by Faith Hunter
Eli had been staring at the lock for the last few seconds while I wool-gathered. He said, “Two things. It’s fuzzy. It buzzes when I touch it. I don’t have the tools I need to get this open. The rock inside might be calling something. Summoning something. As my gramma might say, I feel a vibration in my molars.”
I put aside for the moment that Eli felt a summoning in his molars. And that he had a gramma. “Calling arcenciels,” I said. “They’ve been acting weird, dancing in the magically charged clouds.”
“Your hair is standing up. We might be about to get struck by lightning.” He said it casually, the way he would say It’s sleeting outside, or Eating a dozen beignets in one sitting is bad for you, or Tea is no substitute for espresso.
As he spoke, several things began to come together. The trapped arcenciel. The missing Sabina. The missing Grégoire. And time . . . “So if they have a time-shifting arcenciel, why haven’t they— Holy crap!”
“Jane?” Eli asked.
I had stopped dead still, thinking. “They intended to go back in time and take over Louisiana. Reshape history to their own choosing. That could be the only reason to devise a trap for so many arcenciels. This is the purpose of the Europeans’ visit to the United States.” I knew it, deep in my bones.
“They could do that?”
“Pretty sure.”
The silvered cage began to glow, brighter than the sun. Brighter than the last time by far. Lightning. Striking. A massive bolt was coming. Fear shocked through me like the lightning that had nearly killed me. Electric. Behind us, a door opened.
I grabbed Eli by the shoulder, my hands and claws sinking into the muscles and tendons and around the ball of his humerus. I leaped away from the cage in a move worthy of a mountain lion. Lifting his body as I jumped. Around me, the Gray Between opened, but it was not my own Gray Between, but the place of the Between that was all arcenciel, a bowing of space and time and energy that simply wasn’t a skinwalker place. I held it away, watching it bloom, thinking. Trying to make sense of it all. I landed, touching down to my toes and knees and one hand. Eli dropped beside me, knees flexed, taking his weight. In time outside of time. An arcenciel time bubble, one that was blue and golden all at once.
“Janie? What—?” Eli slapped his hand atop mine, as if to make sure it stayed in place.
“Lightning was striking,” I said. And my voice sounded odd. Empty. No echo, like the one in the warehouse. I hadn’t even noted it until it was gone.
Eli looked around us. Everything was stopped, frozen in time. Tonelessly, he said, “We’re in the GB, aren’t we? The Gray Between.” He was totally expressionless. Battle face.
“Yeah.” The GB. That was funny. The initials made me smile, but it didn’t last long.
My stomach heaved and I felt queasy. I watched as Eli acclimatized to the place outside of time, but he looked fine, not a hint of nausea. Maybe nausea is trained out of Army Rangers.
He took in the room and the movement of power down the lightning rod, the position of all the combatants, his hand holding mine down on his shoulder as if he understood that the moment we weren’t touching he’d be back in real time. “Sound is weird here, Babe. My ears hurt.”
“It’s the air pressure. Light moves fast, so we can still see. But sound through air molecules can move only at certain speeds.”
He stretched his jaw, trying to equalize the pressure in his ears. His gaze landed on the door. “Who’s coming through? And from where?”
“A closet? A small space in the wall?” I asked. “I’m guessing Grégoire and his old master, to kill us all.”
“Grégoire to kill—? Oh.” He looked around again. “Because Le Bâtard has the twins. The Royal Bastard has leverage, and you think he’ll use it to force Grégoire to kill us.”
“That’s what I’m thinking. Or not. Le Bâtard and Louis may be at HQ. We could have another unknown witch behind door number three, the wigged-up vampire female, or a unicorn, or a leprechaun. I hear they’re mean little buggers.” I changed the subject. “You need to let go. I don’t know what being outside of time might do to your cells or your DNA. It might warp them.”
“No.” He patted my hand. “You look and sound not quite right. For the moment I have a strategical advantage. Hang tight.” Eli released my hand and drew his weapon, switching out the mag for a fresh one loaded with frangible silver rounds.
“I smell vamps on the other side of the door. They’ll be moving vamp-fast. They might be masters, old as the race. They might not die from silver,” I said.
“True, but silver direct to the brain box will slow them down enough for us to take back the field of battle. And take a few heads. We should start a collection. Mount ’em at HQ on the fence.” That was my partner. Always thinking about the high ground and how best to secure it.
But the image cleared my head and I shoved my reaction to the lightning down and away. I said, “Ick and ewww. The stink of vamp head in NOLA heat? No thanks.”
Eli grunted, this one more like snorting laughter. “Okay. Let’s move. Together.”
We stood straight and shuffled to the doorway, close enough that we touched, sorta like a three-legged race but without the grain bags or the messy amputation. Eli reached forward and pushed the door. It didn’t move. “Jane?”
“Laws of physics change some when we remove time from the equation. Things we have to reposition are more difficult. Sometimes. Not always.”
He released the door. “When I fire my weapon?”
“It probably won’t fire. If it does, the moment the round leaves Gray Between and enters real time, it just kinda hangs there,” I said.
Eli grunted. It sounded a lot like me. He holstered the weapon and drew two silvered knives, turning them blades-back in his fists. The steel edges were honed so fine it hurt to try to focus on them. “Hang on tight,” he said, and put muscle to opening the door. It moved two inches. His booted feet slid on the concrete floor. “You could lend a hand,” he said.
“Could. Learning stuff.”
“Glad I can be of help.” He sounded snarky. Put his free shoulder against the door and shoved again. I kept my hand steady on him.
“For instance,” I said, “I figured out why the whole door doesn’t enter the Gray Between with me when I touch it. In fact, the part I’m touching, or, in this case, you’re touching, does enter the GB. Makes me wonder what’s happening to the structure of the wood itself at the boundary.”
“You think too much. Yada yada, physics, yada yada.”
“Or lack of physics.” It also made me wonder what it was doing to my own cellular structure, as I entered it over and over. I knew it was changing me. But that was a problem for another day. For now, I was just glad I wasn’t vomiting blood, thanks to the pentagram-shaped magics inside me.
With a lot of effort, the door slowly shoved open, the hinges emitting a low-pitched hum that was probably a high-pitched squeal in real time.
As the door opened, I smelled vamps and their power, a bloody scent full of death and sex, the blood of the old and powerful ones. Sabina. Maybe another nearly as old. There were a few of the first- and second-generation vamps in NOLA: Sabina and Bethany and the Son of Darkness. Who was a skin-bag of bones and gelatinous goo.
I remembered the painting on the wall in Leo’s office. The eyes in the shadowed face, the woman watching Katie and the king in the bed. Bethany. Bethany’s eyes. They had Bethany, or Bethany was a spy for the Europeans in Leo’s city. Had Katie hung the painting as a warning? A way to get us to notice the power structure and the old relationships that might be affecting the current EuroVamp political climate? Bethany had healed me and tasted my blood the first time we met. She knew what I was. She had to. And Bethany was certifiably insane. Or was she? What if she had been faking the crazies? God only knew what she was up to. They had Sabina prisoner. And maybe Katie was now a double ag
ent. I wanted to bang my head at all the possibilities.
It would be best to consider and plan for the worst-case scenario and hope for something better. Worst case? They may have killed Sabina for her blood. Bethany and Katie were behind door number one. Or, Le Bâtard, Louis, and Grégoire were. I sniffed the air, but the scents hadn’t reached us yet and the air just smelled stale.
I looked down at myself and my star-shaped magic. The silver and red motes were different. Moving slower, the speed uneven. The motes were zipping a bit and slowing, zipping a bit and slowing. It was as if there was some kind of interference. As if something was attacking and breaking, or worse, deciphering, my own magic. That couldn’t be good. I needed to get out of the arcenciels’ time bubble. “I need to let you go,” I said.
“Not yet,” Eli said.
He had the door open, and I wasn’t surprised to see Grégoire just behind the door, his body positioned as if running, one hand out to shove the door open, the other holding a sword. Behind and to his sides were two other vamps. I got a good look at Le Bâtard and Louis le Jeune, king of France. Louis was as pretty as his portrait, with soft curling brown hair and a delicate face. He also looked cold and totally without emotion, a serial killer of humans, intent on his work. Le Bâtard was a man full of hate, his mouth pulled back in a snarl, fangs exposed, vamped out. There was also something excited in his eyes. Fever pitched. I’d seen that look before once. Feeding frenzy. He was looking forward to killing prey. A lot of prey.
They were wearing modern clothes. I had subconsciously been expecting pantaloons and waistcoats and big buckled shoes. Maybe powdered wigs. Instead, the Big Bad Uglies were wearing dark fighting leathers spelled with a geometric pattern, the energies looking like herringbone. Each carried two swords. Dang.
Le Bâtard wore a gold chain around his neck with trinkets on it: a red heart, an old key, a small stoppered glass vial that might have held blood. The necklace was flying in the air. His partner in murder wore earrings in each ear and a good dozen rings on his fingers, each one bright with gems and worth a fortune.
The pretty vamp—Louis le Jeune—had the point of a foil, a dueling sword, buried in the middle of Grégoire’s back. There was blood on Grégoire’s clothes. I didn’t know if Louis was killing Grégoire for running away or herding Grégoire into the room to kill us, but I was betting on the latter.
Grégoire was wearing dark slacks and a dark wool sweater that clung to his boyish frame. He was crying, blue eyes brimming with tears. More tears glittered on his cheeks, streaked back across his face. He wasn’t vamped out. He looked . . . afraid. In the V of his sweater, I could see burns and unhealed fang marks, some still bleeding. Grégoire’s old master and sire had resorted to torture to get his scion to do his dirty work.
“Jane.” Eli pointed to Grégoire’s other hand. It was holding a small black instrument. “Switchblade,” he said, “blade placed to penetrate his own chest.”
“Blondie’s planning to kill himself before he does whatever they want him to do.” That was the epitome of sacrifice. I wanted to hug Grégoire.
Le Bâtard and Louis were Naturaleza vamps, and Naturalezas wanted power, power of all kinds. So . . . My mind kicked into gear. They wanted Sabina to drink from, Grégoire to fight for them, and for Le Bâtard to have bloody kinky sex with him, sexual torture—trying to make Grégoire fight to win. They wanted Leo for his land. The SOD for power. The arcenciels for time bending, and, if I was right, to carry them into the past so they could change history.
They wanted to own the world. And they needed the storm to call and capture the rainbow dragons to get it all. The European emperor had sent them ashore for a first strike, suggesting that Adan Bouvier couldn’t do big magic on a boat. He needed dry land under him for anything major.
Grégoire was the linchpin. It was possible that Grégoire could defeat Gee DiMercy. And Edmund. And Leo. All the EuroVamps needed was to get him to fight his own people, and that alone would throw any defensive plans to the winds. They needed motivation.
They had the twins to force Grégoire to do what they demanded, hurting the boys until he complied. I looked back at the twins. The spell over them was a strangely geometric haze. The motes that were present in most magics were random. This working was regular, evenly spaced, and . . . herringbone, like the magics on the Deadly Duo’s clothing. “Brandon and Brian are behind some kind of weird ward. I have no idea how to break it.”
“Okay, so we do the next best thing. Stay close.” He edged in behind Grégoire and beneath the sword in the vamp’s back. Feet scuffling, I followed. With a flick of his hand and blade, Eli cut Louis’ wrist. The blade, though sharp, barely sliced the flesh.
“That ‘yada yada, physics,’ thing?” I questioned. “You have to press hard. Things in the Gray Between appear to be more dense.” Eli repositioned his grip and shoved the tip against the wrist. This time it penetrated and Eli rocked the blade back and forth, widening the wound. Blood appeared at the edges of the gash and I leaned to sniff. The blood smelled of fear and Grégoire and Sabina. And the stink of vamp blood meeting silver—acrid, burned, and vile.
My stomach rolled, sick.
Inside me, Beast thought, Half-shift. Fighting form. Now.
Not till Eli’s done, I thought back.
She snarled but didn’t insist.
Eli patted my hand as if reminding me to grip harder and applied more pressure to the tendons beneath the skin. After a few nonmoments we both realized that incapacitating them was not going to happen fast enough. Bile rose up my throat. I gagged. I needed to half-shift. “Oh to heck with it. This is taking too long.” I pulled a vamp-killer, handed it to Eli, and pointed at Louis’ throat. “Cut deep. He’ll heal faster than we want, but we’ve bought ourselves some time.”
“You want it off?” He meant the vamp’s head.
“Not until we know where all the prisoners are.”
“Look at you, being all ‘Think first and kill later.’” Eli hefted the blade and turned it to a backhand. He swung. Cut an inch or so into the neck on one side, into Louis’ jugular and his carotid artery. The blade stuck in the time-hardened flesh. Eli waggled the blade, yanking it at the same time. The tissue parted and blood appeared. Not spurting yet, but that would come. However, Louis was Naturaleza and had fed well on blood. He was capable of healing most anything. Eli took another backswing and hacked into the cut, widening it. Removed his blade and gripped my hand with one of his, holding it on his shoulder. His hand was cold. Too cold.
“Eli?”
“Not yet.”
He maneuvered back under the sword in Grégoire’s spine and did the same thing to Le Bâtard’s head. Then he went to Grégoire. With the smaller blade he cut into the flesh around Grégoire’s thumb, the one holding the switchblade against his stomach, the weapon Grégoire intended to kill himself with. “Maybe he’ll feel it and know he isn’t alone,” Eli said.
He looked back at me. “You’re pale. Sweating.” He touched my face. “Clammy. Bleeding?”
I shook my head, the motion jerky. “You’re cold. You okay?” I asked.
“Not really. The GB is a onetime deal. But let’s finish it. We need to free the twins and the caged witch.”
CHAPTER 19
Hung in the Sleet like a Sad Sack of Potatoes
I looked at my own hand to make sure it was empty. I vaguely remembered drawing a weapon. Or three. I had no idea where the weapons were. I patted my rigs and discovered I’d replaced them without even noticing my own actions. Muscle memory was a good thing. I was feeling woozy and put an arm around Eli to hold us together. “Okay. Let’s do this.” In our three-legged walk, we moved back into the larger room and up to Brandon and Brian. “We have a herringbone magical pattern. I don’t remember seeing that before, but at the moment my memory isn’t so great. Can you see magic?” I asked. “Can you see the pattern?”
�
�Babe. Human here.”
“Yeah. Right. I’ve seen a lot of funky magic.” I lifted my eyes to the wires that originated at the lightning rod. “This is all geometric. I think I need to . . .” I looked at Eli. He was so close it was hard to focus. “I think we need to cut the wires to the lightning rod.”
He looked up. “We have multiple wires. Which ones do we cut?”
“All. Why not.”
Eli was holding my vamp-killer. I wasn’t sure when I’d given it to him. I was losing bits of time. Not good. “Hang on, Babe.” He positioned his feet for a stable balance, took two test swings like a batter at the plate. And swung at the wires. Unlike vamp tendons, the copper wires parted. And nothing happened. “Hunh,” Eli grunted. “Babe, you strong enough to take the twins into GB with us?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” I shrugged and the gesture hurt, a sick muscle ache, like after a major beating. “We could die.”
“That would suck. You got a better idea?”
“We need them away from the pole.”
We inspected the wires Eli had sliced through. As we talked, the wires separated a quarter of an inch, leaving a stationary light connecting the space between the ends. The herringbone pattern on the boys had begun to thin. “Wait,” I said. I dropped to one knee and eased the blade of a vamp-killer through a space in the magical mesh pattern. The blade sparked on the working, throwing light even Eli could see. I sawed through the straps holding the boys to the pole. It took a bit of no-time, but the blade eventually worked through.
“Plan B,” Eli said. “They get away by themselves.”
We three-legged it over to the silvered cage. In the Gray Between I could see how the magical lock worked. It was tied to the security of the cage, the twins’ bindings, and the lightning rod. It was slightly out of sequence with both real time and Gray Between time, making it fuzzy and hard to see. “It’s slightly out of sync with real time.” I looked at the crystal inside the geode.