by Faith Hunter
Page 24
Nicolas shows Jane to the library, where she waits for half an hour, then is taken to see Roseanne. The vamp looks worse than in the picture Leo received, and despite what was done to her, she does not divulge the name of her new master, saying, “She may not answer. ” When Jane says that Leo would like a sample of Roseanne’s blood so his lab can work on a cure, Nicolas vamps out and comes at Jane, and she puts a gun with silver shot under his chin. Roseanne says she will comply with the request, and Jane draws the blood. Unfortunately the blood continues to seep, but Nicolas is able to get the bleeding stopped. When Jane says she will be leaving, a voice behind her says she will not, and she turns to find a gun pointed at her chest by a human who smells like the new master.
I Started to Squeeze the Trigger: Jane stalks across the room and takes the man down. Nicolas tells Jane to take care of their “guest,” putting an unusual emphasis on the word. Jane realizes that this guy is actually Roseanne’s antidote—she feeds from him to keep from dying. Jane smells the same master on the man that she did on her attacker in the hotel in Asheville, making it pretty clear that the same vamp master is behind that attack and the vamp disease. The big guy she has just taken down also has an amulet (nonactive) on him, and she takes that away. After checking with Roseanne to make sure she’ll be all right after Jane beat up the guy, and being told yes, Jane leaves.
In the car, with the GPS directions for the airport set, Jane texts the pilot to ask if they can use the same plane, and receives the answer yes. After dropping the vials of Roseanne’s blood in a FedEx box, Jane gets on the road. At first Jane thinks she may be getting followed by a couple of other cars, but they turn off. Jane calls Bruiser to give him her report, and during their conversation she determines that she is being followed, by the same two cars she saw before. Jane tosses the phone and floors the car, but ends up driving off the road and down the side of a hill. The airbags deploy, and Jane then passes out. She comes to, hearing Bruiser’s voice calling her name on the cell, but also hearing footsteps coming her way. Jane gets to one of her guns, firing off three shots. Unfortunately her assailant gets off shots also, and one of them hits Jane. She shoots a few more times, and it seems the guy has left. Jane knows she is in trouble—bleeding out, and unable to get to her fetish tooth in her pocket. She thinks of Beast, and Beast comes.
Removing Jane’s clothes and boots from the car to hide them, Beast also tries to pick up the cell phone, out of which she can still hear Bruiser’s voice, but she is unable to wake Jane. After accidentally breaking the phone, Beast decides that may be a good thing, as Jane may not want Bruiser to find her clothes without her. After brushing away her tracks using the clothes, which she then hides, Beast goes hunting for food, grabbing an old goat. After eating and lying in the night air, Beast thinks about how the angel Hayyel had told her he could separate her from Jane and give her freedom, but Beast refused, not wanting to leave Jane. Beast decides to go for a walk, to see if she can find those two male mountain lions.
The Man Who Killed Me: Jane wakes on the pile of her clothes, with no memory at all of her time as Beast. She is pleased to realize that Beast wiped away her own tracks. Finding the blood trail of the man she shot, she puts some of the blood/dirt mixture in a test tube to take back with her. Jane catches a ride back to the airport from a trucker, and makes it to the plane, wondering if the pilot (not one of Leo’s regulars) may have been the source of the leak that led to both attacks. After showering and locking herself into the sleeping chamber, Jane gives Bruiser her report, then sleeps until they land in Seattle.
Jane gets to the clan house, which is eerily quiet. Immediately suspicious, Jane goes inside, gun drawn, and smells the sickness of the vamp disease. Going upstairs, Jane finds ten diseased blood-servants and a dead woman, who, upon closer examination, Jane figures out is a Mercy Blade. Jane takes blood from the sick, and finds out from one of them that the Mercy Blade had told them all to fight rather than submit to the vamp-master, and he killed some of the Mithrans, though some got away. Jane picks up a laptop and some cards for a place named Blood-Call.
When she arrives at the private airport terminal, Jane senses something wrong and finds a man tied up in the back room, who tells her that there were three people, one a vamp, and that he heard screaming out at the plane. When Jane goes to investigate, she smells fresh blood, and when she gets inside, she sees blood everywhere.
Deer Antlers Piercing Through His Shoulders: Jane finds the body of pilot Dan crucified in a horrifying scene, then discovers the new first mate dead on the bed she had slept on, with an envelope with her name on it on his body. The shock of the scene brings another vision to mind, one she can’t place but can’t get out of her head. Going back into the terminal, Jane frees the trussed-up man and borrows his motorcycle to get away. Jane asks the man to wait ten minutes before calling the police. While she’s riding off, it occurs to Jane that if she really wanted to (and part of her does) she could disappear, and she throws away her new cell phone.
As Jane thinks over the last couple of months and her loss of Molly and Rick, she also faults herself for not thinking that someone after her may hurt someone else. Beast’s comments that she is a killer only do not help. Withdrawing five thousand dollars, just in case she needs it, Jane knows she will have to fly on a commercial plane to get back to New Orleans, meaning she can’t take her weapons. She goes to a UPS store, packs everything carefully, and overnights the packages to herself. Jane calls Bruiser from a pay phone to tell him what happened, and after that Reach calls Jane on the same phone, telling her that he has the security tapes—visual proof that she isn’t human. He says if he ever feels threatened he will use them.
After riding around Seattle, Jane heads to the main airport, parking the borrowed bike, and leaves a phone message for the man the bike belongs to as to where he can find it, along with a hundred-dollar bill. While killing time before her flight, Jane opens the note left to her on the first mate’s dead body. In very formal language and script, she is told that she killed the letter writer’s Enforcer (the man from the hotel in Asheville), and that she will die along with her Master, which she assumes means Leo. As she drinks a beer, which the vamp-master smells like, Beast points out that may be important. While mulling over the bits and pieces of information she has, Jane decides to contact Derek Lee to see if one of his guys can find anything on the Enforcer she killed, and to acquire a couple of guys that would work just for her—a pointed comment that doesn’t go unnoticed by Derek.
When Jane gets home, she showers and heads over to see Aggie One Feather, who at first is resistant to help Jane go to water again right then, but then agrees. During the ritual, Aggie, whose face seems to be growing a wolf snout, asks Jane what she is bothered by that she never finished, and Jane says the revenge of the murder of her father and rape of her mother.
I Never Had a Chance to Say Good-bye: Aggie-with-the-snout tells Jane that she was just five, and asks who else she told what was going on. Jane remembers going down the hill to her grandmother’s house, and being put on a horse, and also realizes that her grandmother was also a skinwalker. Then the door opens, interrupting Jane’s vision, and Aggie says she’s sorry she was late getting there. Jane thanks her and says she is done anyway.
Later Jane gets woken up by her phone, with Bruiser asking her to come and help them, as Leo’s clan home is under attack. While Bruiser argues with Leo about how he needs to leave, Jane hears sounds that tell her Bruiser has been hit by a shot. Jane finds her boxes of delivered weapons on the doorstep, and puts some together before heading off. Jane arrives to find emergency vehicles, with Bruiser in one of them. The paramedics allow her to stay with Bruiser because he claims she is his wife and can make legal decisions for him. During their discussion about the letter Jane received, Bruiser loses consciousness. Jane calls Katie, threatening to kill her if she doesn’t send someone to heal Bruiser immediately.
Jane knocks the
ambulance driver out of the way to keep him from taking Bruiser to the hospital rather than waiting for the vamp Katie has agreed to send, and ends up getting restrained by law enforcement until they realize what she was doing. Koun, a large Celtic vamp, arrives to help Bruiser, and afterward, he tells Jane she owes him a boon—she must fight in his place, as he is now too weak. Jane agrees, and joins the fight. Vamp Innara is too gun –ho for Jane’s and Derek’s tastes, and they tell her that killing everyone there will not leave them anyone to question. After they bring Innara around to their way of thinking, Jane and Derek decide to use flash grenades. Jane and Girrard the Mercy Blade go into the barn together, and when they come out, they find Innara staking another vamp.
I Whirled and Caught the Naked Man: Since Innara is using a silver-tipped stake, Jane yanks her arm away. Innara responds by going for Jane’s throat, but gets a big surprise from Jane’s silver mesh collar. Jena, Innara’s anamchara, runs over to get Jane, but Jane pushes her away. Examining the vamp that Innara had been staking, Jane smells Leo’s blood on him, and the way she goes about it disturbs Derek, who nonetheless answers Jane’s question about Leo’s whereabouts—he’s been taken. They agree to keep the vamp for questioning, but out of nowhere Grégoire comes flying, attacking the hostage. Jane stops him, explaining what they plan to do. Grégoire says he will bring his silver cages.
At Katie’s, Jane has a brief discussion with Tom, Katie’s blood-servant, and learns that the girls have all been sent away for the night. Jane also sees Bethany, the healer, working on Bruiser. In the parlor, the two cages are in the middle of the room with the vamps inside, and one of them decides to talk. He doesn’t give up his master’s name but swears he doesn’t know where Leo has been taken. Derek switches gears and brings up the name of the Enforcer that Jane shot in her hotel room. The vamp says that the man was there to learn what he could about Leo’s Enforcer (Jane, since she made the mistake of announcing it once) in order to issue a Blood Challenge. According to the Vampira Carta, that is a first step in challenging another master. Katie comes over to Jane, blaming her for the vamp war going on, and Bruiser comes into the room, saying it is not her fault, then collapses. Jane picks him up and carries him to another room, where Katie comes in and tells Bruiser that he will live and still be mostly human.