by Faith Hunter
Eli canted his head, acknowledging my words. I finished the cocoa. Eli offered me a hand. I looked at it but I had to clear the air first. “I know how dangerous it is to shift to a smaller mass. I was afraid someone would try to stop me.”
“I’m not that someone. Don’t play games, Jane. Not with me.”
“If I wanted to do something really, really stupid, you would let me?”
“We’d talk over options. Weigh threat levels. Discuss backup. You claim you want family and clan. But when it comes down to the battles we should be fighting together, you go rogue. Bruiser was livid. Molly was furious. I was pissed. Still am.” His words were hard, with sharp angles, meant to cut.
I wasn’t good at apologies. Or doing things with others. I had run away from my people when I got sick. I had run away when I planned to shift to owl. “I didn’t know if I could shift to owl with the tumor in my belly. I was afraid I’d die and you’d be here to have to watch.”
“So you ran off alone. Again.”
“I told Alex what I was doing and where I was going. I carried the cell phone.”
“Not good enough.”
Viciously, I said, “I don’t want you to watch me die, you idiot. It’s tearing you apart watching the cancer eat me.”
Eli slanted a look at me, one hard and cutting. “You ran away. You always run away.”
I tried to cuss but the words stuck in my throat. I managed, “I’m sorry.”
Eli nodded, a tiny dip of his chin. “You should always make use of backup if it’s available. It was available and you went out alone. Don’t.” His tone was steely. Softer he said, “However, what you did was brilliant, flying with a trackable cell. It was a good plan. We know where you went. Is the last location you circled for so long the place where EJ is?”
“Yes.” I took a few deep breaths. And accepted Eli’s hand, which was still out, in offering. He pulled me to my feet and steadied me. The pain swept through me like waves if waves were made of blades and broken glass. “Gimme a minute,” I said. I held the Anzu feather hard against me. The pain ratcheted down slowly.
“You’re right about one thing. I do not want to watch you die.”
“Okay. So I don’t die. I stay alive.”
“Good plan.” Eli opened his cell. Punched a number. He said, “Yeah. We’re heading back in. Last coordinates are where she tracked EJ. Shimon has him. She confirmed that there are two groups of fangheads, competing.” He listened for a bit and I didn’t try to overhear. I was too busy breathing. “Copy.” He closed the cell and picked up my gobag and the crystal. “What’s this?”
“Soul. I’m pretty sure. We’ll need to free her but . . . I don’t know how. She’s trapped but that isn’t her arcenciel form. It’s a mermaid form. And I’m pretty sure she isn’t sane in that form.”
“Yeah. Copy that.” Eli studied Soul in the beam of his flash.
“If we find a rift in the dimensions,” I said, lying by omission, “we can try breaking the crystal and tossing her in.”
“Yeah. We’ll do that. Just go out and find a rift. Though I guess a rift isn’t any more impossible than anything else we’ve done.” He tucked Soul in his pocket and slid an arm under my shoulder and around my back. Our heights were pretty much the same, but it worked. He flipped on a strong flashlight and shone it across the snow.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do this.” I took my first step. Agony like boiling oil passed through my middle. I took a second step. And a third.
It was nearly dawn when we got back to the inn. Eli used his cell continuously, and by the time we got back, a battle plan had been organized. But I still hadn’t found Beast. And I wasn’t able to fight for EJ. I would be a liability. Which just sucked.
I lay on my recliner with the heated blanket on high, sipping chocolate with CBD oil in it, trying to find Beast, trying to find my half-form. No such luck. I watched the team as they filed out the door, taking the kids with them to drop off with Bedelia and Carmen at Evangelina’s old place, the only safe place the witches knew. Gramma, Carmen, and the two human sisters were going to keep watch over them. The café would remain closed for the morning breakfast business. Asheville didn’t slow down for a little snow, and the locals without power usually came out to Seven Sassy Sisters Café en masse when snowfall hit. Snow days were big moneymakers. But not today.
Brute, who had been injured in the vamp attack, was on the sofa, curled around himself, healing with were-creature speed. I smelled vamp blood on him and in him. Once again, despite the hatred between weres and vamps, they had saved him. But he was deeply asleep. On one shoulder lay the grindylow, also asleep.
Outside, as the dawn grayed the sky, the vamps went to their hideouts for the day and the witches and humans took off on snowmobiles to the main road, which was freshly plowed. Box trucks that had been parked at a nearby gas station pulled up and the smaller vehicles were loaded in. I hadn’t even thought about needing to get around on plowed and clear streets and then back onto packed snow. “Good thing someone had a brain,” I said.
Understanding my comment, Alex said, “Box trucks were put in place by Eli and Shaddock during a break in the weather. Eli also has the helo on standby. And the sheriff’s office and Buncombe County Emergency Services have been informed that the Dark Queen’s people are searching for the Flayer of Mithrans. Your brother called. He said to let him handle it. I told him to . . . um . . .” Alex’s face went red. “I told him to do something anatomically improbable.”
My lips twitched into a smile before it faded. Pain brushed through me as if pushed by a broom, and I forgot to breathe. When I could speak, I griped a whisper, “I’m useless in this form. No wonder they left me behind.”
“Nah. You’re just a lone wo . . .” He stopped as Brute rolled over on the oversized sofa, lifted his head over the sofa arm, and gusted out a sigh that stank of dog breath. “Lone cat,” Alex said. “You’re just a lone alpha cat trying to lead a pride of alpha cats.” He grinned over his keyboard, curls dangling in his face. “Sucks to be you. Lemme play my tiny violin, Your Majesty.”
I threw a pillow at him. But I felt a lot better.
* * *
* * *
It was Alex and me in the house, alone—sleep deprived and ornery on Alex’s part; sleep deprived and in serious pain on my part—as the box trucks and then the snowmobiles moved our people around. I was hoping Beast would come back online, reboot herself, and help me into my half-form. If not, I’d have to change to Beast and then I’d be useless until she let me shift into half-form. I hated to admit it, but Beast had as much control over my shifting as I did. Maybe more, since we had spent more than a hundred years in her form.
On the screens and over the comms, we listened to the team travel, which was next to impossible on roads that were mostly but not always plowed and some that were not designed for anything bigger than a pickup truck. It was midday before they were in place. And by then, the cars I had followed as owl were all gone.
The team moved in to find a Halloween fright house complete with scattered viscera and gore, five beheaded vamps, six dead humans, and enough blood spatter to qualify the house as a testing ground for crime scene school. Legolas wasn’t there. Neither was EJ.
I could practically feel Molly across the miles, disintegrating. “Alex.” I made a cutting motion across my throat. The younger Younger cut the mic so we could talk privately. “Ask Eli on a private channel if EJ’s clothes or his marble locator device are on site. If not . . . I have an idea.”
“Copy that.” Alex opened a private channel to his brother.
I lifted the crystal prison that held a mermaid-predator creature captive. Soul was frozen inside the four-inch-long quartz crystal, her finger-fins wide open, her lips parted, her scaled body trapped in the midst of a twisting motion, like an eel trying to escape. Slavery was evil in every way.
But,
for EJ . . . I twisted the chain, sending Soul’s body twirling with the decorative quartz.
I would do horrible things to save my godchildren.
I’d even try to ride a trapped arcenciel, one I considered a friend.
I was probably going to hell for the things I had done. I had killed and maimed and destroyed so many sentient beings, all in the name of the greater good. But I’d do it all again to save EJ. I pressed the Anzu feather against my belly. The pain was breaking through even that now. To stay human-shaped, I’d soon have to resort to morphine, and the drug would shut down my brain. So I’d be saying goodbye to human Jane again, but just in a different way.
And then another option occurred to me. I examined it from every angle I could think of.
“Janie,” Alex said, sometime later. “No clothes. No marble in a mile-wide circumference from the target location.”
“Tell Molly I have an idea how to find EJ. Tell her I need her to stay calm and in control until I see if this works. Tell Eli to clean up the site,” I ordered, which meant burning it to the ground. The vamps would burn to ash. The humans would be an unsolved murder case. “Then please find Girrard DiMercy and ask him to come by.” Gee loved a good fight. Where had he been?
“Copy that. Relaying.”
I worked through my idea as he chattered on the communication system. What might have been a long time later, I woke to find Alex kneeling at my side. “Janie?”
“I smell chocolate.” My voice croaked and I cleared it and tried again. “I sm—”
Alex pressed a freshly filled thermos into my hand. I drank until I felt a measure of warmth fill my cold middle. I asked, “Is Gee here?”
“No answer on his cell. Eli says he hasn’t seen the big bird.”
“Not that I’m surprised.” I sipped the chocolate. “I’m going to need your help. You got pics of the circle Big Evan made in the main room?” Alex nodded. “Well, you’re going to reproduce it.” Alex raised his eyebrows in questioning disagreement. “It’ll be fun,” I said.
“I’m not a witch.”
“Me neither. There’s no law about a nonwitch preparing a circle. Besides, I have witch magics right here.” I tapped my belly. “They gave me Dudley.”
“Uh-huh. Fine. You drink chocolate and CBD oil. I’ll get the equipment.”
“After you re-create the circle, find Molly’s silver shot glass/chalice. We’re going to summon Girrard DiMercy.” Forcibly if necessary.
Alex frowned, thinking it through. “Because he signed on as part of Clan Yellowrock, you can call him to come to you.”
“That’s the theory. Last time I tried it I got into his head, but he, more or less, told me to shove it.”
“This should be interesting.” He stood and placed a hand on my head as if in benediction. It wasn’t the first time he had done that. I had a feeling he was praying for me. He dropped his hand and left the room.
I looked at Brute, whose odd blue-crystal eyes were staring at me. “I’m going to try something. If I need help, are you game?”
Brute closed his eyes and faked sleep. Stupid wolf.
* * *
* * *
I lowered myself onto the pile of cushions at the north point of the talcum powder circle and made sure the fringe and tassels on the pillows didn’t overhang the talc. The floor was cold and my body couldn’t handle prolonged contact with it, so Alex had gathered pillows from every room and placed them inside.
Situating the Soul crystal on the cold floor in front of me, I crossed my legs yoga style and tried to find a comfortable position. There wasn’t one, and I still hadn’t found Beast to let me shift into half-form. I knew she was inside me somewhere, because I could feel her panting, but she wasn’t speaking to me. She probably knew what I was thinking about doing, the idea spawned by being owl—though owls didn’t spawn.
Animal humor, but Beast wasn’t buying it. Not at all. Silent and distant and I didn’t know if it was pique or damage from taking owl shape.
Alex placed the shot-chalice in my hand, the burning candle in a candle stand on the floor at one knee, and the blood-drawing tray near the other, before stepping back and away. I closed the circle with the last of the talc, dusted my hands into the air, and wiped the residue onto my sweat pants. I stared at the talc clouds in the air. Would that damage the working? I was way messier than a witch, but then I didn’t have talent, power, or craft, and I was as likely to kill myself as accomplish what I wanted. I decided to ignore the dissipating talc fog.
I opened and prepared the blood-drawing stuff and cleaned one finger with alcohol. I held the shot-chalice over the flame and was surprised at how fast the silver heated. “Shoulda gotten a potholder,” I muttered.
“Beg pardon?” Alex drawled. There was a hint of snark in his tone, and he was leaning against the wall to the TV room, ankles crossed, arms crossed over his chest, cell in one hand, recording. He wore a hip rig with two nine-mils. He was a pretty good shot. Better than me, these days. He was dressed in hiking boots, tight jeans, and layered shirts. His too-long curly hair fell over his forehead and his eyes looked a brighter green than normal. Alex looked like . . . Well, wow. Stinky the Kid had grown up. He’d gotten buff and tough and kinda cocky . . . and . . . looked like a male model. An unexpected gush of pride welled up in me, though I’d had nothing to do with the transformation.
“If something happens to me, you take care of the others, you hear?”
“If something happens to you, Eli will beat my ass, so make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“Ouch!” I dropped the silver shot-chalice and it landed on a pillow, upside down, as I shook my burned fingers. The shot glass was sterling, so I figured the shallow bottom was as useful as the deeper bowl on the proper side. I stabbed my finger with the lancet and said a bad word. Alex chuckled, sounding as wicked as his brother. Dear God. What was I going to do with two of them? I squeezed my finger over the shallow silver bottom and blood filled it quickly, then started to run everywhere. I applied pressure, but it didn’t stop. “Stupid cancer,” I said. “Now my blood isn’t clotting.” And I was breathless and nauseated and . . .
Brute wandered in from the TV room and flopped on the cold floor, head on one ear, tongue lolling, watching me sideways. Stupid dog.
“Girrard DiMercy,” I said. “By my blood I call you.” The blood in the silver vessel didn’t boil, but it did warm a little. For the space of maybe a minute nothing happened. So I picked up the mermaid in my bloody hand and said, “Girrard DiM—”
“By the feathers of Artemis, what are you doing!”
I looked up to see Gee hanging off the wrought-iron chandelier overhead. The chandelier was swinging and looked as if it might fall and hit me.
“Are you trying to kill us all?” he went on in his vaguely Spanish accent. “Do you know how many arcenciels are in the area? Three! Three of the flying goddesses, searching for a juvenile that someone sensed. And the three are in contact with others.” He said of the crystal, “Who have you trapped?”
I placed the crystal on the floor. Tucked my bleeding finger into the tight space between thigh and calf and used my body weight to apply pressure to the tiny cut. “Soul, but I didn’t trap her. She was captured while stuck in mermaid form and didn’t try to free herself and was carted off by a vampire. You missed the battle.” I didn’t add that if he had been here things might have gone very differently. “I got her back but I don’t know how to free her. The arcenciels owe me for reneging on Leo and the Sangre Duello. I want to collect. She’s my bargaining chip.”
“You want the arcenciels to free Soul?”
Brute snorted as if he thought that was funny.
“Yeah. And then help me rescue my godchild.”
“Have you not bothered to inspect Soul?”
I frowned and lifted the chain to study the trapped mermaid. “What am I looking for
here?”
“Her left leg,” Gee said, as if I was stupid.
I held the crystal to the chandelier; something inside caught the light. A silver-toned circle was around Soul’s ankle. Fin. Whatever. It was tight, cutting into her flesh. Small blisters ran up the scales of what would have been her calf and knee, then thinned and vanished. “Okay. I see it. Is this why she can’t find her dragon form?”
“Yes. No one will help her. No one will save her. No one can save her. She was punished by the Arcenciel Council for multiple infractions; for shifting the timelines enough to give Leo a faint chance for life, when they had decided to allow him to die. When she refused to assist them to go back far enough in time to destroy the Mithrans before they could be born. When she helped you, against their advice. And when she failed to keep their age-old enemies, the salamanders, from the Earth. They decided the infractions had piled high enough and they punished her.”
I didn’t know or care anything about salamanders. I cared about my godchild. “And if I let her go? Break the crystal right now? Will she go crazy and bite everyone in sight?”
“She may. Or she may die. Soul has two choices for recourse. She can help the arcenciels destroy the origination of the bloodline of the Sons of Darkness, or she can dive through a rift and be saved. She refused the former option. And there are no rifts available to her.”
“Why not?” I knew the answer, but I wanted to hear it from his lips.
“All the others are buried beneath the oceans, lost in the deluge that resulted at the end of the last ice age, or surrounded by Mithrans or they open into the middle of a mountain. The arcenciels have been cut off from their world for millennia.”
My entire body stilled. Even the pain seemed to pause for a bright, shining moment. Slowly, I repeated, “‘Surrounded by Mithrans.’ That’s why they want the Mithrans all dead? Because the vamps have access to a rift?”
