Blood Cross: A Jane Yellowrock Novel

by Faith Hunter

  Bruiser stood in the corner, his arms lose, staring at my dirty, blood-crusted feet.

  “I lost my flip-flops.” I touched the door behind which Molly and Bethany had vanished. “She wasn’t this bad the other day. Bethany. Will she hurt Mol?”

  “Bethy has good days and bad. Today is a bad one. But she’s a healer before anything else. Your friend will be fine.”

  “Leo . . .” I stopped. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Leo doesn’t know we’re here. He is at Immanuel’s grave site. But when I tell him, my guess is he’ll stop by your place, and he won’t be happy.” He offered nothing else, watching me. His unwavering gaze made me acutely aware of my lack of proper clothes. Shorts and T. No bra, no shoes. Covered in blood. He didn’t look all that great himself, despite the tailored casual clothes and the air of absolute confidence he wore like a second skin. He was pale, circles beneath his eyes, lines drawing his face, looking worse than the last time I saw him—probably the lingering effects of a feeding frenzy.

  “It isn’t Immanuel’s grave site.”

  He raised his brows. “So? Keep a few crosses nearby.”

  I nodded, now more uncomfortable than before. Great. Small talk in a hospital. Two things I hated at one time. A moment later Bethany left the room and went straight for Bruiser. She wound herself around him and he moved into her embrace, the motion familiar and tender, the gesture of a lover. Something uncomfortable turned over inside me. I didn’t want to know what it was or inspect it too closely.

  “George. My lovely Georgie.” Bethany ran one hand through his hair and he laughed softly. “Take me home now, yes?”

  He kissed her fingers when she pressed them to his lips. “Did you help the little witch, Bethy love?”

  “She will life—will live,” she corrected. “She will live. I shared my essence and my holy blood with her. Are you pleased with me?” Her tone was needy, the sound of a child asking a grown-up for approval.

  My discomfort spread. Holy blood. Criminy.

  “Yes. I’m proud of you.”

  “I may drink again tonight? I hunger.”

  “I will see that you are well fed. You did a good thing.”

  “Yes,” she said happily, sounding like a child praised by a parent, “I did.”

  Bruiser looked at me and nodded once. Without a good-bye he led Bethany through the doors and outside. I was left looking at my reflection in the closed glass, the night black beyond. If I were foolish enough to get involved with Bruiser, that was what I’d get, a bit of his time, none of his loyalty. That belonged to the vamps. It was good to know. Good to keep in mind. But the knowledge still left cold emptiness inside.

  I went in to see Molly. She was lying in a darkened room, asleep beneath a warming blanket. Bags of fluid went into each arm. A nurse printed off a paper strip and looked up at me. “She’ll be fine now. It must be nice to have them come when you need them.”

  Them. Vamps. “Yeah. It is.” I took Molly’s hand, and it was cold as death beneath the warm blanket. Her face was whiter than the sheets and crusted with dried blood. The nurse took a wet rag and wiped her face. The rag came away scarlet. More blood, wet and thin, as if mixed with water or IV fluids, had soaked into the sheets. Other sheets were on the floor where the nurses had tossed them to keep from slipping in Molly’s blood. Evidence that the fight to keep her alive had been intense and desperate. Until Bethany appeared on the scene.

  I understood why some doctors had called for a national vamp blood bank, until it was discovered that whatever made vamps vamps didn’t survive removal from their bodies, but started decomposition almost instantly. If they had a preservative to give it a shelf life, hopeless cases like Molly’s would survive. I stroked her hand, the dried blood brittle on her skin. “Will she sleep long?”

  “I’ve only seen the vampires heal someone once before. He slept until morning. And then most of the next day. You should go home. Get some rest. Be sure to leave your number with the desk and they’ll call you if there’s any change. And they probably have a room number for her now.”

  Silent, I left Molly to the care of the medical professionals and did as the nurse suggested, exchanging information with the tech behind the desk. She looked twelve, fresh and clean and cheery. There were bunnies printed on her pink scrub top.

  There was nothing I could do. I went home.

  I stood on the side step, taking in the smell/texture/ taste of my house. Blood. Magic. Fear. Cops, now gone. The wards on the house had been ripped, a hole I could see like a tear in a wedding veil, the damage flickering on the silver-gray mesh of magic. There, where the hole had been blasted, the tattered net of energy moved lazily, like a scorched curtain in a slow breeze. The edges of the hole glowed black and red, as if they were still hot to the touch. The smell of the attack was wood ash and smoking garbage, its texture on my skin like rotten fruit. Molly’s alarm hadn’t gone off when the attack happened, the magical assault burning through without a sound. Whatever made the hole, it was powerful.

  I moved into the darkened house, my feet silent on the wood floor, and stared at the pool of blood, black in the night, where my friend had lain. And I burst into tears. Hot, choking, smothering tears that clawed up from my lungs and closed off my throat. I caught myself on the banister and eased down to the step. My body shuddered with sobs, wracking and harsh, my pain and guilt as cutting as Beast’s claws on my mind.

  I had let my only friend come here, even though I was fighting vamps. And even after I’d learned that witch children were being kidnapped I’d let her stay, believing that her wards and my Beast could keep them all safe. And everything I’d believed had been burned away in the magical attack on my house.

  When the crying ended, I dragged myself to my feet, went outside, and stripped. Sat on the boulders. I had to find the kits and Bliss. I forced the change on myself. Pain slammed into me, scored deep, punishment, chastisement, castigation. For losing Angelina and Little Evan, and Bliss. The three were my last thoughts as the grayness took me.

  I snarled, crouching on broken rocks. Pain dug predator talons deep into my pelt. Hungry fangs bit and tore. Jane did this. Punished us for another’s acts. Stupid. And human. Stretched and felt pain pull through flesh like an enemy’s claws. She had left no food. Growled and spat. Settled on water from fountain. It trickled from the tiny stone vampire woman at the top.

  Hunt, she whispered in my mind. Kits.

  Belly cramped with hunger, just as in the hunger times. I snarled at her, at Jane, but remembered Angie. Evan. Bliss. Liked little witch. Must protect kits. I dropped from fountain, moved slowly to burned ward. Sniffed. Hackles rose. Smelled many humans with guns.

  Cops, Jane whispered. EMTs. Paramedics. All gone now.

  Pelt settled. Leaped up steps, across porch, into kitchen. Stopped. Smelled witches and vampire—a rotten-fruit evil smell. Delicious reek of old blood, Molly’s blood, from when she lay dying. I growled low. The shaman vampire healed her. I knew this from Jane’s memory. Did not have to grieve.

  I pulled the scents deep, through open mouth, over scent glands. A screeee of breath over tongue and scent sacks in mouth. Choosing the evil ones to study, learning all parts of them. They were the young-rogue makers. Knew it. Set them in scent memory, three evil vampire witches. Two unknown witches, female, and one who was both vampire and witch, male.

  Three vampire witches? Jane thought. Bruiser said witches are seldom turned because their devoveo state is prolonged, sometimes permanent. Her thoughts turned inward, considering three enemies.

  Ignoring hunger, I walked outside, jumped to top of rocks. Launched over fence. Landed on other side with silent paws. Beast is good hunter. Will track evil vampires and witches. And Bliss. Will kill. Will save kits. Big Cat’s duty. A mother’s task. To kill. To eat. To take vengeance on enemies.

  I trotted into dark street. No people out. Quiet. Many shadows to hide in. I smelled Angie. Raced down street, seeing story in smells. Vampires had run her
e, pulling Bliss. Carrying kits. Forcing female witches with magic. They all feared. I growled. The smell of blood was close. Much blood. And the burned-paper smell of forced magic.

  I stopped. Sniffed into narrow place between buildings. Three vampire witches had fed on two other witches. Had stolen their blood and much of their power. Strong magic. I padded into street, sniffing at tar road. Scent of kits ended. Car rolled away. Taking kits and evil vampires.

  Thought all vamps were evil, Jane whispered deep.

  These worse. These are rank with witch blood and witch magic, like rotten meat and crawly things.

  Gave Jane a glimpse of maggots as I went to side of street, to empty lot where building had burned. Witches had gone there. But without kits. I smelled where witches walked, bleeding. On next street they did magic. Car came. They left.

  Hungry. Home. Jane’s hunt now. I padded back to Jane’s den and jumped over fence, landing on rocks. And changed.

  I came to myself, naked on the rocks, my stomach in agony of hunger. I touched my face, feeling the flaccid skin, the hollowed cheeks. I hadn’t been fair to Beast or to myself to shift without food. And the calorie loss was at a dangerous level. I gathered up my clothes and limped inside. I drank a gallon of water, my throat tissues so dry they ached with each swallow. I ate a pound of jerky and opened a box of Cheerios and spooned it all down with sour milk. My stomach ached with the amount of food.

  Still naked, I turned on the lights and got a bucket, spray cleaner, and a roll of paper towels. I cleaned Molly’s blood off the floor, the cleanser burning my nostrils and the skin of my hands. I let it burn, the pain another penance.

  Lonely wasn’t something I ever felt—not ever—but the black hole inside me was so empty, so deep, it was a caving in of my soul, imploding like a mountain falling in on itself. A separateness that might be loneliness. As I worked, tears fell from my eyes and wet the bare floor.

  When the floor was clean, the paper towels bagged on the side porch, the blood scent hidden under the chemical reek, I wiped my face and answered Evan’s call from Brazil, and then another from Molly’s elder sister Evangeline near Asheville.

  Evan had already booked a flight to the States. I’d have to find a safe place to put him. Not at my house. It wasn’t safe for anyone anymore. The master of the city was gunning for me. Witches had gotten in, along with something Beast had described as a vamp-witch. I thought I’d never heard of such a thing before, but then I remembered what Bethany had said at the hospital—that she was a witch and one of the cursed, aka a vampire. They should have been hated enemies.

  Evangeline was coming as well, her tone hard and biting. She blamed me. I couldn’t disagree. She was right. It was my fault. I called the hospital and found that Molly had gone to a private room. The charge nurse said she was sleeping; her vital signs were normal. Relief fluttered through me like butterfly wings, gossamer and diaphanous in the dark core of my twinned souls.

  Filthy, I stood under a scalding shower and let the blood drench off me. I was getting used to seeing scarlet-tinted water swirl around my feet.

  I was standing naked, damp, and chilled in my bedroom, staring at my new leathers, when the remaining wards on the house shuddered and spat. An electric banshee wail sounded, Molly’s alarm when something magical attacked.

  My front door vibrated with a massive thump I could feel through the floor. Then I smelled vamp.

  CHAPTER 15

  Hedge of thorns

  In one move, I pulled the shotgun and a vamp-killer, blade back for in-close street fighting, and advanced to the front door, planting my feet with care, balanced and ready. My heart sped, my breath went deep and fast. Beast’s claws tore into my belly, ready to fight. But the front door was closed. No one had broken through Molly’s ward.

  Barely heard over the howl of the alarm, the side door creaked. Where the ward was broken. I whirled.

  Leo stood inside, fully vamped out, eyes bled black in scarlet sclera, fingernails like talons. His shoulders were hunched, his clothes windblown, shirt open to the waist. Like most vamps, he was slender to the point of emaciation, his chest thinly haired, ribs stark and muscles like cords, no fat on him at all. He was staring at the place where Molly nearly died. His nostrils flared as he scented her blood.

  I remembered Bruiser saying that he’d been at Immanuel’s grave. He was probably deep in Dolore, on the edge of madness again. Bruiser had told me to keep crosses nearby. I had a moment to wonder which of my many sins Leo was here to kill me for. I adjusted my grip on the Benelli.

  Leo sniffed, short, quick inhalations, animal-like. Cocked his head to the side, the motion not mammalian, but snakelike. It made my flesh crawl. My fingers tightened on the vamp-killer. He sniffed again and closed his eyes, holding the breath in. He let it out with a quick plosive breath and snarled. Beast reacted with a shot of adrenaline to my system and a soft growl from my own lips.

  Leo’s eyes flew to me, to the Benelli M4 Super 90 in my right hand. His gaze traveled from the shotgun, up my arm, and down my naked body. It wasn’t the leisurely perusal of a lover, but the calculated evaluation of a predator. Of a killer studying prey.

  I shouted over the wail of the alarm. “I’m assuming you’re here to finish what you started when you came to burn me out.”

  The wail of the witch alarm went silent and I started, the thirty-second siren preset into the ward by Molly leaving a deaf hole in the fabric of the universe. If we don’t have them immobilized or dead by then, it’s too late, she’d said, with a sweet grin. My heart squeezed tight with pain. Someone had the children. Someone had stolen them. I flipped the vamp-killer, the silver catching the light.

  “Someone has taken the children,” I told him, though I couldn’t say, for sure, why I bothered.

  A hint of emotion flickered in the back of Leo’s eyes, chased like leaves in a winter wind. He blinked slowly. Took a short, shallow breath. The corner of his mouth lifted, almost unwillingly. He chuckled.

  With the sound, his eyes bled back to human, laughter always forcing a vamp back from the killing edge. They can’t laugh and be vampy at the same time; it’s two distinct parts of them, one part still human, one part predator. The red bled out of his sclera and he stood straight, instantly regaining a human aspect. He took a deep breath, the motions bizarre after the inhuman posturing.

  “Why are you here?” I asked, my voice soft in the odd hush. “Is it because I co-opted Bethany to heal Molly?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. . . .”

  “Is it the Dolore?”

  Something faint crossed his face, so fast the flesh seemed to ripple, as if a fragile sanity was torn like rotten silk. Almost as quickly, reason and control reentered his eyes. I kept the Benelli trained on him, the vamp-killer ready. He blinked slowly; black eyes looked me over, this time with a cool perusal. He brushed a strand of silky black hair from his olive-skinned face, flesh paled from centuries away from the sun, and when he spoke his voice was coolly wry. “I can’t be killed with shotguns.”

  “You can if they fire rounds hand-packed with silver fléchettes.”

  Leo tilted his head and let his smile widen, looking me over now like an entirely different kind of predator, making me acutely aware that I wasn’t dressed for company. Wasn’t, in fact, dressed at all. I flipped the knife so it was point forward. “And the knife is a silver-lined vamp-killer. Neither will kill you dead instantly, but you may not wake the morning after either.”

  Leo had a really good smile, charming, disarming, his lips mobile and full as he met my eyes. The hard, deep, full-on vamp power rolled over me. I could feel the desire to lower my weapons. Resisted. Hanging on to Beast-induced fight-or-flight response.

  “I am master of this city. Silver will not kill me easily. You have had a Rousseau as guest?”

  It took me a moment to realize he had changed the subject. “No.”

  “Rousseau scions who stink of witch blood attacked your home, in the company of two female witches, R
ousseaus I do not recognize. One is a powerful master. Intriguing. I should know every Rousseau. I have been among them in their clan home. These do not live among the Rousseaus.”

  My heart raced. The Rousseau Clan. Recently allied with Mearkanis and St. Martin, I remembered. Against Leo. I knew Bettina Rousseau, the clan’s blood-master. I would have recognized her scent.

  He shook back his hair, which brushed his shoulders. “Bethany is fragile and such energy exchange is draining to her. You will accept that no one except me asks her for healing.” He said it like a command. My brows went up. With complete disregard for the gun and knife—and me—Leo turned and went back through the dark kitchen. Closed the outer door. I could see the glitter of his eyes through the shadows. “Unless you wish me to join you in your bed, get dressed. We have much to discuss. I’ll make tea.” And with that, Leo, the master of the city of New Orleans, turned his back on me and went to my stove.

  Feeling idiotic and not sure why, worried about this new, less stable Leo and the effects of the Dolore, I closed the door to my bedroom and set the weapons on the bed. I pulled on undies, jeans, and a long-sleeved T. Fuzzy socks. I twisted my hair back and tied the long wet length of it into a knot, remembering something I hadn’t recalled until now, a sharp clicking as I shifted into Beast. I’d had beads in my hair. Now they were lying in the dust and broken rocks of my garden. Inconsequential. The brain latching on to foolishness to avoid a horror.

  Uncertain of the state of Leo’s mental health, I slid four stakes against my scalp like my usual hair sticks, reloaded my derringer with silver shot, and tucked it into my waistband. It wasn’t much against the speed and killing power of a master vamp, but it made me feel better.

  I had no idea what to do next to find the children. So I was going to have tea with a possibly whacked-out vamp? Social calls while the kits were in danger? But Leo had already given me some good info: Rousseaus, or vamps of their bloodline, had the kits and they had never lived at the Rousseau clan home. And there were more than one, which was why I’d had so much trouble analyzing the braided, woven scent signature. They all had to be related. Yeah. It all made sense.