet the stalagmite below it and merge into a single column that reached from ceiling to floor. There the silver chain looped loosely around the pillar down to the ground to lie coiled like a woman’s necklace dropped and forgotten in the shadows.
That chain was what Angie Baby had used to pull the black mote from my chest so we could see it together. The chain she said might kill me if I broke it. I padded to the pillar and sniffed the chain. It smelled of metal. And ozone, like the aftermath of lightning. And it smelled of blood. Vampire blood. Beneath that stink was the reek of burned hair. I sat down again, studying the chain. It was thinner near the floor, and the way it was curled, it had taken on the shape of a flower. A rosebud, which seemed significant but I couldn’t remember why. Overhead, as the chain fell downward, the links were thicker, and the higher I looked, the more organic they appeared, less perfectly made and heavier, as if the chain was alive and was growing and the roots were overhead, like a plant growing upside down, to flower on the floor.
I extended my claws and poked at the bloom, pricking it. The bud opened, fast, like the special photography showing the “pop” of some flowers opening. Inside the petals, where the stamen should be, was an eye, green and blurry and unformed, but looking at me.
Every time I’ve been attacked by magical means, it left a mark, I thought. Like a crack in a piece of pottery that allows water to slowly drain through, continuing to damage the dish.
Jane is not dish. Jane is not in cage. Jane is free, Beast thought back, which didn’t sound like a reply to my comment, but an altogether different observation.
Okay. I’ll think about that one. For now, we need to fix my hand.
Jane can fix hand. Jane is not in cage.
I chuffed out a breath. Lay down and thought about our twined and twisted double helix of genetic material, the double spiral that once was, a double helix for Beast and a double helix for me. But like the last few times I tried to find one or the other, they appeared together, a tripled helix of tangled DNA polymers. The nucleic acids held together by nucleotides, which should base-pair together, were instead in rows of three, twisted back on themselves and knotted in odd places. I had read as much as I could understand about how the helix should work, but it wasn’t enough to separate the strands.
Chain and mote and flower eye, Beast thought. Three links.
Tripled links, I thought back, and examined more closely the chain that hung from the roof of my soul home. I had thought it looked organic and it was. The chain was the spiritual representation of our twisted genetics. Twisted by all the strange magics I had come in contact with over the time I was in New Orleans. Just as radiation forced mutations on genetics, so the magic had forced a change, a mutation. And that mutation was tied to the dark mote of power at the heart of my soul. And was part of the eye-in-my-palm spell that was tied to me. Through my RNA and DNA. It all made sense, here in this place.
Beast extended all our claws and gathered herself.
Beast, what are you—
She shoved off the floor of the soul home with all four powerful legs and leaped high, catching the pillar in her claws the way she would sink them into tree bark. The pillar should have been slick and slippery as water-smoothed stone, but there were rough edges and a spongy feel to the mineralized column that allowed my claws to sink deep. Beast climbed the pillar just as she would a tree. High, to the top of the cavern. I didn’t look down, but Beast chuffed a laugh at my fear. Beast has leaped much farther.
Fine. Okay. But what the crap are we doing up here?
Beast set her claws and held on, her nose only inches from the woad blue link and the dark pulsing mote as she sniffed, drawing the air in over her tongue and the scent sacks in the roof of her mouth in flehmen behavior. The smell of vampire was stronger here, as were all the scents. And the stink was a mixture of Leo, Gee DiMercy, Joses, the Son of Darkness, and . . . Bethany.
Bethany. Holy crap. When she healed me the first time, she left something inside me . . .
Vampire! Beast snarled. Ambush hunter!
Faster than thought, she snapped at the woad ring. It was the striking of a big cat on prey, canines sinking deep and ripping out. The blue link broke and she yanked it free of the pulsing mote. The edge of the mote burst outward in a shower of blue and silver and scarlet sparks. The chain slid free and fell, slithering around the pillar. The blue link crunched and bled, a bitter taste like the drink Aggie One Feather had given me. And the stink of iron, salt, and burned hair.
Below me on the floor, the silver chain piled up as it fell, rattling like snake scales, a sliding shush of sound that was nothing like the metallic ringing chimes it should have been.
The woad ring in her teeth, Beast backed partway down the pillar and then leaped, free-falling toward the cave floor twenty feet below. Where a silver snake with one huge green eye was coiled, looking up at us, ready to strike.
CHAPTER 10
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You Can Try, Witch
Midair, Beast whirled her heavy tail and torqued her body, pushing off the pillar with her back paws, launching herself out and to the side. In a movement worthy of a kung fu special effects movie, she spat out the ring and whipped her body around, catching the snake behind the head. She bit down. Metal and bone crunched, green blood splattered and filled her mouth. Beast whipped her whole body side to side, lashing the snake, thrashing its head against the floor, breaking its spine in a dozen places. Death tremors twitched through its long tail. The emerald slit pupil in the single green eye widened and went still.
The woad ring had gone dull and grayish. The stink of burned hair disappeared. The snake was dead.
Just to be certain, Beast ripped out the snake’s vertebra and spat bone, green blood, and silver scales to the floor. She settled to the cave floor to groom herself. Her tongue was rough and coarse, and pulling green blood and blue woad off her pelt.
Oookaaay. I can’t complain.
Beast is best hunter.
Yes, you are. But we’re still left with my hand all bent back and broken. And what is with that stink of burning hair?
We can shift now. We can become Beast. The Gray Between is ours again, she thought.
I studied the ceiling. The dark mote was still there, but instead of a strong pulsing, it was fluttering, as if Beast’s rough treatment of the woad ring and removal of the chain had damaged it somehow. I remembered it spurting, as if it was alive and had been injured. I pushed to our feet and moved slowly to the other side of the fire pit, to see the mote from that side. There was a small blackened mark there, like a scar.
I went back and pawed the ring. Part of it was missing. What happened to the blue ring?
Beast ate it.
Was that wise?
Tasted of blood of Anzu. Beast chuckled. Makes Beast strong.
I didn’t like the idea of her swallowing the magic of another creature, but it was a bit late to argue about it. What about the smell of Bethany? Bethany was a vamp priestess and she took the term nutcase to new and whacky heights.
Bethany meant to watch, like ambush hunter. Bethany has not done so.
So she, what? Forgot about us?
Beast does not know.
But . . . her magic. Is it dead?
Beast looked away, bored with the topic. Or she didn’t know the answer and wouldn’t let me know that she didn’t know. Dang cat. How about the burning hair? I asked again.
Jane has hair.
Yeah. Dang cat was messing with me. Fine. Ducky. Let’s try this thing.
I padded back to the fire pit and lay down on the cool stone floor. Closing my eyes, I searched out, not my own DNA, but the vision of myself in my human form. I felt the Gray Between as it erupted out of my breastbone, high, near my throat, and spread around me with cool, sparkling radiance I could feel, even sightless. The shift began with my spine and ribs, bones cracking, snapping in two, and reforming. I opened my mouth to scream, but had no breath for one, my lungs half collapsed as they changed and reshaped. This change was as painful as my shifts used to be, and as slow, a ripping, tearing transformation. I opened my eyes as the bones in my left hand and arm, and even higher in my shoulder, began to reform, reshape, realign, and snapped into place. Human. Better, I murmured to Beast. Much better.
And then I remembered one of the Tsalagi words for the double helix of genetic material. The snake. I-na-du. The snake in the heart of each creature. And I had to wonder whose DNA Beast had just broken. Or healed.
* * *
I came to in the sweat house, the coals burned low, into deep red heat, the rocks discharging the same heat outward. The first thing I noticed was that I was pain free. Salt-caked. Stinking. I rolled my body over and took a good long look at my hand. Human. Mine. I checked out my feet and knees and thighs, and peeked down through the neck opening of the sweat-soaked gown. Human. Thank God.
My BFF was gone. Aggie was sitting against the far wall, her back ramrod straight and pressed firmly to the wood, as far from me as she could get and still be inside the sweat house with me. I cleared my throat, which felt like two pieces of chamois buffing together. I was seriously dehydrated, and when I spoke, my voice was coarse and gritty. “So. Now you know my deepest darkest secrets.”
“I doubt that.” She sounded wry, not terrified.
“Well, all the ones that are fit to be aired in public.”
She made a sound that was part snort, part a sound like pshaw, and all Cherokee.
I remembered my grandmother making that sound and I smiled, or what passed for a smile made by lips dried in mummified wrinkles. With all the formality at my disposal and with my heart in my throat, I said, “Thank you, Aggie One Feather—Egini Agayvlge i—of the ani waya, Wolf Clan of the Eastern Cherokee, Elder of the Tsalagi.”
“You are welcome in my sweat house and in my home, Dalonige i digadoli, of the ani gilogi, Panther Clan, through your father and grandmother, but also of the ani sahoni, Blue Holly Clan, through your mother, who must also be honored.” She gave me a slow, low bow, as ceremonial and ancient in its formality as anything I remembered from my toddler years among the Tsalagi. The kind of bow offered to an honored guest who might come to trade or bring news from a distant clan. As formal and measured as a bow offered to one who brought news of war.
Pushing up to a full sitting position, I managed a much less graceful bow in return, but did succeed in dropping my head lower than hers had gone. As was proper to an Elder and to a shaman of The People.
She gave me a wisp of a smile in return. “Let’s get you showered and inside the house. You need to eat and sleep and drink a great deal of water.”
* * *
Before we left, I ate enough at Aggie’s table to feed three people and drank so much water there, and on the way home, that running trips to the bathroom woke me several times, which was the only thing that kept me from sleeping away the rest of the day. Not even the squeals of running children, giggles, and Alex’s teenaged irritation at the noise and interruptions had any effect. On some level, I must have heard it all, but I slept through everything, and woke at sunset, the last rays of scarlet light brightening the street outside my window. My hand was normal, my Beast was purring contentedly inside me, and I was pain free, if stiff as a board. I couldn’t ask much more of living than that.
However, I shuffled to the bathroom and caught sight of myself in the mirror over the sink. I decided that the myth of zombies was really true, as the black-eyed, sallow-skinned, dull-haired, uncoordinated thing in the mirror didn’t lie.
In the shower, I turned the water to scald and slid to the floor, letting the hot water beat down on me, washing away the last of the salty scum I had missed in Aggie’s outdoor shower, the new stink of sleep sweat, and some of the muzzy-headedness. When there was no more hot water, I crawled from the shower, dried off, combed my wet hair, dried and braided it, and dressed, remembering the clothes that had been piled at Aggie’s sweat house fire. Pretty sure they had contributed to the stink of burning herbs and roots and other scents. Being Enforcer was hard on a girl’s wardrobe. Good thing I wasn’t a fashion horse, a woman who loved clothes and shopping and all that stuff. My lifestyle would have left me in permanent misery.
I dressed in a loose oversized gray tee and black leggings, and pulled on socks, because my feet were unaccountably cold, before leaving the bedroom for the kitchen and whatever animal protein I smelled cooking there. I passed Molly, who said, “We need to talk and scan you for external magics as soon you can be coherent. Which, at the moment, looks like never, but I’m withholding judgment.”
With a grunt, I lifted a hand in her direction as I slid into a kitchen chair. Eli was lining up a plate full of beef shish kebabs, with pineapple and onion and three kinds of peppers, heavy on the beef, which was cooked rare and bloody and perfect. I sat and breathed out, “
If you weren’t already adopted, I’d adopt you right now, just for this.”
“That’s what all the old women say. The young ones want to bump bones.”
“Uncle Eli, what’s bump bones?” Angie Baby asked from the living room.
“Crap,” he whispered.
That woke me up. I stuffed a huge gobbet of beef into my mouth to keep my laughter hidden from my godchild. Eli swatted me with his dishrag, smacking my head without even aiming. “These are shish kebabs, Angie.” He indicated a platter on the edge of the table as she walked up. “And when you remove them from the stick, and they bounce, that’s bumping bones.”
I nearly choked trying to swallow the beef half-chewed and not laugh at the same time.
“Uncle Eli,” Molly said from the living room, censure and glee in her tone.
“Sorry,” he said. “Best I could do on short notice. I’ll do better next time.”
“I suggest there be no next time.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “That would clearly be the best decision on my part.”
“Mmmm,” Molly said. “Come back here, Angie.”
“I’m bored. I wanna watch a movie on the big screen.”
“I wan’ watch moo!” EJ parroted.
“I’ll be working in my room,” Alex muttered, gathering up all his gear and traipsing upstairs.
“So, what are you going to do about the vampire?” Eli asked, trying to divert attention from his own faux pas to me. “You know. The one who wants to live here.”
“What?” Molly asked, whirling to face us again.
I shoved in another hunk of beef and chewed, my eyes promising all sorts of retribution on Eli. He laughed easily, happily—that rare mirth that would have been part of Eli all the time if Uncle Sam and military service hadn’t ripped all the innocence out of him.