Shattered Bonds

by Faith Hunter

  Other claws sank into bark and wood. Opened mouth. Bit into back of coat. Knocked things on top of Lego.

  Medical supplies, I thought. He was trying to treat himself.

  Littermate heart is stopping, Beast thought, grief racking through us both. Littermate is becoming meat.

  No. I need two hands.

  Beast thought for a moment. Cannot stand on two paws on tree.

  Okay. We need to let him down. Not drop him. He’d break a bone and then he’d be dead fast.

  Is better than being dead slow.

  No. We still have three paws. Can we hold him in one hand and teeth and climb down the tree?

  Am not jaguar or leopard. Jaguar or leopard can walk down tree with dead prey better than Beast. Puma concolor can climb with dead prey. Can drop dead prey. Cannot walk to ground with dead prey. Call new/old littermate?

  I remembered the smell of big-cat in the snow. I hadn’t wanted to accept it, but I had known the truth of what Beast was saying now. Ayatas FireWind had been on the vineyard grounds. He might still be here, somewhere. Maybe close enough to hear if I screamed for help. He would know the call of a puma. He would know it was me. But the chances that he was close by were small. I hadn’t smelled him, not anywhere on my trek.

  To save Eli, I was going to have to shift into half-form, on this branch, without falling, without dropping Eli, and toss him over my naked shoulder and carry him to the ground. Yeah. That worked. I backed slowly, pawpawpaw, pulling Eli into place on the branch. Precarious but stable for now. His heart was racing, too fast. Stuttering.

  Beast, I thought. Half-form. With retractable claws on all four paw-feet and a full puma face. And fast.

  Beast thought a moment. Jane will hurt.

  Kinda figured that. Hurry.

  Jane will hurt like prey in fangs of sabertooth lion.

  I reached around the branch and sank my claws in. Go. And she was right. It was bad.

  CHAPTER 13

  My Blood to Your Blood. Your Heart to My Heart.

  When the pain eased and the shift was over, my snout was fully mountain lion. My arms were some funky form of puma/human and fully pelted. I still had my fangs in Eli’s jacket and was holding on with both hands under his arms. There was a lot of blood and he stank of near death. If he hadn’t had access to vamp blood in New Orleans, he’d be dead now already. I gripped the bark with my retractable back claws, let go his jacket. Pulled him up over my shoulder as I sat up. Straddled the branch, getting snow and bark in places I’d be sorry for later.

  With Eli over my shoulder and his blood dripping down my spine and through my pelt, I scooted to the trunk of the tree. Sinking my claws in, I pulled myself to a standing position. I was breathing heavily by the time I managed it. We were twenty feet up. At least. I gripped the tree, four-footed support, arms around it, bare boobs scraping on the bark. And I began the torturous descent. I was cursing steadily through Beast lips by the time I reached the ground. Relief swept through me like boiling oil, and I broke out in a sweat. I stumbled drunkenly through the snow, overbalanced by my partner, bark rash up my belly to my neck and all along the inside of my thighs. I opened the back hatch of his SUV and lay him gently on the floor space, shoving weapons and Eli stuff out of the way.

  Over the sound of my own breathing I heard a heartbeat. It was fast and irregular.

  I raced back to the tree and gathered up the medical supplies and slung the bow over my shoulder. I evaluated Legolas as I raced past. He had two arrows in him, the silver points buried in his chest. Silver was a deadly poison in vamp blood unless he was überpowerful or his master was handy. Not him. I sprinted on to Vampire Two and found him with a carbon fiber and ash wood arrow lower down, in his belly, the silver tip all the way through and out the back, the wound paralyzing but no longer poisoning, keeping him in a type of stasis the same way a stake would. “You’ll do.” I shoved the arrow deeper and grabbed his left arm. I ducked and drew him over my shoulder, into the same position recently vacated by my partner, and jogged back to the SUV. “I don’t know if you can feel while paralyzed by ash wood, but I hope this hurts like a mother,” I said. Vamp Two didn’t reply.

  I dumped him into the hatch area with my partner and ripped open Eli’s shirt, revealing gunshot wounds. Two chest wounds, one below his right shoulder, in and out, that had to have clipped the artery that fed his arm, and probably nicked a lung. The other was on his lower left chest; that probably took out a rib and his spleen and maybe a kidney. Its exit wound larger. Much larger.

  I tore open four of the next-generation XStat syringes and shoved them each into a wound, depressing the plungers almost simultaneously. The specially coated, biodegradable sponges shot into his body cavity and stopped the bleeding within seconds. But he was cold and his breath rate was too fast. Eli was in shock.

  Eli was already dying.

  He needed a trauma team and multiple transfusions and surgeries.

  Or vamp blood.

  Pulling one of my partner’s blades, I sliced Two’s shirt off and raked his inner arm with my claws. His blood smelled horrible. I hesitated and then licked a claw. The taste was even worse, burning my tongue.

  I spat it out, remembering the first time a sane-ish vampire caught my scent. The first time I smelled their blood, like sulfur and nitric acid, something caustic. Awful. And then Bethany healed me. Everything changed when I was healed by Bethany. Why?

  Beast likes blood. All vampire blood is strong. But not for littermate.

  There had to be a . . . a “come to Jesus moment” between paranormal predators before scent and blood taste were acceptable. Leo had accepted me and that made my scent acceptable to his people. I let Bethany heal me with her blood.

  I was the Dark Queen. That supposedly gave me power and gifts, probably accompanied by lots of things I should be able to do, unknown gifts. I was the freaking, dang Dark Queen of the fangheads. That had to mean that I could, theoretically, claim bloodsuckers. I’d done it once. With Edmund.

  I didn’t want another vampire servant.

  Eli’s heart skipped a beat. It stuttered fast. Skipped.

  I tore my wrist with my fangs, deliberately missing nerve and artery, and held the welling wound over the vamp’s mouth. I reached for the Gray Between.

  Skinwalker energies burst from my chest and rose around me. I reached for the magics that were mine and the magics that were other—witch and vamp—and gripped them together in my mental hands. Power strummed through me, heated against my palms. I pulled the magics away from the star pattern of my middle. They gave a soft twang and realigned into two figure eights, one in each mental hand. One blue-gray, one scarlet, both pulsing in time with my heartbeat. Okay. That was new.

  I studied the energies of life around me. Eli was the stagnant stink and dark reddish brown of death, with only flickers of living blue and purple. His life force had almost bled away. The vamp’s energies were darker, deep rose in tone, and smelled of ginger. Despite the ash wood in his belly, he was still undead. I touched one finger of my free physical hand to the vamp’s chest and tapped the vampire energies. They rang with a note like a fingernail striking a crystal glass.

  The first drops of my blood dripped into his mouth. A version of words that I vaguely recalled from Leo came to my mind. I snarled as best I could with my Beast-mouth, “My blood to your blood. Your heart to my heart. Your loyalty, I demand. Now.” And I reached for his mind. His heart.

  His soul . . .

  I ripped out the ash wood arrow. The vamp swallowed.

  His brain was a kaleidoscope of shadows and light, pinks and purples and a burst of what looked like glitter in black light. His name was Klaus. He was sixty-two years old, born in East Germany. He was weak. A lower-level vamp.

  I remembered the silver chain that once bound Leo, king of the U.S. vamps. I fashioned a silver chain of the Gray Between and wrappe
d it around Klaus’s energies. Tied it to myself, in my soul home. I realized that wouldn’t help Eli. I reached for Eli’s energies and braided a second tiny strand of my skinwalker magic to Eli’s will to live. “Just a minute or two,” I whispered. “I’ll break it as soon as you’re stable. I promise.”

  I held Klaus’s wrist so that blood dripped into Eli’s mouth. “Drink,” I pleaded. “Please drink.”

  The blood dripped in. I feared I’d choke him to death. A cold breeze swirled through the SUV, stealing what warmth there was. Ten drops into Eli’s mouth. Twenty. Finally Eli swallowed. He managed five small mouthfuls without coughing.

  I dripped vamp blood into Eli’s torn flesh at each of the wounds, watching as they closed. I sliced a cut along the vamp’s other wrist and went back to Eli’s mouth, feeding him. After three swallows, he turned his head away, grinding out the words, “God-awful. Worse ’an greasy grimy gopher guts.”

  A small gulping sound left my throat. “Gastronomically gruesome,” I agreed, the boil of relief simmering through me again. The vamp groaned and I shoved the arrow back into Klaus’s belly, rolled the vamp against the sidewall, and dressed Eli’s wounds by placing layers of gauze over the top of each. I secured them in place with stretchy wrap.

  “Sick,” he muttered. I rolled Eli so he could vomit, and my partner’s stomach emptied. The stench was blood and stomach acids. The vamp blood looked clotted and slimy.

  I wiped Eli’s mouth with his cold coat. It wasn’t very absorbent. “I’m getting you home. Hang in there.”

  “Silver shackles in the . . . metal chest,” he managed.

  “No time. I’m getting you home.” There were blankets and a down quilt and even an electric heating pad that ran on the car battery in the sidewall compartments, and I wrapped my partner in the folds and turned on the pad to combat the shock, which killed people faster than simple blood loss. Tucked his feet and his body between the crates and chests and loose gear, his feet higher than this heart.

  “Babe.” He stopped and exhaled slowly. I thought he had passed out. Then he finished. “Get clothes. You got . . . hairy boobs.”

  “If you’re looking at boobs you aren’t going to die.” Chuckling, I broke Klaus’s neck with a vicious twist, slammed the hatch, and raced to the front, where I turned on the SUV and set the heater to max. Then I negotiated a six-point turn and eased up even with the red Rover. I stopped and got out, opened the other driver’s door. Found a key fob in the console and tossed it in Eli’s SUV. With my partner’s knife, I sliced through the sidewall of the driver’s-side tires. Then I pulled through the dark and headed to the inn, calling Alex on the way.

  * * *

  * * *

  I felt the SUV cross a magical warning system when I turned into the snow-blanketed drive. The hedge of thorns was a half mile ahead and it dropped as I made the last curve to the inn. It was huge, the biggest hedge I could have imagined. The moment we crossed it, Lincoln Shaddock himself raced from the front porch and into the snow. He nearly tore the hatch off its hinges getting it open, and his wrist was already bleeding. He held it to Eli’s mouth. Thema, who had followed him into the snow, lifted Eli like a baby, side by side with Lincoln, carrying my partner inside. I had dressed as I drove, so I wasn’t an embarrassment to myself or anyone else. And when Bruiser opened my car door and stepped close, I turned and lay my head against his belly. And burst into tears.

  My honeybunch stroked my head and massaged my neck, which was unexpectedly pelted, and brushed behind my ears, all the while murmuring soothing sweet nothings. After too long a time for a badass woman with fangs and claws, I pushed away. He let me go.

  “I passed the outgoing team. Did you find them?” I asked.

  “Our team hasn’t arrived, and they haven’t passed a red Range Rover with two bad tires, but Kojo says there are fresh tracks in the snow that match that sort of damage. He thinks we missed them and expects to find them gone. The snowmobiles are trying to follow the tracks, but it isn’t likely that the attackers will stick to back roads when the county has kept the main roads plowed.”

  “Eli wanted me to take the time to silver cuff them.”

  “In which case they would still be there, or their backup would have rescued them already and Eli would possibly be dead. Don’t second-guess yourself in battlefield situations.”

  That sounded like Eli more than Bruiser, but I nodded and breathed in his scent, warm and citrusy and Onorio spicy. “There’s a vamp in the back. He’s temporarily bound to Eli. Eli shot him with an ash wood arrow in his belly and I broke his neck. He can be healed and bled and read.”

  “Good thinking.” He paused, his hand unmoving on an ear tab. “Temporarily bound to Eli?”

  “Yeah. Apparently as Dark Queen, I can do things with paranormal energies.” I gave him a brief description of what I had done.

  “That is very much like the way I bind with Onorio energies.”

  Which meant that I could, possibly, drain a vamp the way an Onorio could. Interesting. “Could you bind me? Could I bind you?”

  Bruiser frowned, thinking. “Doubtful. Leo wasn’t successful binding you, and I am not as powerful as Leo. Anamchara mutual binding might be possible.”

  “No, thanks.” I chuffed a breath and stood. “Love you, but I don’t need a third person in my brain.”

  Bruiser’s eyes moved down my body. “You’re injured?”

  I looked down and the tree rash had seeped through the sweatshirt in pinkish, bloody smears. “Nothing a shift to some other form won’t help.” I explained about the strange shift and the tree burn.

  Although his concerned expression didn’t alter, I could have sworn that Bruiser smelled amused.

  * * *

  * * *

  Inside, I ate a half-raw steak and trudged up the stairs to shower and shift and make plans. On the way home I had told Alex everything about the two groups of vamps in town, more to keep him occupied and not in a panic about his brother, and to give him something to do, than out of urgent necessity. He had called in online help in the form of Bodat, his gamer friend, to do research into Legolas. I was sure he’d have something soon.

  The shower water was hot and painful on the tree rash, but I let the pain center me and hold me to the now so I didn’t look at the water droplets of time. Droplets that might show me a way to keep my partner from getting shot. I kept my eyes shut and grieved and soaped and rinsed and let myself suffer. It was the very least I deserved.

  When I was clean, I gave myself to Beast and let her choose the form I’d take. I took that pain too, as my due, and ended up a Jane-faced, unfanged, hairless half human with hard, fixed claws and long black hair. I dragged myself back upright from the shower floor and turned off the water. Dried my more familiar, healed body and pulled on athletic undies and black Lycra yoga pants along with a tight tee that covered my skin but left no doubt that I was ready for battle. I looked pale so I put on lipstick, red, the color of the Range Rovers and the color of Eli’s blood. So I wouldn’t forget that Legolas was mine. Added my double shoulder holster with the matching crimson grips—battle ready. The holster chafed my skin through the thin material, but I didn’t care. I changed out the ammo for silver. Hair down, barefoot, I opened the door to the hallway.

  Ed stood in the hallway, waiting. He said nothing. I waited. He still said nothing. My tone noncommittal and uninflected, I said, “Ed.”

  The silence stretched. I waited some more. Finally, he said, “I fear that in getting me free, you have shown Shimon all your cards. He cannot be beaten. He will attack this house and kill us all.” His voice was broken, hoarse.

  “Follow me.” I turned and took the stairs at a springy fast pace that forced Ed to use his vamp powers to keep up. When I entered the central area I shouted, “Molly? Got a minute?”

  “I got a minute, Big-Cat,” she whispered, sticking her head around the wall from the
baking kitchen, “but if you wake up my babies I’ll skin you alive.”

  “Understood. Edmund seems to think that we’ve showed the big bad ugly all our cards and that Shimon will win. What’s your professional witch opinion?”

  Molly laughed, her red curls bouncing, body language looking innocent and prey-like, though her expression was definitely not prey. Her face was set in dangerous lines. “Not happening, Eddie. Not now, not ever.” She stared at my primo. Her scent was ripe and intense, the musk of an apex predator. She had been practicing her death magics and I wondered how many trees in the forest out back she had killed. “You look like you’ve been tortured, healed, and tortured again, my fanghead friend.”

  “I’ll live.”

  “Not really. Undead isn’t alive.”

  “I’ll take what I can get until my mistress and my sworn family are safe.”

  “Yeah?” She stepped around the wall, her hands fisted and a sprig of rosemary in her left. “You’ve been the prisoner of a mad vamp, possessed by his madder witch spirit. I’m guessing he left a little something-something inside your head. You gonna let me take a look?”

  “I’ll die true-dead before I give up the sanctity of my mind again. No. You’ll have to trust me.”

  “Trust?” She chortled as if he had said something witty. “Again. Not happening, Eddie. Not now, not until the Flayer is dead and eaten, though if we find a few days free, I could maybe create a detection working that might give us warning if you get a brain visitor.”

  “Yes. Thank you. Should you find time,” Edmund said.

  That shut Molly up. I could tell she hadn’t expected him to agree.

  Deep inside, Beast purred. She liked Ed’s scent and Molly’s scent and the words they volleyed back and forth like gunfire. I walked backward into the TV lounge, studying my primo as I went. Ed was silent, his footsteps following me, his eyes on Molly.