Dark Heir

by Faith Hunter

  I went over the whole saying again, trying to decide how much to use, how much to alter, knowing that I was crafting a spell I couldn’t use because I wasn’t a witch. Long years past was cold iron, blood, three cursed trees, and lightning. Red iron will set you free. Then: Shadow and blood are a dark light, buried beneath the ground.

  I had everything I needed. I had a sliver of the crosses and pieces of the iron, blood. I had a soul home, also beneath the ground. And I had the blood diamond, which was a dark light if there had ever been one.

  Lightning cracked in the distance and thunder rumbled. The rain warmed. Or maybe I was just getting colder. Dying. Yeah. That.

  Bruiser and I passed through one of the arched doorways and into the center of what must have been the sanctuary. He stumbled over the fallen rafters and knelt inside the charred walls. The brick still smelled of soot and fire and wounded earth, which felt perfect for me.

  Rain grew harder. Bruiser set me down on the wet earth and lay me over on my side. My body was frozen in the position in which he had been carrying me, a semi-fetal position. As he eased back, away from me, on his knees, I could feel the rain on that side of my face. It felt heated. Where the rain hit into the mud, droplets shot up in the air and landed on me, adding mud to the burns and the clothing that was melted into my skin.

  Eli spread one of his metallic, heat-retaining blankets over me, and I heard him say, “Molly called. I’m going to get her.”

  “Are you sure that’s wise?” Bruiser asked.

  “She says the lightning bolt did something to her magic. She says she can help. I don’t think we can turn down any help that’s offered. Back in a bit. Keep her alive.” I heard him jog back to the street, his boots loud in the mud and standing water.

  The lightning bolt did something to her magic? I remembered the vision of wings, white and black, snowy owl and crow, fighting. Had the lightning offered everyone in the witch circles a choice? Had the triple circles and the wyrds done something unexpected with us? Something planned and used by . . . someone?

  Darkness found me again, and I slept beneath the metallic blanket, watched over by Bruiser. In the shadows of uneasy sleep, I dreamed and remembered dreams. I saw the cavern of my soul home, as if from the outside, the wings fighting, light and dark. Lightning flashed again and again, in dreams and in reality, rousing me, but I was only pulled under into dreams again. The pain came in waves and spikes, as if I were still in the midst of the lightning strike, hanging between heaven and earth.

  I woke when the rain slowed, to see Bruiser kneeling in the mud beside me, his eyes closed and lips moving. I wasn’t sure, but it looked like he might be praying. For me. My heart stuttered and paused and stuttered back into some kind of rhythm again, but not a normal rhythm. This one hurt and rambled and stumbled. Time was out.

  I struggled to find breath to speak. “You got a knife?” I asked him, my voice an ugly croak.

  Somehow he heard me over the pattering rain and bent over me, his knees in the mud, a small blade in his hand. “Do you want me to cut some of your clothing loose? It’s . . . tight.”

  Swollen. He meant that I was swollen and leaking and ruined. “No,” I managed. And lifted my hands to his in a fast move that sent pain rocketing through me. And impaled my hands on his knife.

  “Jane!” He jerked back and away.

  I chuckled, a sound more sob-like than humorous. “Poke the iron discs into the wound,” I ordered. Lightning flashed and thundered down. Close, like a punctuation to my command. Rain followed, hard and pelting once again.

  There was a long hesitation; then Bruiser was holding my crusted-together fists in both of his. He bent his head over mine, his mouth at my ear, and said, “Love, are you sure?”

  I smiled and felt, for the first time, my tusks. I was still in my half-beast form and my canines were shaped like tusks. Weird. And he still called me love. “Yeah. Blood and iron. Do it. Please.” I couldn’t feel it when he pressed the iron discs into my flesh, but I saw it. The moment it was done I closed my eyes.

  My words mangled by my puma mouth, I called, “Creator God.” Lightning struck close by and I felt the tingle of electricity as it flashed through the ground and through the standing water. I spoke on, stumbling on the words, finding the right phrases, “Cold iron, the iron spike of Golgotha, three cursed trees, a once-black-magic diamond that now glows white and pure, my blood, my skinwalker flesh, and lightning are all in the same place.” I had to stop to breathe, to give my heart a chance to catch up. “An angel of light and an angel of death fight in the space between worlds, fight in the Gray Between that is within me and in the shadows of my soul home.” While I breathed again, I searched through my fractured Cherokee memories and my childhood memories for prayers and finally came up with, “Creator God, El Roi—the god who sees me. Yehovah.” I paused, panting, remembering the fragment of a dream from days ago. Remembered that the Tsalagi had words for the Almighty. I said, “Yehowa, Edoda,” and two words for Great Spirit came to me: “unequa, adanvdo.” And words for angels: “Anidawehi—” I stopped again, to catch my breath. My heart was stuttering inside and the pain was building. I had to finish it right then. “All that is good and all that was evil, or had been used for evil, are now inside my body, surrounded by my blood, my . . .” I searched for the right words and settled on: “my sacrifice of pain. Unequa, anidawehi, let me die or help me. Help me and set me free as War Woman.” The words were soft, half growling.

  Once again, lightning struck, slamming into the ground only yards away. The power of it sent electric shivers through me. Bruiser yelped and rolled back. My loose hair stood on end despite the rain, and my skin crackled with the pain of electricity, but it seemed to help, and the Gray Between finally opened.

  Beast?

  Change. Now! she thought at me.

  I reached inside, down into the marrow of my/our bones, searching for the snake that lies within each cell of the body, the twined snakes of DNA that make each of us what we are. Beast’s and my genetic material, our DNA strands, were twisted together in places, into tripled strands that looked like nothing on this earth. My heart skipped a beat. Sped fast and skipped several. Heart pain spread through me, adding to my anguish. I was dying. Seemed I was doing that an awful lot lately. It meant I didn’t have time to separate the strands. I had to use what I was offered. I took the tripled strands in my mind.

  Somewhere close by, I heard shouting. A scream of pain.

  Wings fluttered over me, feathers white and black, the roar of battle, of swords clashing, of the stink of old blood and ozone. A vision of black shadows and bright light flashed past, interwoven and forever divided. My choices caused this battle. Or not. Maybe they just contributed to it. Or maybe the fight had been going on for eons, in the spaces between worlds, and I was no more than a single grain of sand on the shores of war.

  I yanked on the strands.

  My heart stopped. The sounds of battle were sharp, bright, and painful on my ears.

  Change! Beast snarled at me.

  I changed. I pulled the merged genetic material over me, over us, taking on the half-human, half-puma warrior shape of the War Woman of my clan. Taking it on fully, healing even as I sprouted pelt, as my toes spread and flexed. Retractable claws unsheathed and ripped away burned boot leather, clawed, tore my hands apart. My fingers separated and fisted, healed in front of my eyes, fully formed into the knobby-knuckled, long-fingered shape of my stronger-than-skinwalker hands. Hips and knees and shoulders were bigger, rounder boned. My waist was tiny and solid muscle. I rolled to a sitting position, rain splattering down on me, warm and wet and slick.

  I took a breath and it didn’t hurt. “Oh.” It didn’t hurt.

  I felt the things in my left hand, warm and tingling and full of power. Holding the fist up, I saw the glow of—

  “Jane! Down!”

  I ducked a sword cut and rolled through the mud. A smooth, clean cut. The blade smelling of blood. Bruiser’s blood. I rolled o
ut of the way, my weapons clanking and grinding on my misshaped body, up against a wall that stank of old fire. Lightning struck close, rattling the brick of the burned church. A wall nearby, weakened by fire and storm and time, crumbled and fell in a crash. I wiped my hand across my half-human face, focusing on the battle taking place in front of me. In the midst of a rainstorm, a brutal punishing lightning storm, Bruiser and the Son of Darkness were fighting. With swords. The dual swords of the Duel Sang, the blood duel.

  How did Joseph find us? The gobbet of his flesh had been burned to ashes by the lightning bolt.

  But . . . I looked at my left fist. He could track me through the blood diamond. And perhaps through his own flesh, the hairs in Bruiser’s pocket. I opened the fist, my fingers stretching out, my claws sliding free, gleaming in the wet dark.

  In my paw/palm was a new thing. A new weapon? Or something else, something that had never been before. The metal from the iron spike of Golgotha had melted when I shifted and had re-formed around the blood diamond and the sliver of the Blood Cross. The diamond, now glowing with a white light, humming with power, was touching the sliver of ancient wood, the two weapons touching, held in place by hardened iron. It wasn’t the weapon or the shape that Sabina had suggested, but it was . . . curious. Unexpected. Remarkable in so many ways.

  It had made itself.

  I looked from my hand to the fighting and took a quick breath that flowed in through my nose and mouth, over the scent receptors in flehmen response, smelling, tasting, seeing Bruiser’s blood flow, looking black in the darkness, red in the lightning flashes, hearing the crash of steel and the grunts of pain.

  Joseph Santana was uncut, his body looking whole and healed, but as he moved and cut, I caught the stink of burning flesh. He was still injured, still on fire, somewhere deep inside, the reek smelling of pain and fury. I could risk using the weapon in my fist on him, risk a result I couldn’t predict. Or I could—

  I reached over my shoulder and hunted for the butt of the Benelli Super 90. It was way around to the side, hanging at a strange angle, one strap too loose on my body, the other too tight. I got my right hand around the stock and tried to draw it.

  The new shotgun-shell holder, mounted on the left side of the receiver, caught. The leather had shrunk and tightened in fire and lightning and rain. I twisted and jerked the weapon, trying to free it.

  Bruiser took a cut to his left shoulder and fell to one knee. He got his weapon up to block a sword strike. I yanked on the shotgun, and the damaged leather of the spine holster parted. I rolled to my feet and ran, screaming, “Hey, suckhead! Take on someone your own size!” Bruiser fell flat. Joseph Santana whirled to me as I fired. He took the full blast into his chest cavity. The second blast took him in the belly. The third took off part of his right shoulder.

  He whipped up his arm. The bracelet on his wrist shot out a silver light. Santana vanished.

  I dropped to my knees beside Bruiser. He looked up at me, his eyes too wide with shock and adrenaline. “Hey, gorgeous,” he said, his voice tight with the pain. “What took you so long?”

  CHAPTER 28

  I Smelled Onorio Blood

  “I was busy figuring out stuff,” I said through my half-human mouth. The sounds were odd and distorted, but Bruiser seemed to have no trouble understanding. I ripped open what was left of my med-kit and handed him a slightly scorched sanitary pad, part of Eli’s medic gear, for battlefield wounds. Bruiser slipped the pad under his ruined leather and placed it over his bleeding shoulder. “How fast will you heal?” I asked.

  “Fast enough.” He hissed in a breath, held it, released it on a gasp, and asked, “Why?”

  “You still got the hairs you took out of Pinkie’s neck?”

  Bruiser smiled slowly, the skin around his eyes crinkling. “Yes. What do you have in mind?”

  “Let’s hold hands, call his name, click our heels together, and see if this will take us to him. Or bring him to us. Whichever.” I held out the new weapon, part iron, part diamond, part wood sliver. “He’s wounded. The diamond is connected to the bracelet he’s wearing, and to me. And there’s fresh blood on the ground from where I shot him. It might be now or never to finish him.”

  Bruiser lifted a hand and curled his fingers around my jaw, a hairy, pelted jaw. “Whatever my lady desires.”

  I chuckled and tried to holster the shotgun, but the leather was ruined. All my gear was ruined. I was wearing tatters but managed to find a vamp-killer that was in fairly good shape despite the lightning strike and held the shotgun and the knife in my left hand. I lowered the new weapon—it had to be a weapon, because I’d had to choose to become War Woman to use it—to the ground and smeared it through a splatter of Santana’s blood and sooty mud from the church. I gripped it in my right palm, along with the three hairs Bruiser pulled from an envelope. I closed my knobby pawed fingers around it. “If this works, I’ll shoot him a few times and then cut out his heart.”

  “I’ll try to stay out of the way.” Bruiser was laughing at me, that kind of loving laughter that . . . that I’d never experienced before and that sent warm bubbles of happiness dancing through my bloodstream.

  I hooked my right arm through Bruiser’s left, noting that he held a long sword in his right. And his bleeding had stopped. Onorio magic.

  Silently, I asked, Beast?

  Beast is here.

  Do you know where Santana is?

  No. Angel Hayyel knows. Santana kills and eats his prey.

  I thought about that for a moment, not quite sure what to do about the fact that Beast knew what an angel knew. Okay, that’s scary. And worse, Santana was eating his prey. Like skinwalkers did when they went insane and became u’tlun’ta. And Santana had tasted Immanuel’s blood—Immanuel, whom I had killed, who had been u’tlun’ta. And whom Leo had not drunk from. Leo’d had no idea his son had been eaten and replaced by a different being.

  Diamond is yours for now, Beast thought at me. Will take you to vampire killer.

  “Joses son of Judas Iscariot,” I said, pronouncing it Yo-sace, son of Ioudas Issachar. “Joses Bar-Judas.” Yosace Bar-Ioudas. “Joseph Santana.”

  Nothing happened. Bruiser lifted one brow, Leo-like, and asked, “Blood?”

  “It’s always blood, to you people.”

  “To Mithrans. You are my people now.”

  We might be about to go into battle with angel oversight and me in pelt instead of skin, but my heart warmed and the bubbles of happiness sizzled through me. I lifted the vamp-killer and nicked my padded fingertip, letting the blood dribble on the weapon, the three hairs, and Santana’s blood. “Joses, son of—”

  The world exploded in white light and gray energies and we entered the Gray Between. My gut roiled and twisted and the nausea that hit was fiery. Seconds passed in the Gray as my abdomen kinked and coiled.

  We came out of the Gray Between, propelled over a puddle of muddy goo and blood and part of a vampire, blond and broken. Dominique. Her throat ripped out. Santana’s face buried in her abdomen. Eating. Like an u’tlun’ta.

  We hit, splashing through the thick mud, and rolled apart, facing the Son of Darkness.

  Faster than the lightning that nearly killed me, Santana rose and unsheathed a sword. He was mostly healed but still missing part of one shoulder, that arm dangling, useless. With the single sword, he attacked. Bruiser blocked the strike with two swords and danced through the room, forcing Santana to follow him. Away from me. Swords clanged and rang on the night air. Steel flashed.

  I lay propped against the wall and vomited blood. Brick wall, old brick. Heaving was horrible, but when it let up, I felt marginally better. Well enough to wonder why I was tossing cookies. I hadn’t bent time. I had just . . . utilized the blood diamond. Like a witch. Or it had used me . . . I vomited again, the stink of stomach acid and blood, foul. I wasn’t designed to use magic. Using magic was killing me little by little in ways that my skinwalker magics couldn’t fix.

  I wiped my mouth and took in the
smell of mold and vamp blood and vomit on the humid air. Light came from candles lit throughout the room. Old furniture, half-rotted and broken. No floor. The walls had been spray-painted by vandals. Roaches scuttled everywhere. Two dead humans were piled in the corner. Santana’s and Bruiser’s shadows swayed and gamboled in the flickering light. Through the broken-out window I saw the Royal Mojo Blues Company, and I knew that we were at one of Santana’s old properties, one we had eliminated early on in our search for the SoD.

  Bruiser took a hit to his already damaged shoulder and dropped, rolled through the water and away. Using the brick, he shoved off with one leg and engaged Santana again. One sword to one sword.

  I tucked the diamond into what was left of my bra and managed to get the M4 shotgun up and in place, against my shoulder, trying to find balance where I lay propped against the wall. Bruiser took a sword strike into his torso, through and through. Santana whipped the sword out, slashing. I stared, breathless, as Bruiser fell. I smelled Onorio blood and bowel and I pulled the trigger. Again. I hadn’t reloaded, and the rounds were gone, but Santana was on his knees. He might have been growling through his fangs, but I was deaf from the shotgun. Using the expensive weapon as a crutch, I levered myself up to a standing position and dropped the gun. I took the vamp-killer in both hands and stalked close. I took a steady backhand and swung at his neck, putting muscle into the strike. The blade caught in the cervical spine and the SoD fell over, taking the weapon with him, jerking it from my hands; his head was still attached. There was life in his eyes, but even vamps have spinal columns. I’d severed Santana’s.

  “You alive?” I asked Bruiser, not looking. I couldn’t bear to see.

  He chuckled without humor, graveyard comedy, the sound barely heard over the ringing in my ears. “I’ll live. But the recovery will mean a lot of time in bed.”