by Faith Hunter
He closed the door behind him and switched on a small but powerful flashlight. He caught the broken plywood first. Then me. I figured Alex had found me by tracking my cell phone. I had hoped the rain and the magic had shorted the thing out. No such luck.
“You leave any for me?” Eli asked.
“Not only that, I made you a sandwich.” I pointed to the last sandwich, one I had really made for myself, but this was much better and made me sound unselfish. Maybe even noble, since it did involve food. Eli grabbed a beer and straddled the bench beside me. He gathered up the oversized sandwich and took a huge bite. I hadn’t known his mouth could open that wide.
“Not bad,” he said as he chewed. “But with Lucky’s meats, even you couldn’t make a mess of it.”
“Ha-ha.” I pushed over the open container of slaw. It bumped the edge of the flashlight and sent the beam rolling crazily for a moment. “I left you some, but there was only one fork.”
“You don’t got cooties, do you?”
“Yup. Girl cooties. But I’m pretty sure you can’t get them from eating after me.”
Eli chortled and nearly choked. When he got his airway clear he asked, “You got the wreath?”
“Yup.”
He nodded contemplatively as he chewed. Pulled his cell and sent a quick text before putting the phone in his pocket. He ate a bite of slaw and made appreciative noises that might have been This is good, if he hadn’t been chewing at the same time. He swallowed and said, “The demon melted into a puddle of mud and Margaud was unconscious under a tree outside. You do all that?”
“Yup.”
“That’s my girl.” He lifted a fist and I bumped it, but he wasn’t done. Carefully expressionless in face and tone, he asked, “You bleed much?”
“Not as much as last time. It was pretty bad until I got some beers into me.”
Eli looked over the table and onto the floor where I had started placing empties inside the wreath. “Eight beers?”
“So far.”
“You drunk?”
“Oddly enough, pretty much. I’m thinking that bending time does something wonky to my metabolism.”
“You’re still pelted.”
“Yeah. I noticed.”
“You and Bruiser ever—”
“No. Do not go there. Ewww.”
Eli chuckled and ate more of his sandwich and I realized he was teasing me. Through the bite, he asked, “What are you going to do with the wreath?”
“I don’t know. But for sure the vamps and the witches here won’t see it again.”
“And where’s the Anzu?”
I ate some meat, using my fingers to stuff it in. Licked my fingers. The paw pads felt weird on my tongue. I opened another beer. Drained it halfway. I kinda liked having a buzz, even if it meant I was going to be an alky and go to hell, according to some of my housemothers as I was growing up. “I haven’t decided about that,” I said. I picked up la corona and placed it on my pelted head at a jaunty angle. “Gee calls me little goddess. I think I’ll wear it for a while. You know. All goddess-like. With a crown. Before I decide.” I ate some more meat as Eli finished his sandwich.
“I guess we should pay for this stuff,” he said. “Think forty will cover it?”
I shrugged and Eli tossed two twenties into the light of the flash.
“You did it, you know,” he said. “You got the vamps and witches talking and the Moutons will be brought under the watchful eye of the newly appointed Bayou Oiseau Citizens’ Council.”
“Self-appointed?”
“Yeah. But it’s a multiracial, multispecies, multigender council, so it’s a start. And it’s better than what they had. Which was nothing.”
I pointed to the wreath on my head. “It’s what we goddesses do. We fix stuff.”
“True,” Eli said, his face amused. “Do you want or need to go back and accept kudos from the citizens council of BO?”
“No freaking way.” I scowled at him. “But I need to go back for my stuff and get the guys.”
“Already taken care of.”
“Swwweeeet.” I boxed up a mixed six-pack of cold beer and stuck it under my left arm. Picked up the M4, which had somehow ended up on the floor with the wreath, which had somehow found a way from my head to the floor. I nearly fell when I stood.
“Am I going to have to carry you to the SUV?” Eli asked.
“I don’t know. Things are kinda whirly right now. How far do we have to walk?”
“I texted Alex and your vampire babysitter earlier. There’s an SUV idling out front. It’s most likely them.”
“And if it isn’t them?”
“We’ll shoot our way out.”
I grinned at him, showing my blunt human incisors and elongated big-cat canines.
Eli said, “Edmund. He’s pretty good with a sword.”
“Yeah. I saw. Maybe better than Grégoire.” I placed the crown back on my head and adjusted my grip on the shotgun. Steadied myself on the table’s edge.
Eli was watching, not helping, which was good. He said, “Ed’s too good to have lost a Blood Challenge for clan blood-master. Too good to be wanting to be an Enforcer’s primo. Something’s up his sleeve. You got any idea what?”
“Plans and schemes and tactics and strategies all layered up with some hubris into a nice, neat plot to take over the world? Or at least the vampire world.”
“Think we can shoot our way out of that one?”
I tried to take a step and the world whirled slowly. “Pretty sure we can do anything, partner.” I put a hand on his shoulder to catch my balance. “Let’s go home before the delegation from Rome gets here and stirs the pot.”
“And where are you gonna hide the wreath until we figure who it belongs to?”
I already knew who it probably belonged to—the Birdman of New Orleans, or one of his kind. But I wasn’t ready to hand it over. Not yet. Maybe not ever. “Looks like I’ll be renting another safe-deposit box. A big one this time. And we’ll need to wrap the interior with lead.”
“You’re getting quite a collection of magical trinkets.”
I grunted. I knew that. And I didn’t like it one bit.
“We’ll need to come back and gather up the principals for a parley with the NOLA fangheads and witches,” Eli said.
“You think you can get the helo? I could go for a kidnapping and forced negotiations at knifepoint if we could do it fast.”
Eli nodded. “I can make that happen. Are you going to shift back into human anytime soon? Or are you too drunk?”
“I am not drunk,” I said. “Not exactly. But I don’t think I can shift back anytime soon. And I probably shouldn’t let the witches see me like this.” I pointed to my face and body in a little twirling motion.
Eli’s mouth resisted a smile. “You think they’ll try to take you prisoner?”
“Witches can try,” Beast said through my mouth.
Eli led the way to the door. “We’ll get out of here before anyone knows what’s what. The lead foil came in last week. We can line your bank boxes anytime you want.”
I nodded. “Let’s go home.”
Bound No More
Author’s note: This short story takes place (in the JY timeline) after Dark Heir.
“Your goddaughter is driving me out of my blessed mind,” Molly said, sounding frustrated and more Southern that she usually did.
Funny how the seven-year-old became my goddaughter when she was being difficult. I grinned into the cell, knowing Molly wouldn’t know I was laughing at her. With her. Whatever. My voice solemn, I asked, “What am I supposed to do about it? If I’m reading the time right, you’re still laying over in Atlanta, which makes me still about six hundred miles away. “
“Talk to her. She fell asleep on the first leg of the flight and— Stop it, Angelina Everhart
Trueblood, or I’ll turn around and take you back home.” Into the phone, she said, “What I want is for you to tell her it was a bad dream and nothing is wrong.”
Something in my chest squeezed tight for a moment. “Dream?”
“Son of a witch on a switch,” Molly cursed in witch vernacular.
“Aunt Jane, you there?” It was Angie Baby, aka Angelina, my oldest godchild and the love of my heart. The stress in my chest eased away and the smile was real this time. Angie didn’t sound distressed or afraid, she sounded angry.
“Yup. It’s me.” I leaned on the couch and pulled a soft, fuzzy throw over me. The Kid had turned up the AC and it was freezing in here. Outside, rain fell, splashing into the puddles, pounding on the roof, trickling down the rain gutters, rushing toward the street and New Orleans’ storm water drainage system. Taken together, it made a melodious sound, the varying and harmonious sounds of rain. I had learned to love it. “What’s up, Angie Baby?”
“You gots to get up outta your sofa and protect the scaberteeth lion bone.”
I was on my feet so fast the couch nearly flipped over. A half second later, Eli, one of my partners in Yellowrock Securities, rounded the corner, a nine-millimeter handgun in each hand. “Backyard,” I said, taking the weapon Eli slapped into my palm.
“Round in the chamber, safety on,” he said. “Whadda we got?”
“Don’t know. Angie”—I held up the cell for him to see—“had a dream about the sabertooth lion skull, which I hid in the boulder pile.”
Eli grunted and pulled a vamp-killer. My partner was a two-handed fighter.
“It could be anything.” Or nothing, but I didn’t say that. Eli already knew it. Angie had strong witchy powers, for sure, but she was barely in school yet. She was a kid. Kids make mistakes.
Eli opened the middle door from the living room. Half juggling the cell, I pulled open the door closest to the backyard. All the doors out of the living room onto the porch were new, and mine stuck, swollen by the rain. I yanked, and when it opened, it nearly hit me in the face. I slid out onto the slick porch floor a half second behind my partner.
“Don’t hurt it, Aunt Jane!” Angie demanded, her voice tinny, so far from my ear. “Just stop it! Quick! Hurry!”
But I couldn’t hurry. I stopped, breathing fast and shallow, staring out over my backyard. Beside me, Eli stopped too, his breathing even and slow, his scent charged with testosterone and adrenaline. “Is that what I think it is?”
“A mostly naked teenage girl kneeling in the mud, digging under my rocks? I think so.” The girl was dark-skinned, with long, kinked, black-, copper-, brown-, pale white-, and silver-streaked hair plastered to her shoulders and back. My Beast pushed to the surface and took in the girl. In Beast sight, she writhed with energies, powerful, supercharged, magical strength. All in rainbow shades of light. “I think she’s a juvie arcenciel, playing in the mud. And Angie says we can’t hurt it. Her.”
Eli made a soft grunt of acknowledgement and holstered his gun. Standard ammo didn’t hurt arcenciels, the term for dragons made of light. Neither did silver. Only steel. Angie could say we couldn’t hurt her all day long, but if the arcenciel was a threat—and my experience suggested that they often were—we might have no choice. Eli would stay armed. He kept the fourteen-inch steel and silver-plated vamp-killer in his right hand and drew a black steel KA-BAR Tanto knife with his left. He wasn’t wearing a shirt or shoes. The steamy air landed on his taut chest with a misty sheen.
“Aunt Jane! Hurry!”
“Okay, Angie. I got it. Love you.” I disconnected and placed both the nine mil and the cell on the wet porch floor. The juvenile arcenciel couldn’t have missed our entrance to the backyard. We hadn’t been covert or quiet and were standing within feet of her in what passed for broad daylight in New Orleans in a rainstorm. But she was ignoring us thoroughly, as she clawed with her hands beneath the boulder and pulled out a rounded mound of mud. She was slicked with it. Leaning down, she reached back under the boulder, into the muddy little cave, and began to scrape more mud to her.
Behinds us, Alex, the third member of Yellowrock Securities, said, “Camera’s running. So far she shows on digital footage.”
When arcenciels were in human form they photographed fairly well on digital and film. When they were in their light-dragon form, digital was often nearly useless and film only slightly better.
“Angie says she’s after the sabertooth lion skull,” I told Alex.
“She say why?”
“No. Just that we can’t let her have it and we can’t hurt her.”
The arcenciel whipped her head around at my words and hissed at me the way vipers do, mouth open, showing teeth. Lots and lots of sharp, pointed shark teeth, glinting like pearls. So she knew English. Interesting. No one really knew what arcenciels were or where they came from. Just shape-shifters, time benders, and not from around here—as in not from Earth.
“And the skull’s out there?” Eli asked.
“Not usually,” I said, lowering my voice so that the rain muffled it. “But with Angie on the way, and her being so nosy and having access to everything inside, I put a bunch of stuff in the yard. In hindsight that may have been stupid.”
“You should have put it in the safe room.”
“No. Angie mighta spotted a magical signature in the safe room, and then she would have known the room was under the stairs. With all the things that kill people.”
Eli grunted his understanding. “Whadda we do?”
The arcenciel pulled another armful of mud from beneath the boulder, or what was left of the boulder from the last time I had borrowed mass from it. I’m a skinwalker, and when I need to take on a form that is bigger than my own mass, I borrow it from something with no genetic material of its own. Hence, boulders that get busted.
A storm front had stalled over the gulf region, and it had been raining for so long that the earth beneath the pile of rocks was muddy, and the stone was slowly sinking. In another twenty years, the pile of once-massive stones that I had managed to break and crack and shatter would disappear beneath the surface of the alluvial mud. Faster if the arcenciel kept up her digging. With a sudden move, the boulder rolled toward her and dropped into the trench she had dug, trapping her hands, wrists, and lower arms. The creature screamed and writhed, jerking her body, and I had a spike of visual memory, intense and sharp, of a . . .
A fox caught in metal teeth, trying to rip off its leg and be free. Stinking of fear and blood and death. A man was above it, watching.
Trap, strange thing inside me thought.
From high above, saw weapon crash down on fox, shattering fox skull. Blood flew. Man’s back paw stamped down, pushed down hard beside metal teeth. Trap opened. Beast’s eyes went wide, staring. Interested. Man pulled fox free. Man stood and stuffed dead fox into bag at waist. Reset trap and put small piece of meat in center. Scattered leaves over it. Man walked away, boots loud in brush.
A white man. Yunega. A trapper, strange voice thought.
Man stank of whiskey, blood, unwashed body. Beast studied steel cage of death. Trap. Remembered the way yunega had freed dead fox.
Beast can do that. Free trapped prey. Eat those that Beast wants. Others go free, strange thing inside of head thought. Strange thing with strange thoughts. Should not be inside with Beast. Strange thing that struggled to be free. Struggled to see through Beast’s eyes. Struggled to be like alpha in pack. Beast should be alone. Beast pressed paw onto strange thing in mind and it went still. Beast leaped from rock ledge and landed beside trap. Picked up stick and dropped onto trap. Steel teeth clanged shut.
Beast reached in and sniffed stinky meat.
Bait, strange thing inside thought.
Bait, Beast thought back, testing meaning. Ate scrap of meat. Beast hungered. Keeping paws on matted leaves, Beast followed yunega. Will eat all bait. Will not hunger.
“Jane?”
I blinked, the world whirling around me. Eli had my upper arm in his fingers. Steadying me. “Sorry. Tell you later,” I said. Stepping carefully off the back end of the porch, I placed my feet on the wet grass. Rainwater squished up through my toes, cool and fresh. The arcenciel whipped her head to me and her eyes glowed. She hissed again.
I showed my empty hands. “No steel,” I said, thinking of the trapped fox. “I can help you get free.”
The juvie went still, the way water goes still on a full-moon night, reflecting everything, black and white and harsh with shadows. “Free?” Her voice was raspy and coarse, as if she hadn’t used it in a while. “Free is . . . safe. Free is . . . desired.”
“Uh-huh. Right.” I had no idea why the arcenciel didn’t simply change shape and get free that way, but she didn’t. Body balanced, knees slightly bent, I took a step toward her.
The arcenciel said, “I will never be free.” She shifted shape into light-dragon form, rainbows sparking off her like sparklers and fireworks. Her dragon form was feathery, luminous shades of the rainbow sparkling with brighter motes. Her cotton candy hair flew on an unseen wind, white, stripped with red and black and brown.
In the instant she shifted, I realized several things, all of them what Beast had been trying to tell me: The arcenciel had been luring me in. This was a trap. The skull was bait for me. The arcenciel had come for me as well as the skull. And I was too stupid to figure out what the ancient memory had meant. Deep inside, I felt Beast chuff with delight. Beast is best hunter. Good fight with light predator.
The light dragon launched herself at me. But before she hit, she was back in human shape. She slammed into me, elbow to my gut. I oofed in pain and flew back with her, feet in the air, to the ground, into the mud. She landed atop me, the elbow still in my gut. Something tore inside.
