by Faith Hunter
“Fine,” I said. “I see the marks and I acknowledge the research, but—”
“Someone combined the two crowns, a laurel leaf civic crown and a band, worn by a consort. A witch took the two concepts and melded them into one. Like this.” He punched a corner of the screen and a picture came up, which matched perfectly the corona in the street, surrounded by witches, standing, dry, in the rain.
Alex was tired, I could see it in his face, and beneath the stench of smoke and blood in the room, he smelled of caffeine and testosterone and adrenaline, a combo that said he had been bingeing on energy drinks. “Okay,” I said quietly. “We have a theory about what the corona was made from. Now we need to know where it came from and what it does.”
Alex heard the word theory and his shoulders slumped. Then his face brightened. “My research says this: ‘La corona does one thing and one thing only. It allows a misericord to attain human form.’”
I stood slowly. “Oh crap.” I looked at the windows. Outside, lightning flashed and distant thunder rumbled. “We might be in a bit of trouble.”
The misericords were Mercy Blades, the creatures who made sure that vampires didn’t keep their children alive after a decade, two at the most, in the devoveo. In other words, they administered the mercy stroke of death to the chained, insane killing machines that never made it through the vamp turning into true vampires. They were also Anzu. Storm gods. And . . . I had recently been struck by lightning during a storm. Holy crap. What am I missing?
“Jane?”
I jerked my head to Alex, who looked oddly concerned. I stood, digging in a pocket for my cell. “Yeah. I gotta make a call.”
I walked outside under the gallery roof into the drizzle that had started again. I pulled up my address list on the official cell, the one that my boss could trace, listen in on, and read texts from. I found the name Gee DiMercy, who was also known as Girrard DiMercy, aka Leo’s misericord, or Mercy Blade. An Anzu. Once worshipped as a storm god. Like a blue and scarlet Big Bird with a bad attitude. A storm god . . . I hit SEND and waited. The cell rang. Rang again. And then I heard a calypso dance number behind me.
I pulled a vamp-killer, spinning on one toe. Ducked the sword strike that was aiming for my head. Threw my body into a forward roll, tucking, landing on one shoulder and sliding under the swing hanging on chains. Gee laughed, and his laughter was exactly as I remembered from the first time I heard it—joyful, like a kid in a park, and I found myself smiling with him, even though I was hiding behind a swing, in the dark.
He didn’t attack again and I saw him sheath the sword, the steel a silver gleam in the porch light. “What are you? Kato?” I accused.
“That would make you the Green Hornet. And . . . a sidekick? Have I fallen so far in your estimation?” He swept a hand to his chest. “My heart breaks. However, I am not likely a secondary character, and I much prefer your first appellation—Zorro, the swords master hero.”
Gee DiMercy was standing under the porch light, his very-milky-chocolate-colored flesh cast in a slight yellow tint from the bulb. A V of chest hair was framed in the opening of his shirt, and a faint film of pale energies ran on and under his skin. His black hair was dry and longer than when I first saw him, loose and curling around his pretty face like a cap. His skin looked Mediterranean or Middle Eastern mixed with a hint of African. His features were utterly beautiful but full of mischief, like an angel who was pushed out of heaven for laughing during prayer. He was dressed in a draped-sleeve, open-throat navy shirt and blousy pants with boots to his thighs, but now he also looked younger, maybe fourteen years old in the poor light. But since it was all a glamour, he could look like anything he wanted.
I stood up, keeping the swing between me and the Anzu, no matter that he looked like a dance student rather than a swords master. Slight, delicate, and smelling of jasmine and pine, the commingled scents fresh, lovely, and dangerously disarming on the night breeze. I sheathed the vamp-killer, which would have been useless against the longer sword, even with Gee’s shorter reach. I had been taking lessons, but I mostly sucked with a long sword.
His gaze swept me from my feet to my head and said, “The pelt is lovely, but feathers would have been beautiful. Remember that you owe me a hunt.”
“I remember. Why are you here?” I asked.
“I am here for le breloque. It is mine.”
“And how do you figure that?”
“It was made for my kind by my goddess and friend. It was lost when one of us died unexpectedly. Until now, we did not know where it had landed.”
“Uh-huh. And how do you intend on getting it, seeing as the witches have it warded and protected?”
“Their magics are child’s play to one such as I.”
“Hmmm. And if they have a steel blade and stick you with it?” Anzus—Anzi?—could be wounded and even killed by steel. I had seen that myself.
Gee scowled.
“Right,” I said. “And if they decide that ‘finders, keepers’ is a more appropriate method of deciding ownership, and they attack in a coven of twelve, could they singe your tail feathers?”
His scowl deepened.
“Come inside and talk to the leaders I’ve managed to get in one place. The coven leader is”—I waved a hand into the slow, misty rain—“otherwise engaged.”
“She tries to use misericord magics, stored in le breloque. She cannot.”
“Whatever.” I opened the door and went into the bed-and-breakfast, pausing by the front door. Gee passed me, altering his apparent age to midtwenties before assuming a fists-on-hips, aggressive stance, like a sea captain, or maybe a pirate captain. All he needed was an eye patch, a parrot, and a stein of rum. “I bring greetings and a warning to your people. I am here in peace. But I will have mon breloque back or you will all die.”
If I’d been close enough, I’d have head-slapped him. Fortunately the witch and Clermont laughed at him. Edmund stood and pulled his swords. He stepped in front of the others and said, “I will not permit—”
The front window blew in and a mud demon shaped like a frog stepped through. Everything went to hell in a handbasket.
Eli fired two handguns, backing into the hallway.
Lucky dove across the room, throwing a fire spell that simply disappeared into the frog’s wide mouth, where it sizzled as the demon swallowed it, treating it like an appetizer. When he landed, Lucky flipped a table over on its side and ducked behind it. Clermont, Edmund, and Gee all turned on the thing and attacked, swords flashing. Black tarry cuts appeared on its sides and it roared with anger. I still had my shotgun, but the Benelli was useless in such close quarters. I’d hit one of the swordsmen. I checked the hallway and Eli was gone, and so was his brother. Eli had to have some toys in his room. He’d be back with military reinforcements.
The demon picked up the sofa where they had been sitting and threw it across the room. It crashed on the table hiding Lucky, and the table cracked, splintering. The furniture collapsed on the witch.
The demon’s arms extended two feet. It grew claws. It attacked the swordsmen.
They didn’t have a chance.
But . . . they were all using steel. I pulled a vamp-killer, with its steel edge and silver plating. “Ed!” I shouted. I lay the long knife on the floor and spun it to him. He bent and picked it up while making two cuts in the demon. No. Make that four. He was . . . Edmund Hartley was freaking fast. Seeing him fight next to Gee DiMercy made that abundantly clear. Holy crap. The vamp who was on the bottom of the pecking order in vamp HQ was amazing, a skilled, talented swordsman.
So why is he the bottom of the bunch in vamp hierarchy? Why did he lose his control of his blood clan? How did this guy lose a blood duel?
Before the thought was fully formed, Ed dashed inside the demon’s reach and cut a long gash in its belly with my vamp-killer. The black blood cascaded out. And this time it didn’t c
lot over. Go, me!
“Silver!” Edmund shouted at me.
I pulled two more silver-plated vamp-killer blades and slid them across the floor to Gee and to Clermont. They put their lives in danger of his long reach, dashing in and back out, but the demon squealed as they all began to make headway on bleeding the thing to death.
I whirled and went back outside into the rain. Looking for Margaud.
She was standing under the magnolia tree in Miz Onie’s front yard, leaning against the trunk of the tree, half-hidden in the low branches. This time she wasn’t guiding the demon with kicks, fists, and maneuvers. She was standing still, running with rainwater, a sodden mess. Shoulders hunched, she was staring into her cupped hands, shielded from the elements. Staring at something that had her total attention.
I pulled a small knife, one with a wide pommel and short blade. I drew on Beast’s stealth abilities and her speed. I bent and leaped across the ground, landing on a mossy patch of ground. Instinctively keeping downwind, in the shadows, I leaped again, landing beside the girl. Raised the knife. And bonked her on the head. She dropped like a stone. I caught her hands and picked out the thing in them. It was . . . a gris-gris.
Time slowed all by itself, the bangs and thumps from things breaking inside growing deeper in tone. The raindrops seemed to decelerate, not hanging in the air, but falling at half speed. My stomach cramped. This was not gonna be good. In fact, it was gonna be very, very bad. I could tell.
Gris-gris were small leather bags that had originated in Africa and were believed to protect the wearer from evil or to bring luck. Or to provide the wearer a method of birth control. Lots of things, depending on what the wearer and the maker wanted. They had become part of New Orleans’ voodoo, or vodoun, subculture, and they looked a lot like a Cherokee shaman’s medicine bag at first glance. This one was made out of leather covered with red silk fabric, tied with undyed hemp. It was about four inches long, less than three inches wide, a little large for a gris-gris. Like the shaman’s bag I had begun to wear in my soul home, gris-gris held herbs and small animal bones. And when used in dark magic, the spells they powered could become unstoppable.
I touched the leather, which was bumpy and rough—tanned alligator skin. There was a swatch of bristly hair tied into the hemp. I held it to my nose and caught the scent of wild boar.
I toed Margaud with my foot paw and she lolled limply, sluggishly. Still out. Moving through the abnormally slow rain, I carried the gris-gris to the porch and stood under the light. Inside, the fight was still taking place at half speed, and I could hear grunts and the sound of more breaking furniture. In the distance I also heard sirens. The light-sleeping Miz Onie must have woken even with the sleep spell, and called the county law enforcement officers. I wondered if they would fall sway to the sleep spell as they entered the city limits and if they’d get the unit stopped in time. The thoughts were useless things, mostly background, so my subconscious could worry about the real problem while my hind brain kept me breathing and my heart beating. A lot going on at the moment, and there were, after all, priorities.
One shouldn’t open a gris-gris.
It might unleash many things, even worse things than the demon inside the house. Or . . . maybe the gris-gris bag had been opened and that was how the demon had gotten free? Or . . . maybe there was something even worse still inside the bag.
I had the answer to any gris-gris. I pulled my silver cross from the lead-lined pocket in my jeans. I untied the hemp and pressed the cross into the gris-gris bag and shook it. Black smoke boiled out of the bag, tarry and sour-smelling. When the smoke cleared, I dumped the contents into my knobby-knuckled palm. Fragile bones, mixed dried herbs, a tooth, and three clay tiles fell out. The demon was part frog, part boar, part alligator—frog body and back legs, boar tusks, bristly hair, and a little twirled tail, alligator skin, frog mouth full of alligator teeth. And arms muscled like a gorilla. Using my index finger, I pushed around the contents. There was a jawbone of a very large frog or toad. The boar hair was tied with a string. The white tooth was probably an alligator’s. The tiles were rough, etched with figures of a frog, a boar, and an alligator. I rubbed one and it felt like dried mud.
Of course. I held it to the yellowed light and decided the mud had been mixed with sacrificial blood before it was shaped and dried. Something had died to make the gris-gris. It was black magic.
But Margaud wasn’t a witch. She was human. So where had she . . . ?
Things began to pop up and slide together in my mind, like some weird puzzle forming all by it itself. Margaud and her brothers were Moutons. The brothers had shown up at Lucky’s with Solene, the coven leader, who was Lucky’s sister. The Moutons were vamp haters from way back. Lucky was a vamp hater from way back. Solene hadn’t seemed any too happy to be sharing the town with suckheads. Solene and Lucky were related to the Bordelon sisters, one of whom had been their grandmother, and the sisters had fought the vamps to a stalemate in the town’s vamp war.
Had the Bordelon sisters used a gris-gris? Had they called up a demon?
Through the window something flew, slowly, ungainly, tumbling through the air. Gee DiMercy. But he didn’t fall, tuck, and roll. Blue and pink and lavender magics boiled out from his slight form and in an instant he sprouted feathers, spread his wings, and caught an air current. He glided across the yard, barely maintaining altitude above the ground. He flapped once as he crossed into the street, trying to make it over the witch circles. He wasn’t successful. His wingtips brushed the top of the electric dog collar and the hedge of thorns where they met at the top. Black and silver sparks flew, slightly faster than the rain. The acrid stink of burned feathers filled the air.
And the wards exploded.
The Gray Between caught me up, and time simply . . . stopped. The falling magics looked like slowly burning paper, blackening and scorching in arcs of heat, with flaming lights at the edges. Raindrops hung in the air. I didn’t look at the droplets. I knew better. They held the possibilities of future timelines, spreading out from this moment, from the decisions I made in this moment, possibilities that affected everything and everyone. If I looked at them I could be paralyzed, unable to act, afraid that anything I might do would mess up everything for everyone else. So I didn’t look. I didn’t even want to.
I dropped the gris-gris’ contents to the porch floor and crushed it all between my paw pad and the old, painted wood. It made a strange grinding sound, the tiles breaking. The cross hadn’t stopped him, so that meant that even this might not stop the swamp thing, but it should do something to the demon. Weakening it would help, at the very least. As I ruined the spell, my guts twisted horribly. The pain felt like someone was dragging my intestines out of my abdomen and braiding them into a long, plaited coil.
Nausea rose, tasting of blood and bile. I gagged. I didn’t have long.
When the tiles were dust, I walked back inside, where the fight was still taking place, found a small escritoire with paper and pens inside. I wrote a note to Eli explaining what I had figured out, about Solene Mouton probably helping Margaud, trying to drive a wedge between vamps and witches. I folded the page and tucked it into Eli’s hand, where he’d feel it in real time. Then I stuck the mud monster with a silver-plated blade about fifty times. Surely that should do it.
Satisfied I had done all I could do in here, I shoved off from the porch, leaping through the air, faster than time, splashing through raindrops hanging still in the night. Racing toward the center of the street. Seeing the wards as they fell, breaks appearing in long striations of fractured energies. Seeing, knowing the weakened places in the magics. I bladed my body through a tear in the outer ward, my pelt sizzling and stinking. I raced between witches and spun through the inner ward. It bent and gave and fell beneath me.
I took two steps through the center of the circle, stooped, and picked up the wreath. La corona. Le breloque. I pushed off the asphalt and lan
ded on the far side of the witch circle. Moments later I was half a block away, bent over, retching. Blood pooled on the wet pavement beneath me. Time had returned to normal. Or I had returned to normal time. It was confusing. I gripped my middle and kneaded the twisted steel of my muscles. And once again the heavens opened up and rain assaulted the earth.
I looked up and saw, in the distance, Lucky Landry, Edmund Hartley, and Clermont Doucette walk from the ruined house and into the street. The vamps were no longer sporting swords, so crushing the tiles must have killed the demon, or sent him back where he came from. Whatever. I’d take it. The witches in the circle were screaming. I could hear them in the distance. The rain that had started above me raced across the street and hit them too. Lightning jagged down, the sound booming. It was close. I had no desire to be hit by lightning again. Once in my lifetime was enough. I looked around for the Anzu, wondering if he had called down the current storm.
I pushed up from the water-runnelled pavement. My other hand was . . . gripping the wreath.
I have the wreath.
I have stopped the demon.
And I might live.
• • •
I hid in the storm, walking away from the clamor in the main intersection of town and into the first weedy lot after the row of businesses and shops. The last business in the row had a newly applied sheet of plywood on the side wall, half-hidden by weeds . . . covering a hole. I remembered when the hole had been made. Lucky had thrown a bowling-ball-shaped keep-away spell at me and missed, trying to kill me when we first hit town. The nails holding the plywood in place didn’t hold up to the strip of metal I used like a crowbar to expose the hole into the beauty shop. It was tight, but I was able to step through and I shook myself like a dog, my pelt shedding water that went everywhere. Following the trajectory to the inside wall, I found another piece of plywood and pried it off too.
I ended back in Lucky’s shop and raided the beer cooler. Three beers later, even my skinwalker metabolism was feeling pretty good, if hungry. So I raided the refrigerated meat counter and settled to a table with a fourth beer, a beef roast of some unknown cut, a dish of pulled pork barbecue, a half loaf of bread, and some slaw that smelled heavenly, even to my Beast. And I ate most of it before Eli managed to pick the lock on Boudreaux’s Meats and get in out of the rain.
