Dark Queen

by Faith Hunter

  Beast nodded once. Stupid human move.

  “There’s food in the house. Call when you want to come home.”

  Home. To Jane den. With Eli and Alex. With Jane sick and dying. Beast snorted softly. Eli walked away.

  * * *

  • • •

  I woke up under the low tree. Human shaped. Naked. The sun was a scarlet wash of color in the west. There was a bag that looked waterproof hanging in the limbs of the tree just above me. I reached up and touched it. The bag was dry. The sand beneath me was dry. The air was cold and damp, blustery, but the sky was bright, the cerulean blue of sunset with a single star and a sliver of moon half-hidden in distant clouds. The island felt empty. The house had no lights. Everywhere was dark, silent. Deserted.

  I was alone.

  I rolled carefully to my feet and untied the bag. Found inside a pair of jeans wrapped around undies and a bra, three T-shirts for layering, and a warm jacket. Running shoes beneath them with a pair of wool socks stuffed into the toes. On the bottom was a vamp-killer and le breloque. And the Glob. Memories came hard and fast. Del dying. Katie in danger of dying. So many others. My memory of Leo’s head flying. Flying. Flying. Over and over. And time bending, bubbling, twisting. Changing reality. Changing every moment of the possible present.

  I blinked the images away, only to see them again, on the back of my lids. I had a feeling I would see them forever. Yet, atop that was the memory of Eli telling Beast that Leo might still live. That he was poisoned by an arcenciel bite. Things not in my timeline. I shivered hard in the cold wind. Studied le breloque.

  I had killed the emperor. I was now the Dark Queen of the vamps. De facto ruler of the fangheads. “This sucks,” I said to the empty beach.

  I pulled on my clothes. Braided my hair in a sloppy braid. I picked up the crown, slid it over one arm, took the vamp-killer and the Glob, and trudged to the house. There were no lounge chairs dotting the shore. No fire pit. No people.

  The island was silent. I was marooned on a deserted island? That would be a kicker, if I was stranded here. So much for being the Queen of the Suckheads.

  I climbed the steps to the house and found the front door unlocked. I kicked the sand off my shoes and went inside.

  The windows were shuttered closed, leaving the house dark inside. The furniture was cocooned under white sheets. The house sounded big and hollow and empty. It even smelled empty.

  “Beast? How long did you keep me asleep?” My voice echoed in the empty rooms.

  We grieved, she thought at me. Which was sort of an answer.

  My stomach growled. I made my way to the kitchen. Opened the refrigerator. The light inside came on, proving that the solar panels on the roof three stories above were still working. Which meant plumbing. A shower would be nice. The shelves inside the refrigerator were full of food and beer and wine. Boone’s Farm Fuzzy Navel. I chuckled and pulled the note off the bottle in front.

  It read simply, I love you. Come home.

  Bruiser was fine. That was good. I stuffed the note in my bra next to my heart. I removed the bottle and opened it. Drank it down. It tasted fantastic. Beyond fantastic. I opened another, wishing for once that I could get roaring drunk. Skinwalker metabolism wasn’t agreeable to a good roaring drunk.

  Brains are better, Beast thought at me.

  “Gack,” I said aloud, my stomach rumbling.

  Pig is good, though.

  I opened the freezer. The pig had been fully pulled and placed in zippered, gallon-sized plastic bags. Five of them, frozen hard. I stuck one under the kitchen faucet and let water run over it until it was soft enough to remove the meat from the plastic and then nuked the gallon of meat until it was hot. While it thawed and heated, I checked the food in the fridge, knowing the smell would tell me how long I had been alone on the island. The beanie weenies didn’t smell perfect, but I pulled them out and stuck them in the microwave when the pork was hot. Dumped the pig into the soup tureen on the kitchen island. That was when I spotted the card on the Carrara marble. Heavy card stock, folded over, red writing on white paper. It was the red of one of my lipsticks. Bloodred. Not so favorite anymore.

  The note was arranged like an upside-down pyramid. It read:

  Chère, I done left you rest of that pig you like so much.

  The Kid done left you a satellite phone. Eat.

  Call home. We come get you.

  Deon.

  I spotted the phone on the island too. Didn’t pick it up.

  While the beans heated, I carried the tureen around, snacking, and made a quick tour of the house. Someone had stripped the wet wallboard tape from the walls, reapplied fresh. There was no luggage left. No sign of blood on the floors.

  When the microwave dinged I brought the bottle of Boone’s Farm and the food to the front porch and sat down in the dark. Night had fallen fully. The surf sounded lazy and languid and soothing.

  I ate and drank. Watching the tide roll in.

  When my belly was full, I put the leftovers in the fridge and took a hot shower. The house was cold, but someone had left an electric blanket on the bed I had used, along with a set of sheets and my luggage. The blanket smelled like Molly. Eli had said that she was okay too. I pulled on sweats and the wool socks that had come with the shoes and wrapped myself in the blanket. I fell on my bunk and let sleep pull me under.

  I woke at dawn. Ate pig. Drank wine. I was halfway through the bottle when I saw a flash of a head flying through the air. Leo’s head. Memory. Intense as reality. Stark, electric. I blinked. Sobbed once, hard and harsh and dry. Eyes burning. Leo was in a blood box. He might not be true-dead. Or not exactly true-dead.

  A second image slammed into me. Titus’s head in my hand, then dropping to the sand.

  I’d killed him. It was what I did. I killed people. Beings. Sentient creatures. But I should have killed Titus the moment he walked up to the house on the beach, surrounded by his people. I should have drawn the Mughal blade and taken his head right then. Shoulda, coulda, woulda.

  Hadn’t.

  I finished the bottle. There were more. Bruiser had left me twelve, an entire case. The wine sat heavy on my stomach. Queasy. So I drank more.

  * * *

  • • •

  My second morning on the island in Jane form, I crawled from bed and walked naked down to the beach to swim. The air was warmer, eighties, but the water was cold when I dove in and swam deep. Halfway hoping I’d be eaten by a shark. I wasn’t that lucky.

  When exhaustion claimed me, I crawled up the shore and lay in the sun on the sand. Naked. Alone. When the sun threatened to burn even my golden-toned skin, I rinsed off in the outside shower and went in search of something other than pig. I found a baked fish in the freezer, next to a plastic container that was marked with the words RICE PUDDIN’. I microwaved them both. Ate the entire fish—which had Deon’s touch on it, lemon and herbs—and the whole container of rice pudding, which tasted like coconut and rice and dates and cranberries. They shouldn’t have tasted good together, but they did.

  I drank another bottle of wine, deciding that I’d drink a bottle per day from now on, to mark off the days as human. But I didn’t feel so well. And I was tired. Grief could make a person tired. Right? Right.

  * * *

  • • •

  Days passed. A helo flew over once and I waved it off. It left. I was okay. I just needed privacy. But instead of feeling better, I was feeling worse. A lot worse. After the last bottle of wine, I knew it was time to call for extraction. I’d been walking on the beach at sunset, the empty bottle in my hand, swinging. I’d tried singing. Quit when my own ears protested. I was a mile along the beach, heading back to the house, when the sickening feeling hit me, a wrenching nausea that tossed me to my knees, retching. I vomited up everything I’d eaten for dinner, hard and nasty. Onto the sand.

  It was full of blood. />
  I used to throw up blood when I bubbled time, but it had been days. Weeks.

  “Beast? What’s happening?”

  Jane is sick. Jane may be dying.

  Relief zipped through me like lightning. I wouldn’t have to keep on. I thought about being sick. It’s the snake in the center of all things, isn’t it?

  Jane is broken. Jane has darkness growing in her. Beast sent me a vision of my insides.

  I have cancer, I thought, wonderingly.

  Jane is dying. Jane has broken time. And time has broken Jane.

  Well. How ’bout that.

  * * *

  • • •

  The helo landed on the beach two hours after dawn.

  I climbed on and accepted the ear protectors. Put them on and strapped myself in. Gave the pilot a thumb up and settled back to not enjoy the ride. I was weak and nauseous. Pretended to be fine. Eli met me at the landing site, took one look at my face, and grasped the bag I carried. Led the way to the armored SUV. Headed to HQ, which was where I told him to go. We rode in silence, his battle face on, giving nothing away. Midway there he said, “Babe.”

  “Don’t,” I said. “Please don’t.”

  He nodded and threaded through traffic. Parked in front of HQ.

  “I’ll be just a minute,” I said.

  “I’ll wait for you.” The way he said it held overtones of, I’ll wait for you forever, no matter what. I didn’t reply to the tone. I didn’t have forever. I opened the bag that had been waiting for me on the backseat and removed the small weapon. Stuck it in my waistband at my spine. Just in case. Picked up the vamp-killer and strapped it to my thigh. Stuck the Glob in a pocket. Also just in case. I shut the door.

  HQ looked the same as I climbed the steps. The outer doors opened. The inner doors opened. The smell inside was different. No blood. No sex. No scent of fading funeral flowers or parchment. There were vamps here, sleeping, but not in great numbers and not the ones from before. Instead there was a long line of humans waiting. Wrassler limped toward me, his hands out, a welcoming smile on his face. I held up my hand to stop him. “Not now,” I said softly.

  Wrassler’s face fell and he gave me a truncated nod before stepping back in line. No one frisked me. No one said anything about the weapons on my person. Everything was different.

  Silently, I took the elevator to the basements, all the way to sub-five. I was armed with a fourteen-inch silver-plated-steel vamp-killer with a crosshatched handle, the Glob in my pocket, and a small .32 pistol loaded with silver-lead rounds. I didn’t need anything else for this.

  The doors opened. The lighting was low. Brute was sitting at the feet of the Son of Darkness. One of them, anyway. Joses looked pretty good for a heartless lump of vamp-meat. Stinkier. Hairier. Brute had been biting him enough. Joses was halfway to being a werewolf-vamp bag of bones.

  “Hiya, Brute.”

  He panted at me, his white coat catching the low lights with an almost ethereal glow.

  “Leo’s in a box of blood. He isn’t in charge anymore.” I pulled the vamp-killer. Dropped the bag. “Okay with you if I finish this?”

  Brute chuffed. Tilted his head, tongue lolling. He looked at Joses, his eyes staring at the vamp’s wrists and ankles, where he hung, suspended on the wall. Brute chuffed what might have been a warning. Looked at me. Turned his massive head back to Joses and whined, a single plaintive note.

  I walked past the white werewolf and positioned myself.

  “You will not.” The words grated out, harsh as stone on stone.

  I looked at Joses. He was looking back at me. Eyes focused, black pupils in yellow orbs. Sane-ish. As sane as the old ones ever got. Talking. Giving orders.

  “Say again?”

  “You will not. I live. Forever.”

  “Yeah?” I reared back, the vamp-killer in a two-hand stance. Joses’s shackles snapped. Shattered. Fell away. He surged off the wall, spider-fast, pushing, bowing, springing, leaping in explosive force. Right at me. Beneath the vamp-killer blade.

  Time slowed into a battlefield intensity. I saw/smelled/felt/heard the pop of displaced air. Vamp speed on meth, a rupture in reality. And he grabbed me. Claws sinking deep. Inside the vamp-killer’s reach. Beast shoved into me, claws bursting from my fingertips, fangs ripping through my jaw.

  Too late. Too late.

  The Son of Darkness opened his mouth. Unhinged his jaw. I reared back, my claws piercing him. Shoving him away.

  Foolish kit. Not defense. Must attack, Beast thought.

  A werewolf roared. I jerked to the side. Not far enough. The SOD’s five-inch fangs sank deep. But there was no pain. He was healed enough to have vamp saliva. Analgesic, I thought. His magic shot into me. Struck at my core, at the five-pointed magic that resided there. My mind flickered on and off. All I could think was . . . How . . . ? And then even that was gone.

  Joses sucked deeply at my torn shoulder. Moved his head to my throat. My blood felt heated and languid. My muscles softened. My joints relaxed. My arms came up around him.

  Suddenly I was in my soul home. Lying on the damp, cool gray stone. Staring up at the ceiling, domed overhead. Hayyel’s wings fluttered where they rested, draped down the walls.

  Beast appeared over me, her golden eyes glowing. She lay atop me, her cat warmth soothing. And then she slid into me, falling through my soul, to the place where we were one. And I was back in the basement. Things were happening around me. Roars. The ground was shaking. People were screaming.

  Beast lifted my hand away from Joses. Slid it into my pocket. Curled my fingers around the Glob. Beast eased my hand out of the twisted cloth and raised my fist. She pressed it into the wound on Joses’s shoulder where my/our claws had pierced him. Into his blood. The Glob that held a shard of the Blood Cross and part of the spike of Golgotha woke. Blazing hot. Attacked. Sudden as a pouncing mountain lion. It gripped Joses’s magic. Tore it free. Joses stopped. Frozen.

  The memories of Joses Santana opened. And I fell into the sensation and person of Joses—Yosace, Bar-Ioudas. I saw, I felt, I knew . . . knew . . . the moment the two Sons of Darkness killed their sister and spilled her blood onto the pile of bloody wood. Onto their father’s dead body. Chanted as she died. Chanted and spoke wyrds so ancient, even Yosace didn’t know the meaning.

  Knew the moment the betrayer opened his eyes. Took his first breath. And attacked.

  Knew the feel of Ioudas Issachar’s fangs buried in Joses’s own throat.

  Knew the moment the sons finally trapped their father and chopped him into bits with a stolen Roman sword.

  Knew the moment they walked the streets of Jerusalem and tasted the first kiss of blood.

  Knew when they killed. Killed again. Innocent blood, so full of life.

  Then hiding. Always hiding. Always running. Always going back and back and back again to the pile of bloody broken wood, the pile of the Blood Cross, that had given them this undeath.

  Fleeing the Christians who sought to kill them.

  Escaping the hell that the Romans brought upon the rebellious city. Taking the ones with whom they had shared their gift of undeath.

  Reaching safety. Settling in Rome. Later in France. And later still in Spain. Traveling the world, from Africa to the steppes of what is now Russia and China. Drinking from the Khan who would change the world. Giving Genghis power and success in return for servitude and safety and enough humans to satisfy them. For centuries. Hundreds. Thousands. The power behind the conquest of the world. Then back to Europe. And—

  The memories stopped. I returned to myself.

  The Glob was so hot in my palm that I could smell the flesh there scorching. I blinked. Holding the Glob in his blood, I pressed the Son of Darkness away from me. Hands gripped his head and pulled back. Other fingers gripped his jaw and pulled down. I smelled Eli. He hadn’t stayed in the SUV. Of course he hadn�
��t.

  The fangs of the Son of Darkness slid from the lower curve of my neck.

  Beast rolled me over and to my feet. People backed away fast. I picked up the vamp-killer I had dropped when I embraced the SOD. I raised the blade and swept it down.

  And took the head of the Son of Darkness, Joses Santana, Yosace Bar-Ioudas, the son of Judas Iscariot. There was almost no blood. The body quivered. Shook. The fingers clenched and opened. I held up the head. Its eyes blinked. Focused on me. “Huh,” I said.

  The lips moved, though there was no sound. “I live,” Santana’s head said.

  I considered that.

  Beast thought at me, Vampire head is tasty.

  I did not want to know how she knew this. I looked over my shoulder. “Brute? You hungry?”

  The werewolf stood and padded to me. Sniffed at the head of the creator of the vamps. Brute chuffed. Santana’s mouth opened in horror, a silent scream. I tossed the head up into the air like a basketball. Brute leaped. Caught it in his fangs.

  “When you’re done”—I indicated the pulsing body on the floor—“be sure to clean up any mess.” Brute chuffed again, muted through the hair of his dinner. “We don’t want anything left to regrow.” Brute nodded and dropped the head to his paws.

  I looked around at the humans who stared at me in fear and horror. As if I was a monster. Which I was. All except Eli, who looked vaguely amused. To the others, I said, “Go back upstairs. Leave the wolf to his dinner. When he’s done, burn the bones and scatter the ashes.” They turned and fled.

  I walked to the elevator and the doors closed behind Eli and me. My last glimpse of the SOD was Brute eating all the soft tissue of the face, in preparation to ripping off the jaw and eating the brains. I had been with Beast when she ate skulls and brains. I knew how it was done. Messy but effective. She sent me an image of Titus’s head as she ate it. Gack. The elevator rose to the foyer, the two of us silent, me trying to decide what I needed to do next.

  There was the undying heart in the hands of the NOLA witch coven. Wherever that was. I figured I could leave that to Eli.