Shadow Rites

by Faith Hunter

  “She’s Supergirl. She has X-ray vision,” Eli said.

  “Rolling eyes again,” I said, checking out the cop’s name badge, which was P. Nunez. In any other part of the country, that would be a Latino name. In this part of the world, it was just as likely to be Cajun. “How close do you need to be to hit a target about four inches across?” I asked.

  Eli said, “Distance on this property won’t be a problem, but the angle of shot might be, if the target is buried. If you can tell me how deep, I can make adjustments by climbing trees or on top of the gazebo.”

  “Okay. Gazebo first.” I pointed to a place behind the ornate columned gazebo. “Maybe four inches deep. The apex focal is there. Nunez, we can boost him up.”

  The cop’s eyebrows went up and Eli said, “She’s stronger than she looks. Supergirl, remember?” At the base of the gazebo, the guys put weapons on the patio tiles and I took off my jacket, laying it near the firepower. Nunez made a cup of his joined hands, boosting Eli up about eighteen inches. My partner caught a column to hold his balance and I stepped close and bent, hands to knees, offering my back as a step stool. He transferred his weight to me one foot at a time.

  “Next time, take off your freaking combat boots,” I said. “The treads are getting grit on my shirt.”

  “Such a girly comment,” he said as he stepped onto Nunez’s right shoulder and I stood, taking his other foot on my left. Nunez was shorter than I was and when Eli bounced up off us and pulled himself up to the gazebo roof, it was an ungainly leap, but it was sufficient.

  I brushed off my now-dirty shirt and called up, “When you hand-wash my shirt, be sure to let it soak, you thug.”

  “Yes, dear,” Eli said, accepting his weapons from Nunez, who clearly didn’t know what to make of us or our relationship.

  “He’s my brother,” I said to Nunez. “You can see the resemblance in the jawline and the snark line.”

  The cop shook his head and called up, “Target?”

  “Acquired. Back off at least fifteen feet. That’s about ten feet father than Lachish and Evan were thrown.” We walked back and hunkered down, kneeling on the patio. Louder, Eli called out, “Everybody down. On one.” He counted down, “Three. Two. One.”

  The shot and the explosion seemed to happen simultaneously. A frisson of magic spiked the air and shivered across me. I was expecting it this time and I was holding my left hand open. An eye appeared there for a moment, green lid closed, green lashes resting along the skin over the metatarsal of my little finger. And then it faded. I was still marked. Now I had to worry about Evan. And Lachish.

  There were emergency vehicles gathering, blue and red lights creating a stained glass effect on the nearby buildings. A fire truck pulled to the curb, brakes hissing. Voices called; people raced here and there. I hoped that the paramedics standing at the ambulances had sufficient skills to work with witches. Not all the city’s EMTs had taken the specialized training.

  Nunez and I accepted Eli’s weapons, and before we could raise hands to help, he found a good handhold, slid off the top, flipped over and through his arms and into a swing, dropping free and landing in a crouch.

  “Showoff,” I muttered.

  He gave me a self-satisfied grin and brushed his hands together. Eli seldom deliberately displayed his skills and combat readiness, but he was having fun, his body odor heavy on victory pheromones, which were musky and acrid, but he didn’t swagger. Uncle Sam’s best didn’t need to swagger.

  He had to climb a tree to get a firing angle on the next focal item. Once he was settled into a firing stance, I moved to Evan and took both of his hands as Eli counted down.

  “Three. Two. One.”

  The explosion was intense, stronger than the others, as if they got worse as more and more of them went offline. I ducked but kept my eyes open, watching Evan’s palms. Green eyes appeared in both palms, for half a heartbeat. The lids were partially open.

  I didn’t know what it meant that both palms were marked. It could be that he was under the power of the two witches. Or was a target they were intent upon attacking. Or that they had spelled him already, as they had me. There wasn’t a single good reason I could come up with for Evan to have witchy eyes in his palms.

  Molly had said I was free of latent magics, but my palm had displayed green eyes. I had to think the eyes were linked to me, through the first scanning spell. But how could the witches turn it off and on? Good question. Were we all a danger to the conclave? Better question. Should we stay away? Best question. And the answer was no. Together, we could defeat anything a spell could throw at us. Yeah. That.

  Keeping my worries and conclusions to myself, I went to help Eli down from a perch much higher than the gazebo. He stretched down and gave Nunez the pistol, then motioned us two feet apart and dropped down. He landed, taking the fall on bent legs, a hand on Nunez’s shoulder and one on mine. I stumbled, not expecting him to drop that way, and bit my cheek. Just a nick, which I ignored. I didn’t even flinch. How could I in the presence of so much testosterone?

  When my partner was in place for the third shot, I dropped to the ground by Lachish, who was struggling to resist Ailis’s healing magic, struggling to break free of the painkilling sleep. I took both of her hands, turned them so I could see the palms, careful not to jar the broken arm, and whispered, “It’s okay. It’s a healing working. You broke your arm and leg. You’re in pain. Let Ailis help you until I can get an ambulance.” Oddly Lachish stopped struggling and relaxed.

  “Thank you,” Ailis said, her shoulders dropping.

  “This explosion may be worse that the last one,” I warned. “Can you cover us all in a ward?”

  “On one!” Eli called out.

  Ailis cursed with great force and even more imagination about donkeys and male body parts. I stuttered in laughter as a ward opened over us.

  “Three.”

  I opened Lachish’s fingers so I could see her palms.

  “Two. One.” The explosion was shocking, and I felt a concussive blast knock into the ward at the same moment that two green eyes appeared in Lachish’s palms. Staring at me. The ward Ailis had raised shivered and shook, the energies blasting up in a shower of purple sparks. The eyes seemed to look around me and I closed the palms, fast.

  The tree branch where Eli was stretched out in a shooter’s stance fell with a crack. My partner rolled backward along the limb, tucked, pushed off with one foot, and rolled to the side. Another branch broke. Both limbs hit the ground. He leaped and landed, rolled again to his feet, the target pistol nowhere in sight, and a small subgun I hadn’t even noticed on him, held at firing position. Above me, Ailis’s palms were marked with staring green eyes. She squeaked and the protective ward spluttered and fell.

  I motioned to Eli to hold his open palms out. There was a faint gleam of green in both. His eyes held mine in the darkness as I heard what might have been laughter in the air. It wasn’t his. And while it wasn’t mad, maniacal laughter, like something from a serial killer TV show, it wasn’t ordinary giggles from girls’ night out either. It left a bad taste in my ears. So to speak. I opened Lachish’s palms, and the eyes were gone. I smelled a hint of iron and salt and I knew that the witches responsible for this working had been watching, though from nearby or with the witch equivalent of a crystal ball, I didn’t know.

  Molly shouted, “The wards are all down! The offensive working is no longer active.”

  The paramedics trotted over, one with an oversized orange supply kit. They started to Evan first, but a man appeared in front of them with a small pop of sound and said, “See to the lady first, if you please.” I felt the power of vampiric compulsion flow through the damaged yard. “I’ll see to the gentleman. I’m a doctor,” he added, sounding and looking perfectly human, probably to keep the human paramedics relaxed and calm.

  Really? I thought. Dr. Edmund Hartley. But why not? He was o
ld enough to have taken out a few years of his very, very long life to go to medical school. Of course, he might have attended in the seventeen hundreds. And of course, he didn’t need medical training to heal.

  Pushing outward with his compulsion, he said to the medical personnel, “Lachish Dutillet is a witch, so you’ll want magical protection while you assess her and secure her for transport to Tulane University Hospital. The beautiful Ailis should be able to provide you with that assistance.”

  Ailis gave him a look that would have cured leather, but he ignored it. The two might have had a history. Interesting.

  Tulane University Hospital was the only hospital in New Orleans that kept paranormal medical experts on contract. They also had medical and technical personnel who dealt with the needs of supernats and their injuries. And they had, on at least one occasion, allowed vampires into the ER to treat dying patients.

  Edmund turned to me. He was dressed in a black tuxedo with a burgundy hankie and cummerbund, and very shiny patent leather shoes. There was a faint five o’clock shadow along his jaw, which I thought might be the first time I had ever seen a vamp with ungroomed facial hair. Fangs dropping with a tiny schnick, he said, “I haven’t fed tonight.”

  “Noted,” I said, and pointed at Evan.

  “As my mistress requires.” The words were quite clear, despite being spoken around the fangs. He offered me a tiny bow that managed to come across as mocking.

  Something that smelled like cinnamon with a hint of anise and . . . maybe chocolate mint wafted from Edmund. He smelled like a bakery. I said, “Alex and the Robere brothers will draw up the primo papers tomorrow. I’ll approve them and get the signing witnessed.”

  “Agreed, my mistress. And then they may be stored at the Mithran Council Chambers along with all such legal writs.”

  I narrowed my eyes and answered without agreeing to that, “Heal your other master. Please.”

  Edmund gave a deeper bow and actually clicked his heels together, a military tradition that went back centuries, though no one but me might have heard the patent leather tap. He knelt beside Evan and pulled off his tux jacket, tossing it to the grass. With deft motions, he rolled up both sleeves of his pristine dress shirt. As if just seeing her, he offered Molly a truncated bow and, at the same moment, bit into his own left wrist with a quick, tearing action that almost seemed graceful. Or ritualistic.

  He lifted Big Evan’s head off the ground and held the bloodied flesh over Evan’s mouth, allowing several ounces to dribble in. Vamp magic and witch healing magic grew on the air, competing and blending, like spices that weren’t usually used together, but that somehow worked. The air took on a piquant tang, with a hint of red peppers.

  Evan swallowed. His hands glowed green.

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

  “No!” The Gray Between exploded out of me. I threw myself at Edmund. Faster than the speed of sound. Faster than time. In the instant of the leap, in the moment of no time, I took it all in.

  Edmund halted in the act of turning to me. Eli was swiveling with the subgun, pivoting on one heel, the other foot held up, stationary in the air. The green magics around Evan’s hands were an unmoving cloud of gas and icy sparkles. Molly was frozen too, her hands reaching for Evan’s face, her brow crinkled as if she knew something had just gone wrong. Really badly wrong. There were green clouds of gas on her hands as well, but on Molly, the spell was shot through with blackness. Her death magics had been activated.

  As I leaped through time, my belly was already cramping, tearing, ripping along my side where something had never healed quite right. I caught Edmund by the shoulders, jerking him into my arms, into the bubble of time, with me. Whatever was happening, whatever spell had been activated in the instant before I leaped into the Gray Between of time, was still happening. Edmund’s eyes vamped out. His taloned hands reached for me, gripped the back of my head. Jerked me to him. His head tipped back. Fangs struck at me, like a snake striking at prey.

  CHAPTER 14

  Deader Vampire

  I whipped my body back and busted him in the mouth with my elbow. Not the best way to strike an opponent, but at close quarters it was all I had. The blow slammed his lips against his teeth and fangs. Ripped the inside of my elbow on a fang, mixing our blood. Magic wrenched through us both. His eyes went wider. He snarled.

  Still moving, I threw Edmund away from me, my hands in his blood and mine. He slid from the bubble of time, into the night, hanging in thin air. I tumbled forward, beneath him, and came up on my hands and knees. Vomited blood in a scarlet gush. Nothing new there, not with Gray Between and its nasty during-effects and aftereffects. My belly cramped in a molten fist of agony. Normal. Dying again . . .

  I pushed to my feet and wiped my bloody mouth on my wrist. And looked at my left palm. A green eye was glowing in the center of it, the lid open and smeared with vampire blood and my blood. Mixing us together in the dark working. This was bad. But the vampire was now in real time and I wasn’t. The spell was stuck in real time, in Edmund’s time, not whatever bubble of time the rest of me was stuck in.

  “Crap.” I had guessed right, in that singular instant before I grabbed my primo. This part of the layered and multipurpose spell was triggered by vamp blood and my blood at the same place and the same time as witches. Though the attacking working had probably been constructed with Leo in mind, not Edmund. Edmund, the only vamp here, had now been spelled to attack me, just as Gee had been.

  I staggered back to Evan and looked at the working erupting out of him. Compared it to the working stuck in my palm. Tried to put it all together.

  The two enemy witches had . . . what? Gotten a sample of my genetic material and used it to create a watching-working tied to me? Then they scanned my house, using it as a distraction so they could drop a DNA spell into me. Yeah. That felt right. Their initial scan had left a back door entry to my house. Using that, they put a similar watching spell in an air elemental gas spell, sent it inside the hedge of thorns ward that had been protecting the house. The Truebloods had breathed the spelled gasses. Their breath had carried it to their blood, and Edmund had done artificial resuscitation on them, probably getting the spell on him/in him that way. Making it worse, Evan had triggered the magical icons at my house, and then here, and gotten knocked loopy, getting more of the magics on him.

  But the working on me, while it wasn’t active when Mol scanned me, was still there. Hiding inside me? Yeah. Like the way a spider hides its eggs in its prey. And the moment my blood and vamp’s blood were in the same place, inside a witch circle—or the remains of one—the main part of the attack was activated.

  I leaned into Molly and checked her palms. Yeah. Same green magic crap. Lachish’s hands and Ailis’s hands were erupting green stuff too. So the spell had been transferred from one to the other the way one person with the flu might infect another, by touch or breathing. Or when the focal was tripped.

  The spell—or part of it—appeared to be intended for us to turn on each other. It was an amazing spell, intricate, multilayered, specific, targeted on a genetic level and then targeted on a multivictim level.

  I didn’t know who the attackers were. I didn’t know how to stop the spell. Except to get away from them all. To get Edmund away from them all.

  Nausea flooded my mouth with saliva. The taste of blood and acid rose up my esophagus. I vomited again, but this time I felt something different. Something warm near my ear. Cold dripping down my neck. I touched the soft tissue of my throat, in front of and below my ear, and my fingers came away cold and sticky. Blood. Just a trickle.

  Right at the place where Leo had bitten me when he tried to force a binding on me. Blood welling in the two spots where his fangs had bitten me. “Well, joy,” I said. I didn’t know if the blood was the effect of entering no time one time too many, or the effect of the attack spell, or some other mumbo-jumbo paranormal crapola. Bu
t whatever the reason, it wasn’t going to be good.

  I propped my hands on my knees to hold myself up. An unexpected shiver raced through me, raising the hair on my arms and legs in reaction to the cold. I would never be able to defeat Edmund in real time, not as sick as I was. So I pulled a pure wooden stake out of my bun, one with no trace of silver on it, and crab-walked over to him. I shoved it through his shirt into the sweet spot where his ribs came together, where the descending aorta—in both humans and vamps—was. His flesh in no time was rubbery and difficult to puncture. But I leaned into the strike, putting my weight behind it until the stake was buried deep. It wasn’t a heart stick, so he should survive it.

  I stood there, cramping like a son of a gun, until I saw his eyelids flicker. When I was able to stand upright against the cramps again, I rammed a shoulder into his belly, below the stake, and rolled him up into a fireman’s carry. I was doing a lot of that lately. Maybe I needed to add more weights to my squat lifts.

  Fighting nausea and vertigo, I carried the now-comatose and paralyzed vampire off the property, down Eighth Street to St. Charles Avenue, where cars and people were unmoving, caught in no time. I trudged across the streetcar rails into the Garden District, and hooked a left onto Pryatania Street. My intent was to zigzag to the empty and former Clan Mearkanis Home. But my strength was draining away fast.

  Stumbling, two blocks later, I turned again and made my way into the street to avoid a romantic couple frozen arm in arm, laughing, sightseeing along the white walls encircling Lafayette Cemetery Number One. The limestone and marble and whitewashed cement glowed in the night like a beacon. A sound that might have been humor rumbled within me. I was far enough away from the Elms to feel a bit safer and the irony was too much to ignore. I hobbled to the iron gate, which, strangely, was still open, and into the cemetery.

  I passed what might have once been a guardhouse, but was now derelict, the roof never replaced after Katrina. The hurricane had left the city bankrupt and unrepaired, and the many cemeteries and their mausoleums and crypts and vaults open to vandalism. The concrete path was cracked and busted. Gang graffiti marked the resting places of the dead. But the family mausoleums still managed to impart that distinctly New Orleans flavor, standing cheek by jowl, with crosses and arched roofs and sun-faded silk flowers at the sealed entrances.