Dark Heir

by Faith Hunter

  My cavern was damaged, as if fire—or lightning—had left soot and char all over it, black and gray and dirty, with the undamaged wall showing through in places, white and palest of greens and creamy grays in what looked like strange symbols, nonpatterns that I didn’t recognize right at first. I tilted my head and walked around the pit, studying the shapes, and they resolved into hundreds of representations of the Blood Cross scorched into the walls at every angle, as if the lightning and the cross had been spinning around, engaged in a dance—or some arcane form of combat.

  I held my right fist up to the wall. The crosses covered and overlapped the tracery image of veins left from the injury I had suffered to my hand, the injury of the wyrd spell Santana had thrown at me. I’d never been completely healed of it, and, perhaps the wound had made my spirit and my soul home susceptible to further damage.

  Directly overhead was more white and dark, this time in the shape of wings, white wings and dark wings, as if a snowy owl and a crow fought there.

  From the far wall, I saw a flash of light and felt a burning shiver as if from the lightning, smelled again the odd scent, strong for a moment, inorganic and acidic. Though I had never smelled it before, I identified the smell. Limestone burning. My cave walls were being burned by the lightning. I understood what I was seeing and smelling. The sliver of the Blood Cross, the diamond, and the lightning were doing . . . something . . . in reality, and it was affecting me there, in the Gray Between. And perhaps in yet another reality where light and dark, chaos and order, were fighting for supremacy. Or maybe in another time, another moment.

  Lightning flashed again, a sear I felt on my skin, hot and burning and then gone.

  The shape the lightning left behind was of the cross itself, not the sliver that I carried, but the portion that Sabina kept safe in her lair. I remembered the cross, the way it had felt in my hand, the wood unshaped, tightly grained, the two pieces not much more than rough stakes, splintered ends smoothed and oiled. The wire that wrapped the two pieces, shaping them into a cross, was metal, green with verdigris. The cross had been weighty, much heavier than it appeared, and old. Ancient. It had been made from the three broken crosses that the sons of Ioudas Issachar had used to bring their father—dead and buried—back to a semblance of life. And thereby they created the first vampire.

  Another flash of light burst, this almost directly overhead, near the imprint of the wings, leaving behind the stronger scent of scorched limestone. As it burst, my face burned, a flash of heat. The stink of burning hair and skin overlaid the smell of burning rock.

  I understood that my body was under attack in reality, and my soul home was under attack in the Gray Between, but I wasn’t certain if the lightning was my enemy, or the blood diamond, or the Blood Cross. Or Santana. Of if the spell had gone horribly awry. Or maybe all of them.

  It was possible that I had been pricked by the cross in real time, real life; Sabina had warned me that if I was wounded by it, the weapon might kill me. But it wasn’t as if she’d been certain. And I’d wielded the sliver of the cross before. So if the cross wasn’t my enemy, then that made the diamond my enemy. And maybe the lightning had provided the power to whatever was going on in a battle between light and dark, chaos and order.

  Two more flashes lit the roof of my cavern in bright light. Sooo . . . who directed the lightning? And if my soul home was ruined, would I be dead in the human world too? Or, conversely, could I survive if I was there, in my soul home, when my body died in the other reality?

  There were too many metaphysical questions and not a single answer. I had no idea what any of it might mean in my current state of spiritual darkness. Or maybe spiritual wandering. Whatever. What really mattered was that . . . I hadn’t blessed or warded my soul home in . . . ever. I wasn’t even sure how to do that. Until now, I hadn’t considered that I might need to do that. It—the spiritual heart of me—wasn’t purified or strong. I had left it weak and unshielded in my neglect and my wandering.

  Decide, Beast thought at me. Decide whether you will be War Woman or killer.

  “Aren’t they the same thing?” I asked, surprised.

  There was another flash, another pain, a second. A third. These coming much sooner than the last. Much closer to me. And much more agonizing. Burns always are. I hissed as the pain spread. Real time was speeding up again. I was almost out of nontime. Which was kinda funny on the face of it. I didn’t have long to figure out what to do in a choice where both sides seemed to be the same thing.

  Except . . .

  A War Woman always fought for something. For family. Clan. Land. Tribe. Honor. Justice. Important things.

  Killers just killed. For sport. Money. Without thought or caring. Killers killed without . . . spiritual purpose. Except that my grandmother was a War Woman. She had tortured the two men who killed my father and raped my mother. How did vengeance fit into the paradigm?

  I had killed sentient beings of multiple species. Werewolves. Vampires who were in the devoveo. But they might have been able to return to sanity with enough time and the proper blood to drink. Brute and I had discussed that once, but no answer had been forthcoming. I had killed humans. In every case of killing, they were trying to kill me at the time, but I had never tried to save them. Never tried to find another, nonlethal way to stop them. Never tried to give them a chance at . . . What? Redemption? Change? A different life? And if I had given them a chance to change, I’d probably be dead now because, honestly, people didn’t often change.

  Except the taxi driver. Zareb. He had changed. Turned his life around. Sooo. Had I therefore sent people into the next life unprepared for the light, worthy only of the darkness and chaos? Had I deprived them of the opportunity to transform? To find redemption?

  I had perhaps even been seeking the darkness and chaos myself, depending on things and people instead of on the spiritual. Had that weakened me, allowed my soul to be damaged? Crap. I had been stupid. This wasn’t good. Not at all.

  Choose, Beast said.

  “War Woman,” I said.

  * * *

  A light so bright it stole all my vision engulfed me. I was in the air, hanging in the midst of a lightning bolt. Pain shook me. I burned. I was on fire. My body caught in the fiery lightning, unable to move. My skin blackening and falling off my muscles, exposing my bones. But unlike in my soul home, there was blood.

  Forcing my muscles to obey, I brought my hands together, the sliver of the cross, the glowing-white blood diamond, and my blood, what little hadn’t boiled away, meeting. Touching. I made a double fist around the weapons and gripped tight with hands that were on fire. My entire body spasmed in a seizure as some new magic, some new power, met the lightning. Together they seared into me.

  The lightning bolt swatted me the rest of the way out of the witch circle. Over Molly’s and Sabina’s heads. Through the magics of the middle circle. Through the wards of the outer circle. Smashed me against the earth. Bowled me over and over in a sickening rush of melting skin and clacking bones. As I rolled, the fire was snuffed out. Pain continued to explode on and through me. I was pain, as if the sensation were a sentient being, alive and seething.

  The Gray Between took me again. A different kind of pain ripped through me, colder, icy. Pelt sprouted through the burned flesh. I came to rest on the grass, in the dark, against the front wheel of a vehicle.

  The last echo of thunder shook the earth. Rain strafed the ground. Hard, drumming rain.

  A shot rang out. Reverberating through the beating downpour.

  Women screamed.

  My bones twisted and snapped. My ribs wouldn’t expand and I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t even die. The pain was beyond my own comprehension. I was in the midst of the shift into . . . something. But I was burned, burned, burned. Bruiser lifted me. I knew by the feel of him in the Gray Between. My body twisted in his arms, writhing in agony. Let me die. But the words didn’t form. My mouth wasn’t shaped right for speech.

  But, od
dly, I could still hear.

  Rain decreasing. Slamming of doors. Engine starting. Sound of tires over something.

  “Hospital?”

  “What good would that do us?”

  “Vet?” That was Eli, worry underlying the snark.

  “Church?”

  “Alex? Closest church?”

  A tinny voice said, “Closest is upriver. Eight miles.”

  “I say back to the French Quarter. The St. Louis Cathedral. I mean, if you want a church, that’s a big-assed church.”

  “Do it.”

  My body lurched and rocked and I finally inhaled, the breath so painful it felt like I was still breathing lightning. I tried to scream, tried to flail against the pain. I couldn’t. Every slightest movement sent pain rocketing through me, slicing through me. “Can’t get in the church,” I managed. “Will burn.” But it came out as “’An’ ’eeen urk. Iu urn.”

  “Can you get the weapons and clothes off her?” Eli asked.

  I felt pressure here and there on my body. “They’re burned into her flesh,” Bruiser said. “They’ll have to be cut out unless we get her to shift.”

  I felt wetness on my back, the backs of my thighs. The only part of me that wasn’t screaming in pain. “Jane? She’s awake. Can you shift, Jane? Can you shift?!”

  I reached into me. Nothing happened. Nothing. Something was wrong. “No,” I managed to say, but it came out, “Nuh.” My mouth was broken. “Nuh.”

  “Hang on, Janie,” Bruiser whispered. “Hang on.” My consciousness slipped away in a haze of agony.

  Much later I whispered, “KitKit?” the sound guttural and hoarse. I had no idea where that question came from, among all the ones I should have asked.

  Bruiser laughed, though it sounded more like tears. “A little singed. Last time I saw her, she was in Molly’s arms.”

  That was when I realized that Beast had asked. Beast. Speaking in English through my mouth. Or . . . maybe my mouth. Maybe something else.

  “Flesh of Joses/Joseph?” I asked, sounding a bit more human.

  “Gone. Burned to ashes by the lightning.”

  Maybe that was a good thing, I thought. Or maybe not. Because there was still a way to call the SoD. Using the three hairs that Bruiser carried. Maybe we didn’t need the witches at all.

  Once again, everything went black.

  CHAPTER 27

  Medium-Well-Cooked Meat

  When Bruiser picked me up, I came to again. It was the altering level of pain that woke me. My eyes were open, slitted to see down along my body. I was in half-Beast form, but burned. Crispy critter. The phrase came to me, uttered once by a firefighter, back in the mountains, when he thought no one was listening. My blackened hands were clasped, half-human, half-paw, and were fused together, as if the muscles and juices had cooked them into that shape. Though I couldn’t feel them, I could see the glow of the white diamond through my flesh, and I knew I was holding the two magical items in a double fist sealed by burned flesh.

  We were illegally parked directly in front of the St. Louis Cathedral, in the area marked off for foot traffic only. Bruiser was carrying me up the short flight of steps, through a downpour that rivaled Noah’s flood.

  “Nuh. Nuh!” I shouted. But it came out in a whisper. The light in my hands exploded. I croaked out a scream. Writhed in Bruiser’s arms. He whirled and raced away from the front doors, back to the SUV, trailing a wisp of smoke. The light died. The pain that had spiraled up into some new height of agony died back down with the distance. But now, I felt cold, so cold.

  “I’m such an ass!” Eli shouted, frustration and fear in his voice. “Janie tried once before to take the diamond into a holy place. It’s black magic. It burns.”

  The sound of his fear made me reach out for the Gray Between. Nothing happened. I tried again. And again. Nothing worked. Beast? She didn’t answer. It was getting to be a bad habit. And now I was afraid too.

  “What are our options?” Bruiser answered Eli, his voice thick with fear. “It’s seared into her body. Suggestions?”

  “Leo? One of the priestesses?” Alex asked over the open cell’s speaker.

  “I don’t—” Bruiser stopped. I could feel his breathing, hear his heartbeat. “I don’t think Leo can help. Not with this. Bethany would as soon kill Jane as heal her, and this would be beyond even her talents. Sabina is hurt from the lightning strike. But if we can’t find another way, then the Master of the City would be our last resort.”

  “Aggie One Feather? Alex, see if they’re home.”

  “Already tried. No answer, bro,” the tinny voice said. “I left a message on Aggie’s cell, but there’s a powwow in North Carolina this coming weekend. They may have left for that already.”

  Car doors closed and the engine started. The tires rolled over something and Bruiser shifted on the seat. I couldn’t help the sound that wrenched from my lungs, a groan-moan-sob-croak.

  “Sorry, sweetheart,” he whispered. “So sorry.”

  I thought I felt something touch my forehead, and I remembered the blessing he had given me before the witch circle, the feel of his Onorio magics skittering over my skin. Hadn’t helped much then. Didn’t help now.

  We hit another bump and pain pummeled me. I went blissfully unconscious again. Sometime later, pain woke me. “Alex. Send me directions to something. Anything,” Eli said. “Yeah? Got it. Let’s go.”

  Bruiser murmured through my own personal hell of pain, reminding me, “Find the Gray Between, love. Find the Gray Between.” This time I didn’t go unconscious but was alert through the drive, trying to follow Bruiser’s orders, trying to open the Gray Between, to become calm enough to sink deep inside, to the well of my own power, and shift and heal. But every breath was agony. Every heartbeat was torture. And the magical implements cooked into my palms/paws were the problem.

  My pelt was scorched and my skin was blistered and breaking and draining in places, blackened and crisp in others. My burned muscles were contracted into knots of charley horses. On the drive, I started shivering as my body went into shock. I was losing fluids so fast that I’d die soon if we didn’t figure out something.

  “Where are we?” Bruiser asked.

  “Coliseum Place Baptist Church on Camp Street,” Alex said over speakerphone, just as the SUV came to a stop. “It was burned sometime after Hurricane Katrina. It’s sacred ground but not a place of worship anymore. It’s slated to be torn down because it’s unstable and likely to fall apart, but the historical society is trying to save it, and so there’s an injunction.”

  Eli said, “This may work. Good thinking, Alex.” His voice got louder as he spoke over his shoulder to Bruiser. “Janie was partially healed when she landed in a baptismal pool at The Church. And once before, I saw Janie enter a sacred place in Natchez, the foundation of an old church. It was only an outline of the foundations, the rest burned to the ground. But when Jane walked through the front door, she disappeared into a mist and met with a woman. An Elder of the Choctaws, I think.”

  I remembered that. I remembered how to do that, to enter sacred ground. But that time I’d had a coin to call the Elder to me, and an invitation to do so. This time I had . . . dangerous stuff gripped in the medium-well-cooked meat of my hands. And something just as dangerous—under the right circumstance—in my pocket. Something that had been part of that previous night, that previous journey into a different place and time, a place of dreams and the past and an old, old power.

  Bruiser got us out of the backseat, and I managed not to scream too much, but my shivering was worse, much worse, even with the heat of an Onorio holding me. “Get the iron out of my pocket,” I said. Or nonsense syllables close to that. Mind-reading, Eli knelt and rummaged in what was left of my pocket, coming up with the fused iron discs. “Take me into the church grounds and lay me down.” The tremors of each footstep jolted through me as Bruiser, even with his Onorio grace, walked across the uneven ground toward the church. It was raining again, far harder. I cou
ld feel the cold as it seeped into me, even if I couldn’t feel the raindrops hit.

  Beast? I called, sounding desperate. She didn’t answer.

  To distract myself from the pain, I went over the formula I had once used to call a holy woman to me. This time I wasn’t calling a holy woman. I was trying to heal myself. The words had been . . . Long years past was cold iron, blood, three cursed trees, and lightning. Red iron will set you free. Followed by: Shadow and blood are a dark light, buried beneath the ground.

  Maybe it had been . . . a prophecy of sorts?

  Red iron and trees. I had determined the tree part to refer to the three cursed trees of Calvary that the Sons of Darkness, the witch sons of Judas Iscariot, had used to bring their father back to life. According to vamp-myth, the wood from the three crosses had been mixed with human sacrifice, witch blood, and black magic to create the first immortal, and when the sons ate the reanimated flesh of their father, they became the first two blood drinkers and fathers of all the vampires who followed. I had a piece of that in the cooked meat of my fused fists. The red iron had been iron from the spikes used to attach the three men crucified that night to the trees. According to vamp legend, the new vamps had melted them down and created a single massive spike, which had become a weapon to control vamps. Got that too.

  Shadow and blood are a dark light. Once again there was shadow and my blood, in this place, just as there had been shadow and blood on Golgotha the evening the Christ died. There had been his blood on the tree. And on the cold iron that pierced his flesh, holding him there. The same cold iron that Eli had pulled from my pocket. In Natchez, I had figured out that the crosses and melted-down iron had been used for transformative black magic, magic that had turned Naturaleza vamps into spidey vamps—vampires that had transmogrified into things that were genetic amalgamations of insects, reptiles, and . . . and . . . horrid things. And the iron had given the things control over time.