by Faith Hunter
Koun still looked bored.
“And that’s your cue,” Quint said.
I slapped the crown on my head, and it tightened painfully. Standing, I walked out of my bedroom, down the hallway, and stopped at the top of the stairs.
Bruiser called out, “The Dark Queen of the Mithrans.”
Every head turned to me. I exhaled a long slow breath, letting my scent fill the room. I had never smelled like a typical skinwalker, all flowery with spring blooms. I had always smelled like what I was. A predator.
Four of Shaun’s first twelve vamps vamped out in reaction, uncontrolled, a sign of weakness. All but three of the others shifted body positions slightly, as if to ready for attack. My people stood their ground.
Bruiser continued, “She has many titles and land and clans, but nothing can eclipse the crown she wears.”
Shaun, Dovic, and three vampires are predators worthy of us, Beast thought at me. All others are weak.
We could die, I thought at her. Let’s not start any fights we can’t win.
Inside me, Beast chuffed. Beast does not fight what humans call fair. Beast is best ambush hunter.
Quint stepped in front of me, her eyes darting here and there, indicating she was at high alert. She started down the stairs.
Much slower, letting them look, letting my scent fill the room, I started down, one slow step at a time. Beast poured strength and power into my bigger frame, and a kind of grace that only a hunting cat has. She looked through my human eyes, giving them that odd gold glow of my cat. I moved slowly, seeing everything the way a cat does, every inhalation when the vamp should be still, every slight shift of weight. The enemy vamps had never seen such a thing as I was. It made them flinch.
I saw faster than Quint, when Zariyah twitched to draw a throwing blade. The old Russian Naturaleza snapped back her arm. Beast fast, I pulled my own, dodged down and gripped the railing in my offhand. Leaped into the air. Released my blade. Heard the sound of a blade spearing, impacting the wall where my head had been.
Quint’s blade and mine pierced Zariyah’s throat almost simultaneously, above her gorget. She staggered back. Eli put a round into her forehead. She slumped. Everything went still for a heartbeat, for those of us whose hearts that still beat.
Shaun screamed a challenge that I barely heard over the deafness from the gunshot. “You have broken parley!” He drew his sword and took a step toward me.
Quint shouted back, “No! Your people did!” She pointed at the blade, still quivering in the wall.
“You put that there!” Shaun shouted.
“Cameras!” I demanded.
Shaun shut up.
“All the outclan priestesses sworn to this city are dead,” Eli said calmly, his weapon aimed at Shaun’s head. “There’s no one here to judge a duello, so we placed cameras to prove or disprove parley infractions. Put away your sword, or I’ll put a round in your brain too.”
“Cameras?” Shaun sounded dumbfounded, as if he had never heard of cameras.
“Onscreen,” El said into his mic. He tilted his head at the ugly screen on the wall. All heads turned to the screen. Four camera views came up in slo-mo, quarter time. Zariyah’s hand reaching down, pulling a blade. Snapping back her hand. Me doing my amazing acrobatics. Zariyah’s blade just missing me in the air. My blade and Quint’s landing in Z’s throat. Eli’s headshot.
“Your people have broken parley multiple times in this night alone,” Bruiser said. “We will show the world your perfidy.”
Eli said, “The footage has been loaded up into the V-web.”
Shaun asked, “V-web? What—”
“Think of it like the dark web but for vampires,” Eli said. “The Dark Queen set it up to monitor vampire honor. Most of you have none.”
I had done what? I had heard that V-web term before and had found no time to discover what it was.
“Me,” Alex said into my earbud. “I did it. You can tell me I’m brilliant later.”
Oh. Alex. You brilliant little stinker, you.
In his vampire ceremony tones, Bruiser said, “Your perfidy is known and exposed. All will scoff at you and yours.” He lifted one hand to show the screen with the proof. “No one will do business with you. No one will trade blood-servants. All will give you the cut direct.” That meant they would be shunned by everyone in the vamp world.
“Enough of this!” Shaun shouted. “Duello!”
Two of Eli’s hidden snipers raised up and aimed into the arena. Koun drew his swords. Everyone drew swords. Two shots rang out. Two enemy vamps fell.
Dovic, swords at high and middle positions, raced into the ring. Exactly as he was supposed to. Except Koun wasn’t there, I was. Where I had landed when Zariyah attacked. Koun was still at the stair landing. Dovic raced at me, vamp-fast, air popping. I reached for a vamp-killer.
But my blade hung slightly out of place on the new armor. I hadn’t given it a final adjustment before I came down the stairs. I was going to be far too slow against the master fanghead dueler.
Koun was instantly behind Dovic. Vamped out eyes wide, fangs down.
Quint was suddenly just there, in front of me, two short blades up, two throwing knives clenched in her front teeth. She was tiny. So tiny.
I got my blade free.
Quint ducked, rolled, took out Dovic’s legs. Knocking into him. He began a flip, which slowed, slowed, slowed as battlefield time took over. His swords swooped down toward me.
Eli bowled me over. Drawing up into a ball. Pushing off the floor with his left foot, that leg behind him stretched out.
Quint stabbed up into Dovic’s crotch. Into the small join between Dyneema and plasticized armor. Into his groin. Dovic screamed the ululation of a vamp in mortal peril. He was still falling.
Dovic’s longsword cut down, slicing into a seam in Eli’s armor, into his thigh. The blade stopped. I heard/felt the blade hit Eli’s femur. Blood spurted. Our momentum pulled the flesh and bone free of the blade with an audible crack. The sword ripped out. Folding back armor, muscle, and tendons in startling scarlet. Almost as an afterthought, blood pulsed out.
We rolled into the kitchen. Battle erupted behind us.
Before we even came to a stop, I was ripping open Eli’s medical pouches and pockets and pulling out supplies. I remembered bits from my medical training. Don’t use a tourniquet on a limb that you hope to save.
Except in arterial damage cases.
Blood spurted, spurted, spurted.
Around me and behind me, battle had broken out. Screams, the clash of swords, gunshots. Quint and Thema stood over Eli and me, weapons slashing and firing. Kojo covered us from the other side and shot a vamp who tried to get to us there. Raising his sword, he beheaded the vamp. Dovic’s head dropped to the floor, followed by his body.
I shut down. No emotion. I gripped the fabric of Eli’s armor, tearing it down his leg. Exposing the avulsion. The position of the sword strike started just below his butt, a lateral cut that had impacted the bone, fractured it, then slid down, separating the muscle from the bone, cutting/tearing tendons, muscles, veins, and arteries. Deadly. In seconds, not minutes.
Beast shoved power in to me. My knobby hands were strong as I strapped a tourniquet on Eli’s upper thigh at the groin. Yanked it tight.
Littermate, Beast whispered. In addition to the strength, she poured speed into me.
Florence landed beside me. She ripped the flesh of her own arm and her blood poured over Eli’s wound. Infermieri blood. “Close the wound,” she demanded, her words sharp as glass.
Drenched in the blood of my adopted brother, I slapped the muscle back into place over the fractured bone. Began wrapping rolled gauze around and around. It wasn’t enough. Blood still poured through. He was dying. Florence cut her wrist again and held it over Eli’s mouth. He swallowed twice. His mouth went slack.
I couldn’t save him.
Sabina could. Sabina was dead.
Bethany could save him. Bethany was dead.
/> Leo. . . . He had said he would come if I called, but I didn’t have a number for him. But I had other things.
I pulled a small blade and sliced a cut along the side of my forehead, just above my right temple. Not too deep, but enough to make a big freaking damn mess, my blood pouring over le breloque. With my other hand, I wiped Eli’s blood onto the crown. In my pocket, the Glob heated and burned, a frigid burn like dry ice applied to my flesh. I wrapped my mind and my will into the Glob. Into le breloque. The magic of the Dark Queen was crystalline and bright. With it, I saw all the tiny pockets of time-no-time and space-no-space where the Glob stored all the energies it took when it ripped magic out of the world. All the stored energies I might ever need were contained and stored in the Glob. I let my own crystalline might touch three of the small pockets, emptying them all into the power that was mine. Pouring magic and power into me. Into me. With my bright power, I shaped that magic.
I melded it together into a strong net of power that glowed so bright it ached. And it showed everything I was and everything I ever could be. I shoved healing into my brother. But my power was made for war. Nothing happened.
Twisting my power again, I raised my head and screamed, “Leo! Come to me!”
Nothing happened. I applied pressure with my big knobby hands, laying my body across the horrific wound. “Leo!” I screamed.
Nothingnothingnothing.
Except Eli dying. I tried the healing again. And again. “Eli. Come on Eli,” Tears and snot ran down my face.
Florence forced her blood down Eli’s throat, massaging to trigger him to swallow.
Time and space shivered. Gray and green and red-hot power burst out in front of me. A split like the center of the rift I had fallen into once. I nearly drew back.
Brute wavered into the split in time and space and stepped aside. A hand was on his head.
Beside the white werewolf, Leo appeared.
His black eyes took in everything at once, and he vamped out. His fangs ripped his arm from wrist up to mid lower arm, through his clothing, tearing them away. He bent over Eli, shoved me aside, and poured his blood over the bandages wrapping the wound.
I saw everything at once.
Florence was dribbling her powerful blood down Eli’s throat, massaging it.
In the other room, screams, shouts, ululations, gunshots rang out. Positioned over us was Quint. Her short sword dripping. Her nine-mil firing. Precise. Deadly. I didn’t have to look to know each shot was a head shot. And that she was using silver-lead rounds.
“Remove the bindings,” Leo said to me.
I slipped the tiny blade between blood-soaked fabric and swollen flesh. Slid it gently up, the gauze separating. I heard/felt/knew as Eli’s heart skipped a beat. Another.
Leo laid his cut arm on the flesh, his blood flowing. Florence added her blood to his and I bent over as well, letting the blood from my head wound merge and mingle with the vamps. Eli’s flesh began to heal. But we were in a spreading pool of blood. So much blood. Too much . . .
Eli’s heart . . .
Stopped.
Stuttered.
Beat.
Our blood flowed.
Beat.
Beat.
Stopped.
“Change him!” Alex demanded over the earbuds.
“Leo?” I whispered, begging.
“I am now outclan.”
I looked at Florence.
“I am outclan.”
Leo said, “You are Dark Queen. You have the power to heal him.”
“I tried,” I said, weeping. “I tried.”
Brute padded through the wide pool of blood and stopped inches from my face.
Stinky dog breath, Beast thought. Good wolf. Follow good wolf.
Holding Eli’s body together with my left hand, I put my bloody right hand on Brute’s white head. My magic rose. It shivered and trembled, silver energies whirling and spinning, darker motes whirling. A single red mote coiled and looped. The red mote of evil magic I had thought was gone, not seen in months, was still here. Or was back here, released by the Glob when I opened the tiny pockets of power. The Glob blistered my flesh at my hip where I had somehow tucked it when Eli fell. The red mote circled the Glob, but wasn’t sucked into it.
Was I still evil? Or were power and magic just that—inanimate—energy tools needing only the will and might, to be focused and used, making magic not a force with a conscience and principles and morals. Just a tool. Was magic less the might and more the compassion and humanity of the wielder? Even the Glob?
Suddenly we were in my soul home. The temps dropped. The stone walls of the cave were cold and wet. The walls were gray and pale yellow and shades of white. No fire burned in the firepit in front of me.
Eli wasn’t here. Was that important? Did it matter? Was he dead?
On my right side, Brute stood. On my left, stood Beast. On the other side of Brute stood Leo. He was looking up. Into the dome overhead. His eyes widened, his mouth opened, his fangs clicked closed on their little hinges. His eyes bled back to human. He dropped slowly to his knees.
I followed his gaze and saw the angel wings draped over and against the stone dome, where they offered protection to my soul home. Hayyel keeping watch.
“Angel,” Leo whispered. “Never have I thought to see such a being again.”
In my vision, I was female but dressed as a warrior of my tribe and clan—leggings, long tunic to my thighs, long belt wrapped around my waist. I wore my father’s medicine bag on a thong around my neck. “How do I save Eli?” I asked of Hayyel.
“Open the wound,” the angel’s voice said. The dulcet tones reverberated around the stone room, and Hayyel appeared in front of me. Like a few other times, he was in winged form, but this time his wings were closed over him, hiding his body.
Leo fell to his face on the stone floor. Brute stretched out, belly and head down. Beast chuffed.
“Place your stone of office within his flesh. Pour your blood and all of your power over it. This may heal him,” Hayyel said. “Your strongest Mithrans must feed him. Leo, you must use your magic, though it will call to your master. Hurry. And then find where I am. You don’t have much time to free me. Your real enemies are close.”
“Huh?” I said.
Hayyel looked like he did when I first saw him, black skin, darker than the night sky, and golden eyes. He opened his golden wings, the brown and red spots among the feathers seeming to catch the light. He was wearing a white tunic, golden brown robe, and sandals
Around his waist was a silver chain, bright and glistening and studded with bits of dark iron. Instantly I knew the iron was formed from ingots of the Spike of Golgotha. Somebody had chained an angel.
“Go,” he said, snapping his wings over his body.
I was back in the kitchen. “Feed him,” I screamed. I yanked the Glob from my pocket and pulled back the avulsed flesh, the heavy part of Eli’s thigh. I shoved the Glob inside. I was still holding the small knife and I sliced lengthwise along my arm, as Leo had done to his own with his teeth. My blood pulsed out into the wound. It pulsed and pulsed. All over and into Eli’s wound. Hands tried to pull me away. Tried to bind my wound. “No.” I stabbed the little knife at the hands. They withdrew. Quickly.
My blood pulsed. Again and again. And nothing happened.
When the world started to go dim, I fell back. “Okay,” I said, laying on my side in Eli’s blood. I allowed the hands to wrap a bandage on my arm and apply pressure. Other hands wrapped Eli’s leg with more gauze, the Glob still inside.
I was laying on the floor with Eli, in his blood. I couldn’t hear Eli’s heartbeat flutter. His skin was that deep ashen of the dead. I heard ambulances out front, sirens wailing.
Koun landed beside me. He flipped Eli over. Ripped his own flesh with his fangs and fed Eli, massaging his throat. Florence was still bleeding over Eli’s bound wound. Leo knelt on Eli’s other side, vamped out. He gently bit into Eli’s neck. Blue magic flashed out from L
eo’s fangs, from his hands on Eli’s chest. It was a rhythmic cadenced magic, not vamp magic, not the magic of the gather. It was like and yet unlike any magic I had ever seen.
The closest parallel was outclan magic. Like when Bethany changed Bruiser from primo to Onorio.
When he appeared, Leo had said he was outclan.
How did that even happen. What the heck did it even mean?
I felt something happen inside Eli. The Glob did . . . something. Le breloque did something too, burning my head. Eli’s body jerked the tiniest bit. Leo withdrew his fangs. Koun and Leo turned Eli to his side and Koun slapped his back three times. Blood drained out of Eli’s lifeless lips. They laid him face up. Leo bit in again and Koun ripped his own flesh again, feeding Eli, forcing down the blood, his fingers near Leo’s fangs.
It wasn’t going to be enough. I knew it. I was a breath away from telling Koun to change him.
But I reached up and put both hands on le breloque, bloody and sticky and cold with all the blood mixed there. I thought about the Glob, its power warm and unexpectedly open and giving, inside Eli. Inside my brother of choice. And I called Eli with all my magic. With everything I had. All that bright and shining power. All that I was. And all that I may ever be. I gave to Eli.
Come back to me. Come back. You will live. Live. Your heart will beat. Beat. Beat. I willed him to live, willed his heart to beat along with mine. Beat. Beat. Live. Live. Live!
Inside me, the new magic rose, bright and glowing. Dark Queen magics. Wrapping around my own skinwalker magics, prism-bright, shining like rainbows, echoing like brass gongs and cathedral bells ringing, brilliant as light through scarlet glass. Warm, sweet smelling, soft as silk yarn. Harder than steel. Blazing forge hot. I focused all that magic, all my own power, and all that power of the Dark Queen onto Eli.
“Live,” I whispered.
I heard a heart thump. A long time later, I heard another. More. Eli’s heart began beating steadily.
Tears gathered but no longer fell. Couldn’t. I didn’t have enough fluid left in me to cry, not even for joy. I was empty of blood, cold enough to be dead myself, and exhausted. So tired I could scarcely hold myself off the floor. I didn’t have to look up. My power crawled out, snaking into every creature in the building, knowing them all—who lived and who had died.
