Dark Queen

by Faith Hunter

  Leo said, “I will arrange to take your kits to safety, with others of their kind.”

  “The papers are in Asad’s bag in a hidden compartment. At the Royal Sonesta.”

  That was a NOLA five-star hotel. Nantale reached up and grabbed Leo’s hand. He returned the grip; Nantale’s skin went pasty, and then quickly ashen. She spasmed, coughed. Just that fast, Nantale died. Leo stroked her face once and gently placed her head on the floor. It was over, whatever it had really been.

  I looked around the room. Vamps were standing in small groups, and I memorized who was with whom, who had weapons drawn, who looked happy and who looked disappointed at the outcome. I opened my mouth and scent-searched for lemons, but the smell was gone. Good thing. My head hurt too bad to fight a witch right now.

  Leo stood, spitting mad, and rounded on one group of vamps. He addressed Tex. “You will go to the Royal Sonesta and find the papers of parley. You will bring the offspring of our enemies here, to safety. You will treat the kits with kindness and respect, as valued guests.”

  Tex slanted his eyes at me and I gave him a small nod. To Leo, he said, “I will, my master.” Which gave Leo control over some of the most important African werelions on the planet. Kits he could shape and raise as he wished. Nice move, I thought, if he brought up his foster kits to believe in personal freedom and responsibility. If. I guessed that being fostered by a vamp was better than being killed in the claws of an adult big-cat.

  “Once Nantale’s kits are safe,” Leo went on, “I will contact the Party of African Weres. PAW may want the bodies for burial.” He lifted his chin slightly to Kemnebi, a very French gesture, full of disgust, but he spoke to me. “You will deal with your traitor.”

  Beast peeked back out and sent me a vision of sinking our fangs into Kemmie’s back just below his skull, shaking him until his neck broke, before picking him up and carrying him away. Instead I remembered the stench of lemons and the heat of the spell that had set off the fighting. A familiar taste of magic.

  Leo gave me an enigmatic look and gestured to his blood-servants. “Take the leopard to the playroom. Our Jane may use the scion lair.”

  Playroom. Right. Only a vamp would think of a room full of cages and with a drain in the middle of the floor as a playroom. Leo said, softer, holding my eyes with his dark ones, “I thought I had healed the rift with the werecats. I thought you had tamed the leopard beneath Rick.”

  “Magic,” I said just as softly. “Familiar magic. Someone found a way to override the bond, and fast.”

  “Ahhh.” Leo knew about the anomaly’s presence in HQ and our inability to see the witch in real time.

  I looked back at my people, Eli’s face closed and cold, Alex a little more blanched than I expected of the player of violent video games. But then, he had recently been attacked and left nearly dead. His hand was around his throat, fingering the new scars. I seldom even noticed them these days, but being human, he’d healed far more slowly than I did, even with all the vamp blood in him.

  “I’ll handle moving the werecat,” Ed said softly, from beside me. “Rick LaFleur should interrogate him.”

  My adrenaline washed away. “Right. Okay. Do it.”

  And then I remembered the image of Asad and Nantale licking their lips the first time I saw them in front of the SOD. Had they wanted to drink the ancient vamp blood? Had they been in HQ tonight long enough to actually do so? Had they been in sub-five while the ceremonies were taking place? Had they drunk SOD blood tainted by werewolf bites? I had to wonder what that blood would do to them, if it would make them fall under spells of aggression. “Leo. Take a whiff of the lions.”

  Leo looked at me oddly, but he bent over the lions and sniffed.

  “They scent of Joses Santana, the Son of Darkness, and of magic.”

  I nodded, a scant motion against the migraine. “Yeah. That’s what I figured. I think they’ve been trying to get to the SOD since the first time they came here. And I think they finally got what they wanted. I think—maybe—that they aligned with Dominique and Des Citrons, and at some point before she tossed Callan a sword, Dominique led them to sub-five, beneath a strong obfuscation spell. She had magical help, the spell big enough to hide them on the stairs. And they drank SOD blood, tainted by werewolf saliva. What would it do to them? Would it alone make them crazy enough to attack? Or was that from the witch’s and/or Des Citrons’ magic in the room? Or both, working together?”

  Leo shook his head. “This I do not know.”

  “Eli, with me. Alex, get to security. Check the footage and find out what happened with the anomaly. Find out when the cats got to sub-five and why we weren’t notified.” I pointed at a security guy. “You. Go with him. No one travels alone in HQ.” Alex sped away, his scent suggesting he was happy to be out of the blood-splattered room, the security guy on his heels. I turned on my paw and padded down the hallway and the stairs to sub-five.

  I’d kicked off my shoes when I half-shifted and the floor was cool to the touch on the stairs to the lower basement. I looked around fast, taking in everything: old blood, werewolf-stink, SOD, and mold. The cameras were off. The last time Dominique was here, she had turned them off with a remote device.

  There were no uninvited weres present, but the SOD wasn’t alone. A dozen HQ security, armed and twitchy, stood with weapons raised at three women, who were standing in a semicircle studying the human-shaped thing on the wall. They looked almost human, but were all likely arcenciels: not Soul, who I knew best, but Opal and Cerulean and one I hadn’t met. Brute was there too, Brute biting Joses Santana’s foot, drawing watery blood.

  The SOD had changed even more, and I guessed that he had been fed, possibily the blood of the vampire and the witch who were hiding in HQ. He was fully human shaped, his face no longer slack jawed. His eyes were open and he was laughing silently at his wolf tormentor. I ignored him and said to the security types, “Stand down. Return to your posts, by order of the Enforcer.”

  They didn’t look happy about it, but after a moment they left the basement by way of the elevator. Gee stepped out of the stairwell and bowed to the arcenciels, his face lit with joy. “My goddesses. Greetings.” In unison, they nodded to him and Gee assumed his place beside me, taking in the tableau.

  “Brute?” I asked. “We were just attacked in the gym by werelions and Kemnebi, the black wereleopard who was injured here”—I shrugged, not sure of the day—“not long ago. Is it possible that they got a taste of the SOD recently?”

  Brute snorted then nodded, his head moving up and down, the gesture un-wolf-like and odd on his huge form.

  “Today?”

  He nodded.

  “Were they with Dominique?”

  Brute shook no.

  “Were they here with someone who smelled like lemons?”

  Brute tensed and nodded.

  “Well, crap. They divided up?”

  Brute stared hard at me and nodded.

  “Would the taste of SOD do anything to werecats? Make them crazy?”

  He snorted and vocalized something that sounded like, “Aroouuu.” Maybe it was an answer, but I didn’t speak werewolf.

  “You got any idea why no grindylow showed up in the gym?”

  He snorted and vocalized again. “Ooommmeee. Ooommmeee.” The tone was different, the length of the snort was shorter, but again, I didn’t speak werewolf and I couldn’t figure out how to ask all my questions in simple yes/no form.

  The SOD was looking at me, still cackling, silently. Hard to do with no heart. Hard to be undead with no heart. I figured it had grown back somehow. He lifted his head away from the wall, his long black hair sticking and coming away with a soft squick. His jaw unhinged and his fangs unfolded. His fingers flicked open and I caught a flash of gem and gold. He took a breath that sounded like a coffin opening. Hoarsely he said, “Yellowrock. Ut omnis, mortem.”

&nb
sp; I tensed to throw myself behind the doorway. But . . . nothing happened. The SOD had just spoken a wyrd of power and . . . nothing. No magical power swept the room; no magic tore and seared the air. I frowned, trying to figure out what had happened. The SOD rattled his entire body on the wall, the silver chains clattering. “Ut omnis, mortem!” he screeched.

  And again, nothing. The arcenciels put their heads together, and I had the distinct impression that they were chattering among themselves, silently. Mind power crap. Ut omnis, mortem? The last word I knew. It meant dead or death. But the first two words were less clear.

  “To everyone, death,” Gee translated thoughtfully. “It was a wyrd, and it should have killed us. Well, some of us. The curse failed.” He looked at Brute. Then at me, studying me in my half-form. Without turning his head away from me, Gee asked, “Brute. Did you bite the Son of Darkness to take away his power?”

  Brute wagged his tail and sank his teeth into the SOD’s bare foot again. It wasn’t an answer, but the SOD screamed in frustration and banged himself off the wall and back, the chains clinking more loudly.

  Gee asked again, his words a little different. “Brute. When you bite the Son of Darkness, do you take away his power?”

  Brute chuffed. And then he nodded his head up and down in the human affirmative, bouncing once on his front paws. Brute spun to me. His silver-blue eyes less wolflike than I had ever seen them. Human intelligence gleamed in them. And I knew. Over the sound of the SOD’s raspy screams, I whispered, “Hayyel gave you the ability to timewalk and to incapacitate the magic of the Sons of Darkness. With your bite.”

  Brute gave me a doggy grin, his tail wagging even more fiercely, and turned his attention back to the SOD. He bit down again and again, his wolf fangs piercing the bare feet of one of the fathers of all vamps. Biting. Biting. Giving one of the two most powerful vamps in the world the were-taint. And no grindylow was stopping him. I walked to the SOD and grabbed his nasty, slimy hand. On his index finger was a ring, a faceted brown diamond in a simple setting. A magical amulet. “Did Dominique give this to you today?” I asked.

  Joses gurgled with laughter and clenched his fist. Brute nodded and vocalized again, “Ooommmeee.” He was trying to say Dominique, the vamp I hadn’t killed well enough. Crap.

  I gripped the SOD’s hand and pulled on the ring. He made a fist to stop me, and so I broke his finger and pulled off the ring. Tucked it in a pocket as he screamed hoarsely. I turned from the drama in sub-five and pattered back up the stairs, texting Rick that his zeta cat had just attacked Rick’s alpha at HQ. He texted back that he would be at HQ in four hours. Then I found some Tylenol and a handful of ibuprofen for my headache. I managed to keep it down.

  In the scion lair, the playroom/prison where Leo, or some other suckhead, once kept his scions in the devoveo, I walked past Eli and Edmund, who were standing a good six feet away from a silvered cage. Inside was my new buddy, Kemnebi. My silvered blade was still buried in the middle of his back. Kemmie couldn’t heal until the silver toxins of my sword cuts had flushed from his system. The stuck silvered blade made that impossible and shifting to either of his forms unattainable. He was trapped in cat form, paralyzed by a silver blade, his guts still spilled out on the floor. Alive, but in pain. I could smell it on the air, hear it in his panting breaths. Guilt, my old nemesis, raised its head. Kem would kill me in a heartbeat, but I was sick at the sight of him there. Being tortured.

  I opened the cage door, pulled a vamp-killer, and squatted on the floor in front of his cage, balanced on my toes, my elbows on my knees. I leaned in and growled. It was a deliberately masculine position and a challenging growl. My lips pulled back, exposing my fangs. Letting my voice drop into Beast’s growl, I started with the easy questions, saying, “Did Dominique and a lemon-scented witch cast a spell on you to free you from your tamed state?”

  Kem hissed at me, cat style.

  “Did you harm the grindylow who was supposed to watch you?” I placed my blade at his throat.

  Kem snarled, showing me his cat fangs.

  More slowly, I said, “Did you, somehow, kill your grindy? You and the lions attacked when humans were present. The grindy should have killed you all.”

  The half-man/half-cat spat at me, the only gesture he could make with silver in his spine.

  “Why did you attack? How were you and the cats planning to disrupt the Sangre Duello? Nod that you’ll answer these questions and I’ll pull out the blade so you can heal.” He lifted his lips, showing his teeth; deliberately he shook his head no. I stood, closed and secured the cage door, and said, “No food, no water, no medical help, and no one removes the silvered blade until he’s willing to tell us about the grindy and about what’s going on with the weres.” I turned my back to the cat, a cat insult, and left the room, Eli on my tail. So to speak.

  In the hallway, the playroom door closed and I could smell Eli’s anger.

  “You’re leaving him in agony.”

  I steeled myself to answer. “This isn’t war. He isn’t human and isn’t covered by or protected under human laws. He’s a werecat. He won’t die. He’ll suffer a bit, that’s all.”

  “Jane—”

  “No. Too many seemingly unconnected things are happening right now. Too many possibilities all leading back to the EVs and ahead to disaster. In the last few minutes, we’ve been attacked by werecats who acted crazed or spelled or both, one of which should not have been able to attack at all, too tamed for anything except getting his belly rubbed. We’ve smelled lemons. Dominique, who allied with Des Citrons—but might, possibly, be acting outside their wishes—has gotten in and out with ease and she tossed Callan a sword. Callan attempted to kill the outclan priestess. A witch is floating around HQ and no one can seem to find her.

  “I’ll make sure Alex is researching them, but though they’re an old clan, Des Citrons has managed to keep out of the historical eye for centuries. The clan may or may not be aligned with the EVs. They may be hoping to sit back and watch and then pick up the pieces later. Rick will be here in four hours. Rick, as alpha, can make Kem talk. Four hours to think about his sins.” And then it hit me. I ducked my head to see directly into Eli’s eyes. His were haunted. “You saw injured enemy combatants tortured, didn’t you?”

  “Aggressive interrogation.” His lips twisted down. Confusion filled his face. “It’s—” His words stopped abruptly.

  “Inhuman and inhumane?” I leaned in to Eli, my shoulder touching his. “His grindy is missing. He may have killed it. Her. That’s assuming grindys can be killed. But his grindy is a baby grindy. A baby.” They looked like kittens, neon green kittens with steel claws, but kittens. They were cute little killers. “He wanted to kill humans. Tried to kill Larry and may have turned him into a furball. And Kem is my pack. It’s my right to demand answers.”

  Eli shook his head, but answered in the affirmative. “Yeah. Okay. For a werecat who didn’t think twice about harming Larry.” He made a fist and placed it on the door between Kem and us. “Okay. Four hours.”

  Eli walked away, leaving me thinking about how much I had changed, about how easy it had been to slip away from humanity, away from thinking about mercy and kindness. Mercy and kindness were hard. Hurting others was easy. The door opened and I met Ed’s eyes as it closed. It was a thick door. Heavy. It sealed with a little whoosh of sound I hadn’t noticed when I entered and left. It was a door created to keep the screams of those inside from disturbing others in the hallway. It was a room built for imprisonment and torture. “I’m a horrible person,” I said, speaking to myself rather than to Edmund.

  “Yes, my master. You are.”

  “But if I set him free, again, he’ll hurt the ones I love. Again.”

  “Yes, my master. He will.”

  “I have to take care of the people I love. That means . . .” This was the hard part. The part I had realized several times over the last months. �
��That means I have to become a monster.”

  Gently, Edmund said, “Have you not always been a monster, my master?”

  I took in a breath that hurt as if I had been stabbed. I turned from the room where I was actively torturing an enemy and started to walk away. Faint screams came from the room behind the heavy door. My heart leaped into my throat. Ed slammed the door open. We both raced inside. Kemnebi lay inside his cage, his throat sliced away, his blood emptying out, toward the drain in the middle of the floor. His cage was still secured. The grindy was standing atop the cage, her neon fuzz bloodied, her ankles and neck showing ligature marks where rope of some sort had dug into her flesh and abraded off the hair. She had been tied up. She had gotten away. And killed a wereleopard inside his cage. Right. Not exactly a kitten.

  Eli appeared at my side. “Well, hell,” he said.

  Vamps and weres and their blasted layers of conspiracies within plots within intrigues within treacheries. “I need to see the parley papers. We need to talk to Leo.”

  CHAPTER 11

  QaStaHvIS yIn ‘Ej Chep

  We were walking into the foyer when a man’s voice stopped us, saying, “Legs?” The nickname meant it was one of the longtime security guys. Team Tequila or Team Vodka. “Hey, Antifreeze,” I said, slowing. “It’s good to see you up and moving. How are you?”

  “Not bad, Legs. Suckheads pay better for injuries than Uncle Sam and don’t dump you for wounds.” He held out his good hand and there was a folded note between two fingers. Folded but unsealed meant it had been seen by everyone, that it wasn’t private. “From the MOC.”