by Faith Hunter
Evan grinned at me through his thick red beard. “It’s dark. Vampire time. Edmund wants to talk to you,” Evan said.
Molly, half-hidden behind his bulk, grabbed my sleeve and tugged me away from the doorway. “We want to talk to you first. About my death magics.”
“No.”
“No what?” Molly asked her eyes narrowing. People didn’t tell the volatile redhead she couldn’t do stuff.
“You can’t use them to drain the vampires,” I said, hearing the stubborn tone in my voice. “You can’t guarantee you can stop draining, and you might take some of our people.” I thumbed to the bedroom doorway. I didn’t bring up Beast’s assertion that she could act as familiar for Molly. I didn’t know what would happen if we got busy and took our attention off Molly. She could kill everyone around her. I wasn’t risking her or the kids. Or my clan. “Or some of your people. Like your kids.”
Molly’s eyes flared brighter. “We have to—”
“And why are you letting them sleep with a werewolf?” I accused, deflecting her. “Are you nutso?” Yeah. Accuse her of being a bad mother. Get her mind off her death—
Molly punched me. Hard.
“Ow.”
“Yeah. Right,” she said. “Short, postdelivery mama hurts the big bad vampire hunter. You listen to me,” she practically hissed, stalking close, her face only inches from mine. She reeked of power and fury and I barely stopped myself from backing away.
Over her head, Big Evan was slowly shaking his head no. Whatever Molly had planned, he wasn’t in agreement with it. But he wanted me to be one to tell her no. Great. Make my life easy, why don’t you.
“I could kill the Flayer of Mithrans with my death magic, but yes, it’s hard to stop. However, I could drain them all a little bit, and then Bruiser could take out the leader. Between an Onorio’s magics and mine, we could take them all down.”
Evan continued to shake his head. Stopping instantly when Molly looked around. Coward.
I asked, “What do you do with the excess undeath/unlife energy when you pull their magics to yourself?”
“What?”
“You have to put the energy somewhere. Where does it go? Where did it go when you drained the vamps in the Regal?”
“I—I—What do you mean where did it go?” Molly demanded. And then her eyes cleared. “Son of a witch,” she swore. Her hands tightened; her eyes went wide and unfocused. She spun around as if looking for the missing magics.
Speaking slowly, I said, “Molly?” She whirled back to me, eyes wild. “That was a direct, face-to-face confrontation.” I continued. “Shimon has his own Onorio who nearly killed Bruiser. If they took out Bruiser, they could try—” I stopped. Bruiser had been wallowing in misery and guilt and that was not normal at all. Was my honeybunch spelled? I held on to that thought and returned to the discussion at hand. “If Bruiser was out of the picture, the Onorio could turn her attention to draining Edmund. And Ed might have had his brain rewired by the Flayer when he was being possessed and flayed. Our options are limited.”
“Okay. Options. Right,” Moll said, her eyes still too wide. “I’m listening.”
And she was. Sorta. “Edmund could challenge SOD Number Two to Sangre Duello. Or I could challenge him to the kind of fight I had with Titus and fight him outside of time. Shimon was a witch before he was turned, so magic would be allowed. But that might kill me before I killed him, because if he has timewalking magic, and I think he has some, he might be way better than I am. Or . . . we could just kill him in his sleep. Assuming he sleeps by day. Assuming we could find him. Or maybe the arcenciels can be convinced to attack and bite him all at once. I’ve negotiated for eight arcenciels to help us, the way they were supposed to in the fight against Titus, but I haven’t heard back. If Shimon has an anode nearby, he might be able to capture them. In fact, that might be what he wants. Or worse, maybe the time circle he’s had going somewhere is being powered by trapped arcenciels rather than witches. Arcenciels who’ve been trapped for so long that they don’t know about the new spell that frees them. And maybe his plan is to rule over time forever with the arcenciels under his magical thumb. And maybe he knows a counterspell and can keep them trapped. Shimon’s been around two thousand years. This might be a brand-new way to use arcenciels, to ride them through time.”
“You’ve been thinking about this.”
“Yeah. I have. Thinking is all I’ve had to do while I was trying to die. Thinking the long game, the way Leo used to, is hard. It’s like 3-D chess with four sets of pieces—white, black, red, and green. I suck at it. But I can see part of the boards. And all of them are deadly. And honestly, I can’t see how we’ll win against him.”
“We’ll win,” Evan said, sounding too confident.
Molly agreed. “In a direct confrontation with fangheads, with time to prepare, witches always win.”
“His brother could walk through time. Probably Shimon can too,” I said. “Time always wins when pitted against magic. And I can’t promise I’ll live through another timewalk long enough to kill him.” They still looked unconcerned. “He has witches at his disposal, or maybe even arcenciels. In a time circle.”
“And we’ll save them once we finish with the mustache twirler.”
“The what?” I asked.
“The evil horror,” Molly said placidly, “who wears a black hat, twirls his mustache, and says mwahahahaha, as he dips the good guy in acid or in a tank filled with hungry alligators.”
I frowned. The Son of Shadows was like that. Pure evil all the way. The creature had no redeeming qualities at all. Even Hannibal Lecter had been erudite and intelligent. Dexter had only tortured the bad guys. All bad buys had something or someone they loved or something they were passionate about, even if it was only their own bodies and needs. But Shimon was allowing himself to be altered, giving himself an exoskeleton that would likely be awfully ugly, awfully quickly. But . . . names. The names of the Flayer all meant something. I felt a chill, knowing I had missed something. Something important.
“What?” Molly said. “What are you thinking?”
“There was the dark blur with the flash of red in the background at the Regal.” I texted Alex to go over the tapes, see if he could spot the dark blur and identify it. I got back one line.
I’m like, 30 feet away, you know.
The kids are sleeping, I texted back.
As I read his reply, Molly got a phone call. And staggered. “Are . . . Are you sure?”
Big Evan tapped the cell onto speaker, mouthing, Our neighbor.
“Everything is burning, Molly. I’m so sorry. I called the fire department as soon as I saw the smoke, but . . . your house was mostly gone by the time they got there.”
CHAPTER 17
I Don’t Eat Family
“Shimon burned your house,” I murmured. Guilt punched me in the chest and opened a dark pit inside me.
Molly walked away and talked for another five minutes, getting particulars. But none of it really mattered. Shimon Bar-Judas had burned my BFF’s home. Molly had lost her orchids. Her big Aga stove. Evan had lost his home studio and all his instruments. The kids had lost all their toys. Molly was crying. Evan looked as if all his blood had pooled in his boots, face too white against the red of hair and beard.
The pit of guilt inside me grew wider and deeper.
As Molly was getting off the call, Evan’s cell rang. It was Molly’s mom. Frowning, he tapped his cell on too, and answered, “Hey, Bedelia, what’s going on—”
“The working got through the wards. The whole place lit up in seconds, a flash fire.” Molly’s mother was crying. “We’re okay. But only because of the old root cellar. We went down and through it and out on the creek side. We’re okay,” she repeated, whispering, “but the house is in bad shape. Lots of fire and smoke and water damage.”
Molly took Evan’s phone and tapped off the spe
aker. Privately, to her mother, she said, “We’ll be home as soon as the weather lets up. You, Carmen, the kids, and the animals go stay at Evangelina’s, okay? Put up a ward there. Attach it to the ley lines below the house.”
Evangelina’s house was sitting on ley lines close to a liminal line. Powerful. Very powerful. Any ward opened on that old house should withstand anything. The ley lines were how Moll’s sister had captured a demon and set a lot of the mess of my life in motion. Molly’s death magics had first appeared there, and to this day, nothing would grow there.
After a lot of magical strategy chitchat, Molly ended the call and leaned against her husband, her red hair against his broad chest. “I have to call the insurance company. Our rates are going to go through the roof. Which we don’t have anymore, it seems.” She sobbed once, hard. Big Evan pulled her close, tears in his eyes too.
I walked away. They were in danger because of me. They had lost their house because of me. My fault. Guilt, my old frenemy, clawed into my soul. “Jane,” Alex called as I moved through the empty inn area. I waved him away and made it to the front door. Yanked it open, the icy air instantly clearing my head.
A gong shivered through the air, through the floor, through the walls. Gong. GONG. GONG! The hedge of thorns around the house wavered and shook in a coruscating wash of light.
I raced outside. Big Evan thundered through the inn after me. Molly was on our heels, moving faster than I ever remembered. I stopped and they passed me. The ward bonged over and over, a steady thrum of dissonant notes, and I pulled on Beast’s night vision, placing all our people.
The witch twins were standing back-to-back in the snow. Focals lay at their feet: moonstones as big as my fist at Cia’s feet for the moon witch; Liz was a stone witch, and she had a huge, clear orb at her feet, quartz, maybe, and beside it was a two-foot-long multicolored crystal spire of tourmaline, as big around as my arm.
Shiloh raced at vamp speed from the side of the house, a popping smudge of movement. She threw her back to the shoulders of the twins, facing out. Cia made a little erp sound. Liz cursed. They hadn’t known she was here. I had forgotten to tell them, and it seemed Molly had forgotten as well. Shiloh dropped a strap over her head and shoulder and aimed into the dark with an AR-17. There were extra magazines in her belt, each holding thirty rounds. “Hi,” she said to the two witches. “It’s been a while, and I’m a little different nowadays, but you’re my aunts. I’m Shiloh, and what you can call a combo witch. Earth and a little fire. I’m making myself a conduit and giving you my magic to use while I keep you safe from human weapons.”
“But. You’re a vampire now,” Liz said, intrigue and horror on her face.
“I don’t eat family,” Shiloh said, amused and exasperated. “And being a bloodsucker doesn’t stop my magic.”
I loved that girl. Shiloh was badass. She looked fully healed from having her throat torn out. Always a plus. The gonging bonging continued, speeding up slightly. The ward over the house and grounds brightened and dimmed with each percussive stroke.
Molly dropped her back to the twins’ other shoulders, so they all four stood facing outward. Big Evan scuffed a ten-foot circle in the snow crust and took the north position. “We have air,” he said, speaking of himself, “earth-death, stone, moon, and earth-fire. Five of us. My power, my will to your wills.”
“My will to your wills,” the others repeated. Quickly they fell into that meditative state that synchronized their magics.
It wasn’t a perfect circle. They needed a water witch to make it perfect. But it was an Everhart-Trueblood grouping, and that made it powerful, linked by bloodlines and love. Which was the first time I understood that Molly’s family knew about her death magics. I was proud of Molly for telling them. It couldn’t have been an easy convo.
Big Evan pulled out a multitubed flute, the kind the god Pan always used in stories, and blew a soft, tremulous note. The circle flared up and the witches each took a step to their assigned places.
Edmund moved slowly to stand beside me. He wore a bandolier-style holster with two nine-millimeter semiautomatics and four full magazines of ammo. Double swords hung at his hips. He looked pale and scarred and so very not ready for combat. “My queen,” he murmured. My lips tightened in frustration.
On the snow-covered lawn, the witches sat and arranged their focals. Evan said a wyrd and the circle he had made in the snow blazed once, a soft white light. At each witch the light sparked once, changed color, and a tendril of energy rose to the center, where it met the others. They twined about and sent up a sparkling, rainbow-colored braid that converged on the ward overhead. The ward that was shivering sound and light across the inn’s grounds.
Eli joined me and placed a comms system around my neck. I stuffed the earpieces into my upright ears and adjusted the mic for my snout. He handed me my Dyneema, Kevlar, and anti-spelled armored vest, which I Velcroed on. Over it went the shoulder/spine rig that held three weapons, dual shoulder nine-mils and the Benelli M4 in a spine sheath. The hip rig with one nine-mil and vamp-killers with fourteen-inch blades on each hip. When I was weaponed up, he placed the Glob in my hand and extended le breloque. I pocketed the Glob but hesitated at the crown. This was one of the things the Flayer of Mithrans was after. I didn’t know if I should taunt him with wearing it a second time. But I reached out and took the crown. Placed it on my head. It changed shape and tightened, securing itself to my head.
“Thank you,” I said to my partner and my second. Eli was fully kitted out in cold gear and weapons. “You are not going out of the ward to reconnoiter,” I said.
“Yes, Mama. I’ll be good, Mama.”
Even I caught the sarcasm, but I decided to ignore it. “What does Alex see?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
Which was very bad. That meant the enemy had found all the security measures on the property and figured out how to avoid them, or they had mojo—magical or tech—that we didn’t have. I looked along the walls of the house to see Lincoln directing Thema and Kojo up onto the roof, each with long-distance rifles and tripods. He sent his other fangheads around the house into secure locations, spots I was sure he and Eli had chosen in advance. “The prisoners?” I called to the MOC.
“Secured and unconscious, Queenie. You see anything?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Mama!”
“Mamamamamama!!”
I whirled in time to see Lincoln Shaddock, Master of the City of Asheville and BBQ chef extraordinaire, catch both witch kids and swing them up in his arms. He carried the screaming children back inside and shut the door.
The gonging grew in sound, a painful cadence. I caught Big Evan’s eyes. Tapped my ear. He gave a truncated nod that was mostly just beard bumping on his chest like a half dozen red squirrels hanging on his jaw, flicking their tails. Evan changed out the Pan flute for a long, thick reed instrument and blew a note I could hear over the noise. The magic moved across the air, a heavy, cottony texture to it. The gonging sound decreased.
Into my earbud, Alex said, “I see two approaching combatants. They . . . Damn. They have an outclan witch priestess. She’s in robes like Sabina. And she’s glowing even on the camera feed. Like she’s leaking power.”
“Where?” Eli asked.
“Front door is clock heart facing twelve. She’s at twelve, about halfway down the hill. She’s under a hedge of thorns that looks like it’s made of blood, it’s so thick. The ringing attack on the ward seems to be starting from near the same place.”
His voice strained, Edmund said, “This outclan. White robes or black?”
“Black.”
“Aurelia Flamma Scintilla,” Ed breathed. “Not her given name. Not her surname. But her chosen name.”
In my earbud, Alex said, “Diving into the files for intel.”
“Copy,” I said into my mic. “Ed?”
“Yes, my
queen,” he said, almost too softly to hear beneath the awful gonging attack on the ward.
“Tell me everything you know about Aurelia.”
“What I know is gossip gleaned while I was back on the continent,” Edmund said. “She grew up in a tiny village outside of Rome in the late 1800s. She eschewed magic as evil and dedicated herself to the church. She was a cloistered nun until her convent was destroyed one night by a young rogue. Three of her sisters died. She killed the vampire, embraced her magic, and has spent the years since destroying Mithrans.”
“How many years?”
“Roughly one hundred and fifty in her quest to kill us all, though she is not a Mithran, not a Naturaleza, and not a blood-servant.”
“Then what is she?” Eli asked, checking his weapons. “What is she doing here?”
“Aurelia is a senza onore. A dark form of an Onorio, and an outclan priestess,” Edmund said. “Flamma Scintilla means flame spark, and she has a unique gift. Pyrokinesis. She is a Firestarter, a very dangerous one. I did not know she was in the States. And I find it difficult to believe that she is working for the Flayer. She hates vampires. She has no master, and only drinks from the Mithrans she kills.”
“Unless the Flayer has something on her or has someone she loves.” I thought about the fire at the NOLA vamp graveyard, the stones themselves burning. “Does Sabina know her?”
“Yes. They hate each other. And Aurelia is a far more powerful worker of magic than Sabina. Or George. Or Grégoire’s boys. Perhaps stronger than them all put together. If they hope to drain her, they would have to work together.”
“The timeline for the fires in NOLA. Is it possible she started them and still got here?”
“Barely. But yes,” Ed said.
The last time we ran into a senza onore, Gee had rubbed the blob into my hand as if that did something mystical. He said we two were the only ones burned by the senza onore spells, as we were the only goddess-born present. So did that make me more susceptible to senza onore spells? A little more uncertainty in my life was really freaking great. “So why is she here, tonight, with a master vamp?”
