Blood Cross jy-2

by Faith Hunter

  I felt a vibration and opened my cell. It was Derek Lee. “Yeah?”

  “I’m out front. Take these pictures. They give my men the willies.”

  “How many did you get?”

  “All of them.”

  “Who came when we got out of there? Cops?” I didn’t look at Rick, but he was looking at me, speculation in his gaze as he ate.

  “No cops. Human blood-servants and slaves. I left a man watching from across the street. They’re loading the long-chained ones into an eighteen-wheeler. Cleaning out the place. My man’ll get a tracking transmitter on it if at all possible. That’s what you meant by using them as bait, isn’t it?”

  I could hear the grin in his words. “Thanks.”

  “Let us have the bounty on the heads of the long-chained and that’ll be thanks enough.”

  I remembered the faces of the raving vamps. The way the girl vamp licked at her own arm, trying to taste her own blood. On one hand, it seemed wrong to give them true-death if there was any chance at a sane future, but not if that future sanity was promised at the death of children. “They’re yours.”

  I closed the cell and stood, looking down at the witches. “I have some evidence.” Rick looked up at that, his expression saying clearly that he wasn’t sure he should be here. “Don’t ask,” I warned him. He sat back and set down his spoon.

  “I have a feeling this stuff isn’t pretty. It might involve the ceremonies where vamps sacrifice witch children.” Molly touched her mouth, her fingers quivering. “If you can’t handle it, go upstairs. And you,” I said to Rick, “you stay out of sight and don’t look at the deliverymen.” I went to the door.

  Derek Lee already had a half dozen paintings on the porch. I grabbed two in each hand and carted them inside. They were in heavy gilt frames, each weighing about forty pounds, a lot heavier than they’d felt back at the lair, with adrenaline surging and Beast close to the surface. I propped the paintings against the couch and went back for more. The van roared off as I worked. There were fifteen paintings. Rick was lining them up on the floor, propped along the furniture.

  Her mouth in a tight line, Evangelina was changing the order, separating the paintings into two groups, one group on one side of the room, facing the other. I closed the door when I brought in the last one. Molly was in Evan’s arms, her face in his shoulder. I could smell her fear. Evan’s fear was subsumed beneath a rising anger. Evangelina’s scent was more complex, her emotions tightly controlled.

  Rick was ignoring me, studying the paintings. I joined him. This wasn’t the first time that I had gotten important info from vamp paintings. “Good thing vamps chronicled their every important move in oil on canvas,” I muttered. “Self-obsessed bloodsuckers that they are.”

  Evangelina said, “That trait may have come from the fact that silvered mirrors reacted to them and didn’t show their reflections well. So they sat for paintings to see how they looked.” She had separated the paintings into two groups according to time period, one batch with the female participants dressed in belled skirts, big sleeves, and corsets that came to a point below the navel, and for the men, knee pants, lace and satin, ugly big-buckled shoes, with white hair piled up tall. The other batch depicted people—well, vamps and witches—in high-waisted, slender dresses that showed a lot of cleavage, delicate shoes, and natural-colored hair.

  Though the participants changed through the years, all of the ones in charge of the ceremonies held knives and had fangs. Some of the vamps in the center of the witch circles and pentagrams had fangs and were clearly raving; in several paintings, they were the two teenagers I’d seen in the warehouse, the long-chained ones. The sacrificial children were dead, their throats cut, lives forfeited in the pentagram’s center. In others, they were being drunk from as they died.

  In the later depictions, the experiments had changed several times. One showed the long-chained ripping out the throats of the sacrifices and drinking them down. In one, the adult was, I guessed, Renee. Her husband and her two children were in the circle, savaging a human. Two younger, fangless children were being sacrificed by Renee, a silver knife held high. On the latter canvases picturing both Damours, a bearded vamp was assisting the ceremony. The brother? Wasn’t he supposed to be the last of the three to find sanity? I rearranged the order of two paintings and smiled grimly. “Evangelina, you’re the educated one. What time periods are we seeing?”

  “I never made a study of fashion,” she said dryly, “but I’d say the older batch is from the seventeen hundreds and the more recent from the early eighteen hundreds. This one”—she tapped a painting in which the participants wore modern-looking clothes—“I’d say came from the nineteen seventies.”

  “That’s what I figured.” In it, only the children were in the circle, feeding on a witch child. Adults stood outside, at points of the pentagram. They bore striking resemblance to one another. They had to be the Damours.

  “You understand this?” Rick asked. “Because I sure don’t.”

  “There were no notes of the Rousseau experiments from the seventeen hundreds. Nothing was destroyed in the fire.” I turned one of the oils into the light better to study the face of the strange vamp. I wondered who he was. “These paintings were the records of experiments, shipped to the States, probably in the frames, but behind other, less important paintings. Some of the later ones were maybe painted here. But whenever they were painted, this is the Rousseau record of the experiments to rid the clan of insanity.”

  “They could be transported, hidden behind other paintings, but in plain sight, and no one would ever know,” Evangelina said.

  There were definite differences in the styles of the paintings as well as the experiments. In the older set, there was no pentagram in the witch circle. No crosses on the trees. In the more recent batch, all the elements I’d seen in the young-rogue burial sites were present. Except . . . “In the older ones, the circles and pentagrams are made by cutting into the earth, like with a spade. In the newer ones, the circles are made with other things. Something that looks like powder or flour in one, flowers in one. Feathers. And stones in two, one with pebbles, one with shaped stones, like bricks.”

  “And the sacrificial athames in the older depictions are steel. The most recent ones indicate silver,” Evangelina said. “The vamps in charge change.”

  “And there’s this bearded guy. He’s in . . .”—Evangelina counted—“six of the later paintings. Look at his position. Almost as if he’s in charge now. And I’m betting that necklace on his chest in all the paintings is an amulet that lets him draw power from the others.”

  I studied the amulet. I didn’t know much about gems, but it looked like a pink diamond or a washed-out, pale ruby, about the size of my thumb from the last knuckle to the thumb tip, faceted all over. It was on a heavy gold chain, a thick casing holding the gem, the casing shaped of horns and claws. It looked barbaric, brutal, and powerful, an artifact from a distant time and place.

  “That’s what they intend for my babies?” Molly asked. She was standing where she could see all the paintings at once, her hands fisted so tightly her fingers were white, fear and grief and fierce anger on her face. I wanted to promise that I’d get to the children in time, that I’d save them. But the promises were for me, not for her. Molly knew what we were up against now. I nodded instead and went to the last painting from the eighteen hundreds. It was different from all the others. In it was an extra figure racing downhill, her white dress flying back with her speed, eyes blazing, holding a flaming, bloody cross. Sabina Delgado y Aguilera coming to the rescue, her face in a rictus scream of pain, her arms on fire, flames licking up toward her body. The vamps in the circle were running away, faces full of terror.

  Sabina had known exactly what I was describing when I told her about the young rogue and the witch circle in the woods. She had known and hadn’t told me.

  A soft knock sounded at the door and Molly whirled, the reek of her rage and panic bitter on the air. No one had set
wards. I peeked through a sliver of clear glass, glanced back once to see Rick with his weapon drawn and Evan with his hands out in a warding gesture. I opened the door. Two witches stood on the shallow stoop. I had never seen them before, but I recognized their scent.

  Beast reared up fast, her pelt pressing against my skin, her claws sharp in my fingertips. Thief-of-kits! Beast lunged into my mind. Flamed into my eyes.

  One witch, petite and blond, stepped back fast, shock on her face. Threw up her hands, palms out, power gathered there. Before she could throw the spell, I leaped. Was on her, a vamp-killer at her throat. Her thief-of-kits scent oily in my nose. “Any reason I shouldn’t just kill you where you stand?” I growled.

  Screaming sounded all around me. The other witch begging, Molly shouting my name. Evan roaring. But the witch’s terror was so strong it was sweet in my nostrils and mouth, heady. Her blood was mine. I slid the blade across her flesh, only a fraction. The witch’s skin spilt. She was crying. I inhaled, smiling, showing killing teeth. Whispered, “Thief-of-kits. Die.”

  It was Evangelina who placed her hands on my arms, power flowing up from her fingers like cool bayou water, drawing away my rage, her voice soothing. “Wait. Not yet. Not just yet. Jane, let her go. I have her. She will not get away.”

  I met her eyes, my voice hissing and guttural. “Thief-of-kits.”

  Amazingly, Evangelina smiled, and suddenly she was beautiful, greenish eyes sparkling, her face young. “And we have her now. She will not get away.” She pushed at the vamp-killer, a gentle pressure. I blinked, Beast vision overlapping with mine. Evangelina’s peace chilled my killing heat. Soothed me like a hand down my pelt. I let her press the weapon away. My fingers slowly opened, one at a time. I released the witch. Under Evangelina’s hands, my rage eased, settled back, and found a resting place, like a sun-warmed rock in my mind. Unsteady, blinking in the sharp man-light, I stepped back. I was still holding the knife. It was the one Evan had carved for me and when I looked up, I saw his eyes on the hilt.

  “Please come inside,” Evangelina said to the two witches, her tone genial and gracious, a hostess asking guests in. “And you will tell us everything.” Her lips twisted into a smile that made my heart stutter. “Or I will kill you myself.”

  My Beast liked this woman. She was wise and strong.

  I went inside and busied myself making tea. Ignoring the stares from the others. Finding my place, myself again, inside Beast’s angry heart.

  The witches’ story was simple, and so stupid that it was believable. A vampire sorcerer, a male witch who had been turned, had come to their small coven, five women of the same bloodline, who worked together. He’d claimed he had proof that Leo Pellissier was kidnapping and killing children who carried the witch gene, killing off the next generation of witches to cement his waning power. He had proved he was more powerful than Leo by walking in the last rays of the sun. They had believed his story. Against the wishes of the city’s other covens, they had agreed to help. Working with them, he had identified several undocumented witch children and teens and staked out the perimeters of their homes.

  When the attack came against Bliss, protected behind only electronic security, without wards, the vamp and the two witches were watching. Two vamps, most likely Renee and Tristan, had spelled Bliss, who had come out of her room through the window. The watching witches had attacked to save her. But the vamp who had befriended them turned on his witch helpers, joining the Damours. Both witches were injured.

  The Damours had placed an amulet on each witch’s chest, into her blood, and drained her power. Carrying Bliss and forcing the wounded witches, they had climbed over the fence and blasted their way through the wards on my house. They’d taken the children and gotten away, dropping off the conned, injured, magically drained witches to make their way home in the dark.

  “Why didn’t the vamps drain you?” Rick asked.

  “One tried. The little girl who lived here hit him with something,” the smaller blonde said. “I didn’t see what, but it stopped him. He looked at her, and then he let us go. It was weird.”

  Angelina. Angelina had caught his attention. With her strong powers bound just under the surface, Angie Baby was the perfect sacrifice. I wanted to rip the heads off the witches’ shoulders for their stupidity.

  “We were both pretty bad off, drained of our gifts,” the other witch said, “but as soon as we could, we came straight over here to tell you.” The witches looked at each other and back to me, fearfully. The women were sitting around the kitchen table, Rick leaning against the cabinet, Evan standing in the doorway, as if he couldn’t be any closer to the grouping or he would kill someone. Evan was a huge man. If he lost his temper, he might be dangerous. I stood off to the side, silent, knowing that Beast was still in my eyes, the full moon holding her close to the surface. For now, she was content to let me remain alpha, but I didn’t expect it to last.

  The smaller blonde said, “I’m Butterfly Lily. My mom is Feather Storm.” When she saw Evangelina’s brows go up, she grinned. “Okay, not our real names, our coven names, and the only ones we’ll give you tonight.” Her smile fell away as if the tissue beneath broke apart and pulled the emotion with it.

  “We thought we were doing the right thing, saving witch children, working with the vampires to heal the rift between our races. Picking the winning side.” Butterfly Lily ducked her head and her voice went softer. “Mom and I are not real powerful. Mostly we’re used as routing for group workings.”

  She said to Evangelina, “We brought him to our coven. He promised to help us catch the kidnapper. We believed him. He was convincing.”

  Evangelina said nothing, her expression both sad and condemning. She sighed. “Go on.”

  “I know. It was stupid. We were stupid. He had us watch the vamps for weeks. Had us track them to their parties and to their lairs. Gathering information.”

  There had been five witches outside of the vamp party, under a glamour. Hiding. Watching. This coven. Doing the dirty work of the Damours.

  “He got us to track down every nonaligned witch and witch child in the city so he could protect them. He said that once he had enough evidence to prove that Leo Pellissier was kidnapping witches, he was going up against the blood-master of the city. When he won, he’d declare peace with us and sit down to negotiate.”

  I was fighting an enemy I’d never met face-to-face. An enemy I’d seen only on canvas and in the young faces of his children. I wanted to weep.

  Feather Storm said, “The city’s covens are . . . really mad at us. We’ll help any way we can.”

  Beast under control, I left the room, and brought back the painting that showed the ones I thought were the three Damours and their children. I shoved the painting in front of the women and they recoiled from it as if it were evil. “These are the witches who took the children?” I asked. When the witches with the silly names nodded, I looked at Rick. “If all three of the adult Damours are sane, that means the blood magic ceremonies worked at some point for adults, but didn’t work on children. They’re experimenting on strangers, turning them, changing the ceremony each time, trying to find what will succeed. That’s what this is all about. This is the proof. It’s a way to bring people over without the insanity of the devoveo, the young-rogue state, and to allow the long-chained to find sanity. It ties everything together. And it means they’re close to a solution to the devoveo.

  “They know if they’re caught they’ll be killed and there will be another purge, so they’re attacking first, forging alliances with two strong clans, undermining Leo’s power base, pumping up his enemy Rafael. I have a feeling they might be getting the Crips to fight other gangs too, keeping the police too busy to see what’s about to happen, which is a war with Leo. Tell Jodi. See what you can put together.”

  My cell rang and I answered. Derek said, “No dice, Princess. My guy got a transponder onto the truck taking the long-chained, but the security found it. We lost ’em.”

  My he
art fell. “Okay, Derek, thanks.” I disconnected and looked at my guests. “I’m going out,” I said. “I’ll be back.” They fussed and yelled and made a stink, but I reweaponed up, got back on Bitsa, and took off.

  I should have slashed his tires. Now there was nothing I could do about Rick following me on his Kow-bike. Not a dang thing.

  CHAPTER 21

  Will not be caught in predator’s stare

  I had no idea how late it was and I didn’t care. I called Bruiser and told him what I needed. Unlike my houseguests, he didn’t argue. When I reached the vamp graveyard, I roared around the gate and up the shell drive to the chapel without setting off any alarms. I killed the bike and stalked to the steps. The Kawasaki came to a halt behind me. The night fell silent. I didn’t glance back, but I could smell gun oil and knew Rick had drawn his weapon.

  I raced up the steps. Banged my fist against the chapel door. It echoed within and against the crypts behind me. I heard the softer scrunch of shell as Rick left his bike and joined me, standing a little to my left.

  There was no answer to my knock and Beast, fighting her own fierce frustration, bled strength into my blood in a raging of power. I gripped the door handle and turned. Threw my body against the painted wood. The door slammed open, banging into the inside wall. With Beast’s night vision I took in the place at a glance.

  The chapel was one long room, white-painted walls and backless wood benches in rows. Moonlight poured through red-paned stained glass windows, tingeing everything with the tint of watered blood. At the front was a tall table holding a candle and a low bowl of incense, smoking, filling the air with the scent of rosemary, sage, and something bitter, like camphor. A rocking chair sat beside the table, and on its other side, a low stone bier carved with a statue lying faceup, marble hands crossed on her chest. I strode to the bier and identified the carving as Sabina. It was her coffin. I had a feeling she slept in it.

  I pushed the stone cover, bending and putting Beast’s strength into it. The top moved with a heavy, grating sound, stone on stone. It weighed several hundred pounds. I heaved, breathed with a groan, shoving, the air painful in my lungs. I moved it a few inches. Behind me a lighter clicked and flame brightened the room as Rick lit candles. Holding one, he joined me and we looked through the narrow opening, into the crypt.