True Dead

by Faith Hunter

  The arcenciels didn’t pale at the threat, but Opal’s hands fluttered, and Storm leaned against the stones. They looked back and forth between one another, as if talking mind to mind.

  “Eli, can you offer a distraction to our arcenciel guests?”

  Eli bowed. “Ladies. Have you ever ridden in an armored SUV?”

  “No,” Opal said.

  “Have you ever been to the human place called the ‘burger joint’ for the human meal of burgers and fries?” Eli asked. “The burger joint is the cornerstone of human existence.”

  “No,” Storm breathed. “Is this more important than the honeymoon?”

  “Yes,” Eli said with a straight face. “And if you negotiate with the same honor as Wrassler, and remove the request to attend the honeymoon, I’ll take you to the burger joint right now.”

  The arcenciels squealed and raced toward Eli. Moments later they were loaded up in Eli’s personal use vehicle, along with Aya, and were trundling away through the busy streets. I didn’t know why Aya was going but figured that Eli knew what he was doing. The human guards went back to patrolling, leaving me surrounded by vamps, Alex standing at my elbow.

  Koun said, “My Queen, I have lived two thousand years and been a member of many courts, both human and Mithran. And I must say that yours is the most entertaining in two millennia.”

  “Never a dull moment,” Tex agreed, and clicked his tongue at his dogs. “Come on, let’s get you babies some steak from the queen’s fridge. She always has the best food, and I have it on good authority that Deon sent over some leftover grub.”

  Tex, the dogs, and Koun wandered toward the house and whatever little miracles Deon had provided.

  Kojo and Thema came closer. Kojo asked softly, “You do not try to capture and ride the arcenciels? Throughout the ages, all Mithrans and Naturaleza have tried to capture them in crystals and ride the past and the future.”

  “I don’t believe in slavery. And time travel is dangerous in ways no living being can guess at.” I knew. I’d done it without trapping arcenciels, had gotten cancer from it, and had made some mistakes I couldn’t correct. Ever.

  The two looked at each other and back to me. Without another word, they glided into the night with that disconcerting snake-like vamp grace.

  Alex and I stood alone, almost eye to eye. He was taller, leaner, more muscular. And he was shaving. He had a moustache and a chin beard. I hadn’t noticed. “Hey, Kid,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “We got the DNA results back from Dr. Northern at the lab. Can we talk? Privately? Just us two?”

  Something odd tickled at the back of my heart, as if something had wrapped around it. “Sure. My rooms?”

  “No. Let’s go for a ride around the block. No vamp ears to listen in.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Kickstart the Old Bastardized Panhead Harley

  Alex led the way through the house and to an SUV that was idling at the curb. He got in the driver’s seat, which felt all kinds of odd, accepted the fob from the human standing there, and waited for me to get into the passenger seat. He pulled into traffic. An SUV was already in front and another eased in behind us. Security for the queen.

  I hated it.

  Alex drove with excellent precision and confidence, which meant he had likely taken lessons in defensive and offensive driving. But he looked pensive.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m listening.”

  He stared into the night, following the security SUV in front, being followed by the SUV in back. Brake lights lit his face through the tinted windshield. “I wasn’t sure what the results meant, even with Dr. Northern’s interpretation, and Eli and I didn’t want them sent out for interpretation or second opinion. We got the doctors Paquet—Solange and Pierre—to look over them. You know. The ones who took over the fanghead funeral home. They’ve lived long enough to have studied a lot of everything, and they explained it to me.”

  “Okay.”

  “Your DNA and the DNA on your grandmother’s robes is human, but both contain some genetic errors that appear and are reproduced on one or both of the X chromosomes. You might remember that the witch trait passes on genes linked to the X chromosome. Skinwalker genes pass through in the same manner. Aya got his Y chromosome from your father. Aya got his X chromosome from your mother, and it had a genetic abnormality.”

  “My mother couldn’t shift.”

  “No. Something about her recessive genes, though she was from a skinwalker bloodline. Anyway, your mother married your dad, a man with an X chromosome that had abnormalities too, though different abnormalities from her own. Through marriage to your mother, your father became a part of the Panther Clan.”

  “But they weren’t of the same exact bloodline or clan.”

  “Correct. I posit that the woman you know as grandmother has tracked the bloodlines and made sure that people with the proper traits married out of clan, and then their children, later on in the line, married back into the Panther Clan or were adopted into the clan.

  “You got your skinwalker X chromosome from your father and it was in bad shape; you got your mother’s normal-ish X. Ayatas got your mother’s abnormal X, with different replications. So you and Ayatas started out with very different replications. Your original DNA, tested from before the rift and the cancer, has more replications than Aya’s does. Four times the number.”

  “Is that bad?”

  He made a turn and skirted Bourbon Street, where the night’s activities were already in full swing. “The abnormality is actually a doubling or tripling of specific genes, and is passed down from generation to generation, but it’s exclusive to one bloodline. So, as I understand it, it’s like this. Two sisters receive their genetic makeup and X chromosomes from the same parents, but the sisters’ X genes might combine differently. One sister might have nearly the same genetic reproductions as the gene donors, while the other might have multiplied reproductions, say two or four or eight times as many, as the gene sequence”—he waved his right-hand fingers in the air—“mutates isn’t exactly the right word because all the genes are the same, just way more of them, but it will do. These particular sets of genes don’t transfer like normal genes on the X chromosome, but more like a human mutation called Fragile X. Basically, this means that all skinwalkers are likely to have different powers and different power levels, even within one family, and the way the replicated sequence is passed on is different for each family member.”

  My first Tsalagi Elder, Aggie OneFeather, had raised the question of clan and my father, so she had known something about genetic lines. “Tangled X chromosomes. Fine. I get that. So why do you look all intense and upset? Wait. You said my DNA from before. Then I went into the rift. Is mine the same before and after?”

  “No. You have fewer replications than you did.”

  I wondered if the extra replications had been responsible for my ability to timewalk. And the magical cancer. And if the current replications were making my shifting unreliable.

  He made a left turn and checked his rearview. “The DNA also suggests that aging occurs faster in some lines than others. And aging is the prime cause for becoming u’tlun’ta.”

  “Did Ka age more rapidly than me, and therefore that made her become u’tlun’ta sooner? Will I age more rapidly now that I’ve been through the rift? Or maybe stop aging?” I looked down at myself. When I came back from the rift, I looked eighteen. I still did.

  “We need Ka’s DNA to compare, but I’m thinking your DNA was repaired more than we thought during your trip through the rift.” His tone said there was more.

  “Okay. I can kinda wrap my head around that. How does Grandmother’s DNA fit into all this?”

  “Hayalasti Sixmankiller’s DNA is in seriously bad shape. A batch of replicated genes on the X chromosome is tangled like a hairball.” He glanced at me. “Similar to, but a lot worse than, yours pre-ri
ft. It looks like someone added DNA with an ice cream scoop and tied it together with yarn. That could be because of someone she ate alive, and the black magic that pulled their DNA into hers. Or not. We don’t know.”

  “Question. Will you ask Wrassler, on the QT, what happened to any samples of Immanuel’s blood after I killed him? Maybe blood-stained carpets or rugs or cleaning cloths?”

  “If he’s got any, you want it tested?”

  “Yeah. Let’s find out what we have.”

  “Meanwhile, keep this in your pocket.” He handed me a small brown paper bag. “It’s a scrap of your granny’s sweaty shift. Dr. Northern returned it, and Eli thought you might need it someday.” He glanced at me, and I must have looked confused because he added, “Le breloque uses blood as a weapon. Maybe it can use sweat too.”

  And maybe Grandmother could track me by it. But I shoved it into a pocket anyway.

  Alex called security. “Alex Younger here. Heading back to the queen’s personal residence.”

  The car in front took a right. We followed.

  * * *

  * * *

  After the attack that wasn’t an attack, I was tense, so I made a pot of strong black tea. While it steeped at the kitchen table, I dragged the trunk of journals close and pulled out an armload I hadn’t looked over yet. I flipped open five before I found one in English. I read the first page, handwritten in that old calligraphy style of the classically educated human of European descent. It was simply a name and a date in immaculate penmanship. Immanuel Justinus Henri Mainet Pellissier, in the year of our Lord, Seventeen Ninety.

  This journal was written by Immanuel.

  I closed it, a finger holding my place on the page. This journal was one of the last ones handed down to me by Derek while we were raiding the storage room on sub-four. He had given me this one on purpose, knowing I had killed Immanuel or, rather, the creature masquerading as Leo’s son.

  Hardly daring to breathe, I reopened the book and turned the page, staring at the words and lines of a diagram, a lineage, vamp style. On one side were physical children—children of the body—written in black ink. On the other side, written in a browning grayish ink, was a vampire lineage. I dropped my nose close to the page and sniffed, getting a whiff of what smelled like old fanghead blood and funeral flowers and ashes. The ink had been made from vamp blood.

  Immanuel. The name was like a talisman and a curse. His death had been the origin of everything that had happened in this city since the day I first arrived.

  I had killed him.

  This man, Immanuel, with blondish hair, an elegant demeanor, and the stink of scorched flesh and rot, was the reason I had come to New Orleans, hired to track and destroy a vampire murderer. Saving the witches was the reason I stayed. And now I was stuck here, queen of the beings I used to hunt and kill. Holding the journal of Leo’s son.

  There could be DNA on the pages. I got up and went to my room, returning with a pair of gloves. Three-hundred-plus-year-old blood, spit, and sweat from turning and touching pages was probably not useful for DNA, but I wasn’t taking a chance.

  I turned the pages, reading names here and there. Shopping lists. Descriptions of parties. Names of beautiful human women he slept with. Beautiful vamps. On page 3, Immanuel described himself as a man of leisure, an unashamed womanizer, a rake, a dilettante, and a man of style, which in my time meant he was lazy, a player, and a fashionista. A name jumped out at me, feeling vaguely familiar, as if I had heard the name before. Tsu Tsu Inoli. Russian? Asian? Scandinavian? Probably phonetically spelled.

  The cell rang and I flinched just a bit. My honeybunch’s face was on the screen. I glanced into the living room to see Alex’s feet hanging off the end of the sofa. I hadn’t even noticed his soft snores. The Kid didn’t sleep enough, so this was either a power nap, or he was crashing and would be down for hours. I picked up my teacup. My voice soft, I answered, “Hey.” And sipped. The tea was strong and fragrant, and a sense of well-being moved through me with its warmth.

  “Hello, my love,” Bruiser said. “Did I wake you?”

  “No. I’m just having tea and holding Immanuel’s journal. I just found it. It’s like a treasure.” There was a long silence. “Bruiser?”

  “I heard you. Who packed the trunk for you?”

  “Derek.”

  He was silent again, but this time I could hear a chatter of voices in the background. “Derek is missing,” Bruiser said. “He was providing a blood meal to Signy, a Scandinavian Mithran who came to HQ this past winter.”

  A quiet thread of fear twined through my heart. “Go on.”

  “The furniture is overturned and there is a pool of blood in Signy’s room, with droplets here and there in the hallways. Two other Mithrans confirmed by scent that it is both human and Mithran blood. Nothing was on the standard digital security cameras, and it appears there was an obfuscation working in use. Wrassler is tracking via the laser monitors and FLIR cameras, but so far we can’t prove if he left willingly or not.”

  I said, “When we were fighting European vamps in Asheville, we knew they sent some fangheads here, hiding among the Mithrans who came for sanctuary. Was she one?”

  “It is possible.”

  “Do I need to come?”

  “No. I’ve called Tex. He’s bringing his dogs. One has a nose and he’s trained to track. If you see Brute, ask him to come to HQ too. I called because I found the iron witch circle, or where I think it is. Meet me at the Damours’ warehouse.”

  It took a moment for me to place the iron witch circle. We hadn’t talked about it since I saw it in the vision of Ka, Adan, and Bethany. I didn’t like where this was going. Anxiety wormed under my skin like electric snakes.

  The Damours were a vamp blood-family with a witch family linage that had been intwined over too many generations; they had survived the vamp purge in the late 1700s and ended up in New Orleans, where they continued blood-sacrifice of witch children, the most foul of black magic, right under the noses of two of the masters of the city. That magic had involved the blood diamond. Which had been incorporated into the making of the Glob.

  “Jane?” he asked, quiet worry in his tone.

  I pulled myself back to this moment. “I’ll be there in a bit.”

  “Okay. Be safe.”

  I hung up. Sipped my tea. My hands were shaking slightly.

  Go to place where vampire witches killed kits? Beast asked.

  To the place where lots of people were killed, I thought. We thought we had rooted out all the black magic from that place. Maybe we missed something.

  Take killing steel and white man weapons. And weapons of magic.

  Exactly what I was thinking.

  I tossed back the tea and silently went to my room to change.

  * * *

  * * *

  It felt amazing to kickstart the old bastardized panhead Harley and ride through the streets fully human-shaped, alone, the way I had come to this city. Or almost alone. My security team were all around, riding the white crotch-rocket bikes that Leo had bought before he died the second time. I heard the bikes’ high-pitched whine all around me, but I could almost pretend they weren’t there. Because of traffic, I beat Bruiser to the warehouse and rode around it, taking it in. The front of the place had been subdivided into three businesses, but all the leases had changed since I was here last. I pulled Bitsa off the street into the back parking area and killed the Harley engine, the rumble echoing off the nearby walls.

  Setting the kickstand, I swung my leg over, adjusting the hip rig and the nine-mil. I was wearing jeans, a heavy T-shirt, and a leather riding jacket, the Benelli in its original spine holster. Unzipping the jacket, I slid it off, tossed it to the seat, adjusted the fit of the old spine holster, and strapped the helmet to the seat over the jacket. It all felt so normal. So me. I opened a saddlebag and pulled out a set of stakes, sho
ving three wooden ones into my hair and three silver ones into the stake sheath on my thigh rig. I added a glass bottle of fresh holy water, ready for throwing. Shoved the Glob deeper into my pocket, which was jury-rigged with padding against potential magical heat.

  I was ready for most anything.

  Out of the night, a white blur trotted down the street. Brute. The angel-touched white werewolf stuck in wolf form was showing up, out of the darkness, his movement slightly out of focus with my current reality. Timewalking. I didn’t take my eyes off him, but suddenly he was beside my thigh, sitting, looking up at me, panting slightly, tongue hanging out a little to the side of his mouth.

  “Crazy wolf,” I said. “How did you even know to be here?”

  He huffed at me, smiling.

  Together we turned and looked at the building. We were at the back-alley entrance off Iberville, and this time there was no vamp scent, no smell of dead human bodies. “I don’t think you’ve ever been here,” I said to the wolf.

  The warehouse had windows on the lower story at the back and sides, and wide, arched windows on the two top floors. Renee Damours and her husband/brother had used the back half of all three stories; one had been for storage for her long-chained children and her businesses, and the other two floors for living. Unlike in the vamp-owned days, the windows were no longer draped in heavy cloth but blank to the night. No lights shone inside. There were a half dozen security cameras, a single heavy-duty steel garage-style door, and a brand-new steel entry door with a keypad lock.

  I wandered up to the door and checked it. Locked. I sat on a low brick wall and waited, Brute stretched out beside me, my security team all around, Quint in the shadows behind me, watching everything. Ten minutes later, Bruiser’s SUV and his two-SUV-security team turned in and parked. Bruiser stepped out of the passenger side door and walked up to me, his long legs in an unhurried stride. He took in the bike as he passed it, his eyes raking my clothes and weapons. A tiny smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “Ready for war?”