Dark Queen

by Faith Hunter

  But Titus stepped to the side. Faster than vamps can move. He was simply . . . not there.

  I felt the magic within me shiver and sing. The magic that formed a five-pointed star, a near perfect harmony of time and place and purpose. It pulled and twisted. Time thickened, a turgid, icy weight in the air. The Gray Between opened, a slice in reality, dove gray energies with black motes of darkest power.

  I stepped outside of time. The noise of the surf and storm deepened, basso thrum.

  Titus was on the outside of the sword strike. His longsword back. Titus had . . . timewalked.

  So had I, though not by choice. He had pulled me out of normal time with him, but he hadn’t noticed me. His attention was intent on Leo. Raindrops glistened, hanging in the air. A thousand possibilities, caught in the storm. Beast growled. Reached out a paw.

  Time snapped back. Normal. Crashing loud.

  Titus lunged forward. Straight and true. The blade taking Leo high on his chest.

  Lightning touched down. Blinding, dazzling. Only feet away. Magic captured in the Glob reached for the energy in the brilliant bolt. Sucked it inside, to fuel its own might. Power exploded in the air. Sizzled through the sand. The Glob broiled, roasting my palm, and Glob magic flashed out and absorbed it, faster than the lightning could die away. Rain blasted down, drenching, scarring the sand.

  I was soaked through with the possibilities of the future. Half-blinded.

  But I could see enough.

  Leo staggered back, into the surf. Off balance, about to drop to one knee.

  Titus’s sword swung forward, the weight and torque of his entire body behind it.

  The blade cut into Leo’s neck. Blood spraying into the rain.

  Leo’s head flew into the air.

  His body fell.

  Rain shattered onto the earth.

  Leo died.

  Leo . . . died.

  Rain sliced me. Slashed my face. Sluiced down my leather jacket. The future and the past in every drop, icy from the fall through the heavens. I screamed.

  CHAPTER 20

  Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda

  Suddenly I was in my room, digging around in the box of trinkets. Pulling out the bone fragment I needed. I didn’t remember getting here. Timewalking. Didn’t care.

  Beast? Fighting form.

  Beast is ambush hunter, she thought at me. Using my hands, she grabbed a second box from under the bed, a box of bones and teeth. Shoved my hand inside. The Gray Between ripped across me, tore its way along my spine.

  My bones snapped and popped. My belly wrenched and flipped as nausea bent me double before it vanished. Pain shot through me, twisting the length of my skeleton, stretching my muscles, broadening shoulder joints, re-forming hips and pelvis, twanging in my jaw as my teeth grew. I tasted blood as the tissue and bone in my mouth and jaw tried to accommodate the transformation and the new fangs.

  And . . . I took on mass.

  The rubies on my necklace shattered. Bloodred crystals melted and disappeared. I threw back my head and screamed Beast’s challenge, the sound roaring through the house and out the windows to the assembled vamps on the beach. In ten seconds I drew back my shoulders. I was half-form, my pawed feet stretching out the sides of the specially made combat boots, my jaw full of teeth designed to tear meat. My eyes glowed golden. But I was more. I was bigger. I was—

  Beast is sabertooth lion. Beast is big.

  The rubies. You—

  Beast took mass from rubies. Took snake in heart of all creatures from bones. Took Glob magic. Gave magic to Jane. Beast is best ambush hunter.

  I/we slid le breloque onto one arm. Took the Glob into my fist. Pulled the Mughal blade. I stepped back into normal time. My belly crunched, my head ached, but I shoved the pain away.

  I leaped through the window and landed on the porch roof. Roaring my challenge. My body lit by lightning that flashed from the ordinary, natural lightning storm. The vamps on the beach turned to me, looking up, as rain and lightning slashed down. The vamps rushing from the surf stopped, waiting. I shoved the crown they all wanted onto my head. My voice a deeper octave, I screamed, to be heard over the storm, my voice a roar not heard on the Earth in millennia. My voice a basso reverberation, I shouted, “The Dark Queen challenges Titus Flavius Vespasianus for control of the Americas and of Europe. The Dark Queen demands La Danza de los Maestros de Sangre!”

  Titus’s eyes went wide and he stepped back into the surging waves. Lightning hit the water and the shore, a two-pronged strike. Titus vamped out, his jaw unhinging and sliding back into place. This was the first time I’d seen him in fanged form. Five-inch fangs, as long as the priestess’s fangs, thick at the base and serrated. Top and bottom. Titus had dog fangs. And three-inch talons.

  Beast fangs are bigger.

  “By what right do you challenge?” Brandon called out.

  “By the right of the Dark Queen and by the death of Leo Pellissier. A death not dealt by the sword used by Titus Flavius Vespasianus, but by witch magic. Vespasianus cheated with witch magic, outside of the protocol of Sangre Duello. Ask the witches.” I pointed with the Mughal blade to Molly and Lachish, who stood together beneath a hedge of thorns that glowed like the sunrise. “Ask the arcenciel who watches this Duello.” I pointed to the clouds. “Only within La Danza de los Maestros de Sangre may magic be used in battle. This challenge is legal and it is mine!”

  Titus must have known he was shit-out-of-luck, because he shouted back, “I accept!” He shook his long and short swords at the sky. “The weapons we carry! And the weapon of time! The blood of my enemy still on my blade.”

  “Here and now!” I shouted back, my voice low, a growl of fury. “And in time! Prepararse para la muerte.” I threw myself forward, leaped from the roof, and dropped toward the sand. Landed before him, my half-form knees bending, taking the fall. I slammed le breloque onto my head. It clamped down on me as if sealing itself to me.

  “Unto true-death!” Titus screamed.

  The death bell rang. Battlefield time-sense took over.

  Titus’s longsword descended. He threw a smaller blade at me. In Beast-sight, I saw it spinning, flipping. I stepped aside.

  Beast clawed again through the Gray Between. Time slowed. Slowed. The consistency of frozen taffy. Time stopped. Pain speared me through my right eye. Nausea rose in a vile rush that twisted my guts. The storm was heavy, rain suspended like crystal bullets striking down. It was hard to breathe. And dangerous to move. If I looked at the rain, I would see moments of time, might change moments of time. But if I didn’t look directly at the drops . . . I focused away from the rain. The time-droplets moved back, out of my way, leaving regular raindrops close to me.

  Carefully, making sure I didn’t move quickly enough to accidentally alter time in any of the time-drops, I ducked beneath the sword strike.

  Beast is best ambush hunter. Beast reached out for a droplet of rain. In it was the immediate past. The image of Titus’s sword striking Leo’s neck.

  I stopped her. Thinking. Trying to see what might happen if we took that small part of time. The droplet beyond it was an image of Titus’s people attacking the Onorios. The droplet beyond that was an image of his people attacking the witches, a sword thrust through Molly’s belly, killing her and her daughter. Lachish dead in the rain, magical implements on the sand. Ailis dead. Koun and Tex dead. The droplet beyond that showed a bomb landing on the beach, another on the beach house. Titus’s ship exploding. Everyone dead. And worse beyond that. A pathway running with blood.

  Every time-drop near the death of Leo showed only destruction and devastation. If I went back in time and saved Leo, far worse would happen. I studied the drops. Praying for that one, looking for that one, single drop that might show me another path. But . . . every drop, each and every one, displayed the beginnings of a war between the Europeans and the American vamps. Further
back were images of humans drained and dead in the streets. Humans hanging from streetlights in the French Quarter. Bombs dropping on New Orleans. Soldiers and tanks in the streets. Vamps at war with the United States.

  Eli and Alex dead on the floor of our home.

  Edmund lying back-to-back with Gee, both dead, beheaded.

  All because I saved Leo. The pain in my head grew worse. I fought to keep my gorge down, swallowing the sickness there.

  Heart aching, I said aloud, “We’ve messed up too much as it is. We can’t fix this by timewalking.”

  Beast is best ambush hunter. Beast can save Leo.

  No. We’ll screw up things. Mess up people’s lives. If we save Leo, that will change something that may have been supposed to happen. No.

  Beast/Jane screamed, the sound lost in the vibration of thunder. And then Titus moved. He stepped into the time bubble with me. His sword swinging down. I caught it on the curved Mughal blade and stepped close, ramming up. Hit him in the jaw with an uppercut. The Glob sliced his chin and busted his lips. It sucked his power away. A sudden scalding burst of might I felt in my paw/fist.

  Titus threw back his head and screamed. I tossed the Glob high, where it left the bubble of time, hanging in the air, and, Beast-fast, pulled a vamp-killer. Thrust with the vamp-killer, through his chin and up into his skull. Ripped out the knife, twisting. Titus shivered, shook, seizing as if the lightning had hit him. I slung back the arm and took Titus’s head.

  I pushed the headless body out of the bubble of time, leaving him half falling and headless.

  Speared his head from out of time on the Mughal blade. Pulled it to me. Sheathed the vamp-killer. With a claw, I lifted the thin chain that still rested on the emperor’s chest. Inside was a tiny quartz crystal with a miniature arcenciel inside. She was purple and gold and shimmering with fury. This explained why Soul had stuck around. One last arcenciel caught in crystal, a slave to a vamp who wanted to rule time. I tucked the crystal into my pocket. Reached for the Glob.

  Carrying the head and my weapons, I left Titus’s body standing headless in the stationary raindrops. And I padded on my massive paws away from the fight. Into the storm, under the low trees. I dropped the head and fell beside it. I cried until my guts hurt. Until my body felt broken and scoured and bleeding.

  Time still stopped, I pulled the crystal and said to the trapped dragon, “I can’t trust you not to bite me. So I’m going to make sure you’re freed when I’m not nearby.” I placed the crystal on a shell and left it there, in normal time. I picked up another shell and held it directly above the crystal. And dropped it. The shell fell from twisted time and hung suspended above the arcenciel. The moment it hit, the slave to time would be free. But Leo . . . Leo would still be dead.

  I moved away from her, carrying the weapons and the head of the emperor. A strange amalgamation of odors were caught on the heavy, salty wind—Leo’s paper-and-ink-scented blood, a strong fragrance of fresh-cut lemons, and surf-wet werewolves. I looked out into the gulf to see the forms, unmoving, caught in time as they rushed ashore through the dark. Clan Des Citrons. Wet rogue werewolves were behind them, and two grindylows were closing in from the water and the storm-drenched beach.

  I looked to the side. Eli was closing in. Firing. Caught in a sprint, angling into a safe line of fire. Derek raced beside him. Leo’s vampires rushed to attack, swords and bare-handed. Dacy Mooney, Del’s mother, was in the lead, her sword arching back to take a Des Citrons vamp’s head. The smell/sight/sound of Molly’s earth magic, red, blue, vibrant, tearing into the night. The sight of the Bighorn Pack, one dropping his camera, racing to the battle. Overhead, three arcenciels were in real time, dropping from the clouds, glistening in the night.

  And then there were Aya and Rick, rising from the water, Benelli shotguns at the shoulder. One had fired, the low, hollow thrum of shotguns, the shot hanging in the air. Slightly farther back, two Navy SEALs were rising out of the water, picking off the emperor’s vamps and humans. When time returned, the wolves would howl. The vampires would scream. The stench of silver fléchette rounds tearing through flesh, and the reek of poisoned blood, would taint the air.

  My not-so-secret last-ditch defense to protect our people and to keep the military from accidentally taking us all out. Because of my phone call, Gee had made sure that Ayatas FireWind and all the might he could call upon were a presence in the dark, in case Titus pulled a fast one and his people attacked. All of Leo’s merged paranormals were here, fighting together. Finally. But too late to save the Master of the City.

  I should be out there. I needed to be there. I tensed to move. Pain slashed through me. I fell to the sand, hands and knees catching me. Gasping. Pain like a thousand snakes in my gut, biting me all at once. I screamed. Boneless, I landed on the sand.

  Beast padded into the forefront of my brain. She pressed down on me, sending me to sleep.

  * * *

  • • •

  Beast looked inside at Jane’s snake. The snake that was at the heart of all beings was twisted, knotted, frayed. It had four strands, not the two strands it was supposed to have. It was broken, like the body of prey that raced away and fell off a ledge into a deep place.

  Beast looked into Jane’s belly. There were dark places there. Sickness. Growing fast. Jane was dying. But . . . Beast was best ambush hunter.

  Beast found own form and shed mass into sand on beach. Stepped into form of Puma concolor, mountain lion. Shifted. Beast’s snake in heart of all things was healthy. Was strong.

  Time returned, storm throwing cold rain and lightning to ground. Arcenciels dove to earth. Trapped arcenciel leaped for sky. Rain beat into pelt. Lightning flashed, hitting water. Hate storms. Hate rain.

  Struggled out of Jane clothes. Shook pelt. Did not help. Rain still fell, cold and wet. Beast looked out at storm. At dark forms fighting in curling water. Eli and Derek and Tequila boys, fighting. Rick and Ayatas firing on vampires arising from water. Other humans with them. Hunters Jane called military. Smelled lemons and silver and blood. Smelled human blood and vampire blood. Smelled much death. Bruiser stood on sand, watching fighting. Seeing Leo body. Tears leaked down his face.

  Bruiser shed tears for friend.

  Fighting slowed. Tequila boys carried bodies to shore. Vampire bodies smelling of Titus and of lemons. More fighting on ship out in curling water. Derek had sent Bruiser’s boat to attack emperor’s boat. Was good Enforcer. Derek did not need Jane now.

  Beast hungered. Considered head of dog-fanged king of vampires. Was like alpha lion of strongest pride of African lions. Was tasty? Beast pawpawpaw to head. Licked at neck. Was tasty. Strong blood. Beast extended claws. Pulled head to body. Lay belly to sand. Ate mouth and face of vampire. Ripped off jaw from alpha of vampire pride. Was strong blood. Strong flesh.

  Would stay Beast for one day or five. Would be good to hunt for fish in water and kill birds nesting onshore. Crunched into skull. King of vampire brain was tasty.

  Much later, after sun rose and its warmth stole territory from winter night, Beast looked up. Eli was watching. Leaning against tree, arms crossed to hide claws. Human sign of peace. Beast chuffed. Licked lips. Batted parts of skull to Eli. Crown of skull whirled in sand. Stopped. Beast panted. Waited.

  “Leo’s in a box of blood. His head is still attached, but not by much. Probably not enough to save him.”

  Beast growled. No. Leo head was gone. Flying. Eli is stupid kit. Leo is dead.

  Eli said, “And worse, an arcenciel appeared out of nowhere and bit him. Arcenciel bites are psychotropic and psychotoxic. It might be months before we know if he survives and if he’s sane.”

  Beast took a soft, slow breath, understanding. Arcenciel Jane set free hadn’t bitten us. Arcenciel changed time. Arcenciel bit Leo body.

  Eli kept talking. “The Vodka boys set up a distraction with George’s boat and a SEAL team boarded Titus’s sh
ip. Freed the captives—the Carusos, two witches who had been using a form of Cym’s obfuscation charm to hide the ship from the military, an Onorio who hung in chains. Turned all the others over to Edmund.”

  Beast licked own jaw and muzzle free of blood. Tasted good on tongue.

  “While Soul fought her own kind and then tried to save Leo, Derek and I took the fight to the water. Rick and Ayatas and a small group of SEALs caught Clan Des Citrons and the rest of Titus’s fangheads trying to get ashore. For once you didn’t just fly by the seat of your pants, Babe. You did good setting that up officially. Ayatas had the ear of the FBI, CIA. You figured he had the ear of the other government services and military too.”

  A tone of satisfaction entered his voice. “The fangheads didn’t make it ashore.”

  Beast chuffed. Jane is sneaky. Made sound of kit call, high-pitched and sweet.

  Eli kept talking. “Edmund already took over the reins of the U.S. territory. Leo did well to make Ed his heir. He’s making peace with everyone, whether they want it or not.” Eli smiled slightly. “He’s good at this. He’s spoken to the press, to the governor, and to members of Congress on the phone. He’s making plans to go to Europe and take over there, in your name, and he’s taking Grégoire with him to take over those holdings at the same time. He appointed Alesha Fonteneau to run NOLA until he gets back. Once things are settled, he wants you to go to the European court and take over as the Dark Queen.”

  Beast shook head in human way, side to side, trying to think like Jane. Leo head is not gone? Saw Leo head fly into air. Thought about arcenciel in crystal. About Soul hiding on island. Timewalkers. Better timewalkers than Jane.

  Eli smiled tiny smile. “Molly’s okay. So is her baby. You staying here for a while?”