by Faith Hunter
At the words “Sons of Darkness,” she started, and her eyes went half-vampy. Beast roared to the surface, and I tensed as Sabina stared at me, her gaze the most predatory I’d ever seen from her. But then the priestess seemed to win some internal battle, and her eyes eased to near human. Beast snarled and settled back.
“Listen, lady, this guy’s heavy,” I said. “And his body fluids are dripping all over me. Mind if I put him down before we continue this conversation?” So much for my people skills. I am so stupid.
But the priestess didn’t look as though her nose was out of joint at my tone. She pointed at her feet. I adjusted LeShawn’s weight with a little shoulder twitch and knee bounce and crossed to the porch. I eased him down, but his head clunked on the cement floor anyway. Good thing he was already dead or he’d wake up with a headache. I took a deep breath and blew out the strain. LeShawn hadn’t been a linebacker, but he’d been a meaty, muscular guy.
The priestess was suddenly gone. Just not there, the porch empty, leaving only a localized breeze where she had been. I blinked in surprise, looked around to make sure she hadn’t come toward me; I had started to call out when she returned just as fast, appearing on the porch holding a short stubby candle in a little glass bowl, a white plastic box, and a chair. I managed not to flinch or make any move that might be construed as prey movements. Sabina didn’t smell of fresh blood, and I had no idea how long since she had really fed, deeply enough to be satisfied. I had no desire to be her next meal.
Moving at more human speeds, she placed the chair near LeShawn and held out the candle and the box to me. I took them both and hitched a hip onto the porch, catching my breath and placing the candle so its light shone near the dead vamp’s face. The box had a baby on the top and turned out to be baby wipes, which seemed seriously weird, but I was out of my league and I had no real idea of what was normal or not. I cleaned the blood and the grave-goo away as Sabina studied the new corpse.
Several silent minutes later, she leaned down and began to cut through LeShawn’s shirt with a tiny pair of scissors no longer than her fingers. “Let me,” I said as I gripped the edges of the cut shirt and tore it from neck to hem. A final snap ripped it through. When I was done, I realized the vamp could have snapped me in two as easily as I had the shirt. Despite what she looked like, she wasn’t an old lady. She was an ancient vamp, which meant powerful. I could stop doing old-lady favors for her.
The tats on the guy’s chest were both prison tats and the kind of fancy work only a master artist can create. The black widow on his neck perched at the top of a web spanning his entire torso and both shoulders, and the other tats were caught up in the web. There were crosses and hearts and inked initials, the word “MOM” with a red rose, a tombstone with the name Mary on it, an eagle, and a pit bull. And there were scars, one from a knife wound and two from bullets; the scars had been included in the artwork. It was a tapestry of his life, of the good moments that had made him who he was, and the bad times that had shaped him with pain. There were also arcane symbols and initials—the gang tats that claimed him forever.
Sabina sighed. “I believe you.”
I looked up in surprise. “Why?”
“Those tattooed with crosses do not survive to rise. The crosses should have burned through him to the bone when he awoke.” She sat back in her chair, which creaked softly in the night. “Where is this place of magic?”
I pointed in the general direction. “And there are three other sites, older and overgrown, in the woods nearby.”
Her lips thinned and turned down, making wrinkles in her pale face. “How could this be? I am here. I would have known. I should have known.”
“Not if humans prepared the ground by day and witches set it under something like a stasis spell combined with a protective ward. Not if the vamp waited until nearly sunrise to do his work,” I said, thinking of the vamps that took the children, moving at dusk, sunlight still bright on the western clouds. Had witch magic given them protection from the late-day sun? Or were they practicing other magics on themselves? Yeah. That.
They’re not just trying to defeat devoveo. They’re trying to make an übervamp. A vamp with all the strengths and none of the weakness of regular vampires. My breath caught.
Sabina seemed to come back from a faraway place, and when she spoke it took her a moment to find the words. Or perhaps the language. How many languages and dialects did a person learn while living two thousand years? “Witch charms hid where this child rose? Powerful witch charms?”
“I’d say so, though I haven’t had a witch out here to scan the place yet. Do you recognize the scent of the makers?” My heart tripped again with hope.
Sabina leaned down again and drew the air in over her mouth and through her nose, much as Beast scented. She went still, the breath dead in her lungs. “The smell is familiar,” she breathed out, scenting again. “No.” She sat down with a sudden thump, her white skirts on the porch floor. Sitting there, she shook her head, a weirdly human gesture, her expression dumbfounded. “Surely not . . .”
I realized that Sabina, priestess of the vamps, knew exactly what was going on. She had seen the kind of vamp burial before. When she didn’t go on, I prompted, “Not what?”
“It is not possible. The maker I scent is long ago true-dead. I killed him myself.” Her face cleared of the nearly human emotion. She smelled again, her nostrils fluttering. “His heir. He made himself an heir before he died. Yes.” She sniffed again. “Yessss. His heir is now the leader, but he does not work alone. His acolytes assist him.”
My hope died. I kept the reaction off my face by an effort of will, clenching my teeth together against the setback. If Sabina didn’t know the makers, I was back to square one.
“The makers are of the Rousseau line and are young, only a few centuries old.” She stood again, moving human slow, studying me. “I cannot help you, creature who hunts.”
I figured I was the creature who hunts, and my blood spiked, sharp and fast, through my veins. But I shoved my need to know of my kind deep. Not until the kits were safe. I turned back to the body of the dead vamp.
“I did not believe that any of us could bear the power of a cross without burning.” It was said with that tone she used when making pronouncements of ultimate Truth, like a law of nature and physics, like: None of us can fly, none of us can breathe underwater, and none of us can survive without blood. But it wasn’t true.
“You did,” I said softly. “The night the”—I wanted to say liver-eater, but changed it in time—“old rogue attacked. You drove him off with a cross. A wooden cross. And it blazed like pure silver.”
Sabina Delgado y Aguilera’s eyes raged into black pits. Her fangs snapped down, three-inch-long spikes. She was on me before the crosses hidden in my collar had time to glare with light. Before I could blink. Before I could draw breath. Her motion was so fast that I didn’t have time to reach for a weapon. Her hand slammed me against the wall of the chapel so hard I heard the stucco crack. Icy fingers tightened around my throat. Her breath moved against my jaw, cold and smelling of old blood and dry herbs.
CHAPTER 17
Our sin has multiplied
Sabina was shorter than I, yet my feet dangled off the ground, my body against the chapel. Her fingers were like steel, cutting into my throat, twisting the steel chain links of the collar into my flesh, yet only the collar allowing me any breath at all. I was pinned, my neck stretched out. I couldn’t reach any weapon that might be effective against her.
I forced my panic down, but there was nothing I could do about my racing heart or the fear-sweat that beaded on my skin. And the children had only me to help them right now. I forced my hands to fall to my sides. Held myself tightly against another brainless move.
She spoke, and I had no idea what she murmured, but it sounded like Latin, like a . . . liturgy. And this was the priestess of the vamps. I had said that they had a religion. Maybe I was more right than I had guessed.
When sh
e paused to draw breath, I tried to speak. “Please.” My voice was whispery from my arched position and from terror building beneath my breastbone. I forced out the words. “I seek. Absolution.” With the word, a faint tremor ran through Sabina. She eased her grip on my throat. My breath whistled in my newly healed tissues. Relief flooded through me.
I had been to water, had been prepared for battle. Purified. I drew on that calling. I could feel again the sluggish current flowing over me as I dropped below the surface. The warmth of the air when I stood, my feet in the muck of the bayou bottom. The blackness when I again went under. Strange peace flowed through me, tranquility lapping at the far corners of my mind like the black bayou, dark and slow. The emotion felt as if it had been hiding, holding itself silent and still until now when I might recognize it, use it. And I understood. This fight for the kits was the reason I went to water. This was the battle Aggie One Feather had foreseen.
Serenity flowed along my skin and settled into the distant crannies of my mind and heart, sifted through my nerves and soothed my flesh. I closed my eyes. I repeated my calling. “I seek wisdom and strength in battle, and purity of heart and mind and soul.”
The serenity that flowed through me seemed to move through my skin, bleeding into hers. She took a slow breath.
Her fangs clicked back in her mouth, her body trembling, her eyes bled back to human. She set me on my feet and stepped away. Blood pounded into my head. The world reeled around me and I caught myself on the edge of the porch, fingers digging into the underlip. Somehow we were on the ground beside the chapel, the dead vamp’s legs near my hand. I carefully moved away as if he might stand up suddenly and attack.
“Show me the site where this rogue rose on my land.” It was said in the command tones the very old ones use. Duress. Coercion. Vamp magic. It rippled over me like dry sand scattered in a smooth arc, burning and sharp. I wanted to go into the woods. Wanted to go back to the burial site marked with white shells. I turned and faced the woods, my booted feet on the crisp grass.
Beast touched the compulsion with a paw and batted its control away. I could almost see it unravel from me, like the fringes of a shawl pulled free from the weave. Crap. Sabina was strong. I took a breath, keeping it slow and steady. I didn’t want her to know I was unbound from her power, not if I could help it. I still had too much to learn.
I smoothed my hands over my thighs and kept myself from drawing a weapon. She was so fast I’d not get it halfway out before I was dead. I swallowed and it hurt, reminding me of her strength. “Sure. This way.” Legs shaky, palms sweating, I led the way back into the woods. I didn’t hear her footsteps follow, but the starched cloth of her habit made little chuffing sounds, cloth-on-cloth. The skin on my throat rose into fresh prickles at the thought of her behind me.
Still in command mode, she said, “Tell me what you know of the cross of the curse. And how you know it.”
The compulsion rippled over me, black motes of power, tinged with purple, ringing my chest, making it hard to breathe. Cross of the curse? The one she used to chase off the liver-eater . . . ? Yeah. But lying wasn’t my strong suit and lying so close to compulsion was probably impossible; I’d have to lie with the truth. Was that any less a lie? Something else to worry about later. After the children were safe.
“A little bird told me that you used a cross to chase off the creature who was attacking you. She said that it’s a . . . powerful weapon.”
She was suddenly at my side, visible in my peripheral vision. “Who is this little bird,” Sabina purred, “who speaks of the Blood Cross?”
I took a chance. “An owl.”
There was silence between us until we neared the ring of white shells. I would have known we were close even without the direction sense and the sense of smell that was stronger and finer than any human’s, known by the glowing of the crosses nailed to the trees. They reacted to Sabina’s presence from forty feet away, glowing brighter until Sabina had to stop, shielding her eyes from the brilliance.
Her voice breathy with pain, she said, “I smell the sire; most certainly Rousseau.” Her eyes covered, she backed away several steps. “This place reeks of the past, of evil once battled and conquered. It stinks of witch magic, burned and strong. I smell the blood of sacrifice. Of witch blood that was spilled here. The blood of our sin.
“I have failed,” she moaned, “and now our sin has multiplied.” Her voice rose to a wail. “Our sin has multiplied.”
She presented me with her back, bent and hunched in pain. When her wail and its echo had dissipated, a silence settled on the woods. Sharp and acute, as if the forest itself listened for more. Long moments later she whispered, “I will give you answers at the chapel. Return there.” In a heartbeat, with a rustling through the trees and a frail movement of wind, Sabina was gone. The crosses brightened for an instant and dimmed.
I now knew without doubt what was happening in the circles. A Rousseau was killing witch children, their blood and fear powering a working of dark magic to increase the number of days a vamp spent in the grave, in order to raise a vampire who was sane. It was the only thing that made sense.
My heart filled with rising desperation as I tramped back through the woods to the chapel.
I stopped at the edge of the vamp cemetery, surprised. I hadn’t really expected Sabina to be waiting, but she sat in the chair, moonlight bright on the white of her clothes, her face in shadow. I moved slowly to her and saw that LeShawn had been moved in my absence. And beheaded. His body had been rolled to the bottom of the stairs at the front of the building. His head sat to the side on the stump of his neck, positioned to stare at Sabina. Which was disturbing on so many levels.
Again, I deliberately made noise when I approached from the side and rear and eased my butt onto the porch, one booted foot on the ground, sweating in my leathers. Neither of us spoke for a long time as the night air moved sluggishly across the cemetery. Night birds called. A bat fluttered close by and away. Sabina sat statue-still, breathless, pulseless, dead. When she took a breath for speech, it startled me and I jumped, but Sabina was staring at LeShawn’s eyes, his appearing focused, as if he watched us—a trick of the moonlight.
“You talked of the Sons of Darkness. They are not oft spoken of by my kind. Their shame is all our shame.”
I didn’t reply and Sabina took another of the weird-sounding breaths. “There is a scrap of parchment remaining, from the first history of our kind and the first prophecy of our savior. The original parchment is oft copied, oft translated. As priestess, I retain a scrap of the original scroll as well as an early copy. It tells of the Sons of Darkness and their great sin. It tells of how they made us. The Sons shared with us their blood curse, creating a race of beings with many gifts, yet bearing great agony, great pain, the sin of the world in our blood.” She paused, and I heard a barred owl call from far away, hooting in the species’ four- and five-beat melody. It always sounded like “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?” It was answered from even farther away, the notes plaintive. Owls liked it here. The silence between us had stretched and I didn’t think Sabina was going to continue. When she spoke again I jumped.
“And though they sinned the darkest sin, the Sons prophesied the salvation of our kind.” She cocked her head, still watching LeShawn. His blood had leaked onto the white shells and into the ground. “If it is discovered that you are the savior, the one who will bring us to peace, then I will tell you all. Only the savior of the Mithrans may yet hear the entirety of the old tale.” Her eyes were suddenly on me, their weight like a lead-lined blanket, heavy and immobilizing. I was careful not to meet her gaze. She studied me. “But I think you are no savior of my kind. My wait is not yet concluded. I may not yet seek my ending.” She blew out a breath that smelled of old blood. Very old. Again, I wondered when she last ate.
Sabina licked her lips and I felt as if an electric shock passed through me. I tended to forget that she had once been human, and might still be capable of human gest
ures. Sabina held her eyes on me. “I scented three Mithrans at the place of rising, all familiar to me but from long ago. I thought it impossible for a vampire with a lair in this city to remain unknown to me. I thought it equally impossible for a small family or even a solitary vampire to survive in Pellissier’s hunting territory; they would have been dispatched long ago. But the past has returned and brought its evils with it.”
She seemed to expect a comment, but I couldn’t think what I should say. When I didn’t reply she looked away. “A witch child was killed at the place of first rising. The child was drained of his blood and his body taken away.”
I couldn’t help it. I flinched. Sabina went on unperturbed. “Such is against the Vampira Carta, against our ways and customs, punishable by true-death. Will you bring the culpable ones to the day?”
I nodded. “But you have to help me,” I said. “Do you know anything that could help me find the vampire who is doing this?”
“Clan Rousseau once practiced blood magic, which required them to sacrifice with the blood of human and witch children. Some of these Rousseaus denied the guilt that all Mithrans must carry, and that older Mithrans must, by law, pass on to their scions. They claimed the way of the Naturaleza—believing that they had the right, as predators, to hunt and kill humans. And they claimed that the sin of the fathers was not passed to the sons.” She shook her head. “Their sin was discovered and these Rousseaus were wiped away in a great purge.”
Excitement shot through me. I had heard of the purge. And this bit of history was tying all my information together.
“A strange form of insanity has always run in the Rousseau bloodline. Not something of which we oft speak. But it is there, nonetheless.” Sabina looked back at LeShawn. I nearly trembled at the release from her gaze. His eyes were glazing over in death, milky and no longer appearing to watch the priestess. His features seemed to sag, and Sabina’s mouth turned down at the corners, seeing it. She looked old, her skin like creased silk. I breathed out my relief slowly, and wondered if she could smell the pheromones of respite in my breath, in my sweat.