by Faith Hunter
I could almost feel the fury vibrating through Evan, but I wasn’t going to say anything nice to make it better. This had been a long time brewing. “Now,” I said, making it clear I was changing the subject back to relevant topics. “Do you want to bitch about it, or do you want to save some witches? Because if you don’t help, I’m going to try to free them, and we might all blow up.” The silence after my tirade was almost palpable.
“Tell me everything you know about the spell,” he snarled.
And so I did, starting with de Allyon, adding in Kathyayini’s riddle, the bloody iron discs, the crosses and spikes, and ending with witches on the points of the clock. Evan asked succinct questions and listened without further comment. When I was done, he went silent. After a long moment, I heard him take a breath. “Why do you always end up with death magics to undo?”
“Just lucky?” But that wasn’t what Kathyayini had said. She had told me that I was the root cause of everything. Just like Evan had said. Which could be casual cruelty, or a way to teach me something about myself or make me face some hidden flaw. Or it could be the simple, unvarnished truth. Either way sucked.
“At least now I know why Leo hired me,” he said.
“Hired—?”
“I got a gig at the Darkness Is Forever Bar in Mobile, Alabama,” Evan interrupted, “paying me a small fortune to do an update on the lighting and sound systems. I had no idea Leo owned the joint until yesterday. He knew I wouldn’t hang around to help you, so he kept me close in case you needed my help. And because the MOC is paying me so much money, I did what he said.” Evan snorted softly. “I’m a bigger whore than you are, taking money from the chief fanghead of the U.S. Arguably,” he added. “I guess it’s possible that the MOC of New York has more scions, but not as much territory.” He fell silent, seeming to have run out of things to say on that odd note and leaving me to understand that the arguably did not refer to whether I was a whore. But I held in the snarky comeback.
“I have to study on this,” Evan said, “and make some calls. Don’t discuss us with PsyLED officials.” He disconnected.
I closed the phone when I heard something bump overhead. “There’s a handle in the floor. Pull it up,” I shouted. And only then remembered that someone other than Soul might arrive. Adrenaline rushed through me, and I shivered with reaction. I can be so stupid sometimes. I pulled a vamp-killer and a handgun, then put away the gun. I might hit one of the witches.
But when the trapdoor opened, it was Soul’s hand I saw and Soul’s feet. She had tiny feet in tiny little black boots. I put away the blade, shone the flash onto the stairs, and waited as Soul slowly descended the steps.
“Oh,” she breathed softly as she turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. “Are they wearing iron?”
“The clocks on their chests each contain an iron disc coated with blood. I’m guessing it’s de Allyon’s blood,” I said, not adding the part about skinwalker blood being in the mix. I wasn’t going to share unless I had to. “The blood-donor vamp is very, very dead. Does that make a difference in breaking the spell?”
“Even if he were here, I have no idea how to break such a powerful spell. But without his blood, I fear we are hamstrung.”
“Maybe this will help. ‘Long years past,’” I quoted Kathyayini, “‘was cold iron, blood, three cursed trees, and lightning. Red iron will set you free. Shadow and blood are a dark light, buried beneath the ground.’”
Soul’s eyes went round. “Where did you hear this?”
“An old tribal woman said it to me. She also said, ‘The one you seek is bound to the Earth. She didn’t mean to be bound, but she cannot get away now.’ Neither riddle made sense at the time. But now we have the blood-iron discs, possibly made from the iron spikes of Golgotha, and the buried witches.” I stopped, remembering the scene in Big H’s house, all that white and fancy furniture and silk and satins and one butt-ugly necklace around the neck of the blood-master. He had dangled it outside his clothes, as if proud of it, though it didn’t mesh with anything around him. He wore it as if he wanted it to be seen. By me. As if drawing attention to it.
“And the Master of the City of Natchez wears a copper chain on his neck with something made of corroded metal, wrapped in copper wire, hanging from it. I thought it was just ugly jewelry, but why would he display jewelry so different from anything else in his taste? What if it’s the same iron?” I tried to find sense in it all, but it was like trying to untangle a snarl of copper wire or a skein of yarn after a cat had played with it. And so much for Evan’s order to say nothing to PsyLED.
“I don’t know if he’s bound like the witches or took it as a trophy or using it now himself. But—I know you said it had to be something big, like a boulder or a tree—but what if the necklace is the focus we’re looking for? The amulet.”
“It should be something large,” she started. “But this is something I’ve never heard of before. I shouldn’t base my conclusions on old experience,” Soul said.
“I think the thing Big H is wearing is something from de Allyon, the maker of this circle, and Kathyayini’s riddles were meant to light a path into a possible future. I think he’s wearing blood iron.”
“It is still daylight. You can find Hieronymus’ lair and take the necklace. Find a way to undo the working. But you don’t have much time if we are to save that one,” she pointed at the woman whose face was nearly under the sand.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, baiting her, herding her where I needed her to go. “All we need is the location of his lair. Easy-peasy. We’ll torture his primo, Clark, for the location. And then I’ll break and enter and steal the necklace.”
Soul’s face underwent a change as she got what I was saying. “I will not give up the lives here,” she said fiercely. “And, yes, I’m willing to turn a blind eye to stop them from dying.”
Soul’s eyes latched onto me with claws, the feeling of being under her regard much like the feeling of Beast’s claws in my brain. “You have a plan.” Again it was more an accusation than a statement.
“Maybe I do,” I said. “But to make it work and not go to jail, I need PsyLED to stay out of my way for a while. Maybe keep the local cops away.”
“Are you going to kill anyone?” she hedged.
“Not if I can help it. At least no one human. And I’ll have the Master of the City of New Orleans’ approval for it.”
“Legal papers signed with Leo Pellissier’s official seal?”
“Eventually.”
Soul looked at the woman whose head was nearly buried by the sand. As if memorizing the witch’s features and her expression of total horror, Soul said, “I can do what you are asking. I can look the other way. But I do not think that Rick LaFleur will allow you to go without him.”
“We’re not gonna tell Ricky-Bo.”
“I think that is wise. His attachment to you is deep. As is his pain.”
“Ummm . . .” I stopped. That was all I had. And I had no idea what kind of pain Soul was talking about. Rick had a lot of pain every day of the full moon, but I didn’t think that was what she meant.
“Do you love the primo?” she asked.
Shock zinged through me at the question. “Bruiser held me down while I was forcibly bound to Leo Pellissier.” My words hung on the air like a bell rung in an empty tower. Soul’s eyes were appalled at the violation. I sucked in a painful breath. “We done here?”
“Yes. Go break the law, Jane Yellowrock. But be careful. If you kill humans, all bets are off.”
“I plan to kill only the ones trying to kill me.”
“That is difficult and will result in far too much paperwork, but it is acceptable.”
“Are we bonding here?” I asked.
“I would love to have tea with you sometime, when lives are not in danger and when I am not doing something that goes against all the rules of law that I hold dear.”
“Ditto. Café au lait and beignets at Café du Monde. Except that we’ll have tea.”
I pulled my weapon and, hoping I wouldn’t be transported to some distant place, I bounded up the steps and closed the trapdoor. My stomach wrenched at the transition. Happily, I landed back where I started.
• • •
I called Eli from the refrigerator in the old bar. “We’re gonna deplete your store of sleepy-time bombs. And we need some antiriot rubber bullets and a riot gun.” I told him what else I needed, and Eli Younger started chuckling.
“It might work,” he said. “What are you going to be doing?”
“I’m going to put on dry clothes, run by Walmart for supplies, and then go talk to a preacher.”
CHAPTER 25
Cat Reflexes, One;
Blood-Servant Reflexes, Zero
I buzzed the secretary from the security door, staring into the security camera and asking to speak to the preacher. She didn’t want to let me in, this motorcycle mama in leather, with dark circles under her eyes and a look of death and danger about her, but I told her to tell Preacher Hosenfeld that the little girl with leukemia needed his help. Moments later, I saw the older guy coming down the hall to the door. He was wearing a cheap suit, white shirt, and tie, even on a weekday, his gray hair combed back with some kinda goop like they wore in the fifties, though he couldn’t be old enough for that style to have been around in his formative years. He studied me through the windows before I heard several locks click and the door opened. “I hope I’m not being foolish opening the door to you, young lady.”
“I kill vamps for a living, including the one who has Charly’s mom. I intend to get her back.”
“Charly. That is the little girl from Sunday,” he said, hesitant.
“Yeah. A vamp put her mother, Misha, into a charmed circle and it’s killing her.”
Hosenfeld looked confused. It cleared up fast. “A circle. She’s a witch, then, this woman you want to save.”
I felt my heart shrivel. A lot of Christians felt witches were of the devil. “Yes,” I said tersely.
“Are you a Christian?”
“Baptized in a river when I was a teenager. I go to church most Sundays. My favorite Bible verse is ‘Jesus wept.’”
“Because it’s the shortest?” He almost smiled.
“No. Because it says that Jesus knew what it meant to grieve. He’d just let his best friend in the world die of illness when he could have gotten there in time to save him. I’m thinking he was between a rock and hard place, and the hard place let his friend die. He grieved. Then, when he could, he went and raised his friend from the grave, and he knew that if he did that, he’d die himself.”
“That is a very complicated scenario.” His smile was wider now, and his shoulders had relaxed. “And do you pray?”
This man was an elder. He was asking me questions, and one did not lie to an elder. I blew out a breath and tried to find an answer to his question. “I think about God. I confess. A lot. But at the same time, it’s been a while since I . . .” I shrugged, uncomfortable, “since I got on my knees.”
“I have never met a Christian warrior such as yourself.”
I opened my mouth and closed it. I had no idea what to say about that and no desire to debate it either. “Here’s the deal,” I said. “I want to use the church’s baptismal water to flush out the vamps,” I held up the empty vials I had bought from Walmart. “and I don’t have time to play word games. But it isn’t like I can steal the water.”
“And you want me to help a witch,” he clarified.
I shrugged and settled on, “People of all faiths are responsible to help the weak, the downtrodden, the sick, and the helpless, especially children. And of all the religions in the world, Christians are the only ones that are commanded not to judge, yet we do every day—gay people, ethnicities different from our own, people in mixed relationships, people with gifts they were born with, power they were born with, genetic mutations they were born with, illnesses of the brain and body. I’ve got a little girl’s mother to save, and, yes, she’s a witch. Are you gonna make it possible for me to save her?”
Herman Hosenfeld’s face wrinkled up in a smile. “Of course. How do we do it?”
“We?” My voice squeaked just a tad on the word.
“Of course. I’ll be there for prayer support, and”—he held up a hand to stop my reply—“I promise to stay out of your way. There are no other options, young lady. I have a daughter who is a lesbian and married to her witch partner for the past fifteen years. My wife and I lost her years ago through misunderstanding and judgmental attitudes and sheer, blind stupidity. I am no longer so foolish to think God sees her lifestyle with greater ire than he does my judgments.”
“The name is Jane Yellowrock, I am not young, and I am not a lady. And you are not what I was expecting.”
“You are a surprise in my day too.”
• • •
We had a small parade of vehicles all idling in front of an empty lot, wasting gas. It had started to rain again, spats of sprinkles hitting the windshield, making the cars behind us waver through the Earth’s tears. Eli opened the driver’s door and climbed in. He was slightly damp, and his hands were empty. He turned on the wipers and said, “Canisters discharged. But without a better idea of the cubic feet of space—”
“I know,” I interrupted. “I understand.” There hadn’t been time to do the necessary research, even for whizzes like the Kid and Bodat. We had no floor plans or maps of the lair under the house. Most important, we were even guessing that Big H was still in his Clan home, having based that assumption on the fact that I had given him the plague vaccine at dawn and he would have been too tired the following night to move to another location. Guesswork and assumptions. Crap. Eli tilted his neck to the side and his cervical spine made a rapid series of cracks. “How’s it going?” I asked over my shoulder.
The Kid and Bodat were in the backseat of the SUV, computers in hand, monitoring everything from police and emergency responsiveness to the weather, and keeping eyes on the inside of the house we were about to attack. “Piece of cake once we drilled into Big H’s security system,” Bodat said. “The vamp has cameras all over the place.”
Excitement sparked down my nerves and worry pulled at my mind. This could go wrong in so many ways—not least that my theory about the copper necklace was wrong and the pendant was something else.
Or that the holy water wouldn’t work. I rearranged the vials of holy water attached to my jacket. I had it in plasticized glass, so I didn’t risk them cracking or shattering. But it still sloshed. I had never carried so many vials before.
I checked the gun in my lap again. It was a U.S. model M32, a lightweight, six-shot, 40-millimeter launcher that could be a grenade launcher or a riot gun. It was loaded with six rounds of rubber bullets and, while it was a pain in the butt to reload, it gave me a chance of keeping my promise to Soul to not kill humans. I adjusted the military combat helmet with ear protectors and the built-in com unit. It felt weird on my head.
“We are live,” the Kid said into the headset he wore. “Flash headlights if you can hear me.” Lights flashed behind us. Eli and I raised our hands, thumbs up.
“The security system is in my hands,” the Kid said, his voice all business.
“Alarm system is off,” Bodat said. “Elevator is shut down.”
“Feed is now being sent to your cell phones,” the Kid said into the headset, “so use them if you get separated. Doors to the basement stairs are unlocked and will not alarm.” His fingers clacked on the keys of his tablet, and he took a breath that hissed into my earpieces. “Totally cool underground escape passageway is sealed. No one can get in or out through it.”
“Eli, time?” he asked his brother.
Eli, his eyes on his chrono watch said, “Now. Air should be clear.”
Alex shouted into his mic, “Go, go, go, go, go, go, go!”
Eli rammed the transmission into drive and took off with tires spitting debris, even with the extra load and the rain.
We pulled up to Big H’s fancy-schmancy house outside of town, but we didn’t stop at the curb. We squealed into the drive and then straight up to the front door, ruining the vamp’s perfect green lawn and squashing a patch of azaleas.
Moving fast, Eli and Bruiser met at the back of the SUV while I pounded up the steps and into the house. I paused in the middle of the ornate foyer and took a quick, exploratory breath. I could smell fumes, but nothing we couldn’t handle.
A man in a gas mask raced through the dining room opening, a shotgun in one hand. But he experienced a moment of indecision. Was I there to save his master? Or was I there to do him harm? In that single heartbeat of indecisiveness, I coldcocked him. He fell like a sack of potatoes, and I dodged the gas mask as it flew off but caught the human.
Deep inside me, Beast huffed with laughter and milked my brain with her claws. Fun, she murmured.
“Sorry, Clark,” I said, as I eased him down to the floor. “I promised Rick’s Soul not to kill humans. I didn’t promise not to hurt a few.” I picked up his shotgun and broke it open, tossing the rounds and laying the gun on the nearest white couch.
I raced for the stairs and paused in the entrance, looking back. Behind me, Bruiser secured Clark with heavy-duty zip strips, pushing the body out of the way. Behind him came Eli. Framed in the doorway, back at the street, a figure stood in the rain. It was Herman Hosenfeld, his eyes closed, his hands half-raised in prayer. He was shivering in his cheap suit, a cold wind blowing and icy rain pelting him. Beside him stepped a woman wearing gauzy greens, her clothes whipping around her, looking already drenched. Soul. She spread her fingers, her lips moving. She was speaking a warding of some kind. Hosenfeld paused, looked at her, and smiled before going back to his praying.
