Shadow Rites

  I gagged again, and the tearing sensation in my belly doubled me over on the porch floor.

  Leo smells wrong. Smells like meat, two days dead, Beast thought. Or like Son of Darkness with silver inside.

  Which would be about right. To prepare for tonight, Leo had gotten blood-full, probably blood-drunk at one point. And he had surely squeezed out a few drops of the good stuff belonging to the oldest of all vamps to sip on. And now Leo was full of silver, just like the SoD.

  I pulled the stake out of Leo’s belly and set it on the porch floor, careful to not let it tink or thump down, in a darker shadow. Just as carefully I extruded my bloody claws and cut the Morse code for SOS into the porch floor. Three dots, three dashes, three dots.

  As I carved, Tau inspected the structure of the magical working ward, fingers running over the energies frozen in no time. In the Gray Between, the striations and overlapping flaps of the ward looked like geometric forms—triangles and polygons made of light. Tau pressed her fingers into a faint, narrow crack between two angles and ripped a small hole. She placed one hand over the hole. Black electricity blossomed out of her palm. The rent in the red ward stretched and pulled.

  I twisted my body and scratched the SOS again, just in case Eli didn’t get it the first time. I wiped my bloody fingers over the porch, hoping that someone was around to smell what had happened and track us. Or they might at least see the blood and the SOS and figure out it was something bad. I went back to kneading my belly, feeling the torn muscle like mush beneath my fingers. It was bad. Real bad. But . . . I felt Leo’s weight shift, just a millimeter or so. His fingers tapped on my back. Tap, tap, tap. Scratch, scratch, scratch. Tap, tap, tap. SOS. Leo had seen me leave the note and was letting me know he was less incapacitated than the witches and I had thought. But how to use that?

  With her other hand, Tau widened the hole, her palm sliding over the ward in a large oval, and pressed outward. A segment separated and fell into the yard like an egg-shaped door.

  Leo was tugging on the bolo spell. How could he even do that? Then, Ooooh yeah. It was likely made with blood magic. Tau’s blood. Which was Ming’s blood. Ming had sworn to Leo. Ming’s blood was Leo’s blood. Ming’s magic was Leo’s magic. That would have been a great thing to understand before this. But . . . I was betting that neither one of us had had the time to figure that out or decide how to use it. The bolo loosened and slid on my body. I hissed with electric shock.

  Marlene yanked on my broken fingers, the pain pulling me to my feet, and Leo with me, through the opening and into the night. The bright lights, flashing red and blue, streetlights, vehicle headlights, neon in windows, all seemed to smear across my retinas like lights in slo-mo camera footage, long swirling swaths of brightness on the dark of a New Orleans night.

  There were police officers everywhere and Leo’s security people, including Derek, who should have been elsewhere, not that I blamed him for deserting one post for where the action was. We passed close to him, and I used my drunken staggering to get close. I flicked my good fingers at Derek’s face, seeing the blood fly from my fingertips and stop, hanging on the air. In real time, Derek would get hit and know that something was wrong.

  Still in the Gray Between, we walked down the street, me weaving, the strength leaving my body along with a blood trail to follow. Leo’s hands bumped against my butt with each step, over and over, and I knew that he was enjoying the ride. I lurched off the sidewalk onto the street and landed hard on my heel, my shoulder ramming up at him. He almost gasped when my shoulder thrust into his solar plexus. But my gut tore just a bit more.

  Jane, must shift back, Beast thought.

  “I have to stop,” I said aloud.

  “No,” Marlene said, jiggling my dislocated fingers.

  My throat made a strangled noise of pain. “Then I’ll die, right here.” I let myself fall to my knees again. They were taking a beating tonight. “I have to stop . . .” I paused, thinking through what I was going to say, knowing it had to be something that didn’t let them start to figure out how to bubble time. No way could I let these two figure out how to do that. So I lied about one thing on my person that I could do without, lied to gain us some time. Lied to keep my secret. Lied to give Leo access to the one thing I could offer. The one thing I had refused to offer, ever. Until now. “I have to stop using the gorget. It only gets an hour of time per person. It needs . . . um . . . sunlight to replenish it.”

  “What dis gorget is?”

  “On my neck. The gold-and-citrine necklace. It’s what lets me change time. It has to spend time in sunlight to stay . . . charged.” Charged? I was so lame.

  Marlene yanked the gold gorget, forcing me forward and down to my knees again with the violence of the ripping. The clasp broke and scored the nape of my neck. Blood welled to the surface of my skin. An offering, if Leo could figure that out. I felt Leo slowly lift a hand and wipe my blood. I knew he was licking his fingers. And for once I wasn’t irritated that he took my blood. I didn’t have much strength left and I needed him to be fast and strong. A master vamp who got the drop on a witch could bend her mind so fast she’d never see it coming. Leo took some more blood and I turned our bodies away from the witches so they wouldn’t see.

  Deep inside, Beast growled, a low vibration of warning. I felt Leo’s mind near mine, a shadow in my soul home. My first thought was that he was trying to bind me again. My second thought was a realization that he was stealing power from my soul home. He had been there once, not that long ago, chained to me. And maybe that allowed him access to the spiritual power stored there. Or maybe the mere fact that I offered him my blood gave him access, the same way blood magic worked when the sacrifice was willing. The cavern space went dim and the flames in the fire pit lowered, growing cold.

  I could feel Leo growing stronger. He tasted my blood again. I thought about telling him to stop, but . . . the bolo spell was trying to kill me. His fingers tangled in the bolo spell and loosed it from my torso. I managed a single full, deep breath. Relief flooded through me.

  Leo took a drop of my blood. Funny how anything that saved my butt was okay, even things that had only recently repulsed me. Leo with some of my blood. A vamp knocking out some witches.

  “Dis t’ing got no magic in it,” Marlene said. “But I sell it and make us some money.”

  “I have to stop,” I whispered, the warning to Leo. And the Gray Between slid to the side and disappeared.

  Leo struck.

  I felt him push off me, vamp-fast. Before I could even blink, he had both witches, their throats in his fists, his fangs in Tau’s. Neither one moved. Neither one protested. I fell over onto the sidewalk, landing with a slight bounce. Tau smiled and sighed, sexual arousal in the tone, and leaking from her pores. She wrapped her arms around Leo’s shoulders. Onorios cannot be bound, but blood-drunk, clearly, was another matter.

  Marlene simply stood there, gazing off into the night. This was why the witches had not taken over the world and killed off the vamps. The vamps might have little recourse against their magic, but the witches had absolutely no defense against the mind-blowing compulsion of a master vamp. In a way, they were evenly matched in this war that been going on for millennia. If Leo got the accords signed after this massive snafu, he’d have a huge edge over the EVs.

  “Drop the rope working you have upon her, ma chérie. The woman is no danger to us.”

  The bolo fell away with a soft sizzle of sound. I closed my eyes, not wanting to watch Leo bind Marlene against her will. Making Tau love him and desire him. Forever. It was illegal. It was immoral. It stole their free will. But I just couldn’t care about two people who wanted me dead.

  Through the ground I felt the vibrations of people running toward us. Eli and Bruiser and the two Onorios reached us first. Bruiser slid his arms under me and lifted me. “Get her home. To the rock garden,” he said. He kissed my forehead, his lips burning ho
t. And he passed me to Eli. My head lolled on my partner’s shoulder, the stink of fear and relief so strong in his pores it was rank.

  An SUV pulled up, a short distance away, the headlights visible through small buildings. We were no longer on St. Charles Avenue, but just off Loyola Avenue, in an area of town where cemeteries were on either side of the street. We were actually inside one cemetery, however, and I caught a glimpse of the mausoleum belonging to H. Meyer. The crypt was constructed of brick covered with cement, shaped to look like stone. There were once-white marble architectural elements and a pediment on top. If the concrete parts of the burial place had ever been painted or whitewashed, the pigments were long gone. Low beds of white clover grew everywhere between the resting places of the long dead, and taller weeds pushed through the broken concrete walks. Bracken and more weeds grew from the walls and roofs of even older crypts. Neglect and decay and useless decadence. There was no one to keep the place of the dead nice, not anymore. It was falling to ruin.

  Eli carried me past the Haynes’ resting place, the O’Haras’, and eventually on to Sixth Street. He strapped me into the SUV, which smelled of Youngers and Truebloods and home. He got in, started the engine, and I let my head fall to his shoulder.

  When I woke, the sun was nothing more than a gray shadow, still to rise, a promise of heat and humidity. I was in my own bed, with Angie Baby curled into the curve of my totally human body.

  Kitsss, Beast thought. And Den. Safe den. Want kitsss.

  Eli opened the door and said, “How did you get away from the guards?”

  My godchild giggled and snuggled closer to me, her arms around my neck. “Aunt Jane needed me. She feels better now.” Later, I felt Molly lift Angie away, and I smelled breakfast on the air. But I was too tired to care, even about food. Alone in my bed, I rolled over and let sleep claim me.

  * * *

  Much, much later, Eli came to my room again and cleared his throat. Then again. And then over and over until I grunted that I was awake. He said, “The witch/vamp accords were signed this morning before dawn. Leo has his deal.”

  I grunted again, hoping he’d go away so I could go back to sleep, but then I remembered I had a question. I grunted again, something might have been “Nicauds?”

  Eli said, “In court with a full coven of the more powerful witches in the U.S. They broke enough witch law to see them confined somewhere for decades. Or to have their magic stripped forever.”

  “They can do that? Take magic?” I asked, though it came out scratchy, sounding like a cat with dry heaves.

  “I overheard some stuff. So I think so. Not sure.” I didn’t reply, and he said, “We got paid.”

  Which was good. I grunted one last time, “Ducky. Go away.”

  He did.

  I slid back into dreams, a sweet relief spreading through me, gentle fingers of hope in its tail. If we could do this—the we of vamps and witches and YS—there was nothing we couldn’t accomplish.

  EPILOGUE

  Two days later, I woke in my bed, the smell of fresh sheets and the jojoba oil Bruiser had given me telling me that I was okay, or as okay as I could be under the circumstances. I also smelled Bruiser’s scent and I stretched out an arm to find his place empty, and cold. He hadn’t slept here, but he had been here. His citrusy cologne was fading on the air. He hadn’t been gone long.

  I didn’t know what had happened in the aftermath of the cemetery, except that I had found my fully human form and been taken home. At some point, I had been fed by Edmund. Clearly I had been showered and someone had somehow gotten me into my jammies.

  I remembered the smell of magics and Angie Baby. And later, the sound of angry voices. I remembered Leo, on the other side of the door, sounding concerned and then sounding irritated, saying, “She should be told that the witches signed the accords. We are aligned. I must tell her.”

  And Bruiser’s voice as he told his once-master that he couldn’t come into my bedroom, couldn’t wake me up, and that was final. And Eli, telling Leo, “I’ve already informed Jane. She said, ‘Ducky,’ and went back to sleep. No, you can’t wake her. No, I do not work for you. I work with Jane. No. No.”

  At the sound of the confrontation, I had smiled in the dim light.

  I remembered food—soup—being spooned into my mouth. Water through a bendy straw.

  I also remembered pain. And the respite from pain.

  And now I was awake, feeling stiff and sore and deeply rested. And there wasn’t any reason to put it off really. Either I was healed or I wasn’t. And if I wasn’t, I’d have to shift into Beast a few times, and maybe into some other animals, to find the parts of me that went missing when I bubbled time so much in the last week.

  I pulled my arm to me and placed my open, healed fingers on my abdomen. I had skin, not pelt. I slid my hands up and down, discovering that I was my usual human shape and size. The hole in my side where my external oblique muscles should be was . . . better. Not so deep. Not painful. But I wasn’t totally okay.

  And I still had a dark mote of power inside me, attached to my heart, one that would kill me if I tried to rip it out.

  But all in all, things were pretty okay, considering.

  The door cracked open and the scent of Angie, Little Evan, and Brute filled the room. “Aunt Jane?” Angie stage-whispered. “You still sleeping?”

  “You still weepin’?” Little Evan echoed.

  “Shhh. Mama says we can’t wake her up if she’s still sleeping.”

  I chuckled softly and said, “I’m awake. Come on in.”

  “Aunt Jane’s awake,” Angie shouted to the rest of the house. “She’s not dead!”

  “She not dead!” Little Evan said.

  “You woke her up, didn’t you?” Bruiser said.

  “No. Uncle Bruiser! She was awake.”

  “No, Unca Buse!”

  The three, and a werewolf, traipsed in. My mattress moved like an earthquake as Brute leaped up. The kids took his action as permission and followed, Angie snuggling into my left arm and EJ into my right. Brute claimed the bottom half of my bed, on top of my feet, but he was werewolf warm and I didn’t mind.

  I smelled my honey bunch at the door and knew without looking that he was standing there, watching us all. Smiling. Yeah. I could smell his smile. How cool was that?

  A moment later the grindylow jumped up on the bed and raced around like a furry, fuzzy green ferret, chittering madly, before she leaped onto Brute and burrowed into his hair. I had wondered where the creature slept.

  I closed my eyes and might have even gone back to sleep if Eli hadn’t forced me up and out of bed, by the crafty device of putting a steak on the grill out back and leaving the side door open. Evil man. But then I realized that if I added steak to the picture, I would be the happiest person on the face of the Earth. So I gathered up my godchildren and my menagerie and rolled off the bed, seeking the rest of the Yellowrock Clan.

  Read on for a special preview of the first book in Faith Hunter’s Soulwood series,

  BLOOD OF THE EARTH

  Coming in August 2016 from Roc.

  Edgy and not sure why, I carried the basket of laundry off the back porch. I hung my T-shirts and overalls on the front line of my old-fashioned solar clothes dryer, two long skirts on the outer line, and what my mama called my intimate attire on the line between, where no one could see them from the driveway. I didn’t want another visit by Brother Ephraim or Elder Ebenezer about my wanton ways. Or even another courting attempt from Joshua Purdy. Or worse, a visit from Ernest Jackson Jr., the preacher. So far I’d kept him out of my house, but there would come a time when he’d bring help and try to force his way in. It was getting tiresome having to chase churchmen off my land at the business end of a shotgun, and at some point God’s Cloud of Glory Church would bring enough reinforcements that I couldn’t stand against them. It was a battle I was prep
aring for, one I knew I’d likely lose, but I would go down fighting, one way or another.

  The breeze freshened, sending my wet skirts rippling as if alive on the line where they hung. Red, gold, and brown leaves skittered across the three acres of newly cut grass. Branches overhead cracked, clacked, and groaned with the wind, leaves rustling as if whispering some dread tiding. The chill fall air had been perfect for birdsong; squirrels had been racing up and down the trees, stealing nuts and hiding them for the coming winter. I’d seen a big black bear this morning chewing on acorns halfway up the hill.

  Standing in the cool breeze, I studied my woods, listening, feeling, tasting the unease that had prickled at my flesh for the last few months, ever since Jane Yellowrock had come visiting and turned my life upside down. She was the one responsible for the recent repeated visits by the churchmen. The Cherokee vampire hunter was the one who had brought all the changes, even if it hadn’t been intentional. She had come hunting a missing vampire, and because she was good at her job—maybe the best ever—she had succeeded. She had also managed to save over a hundred children from God’s Cloud.

  Maybe it had been worth it all—helping all the children—but I was the one paying the price, not her. She was long gone and I was alone in the fight for my life. Even the woods knew things were different.

  Sunlight dappled the earth; cabbages, gourds, pumpkins, and winter squash were bursting with color in the garden. A muscadine vine running up the nearest tree, tangling in the branches, was dropping the last of the ripe fruit. I smelled my wood fire on the air and hints of that apple-crisp chill that meant a change of seasons, the sliding toward a hard, cold autumn. I tilted my head, listening to the wind, smelling the breeze, feeling the forest through the soles of my bare feet. There was no one on my property except the wild critters—creatures who belonged on Soulwood land—and nothing else that I could sense. But the hundred fifty acres of woods bordering the flatland around the house, up the steep hill and down into the gorge, had been whispering all day. Something was not right.