by Faith Hunter
Rancid as a battlefield littered with the fallen and the burned.
That was why the potent rosemary. To hide the stench.
There was an amulet tied around her neck, visible where her shift had twisted.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Aya slowly rise to a crouch, but he didn’t stand to fight. He wasn’t reacting to his grandmother smelling like a burning rotten corpse. It was as if he couldn’t smell the rancid reek. As if he was frozen in indecision and confusion. Or frozen in Sixmankiller’s power.
Grandmother’s magic attacked again, blacker than a starless night, cold as the depths of hell. The Glob heated. It wasn’t skinwalker magic. It wasn’t u’tlun’ta magic. It felt and looked like black magic, which was witch magic. Sixmankiller was not a witch. The power had to be stolen. More black power shot out, countered by the Glob in my pocket.
The attacking energies came from the amulet resting on her breastbone, tied around her neck. It wasn’t a medicine bag. It was something else.
The Glob sucked the attack down like a white shark swallowing prey. The amulet on Granny’s neck began to glow a dull red, like heated steel, then brighter. The Glob drained down the light too. Grandmother screamed. I smelled burned, rotten flesh.
The old woman dove at me again, shoving off with her right foot.
There was a knapped stone blade in her left hand.
She stabbed forward.
I ducked back and blocked her knife hand with my left, shoving up and around in a whirling motion.
She snapped at my exposed arm. Biting at me. Her teeth grazing my skin.
U’tlun’ta. Liver-eater. The evil of the skinwalker, to eat the living and take their form.
She wanted to be Jane Yellowrock.
She wanted to be the Dark Queen.
The Glob sucked the last of the amulet’s power away. Le breloque did . . . something. Grandmother froze.
I swiped her face with my claws. They caught the edge of her jaw. Down her throat. Caught the thong around Grandmother’s neck. I ripped away her charm. Her blood splattered across me.
The stench of u’tlun’ta filled the sweathouse. Grandmother dropped, curled to her knees, and shifted. In a second and a half. She simply became Bubo bubo.
The shift falling away, she flew at the door. Her claws and body battering it. I hadn’t latched it. The door opened, and she flew into the daylight.
Bubo bubo. The Eurasian eagle owl.
I stood still, Grandmother’s amulet hooked into my claws, swinging. The owl was not native to this continent.
When I had to fly, the eagle owl was my bird of choice, even though it wasn’t a bird native to the western hemisphere. It had been hard to get the bones. Not impossible, just freaking difficult.
Bubo bubo eagle owls were part of a prophecy told to me by Sabina, the outclan priestess. The one burned by the Firestarter. I’d once had a vision of grandmother leaping at me and calling me a rabbit. Rabbits were choice food for owls.
I had always assumed the owl in the Bubo bubo prophecy was me, but . . . this and the memory . . . I had a memory of Sabina and Grandmother in a Cherokee war council. Sabina was a gigadanegisgi. Blood taker. Had Sabina tried to buy me when I was a toddler?
“Jane?” Aya whispered.
Aya was an officer of the law, working with PsyLED. He had to know that we had a real problem here, and not one that his department was equipped to handle. I lifted the amulet in my oversized, half-form hand and studied it. It was a rough diamond, big as a pecan-half, knotted with hide thongs.
Diamond.
Things came together.
Diamond. Like my Glob. It too had been a diamond, a reddish blood diamond, filled with the magic of the sacrifice of witch children. Had Grandmother been using the diamond to direct her magic, or had the energy been coming from the diamond itself? Was this one of the amulets the fangheads were always searching for? How had Grandmother gotten it? Had she stolen it from Sabina when the vamp tried to buy me? Was this the blood price for a skinwalker child?
“Holy crap,” I whispered as the amulet cooled. My voice was Beast-low and growly.
“Jane?” he asked again. “I couldn’t move. How . . . What did she do?”
I looked from the amulet to Ayatas. I was going to have to explain, and I didn’t know what words to use.
Something about his body posture changed, and I was suddenly seeing Ayatas FireWind, cop, not Aya, brother. “Did you see the magic?” he asked.
“Saw it, smelled it. You remember the stories about spear finger, liver-eater, and u’tlun’ta.” Aya nodded. “And you remember that I killed one.” He gave a small cop nod. “That u’tlun’ta . . . He smelled like Grandmother.”
Aya breathed in and frowned fiercely, making long grooves from his nose to his chin and two sharp lines between his eyebrows. “Is that what I smell? Like rotten meat cooking on a spit?”
“Yes. And the stench is worse than the last time I met an u’tlun’ta. She did black magic—black witch magic—with this”—I indicated the amulet—“and she’s changing, Aya. Changing into u’tlun’ta, the cannibalistic evil creature that our kind all seem to become when we get old. She’s hiding that change behind spells she bought from witches. And she attacked me with this.” I held up the dead amulet in my knobby fingers. “It’s a diamond. Or it was. Now it’s black and”—I stopped. I pulled the Glob and tapped Sixmankiller’s stone with it. The diamond cracked and its internal matrix shattered in my palm—“dead. Still intact, but cracks running all through it, ruined down to the cellular level.”
“What is that?” Aya demanded about my ugly weapon.
“It’s the blood of sacrificed witch children, a piece of the Blood Cross, a round ingot melted from the Spike of Golgotha, one of the vampire blood diamonds, and my flesh and blood sealed together by me being struck by lightning.”
Aya’s frown vanished and was replaced with a scant smile. “You have lived a long and fascinating life, my sister.” It could have been an accusation, but it wasn’t. It was spoken in that tone that cops use when speaking to one another.
“I figure you have too, little brother.”
Aya’s eyes went wide, and his posture shifted again, the cop falling away. “You called me little brother, and not in insult. And . . . earlier you called me Aya.”
“Yeah, yeah, don’t get all weepy on me. Our liver-eating gramma claimed she wanted us to be family.” I shrugged, a Tsalagi lifting of the shoulder blade, but which now was part uncertainty and part discomfort. “But we already are. Family. You know, now that I’m over being upset that I got tossed into the snow to live or die.”
“Elder sister,” he said, his tone and eyes formal and yet amused, “I grew up listening to tales of your exploits when you were merely a child of five. Growing up in the shadow of a superwoman was difficult. My heart never doubted that you lived.”
“Huh. Why would you think that?”
“How could you not still live, with such a history? But when we finally met, I had to recognize and resolve my long-forgotten childish jealousy.”
My discomfort grew. “Whatever. Back to Gramma. You brought her to me, wearing this.” I shook the internally shattered diamond at him. “Why? It’s obviously a magical amulet. You’re an ass, but not a total jerk.”
Ayatas touched the ruined amulet with a fingertip. He shook his head. “I never saw this before. After I first learned of the u’tlun’ta you killed, and after I saw the security footage of you fighting the half-man, half-saber-tooth lion and defeating it, I watched the footage with Grandmother to see if she knew what the creature was. She claimed she didn’t, but she was . . . let’s call it overly interested in the footage.”
“Cop talk,” I said. It was the same kind of comment Rick would have made, back when we were dating. “You really mean to say that she knew what it was and she was lying.”
He tilted his head in acknowledgment. “I’ve been a law enforcement agent for over half of my life. She watched the video dozens of times, and she asked for a copy. I told her no and saw something flash in her eyes like fire. She couldn’t hide her intense reaction to being refused. A day later, my flash drive was missing, and someone had tried to get into my computer. I began to watch Grandmother. Something was different.” His eyes were still on my hand, holding the ruined amulet. “And you had told me that you possessed a gift for seeing magic, which I do not have. I wanted you to look at our grandmother and her magics.” He looked back up at me, the too familiar yellow eyes, big nose, like looking in a mirror that showed a prettier, more refined me. “I wanted you to see her magics, did not think she would try to harm you. And I never saw this until now.”
“Maybe she kept it in her medicine bag. I’m pretty sure it contained a mixed cluster of spells. An illusion or glamor spell calibrated for scent, probably an obfuscation working, and several rounds of a big mama attack spell.”
Aya said something in Tsalagi that I didn’t understand. Cherokee didn’t curse, but it sure sounded like it. He reached out and stroked my jaw once, as if curious if the cat fur was real. I was fully pelted there, the sensation of his skin on my fur a shock. “I have loved and feared the old woman for decades,” he said. “She saw you shift into this, your half-form. She will want that ability, that power. If she is u’tlun’ta, she will try to take it from you. She tried to bite you.”
Like a sucker punch to the jaw, it hit me. “It would be easy for our grandmother to take my body. We are already genetically linked.” The transition using the snake in the center of all things—my DNA—would be child’s play for an old skinwalker like her. I lifted my claws close to my face. Her blood was caught there, stinking badly, now that the spell hiding her scent was gone. Softly, so quietly that Aya had to bend close to hear, I asked, “Is she still the woman you knew as a child? Is she still Hayalasti Sixmankiller?”
An expression like a steel veneer dropped down, replacing his grief and horror. Just as quietly, Aya said, “No. She is not.” His voice changed, taking on a cadence that was similar to the way tribal storytellers talked when imparting ancient tales or wisdom. “When I came back for a prolonged stay on the remains of the Indian Territory in Oklahoma in 1985, she was different. Colder. More cruel. She has been different for a very long time—” He stopped, his words cut off sharply, as if by a knife, and his face wore an expression of grief, as if he was accepting the changes in his elisi, his grandmother.
He didn’t speak again and when enough time had elapsed to make me uncomfortable, I asked, “In any of the old stories, is there any mention of a way to reverse the changes in u’tlun’ta? Any binding, forced ceremony, maybe a vampire could reverse her?”
Aya blinked and looked at me, seeming himself again. “No. Not in the old stories. Vampires killed our kind, killed skinwalkers, because we couldn’t be bound. Becoming u’tlun’ta is a choice. A decision. Once the first step is taken on that path”—his voice hoarsened—“the old tales tell us that there is no way back. Of course, the old stories didn’t have access to the weapon you carry.”
“It’s called the Glob,” I said, my mind on other things. Bruiser . . . What if he could bind her? Could I magically drain a liver-eater using the Glob? Force a skinwalker to reverse paths?
“The Glob. Of course,” he said, slightly amused. Then the pleasure faded.
My brother’s eyes held mine, already grieving, as if knowing what I was about to say.
“If we can capture her before she eats another human,” I said, “another sentient being of any kind, there are some things I can suggest.” Bruiser . . . Did I dare ask him to try? “If Gramma was a vamp, it would be the Dark Queen’s job to make certain that she was neutralized. I’m not sure what I’m responsible for with our particular paranormal species. But once she kills . . . as a law enforcement officer, it’s your job to find her and bring her in and make sure she’s kept away from humans.”
Aya lifted his head to me, his jaw forward, an aggressive stance. He seemed to steel himself, and when he spoke, his words were toneless. “No other paranormal is likely to be effective against her. The old stories tell us that the u’tlun’ta is the responsibility of the family and clan elders. It is their responsibility to render judgment. That would mean me, outside of my job.”
“I’m family and clan too, little brother. I am eldest. I am a war woman, whose job it is to deliver judgment. If I can’t capture her and stop her, then we will have to do it. And soon.”
“What will you—” He stopped and started over. “What magical methods of manipulation and restraint would you attempt?”
That was an interesting way to phrase things. Null cuffs were a military and law enforcement tool, and I wasn’t supposed to have access to them, and cops all had a love-hate relationship with null prisons and scion cages, which existed outside of human law and human control. I threw caution to the winds and said, “First, physical restraint and null cuffs. Then maybe, if the witches allow it, a room in the null prison. If that doesn’t work, then magical binding, like what a vampire does to a human but on a greater scale.” Like what Bruiser did to vamps he bound. And I had the Roberes too. Three Onorios working together might do what no one imagined.
But there were lots of things that no one imagined.
The vision of the bloody hull of Monique’s soul home blinked onto the back of my eyelids. Yeah. That’s what Monique was doing. Putting together a cabal of Onorios to fight a battle of her choosing and betray the vamps.
“Greater scale,” Aya said, not quite a question.
“Yeah.” I forced my attention back to the present. “I have friends and scions in high places.” And I have the Glob and my crown. At the words and the thought, le breloque warmed on my head.
Aya took my knobby fingers in his, staring at the half-form knuckles and retracted claws. “You asked about the old stories. They say, ‘It is a rare but necessary thing for skinwalker elders to shackle one who has lost her soul, and take her to the top of the mountain and throw her off.’ That is what the old skinwalker tales say.”
“Well, that sucks.”
He smiled sadly.
My baby brother was an Elder of The People. Though I was technically older, I had spent around 170 years in Big-Cat form. By comparison, and considering my lost years, I was a child. I needed to remember that and, according to the old ways, ask his counsel. I drew on the formality of vamps and said, “Little brother, Gramma can shift to an owl and fly away. She has amulets and spells you don’t know about. How do you catch a spirit in the night?”
“Mmmm. Perhaps we will need a plan B.”
“You think?”
He smiled a full, real smile.
“Did you both fly in?” Because if she flew in, she had to deposit mass on a stone somewhere to become so small.
“No. She was here when I arrived. I came over the mountain as wahya—black wolf—and I carried enough beef jerky and snack bars to tide me over.”
“So she deposited mass somewhere. If we could find that place and wait for her, we could take her while she was starving and weak.” Or we could destroy the missing mass before she shifted back, a small voice in the back of my mind suggested, and she would likely die. I didn’t say that.
Aya nodded. “It is unlikely that she deposited her mass nearby.”
I tilted the hand he still held and extended my claws, catlike. “But not impossible.” I stepped away, lifted the pitcher, and poured water onto the fire. It sizzled and smoked and spat as it went out. Aya followed me into the afternoon sun and watched as I stepped into the small alcove with the shower and the bins of clothes, where I wiped my claws on a washcloth. I pocketed the rank blood. There were spells that could track people by their blood, and my BFF was a witch. I put Gramma’s shift into a bin and sealed it, washed my
claw under the icy water, and stepped back and away, indicating my hospitality. “As my guest, please use the facilities first.”
I walked toward the creek behind the sweathouse. The shower came on, and I heard him take a shocked breath as the cold water hit him. I left him there to dress, and, wearing my sweaty gown, the washrag with my grandmother’s rancid blood in my pocket, I walked to the creek. It was fall yet not cold. With climate change it was often warm-ish into early November.
It had rained briefly while we were communing, and my odd, square-looking paw-feet squished in the mud. Ahead, I saw the rounded tops of stone, nothing that was broken or shattered. No indications the stones had been used to give her human form mass, and then that mass deposited back as more broken stone when she returned to Bubo bubo. Aya was probably right that Grandmother flew in and was flying back to pick up the original mass she had left hidden and far away. She had deposited and retaken mass from a long distance, which suggested the old woman had power and magic way beyond what I had. She had probably tied herself to a stone as I did with my gold nugget. I reached up and touched the nugget at my neck, hanging on double strands of gold chain. I seldom noticed or thought about the piece of gold that tied me to the rock of my first shift into Jane. It was as much a part of me as my hands or my teeth. Not noticed until they were gone.
Leaves had begun to fall, golden, red, dull brown. I made no attempt at stealth. This was my land, my home, as much as any place was. In my sweaty shift, I stood looking down at the creek more than ten feet below. It was sluggish and chuckling, not full and roaring as it had been in winter and spring with snowmelt and heavy rain. The trees were still taking in rainwater, and there was little runoff. All sorts of animal tracks were pressed into the sand on the beach across the way. When Beast hunted, she often started here at the closest watering hole. Above me, the sun peeked through the clouds, reflecting in raindrops on leaves and branches, casting shadows. The world smelled alive and clean. Part of me almost thought I could hear bells in the distance. I put the Glob in my empty pocket, waiting.
