Blood Cross jy-2

by Faith Hunter

  A little click sounded as her fangs snapped down. Her smile was predatory, as cold and barren as the energies she had shared when she healed me. Slowly, her eyes bled black and her sclera bled scarlet as she vamped out, but the transition was slow, not the eyeblink speed of the others. She seemed in control even as she lost it. Old . . . she was old.

  “I was among the first hundred who followed the Sons of Darkness, turned by one who was among the first ten of the Cursed.”

  I remembered the term Sons of Darkness mentioned at the party, and that one of them had been contacted by Rafael. I’d also seen the term on a scrap of paper in room 666. She swiveled in the seat, a motion as supple and sinuous as a snake, and put the Porsche into drive. “You are not human. You have been honored to receive my essence and live.” Without another word, her fangs retracted with a soft click, and she pulled out of the alley, around the convenience store, into the street. Moments later she slowed in front of my house and said, “You may leave me.”

  I unbuckled, opened the door, and stepped from the car, not ticked off that I’d been dismissed, as I usually was when one of them acted all high-handed. I was satisfied to get away alive. She reached over, pulled the door shut, and the tires ground away from the curb, the car a low throb in the night.

  We still didn’t have power and so when I was inside, I lit a single candle, carrying it with me. Filthy, I stripped, tossed the dress into the sink, added soap and water, just in case the dress could be salvaged, and showered off fast. I was almost getting used to the sight of blood rinsing off me and down the drain. Naked, damp hair unbraided and knotted in a ponytail hanging down my back, I dialed Derek Lee. When he answered, I said, “I’m hunting rogue. Want to come?”

  His answer was a succinct “Hell yeah.”

  “Meet you at your place,” I said, and closed the cell.

  When Bitsa and I motored up to his housing unit, Derek and three of his guys were waiting. From the look of them, they were all military or ex-military. Cold, expressionless, ready. They were in jungle camo, boots, and bore a single pair of night-vision goggles. I could smell the steel and gun oil from the street. I didn’t bother to say hi, I just killed the engine, slung a leg over the bike, and kicked the stand down.

  “You leaving that nice piece a’ art here?” one of Derek’s guys said.

  “Witchy locks. Anyone who touches it gets a shock.”

  “What we doing?” Derek asked, moving into the street.

  He didn’t introduce his crew; I guessed he didn’t intend me to know their names. Okay by me. Trust had to be earned; it worked both ways. And I was starting out with a lie but there was no help for it. So much for trust. “I want to see if I can track the rogues’ hunting ground, find out if there are any more young ones feeding in the area.” I held up a shard of sharp stone I’d grabbed from the rock garden. “This is spelled. I feel a sort of vibration in the presence of vamps. I can track them with this.” Total lie but it was all I had. I was gonna sniff them out, but I couldn’t say that.

  “You leaving it with us when you’re done?” Derek asked.

  “Sure. It’ll be nothing but a piece of rock, but you can have it.”

  “Onetime spell. Damn witches got no heart,” guy number one said.

  Derek lifted a careless one-shouldered shrug of the fighting man. “After you.”

  Two hours later I was done. Using the magical rock I had mapped the entire hunting ground of the two young rogues we had killed, and the others killed and beheaded by Derek and his crew. There were no more young feeding in the projects, which relieved my mind, but I had learned nothing new, which was a bummer.

  The men followed Bitsa and me out of the projects, threading through the city to vamp headquarters, a cooler full of vamp heads in the backseat of their car. I tried to call ahead, but cell towers, or the erratic power to them, were back down. I pulled up at the front door and unloaded the cooler, surprised at the weight. Vamp heads were heavy. Derek and his soldiers took off, which was still sort of weird, as I knew they worked for Leo.

  I rang the bell, and when the same security blood-servant opened it, I handed WWF the cooler. He grunted when he took it and set it on the table inside. “Can I get a check?” I asked.

  “Ernestine’s gone home for the night. Call tomorrow.” He opened the cooler and made a face at the smell. I stepped back fast. The dry ice hadn’t done a very good job and the heads were ripe. WWF pulled on latex gloves and inspected the fangs, verified them to be young rogue, and wrote out a receipt. I took it and left, feeling that I hadn’t accomplished a dang thing today.

  Wired, unable to sleep, I stripped again, and put the weapons under lock and key so the kids couldn’t find them. Grabbing my puma concolor fetish necklace and my travel pack, I stopped by the kitchen for some warm beef jerky and went out back to the rocks I used for meditation and to shift. I had two hours till dawn and a lot of frustration to burn off.

  Yesssss. Hunt, Beast thought at me. I hadn’t hunted in days, and she pressed against my flesh, her pelt abrading me, her claws opening and closing, sharp tips biting into my mind.

  Standing on the broken rocks, I pulled the travel pack over my head, adjusted the double chain securing the gold nugget necklace to its proper length, and snapped on the travel pack. Together, they looked like an expensive collar and tote, such as a St. Bernard rescue dog might have carried in the Swiss Alps. I bent over and scraped the gold nugget across the uppermost rock, depositing a thin streak of gold. It was like, well, like a homing beacon, among other things.

  Hunt. Kill. Blood and meat. Beast, while always present in the depths of my consciousness, was talking to me as a separate entity now, as a self-aware creature with desires of her own. I looked at the jerky I’d dropped on the ground, knowing she would hate it, but there wasn’t anything I could do, not with the power still off. Besides, Beast needed to roam free for a while, and I needed the more perfect healing that shifting would bring. The drop of Bethany’s essence had kept me alive, and if I had no other experience to compare it to, it would have seemed nearly miraculous. But it wasn’t a substitute for Beast and my own skinwalker magic.

  I sat on the boulders, the rock warm beneath me. Mosquitoes swarmed, biting. Beast hissed. Biting things. Too small to eat.

  The necklace of the mountain panther—commonly called the mountain lion—was made of the claws, teeth, and small bones of the biggest female panther I had ever seen. The cat had been killed by a rancher in Montana during a legal hunt, the pelt mounted on his living room wall, the bones and teeth sold through a taxidermist. The mountain lion was hunted throughout the Western U.S. but was extinct in the Eastern states, or it had been. Some reports said panthers were making a comeback east of the Mississippi. I could hope. I didn’t have to use the necklace to shift into this creature—unlike other species, the memory of Beast’s form was always a part of me—but it was easier.

  I held the necklace and closed my eyes. Relaxed. Listened to the wind. Felt the pull of the moon, growing gravid, nesting the horizon. I listened to the beat of my own heart. Beast rose in me, silent, predatory.

  I slowed the functions of my body, my breathing, my heart rate, let my blood pressure drop, my muscles relax, as if I were going to sleep. I lay on the boulder, breasts and belly draping the cool stone in the humid air.

  Mind clearing, I sank deep inside, my consciousness falling away, all but the purpose of this hunt. That purpose I set into the lining of my skin, into the deepest parts of my brain, so I wouldn’t lose it when I shifted, when I changed. I dropped lower. Deeper. Into the darkness inside where ancient, nebulous memories swirled in a gray world of shadow, blood, uncertainty. I heard a distant drum, smelled herbed wood smoke, and the night wind on my skin seemed to cool and freshen. As I dropped deeper, memories began to firm, memories that, at all other times, were submerged, both mine and Beast’s, but had been brought closer to the surface by the time in the sweat lodge with Aggie One Feather. Had that been only this morning? It seeme
d forever ago.

  As I had been taught by my father—so long forgotten—I sought the inner snake lying inside the bones and teeth of the necklace, the coiled, curled snake, deep in the cells, in the remains of the marrow. Science had given the snake a name. RNA. DNA. Genetic sequences, specific to each species, each creature. For my people, for skinwalkers, it had always simply been the inner snake, the phrase one of very few things that was certain in my past.

  I sank into the marrow hidden in the bones. I took up the snake that rests in the depths of all beasts and I dropped within. Like water flowing in a stream, a whirling current. Like snow rolling down a mountainside gaining momentum, unstoppable. Grayness enveloped me, sparkling with black motes, bright and cold as the world fell away. I slid into the gray place of the change.

  My breathing deepened. Heart rate sped up. And my bones . . . slid. Skin rippled. Fur, tawny and gray, brown and tipped with black, sprouted. Pain, like a knife, slid between muscle and bone. My nostrils widened, drawing deep.

  Jane fell away. Night was rich with wonderful scents, dancing like trout in stream, each distinct. I panted. Listened—cars, music, the sounds of humans, and the sounds of animals. Hopped from rocks. Sniffed food. Hacked. Old dead, cooked meat. Dead prey. Wanted hunt, to tear flesh from bone. But stomach burned with need. Hunger. I ate.

  Belly silent, I stepped to top of rocks, broken and sharp, and leaped to top of tall fence, brick warm and high like limb in sun. Dropped down, to yard on side of house without small dog. Good eating, but Jane says no. Only opossum, deer, nutria, rabbit. Alligator. If I can catch one. Am Big Cat, but gator is big underwater.

  Long time later, near sunrise, belly was full of small deer, hooves and bones and not-eat parts on the ground, my heart happy with hunt and blood. With last lick of tongue, groomed paws and face clean, and rolled over on pine needles, paws in air, staring at night sky. Was near shaman’s house. Not shaman from far away, not new shaman who was also vampire, but shaman of Jane’s people. Cherokee shaman. Aggie One Feather. Jane needed to be here. Jane needed shaman, though she did not know it.

  Mind of Jane rose, curious. Why? she thought. Why do I need Aggie?

  Did not answer. Sometimes Jane was foolish, like when she did not mate, though her body and soul needed a mate. Three males would mate with her. All fast and strong and healthy. But she did not. Curious.

  Yawned and rolled to feet, nosed carcass. No good meat left. Satisfied, padded through trees and scrub and along path to shaman’s, careful to step on pine needles piled deep, not on mud, careful to hide tracks. Padded along path where liver-eater had once hidden, checking for his scent. Fading. Liver-eater was true-dead.

  Circled sweat house. Shaman’s dogs were asleep on back stoop, snoring. Easy prey, if I was hungry. Looked at sky, dawn not far away. Time to change. Time to let Jane be alpha.

  Located good place under tree with low branches. Safe, protected. Lay down on leaves and needles, their scent fresh and strong. Thought of Jane. Human. Found her snake. And shifted. Painpainpain like knives sliding on bone, cutting deep.

  In the gray dark of almost dawn, I lay on a bed of pine needles, their sharp ends pricking my bare skin. “Why do I need Aggie?” I asked my other half, my voice raspy, dry, and unused. Deep in my mind, Beast rolled over and closed her eyes. I cleared my throat, said, “Big help you are,” and pushed to my knees. Unclasping the travel pack from my neck, I shook out my clothes—T-shirt, lightweight pants, and flip-flops—and dressed quickly, already smelling bacon and eggs cooking nearby.

  Despite the deer Beast had brought down and gorged on, I was still ravenous, the energies used by the shift partially provided by the calories in the protein and fats of the big meal. But it was never enough and I was always hungry after. The smell of breakfast cooking made me salivate.

  I pulled my long hair back and tied it in a knot as I walked toward Aggie’s house, hoping she and her mother would still be asleep or looking elsewhere when I exited the woods because I had no explanation of why I was in the park property that bordered theirs. I wasn’t so lucky. They were sitting on the screened porch in the dark of near dawn, the older woman drinking from a mug, and I felt the weight of their curiosity and speculation as I stepped onto the lawn. Aggie stood and opened the screened door. “Have you come to go to water?”

  “Um . . . yes.” It seemed safest to agree, though I didn’t really remember what it meant. At the sound of my voice, dogs rose and pitched from the porch, barking. Beast hacked with amusement at the sound before going to sleep in my mind.

  “Are you fasting?” Aggie asked.

  “Yes. And starving.” And hoping she’d ask me to breakfast. She didn’t.

  “Go wait on the front porch. You need to pray and center yourself, and I need to gather my things. Our breakfast can wait.”

  I sighed. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to get nourishment any time soon. Center myself, she said. Something about that thought raised my hackles, and I didn’t know why. I was centered. I was always centered. Whatever the heck that meant.

  Around front, I dropped down on the porch and waited as the sky began to brighten from the darkest blue of night to the bleak charcoal of early dawn. I was hungry and tired and sleepy. And annoyed, not that I’d let Aggie see that.

  Faster than I expected, Aggie opened the front door and walked out, no lights on inside, which preserved her night vision. In the dark, she placed a small black cloth bag on the step and sat beside me with a stretch and a yawn, her manner grave, until she met my eyes. Hers took on a twinkle as if she could see the orneriness squirming beneath my skin. I pressed my lips together to keep from saying something crass and she chuckled softly. I wanted to make claws of my hands, but gripped them together around my knees instead, the knuckles white.

  Aggie’s expression went from amusement to compassion, which somehow made me madder. And again, I didn’t know why. She patted my clasped hands as if to say, “Take your medicine, little girl. It won’t taste bad,” which surely was a lie. She then began to explain the ritual of going to water, offering explanations on its purpose, and instructing me in my part, as if I was really going to do this.

  My aggravation grew until I was grinding my back molars. And I had no idea why I was so irritated. Angry. Whatever. When she paused I said, “So, to put it simply, we throw up, talk to God, and then go for a swim. In a bayou that’s full of all sorts of things. Snakes. Twenty-pound rats. And alligators.”

  Aggie laughed, the sound like water burbling over stones, her face creased into smile wrinkles that otherwise didn’t show. “Pretty much. There are ritual prayers, but I can walk you through them.”

  I was used to doing my praying in church, but somehow this felt natural too.

  “Usually women don’t have to purge,” Aggie continued, “but you are a warrior woman, and my mother and I agree that you must go to water as a man would, at least this first time. After, you will be cleansed inside and out; your spirit will be open, and restored. You will be ready for battle or pain or difficulty, and you will be without the shadows of the past that darken your soul. Come. Sun’s getting ready to rise, and going to water is best done at dawn.” Aggie stood and reached back to the house, opening the door. From the darkness within, an old woman tottered out, Aggie One Feather’s mother. Maybe I was dense, but I hadn’t realized that the older woman would be joining us.

  I bowed my head to her and murmured, “U ni lisi, grandmother of many children.” It was a term of greatest respect.

  Her hair was braided down to her hips, the thin tresses black as a raven’s wing brightened with rare white strands. She nodded once to me and blinked into the dark, leading the way to the car parked in the yard, a little four-wheel-drive Toyota barely seen in the unlit driveway. Chattering in Cherokee, she climbed into the backseat and buckled herself in, her actions certain and determined. I looked at Aggie, but she was too busy following her ancient mother’s orders to notice my dismay. Now I had two lisi to deal with, and it was clear who
se word held sway. Elder Grandmother’s.

  Unable to figure out a way to avoid the ritual, and not knowing why I was feeling so stubborn, I climbed in the front passenger seat. Aggie drove us out of the cul-de-sac and down a series of shell roads, white in the dawn light. Unpaved roads in the Delta states were often covered with crushed shell, and the farther we drove, the sparser the shells on the roadway became until we were on a two-track trail, the car bouncing into and out of potholes and over washboard ruts.

  She gunned the engine like a wannabe dirt-track racer, skewing around curves between ever-closer trees, the dark world bouncing in the headlights, which didn’t help the state of my nerves or the condition of my hunger. Like the woman in the backseat, who seemed familiar with Aggie’s driving, I held on with both hands while my stomach growled and cramped with hunger and Beast pressed paws into my consciousness, kneading, her way of offering comfort. Why did I need comfort?

  The old women laughed and chattered as Aggie drove, including me in the conversation from time to time, mostly instructions about the ritual to come, and I wasn’t certain whether I was growing happier about what we were going to do or more uncomfortable.

  “The old beliefs say that a Great Creator made us,” Aggie said as she spun the car around a hundred-twenty-degree curve and back in a graceless swerve. “There was a split in beliefs generations ago, I think influenced by Christians, with some saying the Creator still was listening to us and some saying he had gone back to the Great One, or possibly somewhere creating other worlds, and had left three guardians to watch over us.”

  Interesting that they had a trinity too.

  “Some talk about these three guardians and some talk about the guardians of the four directions. As for actual names to call on, the major one would be Unelenehi, who is the Great One. It’s also the name for the sun, but according to my grandpa,” she said, taking her eyes from the narrowing road to give me a look that said her grandpa had been an important, knowledgeable, and wise man, “the sun was only a reflection of the Great Light behind it, which was the One. You call on this when facing east. Many people like to call on Selu, who was first woman, the corn mother. Her husband, first man, was Kenati. There was also a great female spirit. I’ve never seen her name written, but it’s pronounced like Ag is see qua.”