by Faith Hunter
“Kem says what?” she whispered.
“Kem shasss shometing isss w’ong wi’ me.”
“And he let you go free? Into the night?”
Her question was weird. He knew that from the part of his brain that was still human. “Not Kem. Jzeee.”
“Gee? Girrard DiMercy?” Jane’s words came softly, gentle on the night air.
He rubbed his head against her palm, feeling her fingers thread into his hair. Massaging. Some of the pain in his scalp eased, and he heard his own sigh of pleasure. He wanted her to touch him everywhere like that, to relieve his need, release his pain, set him free from this agony. He raised his hands and curled them around hers, his fingers trailing up her wrists as far as her leathers allowed. Her skin was like silk, if silk could be electrified, if silk moved over muscle like rich oil over the bayou water, but sweet as honey.
“Leo’s Mercy Blade?” she asked again. “He let you go?”
“Yesh.”
“And Leo? Did he—”
Rick laughed, remembering only then the flashing image, the single snapshot vision of Leo Pellissier, Blood-Master of the City, his mouth open in shock. The sound of his voice roaring. The barbed, spiked texture of his power as he drew something electri Sthiectrifiec and molten-smelling out of the air. And the stink of vamp blood, like pepper and green leaves. “I hit him. I sthink I . . . hurt him.”
“Oh, Ricky Bo.” Her sigh was like the first breath of spring on the air. “I’m so sorry.”
The punch was faster, harder, deeper than he expected. Air exploded out of him like a balloon run over by an earthmover. She’d hit him before but never like this. Who knew Jane Yellowrock had been holding back all this time?
He woke in a cage. Raving and furious. He threw himself at the bars even though he knew—with that tiny human part of him—that he was hurting only himself and that there was no way out.
Someone turned a hose on him, hitting him with icy spray, the water like needles. He rammed the bars again, and the cage shook with the strike. And again and again. With each blow his body came away more bruised. He heard/felt/smelled the bone in his right arm break, and the added pain sent him to the corner of his cage to whimper and lick his wounds.
He smelled vamp and age and bricks weeping with the Mississippi. Mold and sickness and blood rode the other scents like the top note of a really expensive but foul perfume. It was the smell of blood that brought him back. Beef blood. Steak so rare it would grunt if you kicked it was piled on a plate, steaming hot, thin blood pooling on white china.
He caught himself. Found himself. Remembered who he was and what he was. And he saw the red fletching on the dart sticking out of his butt. They had drugged him, tranked him. With an old-fashioned tranquilizer dart. Like a wild animal.
Forcing his fingers to bend in ways that paws would not have, he reached back and gripped the dart. Slid it from his flesh. Tossed it out of the cage. The drug was running through his veins like good bourbon, pushing back the pain, pushing back reality. He blinked, shook the wet hair out of his eyes, and focused on the room.
He was underground with no way out. The windows were small, arched on the top, set high and barred; the door was barred; the cage they had put him in was eight feet by eight feet, with bars for walls and a barred ceiling. And all those steel bars were set into stone. The stone smelled of old water and mold and had been in place for centuries. At the far end of the room, watching him, was Jane.
She was sitting on a tall, backless stool, her leather-clad legs loose and relaxed, one booted foot on a rung, the other on the floor. Her arms were back, elbows resting on a tall table pushed against the wall behind her, and her leather jacket hung open, revealing a thin knit, skintight Lycra tee, the lines of the black bra under it barely visible. She smelled like sex and craving, and his body responded, growing hard and ready.
She tilted her head, her long, straight black hair falling in a slide that shushed as it slithered to the side as if alive. “Do you know where you are?” she asked, sounding lazy.
He thought about that for a moment. Or an hour. Time was doing crazy shit, and he wasn’t sure. He finally forced the words out. “Warehouse? In the Warehoush Dishtrick? The Sish had put Nunnery?”
She nodded once, a single dip and lift of her chin. “In a temporary holding cell for young rogues. They’ll let me keep you here for the three nights of the full moon. I couldn’t take the chance that you might lose control and infect someone. I’m sorry.”
He touched his jaw. “You hit like a guy.”
She chuckled. “Thanks.”
The three nights of the full moon. Yeah, right. He was less than a third of the way through this torture. But with the drugs circulating through him, holding the pain at bay, he at least remembered that he had once been human. He worked his jaw, and it felt normal. This time when he spoke, the words came out properly. “They let you keep me here?”
“Leo.”
“Mmm.” He thought about that for a while as water dripped and ran across the stone. He’d hurt Leo. Raising his hand, he curled his fingers into a fist. Already he was healing, his bruises fading. And the arm bone he had broken on the cell attack was little more than a bump that ached when he touched it. His skin felt hot, and the water was drying on his body more quickly than normal. Part of the benefits of the furry life: quick healing and a higher-than-human body temp. If not for the moon-change pain that fought the drugs in his system, he might have laughed. “What’d you have to promise Leo to get him to let you use this cage?”
“Nothing. Oddly. He called me on my cell just after I took you down, and offered. He’s upstairs, and he’s not his usual unruffled public self. His shirt is bloody.” Her lips tilted up on one side. “Your work?”
“Probably.”
“You took down a vamp,” she deadpanned.
“I got the drop on him. Even vamps can be sucker punched.” He shrugged. “And you took me down.” He was suddenly conscious of being naked and aroused, sitting on a cool stone floor. And he was thirsty and more hungry than he’d ever been. He nodded to the food. “That mine?”
Jane uncoiled from her perch and sauntered to the plate. With the toe of her boot, she pushed it through a small space between the lower bar and the floor. She hooked a finger around a tall, narrow thermos with a built-in straw, like a kid’s sippy cup, and passed it through too.
“No utensils?”
“Not until after the moon.” She walked back to her perch and sat, her back to him this time, giving him privacy. He dug in to the beef, stuffing it into his mouth, and the taste exploded through him like a bomb going off. When he had licked the plate clean, he drank the water. Tap water—chlorine and dankness and something slightly salty. He licked the half-cooked, watery blood from his fingers.
Jane seemed to know he was done and swiveled around on the stool seat, the leathers squeaking slightly. He pushed the plate and cup back through the bars, waiting, reading Stin"Time her body language better than he ever had before, and he knew that she had a lot to tell him. But first she took a satchel and threw it at the bars. It hit with a quiet thud and slid to the floor. “Clothes,” she said. “Get dressed. You’ll have visitors at eleven thirty.”
He pulled the satchel through the bars and zipped it open. Inside were jeans, a T-shirt, and a package of new boxers, his size. They were made of some filmy material that seemed kind of girly, but he didn’t complain. The T-shirt hid his scars and the mangled tattoos that were all he had left of the art on his shoulder and arm. As he pulled the shirt on, he caught a flash of gold from the eyes of the mountain lion tattooed there, but when he pulled up the sleeve to inspect it, the glow was gone.
“Visitors?” he asked as he stepped into the jeans.
“Local witches. Leo called them, and they said they might have a way to spell you through the shift, force you into your cat.”
He stilled. Fear crawled up his spine like a snake up a tree. He’d been in the power of witches before. It hadn’
t been pretty or easy. He zipped up the jeans, feeling her interest, her gaze on him. Without looking at her, he asked, “You’ll be here?”
“If you want me to.”
“Yeah. I do. And if they try something hinky, you stop whatever it is they’re doing.”
“I’m supposed to know what’s hinky with witches?”
He looked at her from under the too-long black hair that curled into his eyes. “I trust you to make an educated guess.” She nodded again, that little chin-drop thing. He used to love that. Still did. But the wary look in her eyes held him off from saying anything about them, about their relationship or current lack of one. They had unresolved business, but it had to take a backseat. He understood that. Jane was always all about business and let nothing stand in the way of that, except sometimes dancing. He had a memory of her dancing once as he played the sax, her body writhing like a cobra on ecstasy, like sex on a stick, hot and sweaty. He went hard again just thinking about it. Jane laughed low, and he could smell his own arousal.
The heavy wooden door opened, and Leonard Pellissier, the Master of the City, walked in, followed by three others, but Rick kept his gaze on the MOC. The stink of vamp, peppery and minty, and blood, thick and slightly chilled, filled the room. Rick’s arousal faded quickly, and he stepped back against the far bars, feeling the damp of the iron through his tee.
Leo wasn’t vamped out like the last time Rick had seen him, but Leo was still wearing the bloody shirt, which said something about his state of mind. Rick crossed his arms and tucked his hands under his armpits, knowing that made him look defensive, but looking defensive was marginally better than looking aggressive. He got in the first salvo. “I apologize to the Master of the City of New Orleans for hitting you. Him.” Rick wasn’t good at the royal third-person speech, and thees and thous had always just confused him. Of course Jane talked to Leo like she would to any other person, but he had a feeling that Leo allowed a lot of smack talk from Jane that h Sm Jgaine wouldn’t from anyone else.
Leo, his chest not moving with breath, his eyes so black it was hard to read anything in them, studied Rick. Leo was dead. Or undead. Yeah. Standing there like a dead man, no sense of life left in him at all. Nothing in the room moved. No one coughed or sighed or shifted on the stone floor. It was so silent that Rick could hear his heart beat and the sound of air breathing in and out of his lungs. A good two minutes too long later, Leo took a breath, and the movement startled Rick. He blinked, and that quickly, Leo was smiling.
“You have my blood. I have fed you more than once at the brink of death.”
Rick nodded once, unconsciously mimicking Jane’s little chin-drop nod. “The first time, I was on a slab of black stone, being spelled by a witch and drained by a vampire.” He saw Jane start. He had never told her the story. He needed to remedy that. He had a lot of things to tell her, if she chose to listen. Later. Much later.
“I feel the pain that crawls under your skin like acid, burning like flames, like silver through your blood. One of my blood-servants prepared the medicine”—Leo flicked a finger at the trank dart—“but he did not know what dosage would be required. It helped?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“I tried to bring our priestess to assist you, but she refused, saying she might be injured. I cannot force her, and my own blood was not enough to prevent your contagion, nor were the services of my Mercy Blade. Neither of us can cure you now when the taint has taken firm root.”
Rick looked away, discomfort squirming though him. He remembered—in bits and snatches—the first days after Jane brought him, more dead than alive, to the MOC’s Clan Home. Gee DiMercy and Leo had carried Rick to a bed and climbed in with him, healing him as best they could. It had been way more intimate than he was comfortable with, but they had kept him alive, so he couldn’t bitch about their methods.
When it was obvious that Rick wasn’t going to respond, Leo said, “The local witches wish to assist you. If you will permit.” Rick looked back at him quickly. “The female who spelled you originally is no longer with the coven. You will be safe.”
“Can you keep me drugged through it?”
“Of course.” Leo moved closer, inhaling. “I smell your pain. It grows. I shall send in the witches.” He turned to the man beside him. “Keep him comfortable.” Moving human slow, he walked from the room.
“Yes, boss,” George Dumas said, the words sounding odd when flavored with his faint British accent.
Rick dropped his arms and nodded to the blood-servant. The man was holding an oversized handgun, a tranquilizer gun. Rick had never liked the MOC’s primo blood-servant and especially didn’t like knowing that the overage half-human blood-sipper had shot him in the butt, but there were better times than now to complain about it. That gun was loaded with his sanity for the next three days. “Dumas.”
“You’ll be in charge of the dosing. Ask, and I’ll shoot. I understand the pain will likely be more intense whenever the moon is up and easier to bear when the moon is below the horizon. Of course, if they get you to shift, you’ll be fine.”
Rick’s mouth twisted up. “Furry.”
“That too.” There was compassion in the blood-servant’s eyes.
Hell. George Dumas was probably more human than Rick was now. He sighed. “Okay.”
Moments later, five witches entered the room. A tiny blonde approached the bars, getting closer than anyone had since he’d woken up in the cell. “We’ve met. You might remember me? Butterfly Lily?” She pointed at an older woman. “And my mom, Feather Storm?”
“I remember.” He also remembered that they had claimed to be “not real powerful. Mostly we’re used as routing for group workings.” He’d rather have the most powerful witch in the city here, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. “Thank you for coming.”
She introduced the others as Rowan Rose, Running Doe Poppy, and Orchid Sunrise. Rick nodded, not smiling at the silly monikers. If they could help, they could call themselves Catwoman, Batwoman, and Hercules-etta for all he cared. Rowan Rose looked around the room, checked her watch, and shook her head. “We have eighteen minutes to get the circle drawn and the ritual started. This is not going to be fun, girls.”
It wasn’t. And that was an understatement.
By one a.m., Jane had left the room. By two a.m., Rick was on the floor of his cell, writhing in his own vomit, gagging like the worst case of dry heaves any drunk ever had, shrieking, panting, screaming like a banshee, and begging for the next dose of medication. He got it. And he didn’t wake until the moon fell below the horizon near dawn.
The sound of mocking laughter woke him. His eyes fluttered open, and he blinked, trying to focus on the floor of his cell, his left cheek on the cool, wet stone. His eyes were working but independently; his brain wasn’t able to make the dual images into one. Water ran along the floor and trickled into a drain, running off him in fresh rivulets. He remembered where he was. And what he wasn’t. And his stomach did somersaults until he gagged. His abdominal muscles cramped hard with the retching, and he wondered how bad his sickness had been to make him hurt this badly afterward despite the healing properties of were-taint in his system. He had a bad feeling that this “hell on waking” sensation was going to become overly familiar for the rest of his life.
He had been hosed off again and was wet to the skin in the clothes Jane had brought him, but at least he wasn’t lying in his own filth anymore. His stomach churned, but he shoved an arm under himself and rested on his elbow as the world whirled around him.
Kemnebi was standing outside the bars, his hands on his hips, a feral smile on his face. He was wearing loose white cotton pants and a button-down shirt, the set woven of cotton and many times washed into a softness that Rick could see. The Africa Se. feeling tn smelled of black leopard and jungle nights and freshly killed prey. And cruelty. And anger.
“You survived your first night,” he said. “Good. Now I can watch you suffer again. And again. And eventually you will die in agon
y on the floor of that cell or by my fangs, my claws and killing teeth buried in your throa—”
The blur was faster than Rick could see. Faster than Kemnebi could react. It was less than sight, almost a sound, as of air being displaced. A snarl that echoed off the stone. Followed by the twin thuds of two bodies hitting the wall. The growls, hisses, and snarls of combat. A flash of a silvered blade. A shadow of black and yellow and scarlet. The smell of blood. Movement Rick couldn’t follow except as smears on his retinas.
He knew by the smell that it was Jane fighting. Defending him. But his eyes wouldn’t focus. He struggled to his feet. Fell toward the bars, hitting face-first, breaking his fall with his cheek. Pain shattered through him like lightning through a lightning rod, bright as the beginning of the universe, tinted with stars and blood. “Fuck,” he said of the pain, of the fight, of his helplessness. “Fuckfuckfuck. Jane? Jane!” he screamed.
An instant later George Dumas was in the room, moving almost as quickly the other two, pulling Jane off the black were-leopard. But she didn’t let go, and lifted Kemnebi with her, holding him off the stone. She held a knife at Kemnebi’s throat.
Red blood ran into the man’s white shirt, staining it scarlet. Rick growled, more vibration than actual sound. The blood smelled so . . . good. Kemnebi slanted a gaze at the cage, his eyes going wide. His irises were green gold. And they were afraid. Rick hissed. He hadn’t seen Kemnebi since the first night of the full-moon cycle, and the man had changed. Or Rick had. He just hoped he’d remember that when the drugs wore off. “Being stoned can be a bitch sometimes.” Only when the others all looked his way did he realize he had spoken aloud.
Jane pressed the blade into Kemnebi’s neck and snarled, the sound so unlike her that Rick jerked in surprise, his skin moving over his muscles as if he had a pelt. Her growl echoed off the walls, and she said, “Bruiser, I swear by all that is holy in the highest realms of heaven, if you don’t let me go, I’ll kill him while you hold him. And I’ll smear his blood onto your clothes so the other weres will think that you, and by extension Leo, are responsible for his death.”
