by Faith Hunter
The Bad Men Are Gone: Jane and Eli fight off the first wave of vamps, without any damage to Sylvia, and after killing a number of vamps they manage to trap all but one in the cold room. Eli beheads the one remaining vamp, and Jane hears a sound. A little girl is hiding behind the body of a security guard. Before they leave, Eli tosses a grenade into the cold room to kill the trapped vamps, and shortly thereafter a woman from social services picks up the little girl. Beast’s reaction to the child makes it clear to Jane how much Beast wants children. Sylvia approaches Jane, taking her to task for taking crime scene photos so she could get paid. After a brief argument, during which Jane also assures Sylvia that she and Eli are friends and family only, the women part with a handshake and an understanding. Eli and Jane go to check out more of the addresses given to them by the Kid, but they don’t find anything. When they get back to Esmee’s, Bobby is waiting for Jane, telling her about a dream he had about a lion, and he thought it was her. When Bobby’s description of the dream changes to him telling Eli about how Jane protected him when they were younger, it occurs to Jane that they have never met Lotus, Hieronymus’ heir, but they should have. She also realizes that when Francis said that Hieronymus had been betrayed by those closest to him, she just assumed the vamp meant Hieronymus’ sons. Jane asks the Kid to look for more connections between the female vamps.
I Look Like a Well-Dressed Street Person: Charly wakes Jane up with the statement that it’s Sunday, and they need to go to church. Despite Jane’s initial protests, she agrees and borrows a skirt from Esmee, who tells Jane to go ahead and give some of the darkness she feels to God. The group arrives at the huge church, and Jane muses over the connection between Christianity and the creation of vampires. After communion, Jane’s thoughts wander, and she snaps back to reality when she notices Charly up front with the microphone. The girl tells the congregation her mother is missing, kidnapped by vampires, and that she has leukemia. After the service, they all return back to Esmee’s. When Jane awakens from a nap, she senses that Rick is there. During their brief conversation, Rick finds out that Jane and Bruiser have not slept together, and Jane finds out that Monica, the caller she was jealous of, is Rick’s younger sister. After Rick leaves, the Kid comes to Jane’s door and tells her to come to the breakfast room to hear what he found. It turns out that up until the nineteen forties, Hieronymus and Lotus owned property together, but that at that time Hieronymus chose not to include Lotus any longer. The female vamp went into business with Silandre and Esther, and Jane figures they waited until de Allyon came along to wrest control away from Hieronymus.
I’ll Get Well Later: Eli and Jane go back to Silandre’s, where they meet a young woman named Nostrana, who says she works for Silandre a few days a week. Silandre is not there, nor has she been recently, and while Jane is commenting upon the oddity of a witch (Nostrana) working for a vamp, the coin in her pocket suddenly becomes hot, as does the pocket watch, which also smells of old blood. After the heat dissipates, Jane and Eli leave to return to Esmee’s. Jane plans to go talk to Francis, as she believes he has something on his body that enables him to heal without ingesting much blood. She believes that this same type of focus powered by a witch circle may be what allowed de Allyon to operate as Naturaleza when other vamps were Fame Vexatum. After two minutes in the sun, Jane finds an amulet on Francis, which she confiscates. Jane decides to take Bobby for a ride to see if he can locate Misha. During their conversation, and while Bobby is scanning the area, Jane learns that Misha is a witch—as is Charly. They wear jewelry that holds spells to hide them from detection. However, Jane realizes now why Lisha was taken. When Bobby holds one of the pocket watches, it burns his hand. Soul suggests via text that Bobby should be placed within a circle with the watches so they can’t hurt him. Bobby insists they make a circle in the sand, and with the three watches, Bobby determines the house where Misha is being kept.
Close Your Mouth, Girl. Mosquitoes Will Fly In: Jane uses her knife to break the circle, and Eli attends to Bobby’s hands, telling him he’s a hero. Jane texts the Kid to have him get the team to meet her and Eli at the house Bobby identified. Bobby wants to go in with Jane and Eli, but the latter convinces him that he can best help by staying outside with a phone so he can call any other backup needed. Looking at the house with Beast-vision, Jane can see the writhing magic surrounding the building, the wards protecting it even involving the houses on either side. When the rest of the team arrives, Jane suggests that she can shift into bird form and dive down into the house from the top. After examining the possibilities, Bruiser asks Soul if she can make a death charm for him and Jane so they can trick the wards and get through. Soul agrees, saying she can have one completed by dawn. Eli and Jane join the others back at the warded house, and learn that Soul was unable to make a charm that can withstand the magic used on the house, but says that she herself is a magic that can survive the wards. Jane guesses correctly that Soul’s new plan is for her and Jane to get into the house via zip line. Eli and Jane planned for explosives to be planted on the outside, and if Jane shifts, her clothes and weapons will be dropped down by Soul. When a hole is blown in the roof, the others should also be able to get through. Jane and Soul prepare to descend, the two of them close together so Soul’s magic can work.
“Thank You,” the Corpse Croaked: Jane sees Soul deteriorate before her eyes, and the two begin their descent. After they both arrive intact and Soul looks like herself again rather than a rotting corpse, Jane says she wants to trade secrets, as she has no idea what Soul is. Soul responds that perhaps they will talk sometime. Jane changes clothes into her leathers and unpacks explosives. After Soul and Jane don their hard hats and plug their ears, Jane signals for the explosives to be set off. With Rick and Bruiser now joining them, all four drop into the attic. The floor collapses, and Jane finds Bruiser fighting two buglike vamps: one resembling a hornet, the other a spider. Jane tells Bruiser to aim for the amulets they wear, and Rick is down. After both vamps are dead and their amulets removed, Jane checks on Rick, who is alive but without his headphones. Soul replaces them, bringing Rick back under control. A search of the house results in no witches, just black painted arcs on the floors of the rooms, but they do find more dead humans, including children. The sight of the latter enrages Beast, and Jane attacks the bug-vamp in the room. After killing the last of the vamps and dragging a body outside to the sun, the group finds themselves face-to-face with cops with their guns drawn. Despite her deafness from the explosions, Jane manages to explain who they are and what happened. When she examines the amulets she has just taken, the pieces draw together as though magnetic. Jane decides she needs to go see Kathyayini again, so the Kid drives her to the spot where the church appeared before, and Jane takes out the coin.
Vampire Blood. Mixed With Something: After they arrive at the location, Jane tells the Kid to wait for her, but if she isn’t back in an hour to get Eli to bring Soul there to look for her. While she waits for something to happen, Jane examines the coin, realizing that what she thought was copper is actually old vampire blood. When she adds her blood to the coin, the discs she brought along join together on the ground in front of her, and the combination makes the amulets glow. When Kathyanini appears, Jane tells her what she has figured out: de Allyon, as a conquistador, used the power of skinwalkers and used their blood to make amulets. At some point de Allyon figured out how to used the amulets as focuses for power to keep the other vampires in the United States out of his business while he practiced Naturaleza in Atlanta. Then he came up with a plan to make vampires sick, but Leo and Jane put a stop to that. After Jane killed de Allyon, his heir started using the amulets and a witch circle to make superstrong vamps, but they are ending up with mutants. Kathyanini suggests to Jane that she plays a role in everything that has happened, that it was all part of a plan. The old woman disappears, and Jane goes outside to find the Kid, asking him to take her to the old saloon where she and Eli rescued the three women. Stepping into the witch circle in front
of the fridge, with the amulets, and pressing the discs into the bloody cloth, Jane lands in a small room, realizing she has been transported by a spell. She can hear the others in her team through the walls, so she knows she is back in the house they just raided at dawn. Jane steps on the handle for a trapdoor and notices that the pocket watches all say twelve. Jane lifts the handle.
That Was Before I Killed Her Sister: The door opens easily, and Jane goes down steps into the crawl space. Aside from the few bones she saw at first, Jane now sees live women, buried in sand in various stages. The witches are all glowing with power. Jane spots Misha but is reluctant to touch her, as she doesn’t know what might happen. It becomes clear to Jane that the earth is actually swallowing the women, which explains why they are in various stages of submersion in the dirt. Eli calls Jane, and she explains where she is and what she sees. Jane asks to have Soul come through the circle to see if she can figure out what is going on, and to have Rick call Evan Trueblood to tell him to take the call from Jane she is going to make. While she waits a few minutes before calling Evan, Jane notices that the witch bodies are laid out in a pattern. When she calls Evan, she tells him where she is and what she sees. After Evan snipes at Jane, she tells him off, and then they get back to the matter at hand. Evan wants to know everything she knows about the spell. After telling her that he is working for Leo, though he didn’t at first realize it, Evan says he’ll call her back shortly. Soul arrives and asks if the women are wearing iron. Jane says that the clocks on their chests contain an iron disc with blood, probably de Allyon’s. Jane tells Soul about the ugly necklace that Hieronymus wears, out of character with everything else about him and his home, and believes that it may be at the center of everything, though the vamp master may not even know it. Jane decides she needs to go get the necklace. When she goes up the stairs, she is relieved that she ends up back where she started. She calls Eli, telling him she is going for supplies, and to see a preacher.
Cat Reflexes, One; Blood-Servant Reflexes, Zero: After gaining admittance to the office of Preacher Hosenfeld (from the church she had visited with Charly earlier), she explains that she is trying to get the girl’s mother back. The preacher grills Jane about her faith and beliefs, and then agrees to help in more ways than just letting Jane use the holy water from the baptismal font. Jane and company storm Hieronymus’ home, which has been bombarded with sleepy-time gas, and Jane has to knock out Clark, the primo. The Kid has them patched in to the house’s intercom system, and Bruiser makes the announcement that he is there as Leo’s enforcer to search out and stop Naturaleza, and those who do not fight will not be harmed. The group does receive resistance from some blood-servants, who are dealt with through the use of rubber bullets. They find a lot of humans prone from the gas, but until they get upstairs they don’t see any vamps. Jane gets to use the holy water on a couple of vamps, which has the desired effect. After battling a few more vampires, Jane and the guys find Hieronymus downstairs, being protected by five of his people. The necklace is now burned into his flesh. Jane tells him that the Naturaleza tagged him without him knowing it, and that it is controlling him. He tells Jane to take it off him, in spite of what it may do to him. When Jane removes the necklace, there is a power surge and Jane feels as though she is falling.
Mr. Prepared for Anything: Jane seems to be in a tunnel, and walks into a room with an old Native American woman—her grandmother. The woman tells her that she has done well to let love into her life and heart, as it will prevent her, at least for the time being, from becoming the monster she may have become from having killed a man as a child, the man who killed her father. When she asks the older woman if she became a liver-eater, the woman shifts and leaps at Jane, but then she abruptly appears back at Hieronymus’ home, in the same room she left from. When Jane asks Hieronymus why he allowed her to take the necklace, he explains by recounting (after making the rest of her group leave the room) the Mithran creation story, which she already knows, but with an addendum she doesn’t: when the outclan priestesses took the wood of the crosses to create weapons used against the Mithrans, the Naturaleza took the iron and forged weapons to bind and control. Two tribes formed, one Naturaleza and one Fame Vexatum. After many years of war, some of the Naturaleza came to the new world, including de Allyon. When Hieronymus hears what is going on with the witches, he tells Jane that she must take Lotus’ head before midnight when the working is complete, and that he wants the blood-iron. As they drive away from Hieronymus’ house, Jane muses over the fact that in spite of all of their research, done properly, Hieronymus had known all along where Lotus was but could not tell her because of the binding. She sees this as a lesson to save the Master first. Later that evening, Jane and Bruiser sneak out of Esmee’s (they don’t want the others along, because they probably wouldn’t survive), heading for the house where they had found Esther beheaded. Jane had Leo call in Evan Trueblood, because she knew Evan wouldn’t have come if she asked. When he arrives, Evan blames Jane for too many people knowing that he is a warlock, and that his daughter is a gifted witch. Jane vows that when too many people find out, she will be there to guard them. Jane places the fused discs in one of Evan’s hands, and the sliver of iron in the other, as he told her to. In the basement, Jane places a sheet on the floor and makes a circle, which Evan gets into before she closes it. Evan plays flute music for five minutes, and when the discs move until they point into a direction that Evan says is the vampire lair. Bruiser tears down the shelves that hide the door, and when he opens the door, Silandre and Lotus both come out, going toward Evan. He scratches both of them with the iron, and they both fall to the floor in some sort of binding, unable to move. Jane hears moaning from the hole leading to the lair.
While There is Breath, There is Hope: When she goes into the space, Jane finds three women and a child, the missing Achee family of witches—including Kathyanini. After the family gets taken to the hospital, Jane, Bruiser, and Evan take the two comatose vampires over to the house where Misha and the others are buried in dirt. Jane goes down first; the two vamps are sent through the portal next, and are followed by the two men. After Jane places candles by each of the witches, Evan plays flute music. The sand begins moving, the vampires wake up and begin singing, the spell speeding up, and Jane realizes that the spell is immortality. Jane breaks the circle, beheading Lotus and then Silandre, and the earth spits out the buried witches. The house begins to shake, and Evan uses his music to blow a hole in the side so they can all get out. Two days later, Jane confronts Evan before he is about to leave in his truck. He has avoided her since that night, and she wants to talk to him. She begins by apologizing for interfering with his spell, and he says it wasn’t working, and if she hadn’t done what she did, the vamps would have succeeded. He apologizes for treating her so badly, and credits her for getting to the bottom of what was going on with the vampires and the blood diamond before. He tells Jane that Molly has forgiven her for killing Evangelina, and that she will eventually call. Jane asks Evan to check on Rick’s calming music, because she thinks it needs adjusting, tells him that Francis was turned over to Hieronymus, and that she thinks he may want to consider the addition of vampire blood to the healing spell he and Molly are putting together for Charly. The problem: Hieronymus wants the iron spike that can do transformational magic.
Epilogue: Eli, in his military uniform, presents Bobby with a purple heart medal (one of his) for his service. Jane, Misha, and a healthier Charly are all in attendance.
Story:
“The Devil’s Left Boot” (in the anthology Kicking It ): Liz and Cia Everhart are working at the Seven Sassy Sisters Café and Herb Shop that they own and operate with their four remaining sisters—Evangelina having been killed recently because of her involvement with a demon. Liz feels grief over the loss of her sister and coven leader, and actual physical pain from the same sister having tried to kill her with a boulder, but healing from both is taking a while.
Liz sees a bright red car pull up in front of th
e restaurant, and when she sees who gets out of it, she calls to Cia. The women are surprised and dismayed to see their biggest tormenter and foe from high school, Layla, on her way in, holding a pygmy goat in her arms. Using the formal forms of both sisters’ names, Layla says that she requires help, saying that she brought the goat as a sacrifice. Cia tells Layla that they don’t do blood-magic, and to get out, but the woman starts to cry, saying her mother has disappeared and the police aren’t taking the situation seriously. Softening a bit at Layla’s plight, Liz and Cia decide to hear her out.
Layla’s mother, Evelyn, missed an important work meeting, prompting her boss to check with Layla, who found her mother’s clothes, purse, and cell in a strange pile on the floor at her house. Layla says she can pay them, and after seeing the stack of bills she has, Cia states the fee of one thousand dollars for trying to locate her, and two thousand more for success, regardless of the state she may be in when they find her (which she points out is Jane Yellowrock’s fee). Agreeing to the terms, Layla says she will meet the two sisters at her mother’s house. When Cia brings up her cleverness at citing Jane’s fees, Liz almost tells Cia what she has kept from her—Jane is in town for the hearing over Evangelina’s death.
