Dark Queen

by Faith Hunter

  “Titus Flavius Vespasianus and Leo Pellissier officially requested permission to have the blood battles to the death in Louisiana,” Soul said, “and, as the challenged party, it was Titus’s right to do so according to Mithran law. Fortunately for the safety of our citizens, it was not his right according to United States law. When the request for the duel to be held on U.S. territory and land was refused by a myriad of government institutions, the Mithrans shut the door to all of us. Now Pellissier is no longer answering our calls. In fact, not one single vampire in the entire United States is returning our calls.”

  I knew all this. The number of U.S. legalities involved had been too long to deal with, from duels being illegal in most U.S. states to ICE and the federal government working to ensure that these particular European vampires were never allowed on U.S. soil, even for a visit. As Leo’s Enforcer, a position of power in vamp hierarchy, and as the Dark Queen—a title I was still learning about—I knew most everything going on. And I could tell Soul none of it. I said, “Tell me that doesn’t surprise you. The government flipped off paras and then expected the para leaders to keep in contact with them? You’re a para. You know better.”

  Soul sighed over the connection. “We’ve asked the Robere twins and George Dumas to liaise with us on this matter and they refused. We’ve brought in the governor’s office, several maritime organizations, including the Coast Guard, and half a dozen other agencies. Rick LaFleur is traveling internationally more than he’s here, so he’s little help. But Pellissier won’t talk to anyone now.”

  One of the Roberes was a lawyer. George, aka Bruiser, my boyfriend, had been Leo’s primo at one time and still had a lot of pull with the MOC. And all three were Onorios, which we needed at the fight with the Europeans. They were the judges and the keepers of the peace. Did the government know that last part? Sure. Why not? This thing had been FUBARed from the beginning. And Rick . . . I hadn’t known that my ex was traveling. That was interesting too, if not pertinent to this convo.

  Leo had pulled in his nets and gone back to port, as the fishing metaphor went. He had walked away from the government, a government that refused to recognize his species as equal to humans in protections under the law. So now the government and law enforcement were at my door, claiming a personal relationship to get my help. Ducky. The coffin door in my heart slammed shut.

  Soul went on. “Titus and Leo have since requested permission to broadcast the battles, though no traditional broadcast networks have picked up on it. However, no one can stop the broadcast via Internet pay-per-view, despite the violence, and a number of providers are bidding on the rights with Leo. George and the Roberes are also involved in these high-level talks. And they are not calling us back.”

  And you can’t make them, because the government in general refused to work with the suckheads and their humans. Yeah. Soul knew a lot more than I expected. I nodded to my partner and he said, “Okay. Still listening.”

  “I just discovered that the Europeans are planning to hold offshore gambling on the matches and have agreed that the tax income from the bets won and lost will go to Louisiana, if the state will partner with them.”

  My eyebrows went up. That was a surprise.

  “This is likely to result in a great deal of money,” Soul said over the cell connection, “and it seems that someone high up in the Louisiana state government is suddenly interested, which means we are scrambling. It’s all tangled up in federal and state law with everyone wanting a piece of the action or to be seen as politically strong, fighting to keep more bloodsuckers out of the U.S.”

  “Right,” I said, headache spiking again, feeling tired in every bone of my body. “Everyone’s scrambling for power.”

  “My personal concern is that if Leo leaves Louisiana and goes into international waters, aboard a European ship, to fight, who will be in control of his lands while he is away?” Soul asked. “Who will inherit if he loses? What will happen to the humans and the political balance we have established so far? It’s precarious, especially with new laws being proposed in Congress for paranormal citizenship. I want someone with Leo to handle all of that and Ayatas has the experience, the charm, and the diplomatic know-how. But not if he lost control and tried to kill one of you.”

  “He says he’s related to Jane,” Eli said.

  “I see.” Soul paused, perhaps in thought. “I have been unable to confirm or deny this in any official records. The records of Jane Yellowrock began the day she walked out of the mountains at a supposed age twelve.” She hesitated and then went on again, as if feeling her way through what she wanted to say. “Aya’s records appear when he supposedly entered an orphanage at age four and ended when he ran away at age fourteen. He reappeared at a supposed age twenty, having changed his name, and acquired an education by taking classes in three different universities, two online, graduating with a degree in criminal justice. There are photos of him at only one of those schools,” she added, telling us that his history might have been faked. “And in the one photo we have of him at the orphanage, his ears appear to be shaped differently.”

  Children’s faces altered drastically as they grew, but the shape and placement of ears never changed except by surgery. Ears were as individual as fingerprints. What Soul was describing stated that Ayatas had assumed the identity of a dead child, a runaway from the orphanage. It was typical of the way long-lived paranormals maintained a legal position in the world. Ayatas was likely older than his papers claimed. I had guessed that all skinwalkers were long-lived. That my father died only because the white man had shot and killed him before he could shift and heal. And that all skinwalkers were yellow eyed, like me. All assumptions, but with some small amount of evidence to support them. Ayatas could be far older than he looked.

  “As to whether he is related,” she said, “no one has done a genetic comparison to determine a relationship. Some creatures recognize one another’s familial scent. That didn’t happen?”

  He smelled like skinwalker, not like me. “No.” Though Beast thought so. And genetic comparisons wouldn’t work anyway. I’d seen my DNA. It was a mess.

  “So he’s here. He’s both lying and legit. He has a job to do,” Eli said. “His shooting at Jane appears to be a mistake. Pretty big mistake for an officer of the law. Damn stupid,” Eli said, letting ire into his voice. “He should be put on administrative leave. An internal investigation should be begun.”

  “Yes.” Soul laughed softly, almost sadly. Her laughter had always reminded me of bells and woodwinds and it made me want to smile with her, and hide my own braying laughter. Now it just made my head hurt worse. “And when he tells an IA investigator that he drew on Jane because she smells like a dangerous cannibalistic paranormal creature? And Jane is once again put back at the top of the PsyLED’s ‘person of interest’ list?”

  Eli’s eyes narrowed and he looked at me to make sure I understood that we had just been blackmailed. Soul had us over a barrel.

  “I will need to discuss this with Aya, though I would prefer to keep it out of his record,” Soul added.

  Aya, I thought. She called him by a nickname. Soul liked him.

  “We won’t be making any reports,” Eli said, but I could hear his unwillingness to let the attack go.

  “Leo will not speak to any law enforcement agency or special agent. I would consider it a personal favor,” she said, “if you would introduce Ayatas to Leo and smooth the way for negotiations.”

  “Copy all that. And we’ll consider it a personal favor if Ayatas keeps his weapons in his pants,” Eli said. “We’ll be calling if he kills someone, and PsyLED can clean up the mess.” Eli tapped off the cell and drew his weapon, looked at me.

  “I can send the request to Leo’s secretary,” Alex said, glancing at me beneath his long curls. When I tilted my head a fraction of an inch in agreement, he added, “If anyone can get Leo to see a cop, it’s Scrappy. That’s what’s c
alled the fine art of delegation.” He tapped on his official cell.

  “Edmund?” I asked without raising my voice, hiding the gel pack under a decorative pillow. “You can let him out.”

  The shelving opened fully, revealing the small stone-lined room beneath the stairs, the revolving weapons-safe in the corner, the foot of the small bed, and Ayatas. He stumbled out, obviously having been pushed. The shelving door closed on the daylight, protecting my master-vamp primo from the sun. Ayatas looked a little the worse for wear, his long black hair snarled, his clothes rumpled, but no smell of blood on the air, no vamp blood and no skinwalker blood, which meant that the man calling himself my brother had managed to avoid getting rolled, hadn’t allowed himself to be sipped from, and Edmund hadn’t forced him to drink vamp blood, a trait I liked in my primo. Things had gotten a little physical, but there had been no forcing a blood bond. Forcing a bond was horrible. I knew that from my own personal encounter. I still had problems dealing with, well, lots of things, because of that experience.

  “You people are insane,” Ayatas spat out. He sounded remarkably like a cat and Beast peered through my eyes. I could tell she was captivated by the man and I wondered if my eyes were glowing gold. It happened.

  “Why?” I asked. “We didn’t kill you. The vampire didn’t drink you down even though you shot at his master and we woke him from his beauty sleep. And we’re providing you a room to clean up in. We’ve been really nice hosts.” Except for the whole squishing his balls and keeping him cuffed and tossing him into a lair with a sleepy vamp. Reporting him to his up-line boss and mentor. Yeah. There was all that.

  Eli tossed him his cell phone and Ayatas caught it in midair without a bobble. “Call Soul,” Eli said. “Then go clean up. The rest of your belongings are in the guest bedroom upstairs, front left corner. Clean sheets. Towels on the foot of the bed. Late lunch in twenty.”

  “It’s Eli’s white chicken breast Cajun salad made with capers and dill,” Alex said, without looking up from his tablets, laptops, and personal desktop computer and Wi-Fi/cloud system with all the latest bells and whistles. Desktops like this had to be hand-built and the components had cost us over five grand, but it allowed us to act as a hub for every computer system, security system, cell phone, tablet, and GPS tracking system owned by Leo’s people. Alex was bent over it, tapping away.

  “And if I don’t like dill?” Ayatas asked, shaking his hair back and wiping his face with his shirtsleeve.

  “Starve,” Alex said, again without looking up. I smiled slightly, thinking, That’s my bro.

  Ayatas FireWind disappeared up the stairs, his fancy shoes silent on the wood treads. Either he had special soles or he moved like a cat. Or a hunting Cherokee warrior. I was going for doors number two and three. I closed my eyes and dropped my head back again, pulling the gel pack from beneath the pillow and laying it in place, eyes closed.

  “Still happy you didn’t buy that bigger place?” Eli asked, a little knowing spite in his tone. He had found a traditional Creole townhome, only a few miles away, that was roughly three times the size of this house. But this was home, or as close as I’d ever gotten. Not that I’d told him that. I’d just said the larger house was too expensive. And it had been. Still was.

  “Very. But we have to stop taking in strays,” I said.

  Eli and Alex both snorted.

  Alex said, “We have almost everything integrated and Bodat will be in town later today to help me finish up.”

  That was good news and bad news. With the new system, we knew where every one of Leo’s people were at all times, who they were chatting with, and what burner devices they were using to try to keep their activities secret from the MOC. The Kid—Alex—had devised several algorithms to keep the information from being too overwhelming, but even so it was not a one-man job. If Yellowrock Securities was going to survive the Sangre Duello and stay in NOLA, we needed serious geekish help. We were going to have to outsource or hire someone in-house. Either would change the dynamics of our lives. Again. So Bodat was the best choice, even if it meant we had to find him a place to stay temporarily. No way was he staying here long term. Just thinking about the garlic-smelling, doughy-fleshed teen was enough to give me the shivers and make my headache feel worse.

  Bodat was one of Alex’s World of Warcraft buddies who had helped us with a case in Natchez. He was a couple of years younger than Alex and lived in Mississippi. The pasty-skinned kid was planning to attend Tulane in the fall, which was where Alex was going for his doctorate, now that he was finished with probation. Bodat was a hacker wannabe and had a knack for scanning and compiling data. He was working hard to learn the back doors of computer hacking and also had a serious case of hero worship for Alex, which he tried hard to keep hidden. It was cute. But . . . Bodat. I sighed softly.

  Alex and Eli put a blanket over me and went into the kitchen to prepare a late lunch.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Why do you think Janie is your sister?” Alex asked.

  Ayatas halted, spoon halfway to his mouth. It was filled with vanilla ice cream and blueberry-mango cobbler fresh out of the oven. Lunch had been carefully polite, with no mention of relationships or how Soul might have reacted to Ayatas shooting at me. Mostly the meal had been guy chatter about the weather, the difference between an Arizona winter and a Louisiana one, and sports teams. Until now.

  He placed the spoon back in the bowl and looked from one to the other of us as if trying to figure us out. “According to her history, Jane appeared from the woods. My sister disappeared in a snowstorm, many years past. We are long-lived. Her body was never recovered. Why would Jane not have a long-lost brother?”

  “Because she’s a lot older than she looks.”

  “Alex?” This was not a topic of conversation I had expected to be having. This was my most personal information and Alex was on the verge of giving it all away. I put down my spoon, again sick at my stomach. Though the food, and maybe the OTCs, had helped my headache some, the pain wasn’t gone, and nausea was one of the symptoms I suffered with the migraine-like agony.

  Alex didn’t look at me. “I mean, dude, she looks maybe twenty-five, but she’s old. She could be thirty.”

  I wanted to laugh. He sounded like a typical teen, though he was twenty now himself and growing up. Mostly. And he was, not so subtly, pumping Ayatas.

  “If we are siblings,” Ayatas said, picking up his spoon again without looking my way, “then Jane is much older than twenty-five.”

  The words hung on the air for a dozen heartbeats. The odd emotions welled up in me again, a vortex of feelings that swirled together. Things like, I’m not alone. The People still exist. They came for me. Finally. Finally. Finally. Mixed with the hope and the fear and the unanticipated possibilities was a wash of anger and suspicion. Why now? Why did you wait so long? Only to use me? Is the skinwalker—the one who taught me to kill my first man and who pushed me into the snow to live or die—still alive? Is my mother still alive? I had posited that the skinwalker gene was X-linked, like with witches, passing on the mother’s X chromosome. I had assumed that I’d gotten the gene from my father, passed down from his mother, but for Ayatas to be a skinwalker, and my full-blooded brother, my mother had to be a skinwalker too, since any brother would have gotten his only X chromosome from her.

  I shoved down on all the emotions, useless passions that were obscuring the rational, reasonable parts of me, the parts that might let me find my way through the maelstrom. It was unlikely that any of my family were alive. A demon called Kalona Ayeliski claimed to have sucked the blood of a woman I remembered only as Uni Lisi, a term of respect meaning Grandmother of Many Children, and possibly actually my own grandmother or great-grandmother. The demon had been one of the Sunnayi Edahi, the invisible nightgoers in Cherokee tradition. The demon claimed to have killed the grandmother who had taught me to kill. I had believed that the wo
man I remembered as Grandmother was dead. But demons weren’t known for telling the truth.

  “Like, how much older?” Alex asked. “Jane’s a woman. Women don’t like to talk about their ages.”

  I might have laughed or rolled my eyes, but this was deadly serious, vitally important, and my headache was still pretty bad. Eye rolling was out.

  “I’m telling you my history, my deepest, most personal story.” He looked at me now, his golden eyes intense beneath hawk-wing brows. He pushed away the fruit cobbler and bent his elbows on the table, his fingers interlaced. Long fingers, very slender. Familiar. I clenched my fists together beneath the table. I didn’t know the PsyLED cop who claimed kinship, but he seemed quiet, wary, contained, as if holding down emotional reactions until he could deal with them later, privately. Almost shooting me, a future confrontation with his boss about that attempted shooting, had to be weighing heavily on him, yet there was nothing of that in his demeanor.

  “I’m telling you this because I hope you are my sister and there is no way to prove or disprove that hope unless I share everything with you. Things I have not discussed with anyone in decades.”

  I nodded, that peculiar, Tsalagi chin jut of affirmation.

  “I was born on the Nunna Daul Tsuny. The Trail of Tears.”

  No one was eating. No one was even breathing.

  “My mother told me that my five-year-old sister had been killed by soldiers after she attacked one of them with a knife. It was the lie they told the soldiers to keep them from searching for her. I learned later that my sister had attacked a man who raped a Cherokee woman, and grievously wounded him. The leader of our clan had forced my skinwalker sister into the form of a bobcat and drove her into the snow to save her from the soldiers.” He knew too much. He knew things I didn’t. Or claimed things.