I screamed and pulled away from them both. The images died as if a plug had been pulled. I scrambled through the leaves on all fours, eyes shut tight. I ended sitting, hugging my knees to my chest, face buried against my legs. I squeezed my eyes so tight that I began seeing white snakes against my eyelids.
I heard someone move through the crunching leaves. I felt them hovering over me.
“Don’t touch me,” I said. It was almost another scream.
I heard whoever it was kneel in the dry leaves before Jamil’s voice came. “I won’t touch you. Are you still getting the memories?”
He didn’t ask if I was seeing the memories. I found the phrasing strange. I shook my head without looking up.
“Then it’s over, Anita. Once the munin leave, they’re gone until called again.”
“I didn’t call her.” I raised my face slowly and opened my eyes. The summer night seemed blacker somehow.
“It was Raina again?” he made it a question.
“Yes.”
He knelt as close as he could get without touching me. “You shared the memories with Jason and with Cherry.”
I wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement, but I answered it: “Yeah.”
“It was a full visual,” Jason said. He was sitting with his bare back against a tree.
Cherry had her hands pressed to her face. She spoke, face hidden. “I cut my hair after that night, after what she did to me. One night with her was the price for not having to do one of their porno movies.” She jerked her hands away from her face, crying. “God, I can smell Raina’s scent.” She rubbed her hands against her jeans, over and over, as if she’d touched something bad and was trying to wipe it away.
“What the fuck was that?” I asked. “I’ve channeled Raina before, but it wasn’t like that. I’ve got glimpses of memories, but not a full-blown movie. Nothing like that, ever.”
“Have you been trying to learn to control the munin?” Jamil asked.
“Just to get rid of it, them, whatever.”
Jamil moved closer to me, studying my face as if looking for something. “If you were lukoi, I’d tell you, you can’t just turn the munin off. If you have the power to call them, then you must learn to control them, not just shut them out. Because you can’t shut them out. They’ll seek a way into you, through you.”
“How do you know so much?” I asked.
“I knew a werewolf who could call the munin. She hated it. She tried to shut them out. It didn’t work.”
“Just because it didn’t work for your friend doesn’t mean I can’t do it.” I could feel his breath warm against my face. “Back off, Jamil.”
He scooted back, but he was still closer than I wanted him to be. He sat back in the leaves. “She went crazy, Anita. The pack had to execute her.” His eyes went past me into the darkness. I turned to see what he was looking at. Two figures stood in the darkness. One was a woman with long, pale hair and a long, white dress like something out of a 1950s horror movie. If you were playing the victim. But she stood very straight, very certain, as if she were anchored to the ground like a tree. There was something almost frightfully confident about her.
The man with her was tall, slender, and tanned dark enough that he looked brown in the dark. His hair was short and a paler brown than his skin. If the woman seemed calm, he seemed nervous. He gave off energy in a roiling bath that breathed along my skin and made the night seem hotter.
“Are you well?” the woman asked.
“She shared the munin with two of us,” Jamil said.
“By accident, I take it,” the woman said. She sounded faintly amused.
I was not amused. I got to my feet, a little unsteady, but standing. “Who are you?”
“My name is Marianne. I am the vargamor for this clan.”
I remembered Verne and Colin talking about a varga-something last night. “Verne mentioned you last night. Colin said he’d left you at home to keep you safe.”
“A good witch is hard to find,” she said, smiling.
I looked at her. “You don’t feel Wiccan.”
Again, I knew she smiled at me. Her peaceful condescension grated on my nerves. “A psychic then, if you prefer the term.”
“I’d never heard the term vargamor before last night,” I said.
“It’s rare,” she said. “Most packs don’t have one anymore. Considered too old-fashioned.”
“You aren’t lukoi,” I said.
Her head cocked to one side, and the smile was gone, as if I’d finally done something worthwhile. “Are you so sure?”
I tried to get a sense of what had made me so sure she was human, or at least not lukoi. She had her own energy. She was psychic enough for me to notice. We’d have recognized each other without any introductions. We might not have known the exact flavor of each other’s abilities, but we’d have recognized a kindred or rival spirit. Whatever power moved her, it wasn’t lycanthropy.
“Yeah, I’m sure you’re not lukoi,” I said.
“Why?” she asked.
“You don’t taste like a shapeshifter.”
She laughed then, and it was a rich, musical sound that managed to be wholesome and earthy all at the same time. “I like your choice of senses. Most humans would have said I didn’t feel right. Feel is such an imprecise word, don’t you think?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“This is Roland. He is my bodyguard for this night. We poor humans must be watched over for fear that some overzealous shapeshifter might lose control and harm us.”
“Somehow I don’t think you are that easy a prey, Marianne.”
She laughed again. “Why, thank you, child.”
Her calling me child made me add about ten years to her age. She didn’t look it. It was dark, but she still didn’t look it.
“Come, Anita. We will escort you to the lupanar.” She held out her hand to me like I was supposed to take it and be led like a child.
I looked to Jamil. I hoped somebody knew what was going on, because I was lost.
“It’s all right, Anita. The vargamor is neutral. She never fights or takes sides in challenges. That’s how she can be human and run with the pack.”
“Are we involved in a challenge or a fight that I don’t know about?” I asked.
“No,” Jamil said, but he sounded uncertain.
Marianne interpreted for me without being asked. “Introducing two outside dominants to a pack can lead to fighting. Having someone as powerful as Richard is raising the hackles on our younger wolves. Having him sleeping with our pack’s only two dominant females makes it worse.”
“You mean we may get into a pissing contest,” I said.
“A colorful phrase, but accurate enough,” she said.
“Okay, now what?” I asked.
“Now, Roland and I escort you all to the lupanar. The rest of you may go ahead. You know the way, Jamil.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“No to what?” Marianne asked.
“Do I look like Little Red Riding Hood?” I said. “I’m not taking a stroll in the woods with two strangers. One of them a werewolf and the other a . . . I don’t know what you are yet, Marianne. But I don’t want to be alone with the two of you.”
“Very well,” she said. “Some or all may stay. I was thinking that you might like privacy to speak with another human tied to the lukoi. Perhaps I was wrong.”
“Tomorrow in the light of day, we can talk. Tonight, let’s just take it easy.”
“As you like,” she said. Again, she held out her hand to me. “Come. Let us talk as we all troop to the lupanar as one big, happy family.”
“You’re making fun of me now,” I said. “That won’t put you on my A-list.”
“I make fun of everyone a little,” she said. “I mean no harm by it.” She waggled her hand at me. “Come, child, the moon is passing above us. Time wastes away.”
I walked towards her with my five bodyguards at my back. I didn’t take he
r hand, though.
I was close enough to see the condescending smile clearly now. Anita Blake, the famous vampire hunter, afraid of some backcountry wisewoman.
I smiled. “I’m cautious by nature and paranoid by profession. You’ve offered me your hand twice now within just a few minutes. You don’t strike me as someone who does anything without a reason. What gives?”
She put her hands on her hips and tsked at me. “Is she always this difficult?”
“Worse,” Jason said.
I frowned at him. Even if he couldn’t see it in the dark, it made me feel better.
“All I want, child, is to touch your hand and get a sense of how powerful you are before we let you inside the boundaries of our lupanar again. After what you did last night, some of our pack fear you within the boundaries of our lupanar. They seem to think you will steal our power.”
“I can tap into it,” I said, “but I can’t steal it.”
“But the munin already reach out to you. I felt you call your munin. It traveled through the power we have called tonight in the lupanar. It disturbed it like plucking on a thread of a spider’s web. We came to see what we had caught, and if it were too big to eat, we would cut it loose and not take it home.”
“The spider metaphor worked for maybe two sentences, then you lost me,” I said.
“The lupanar is our place of power, Anita. I need to get a sense of what you are before you enter it this night.” The laughter was gone from her voice. She was suddenly very serious. “It is not just our protection I am thinking of, child. It is yours. Think, child, what would happen to you if the munin within our circle rode you one after another? I need to make sure you can control at least that well.”
Just hearing her say it made my stomach tight with fear. “Okay.” I held out my hand to her like we were going to shake hands, but I gave her my left hand. If she didn’t like it, she could refuse it.
“Offering the left hand is an insult,” she said.
“Take it or leave it, vargamor. We don’t have all night.”
“That is more true than you know, little one.” She put her hand out as if to touch mine but stopped with her hand just above mine. She spread her hand above my skin. I mirrored her. She was trying to get a sense of my aura. Two could play at that game.
When I raised my hands up in front of my body, she mirrored me. We stood facing each other, hands spread wide, not quite touching. She was tall, five-foot-seven or five-foot-eight. I didn’t think there were high heels under that long dress.
Her aura was warm against my skin. It had a weight to it, as if I could have wrapped her aura in my hands like dough. I’d never met anyone with such weight to their aura. It confirmed my first sense of her. Solid.
She pushed forward suddenly, wrapping her fingers around my hand. She forced my aura back in upon itself like a knife thrust. It made me gasp, but again, I knew what was happening. I pushed back and felt her waver.
She smiled, but it wasn’t condescending now. It was almost as if she were pleased.
The hair at the back of my neck tried to crawl down my spine.
“Powerful,” she said. “Strong.”
I spoke around a tightness in my throat. “You, too.”
“Thank you,” she said.
I felt her power, her magic, move over me, through me, like a rush of wind. She pulled away so abruptly it staggered both of us.
We were left standing a foot away from each other, breathing hard like we’d been running. My heart thudded in my throat like a trapped thing. And I could taste her pulse on the back of my tongue. No, I could hear it. I could hear it like a small ticking clock. But it wasn’t her pulse. I smelled Richard’s aftershave like a cloud that I had walked through. When the marks were working through Richard, it was often scent that let me know what was happening. I didn’t know what had caused them to act up. Maybe the power of the other lycanthropes or the closeness of the full moon. Who knew? But something had opened me to him. I was channeling more than the sweet smell of his body.
“What is that sound?” I asked.
“Describe it,” Marianne said.
“Like a clicking, soft, almost mechanical.”
“I’ve got an artificial valve in my heart,” she said.
“It can’t be that.”
“Why not? When I lean forward to the mirror to apply eyeliner, I can hear it through my open mouth, echoing against the mirror.”
“But I can’t hear it,” I said.
“But you are,” she said.
I shook my head. I was losing the sense of her. She was pulling away from me, putting up shields. I didn’t blame her, because, for just a second I could feel her heart beating, limping along. The sound hadn’t made me sorry for her or empathetic. The sound excited me. I felt it pull things deep inside my body. It was almost sexual. She’d be slow, an easy kill. I looked at this tall, confident woman, and for a split second all I saw was food.
Fuck.
25
WE FOLLOWED MARIANNE and her guard, Roland, through the darkened trees. I’d have caught that damn dress on every twig and deadfall. Marianne floated through the woods as if the trees themselves let her and the dress pass gently through. Roland paced at her arm, gliding through the woods like water down a well-worn channel. Jamil, Nathaniel, and Zane moved just as gracefully. It was the rest of us that were having trouble.
My excuse was that I was human. I didn’t know what Jason and Cherry’s excuse was. I tried to step on a log and missed. I ended up on my stomach, arms scraping along the rough bark. I straddled it like a horse and couldn’t seem to get my leg over the other side. Cherry tripped on something in the leaves and fell to her knees. I watched her get to her feet and trip over the same damn thing. This time she stayed on her knees, head down.
Jason fell in a tangle of dry tree roots at the end of the log I was sitting on. He fell on his face and cursed. When he got to his feet, there was a scrape on his chest deep enough to show blood, black in the moonlight. It reminded me of what Raina had done to him. She’d cut his chest to rags, and there wasn’t a scar on him from it.
I closed my eyes and leaned over the log, resting my forearms on it. My arms hurt. I raised myself slowly and looked at them. I’d scraped them up enough so that blood was slowly filling the wounds in spots. Great.
Jason leaned against the end of the log, far enough away that we wouldn’t touch. I think we were all still afraid of that. Didn’t want a repeat.
“What’s wrong with us?” Jason asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
Marianne was just suddenly there. I hadn’t heard her come up. Was I losing time? Was I that out of it?
“You cast out the munin before it was ready to release you.”
“So?” I said.
“So, that takes energy,” she said.
“Fine, that explains me stumbling around. What about them? Why do they feel like shit?”
She gave a very small smile. “You are not the only one who fought the munin, Anita. It was you who called it, and if you had not been willing to fight it, then the other two would have been helpless before it, but they fought it as well. They struggled against the memories. That costs.”
“You sound like you know,” I said.
“I can call the munin. These chaotic flashes are what happens when you have a munin that hunts you, and that you do not want to embrace.”
“How did you know it was chaotic?” I asked.
“I caught a glimpse or two of what you saw. The merest touch,” she said.
“Why don’t you feel awful?” I asked.
“I did not struggle. If you simply allow the munin to ride you, it passes much more quickly and relatively painlessly.”
I half-laughed at her. “That sounds like the old advice of lie back, close your eyes, and it’ll be over soon.”
She turned her head to one side, long hair sliding over her shoulders like a pale ghost. “Embracing the munin can be pleasant or unplea
sant, but this munin hunts you, Anita. Most of the time, a munin that tries to bond with a pack member does so out of love or shared sorrow.”
I just looked at her. “It isn’t love that motivates this one.”
“No,” she said, “I felt both the strength of her pesonality and her hatred of you. She chases you out of spite.”
I shook my head. “Not just spite. What little is left of her enjoys the game. She’s having a really good time when I channel her.”
Marianne nodded. “Yes. But if you would embrace her instead of fighting, you could pick and choose among the memories. Strong ones will come easiest, but you could control more of what comes and how strongly it comes. If you would truly channel her, as you put it, then the images would be less like a movie and more . . . like wearing a glove.”
“Except that I’m the glove,” I said, “and her personality overwhelms mine. No thanks.”
“If you continue to fight this munin, it will get worse. If you will cease struggling and meet her even partway, the munin will lose some of its strength. Some feed off of love. This one feeds off of fear and hatred. Was this the old lupa? The one you killed?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Marianne shivered. “I never met Raina, but even that small touch of her makes me glad she’s dead. She was evil.”
“She didn’t see herself that way,” I said. “She saw herself as more neutral than evil.” I said it like I knew, and I did know. I knew because I’d worn her essence like a dress more than once.
“Very few people see their own actions as truly evil,” Marianne said. “It is left to their victims to decide what is evil and what is not.”
Jason raised his hand. “Evil.”
Cherry echoed him. “Evil.”
Nathaniel and Zane and even Jamil, raised their hands.
I raised my hand, too. “It’s unanimous,” I said.
Marianne laughed, and again, it was a sound equally at home in the kitchen or the bedroom. How she managed to be both wholesome and suggestive in the same breath puzzled me. Of course, a lot of things puzzled me about Marianne.
“We’ll be late,” Roland said. His voice was deeper than I thought it would be, low and careful, almost too old for his body. He looked peaceful enough, but I could look at him with things other than my eyes. You couldn’t see it, but you could feel it. He was a mass of nervous energy. It danced along his skin, breathing out into the dark like an invisible cloud, hot, almost touchable, like steam.
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