by Faith Hunter
In my peripheral vision, I saw holy water shooting out of the nozzle like a hundred tiny jets. And Rick, with his mouth on a vamp’s neck. A spray of blood flew into the air from his jaws.
Beast-fast, I stabbed up with an ash stake, hitting my attacker in the abdomen. She fell, the wood taking her in the central artery leading down to her legs. Immobilizing her. Her blood cascaded over my right leg. I dropped her, holding the stake in place as she fell.
The holy water hit the next two vamps in midair. They screamed and did ninety-degree turns, bouncing off the walls. They raced away, screaming in agony. I looked at Rick. He was rising from under the vamp that landed on him. The vamp had an ash stake in his heart and only half of his throat left, the bones of the spinal column visible. But he was still alive, gasping. I figured he’d heal. Sooner or later.
Rick’s eyes were glowing green. He had fangs on his upper and lower jaw. Eli and Bruiser were backing slowly away from him. Rick spat and snarled, his human skin and flesh stretching like a cat’s. Gently, slowly, I lifted my arm and my hand to him. And took up an earpiece. My ears were covered by the helmet, but I could hear tinny sounds of music from it. I lifted the piece toward Rick.
He jerked his head away but kept his eyes on me. I stopped all movement and waited, barely daring to breathe. Rick’s face relaxed just a hair as the music became audible to him too. Then his mouth closed. I placed the earpiece in his ear. His eyes lost some of the glow and darkened toward his usually Frenchy-black eyes. He took the other earpiece and put it in. He chuffed out a breath. “Thanks,” he said. The word was slurred as his mouth tried to return to human. “Don’ wanna get stuck partway.” Which might happen if Rick ever changed to his big-cat, thanks to the tattoos on his shoulder.
“Pain bad?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’ll stay back here for the other door,” he said, “and cover my ears. Don’t get yourself killed.”
“Not my plan,” I said.
“You two finished playing nice-nice? Good.” Eli said, his own words a snarl, nearly as good as a big-cat’s. “Six vamps inside,” he said, “clustered at the back of the room, probably trying to get out the locked escape hatch. They’re gonna be pissed when they realize the hatch won’t open and they’re trapped. And it won’t be long before we have wet, pissed vamps, fresh outta the shower and wanting revenge. On three, people.”
In the moments we had been standing there, Eli had used the last of his C4 on the third door. He didn’t bother to count silently, and I drew a silver stake and my fourteen-inch-long vamp-killer as he counted down. “One, two, three.”
The door blew. And nothing happened. No vamps flew at us. Nothing happened. At all.
I raced past Eli and Bruiser, passing through the baptismal water, feeling it splatter on my hair and across my neck and back. Leaped through the splintered door, into the room. Landed, weapons out to either side, my body bladed, left foot forward, balanced. Ready for anything. I stopped. Water swirled into the room and around my feet.
Clustered in the back of the room were six vamps. Big H was in the middle, standing with his arms out at the sides, his fingers seeming to claw at the wall. Two vamps were on either side; one was crouched at his feet. All of them were vamped out, snarling, their bodies oddly twisted, but not like the spidey vamps. Like regular old vamps. None of them moved.
And I had no idea what to do.
I just stood there. Weapons ready. Breathing like a bellows. Inside me, Beast snarled, puzzled. Behind me, Eli turned off the water. Silence fell.
The guys moved into the room, forming a semicircle behind me.
Like the upstairs, this suite was done in white and scarlet, with a bed big enough to play touch football on, white-painted columns for bedposts, a seating area big enough to seat both teams on, tables and chairs at one end of the room, an en suite bath visible through an open door. And a pile of vamps so still they looked like statuary.
Hieronymus took a faint breath and said something I couldn’t hear. I pulled off my helmet and he repeated, “I cannot.”
I stepped closer, feeling the guys behind me keeping pace. “What can’t you do?”
His face warped, as if his skin had been pulled to the side only to resettle like soft clay or putty that, left alone, returned to its original form. Something was hinky here, not what I had expected, not even subconsciously.
I took another step and sniffed, my mouth open to take in the scent of the room, which I hadn’t done since I started down the stairs to Big H’s lair. The smell of vamp was strong and herbal: the floral of funeral flowers, the dry scent of sage. But the smell of sickness was missing, as was the acrid, dusty scent of the spidey vamps.
I walked slowly toward them, the guys on my trail, spreading out and around furniture, keeping the vamps covered. I was close enough that in Beast’s vision, I could see the necklace around Big H’s neck. And I realized that his neck was burned beneath it. It hadn’t been that way before; I was sure of that.
To the female vamp at his feet, I said, “Unbutton H’s shirt.”
An expression of utter relief crossed her face and vanished. She stood gracefully, reaching long, delicate fingers to her master. They unbuttoned Big H’s white shirt, exposing his chest. Which was blistered and pitted and blackened around a shard of iron wrapped in corroded, ancient copper.
“Tag. You’re it,” I said. When the vamps didn’t react, I said, “The Naturaleza tagged you. They put that on you sometime after you hired me to come kill them off and before I got here. It’s controlling you. Isn’t it?”
The female vamp nodded once, then froze.
“If I take it off, will you die?”
Hieronymus’ face twisted again, and I realized it was with the effort to speak. Nothing came out, but his lips moved. He said, “Take it.”
Keeping the vamp-killer to the side, I sheathed the stake, dropped the helmet, and reached up a hand. I touched the copper necklace. Lifted it slowly. The iron wrapped in copper tore H’s skin as I lifted it away. Blood trickled down his chest. There was no clasp, and I wasn’t going to get close enough to lift it over his head. “This is gonna hurt,” I said.
With a single massive jerk, I broke the chain and leaped back.
The vamps collapsed to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. The iron swung on the chain, back and forth, dangling in my fist. Power surged up from it, snaring me in its might. The entire room went black.
And I was falling.
CHAPTER 26
Mr. Prepared for Anything
I was in a dark place, empty and cool. It smelled of wet and age and eons of time. It pressed down on me, heavy and dense and dangerous. It was so dark I couldn’t tell when I closed my eyes. I reached out and the vamp-killer clanged against stone. The fist holding the necklace touched stone on the other side. My heart leaped into my throat. I was underground. I was buried.
But the stone fell away as I continued my turn. A light, faint and dim, appeared to my right. I took a step, another, moving slow and easy. Moving through the underground dark, a tunnel, cold and wet and chill, its dimensions somehow organic, widening and narrowing. A cave. I sheathed the blade and placed my feet carefully, redistributed my weight warily, expecting to find no ground beneath me at every step.
As I moved, I heard the slow plink of water. Smelled water and smoke, heard the crackle of fire licking at cold, dry wood. The passage opened up to reveal a large cavern in the rock, domed, with stalactites hanging down from the roof and stalagmites rising up from the floor, the walls smooth and pearlescent like a shell.
The fire burned near the back wall, its light flickering. I recognized my spirit home, the cavern of my youth, the place where I first learned to shift when I was a child of five. The place I went to in my mind when I was in danger or when I had something I needed to learn. It was a hard place, but it was mine. A place of strength and a place of dreams.
Near the fire sat an old woman, her gray hair in braids hanging down to her lap on either side. Her
head was down, staring into the fire, the light showing me only the top of her head and her wrinkled forehead. I thought it was Kathyayini, but the clothes were all wrong. This woman wore no flower-sack clothing, but a cotton shirt in a vibrant yellow, a pullover shirt intended to tie at her throat. It hung open, revealing a necklace of carved and dyed bone and porcupine quills and glass beads. Her skirt was canvas, dyed blue, worn at the hem and belted with worked hide in beads to match the necklace. Tied to the belt was a series of small leather bags, pouches for herbs and minerals.
I paced slowly to the fire. When I stood there, my shadow elongated behind me, I had no idea what to say. This was a Tsalagi elder. A shaman. I should have taken off my weapons. One didn’t wear weapons into the presence of an elder of The People.
“Tsilugi, Dalonige i Digadoli, aquetsi ageyutsa.” Welcome, Golden Eyes, Golden Stone, my daughter.
My legs folded, and I sank to the ground. “Elisi?” She raised her head and the firelight moved over her wrinkled face. Her eyes were amber, like mine. “Elisi,” I whispered. My grandmother.
“Forgive me for coming into the presence of an elder with weapons.”
“You are warrior woman.” She waved away my apology, her hand gnarled and ribboned with veins. “Weapons are part of you. You are a weapon.” She shrugged. “I made you to be so.”
I thought about that, about the memories I had recently gained and refused to look at again, memories of this woman putting a blade into my hand. I had been a child, maybe five years old, the year that everything changed. The hairs rose on the back of my neck, and when I breathed, I tasted sweetgrass and burning oak on the back of my tongue. “When you put the knife into my hand,” I whispered. “That’s when you made me a warrior?”
“Together, we killed a man. Slowly. For killing your father. You remember?”
I nodded.
“You remember the first cut?”
I closed my eyes, sucking in a breath. Remembering.
The blade was too large for my fist. The bone handle was cold, but warmed quickly. I raised the knife to the white thing hanging over the pit, tied with rope. It was a leg. It bucked, trying to get away. Above it came strangled sounds, like a pig full of fear. The leg in front of me was hairy with light brown hairs, and white-skinned, like a dog. It stank of fear, this yunega who had killed my father.
I cut it, the blade opening up a line of red. The thing hanging above squealed again, and piss ran down his leg. I reached up and cut him again.
I jerked back from the memory, back from the fire. I landed on my open hands, my palms on the cold stone floor. Staring at my grandmother.
“To kill a human when so young may change a child,” Elisi said. “May make her a man killer. Sometimes a killer only. You have done well to learn to love. You have done well to bring family into your heart, even though they are family not of your blood or your clan or your tribe. This will keep the darkness away for many years.”
“Did . . . Did you become U’tlun’ta? Did you become stone finger, the liver eater?”
Elisi’s eyes flew from amber to gold, two glowing orbs. Her face melted and folded, bristling with pelt. Two sets of fangs grew, distorting her jaw. She growled the word, “Tsisdu!” And leaped at me.
• • •
I landed hard, my body hitting as if boneless, my jaw impacting the floor. My teeth clacked together, the sound strange and clicking. Tsisdu. Elisi had called me rabbit. Prey.
I rolled to my feet in Hieronymus’ room, the necklace in my fist. “Why did you let me take this?” I growled at the vampire on the floor. My voice was on a lower register, my words distorted. I touched my teeth with my tongue and felt fangs. Oh, crap.
Hieronymus pushed to his feet, one hand going to his throat, touching it gently. The blisters weren’t healing, and I knew he needed blood, but he seemed to gather himself. He placed his other hand on his scion, as if to soothe her. “All is well,” he said to her.
His eyes studied me, taking in my features. “I had heard of this, of Leo’s Enforcer, the one who takes the form of a puma.” He dipped his head as if in recognition of something important, something I didn’t understand. I’d have to think about that later.
“This has been foretold,” he said. “This is a time of change, when the old ways return, when old darkness fights for supremacy against that which is new, against the light of the world.”
I had heard those exact words at some point in the last year, but I couldn’t place them. Before I could ask, he went on.
“My heir, Lotus, my erede, she fed from another, pledged allegiance to another, unbeknownst to me.” Hieronymus stroked the hair of the female vampire who had knelt at his feet, his hand soothing her. “When Lotus came to me to offer her blood and her devotion, she reached around to embrace me. And she placed the cursed thing”—he pointed to my fist—“over my head. There is a spell of binding within it.”
“Binding?” I looked at the necklace in my hand.
“The binding of Santa Croce,” he whispered. At my confused look he said, “Il sangue . . .” He struggled for words and said, “The blood on the crosses and the sacrifice of blood, this created the Mithran, the immortal drinker of blood.”
“Master, no!” The female scion raised her fingers to his mouth.
He smiled and caught her hand, twining his fingers into hers. “We have lived with secrets for too many years, my daughter. These secrets have now appeared, as if from the grave, and they bit us. They drained us. Leo sent this creature to right the wrongs.”
Not exactly, I thought, but I didn’t say it. “I know about the creation story,” I said, my mouth moving almost normally now.
“The priestess of the sepulcher—she told you this hidden story?” Big H asked.
I figured he meant Sabina Delgado y Agulilar, the oldest Mithran I knew. She had told me a lot of stuff that vamps usually keep secret, including the origin of vampires via the crosses of Calvary and Golgotha. I nodded.
He sighed, a sound almost human; he moved slowly to a chair and sat. “Forgive me. I am fatigued from the healing of the medicine. It has been many centuries since I felt thus. I find I do not miss it at all.” He stretched out his legs. “I will tell you the rest of the story, of the iron that bound flesh to tree. Ferro chiodo. The others, however, must leave. This is for your ears only.”
“I’m not going anywhere, fanghead,” Rick growled.
“Yes. You will,” I said, studying the vampire Master of the City of Natchez. His bald head was paler than it had been, but his motions were more human than before, something that took control and practice. He was in control of himself and of his people. “Go on. I’m okay. Please,” I added, without looking away from the MOC.
I heard Rick growl, and the hiss of whispered words, and then the sound of people and equipment moving away into the stairwell. Big H smiled grimly. “I never heard of such an attack, of using holy water by the gallons against a Mithran’s lair. How did you get a priest to bless such a volume of water?”
“Baptismal water,” I said, figuring it would get out anyway.
Big H made a hmmm sound, as if rethinking his security arrangements. I had a feeling that drains would be installed in all his lairs soon.
“They’re gone.” I said. You were speaking of the ferro chiodo. Whatever that is.”
“I speak of the iron spikes that bound Christ to the cross,” the older man said, his voice reverential, his eyes on the thing in my hand. “But do not think that there is something holy in this tale.” His voice took on the pitch of a story told often, and when he spoke, he quoted the same words I had heard spoken by Sabina. “When the sons of Ioudas heard that the master had risen, they went to the mount of the skull to find the cross where he died, to steal the wood bathed in his blood, to work arcane magics with the blood and the cross. But the crosses of the thief, the murderer, and the rabbi had been pulled down, broken up, and piled together, the wood confused and mixed.”
Around him, the vamps sett
led to the floor, watching the Master of the City. Others entered through the broken door and sat there as well. Some small, irreverent part of me saw it as a bunch of preschoolers sitting around at story time, and I had to swallow down my laughter. I figured that if I giggled at the creation story of the curse of the Mithrans, I might get drained in retaliation.
“They took it all, all the wood of the crosses. By dark of night they pulled their father’s body from the grave, and with their witch power and arcane rites they laid his body upon the pile of bloody, broken wood. My own histories say they sacrificed the life of their small sister on the wooden pile. Others say not. But with arcane rites, they sought to raise their father from the dead. And he rose, though he was yet dead, his soul given over to the night and the dark. Soulless, he walked for two nights, a ravening beast. And he could not be killed, though he rotted and the flesh fell from his bones to writhe upon the ground. And thinking that some benefit might yet be gleaned from their sin, his sons drank the blood and ate the flesh of their father. And they were changed.”
I nodded. I had heard the story, almost word for word.
“But what is not spoken of is the iron,” he said to me, his cadence changing back to his usual accented English. “Forged metal was rare in ancient times and of great value. For death on a tree, most were hung with ropes made of plants or the ligaments of animals, easy to make and to replace. For iron to be used, the punishment required a swift death. With the holy day of the subjugated people upon them, the Romans who crucified the three required such speed.”
Big H’s voice took on the storytelling tempo again. “When the Sons of Darkness gathered the wood, they found, piled nearby, the iron that had bound the three, and they gathered it and the wood from all three trees. When their father could not be killed and yet walked the Earth, a rotting corpse, they melted the iron spikes down into one great spike with which to kill their father.”
