by Faith Hunter
Nothing happened.
All in or nothing. I thought, Okay, you feathered flying angel. She calls you her angel. Save her! I touched the Glob to Angie’s chest.
And the magic storm that was my godchild stopped. Just stopped.
The stone and iron and wood splinter and Blood Diamond and whatever parts of my own body had gone into making the Glob heated. The Blood Diamond had been used to steal children’s magics, but in the past, the children had to die first. This time the Glob sucked up the excess magics, Angie’s and Molly’s and Evan’s too, ripping them out of the air.
Angie sighed and fell asleep. Molly fell onto the bed. Big Evan dropped like a rock, falling toward me and his daughter. I grabbed Angie up and somersaulted across the room. Banged my head and elbow on the wall and an end table. Big Evan landed and the floor shook.
I came up to my feet.
I was holding child and Glob, the magical talisman out to the side. A vamp stood in the doorway. In daylight. Storm light. Whatever. It wasn’t natural, except for the dark of the storm and the age of the vamp. Thema carried a sword and a ten-mil.
“Son a wish ona swish,” Molly said, the consonants mostly missing, the vowels drunken.
“‘M unna uke,” Big Evan said.
“You puke, you clean,” Eli said, reappearing. He stepped around the vamp standing in the doorway and added, to her this time, “She needs a bottle. There’s breast milk in the freezer and a card with microwave instructions.”
“I am not a nurse for human children,” Thema said. “I am not a blood-servant to stoop to such duties.” Eli plopped Cassy into her arms. Thema’s eyes went wide. The baby, hungry, stopped wailing, rolled her head, and nuzzled at Thema’s chest. “Ahhh. Ahhh . . . ,” Thema said, holding the baby away from her like she might a wriggling skunk.
Big Evan gagged and vomited all over the rug.
I stood, holding a sleeping witch child. “Where’s EJ?”
“In the workout room with Alex.”
“Gimme,” Molly said, pushing up to a sit, one arm out at me. I placed Angie on her lap. “What the hell was all that?” she asked as she drew a trickle of power from the earth and the surrounding woods and magically inspected her infant and eldest daughter. Milk stained the front of her clothing, her body reacting to the need and terror of her children.
“I still have a connection to Ed. He’s using it to let me know he’s close to breaking. When he let down his shields, some of his pain must have filtered through his link with Angie.” I had no idea how much the child had absorbed or would remember, but even a microsecond of Ed’s torture couldn’t be good for her. I turned my head to Eli. “Pack up. It’s early, but we’re heading to that parley.”
“I’m coming,” Molly said. “Lemme shower off the milk and fear sweat and then nurse Cassy. No need to make the fangheads salivate.”
“I’m comin’ too,” Big Evan said, pushing his bulk to his knees and then to his feet, grunting. Before Eli could say anything: “I know, I know. After I clean my mess off your fancy rug and shower off the stink. We’ll be ready in fifteen.”
“Who will take care of our children?” Molly demanded.
“Shiloh?” I asked. “If she’s healed enough?” Shiloh was their niece and a witch-vamp too.
“I do not know how to work a microwave,” Thema said from the door, a hint of panic in her tone. “I do not know what to do with this child. I will fight all of the warriors of the Flayer of Mithrans myself alone, if someone will take this bébé.”
Cassy began to scream. It was a high-pitched, demanding, furious wail. Thema looked as if she might faint. Or drop the infant. Or toss her like a basketball on fire.
“I’ll take her,” a soft voice said from the side. It was one of Lincoln’s servants, Barbara, or maybe Bridget. Something with a B. She gave a soft smile as Thema all but flung the child at her. “I’m an empty nester for over thirty years, but some things you don’t forget, like how to take care of a little one. Hey there, sweetums. Let’s get your tumtum some mama’s milk, yes, that’s a good baby.”
“Tumtum?” Thema said, before adding what might have been a prayer or a curse word in that liquid African language.
“I’ve called Lincoln to let him know we need Shiloh and to gear up to meet the visitors,” B said as she wended her way to the kitchens, bouncing the baby in her arms.
I shook my head at the utter composure of some blood-servants. Squalling babies, kids out cold, vamps in panic mode, witches on the floor, me in half-form, and . . . tumtum. “Shaddock trains his scions and chooses his clan members well,” I said. “I’ll be ready. How are we getting to Asheville? Shaddock’s snowmobiles will take hours.”
“Weather is holding,” Eli said. “No reason we can’t take Grégoire’s helo.”
I stopped and turned back to my partner. “You still got the helo up here?”
“It never left Asheville Regional Airport. Pilot will set down on the front lawn inside of thirty.”
That would be dusk for real. Probably true-dark and zero visibility in this weather. “Good work, Ranger man. You”—I pointed at Thema—“gear up. You said you’d fight the warriors of the Flayer of Mithrans? Well, you might get your wish. The Dark Queen commands your presence.” I almost said Look alive, but that might have been taken as snark by the undead woman.
I raced up the stairs and stripped, shoved aside the new armor Eli had ordered for me, and pulled on the older, scarlet fighting leathers and my double gorgets. I tucked my father’s fragile medicine bag inside my own, mostly empty, much more modern one. Eli had made it for me, telling me it was time to live my life as the Cherokee did, by Full Circle and harmony. I had done nothing with the bag, putting it off because I was dying. I sealed the bags into a pocket in the lining of my beat-up red leather jacket, thinking that I should have done what Eli said and tried to find some harmony sooner. I sorta kinda needed some harmony right now.
I considered the sword I’d practiced with but never mastered and put it aside. Instead I sheathed the vamp-killer I’d used when I was fighting Titus, the former European emperor. I’d taken his head with the steel-edged, long-bladed, silver-plated knife, one created especially for beheading vampires. I added the curved Mughal ceremonial blade, arranging it across my middle in its scarlet scabbard. These were the same blades I had used when I took the head of the Son of Darkness too. My lucky blades. I snorted with amusement.
No guns. Eli would have enough weaponry to take down a T. rex. No holy water, because it was old and the blessing wore off after time. I shoved seven silver stakes into the sheaths on my left outer thigh and seven ash wood ones into the sheaths on the right. Added all my throwing knives, which included the one I had thrown at the SOD to shut his sorry yapper up, long before I killed him. Three lucky blades. Coolio.
I combed out my hair, yanking on the tangles, and left it loose, like a taunt, an insult. You’re such a poor fighter I didn’t even bother to braid my hair out of the way. That kind of taunt. I rearranged le breloque on my head and studied myself in the bathroom mirror. The scarlet nails were the perfect complement to the red leathers. Thought about putting red lipstick on my cat lips. I raised my lips, showing my fangs.
Beast chuffed. Would look like kill. As if Jane ate enemy as prey.
“In that case I should paint Brute’s mouth.”
“I beg your pardon?” Bruiser asked from the bedroom doorway.
I chuckled, liking the vicious sound of my Beast-voice, feeling strong and in control. “Nothing. You look spiffy.”
He was dressed in deep charcoal armor, nearly black, from head to toe. Military-style stuff, except tight, to show off muscle and weapons, and solid-color matte, no camo. He stood beside me, one arm slipping around me, pulling me tight to him, not the gentle caress he gave my human shape, but a firm, almost demanding pressure. In combat boots he stood five and a half inches ta
ller than me in my bare paws. I reached up and scruffed my knuckles across his beard. “Don’t get killed.”
“Don’t get killed,” he echoed.
Outside, I heard the sound of the helo. “Who’s guarding the inn?”
“Shaddock’s humans are guarding the children and Alex, who is well trained with firearms, thanks to his sessions on the range. Stop worrying.” He indicated the front lawn. “After you, my Dark Queen.”
* * *
* * *
This was the helo’s third trip into Asheville, which was possible only because the refurbished Bell Huey had new deicer systems on the rotors, couplings, windows, and pretty much every other part. A storm system slid along the mountain range, which always made the weather unpredictable, but Eli had kept a bored former military pilot on retainer to fly at a moment’s notice. The first two runs had brought in equipment and the support team. I had watched them take off from the parking lot at the inn, two of the heavily dressed bodies carrying long cases and gear bags that clanked, probably long-distance rifles or maybe that rocket launcher I had thought about, as well as equipment for accessing empty buildings and getting to the roofs. B and E stuff. I didn’t want to know. Even with the extra seats removed and multiple trips, the refurbished Vietnam-era Bell Huey could only carry a few people, so it wasn’t like we had many fighters on our side.
Kojo, Thema, Shaddock, Eli, and several of Shaddock’s humans with combat experience were already in place—people risking their lives and their undeaths trying to save my friend. For this trip, the seats had been put back in and the passengers were Molly, Big Evan, and me strapped into chairs, with Bruiser crouched down in the cargo section behind the seats. I had forgotten how horrible the vibration was. No ear protectors worked on my not-human-shaped head and the sound was deafening. Beast growled and complained the whole way. I ignored her.
The Huey jostled hard on landing. The empty parking lot on Hendersonville Road chosen by the pilot as landing site hadn’t been scraped and was still carpeted in many inches of white, the asphalt beneath deceptively lower. Fortunately or otherwise there were so many of us in the helo that we didn’t slam against anything hard enough to injure, though my teeth did clack together. We disembarked from both sides and sped away from the helicopter, through clouds of prop-dusted snow, good cover as we raced into the protection offered by a brick wall. Eli appeared out of the night, shouting over his comms systems. He asked how we were, filed away the answers, filled us in on who was where, and passed out headgear with mics and earbuds.
Mine didn’t fit. We had never tested for my higher-than-human cattish ears. Beast chuffed in amusement as Eli made a fix that included a part of a plastic spoon, some duct tape, and an extra shoelace. The shoestring tied under my chin, hidden in my pelt. It might have been a pretty cool idea except that the spoon was red and the duct tape was some special-order pink stuff. Not badass at all. But it worked and that would have to do. As he worked, the snow stopped and the city lights flickered, throwing us into snow-bright darkness. The earbud crackled. I adjusted the mouthpiece.
“Yellowrock, you copy?” Alex asked into the earbud.
“I copy.” The helo rotored out of sight. The city lights came back on, a dull yellow that slowly brightened.
“Listen up,” Eli said. “Everyone maintain prearranged positions unless fired upon. Thema at my ten. Kojo at six.” That made Kojo the best shot, and me the one who was being protected. A well-armed human woman appeared out of the weather and took her place at Kojo’s side.
My partner moved into point in a crouched run, in the glow of streetlights reflecting from the snow. The Regal’s entrance was ahead on the corner. Eli was dressed in his cold clothes but I could see him in Beast’s vision, weaponed up like a black-ops mercenary on a limitless budget. Which he was, I realized. Money for this situation was almost unlimited, the constraints on our equipment solely a product of time and the weather. With more time and opportunity, every bell and whistle known to the military could have been ours. And would be soon, I figured.
I spotted others in the dark. Half the people with us had headsets with multiple oculars or single multifunction oculars: low-light, IR. One guy had a virtual-reality-style headset but with only one ocular, for reasons I didn’t understand until I saw the drone in his hands. He scraped the snow off a patch of blacktop, placed the device with its four rotors and multidirectional cameras in the center and the explosive device mounted underneath, and the drone took off, almost silent in the constant low hum of the distant snow movers.
The air felt warmer than it had, but that thought must have jinxed us because the sky opened up and sleet began to whisper down, then to patter down, then to flood. This was going to make egress slippery. Ten seconds later, the drone came down in a clattering heap of broken rotors and shattered high-impact-plastic body. The pilot acted as if he’d lost his best friend.
Eli glanced to me across the night and I nodded, indicating that I was going ahead with the mission to rescue Edmund. Into comms, he said, “DQ and Shaddock in the center, behind Dumas. Everhart behind the DQ, Trueblood behind her. Kojo at the rear. Kojo, I don’t see you. Kojo you copy?”
“I copy. I am here.” The words were terse and irritated. Kojo seemed like the type to want to be at the front of the squad, leading the attack, not at the back protecting us all. I glanced around and spotted the warrior, partially concealed behind a snow-blanketed car in the adjacent parking area.
Our current pattern was like a diamond, the center group tightly positioned, the outer, diamond-shaped ring flaring to the side and in front, with shooters at high points on nearby roofs, providing cover.
“Alex,” I asked over the mic. “Does our guest know we’ve arrived for parley?” I’d been convinced not to walk into a hail of weapons fire by surprising a vamp in his lair.
“He’s expecting you.”
“Move out,” Eli said. The sleet began to beat down hard, strafing into my pelt and burrowing in deep where it would either melt and trickle or clump up like small snowballs and chill me.
Hate sleet, Beast thought.
Following Bruiser, I focused on my footing, on getting around the piles of snow left by snowplows, concentrated on the scents in the air: roasted meat, salmon, human blood, the mingled stink of unfamiliar vamps, and the stench of something dead riding high on the air, possibly on top of the hotel. Beast’s puma paws were designed to keep snow from packing in between the toe and center pads. Our half-form paw-feet were more human-shaped, and snow and sleet packed under our toenails with every step.
We entered beneath the arch on the corner, Eli and Thema slipping into the shadows and inside. Bruiser and Shaddock conferred, something about shock value and entertainment value getting us what we wanted. I shook snow out of my pelt. Molly and Evan held hands, Molly’s eyes closed, her lips moving. She was speaking a working, her magics clear and lively, not the dark night of her death magics. Evan was humming, his music a focal no one else might notice. No one, meaning the vamps and their servants inside. Evan was once again putting his witch-in-hiding status on the line, this time for a man he knew only because of me. They should have taken the kids and gone home.
I had to get Ed. Now. Fast. And get my people out.
The main doors opened. I stood straight and tall. Strode into the building and past the reception area. No one was behind the counter. No one alive anyway. Bloody boots stuck out from behind.
We pushed through to the interior. The heat was like a furnace, dry and slightly smoky. “The Dark Queen,” Bruiser announced, his voice echoing as I passed into the main room, “and the Master of the City, Lincoln Shaddock.”
The furniture that was usually placed in the receiving room was pushed back against the walls, leaving the space open. The fireplace was massive, four-sided, centered between four pillars, and everything in the room was arranged around it, meaning the vamps standing in a semicircle.
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My eyes adjusted to the lights quickly and I slowed as the room opened out, giving me time to take in the tableau, because no way was this unstaged. The humans were sitting on the floor at the feet of the vamps, some bleeding and in chains, others giving the impression of pets with pretty collars around their necks. There were dozens of humans and twelve vamps. Twelve powerful vamps, the entire group except for three wearing pure white. Something moved in the background, a fast blur of darkness with a flash of crimson, behind the vamps and humans. It was gone before I could tell what it was.
Set to the side of the enormous fireplace was a gold throne. A gold-plated throne, rather. It had been constructed of what looked like femur bones and human skulls coated with heavy layers of gold. Shimon was literally sitting on the bones of his enemies.
Just inside the main room, I stopped. The people with me stopped and spread out, Lincoln at my left shoulder, the witches just behind him. The humans with us spread out into the fringes, acquiring firing positions sufficient to avoid hitting us. Our few to Shimon’s bunches.
Ed was lying at the base of the throne, at the feet of his torturer. Ed had been skinned, from his buttocks, up across his scalp, to his forehead. From his hips, up his stomach and chest, to his chin.
I didn’t scream. I didn’t wail. I didn’t attack. I showed my fangs. I extruded my scarlet claws and gripped the Mughal hilt near my waist. I forced a snarl of a smile instead of giving in to the scream that was riding at its heels. Shimon had tortured my heir. My friend. He hadn’t done that by accident, but I didn’t know what the Flayer’s goal was, so I waited, though all I wanted was to attack Shimon and save my primo.
Edmund’s head raised. “The tribal woman comes to call,” he said, sounding unlike himself. Understanding came fast. My primo was still speaking the thoughts of his captor. The vamp was in his head. Shimon was posed, lounging back on the gold, his long black hair flowing over his chest, a chest that was covered in a chitinous armor, shining and hard. I had seen this before, in Natchez, Mississippi. It was an exoskeleton like that grown by the vamps there, who had undergone mutation and become partially insectile in reaction to too much . . . too much time magic. Oh crap. I had focused in so intently on the arcenciel time magic and my own timewalking that I had forgotten about witch time circle magic. This magic took multiple witches and a nonstop working circle and large quantities of the iron spike of Golgotha. The witches forced into the time circle had no choice, no way to get free, no way to stop the working. The working killed them, one after another.
