by Kim Harrison, Melissa Marr, Jeaniene Frost, Vicki Pettersson
After a few minutes of silence, Bones turned to Ralmiel. “Why did you come there tonight?”
Ralmiel shrugged. “Jelani offered to pay me double the highest bounty on your corpse, if I let you live instead. So I thought to help you kill the scum fouling my city. It was easy to know where you were, mon ami, once the house went boom.”
Bones couldn’t contain his snort. “Mate, I’ve got some bad news for you. Jelani’s skint broke, and Marie hasn’t authorized any of what he’s done the past several days, so don’t expect her to reimburse you, either.”
Ralmiel stared at him. “There’s no money?”
“’Fraid not.”
“He lied to me. I will kill him,” Ralmiel said in outrage, pulling a pouch from his pocket and squeezing it.
Nothing happened. Ralmiel looked down in surprise, then squeezed again. And again.
A slow smile spread across Bones’s face. “Having some difficulty, are you?”
Understanding bloomed on Ralmiel’s face. “You found Georgette,” he murmured.
“Never underestimate your opponent,” Bones replied. “You know you’re not to be trifling with magic, and if anything happens to Georgette for coming to her senses and refusing to participate in your crimes again, I’ll be forced to make them public.”
Ralmiel said nothing for a long moment. Bones waited, wondering if now that Ralmiel knew he wouldn’t be collecting any quid for “letting” Bones live, he’d dare to take him on in a fair fight, without the chance of one of his magic escapes.
Finally, a faint smile creased Ralmiel’s mouth. “Non, mon ami. That time is past. Money is not everything, oui? One day, perhaps, you might assist me.”
Bones inclined his head. “I hope you’re not lying. I rather like you, but if I ever see you on the other side of a silver weapon again, I’ll shrivel you.”
Ralmiel shrugged. “Understood.” Then he nodded at the mass of people in the street. “Thirsty?”
Another snort escaped Bones. Did he want to plunge into that crowd and glut himself on the throats of nameless, countless people who’d never know they’d been bitten by the time he was done with them? No. He wanted to take Becca to his townhouse, clean her body up, and then bury her in his courtyard so no more indignities could be committed upon her.
But he couldn’t do that. Becca’s family had the right to bury her, not him. The best thing Bones could do was leave Becca where she was. The police would do their investigation, tie it into the other murders, and perhaps decide they had a copycat killer who’d taken his obsession with the LaLauries’ dark history too far. Since Delphine and Louis’s bodies, in death, would have regressed back to their true ages, the police might reckon they were old victims unearthed in that hidden room from the bombing. They’d never realize they were looking at the killers themselves.
So, in truth, he had nothing to do but throw himself into the crowd that had no idea of the horrors committed just a block away. Besides, Marie might just try to make this his last Mardi Gras. The scale of her retribution had yet to be determined. Eat and drink, for tomorrow we die, Bones thought sardonically.
He swept out a hand to Ralmiel. “Lead the way, mate.”
12
Underneath the cemetery, the air was damp and cool, with a heavy scent of mildew. Almost an inch of water stood on the ground. These tunnels never got completely dry, no matter how hard the pumps worked. A single candle broke the darkness, illuminating the face of the woman who sat in the only chair in the room.
Jelani knelt in front of her, which hadn’t been an easy task, considering his prosthetic legs. But now his huge frame was in a posture of submission and resignation. He’d just confessed his crimes and was waiting for his sentence.
And after him, Bones was next.
Looking down at him, Marie Laveau’s expression was blank, hiding whatever thoughts were swirling in her mind. After several tense minutes she stood.
“You betrayed me.”
Her voice was as smooth as her skin, making guessing her age difficult.
“Yes, Majestic,” Jelani murmured.
Power blasted out from her frame as her temper slipped. Bones didn’t react, but he felt like the air had just become littered with invisible razors slicing into his skin.
“You are not sorry.”
Despite her anger electrifying the air, when Jelani raised his head, he was smiling.
“No, my queen. I am not.”
Christ, Bones thought. Intending to go out with a bang, are you?
Something flickered across Marie’s face, too quickly for Bones to decipher if it was pity or rage.
“Good. If you are to die for something, then you shouldn’t regret what it was.”
Her arm flashed out, so fast that Jelani’s smile never had a chance to slip. It was still on his face when his head rolled off his shoulders and his body slumped forward.
Marie didn’t move out of the way, even though Jelani’s slowly oozing neck was now pressed against the hem of her skirt. That long, curved blade was still in her hand as her gaze met Bones’s.
“What about you? Are you sorry?”
Bones thought about the question, and not just because he knew his life might hinge on his answer.
“I’m sorry I didn’t kill the LaLauries sooner,” he said at last, holding Marie’s stare without flinching. “Sorry an innocent girl met a horrible end because I involved her. Sorry for the bloke at your feet, who felt revenge was worth more than his life. But if what you’re asking me is, would I do it all over again to stop Delphine and Louis…the answer is yes. And I’m not sorry about that.”
Marie tapped the knife against her leg. Bones glanced at it and then back to her dark eyes. If you want my head, I won’t kneel for you to take it, he thought coolly. You’re not my sire and I didn’t betray you, so you’ll have to fight for it.
With a knowing look, Marie wiggled the knife. “Do you think I need this to kill you? Do you think I need any weapon at all?”
She dropped the knife and stepped around Jelani’s body. The air around her changed. It thickened with power, becoming icy, despairing, and angry. A faint keening noise seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.
“You know what happens when a voodoo queen becomes undead?” Marie asked. Her voice echoed, like multiple people were somehow speaking through her vocal cords. “My ties to the otherworld were strengthened. Those consigned to the grave filled me with their power. Listen to them roar.”
Marie opened her mouth and there was a roar, rage-filled and eerie enough to make Bones shiver. Dark swirls appeared around her, as if her shadow had multiplied. Those swirls moved to curl around Bones, stroking him with freezing, malevolent, hungry hands. His strength seemed to melt out of him with their touch while the memory of his death, so long ago, flashed in his mind. He felt the same way he did then; cold, weak, succumbing to that inevitable slide into nothingness.
Then the power around Marie faded. That unearthly keening stopped, the shadows curled back into her, and in a rush, the strength returned to Bones’s body.
Marie watched him, a small, brittle smile on her mouth. “I wish you would have lied to me. Then I could have justified killing you.”
Bones recovered enough to shrug. “You already knew the truth. Lying would only have insulted us both.”
She studied him again, her expression giving nothing away. “You are banned from New Orleans for five years,” she finally stated. “If you violate this ban, I will kill you. If you speak of these events to anyone, I will kill you. As far as what everyone else will know, I contracted you to take care of the LaLauries while I was out of town, and Jelani was killed by them in defense of his city. Furthermore, you owe a debt to me equivalent to the value of a life, since I’m letting you keep yours.”
Bones didn’t argue Marie’s assertion that she could kill him. Her display of power moments ago made it plain that there were things about New Orleans’s queen that few people knew—or lived to tell. All t
hings considered, Bones was getting a slap on the wrist. Then again, it was also in Marie’s best interest to leave Bones alive to back up her version of events.
As for Jelani, at least Marie was giving him an honorable legacy. There were worse things to die for than securing a long-denied revenge. Sooner or later, everyone died. It just took death longer to catch up to those it had already visited, like vampires and ghouls.
“Done,” Bones said.
Marie dropped her gaze to look at the dead man near her feet. “Get out.”
Her voice sounded huskier. She knelt by Jelani’s withering frame to stroke his shoulder. Even though she’d killed him, her grief was clear. That sort of ruthlessness combined with her level of power made Marie truly frightening. If meting out Jelani’s death had meant nothing to her, Bones wouldn’t have found her chilling. But even though it had hurt her to kill Jelani, that hadn’t stopped her from doing it.
Yes. Best be going quickly.
Bones left without looking back. His flight out of the city was already booked. By tonight, he’d be on his way to Ohio, searching out the undead accountant he’d been tracking before he got involved in this mess.
This was over, but it was time for the next hunt.
DARK MATTERS
VICKI PETTERSSON
For Dennis Stephenson.
A wonderful father, grandfather, and man.
PROLOGUE
It was a normal moment, and barely worth note. Which, of course, was what made it so noteworthy. But after weeks, and a barrage of demands and pleas, JJ would finally be allowed to wave sparklers and an American flag and cheer until his throat burned. And when darkness blanketed the sky, fountains of color so amazing and loud and powerful would rip it open, dulling even the Las Vegas Strip visible in the distance. For a child born, reared, and hidden in an underground lair, it was an absolute dream come true.
So that was why a family of superheroes were having a simple picnic on a grassy hillside, blanket-edge to blanket-edge with the mortals they’d been born to defend.
“Born and sworn to deflect and protect” his father would say, in a booming baritone that made his mother throw back her head and laugh. JJ would steal glances at them—at the giant man with honey-colored eyes identical to his own, and his mother with her quiet strength and noble lineage—and wonder if he had what it took to do that, to make them proud. He didn’t know. In a world that honored women, he was not yet a grown man, but he was the strongest five-year-old he knew. And all the kids in the sanctuary said his high jump—already ten feet—was better than most of the girls’.
A born leader, he’d overheard the new soothsayer, Tekla, claim of him, and while he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be leading—a parade like the one they’d seen earlier today? Maybe a band like the one with the drums that’d rumbled down the street?—he’d liked the sound of it.
So while his parents sipped from plastic cups, making small talk with the mortals gathered on the highest green of the SandStone golf course, JJ waved a rope he’d found lying in the asphalt parking lot, and pretended it was his mother’s barbed whip. He would inherit the conduit when it was time, and he’d wield it as deftly as she did, unfurling it in the air to strike at fleeing Shadows and their vicious canine wardens.
JJ became so entrenched in these imaginary battles that he had threaded two bunkers and a green by the time the first rocket shot into the sky. Amid the distant laughter and clapping of the hillside audience, he froze under that pulsing sky, the rope slipping from his palms. He felt the same sort of wonder as when his father blocked a thirty-foot dunk in skyball, or when his mother made a concrete wall appear out of nowhere with the mere flick of her wrist. Who knew mortals were capable of something both beautiful and explosive? Each detonated flare thrummed inside his chest like a second, irregular heartbeat.
He jolted when his father’s hand dropped to his shoulder. At some point, as light had carved whorls into the sky, they’d found him. “This is what we’re preserving for everyone else,” his father told him, his characteristic passion making each word sharp. “Every person has a right to the small things, you see? The little happinesses. After all, those are the ones that make life most worth living. It’s what we’re fighting for.”
He touched his wife’s hand as he said it.
And JJ saw that it was good. Cotton candy and popcorn and sticky fingers, and a slightly sick stomach when it was all over. JJ only realized he’d fallen asleep when he felt himself being lifted, then settled again in the car they’d borrowed for the occasion. Outside of their troop’s sanctuary, his parents were believed to be too hard-strapped to afford their own vehicle. They took the bus when posing as mortals, but most often, they ran with a speed that would make a cheetah envious.
And this was JJ’s dream as they drove back to the hotel where they’d spend the night before returning to their subterranean lair at dawn—he was outrunning a big cat, legs wheeling so fast that the beast eventually slowed, and bowed to him as the superior athlete. JJ climbed atop the animal, his right as the competition’s victor, and was carried at breakneck speed along the neon-slicked streets, whizzing past the giant hotels his parents had pointed out to him hours before.
He startled awake when the cat reared suddenly, though they would tell him later that the animal’s awful cry was really the screeching of brakes. He opened his eyes to see his mother’s face, eyes fierce and burning into his. But it was her lighted chest that riveted him. Normally dormant beneath her skin, her glyph was fired, warning of danger, and her right hand curled tightly around her whip.
“Stay,” she said, and then she was gone.
“On the floor,” his father snapped, and like the sparklers JJ had waved only hours before, he, too, was only a bright trail for the eye to follow in the night.
JJ’s heart thrummed inside his small frame, chest tight, as if his Arien glyph wished to burst to life as well. Danger! screamed some primal voice inside him. Flee!
But his father had said to stay on the floor.
It will be even safer beneath the car.
He didn’t know why he’d listen to some unfamiliar voice over his own father’s, but if he was outside he could see his parents, and as long as he could see them, he’d be okay.
Of course, even as he clambered over the front seat, even before the first battle cry ripped the hot, velvet sky—probably even before he’d been tossed from the back of the dream cheetah—he knew they were at war. These were Shadows. Rotted sulphur and smoke pooled in the night sky, stinging his eyes just as in his ward mother’s bedtime stories.
Still, he blinked away the burn, searching for his parents along the rocky desert vista, every outcropping a bumpy threat. Inching forward beneath the car’s chassis, he settled in time to see his mother’s whip unfurl, barbed tips sparking off the light from her chest, which also threw her drawn porcelain features into stark relief. She was feral.
The Shadow she fought was a charred skeleton.
“Mama!” The word squeaked from him. His strong mother, his laughing and vibrant mother, couldn’t be injured by that demon! Tears welled and he blinked them away—keep them in sight!—so he saw when the Shadow’s head swiveled his way.
“No!”
His mother screamed, and she ignored the extended arc of her whip as she reversed, flipping her wrist to shove the metal grip into the living skeleton’s teeth. Bone shattered beneath the force, and JJ—and his cry—was forgotten.
Another light appeared, zigzagging like an overgrown firefly. Defying bulk to outmaneuver his opponent, his father’s limbs whirled, breaking skin and bone with studded gloves, sending more noxious fumes spilling into the air. The two Shadows fell at nearly the same time, and JJ’s parents sidestepped, back-to-back, breathing hard, studying their surroundings.
“How?” his mother asked, voice low.
“Later.” His father reached behind with one bloodied fist to squeeze her free hand. “Let’s get Jay to safety.”
J
J nearly opened his mouth to cheer—his brave parents, his strong parents, had done it again!—but his mother jerked her head, her reply a near growl. “We need to know now.”
“Why?”
“Because there might be…”
Others.
Suddenly there were. So many circling so fast, the smoke became a black tornado, and JJ quickly lost count. Though outnumbered, his parents continued to guard each other, backs and fingertips touching, searching for a way out. Just before the first cry sounded, his mother shot a look back at the car. A smile touched her lips, briefly, before she let it fall.
Then she fought.
And then she died.
And somewhere, more mortals set the sky alight, burning the heavens for pleasure even as his parents’ death cries carved whorls into the air.
The Shadows didn’t linger. The deaths of two senior agents of Light would soon be noted, the kill spots as obvious as the constellations above for those who knew how to read them. So JJ squeezed from beneath the car as soon as the last Shadow disappeared, and rushed to his parents.
There was barely anything recognizable at all. It was as if the Shadows were so blighted in spirit and form that they wished to render the Light the same.
“Solange! Ma Sola! Come back!”
JJ’s head jerked up.
“Un instant, Mama! I want a souvenir to mark my first…”
The girl’s words died in her throat when she saw him. Her gaze skittered like beetles to his hands, braced on the broken things he loved. She wasn’t much older than he, maybe eight, but with a darkness about her…one that’d called her back in search of a memento.
She had watched as her troop ambushed and murdered his family, JJ realized with a sniff. Studying for her future position as a Shadow agent.
A tear coursed over his cheek, and she winced as if it repulsed her. She frowned, then opened her mouth to reveal his existence. He held tight to what was left of his parents while another tear fell.