Dark Queen

by Faith Hunter

  Once I was beyond the house and prying ears, I had myself a silent bout of anger, pounding the sand. My hand—the one that had healed around the magical thingy when it was created—was furiously squeezing the Glob as I hammered it on the earth. For long seconds, I couldn’t force myself to stop or to let go. It hurt my hand. I got sand in my eyes. But I felt better after my temper tantrum.

  * * *

  • • •

  On both floors, the next rounds began.

  Leo’s side was winning.

  Ro Moore chose wrestling as her weapon and defeated her opponent according to standard wrestling rules. Gee took on two vamps at one time and killed them both on the sand. There was enough blood and gore to make the wolves dance in glee. The pay-per-view numbers had started smaller than anticipated, but they had now outpaced expectations and were growing rapidly.

  Brenda Rezk took on a Vespasianus security guy, and the finish was two simultaneous cuts. The cut to her arm was a surface wound, while the other guy was carted away needing major vamp blood to heal. She lost on time, but won on wounds delivered.

  After that things went sour.

  Maryanne, Edmund’s lover and blood-servant, died at the hand of a woman named Cupid, her head rolling across the sandy rings. Edmund went still as death, except for the human tears that spilled down his face as she fell. His tears tore into me like claws into raw meat.

  The bout bell rang upstairs. I hugged him and left him to his grief.

  “Results of this duel are acceptable to the Onorios,” Brandon said behind me. And for the first time since I met the Onorio twins, I wanted to slap them, slap all three of them.

  In the next match, which was supposed to end with first blood, Titus’s swordswoman cheated at en garde and Gee took a hidden steel blade into his belly and out his back, followed by a Z-shaped move that carved his innards into Zorro-inspired spaghetti. Anzus were lethally allergic to steel and couldn’t heal themselves on Earth. Gee didn’t die, but only because his organs were not human-sited, but Anzu-sited. And because Leo fed him from his own wrist. My Enforcer was out for the night. Likely for the rest of the Sangre Duello. The cheater won. Cheating was smiled upon in the Sangre Duello.

  Edmund took the ring, facing off with two blades to first blood, against a vamp who called himself Jeedalayn, which was supposed to be Somali for the verb “to whip.” Jeedalayn had little to no dossier beyond his presumed age. My primo stood there in blue armor facing a six-hundred-year-old vamp. Something in Jeedalayn’s stance caused my heart to flutter. It may have stopped. I had a very, very bad feeling. The bell sounded, the tone a clear pure note of death.

  Jeedalayn slithered. Swords so fast they sang on the air.

  In half a second, Ed took two cuts. Blood flew. His opponent stepped back, honoring first blood. But my primo’s left hand was nearly severed at the wrist, bloody, splintered, and cut bone exposed, his hand hanging by tendons. His right thumb was equally nearly amputated.

  Bile boiled into my throat at the sight. Someone again held me back as Leo’s clan members rushed to provide assistance and clean up the blood spatter. Two blood-servants bundled my primo into sheets and carried him down the stairs. I followed, the scent/taste of his blood and pain heavy on the air. My feet felt strange on the stairs, as if they didn’t quite touch down. As if I might slide off and into another dimension. And I still held the Glob. It was so cold, it was like clutching an ice cube.

  Behind me I heard Brandon say, “Results of this duel are acceptable to the Onorios.”

  I managed to not whirl back and coldcock him.

  In Edmund’s shared cubicle in the center rooms, the vamps and humans placed my primo on a bed. My primo. Someone I should have protected. A woman said, “I have him. Del, get the bottle.”

  “Right here, Mama. I’m ready.”

  A half-familiar smell hit the air: blood and chemicals. I blinked, to focus on Dacy Mooney, kneeling on the mattress beside Edmund, his right hand in her left. The heir of Clan Shaddock said, “Ed, honey, we’re gonna coat your thumb with the blood remedy. This will hurt.”

  “They say it feels as if one is being immolated.”

  “I wouldn’t know. You can tell me.”

  Dacy upended a small glass vial over Ed’s severed thumb and a thick, syrupy drop formed on the end of its rubber spout.

  I recognized the scent of the blood remedy. Leo’s Texas biomedical lab indeed had reverse engineered the revenant potion left by the vamp funeral director when the Caruso blood-family skipped town, to back the EVs. But instead of creating it to make revenants, Leo had made his version for healing. The MOC was a dangerous creature, but sometimes he was also a pretty cool dude.

  I still wondered at the oddity of the Carusos leaving their bottle, and at the letter Leo had received claiming they had betrayed him only to save Laurie Caruso’s daughter. It could be insurance, a bid for protection should Titus lose. Carusos playing the long game, maybe.

  Dacy dribbled the drop on Ed’s severed thumb and pressed the thumb back in place. Ed screamed. He continued screaming as Dacy and six other vamps held him down so Del could apply the blood mixture to the ends of his amputated hand. Del’s blond head bent over my primo, her fighting leathers the color of her eyes. Ed screamed, his ululation so high-pitched that I went deaf and had to step from the room. Yeah. That was the reason. Not my own cowardice at seeing a man I cared for injured and in agony for trying to protect me.

  Shiloh walked down the stairs toward me, followed by a line of men and women. “Leo wants you to follow this one,” she said, her long straight red hair swinging. Except for hers, I had never seen straight red hair. Red hair was always curly. Stupid thoughts. Stupid duel. I hated this. These mind games and blood and death.

  “Why do I need to follow you?” I asked, my lips feeling numb. Edmund was being tortured. I could hear his screams through the soundproofed door. I placed a hand on the door, as if I could ease his pain through the steel.

  “Your two best fighters are down and out,” Shiloh said. “Koun is slated to fight seconds after this bout, so he can’t fight this one.”

  “She’s trying to tell you that I accepted my own duel,” Eli said. He descended the last four steps and stopped beside me.

  The acid in my stomach boiled. “Why?” I whispered.

  Shiloh said, “Challenger is Lucrezia Borgia. Eli Younger chose weapons.”

  “I picked matching German Sig Sauer P320s,” Eli said.

  “Naturellement, I contested such barbarism,” the female vamp behind him said. “However, the priestess has denied my disputation.”

  I recognized the woman. Hers was one of the histories I’d studied in preparation for the EVs’ visit, a VIV, very important vamp. She shouldn’t have been on the roster until later tonight at the worst. Tomorrow at best. And Gee or Ed should have been fighting her. Not Eli. I followed Shiloh down the stairs, not sure why we were going down and not up. My brain was wrapped in cotton. Ed was screaming. I could still hear him.

  Shiloh said, “Lucrezia Borgia chose death.”

  My boots halted on the stairs. I came to a stop, my mind flashing with useless information. Lucrezia was the illegitimate child of a pope and his mistress, in the early 1500s, and had become an assassin for Titus. She was a master at hundreds of weapons. Her dossier said that she practiced all night every night, with blades and firearms. I was so cold at the thought that my head started buzzing and nausea boiled in my gut. The P320 was a brand-new modular weapon, a serialized gun. It could be modified to shoot nine-millimeter loads, altered quickly to fire .357 Sig, .40 S&W, or even .45 ACP—automatic Colt pistol.

  No matter how good vamps were, there were always weapons old vamps hadn’t fired, because they figured the ones they were most familiar with were the best. This was sometimes true, sometimes not. There was a chance, a small chance, Lucrezia had never fired this modular and wou
ldn’t have the muscle memory to make her a perfect shot. I started my feet moving again, down. Down to the death rings.

  Eli was standing on the front porch, moonlight brightening the world around him, making his black leathers seem darker, as if he himself were a pathway into the underworld. I set my eyes on him, but he didn’t look back, though he surely had to feel the weight of my gaze. He led the way down the steps.

  We were halfway down to the beach when Shiloh said to me, “The duel is at forty paces, twenty each, approximately one hundred feet, depending on stride. Since it’s with firearms, it’s all very methodical and according to protocol covered in codicils other than the Sangre Duello.”

  I walked away from Shiloh, across the sand, following Eli. He was breathing slowly. The pulse in his neck was equally slow. Zen. Warrior face on. But he smelled—strangely—of excitement and joy. On the beach, the gulf’s waves curled on the sand. Lightning split and danced in the distant sky, a storm so far away it looked as if the clouds and water were one. With Beast-sight I studied the building cloud. Not magic lightning. Just one of the ubiquitous storms on gulf water. Thunder rolled in with the waves, long and low. The tide was high, making the beach a narrow strip. The wind was cold, and I shivered as it needled its way through my clothes.

  Eli bent to his second. That second couldn’t be me, so Tex had accepted that position, and they spoke in voices I might have heard had I tried. Brute trotted across the sand to me and stuck his nose into my crotch.

  I batted him away. “Stop that.”

  He chuffed with laughter and sat close beside me. A moment later he leaned his entire body against me, from calf to hip, in what was clearly an attempt to comfort me. I could feel his panting breaths and his body heat through the leather uniform and I realized how cold I was. Probably shocky. Because I couldn’t help my people. And Eli was facing a warrior who had been fighting and shooting for centuries.

  I scratched Brute’s head between his ears. “Dang werewolf.”

  He chuffed in agreement.

  Lucrezia was a pretty woman with golden hair and blue-green eyes. She looked way younger than her stated age when turned, and I figured she had been changed a decade or so prior to her reported death and her human self had been replaced with another woman. It was likely that replacement human was the woman recorded by history as having gained a huge amount of weight while supposedly grieving a dead husband, and died young.

  Brute’s head on my leg, I stood to the side and watched the combatants, standing back-to-back. Snatches of instructions came to me on the wind. Eli and Lucrezia shook hands. Tex shook Lucrezia’s second’s hand, a human who had been fed on and had been sipping vamp blood for over two hundred years. She was currently known as Whimsical Lou. Stupid name, but that was what the second called herself. Whimsical Lou, No Last Name. The seconds walked out to the positions where their firsts would likely stand, and waited. Eli and Lucrezia stood back-to-back.

  The moonlight was a long streak across the choppy water, ahead of the storm. I heard a distant bell-tone and Eli and Lucrezia strode away from one another, Shiloh counting off the paces. On his last pace, Eli stepped quickly to the side. They turned and fired, but Eli was a foot to the side of where he should have been. Lucrezia’s shot missed. Eli’s hit her chest, just left of midcenter. She screamed in that sound of a vamp dying, though it was all drama queen.

  They had used standard ammo so the shot would fly true over the distance. She’d live.

  I laughed in relief, the sound billowing on the wind and out to sea. The smell of Lucrezia’s blood sharp on the air.

  Eli had survived and won his bout. Except that this was supposed to be to the death. He strode toward the downed vamp.

  And then time broke in slow motion.

  Time in battle is subjective, thick and viscous like taffy. An avalanche of images.

  Brute snarled.

  Beast leaped into the forefront of my brain, screaming challenge.

  In agonizing, protracted fragments of time, Lucrezia’s second, Whimsical Lou, took two long steps into the dueling space, drew a long-barreled handgun. Aimed. Fired.

  The round hit Eli. Midcenter. I could see it as it pierced his leather jacket.

  Beast screamed. I/we leaped, raced down the sand. Grew claws with my right hand. Drew a blade with my left. The blade took the Whimsical second through the right eye. The claws tore out her throat. All while in midair. She fell. Rolled into the low waves, dark in the moonlight. A shot rang in the night, taking Lou in the chest. Tex, holding his six-shooter, fired again. Lucrezia fell. Tex stood over her. Firing until the chamber was empty. Time snapped back.

  I rose from the landing crouch and sprinted to Eli, my combat boots crunching, throwing sand. Eli wasn’t moving, lying on the shore, facedown, head to the side. One arm twisted, outstretched in the slight surf, clear salty bubbles pooling in his palm. My body was so cold it felt like a shard of iceberg. Tears filled my lids and clung there as if holding on to the rims of frozen cliff faces.

  I heard Shiloh ask calmly, “Have the deceased signed papers to be turned?”

  Bruiser’s voice, sounding cool and distant, said, “Lucrezia is true-dead, as is Whimsical Lou. The judges await status of Eli Younger.”

  I knelt, rolled Eli over, placed a hand on his chest, and . . . felt a heartbeat. Didn’t smell blood. I leaned in and sniffed, a long cat-scree of sound, pulling in air over my tongue. No blood. I pressed down on his chest, feeling the kind of armor Uncle Sam’s men wore to war, not just armor against blades, but against bullets. My tears spilled onto his face. I put my mouth at his ear and hissed, “If you’re not dead, I may kill you for scaring me to death.”

  “Sorry, Babe.” The words were a breath against my cheek, his lips scarcely moving. “Just remembering how to breathe.”

  I thought I might pass out from the relief that rammed through me. I shouted to the wind, “He’s alive. Eli will not be turned.”

  “Never wanted to drink blood,” he gasped.

  “Are you hit?” I whispered back, asking if the round penetrated the armor.

  “Not,” he whispered, the sound creaking with tight breath. I dropped my head to his, forehead to forehead. “But I’m going to kill Lucrezia Borgia.”

  “My mistress. Lucrezia Borgia is true-dead,” Tex said. “I took her conniving, snake-belly-low life and her head.”

  “Good. I think she broke my rib,” Eli said. “Sucker hurts.”

  I rolled Eli up into my arms. He grunted with pain, tightening up to protect the hurt rib. “Babe,” he wheezed. “Next time? We’ve got a backboard.”

  “Oh. Right. Sorry.” I tucked his head against my shoulder and carried him up the stairs and into the house as if he was the most valuable thing in the universe.

  “Results of this duel are acceptable to the Onorios.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Rainbow-Colored Baby Bunnies and Lollipops

  The body of Lucrezia Borgia disappeared, probably back to the EVs’ ship in deeper water. I spared a single thought that the Carusos might be aboard, forced into making the dead into revenants. But I just, flat-out, didn’t care.

  Instead, after I deposited Eli in the vamps’ sleeping lair for a hit of Tex’s healing vamp blood, Sabina called me to the third floor. She stood in the center of the middle fighting octagonal and said, “The challenges to Jane Yellowrock have been met, all but one. This latest is for dominance over Clan Yellowrock, and that by Dominique Quessaire, formerly of Clan Arceneau, now secundo heir of Clan Des Citrons.”

  Beast growled.

  I snarled. Dominance duel. Holy crap. Time again did that battlefield slowdown, where everything happened in overlays of understanding and images. Dominique moved up the stairs and through the scions and blood-servants like a snake through tall grass. I put my hands in my pockets, slouched as if irked by inconsequentials, and looked the challenger over
with jaded eyes.

  Dominique stank of lemons and fresh human blood. She was dressed in fighting leathers dyed the color of her blond hair, which she wore long and down. On her neck was a necklace of small gray moonstones the same shade as her pale eyes. On the necklace was a pendant, a ruby wired with gold.

  I pulled on Beast’s sight and saw the tracery of old, faint magics in the moonstones, empty of power now, but once likely used by a moon witch. The ruby, however, was something more powerful. Intense red motes flashed through it, motes that seemed to call to my own magics. I felt a pull in my midsection, as if I’d swallowed a bag of iron filings, as if a magnet drew on them. Pain slithered through my belly. I almost stepped back. I’d seen a ruby like that before. In fact, I had a ruby like it in my box of magical trinkets.

  And if there were two of them, what did they do?

  What could they do together? Ahhh. Dominique might know or guess that I had the other ruby.

  I had been challenged by Dominique Quessaire. Dominique was a traitor. She had waited to try for my head until after I had something she wanted—my clan and my people. My ruby? Had she been looking for it in Leo’s office when she beat holes in the wall? And Adrianna—her lover whom I had finally killed true-dead—had been after le breloque, the crown of the Dark Queen, when I took her head. Dominique wanted the most important objets de magie. Dominique had visions of grandeur.

  She had seen me fight, knew what I could do. She was good with two swords, even better with one. Better than me by far with any weapon.

  My mind circled back to Adan. Adan had been playing with time. The last moments of the battle that had freed Adan flashed through my memory. There was something there, something important about using magic. Time slapped back to full speed.

  “As the last member of the inner circle of Clan Yellowrock able to wield a weapon, I accept for my master,” Koun said. He was standing behind me and I had no idea when he had appeared there. “Weapons,” he said, “one sword, one battle-ax, no armor.”