by Faith Hunter
Instantly the stone and its components heated, began to suck the power from the Flayer.
Something grabbed my wrist. It wasn’t the Flayer.
It was the charcoal shadow. It formed into a vaguely humanoid shape. Female. Small. The shape of a child. The . . . the soul of a child. His sister. She opened her mouth and laughed silently. She touched the flayed strip on my shoulder and slid into me. Inside of me.
She ripped and tore at my mind, her claws leaving flashes of the two millennia of memories, of the slavery that been her life: pain and blood and violence and pleasure and torture shackled to her brother. Quick still shots of torture chambers, of pleasure temples, of dying enemies, of war and misery. Men and women broken on the rack, dead by plague, skinned, dissected while screaming. Dismembered. Roasted to death. Thousands and thousands of humans and vampires and witches and weres she had helped to kill, against her will, at first. But later with glee, dancing on their mangled bodies.
And further back, to the beginning. The sacrifice that had brought her father back from the dead. Her brothers bending over her as she bled out on the holy trees. Shimon. Eating her alive. Stealing her magic. Stealing her soul.
Her manacles were broken now, her mind a mad, gibbering violence with the freedom to destroy. Her hatred wanted vengeance on the world that had allowed her to suffer so long.
I shoved the horror called the shadow back. Away from my mind.
And we fell into my soul home. Beast and I were suddenly there, in the cavern. With her.
She was human-shaped, naked, spindly, with wild red sclera and huge pupils like a vamped-out vamp, but she had no fangs. She was . . . Not. Not a human. Not a vamp. I didn’t know what she was, but I was stunned from the images of her past, and I hesitated a second too long.
She slashed at me with claws that hadn’t been there a moment past. Blood flew from my forehead. I dodged. Far too late. Hit the stone floor in a rolling fall.
She was spirit made flesh, here in this place. She was the sister of the Sons of Darkness, sacrificed to bring Judas Iscariot back from the dead. She was the power the Sons of Darkness used to create vampires. She was the beginning. The Origination. The title thrummed through her mind and into mine.
She was trapped in my soul home with me. With Beast. Here we could die. But that meant so could she. Too slow, I moved to my feet.
Beast attacked the shadow. Claws and fangs and solid muscle of killing energy. She dragged the wild girl to the floor of the cave and savaged her. Snarling and growling.
The girl grew talons and stabbed them all into Beast’s body. Impaling my other half.
Beast screamed.
I tried to move toward them but my feet were stuck to the cave floor. My body wouldn’t move. I looked down. Dudley was hanging out of my middle, from the wound given me on the surface. Dudley was a glowing star-shaped tumor. It stank like a charnel house, an open sewer, and rotting fish, all at once. I gagged.
Beast screamed again.
The shadow was killing Beast. If Beast died here, then Beast was lost to me forever. I’d be alone. And I’d die of Dudley. Moving fast, I shoved Dudley back into my abdominal cavity with one hand and held my insides in place. This had the added advantage of stopping the bleeding as I applied pressure. In the other hand, I was already holding the blade I had used to kill a man when I was five years old. The handle was antler, crosshatched, the blade of good honed steel. But like in a bad dream, I was paralyzed; I couldn’t fight. I could only hold Dudley and the knife.
Beast screamed again.
Desperate, instinctively, I drew on my skinwalker energies and wiped my blade through my blood. Splatted it onto my feet and legs. A peculiar heat raced through me. Flicking the knife, I flung my blood onto my torso and arms and face. I could move but I had taken too long. Beast was dying. I lurched to the fighting pair and brought down my blade into the throat of the girl. She pulled her talons out of Beast and stuck them into me. I couldn’t breathe. I was dying. Beast was dying. In the physical world, the Son of Shadows was wrenching my head. My vertebrae popped. He was killing me. But here in my soul home, we’d take the shadow with us.
Letting go of Dudley, using both hands, I cut through the shadow’s throat. Oddly, there wasn’t much blood. Her eyes met mine in surprise. As if she hadn’t known she could be hurt. She snapped her hands, breaking off the talons. Leaving them inside me. She scrabbled on my hands. Plucking at my fingers.
I levered the blade through her spine. Bearing down. We fell to the floor. My blood puddled over her as my blade ground through. Clinked on the cave floor beneath. The light in her eyes faded, dimmed, and went out. I grabbed the head by the hair and swiveled on my knees to Beast. My Beast was breathing fast and shallow. Her blood ran in hot rivulets everywhere. I pulled Beast’s warm body onto my lap, grunting with pain as we bumped Dudley and he fell out of me. Beast’s blood drenched me, mixed with mine. The scarlet pool beneath us spread.
“You can’t die,” I said to her. Beast’s eyes began to glaze over. “Hayyel,” I called. “Do something! She can’t die!”
“Beast killed you, and you killed her, when you took her body that first time,” his soft voice said. Hayyel stood at the mouth of the tunnel that led to the underground waterfall. He was beautiful and gentle and glowing. “That first mass change was too great for either of you to survive. But you merged and found accord. You both lived.” He stood there, unmoving, hands clasped behind his back, wings folded and invisible. I wanted to kill him for the lack of help he gave.
Beast panted, her breath softer, faster, in time with mine. Her blood stopped running. So did mine. The world swirled and darkened. We were sitting in a sticky pool of her life force and mine, mixed and cooling and growing tacky. We . . . we were both dying. I collapsed to the side, pulling her dying body with me.
“Don’t go,” I whispered, raking my fingers through her pelt.
The memory of the first time I saw Beast blossomed in the air between us.
I reached in and yanked open the Gray Between.
Tossed the head of the shadow to Hayyel. Startled, he caught it, his eyes going wide. His wings spread and shook. He curled his fingers around the head of the shadow.
I sank into Beast.
Blinked. Tried to focus.
I was in two places at once. I was in my soul home, dying with my Beast. And I was on the cold stone of the crevasse, with the Flayer of Mithrans, dying. He was standing over me, his body broken and bleeding, the Glob still in his brain. My vamp-killer was in his hand. He lifted it high, arm back. Ready to take my head. My throat was crushed, my neck broken. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t feel my body. Couldn’t do anything.
From the far side, Bruiser leaped at him. The Flayer dropped the blade, whirled, and lifted a defensive claw. In one smooth motion, he ripped out Bruiser’s throat.
Bruiser fell to the crevasse floor beside me, his hand near my face. His blood pulsed hard and fast. There was nothing left but vertebrae. No creature except a vampire could survive that. I’d had friends die from this kind of wound. His eyes met mine. His fingers curled once and went flaccid. His pupils went wide, spreading like the night. Bruiser was dying. Beast was dying. I was dying. This sucks, I thought.
Bruiser’s mouth opened. There was no way he could speak. He had no breath and no larynx. Yet he spoke. In the cadence of the Flayer of Mithrans, he said, “Tribal woman. You will give unto me three things: the iron spike of Golgotha, the crown of the arcenciels, and the heart of my brother. If you do this, your man will live. And so shall you.”
I considered it for all of half a second. Considered giving the Flayer the key to time and to control of the arcenciels. The key that might give him back his shadow. Might take him back in time to his own origination, and . . . fix the broken spell that had failed to bring his father’s mind back when his body rose from the dead. Suddenly I understood. That.
That was what the Sons of Darkness had always wanted. Not only to bring back their father’s body but also to bring back his mind. With the exception of the Sons of Darkness, all vamps were insane when they rose, even Judas Iscariot. The long-chained were just insane longer. Had Judas been a long-chained? If they had known how to help him, would their father still be alive? Had they killed their father too soon, when he rose as a killing machine that ate his human victims?
If the Sons of Darkness found a way back, they might give vampires the ability to timewalk from the beginning. Might be able to eliminate the ten years of the devoveo altogether.
That was what the arcenciels wanted to avoid at all costs, even to the utter destruction of human civilization.
No. My mouth moved, soundless. No way. We’ll all die first.
Brute collided with the Flayer. Roaring. Werewolf fangs ripped into him. They went down, snarling, shouting. The smell of blood was strong on the air.
Instantly I was back in my soul home. The Gray Between was open all around us. And I was inside Beast’s body. “Don’t go,” I whispered again. “Don’t go.”
“Beast is best hunter,” she said aloud to me. “Beast is better than Puma concolor and Jane.” In the deeps of our soul home, her body healed. Mine did not.
* * *
* * *
I came to, slowly, smelling Edmund’s blood.
I was lying on the ground, eyes open. A heavy mist filled the air, rising and condensing and falling, dripping, dropping water sounding all around us—splatting on fallen trees, plopping on stone, plinking into water. A symphony of nature. A roar sounded, so loud it hurt my ears. The light changed, so brilliant that pain rammed through my eyes.
Beast?
Beast is here. Jane must shift. Jane is dying. Beast will die with Jane.
Yeah, yeah. Sure. I attempted to shift. Nothing happened. I got a feeble breath. A faint hint of air moved in my throat, explained by the scent of Edmund’s blood. He had gotten some into or onto me, healing me enough to be able to breathe. Go, Ed.
I remembered the sight of Dudley hanging out of me. Remembered the talons left inside me by the shadow. Remembered the popping sounds as my neck broke. I was so screwed. But I did get a second slow breath. There was that.
Beast and I were lying near the rift. Blue water glowed in the night. In the drips of its moisture, I saw the future and the past. Options. Possibilities. Some not so horrible, some . . . dreadful. And none of the possibilities I could see would prevent this. This moment. This death. Time, that wonderful weapon, was useless.
Around our body, the Gray Between glimmered. Waiting.
To my side Edmund worked to save Bruiser. But Bruiser was pale, too pale, too white with blood loss. I watched as the man I loved was dying for trying to protect me from the Flayer of Mithrans. He had come to save me and I was already dead or close enough not to matter. So we both died for . . . nothing?
Beside him was a skinned vampire, Tex, with a stake in his belly, waiting for another master vamp to come heal him. Beyond Tex was the female vamp, the one from the cave. And Stacey, the little witch. Also skinned. Dying. Two vampires, a witch, a white werewolf with a grindylow clinging to his back, an Onorio, and a skinwalker on the floor of a crevasse, dying, lying beside the exoskeleton of a Son of Darkness, the Flayer of Mithrans. He was headless, limbless. At his side were his arms and legs, twitching.
This time, the shadow wasn’t here to carry his parts back to him. The shadow was dead. Brute had Shimon’s head, his jaws clamping down and spreading the crack I had started in the exoskeleton skull.
Eli knelt and put a cervical collar onto my neck, then half lifted me in his arms. I felt the stricture of bandages and sticky tape, and my middle burned. Eli had tried to put me back together. I wanted to chuckle but could only make the feeblest of breaths. But I caught the smell of more vampire blood. Of Kojo and Thema. Tasted them on my cracked, dry lips. They had made me drink their blood. If I had been human, I’d be bound to them and to every other vamp who had fed me to heal me over the last few years. And so would my people.
Leo had bound me and Beast had bound him. But my people, they had never been bound by the blood of the MOC. More important, Beast and I had broken Leo’s binding.
Only a master vamp could break a binding, could keep her people from being bound by a strong vampire. Only death or a master vamp could shatter bonds. Or me.
Understanding bloomed, another layer, as if I finally understood all the questions of my existence in this moment of imminent death. I understood that I was the Dark Queen, had always been the Dark Queen, from the very beginning, from the moment I first touched le breloque and it recognized me as its own. But the words didn’t make it past my lips, falling away into silence without enough breath to speak.
Was the Dark Queen the sacrifice that led to a safe future for all the paranormals in the world? Is that what I had always been? A body to die?
“Babe,” Eli said gently. “You still with us?”
I grunted, too soft to hear, yet he did. Ranger ears.
“Helo is on the way, but the cleft is too narrow for it to land. Thema and Kojo went to get the helo’s rescue litter and scoop stretcher and more climbing gear. We’re going to have to haul you out.” He hesitated. “It’s going to be bad.”
I had worked with search and rescue in the mountains before. Being taken out in a rescue litter or a scoop stretcher would be a long, arduous, painful process. And time-consuming. And time was something I no longer had. “Ne’er easssy,” I managed.
He laughed, some foreign emotion on his face. Maybe grief. “Now that I know you’re conscious, is this a rift?” he asked me.
“Yeessss,” I breathed.
“You said that if we ever find a rift, we should break the crystal and free Soul. You want to watch?”
“Sssssure.”
“Go ahead,” Eli said. He shifted me slightly to see the hot pool.
If I hadn’t been dying, I’d have screamed with the movement. As it was, my vision went dark until I managed a breath. Shaddock leaned out over the blue water. Without hesitation, he broke the crystal of quartz and instantly dropped it into the water. He leaped back to safety.
From the corner of my eyes, I watched as Edmund performed cardiac compressions on Bruiser. My heart was breaking. But something wriggled in the back of my mind. Something about the rift. Unlike the other things that had come clear, I couldn’t find it, whatever it was. The fleeting memory was gone. Important. It was important.
From the water, Soul leaped high, in partial mermaid form, pearlescent teeth gleaming, her legs ending with huge fins instead of feet, her fish frill wide. She landed with a broad splash. I caught a glimpse of horrible scarring up one leg and all along her body on that side, as if Soul had been hit by lightning or burned. The scarring led to one ankle where a thin braided strip of silver alloy was linked, burning her. I had thought it was jewelry, but it was a prison. Holding her in human and fish form. Soul was still being punished for helping Leo, or trying to. For not letting the arcenciels go back in time. Probably for other infractions that I didn’t know about.
Soul broke the surface of the water, her silver hair streaming back. “You freed me from time,” she said to Shaddock.
“Reckon I did,” he said back. “But you can thank our Queenie for that.”
Above the pool, Gee perched in his Anzu form, preening and batting his wings in the rising and falling steam, like a bird. There was a small scarlet-winged lizard on his shoulder. I hadn’t gotten around to talking to him about that. One of many things I might never get the chance to do. The lizzie was staring at Soul, his tongue flicking out and in, tasting the mineral and blood-laden air. Gee said, “If the silver cuff were off, she could go through the rift. She would heal.”
“How do we get it off?” Shaddock asked. “I could—”
“Wait,” I w
hispered. Shaddock paused. Soul’s part-fish, part-human face froze in what could only be called fear. “I claim my boon,” I said to Soul. “Heal Bruiser.”
She tossed a spray of water into the air and studied the droplets as they fell. Without looking I knew they were moments of time. “You would trade your boon for a single life?”
“I’m nothing but a sacrifice. Right?” I whispered.
“You are what you fight for,” the Anzu said from overhead. “Not all sacrifices die. Some suffer and live and make the world a better place.” And wasn’t that a cheerful thought. The Mercy Blade flipped a wing and a long Anzu feather dropped from him to the crevasse floor. Eli picked it up and pressed it to my middle, over the wound where he had taped Dudley in place. My pain eased slightly. Not enough. But anything helped.
“Heal Bruiser,” I repeated, the words barely a breath. “I’ll owe you a boon.”
“It is too late. His soul is ready to depart,” Gee said, “ready to shatter the earthly bonds.”
My own soul shriveled inside me.
“With le breloque, you could have all the power of the world,” Soul said. “You could go back and keep all this from happening. You could go back to your father’s house and save him from the white men who killed him. You could stop the Trail of Tears. You could create the world that could have been. Or you could give it to me. Allow me to rule.”
Pain slithered through my insides like a ball of snakes. It took two tries but I managed to say, “No one should have that power. Not even the arcenciels.” I breathed in, fighting the pain. “So I’ll just take my chances, like I’ve always done, and pray and hope God’s listening.” Or Hayyel . . . Or . . . I’ll go to water, I thought.
The memory surfaced, like a whale rising through the ocean, shoving everything else aside. The rift had been called the Waters of Life. Who had used that phrase? I couldn’t remember. But Waters of Life sounded like . . . healing.
The way of the Cherokee was harmony, and to achieve harmony with others and with nature, we went to water. So I’d go to water here, and I’d take Bruiser with me. And Beast. The little witch. Tex. I’d take them all. I told Eli what I wanted to do. What I wanted him to do.
