by Faith Hunter
Kem wasn’t impressed either way, though he accepted a Snickers as well, and ate it in huge, half-chewed bites. He opened another, gesturing with it in what sounded like a non sequitur in his elegant African accent. “The grindylow no longer function according to its previous and proper purpose. It should be able to track the werewolves once it has taken their human and were scents, and it should have killed them long before now. It isn’t, it hasn’t. Its scent pattern has change in ways with which I am not familiar. It appears to be moving much more slowly than normal, spending long moments in one place, doing what appears to be”—he stopped, as if unable to find the right word—“nothing. Perhaps it is . . . resting.”
The emphasis on the word resting made it sound foreign to the little green-skinned grindy. “They don’t rest?”
“No. Never. Not as long as human is in danger. Perhaps it is . . . ill.” But he didn’t look fearful, Kemnebi looked ecstatic at the prospect. The grindylow had killed Kem’s mate for trying to infect Rick. Kem hoped he’d die.
I frowned, adjusted the blower at my midsection, and ate another candy bar, curling one leg under my butt for comfort as I angled myself to face him. “The grindy didn’t stop the weres in New Orleans from repeatedly biting Rick. Torturing him.” Rick went utterly still, and I could suddenly smell the stress and fear-memory leaching from his pores. He was remembering.
Kem’s lip curled at the smell. He slanted a look to the back, at Rick. “The grindylow was beleaguered in New Orleans. His mistress broke were-law with this human.” Kem’s eyes took on a voracious glow at the word. “He knew that were-law required her death. He . . . loved Safia. Her death was painful to him and was responsible for the delay in tracking the wolves.”
“Yeah?” I remembered the state of the grindy’s room at vamp central. It had been shredded, as if in a rage. Or in frustration. Another of the dominoes fell. I cursed softly, and Kem turned away when he saw the understanding in my eyes. “Coulda been that. Or, you caged him in his room so he couldn’t get out and stop the werewolves from torturing Rick.”
Kem turned hot golden-green eyes back to me. His beast eyes peered at me in threat. I wondered what I’d learn if I pushed at the cat. Beast stirred, flowing up through my veins and nerves, intrigued by the big-cat. It almost felt as if she had been waiting for this moment, primed for some action she expected. Wanted. Heat and power flooded through me and she stared back at the leopard, her claws unsheathed and painful, holding me down. When I spoke next, it was her thoughts I spoke. “To punish Rick for Safia. She was going to leave you. To mate with him.”
Kem growled. Time did a shift and seemed to step sideways, slowing into overlays of still-shots. Kem’s lips drew back. Revealed fangs. Male big-cat musk saturated the air. Claws burst through the tips of Kem’s fingers; black fur sprouted on the backs of his hands.
Beast slammed through me. Pain cut through my hands and mouth like razors. My jaws ached and I tasted blood as big-cat canines pushed through my gums. She hissed, showing killing teeth. I pushed up with the foot beneath me just as Kemnebi launched himself across the cab. One claw swatting at my face.
My leap lifted me over the swipe. Golden-furred hands tore into Kem’s neck. My hands, Beast’s fur and claws. Blood spurted. My fangs tore into his throat. Latching to either side of his esophagus. I bit down, not hard enough to tear out his throat, just enough to cut off his airway. His claws ripped into my middle, catching on the fleece and the belt, hooking deep.
Behind Kem, the door to the cab opened. Rain and wind swept in. I got a glimpse of Rick. We tumbled backward, my body over Kem’s, to land with a splash on the watery earth and sink into the mud. Beast took over my mind. Kem could get no air. He thrashed. And went still.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Is This a Proposal or Something?
Battle was over. Kem, trying to pant, lay back his head. His claws retracted. Forelegs spread, his belly exposed to me. Accepting Beast/Jane dominance. I/we shook him, teeth tearing through tissue only a little. To wound, not to kill. Kem relaxed even more. Proving his submission.
Kem fights like human in leopard skin. The I/we of Beast fights like puma inside human. Better hunter. Better killer.
Beast. Pull back. Let him go, Jane thought.
Will not harm my mate.
Okay. I’ll tell him that. Just . . . Just let him go.
Fights like human. Humans cheat with dominance. Will let go when he gives up. Soon, Kem-cat’s stomach muscles relaxed. His legs went limp. Finally, really, giving up. Now. I let go and Jane stepped up and aside. Pain raced through me as big-cat teeth and claws reshaped and reformed to human mouth and hands. Painpainpain.
I lay on the hood of the SUV, on my back, the rain pelting me, panting with agony. Oddly, the first thing I thought was that I was once again soaked to the skin. I laughed, the sound chuffing, half puma. The second was, “Oh crap.” I lifted my hands. They were human, but they hurt like I had boxed a brick wall barehanded. I put fingers to my face, to my teeth. Human and human. I was still wearing pants, so I hadn’t shifted totally. If I’d shifted into Beast in daylight, I couldn’t shift back until night or moonrise, whichever came first. So . . . I hadn’t known Beast could do a partial change. And Rick had seen it. Crap.
I rolled over, fast, to my hands and knees. My hair was undone, hanging in long wet strands to the engine. It was still running beneath my body, an unvarying, uniform purr. Rick stood a little ways off, Kem once again in black were-leopard form at his side. A leash was around his neck, the prongs pressing into the flesh of his throat. Blood coated his throat and chest, watery in the rain. He was lying on his belly, head down, eyes looking up. When he saw my stare, he crouched lower. A moment later, as if he thought his crouch was not enough, he rolled over again, giving me his belly.
Prey response. Accepts my alpha for now, Beast thought, but will still try to take what is mine.
Rick stared at me, a wry look on his face, amused despite the blood washing over his feet. Rain pelted down on us all, Kem’s fur matted. Rick’s black hair lay against his skull like a coat of paint, his black eyes so dark they looked as wide as vamp pupils. I looked down at myself, my blanket shredded with long swathes of skin showing through. I put a palm to my belly. I was completely human. I was healed, though I remembered Kem’s claws striking my middle. You did this once before, I thought at Beast. Half shifted.
Yes. Will not accept beta place to Kemnebi, black leopard with ugly skinny tail and stink of human. Smell of strange hot country.
I chuckled beneath my breath. To Rick I said, “I’m going back to the hotel. I’m out of clothes. We’ll talk later.” I raised my voice, “When Kem-cat becomes human again, tell him if he kills you, I’ll kill him. You belong to my Beast.”
Rick’s mouth curled up higher on one side. “I’ll do that. Is this a proposal or something?”
My stomach plummeted. “Something.” But I didn’t know what. “Later.” I slid into the cab, pulling the doors shut. With a crunch and splash of tires on rock and mud, I pulled away. I was halfway to the hotel when I had to stop at a drive-through for food. I consumed a bucket of regular recipe Kentucky Fried Chicken and six biscuits. And I couldn’t stop laughing, a breathy, half-hysterical sound, a soft note of dread and pain in the depths. I was still laughing when I dialed the twins’ room.
Back at the hotel, Brian met me at the curb, wrapping me in a white robe and carrying me through the lobby, dripping. A small crowd was sitting at the fireplace, flames licking the air as we passed. They clapped, as if this was an Officer and a Gentleman moment and I was being carried by my prince charming, up the elevator. I laughed, still with that wild ringing note, and Brian kissed the top of my head like he might a small child’s, appreciating the moment.
When we got to the suite we now shared, he lowered my feet to the carpet and took in my bedraggled state, his eyes glued to the wet skin beneath the soaked blanket and the bundle of wet clothing in my hands. I shivered hard, despite the time
to warm up and the food. I said, “Hot shower. Three double stuffed potatoes and a two pound steak, so rare it’s still mooing. Please.” I shut my room door in his face.
Half an hour later I was warm and mostly dry, my hair braided and wrapped in a towel. I had looked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror and decided not to do that again. I looked as if I had lost ten pounds, and as if I hadn’t slept in weeks. My eyes had dark circles, my cheeks were sunken. The half-shift had taken a lot out of me. Better than dead cat, Beast thought at me. She had a point. In the common area of the suite, I sat down at a small table and dug into the food, eating with a steady precision more suited to a robot than a hungry human. The twins watched me with hooded eyes, nearly as still as a vamp, except for the whole needs-to-breathe thing.
When I was done, Brandon said, “You look like something the cat dragged in.”
I grinned. Beast hacked deep inside, amused. “Yeah.” I picked up my cell, keys, a leather jacket, and the scarf I’d taken from Evangelina. “I’ll be back in a bit. I have to see a witch about a problem.”
“Does this problem have to do with the parley?”
“Yeah.” I left the room, calling for the SUV on the way down.
I drove into Molly’s driveway and parked in the false dusk of the storm. It was still raining, but now there were breaks in the downpour, moments when sprinkles pattered down, moments when it stopped altogether. The sky was variegated, darker to the east where the storm was fleeing, the clouds piled on top of each other as they rushed from the cold front. I turned off the engine and sat.
Molly’s house was different since I’d been here last. Big Evan and Mol had added on a garage with a man-den over it, enclosed the old carport, added a bathroom and a master bedroom out back. The addition had doubled the size of the house, but they had maintained the quaint 1920s mountain style of peaked gables and arched windows.
I hadn’t been invited over since I’d been back. Not once. I remembered a time when Mol, Evan, Angie Baby, and I had dinner here several times a week. But the invitations had stopped when Molly had been put in danger on my watch, when Angie and Little Evan had been kidnapped. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that I had become persona non grata in Big Evan’s eyes. His car was in the drive; there would be no slipping in and out without him knowing. I had no idea if I’d be welcomed or told to leave, especially once I reminded them of that recent danger. I hadn’t finished my jobs by killing off all the werewolves, and destroying the blood-diamond, bringing danger back to haunt them again. My insides felt hollow, despite the proteins, fats, and starches I’d eaten.
The house sat on the crest of a mountain at the top of the world, and the views were spectacular. The front yard was lush with fall plants, mums of all colors and sizes, a burgundy-leaved Japanese maple as centerpiece; maple varieties were grouped everywhere, some whose outermost leaves had begun to go salmon or yellow in the chill. The backyard would rival any garden anywhere, with fruits and veggies so tasty and big they looked like mutants. Mol’s an earth witch and her gift is herbs and growing things, healing bodies, restoring balance to nature.
Legs like lead weights, I got out of the SUV, pocketed the keys, and moved up the paved drive. On the chill breeze, I caught a whiff of werewolves, but the scent was faint, distant, and quickly gone as if it had never been. But it was real, not a figment of my imagination or fear.
The new door in the middle of the old carport opened and a small whirlwind flew through. “Aunt Jane! Aunt Jane! Aunt Jane!” she squealed, the high pitch nearly bursting my eardrums. I stooped to catch her and Angie Baby threw
herself into my arms with enough force to make me stagger. Her arms went around my neck, choking, her strawberry-blond-streaked hair whipping in the gusty wind. I smoothed it down with one hand and looped the other arm under her bottom to support her weight as I carried her toward the house. “I missed you,” she said.
My heart melted into a big puddle of goo. “I’ve missed you, Angie Baby.” I batted away tears that gathered any time I was near her. “You’ve grown two inches, at least.”
“I’m a big girl now.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, “Daddy’s at the door and he’s mad. Why is he mad at you?”
I didn’t lower my voice when I answered, but spoke in a normal tone, my booted feet bringing me closer to the glowering man, knowing he could hear me. “Because I let the Big Bad Ugly vampire witches steal you and nearly kill you. Because I put your mama in danger.” Big Evan’s glower turned uglier, colder. I thought about werewolves in the mountains near this house, killing people. “Because he loves you all so much that he’d fight anything to protect you. Your daddy’s doing the right thing, Angelina. He is.” I handed her to him.
The big man took her in gentle hands and set her down behind him, his body a barrier between us. I thought my heart would break. “Go back to the movie, Pun’kin,” he said.
“Okay, Daddy.” Her footsteps tapped away.
There weren’t many men who made me feel little, but Big Evan was one of them. He stood six feet six, and weighed over three hundred pounds, mostly muscle. He had red hair, a full red beard, and brown eyes so hard they could cut stone. He crossed his arms and braced his feet. Waiting. I pulled the damp lavender scarf out of my pocket and held it out to him. “Tell me what you smell. If you think it’s important, we need to talk. You, Molly, and me.”
Evan took the scarf and held it to his nose. He breathed in. Evan is a sorcerer, one of the few alive anywhere, and still in the witch closet, to protect his kids from unwanted attention. His eyes flew down to mine. Widened. He inhaled again. “I smell Evangelina and blood magic.”
I nodded. Evan knew about the witches in New Orleans and the diamond. Of course, he thought it was still safe and in New Orleans. “She stole the pink diamond from my weapons safe,” I said. “She’s been using it on vamps, blood-servants, and me. She’s using it to grow younger and prettier. Though she has the right to draw on her sisters’ magics, they haven’t noticed the changes in her. Which means she’s not just drawing on them as coven leader, she’s spelling them too.”
“That bitch is spelling my wife?” he snarled. Evan’s eyes narrowed, calculating, putting together what he might do to stop it. When he reached the end of his ruminations, he said something vile under his breath. “And I can’t interrupt the spell without serious consequences. Why didn’t you destroy the relic?”
“How?” I asked. “How do you destroy something that absorbed the energies of dying witches for hundreds of years? Drop it in the ocean? In a volcano? What happens to the energies in any of those cases? They don’t just wink out, poof, it’s gone.”
“You’ve brought nothing but evil to this house in years. I don’t want you here.”
Tears burned in my eyes, but he’d never see them. “Fine. You figure out how to handle it.” I yanked the scarf away, swiveled on a heel, and stalked back to the SUV.
“She lost some weight.” It sounded like the words were dragged out of him. I stopped, staring out at the curve of the world. The sky was bright, a patch of blue showing in the west. “Evangelina has. And”—he blew out a breath that sounded like a small storm—“at least fifteen years.”
I clenched my hands and turned back. “Her hair is silky as a child’s,” I said, “something adults’ hair loses by the time they’re forty or so. If her skin glowed any more we wouldn’t need lights. She let a vampire feed from her. I saw the wounds. When I accused her of it in front of her sisters, I don’t think they even heard the words.”
“This is your fault.”
“Accepted.”
“You better come in.”
I took a breath to steady my nerves and entered the house. The new door opened into a great room. The former carport’s back brick wall was now a fireplace with merrily burning gas logs and a hidden laundry room. Bump-out windows were on the western side, Molly’s orchids on display. Some were in bloom, including a heavenly vanilla. Big Evan stood still, mentally
checking the house wards, eyeing the locks. “No opening the doors, Angie,” he said.
She nodded without looking at us. A kiddie film was on the TV screen, and her attention was fastened on a princess and a pony, her small body curled into the seat cushion of an Evan-sized, leather couch. She yawned and pulled an afghan over her, looking sleepy.
Little Evan was standing in the door to the kitchen, bare-chested, wearing footie jammie bottoms. He stared at me, eyes wide. I patted him on the head as I climbed the steps into the kitchen. The small intimate space had been expanded into the old family room and now housed a larger table, a pantry, and a central island as well as skylights for Mol’s herbs, growing in a bay window. But the heart of the kitchen was still the old Aga stove with bread baking in the oven, beef stew bubbling on top, the teapot on perpetual simmer, and copper pots hanging over it all.
Molly was leaning against the counter when I came in, wearing a denim smock and dark red blouse. Her hair was up in a ponytail, and she wore garnet earrings. She clutched a fist between her breasts and her eyes were hesitant, sliding back and forth between Evan and me, nervous. “What’s wrong?” she asked. I cringed to know that, when my best friend saw me, the first thing she thought was trouble.
“Evangelina,” Evan said, “is dabbling in black magic.”
Molly’s eyes seemed to lose focus for a moment; then she smiled brightly. “I have hot chai on the stove. Evan, would you get the mugs?”
Evan looked like he’d been poleaxed. He had expected Molly to agree or deny or get angry, not act as if the words had never been spoken. His eyes on his wife, he opened the new glass-fronted china hutch and hooked fingers through three teal mugs. Molly took them and started setting up for tea. Evan said, “Evangelina is practicing black magic.”
“I have homemade gingersnaps and snickerdoodle cookies. And I know Jane wants whipped cream in her tea.” She opened the fridge and Evan took the spray can from her. He closed the door, cupped her head in his huge hands and tilted her face up, in what was the most tender gesture I had ever seen. He smiled down at his wife and she smiled back. I heard mumbled words, likely some form of Gaelic, saw his lips purse and heard him breathe out as he blew at Molly’s face.
