Blood Cross: A Jane Yellowrock Novel

by Faith Hunter

  “Or the wood from the cross of the thief or murderer,” Rick said, his voice cool and dry.

  Sabina didn’t answer. I set the glowing cross in the box. In the velvet bed shaped for it. And pulled my hands away. As I did, the phosphorescence died, leaving only wood. I closed the box and set it behind me on the stone bier.

  Had I held part of the cross of Christ? Or only bespelled wood? Could I believe anything Sabina had said? Could it possibly be true? The important thing, I realized, was that she believed it. Whatever this cross was made of, it had real power over her. A shiver raced through me. I wavered on my feet and Rick caught me one handed, steadying me. He was moving fast, faster than a normal human, still touched by vamp blood from Leo’s healing, perhaps.

  I pulled the parts of my scattered mind, of myself, back in, breathed deeply to cement them for this moment. I found my voice. “You stopped a blood rite with the cross once before. If I can find where it will be done, will you bring it and stop this rite?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Her answer shocked me. After seeing her in the painting, the cross flaming in her hands, I had expected that she would help stop the Damours. I felt the adrenaline seep out of my system. I had no place else to go now. I knew she wouldn’t let me take the Blood Cross. She would kill me and Rick and a hundred others to keep it safe with her.

  To Rick, she said, “The foolish human who draws a useless gun on a Mithran Elder will wait outside.”

  I looked at Rick, his eyes black in the night, though he didn’t look at me. He was staring at the box that might hold part of the Holy Cross. Or might not. He’d been a Catholic schoolboy. The hidden relics of the true cross were part of Catholic lore for two thousand years. He swallowed, the sound loud in the silent chapel, but when he spoke it was with his usual insouciance. “If you aren’t out in fifteen minutes, I’ll come drag your cold dead body out and give it proper burial.”

  I laughed softly through my nose. Reached up and pushed the Elvis curl back across his head, letting my fingertips scrape gently over his forehead, my touch demanding his attention. He dragged his eyes to mine. Something blinked back into them.

  “Thanks,” I said. “But you better get help first. I have a feeling she’d be hard to kill.”

  “You think?” He touched his throat, straightened his shoulders, and left the chapel, his boots tapping on the stairs leading to the graveyard of the vamps.

  “I cannot help you to defeat this evil,” Sabina said. “I cannot lift the Blood Cross again so soon. I would not survive a second immolation in a decade.” I remembered the painting of Sabina, racing downhill, her arms on fire. Had she nearly died from using it? And again when she chased away the liver-eater? She moved with that lightning speed, leaning over the open stone casket. Close to me. My body reacted, but far too late, with a small spurt of fear and power. She caught my eyes and held me, her mind strong as steel chains, standing so close I smelled the vamp scent of her, dry and heated, like wind over a desert, arid and barren, and beneath the desert scent, oddly, faintly, like dried rose petals. “But I will give you a sliver of it.”

  My mind went blank like a snow-blown night, no thought, no emotion, nothing. Sabina was giving me . . . what? I had a moment of disconnect. Of being lost in the snow of my own thoughts, cold and confused and disoriented. For a moment that seemed to last longer than it should.

  A warning whispered deep in my mind. Not prey. Will not be caught in predator’s stare. A silent weight of claws against my brain, pressed down. Slicing.

  Surprise flashed across Sabina’s face. She broke her stare and turned away, bent and rose and pivoted again, all in one motion, her eyes again holding me in the dim light. “It is priceless. It has left my hands only once before, in all the long years it has been in my safekeeping. You will return it to me when the threat of blood rites is shattered.”

  I nodded like a toy doll, agreeing to anything, everything, without thought. She had rolled me. My hands went sweaty and clumsy. “With this you are invincible over anything not of the Light. It will destroy the descendants of the Sons of Darkness, even the eldest of the Mithrans. To prick the skin of a vampire with a sliver of the Blood Cross will cause him to burn, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. True-death. All others of the cursed will sicken and likely die.

  “But you must use care. It is possible that your kind are cursed of the Dark as well, though from a time long before the cross. If the wood of the Blood Cross pricks your skin, you may fall violently ill. You may die.”

  My heart shuddered in my chest. “My kind? You know what I am?” My words were only a whisper in the dark of the vampire chapel.

  “You are she who walks in the skins of the beasts.” She looked down into the bier, as if she would inventory the contents. Or as if she wouldn’t look me in the eye. Beast, who had withdrawn into the deeps of my mind, looked out again through my eyes. “The owl . . . It came to me, at a time of gathering and blood, when we put Katherine to earth to heal. It cried out its lonely call to me, a bird of the night, a bird of a different place and time. The owl has long been a harbinger of change, of danger, of loss. You are that beast of change and loss. That harbinger of bitter defeat. Of true-death.”

  Beast’s pelt roiled under my skin, uneasy. I had no idea what to say to Sabina. I hadn’t intended anything when I chose the Bubo bubo form to skinwalk in the first time I came here. I’d just needed to be a large bird to conceal my scent, so I could fly here and spy on the vamps, back when Katie had been put to earth to heal. I hadn’t known owls meant something to vamps.

  Sabina held out a small drawstring bag, destroying the moment when I should have spoken, should have asked her more. I took the bag and it was much lighter than I expected, silk velvet outside, padded within. I felt something inside it, long and slender, the length and shape of a ballpoint pen. Or a hair stick. Or a small stake.

  Understanding came to me all at once, all the old lore, all the deeper meaning of the curse of the vampires. “This is why wood stakes kill vamps, isn’t it? Because you were made through magic and blood and wood, from long-lost earth magic, knotted with evil.” I stared at the velvet bag in my pale hands. Shadows and candlelight moved across my flesh as if searching for my twined soul. “This is why you have to drink blood to stay alive. And it has something to do with why so many of you don’t survive being turned, don’t survive the chained years. Right?”

  “It is the curse we bear.” She turned away and sat in her chair, rocking, the wood creaking quietly. She said, “Two Mithrans mind-joined tonight. I felt the joining, I felt their intent.” She tilted her head in that reptilian manner, staring across the room at her broken door, hanging skewed on its twisted hinges. “It is little known that I am open for a moment to any of my flock who choose the anamchara way. As they join, they open, and I am part of them, part of their mind and their purpose. Tonight Rafael of Mearkanis and Adrianna, scion to St. Martin, banded together and killed her sire and his heir. Then they joined their minds into one, and made alliance against their enemies. In that moment, I knew their minds as I know my own.

  “They intend to move against the master of the city after the full moon, taking him in personal combat. Then they will kill all the witches in the city, claiming this territory as their own. And they will kill the Rogue Hunter, she who hunts their kind, for they fear you.” She smiled slightly, her head still tilted as if her neck were broken. “You do not seem so fearful to me. I hope my trust is well placed, my weapon truly given.”

  “I hope so too.”

  “The heavens move with both order and chaos,” she said, as if searching for meaning, for the words to explain the unexplainable, “with light and dark, energy and matter, emptiness and fullness. This is a time of change, when many tides rush together.” She raised her head to its proper position. “When the old ways return, when the old darkness fights for supremacy against that which is new, against the light of the world.” She touched her lips with her tongue, and it made a dry raspy soun
d, inhuman and cold, like snakes slithering against one another.

  Visibly, she gathered herself. “It is not within my duties or power to interfere in a legal challenge against the master of the city, but it would be dangerous for the humans should the allied challenge of St. Martin, Mearkanis, and Rousseau defeat Pellissier. Without an heir, such a challenge is a great danger to him.” She looked at me. “Pellissier is like a rock in the confluence of many streams, attacked on all sides, buffeted.”

  The old vamp had been awfully agreeable about helping this time, when she had been so obfuscatory before. It must have been some freaky vision she saw in the midst of the vamps’ mind-joining. It made me suspicious, but I had no one else to turn to. “I can let him know about the attack,” I said. “Without mentioning your name.”

  Sabina inclined her head and I figured I had been maneuvered into doing her bidding. Before I could respond, she said, “There will be no more blood rites in the forest near this place. I have seen to it. The three Damours will not be allowed to enter this holy ground again. If they have another place for the rites, they will go there, forced there for the light of the moon.”

  I couldn’t help the grin that split my face. I knew where the children and Bliss would be. I knew!

  Sabina chuckled, her face instantly human-looking, mobile, and weirdly cheerful. “Go now. You have much work to do and little time.”

  I felt as if a large hand pushed me toward the outside, toward the night and the full moon. All at once, the candles were snuffed and the chapel went dark, as I left the place I had desecrated, passing beyond the door I had ruined. I stepped from the chapel to the sound of the stone lid being slid into place on her bier and the chair treads starting to rock on the wood floor. Outside, under the light of the full moon, shadows rested black across the grass, striping the white-shell walks like wounds in the skin of the netherworld, open and bleeding into the land. Rick was standing at the bottom of the stairs and when I descended, he gripped my arms, stopping me. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  He searched my face, his Frenchy black eyes holding me more securely than his hands. Finally he nodded. “Okay. That was seriously weird.”

  “You were listening?”

  “Yeah. What next, Master Vampire Hunter?”

  “I need to talk to some guys I know,” I said, shooting him a look, thinking of Derek Lee, putting it all together. “I need to go to New Orleans City Park. And I need to talk to Leo.”

  He nodded, his face serious. “Visiting Leo sounds like a fun date. I’ll bring the beer.”

  I spluttered with laughter, which was what he’d intended, and some of the darkness Sabina had painted on my soul dissipated. He reached up and traced the corner of my lips with a fingertip, the caress soft, making me shiver. I stepped away and he dropped his hand. “Seriously, Rick. I need to talk to Leo, tell him about the plot and the coup and murder of St. Martin’s master and heir. We’re gonna have a lot of dead vamps and a lot more dead humans. But I don’t have time to do that and . . .” I looked up at the full moon. Frustration zinged through me. “I can’t do it all. I can’t deal with Leo and get the kids back and kill the blood-sucking Damours. And the kids are more important than anything else.” I didn’t have time for everything, and so someone was gonna die who shouldn’t die. And it would be my fault. Again.

  “As a cop, I have to warn you that even though the legal definition of a vamp as human hasn’t been established in the courts, killing one without a contract might be considered illegal. Except for killing rogues. Usually. So I don’t want to know about that part. But as to warning Leo, I’ll do it. Well, Jodi and Rosen and I’ll do it. What?” His eyes narrowed. “What’s that look for? This isn’t just your fight, you know. We live here. We’ll be the cops cleaning up after the bloodbath.”

  I took a breath. It seemed to fill me for the first time since Sabina grabbed my throat. A curious delight kicked around inside me. With one exception—a bad exception, when a cop I liked a lot was killed—I’ve always worked alone, so I wasn’t used to having help. But Rick was right. This wasn’t just my fight. “You’ll go talk to the master of the city.” It wasn’t precisely a question, and not a statement either, but somewhere in between. “Right now,” I clarified.

  “Sure. Why not? Got nothing better to do than kick some master-of-the-city vamp-butt.”

  I chuckled, imagining that scene.

  “Or just dicking around with his mind. Me and Jodi might like that. And Rosen,” he added.

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  Rick straddled his bike and called Jodi Richoux and Sloan Rosen, and both agreed to meet us on a narrow bridge a mile from the Mississippi. I had made my call while Rick made his, the beauty of modern life, instant multiple-person communication. Rick helmeted up and I followed his lead. And then, because I had to head that direction anyway, I followed him back toward the city. A mile out, just past a small bridge, he slowed and pulled under a tree. Leading me to think they had been working late, the two other cops were already waiting. They’d gotten here fast, the engine of an unmarked cop car still hot and ticking.

  Jodi was sitting on the hood, dressed in what I was coming to think of as her uniform: dress slacks, little stretchy shirt, boots, and jacket. Sloan, standing beside her and leaning against the car, was wearing jeans and a dark blue Windbreaker with the word POLICE emblazoned across it in big white letters. I filled them in and they discussed how the three-man crew wanted to handle the upcoming talk—which they decided should be off the books and unreported to the high muckety-mucks of the NOPD brass. I liked these three. They thought outside the vamp box. Feeling as though the talk with Leo Pellissier was in good hands, I roared off for a quick stop at home and then a rendezvous with black magic and blood rites in the park.

  CHAPTER 22

  Pardon me if we don’t bleed for you, babe

  My arrival at the house woke everyone, the bike’s roar better than an alarm. Before I entered the house, I jogged to the pile of broken boulders and scraped my gold nugget across a larger piece of stone—a lodestone of sorts to the shift I’d need soon. Moving fast, I grabbed five pounds of steak out of the fridge, shoved them into a Ziploc, and tossed them onto the porch. Tossed a bag of Snickers on top.

  I made it to my bedroom and back out before Molly and Evan met me at the bottom of the stairs, following me and babbling questions I refused to answer. I just didn’t have time. But Molly noticed the two zippered bags and the fetish necklace I’d come for and blocked the door back to my bike with her body. I thought about taking the ruined window, but when I looked that way, it had been boarded over with a sheet of plywood and Evan had taken up a stance in front of it, his arms crossed over his barrel chest, his red beard sleep-tangled. Sighing, I looked Molly in the eye, letting a bit of Beast rise in me. “You know better than to pen me in.”

  Her white gown outlined her rounded curves, making her look too soft and feminine to best me in a fight, but her expression belied her size. She looked as if she’d try to take me if I pushed past her. “Tough.” When I scowled at her, she said, “Not until you tell us what’s happening. Why you’re going to . . .” She pointed at the necklace and didn’t finish the sentence.

  “It’s the first night of the full moon. And I think—I hope—I can find the site of the rites tonight. But I need to go now.”

  “And you think we’ll let you try to stop an act of black magic, a major working of blood rites, alone?” She was aghast, her tone asking me if I was out of my mind. “Jane Yellowrock. Someone stole our children. If you think you know where they are, then we will be there. Like it or not.” Her face hardened. “And besides, the vampires who took our children are witches. You’ll need us to stop the rites without making all the magic go haywire.

  “What?” she demanded of the surprise on my face. “You didn’t know you can’t just interrupt a major working without consequences? You’ll need us to fight. And you’ll need us to protect the children.”


  “I knew,” I grumbled, remembering the smell of the torn and blasted wards. “But you’ll be in the way of me finding them.” My eyes told her I’d be in Big Cat form. “I have some . . . guys . . . who will be close by. They’ll have guns.”

  “Which will not stop a blood rite without a detonation big enough to take you all out.”

  “Crap.” I hadn’t planned this well enough.

  “We’ll be close by,” she bargained, “with whoever you’re working with. Out of sight. You’ll have your phone. You’ll call us when you find the site. Then we’ll come. And we can bring your weapons.”

  “Why wouldn’t she have her weap—”

  Molly cut her sister off with a single motion, a cutting swipe of her hand. “Not important.” Evangelina went silent. She had appeared at the opening to the kitchen, her presence blocking another exit, a fact Beast did not like at all. Three angry witches had her cornered. Her claws came out and cut into my mind. “Where will you be?” Molly asked.

  I sighed. Beast wasn’t the only one feeling trapped. Molly had just backed me into a metaphorical corner too. I knew what could happen when a spell went wrong, when magic went haywire and escaped the confines of the working that contained it. It wasn’t pretty. And it had been known to interfere with my own magics in unpredictable ways. Grudgingly, I said, “I’ll be at New Orleans City Park in an area called Couturié Forest. It’s several hundred acres, and I’ll be off the beaten paths. You won’t be able to find me in time.”

  Without taking her eyes from me, Molly said, “Evangelina?”

  Her sister, dressed for sleep in a long sleep shirt, stepped around me in the dark and handed Molly something. Molly rubbed the surface with a thumb, and brought it to me. It turned out to be a river stone painted with a black symbol. It was wrapped with silver wire and hung on a silver chain large enough to wear in either of my forms. “Put this around your neck. It works like a tracking device for maybe a half hour. Hold the rune for ten seconds between your thumb and forefinger to activate it, and we’ll have a good idea where you are. We can find you.” She pointed at the rune, which looked like a capital F with the horizontal arms broken down at an angle. “Ansuz, a rune meaning a revealing message or insight, communication.”