Dark Queen

by Faith Hunter

  I was certain I wasn’t breathing. Certain that my heart wasn’t beating. Del was my friend. Had been my friend. Del was dead. Or could Leo’s healing blood potion save her? How good was it?

  Sabina said, “Aloisio Esposito, tercero of the Europeans, has challenged Pellissier’s secundo heir, Grégoire. The bout will begin in five minutes, to allow time for blood removal. This will be the last bout of night one of the Sangre Duello.”

  I knew about Aloisio. This was going to be bad.

  I slid unnoticed into the shadow of one of the wood-beam roof supports. I reached up and gripped the two rubies and the gold nugget together. My other hand went into a pocket to grip the Glob, though I didn’t remember putting it away. I prayed a wordless prayer, begging. Did God really hear the ones who fell away? I had personally fouled a baptismal pool full of holy water. Would he hear the prayer of someone with so much blood on her hands? Surely it was God that had sent Hayyel to me. Unless the angel was hanging around my life to exact heavenly justice on me at some predetermined point. I didn’t know, and I feared that my faith had grown thin and worn and was full of holes.

  * * *

  • • •

  We stood on the sand.

  Aloisio Esposito, tercero to Titus, or, as some vamps called it, troisième, was third in line to the crown of the Europeans, the current Master of the Cities of Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon, Marrakesh, Casablanca, and the Balearic Islands—basically Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. He’d been fighting for centuries, had a head count of more than a thousand names—humans and vamps—and he was nearly as old as his emperor. Aloisio was not a pretty vamp; his face was scarred by pre-turning sword cuts and his back was rumored to be marked by the scars of whip lashings. But he had vibrant, caramel-colored eyes and he was tall and slender as a reed, with well-defined shoulders and a tapering back. He walked like a racehorse, with a long, rangy stride and a slight bounce in his step. Aloisio Esposito had not lost a first-blood bout in centuries. He hadn’t lost a death match in, well, ever.

  Sabina did not announce anything or ask about weapons. She said nothing as they approached the central octagonal.

  Grégoire and Aloisio were both wearing black, their matte fighting leathers new and well armored. The death bell rang, the note pure and clean and deadly.

  The attacks were so fast I could hardly see the movement of the blades, glistening in the dim glow of the lights mounted above us. They clanged, clanked, shushed as blade slid upon blade. Blood flew in scarlet drops. Grégoire’s hair was stained scarlet. Aloisio’s neck was bleeding. Just above it, his earlobe was nicked and missing a wedge. Step, step, step, feet silent in this dance of death.

  Weapons a blur.

  I wasn’t breathing. The Glob flashed with a blistering heat.

  In the same instant there was movement in my peripheral vision. Flashing.

  I dropped. The blade thunked into the pillar above me, right where my eyes had been. Perched on my toes, I whirled. No one was there. Looked back to the duel. It was even bloodier. Splatters flying in the air. Splatters on the sand. One landed on my face, cold vamp blood.

  I grunted, my eyes still whipping around the space, away from the duel, which was in its seventh second, searching for anyone who looked wrong, who wasn’t watching the fight with enough attention, or with too much attention. No one looked out of place or guilty. My eyes slid to the side, refusing to focus. And I realized someone was beneath an obfuscation spell. Bancym M’lareil? I pulled on Beast-sight and the rubies heated in my hand. I saw the form of the woman on the far side of the sand, hidden beneath the witch working. Now that I knew where to look, she was slender and muscular, arms akimbo, swords at her sides. I let go of the rubies and she vanished from sight. Had Dominique been using the ruby to keep track of Cym? Yeah. Made sense. Fast thoughts. Fast as the blades.

  I glanced at the duel. Eleven seconds.

  Our witches were farther back on the sand, not close enough to help. This one had gotten inside the hedge of thorns. Had to be in the moments when the hedge was dropped so we could come and go. She had walked over the outline of the hedge of thorns without Molly seeing her, which meant she had come in with Titus, her witch energies absorbed among the vamps.

  A thump sounded. My eyes flew to the battle. Grégoire was on his back. Aloisio stood over him. My heart fell through the sand beneath me.

  CHAPTER 19

  It’s Poisoned

  Grégoire rolled away, swift as thought. Aloisio bent over. His guts spilled out onto the floor in a bloody, reeking, gagworthy slither. Black and scarlet, like eels and raw meat. Aloisio dropped to his knees. Grégoire rose and whipped his sword in an arc. Aloisio’s head rolled to the side.

  Grégoire bowed to Sabina. He was a bloody mess but still standing, his enemy’s intestines in a coil around his ankles.

  “Golden,” the camera wolf muttered.

  “Results of this duel are acceptable to the Onorios,” Brandon said, his voice emotionless. But I could see the strain on his face. He had sworn to Grégoire. The twins loved Blondie. This had been the hardest one he had watched, knowing that if his master died, he could not avenge the true-death.

  I stood and pulled the knife from the wooden support. It was the length of my hand and fingers from tip of blade to tip of hilt. It was old and not well cared for, dried blood in the crevices. I sniffed it and caught the stench of humans and vamps and magic. Death spells in it? I looked around but couldn’t spot the witch anywhere. I regripped the rubies. Nothing. She had moved.

  Sabina clapped her hands three times and said, “The Sangre Duello will recommence one hour after dusk. For now there are food and beverages here and below for the humans. The Mithrans who wish to sup before sleep or before departing must hurry. Dawn is nigh.”

  Grégoire, stepping gracefully out of the intestines, walked off the octagonal and toward the stairs to the beach mansion. His footprints were bloody and as he passed me, I realized I was smelling his blood. A lot of his blood. I swept an arm under his and supported him to Leo’s room. The MOC followed me and there was a lot of harried French, staccato orders, too fast for me to pick out words. I eased Grégoire onto the bed and Leo fell on his friend, tearing his own flesh to heal him. The bottle of healing blood potion was on the mattress beside Leo’s knee. It was nearly empty. I had no idea if there was another bottle or not.

  Grégoire met my eyes with his blue ones and said, “My people have bound Dominique in silver and placed her on the sand for the dawn. You will not save her this death by taking her head.”

  “I won’t save her.” I moved away and went looking for the witch.

  * * *

  • • •

  I didn’t find the witch, but I told Lachish what I had seen and she was searching the house and grounds with a version of a find-it spell. Molly was in bed, grumpy but resting, only because I picked her up and carried her inside, to bed, and set a guard over her. She could get up to pee. She could have food and fluids delivered. That was it.

  Dawn was breaking and the screams of Dominique could be heard across the island and far out to sea probably. I’d never heard such horrible screams. But I didn’t go look. And I didn’t shut my ears to the sounds of wails. I found the courage to check on our own dead and wounded. Del was on Dacy’s bed with her mother, one of the Robere Onorios, and three humans, her naked body cradled against Sabina, the outclan priestess doing some witchy shamanistic thing over her that looked vaguely familiar and totally scary. Sabina’s eyes were closed and she was speaking in a language I didn’t recognize.

  Del wasn’t undead. She wasn’t alive either, not breathing, no heartbeat, her body gray and mottled all over, rigor mortis setting in. Her fingernails and toenails were perfect, a blaze of scarlet. All I could think was that she had gone for a mani-pedi without me. And that thought brought tears to my eyes. I pulled off the chain with the two rubies and carried them to Sabina, hold
ing them out. Saying nothing. The gems dangling, twirling. They were batteries. Maybe they’d help Del.

  The twirling slowed. Stopped. Without opening her eyes, Sabina reached out, taking the gems. They sparked and the motes within took on a different formation. “They will be returned,” Sabina said, her voice a monotone.

  I shrugged helplessly and backed out of Dacy’s room to look in on Grégoire. Leo had him on the bed with a dozen humans. It was a big naked mess of blood and sex. Ditto on the backing away.

  Edmund was cuddled between Gee and Katie and three humans, asleep, Ed’s arm in an inflatable cast, his thumb wrapped in gauze and supported by shaped metal strips. They were all naked. Something else I didn’t need to see. I shut that door and went to feed my face. I was starving. Deon had changed into short-shorts tight enough to fit a small child and his wife-beater T-shirt was stretched across his torso, sequined in rainbow hues with a unicorn on the front.

  I stole a serving platter and loaded it up with enough bacon and eggs to stuff a great white shark, took a place alone at the long dining table, grabbed some utensils from a basket of knives, forks, and spoons all standing upright, and started eating. A brown arm and hand reached around me and placed a teapot and an empty mug beside the platter. Eli took the chair beside me, holding a tiny cup of espresso. I gave him the stink-eye at his lack of food. I knew what that meant. He’d eat mine.

  He stole a piece of bacon. Ate it. I said nothing. He stole another one. Ate it too. Then a third. Around the slice of bacon he said, “They couldn’t turn Del.”

  I stared away from the food and out the windows at the pink sunrise, my appetite temporarily throttled. Tears gathered in my eyes and then dried. They were trying to make her an Onorio. Very few survived that transition, and the ones who did were never really the same after. The transformation was mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical. I liked the changes in Bruiser. A lot. But that didn’t mean that Del, if she lived as Onorio, would like herself.

  Eli took another piece of bacon. “You’re letting me steal your food,” he said.

  “It’s poisoned. I’m letting you get your comeuppance.”

  “So we’ll die together?”

  Del wasn’t dead. Not yet. Maybe she could be saved. I ate a few forkfuls of eggs, forcing them down, thinking. “Okay. Not poisoned.”

  “I love you too, Babe.”

  I frowned. Deon brought me a plate of pancakes with butter on top and syrup that drizzled down the sides. Protein and pancakes. Heaven on earth. “I might have to marry you,” I said to Deon.

  “You and me? Oh! Let’s include Ziggy. We’d make beautiful brides! A threesome walking down the aisle together.”

  He sashayed off.

  Eli shook his head, bemused. “You do know how much you’ve changed my life, don’t you? And you’re the smallest part of the weird that my life has become.”

  “Weird is fun. Keeps you on your toes.” Weird might keep Del alive.

  He stole another piece of bacon. I turned the platter to make it easier for him to eat from. Eli smiled. Took a knife and fork from the upright basket and started eating. “Beast okay with me eating from your plate?” he asked.

  “Beast thinks of you as her kit. I’m surprised she didn’t take the fork and feed you.”

  Eli burst out laughing.

  * * *

  • • •

  Five minutes before the Europeans landed for the night, I was in my whites again. Edmund had insisted on directing my dressing, and because he was in so much pain that he had woken before sunset, I let him—though I put on my own undies, a white uni, and my boots all by myself. He worked with Deon and Ziggy in the rest of the dressing experiment, including a gold turtleneck under doubled gorgets, Queen Bitch’s makeup (too much and all of it glittery, I was sure, though I hadn’t seen myself yet), and weapons (lots of them). Edmund, working mostly one-handed, had braided my hair into a fighting queue with a crown of stakes. I wore the Mughal blade in its scarlet-velvet-covered scabbard, two long swords, and blades all over me.

  “I’ll clank as I walk,” I complained.

  Ed gave me a look that disagreed. “You will be perfect.”

  “No. You will be magnificent,” Ziggy said earnestly. “And though QB will be dreadfully jealous to have competition, after seeing you, I may create a JY ensemble for the next drag queen competition. I’ll show a lot more breast, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “And my pants will be a G-string under leather chaps.”

  Ziggy was currently wearing crinkled gray linen pants and a gray hoodie out of some slick slubby material like flax. Unisex clothes. Lots of makeup. Blinged-out flip-flops. I shook my head. He kissed me on the cheek. “I’ll look stunning, Legs. I promise I’ll do you proud.” He held up a mirror to me. I looked like a different woman.

  Ziggy had applied golden and sapphire shimmer to my lids, a sparkly gold eyeliner over Cleopatra-style black liner, mascara that made my lashes look a mile long. A dusting of golden shimmery cheek color, red lipstick, and the pièce de résistance, lines back from my eyes and cheeks like whiskers, drawn in shimmery gold. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that none of it would matter when I fought. “Thank you. I look amazing.”

  “Of course you do, honey chile. Everything I do is amazing.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I didn’t go in for the first two rounds, instead sitting with the Kid and Champ in the production/security room, studying the low-light and infrared cameras for evidence of a witch. The two rubies had been returned by Sabina when she woke, returned without comment. I hadn’t asked if Del lived or died. I was too chicken. But I’d placed the rubies onto the chain at my neck and they had realigned to my magics the moment I held them. Batteries. Maybe boosters too. We didn’t spot a witch under an obfuscation spell, but what we did see was grim.

  Katie stood in the center octagonal ring on the sand, her bastard sword held in a backhand stance. She wasn’t the Katherine I met when I first came to New Orleans, a confused, olden-day vamp lost in the modern world, nor was she the Katie who had risen nearly insane from a box of blood. This Katie was vibrant, steady, her power shooting throughout the room, so electric that Titus himself winced in surprise. So strong that I could feel it in the cramped room below.

  Katie said, “I accept the challenge of Postumus, who seeks the head of my love and my master, Leo Pellissier.”

  “Who is Postumus?” I asked, not remembering the name in the long list of combatants.

  In a dead voice, Alex said, “Marcus Cassianius Latinius Postumus. Founder of the Gaelic Empire in 260 or so.”

  He would be old. Skilled. Devious. My heart tightened in my chest.

  The bell dinged. A bearded vamp stepped forward, muscular, short, a powerful barrel of a man.

  Four seconds later, Katie was down, her foot nearly severed, her throat sliced from ear to ear, and a stake in her chest. Her opponent was dead, both arms severed and his head across the room, but Katie was in bad shape. She was carried up the stairs in a dripping bloody sheet. Leo’s people won the first match, but with Katie down and out, we may have lost the Sangre Duello.

  “You okay?” I asked the Kid.

  “I’m finer than fine,” Alex answered, eyes on his cameras, his kinky hair sticking to his sweaty face. It was hot in the closet, with all the equipment running and no AC. “Or as good as I can be without energy drinks, mainlining espresso and Clif bars.” I said nothing. As Sabina talked to Titus and Leo, their voices coming through the windows and not the system, Alex said, “You let Eli fight.”

  “Your brother didn’t leave me a choice. He said yes.”

  “You coulda coldcocked him and carried him from the line of fire.”

  I nodded slowly, knowing that Alex could see me from the corner of his eye. “I could have. I didn’t.”

&nb
sp; “You wanna tell me why?”

  “Eli wanted that fight. He chose a good weapon. Something she wasn’t likely to have fired. I had read the dossier on the woman.”

  “Not an acceptable reason.” He turned his head and met my eyes, his brownish ones darker in the night. “You. Let him. Fight.” It was an accusation, the words widely spaced and venomous.

  “He misses it, misses the adrenaline rush, the heightened senses. You know it. I know it. I thought this was a good choice. The safest choice.”

  “That asshole coulda shot him in the head, not the chest. Eli coulda not worn a vest. My brother could be dead.”

  “I know. I screwed up. I’m sorry.”

  Alex nodded, a minuscule gesture much like one Eli would make. “Don’t let it happen again, Janie.”

  I smiled, my lips stretching for the first time since Eli was shot, knowing that I had no control over Eli’s actions at all, but not wanting to say that to Alex. “I’ll do my best.” I tapped one of the screens. “Soul. On the outer edges of the island. What’s she doing?”

  “Walking the periphery of the island. She’s been doing it since the EVs came ashore.”

  “Okay.” I wasn’t sure what Soul was doing or planning, but there wasn’t much I could do to stop her.

  “Anomaly.” He stabbed a different screen. “There.”

  A slender shimmer moved up the stairs to the second floor and proceeded to the third floor.

  Alex said, “Go.”

  I pulled on Beast’s stealth, gripped the rubies, and raced after the Cym-shaped shimmer.

  A camera wolf caught my movement and followed.

  The smell of magic hit the air, faint but harsh as tar—a curse being cast. As the scent blazed out, I could see Cym, standing on the landing at the third floor, glistening beneath the obfuscation spell, which she couldn’t hold strong while casting a curse. I was ten feet from her and at least six feet below her. She raised her arms. The prickle of magic blazed out. There wasn’t time.