Page 22
If He Moves, You Can Eat Him: Beast watches as Evangelina battles with her sisters who are pulling power and energy from the environment around them. Carmen gets burned and Liz is pinned by a boulder. Beast jumps on Evangelina, taking her down with her jaws on her throat, wanting to kill. Jane stops Beast from killing. Angelina removes the blood diamond from Evangelina’s neck, tells Beast that the witch is now sleeping. Beast and two other sisters remove the stone from Liz, and Beast helps Angelina understand that she can use the blood diamond to help heal Carmen.
Soon Evan arrives, taking Evangelina into the house, and going downstairs with Beast to look at the demon. They find Lincoln chained but outside the circle. Evan saws off the chain, with an admonition not to bite him, and when Lincoln agrees, he shares some information. Though Evangelina wants to use the demon, it has plans for her—wishing to possess a two-natured being that he can control by killing off one of the two parts. Neither weres nor humans meet the demon’s needs, and vamps are as dead to it. So it wants a witch. When Evan says that they need to find a way to bind and banish the demon, Angie, who sneaked downstairs, tells her father that he should ask her angel. Evan takes Angie upstairs to talk and tells Beast to keep an eye on Lincoln.
Sharing the Moon-Call: Beast listens in on the discussion upstairs, when Angie is asked about her angel. She says his name is Hayyel, and that he used to be Jane’s until she became Angie’s godmother. Angie tells her parents how they can bind the demon. Molly and Evan discuss how they will get enough power going, and know they have to use their children also. After sunset when Jane reemerges, Rick and Kemnebi arrive at the house, and when Evan sees Rick’s cat tats glowing, he tells Rick they need to talk later. Aggie One Feather calls. The name of the demon is Kalona Ayeliski, the Raven Mocker, and it is actually a sort of demon/witch/shape-shifter hybrid that can’t be killed. The demon does not like having his name known or spoken aloud. Everyone gathers in the basement, and those not taking part in the ceremony still donate blood to the cause. When Evan gets Jane’s and says the demon’s name, it screams.
Threw Her Over the Railing: As the witches begin chanting, then saying the angel’s name, Lincoln runs out of the room. A big flash of light hits the hedge-of-thorns spell over the circle and a winged being grapples with the demon. Molly throws the blood over the circle, saying the binding words, and suddenly the light disappears. The circle, the angel, the demon, the dead werewolf are all gone. The other werewolf is now a big white wolf, and Kemnebi is in his cat form, yet different, with no spots visible. Rick is almost shifting, only restrained by his tats. It seems all of the two-natured were affected by what happened, except for Jane, who feels empty, and when she calls to Beast, she gets no response. Hearing a door slam, Jane races upstairs to find Evangelina gone, Pickersgill, Lincoln’s second, staked but alive, and the blood diamond gone once again. Pickersgill says Lincoln staked him and went with Evangelina. Molly thinks that Evangelina disrupted the spell before the binding completed. Jane still can’t get an answer from Beast, and mourns her loss.
Jane blames herself for Evangelina once again getting the blood diamond. Deciding she can make use of her time by going after Stevenson, the escaped Naturaleza scion, Jane tracks down some of his properties. She finally decides the most likely place is one difficult to sneak up on, unless doing so by water. Jane calls the paddlers, Dave and Mike, to take her to Stevenson’s house, which Reach had sent a diagram of. Blasting her way through a big window in the front room, realizing she has some Beast-like strength though she still can’t hear her cat, Jane finds Stevenson, upstairs, covered with the pinkish tinge of a spell, with a teenaged girl, whom he casually throws over the side.
I Was So Going to Hell: Jane saves the girl from further injury, and fights with Stevenson, winning in the end, though he does injure her. After checking on the girl, who is not as badly hurt as Jane first feared, she calls Bruiser, telling him what happened, and then she blacks out. When Jane comes to, Dave and Mike are there, and they get her ready for the helicopter that picks her up. Waking in her hotel room, Jane finds Grégoire very intimately healing her wounds. After more sleep, including a Beast memory, Jane wakes and finds Grégoire naked in her bed, just as she is. The elegant vamp assures her that he did not drink from her, she is not his Enforcer, and they did not have sex. Shortly thereafter Jane gets a panicked call from Rick, with Kemnebi’s voice in the background, taunting Rick about not being able to shift. Jane gets use of the helicopter, and Grégoire and the twins drop her off at Rick and Kemnebi’s campsite. Jane shoots Kemnebi in the knee and puts silver cuffs on him, telling him that if he helps Rick, she’ll dig the bullet out of him so he can shift and heal. A few minutes later, Grégoire, the blood twins, and Evan arrive.
Butchery Disguised as Surgery: Evan plays a song on his flute, and Rick begins to relax. The others pull out a picnic basket and eat. Jane removes the bullet from Kemnebi’s knee and takes off his cuffs, but as soon as he shifts she cuffs one of his legs so he can’t leave. Evan says he believes he has found a way, through song, to counteract the spell woven into Rick’s tats, and he will make him a CD to listen to during the full moon. At one point Jane thinks she hears/feels the sound of claws on stone in her mind, but that is the only inkling of Beast she gets. When Rick thanks Evan for helping him, Evan says that Grégoire paid him a year’s salary to do it, and Jane tells the vamp she can’t be bought. Jane wonders about Fire Track, the former werewolf, and his new form, wondering if he’ll stay the way he is now.
After some sleep in the hotel, Jane talks to Molly, who says that haven’t been able to track down Evangelina yet. On a whim, Jane decides to leave a message for the escaped witch, telling her that Leo will be there that night, though he won’t be for three days. Unfortunately Jane finds out right after leaving that message that Leo is in fact in Asheville and wants to see her. Jane talks to Adelaide, who confirms that Lincoln is once again with Evangelina. Derek and Jane have a much-needed though brief conversation, where they come to an agreement that Derek does not have to tell Jane what he did in the service, and she doesn’t have to tell him what she is. Leo and Bruiser arrive, and Leo apologizes to her for not completely understanding about Evangelina and her spells when he banished her. Then Jane sees a pinkish light outside and knows that Evangelina has taken the bait and is here for Leo.
The Blood-Diamond: Jane calls for a lockdown in the hotel, but one of the bellboys runs outside to shout at the protestors, and then gets eaten by a big bird inside a black cloud. Evangelina yells to the protesters that the vamps did it, getting the people riled. Jane tries to get Leo and Grégoire to go to their rooms, but the two vampires want to get into the fray, determined to go after Evangelina. Jane, Derek, and the security team run outside, the latter going after the protestors with beanbag rounds and tranquilizers. Jane goes after the demon, calling upon Hayyel. While enveloped by the black mist, Jane feels as though she is alone in a place where she feels the absence of the world. Through her confusion Jane grabs her gun and shoots into the demon, and a golden eagle appears, and both birds are sucked down into the blood on the ground. Jane realizes she needs to keep the demon away from the blood diamond.
Grégoire fights Evangelina, with the vampire catching on fire. Jane realizes that Grégoire is using a silvered sword, allowing him to get through the hedge spell, so Jane uses hers for the same purpose, running with her sword in front of her. The pain of cutting through the ward causes Jane to lose her balance, and she lands on top of Evangelina, stabbing her. Jane hears Beast, telling her that she is a killer only, even of her friends. Evangelina rips the necklace chain from her own neck, placing the blood diamond in her wound, but Jane grabs it. The Raven Mocker is now free, but when Evan tosses her another silver knife, Jane uses it along with the blood to stab at the demon. Evan says the binding words, and then there is an explosion and Jane sees golden wings. The injured make their way inside, and Jane believes she knows what the blood diamond truly is:
a portal to hell guarded closely by an angel.
A Marriage Ceremony With a Death Sentence at the End: Two days after the battle, Jane is at the hospital seeing the woman who was attacked by the werewolves. Rick has news: he has been offered a job by both Sheriff Grizzard and PsyLED, as an agent covering seven states in the Southeast, and he is leaning more toward the PsyLED offer. Rick reported the dead body at Evangelina’s, which did turn out to be her husband that she had killed, and that sort of put him in the good graces of law enforcement. Jane and Rick use the helicopter to deliver a dead steer to the grindy’s cave. When the two of them arrive, they find the grindy dressed, and she thanks them for the food. Then, to the surprise of them both, one of the grindy’s babies climbs on Rick, having chosen him. She will now be his keeper, ensuring that he does not stray and pass on the were-taint. The grindy also says that if Rick never shifts, he may have a power all his own. On their hike back out, Jane thinks over her own predicament, not sure where she really belongs. Molly’s grief over the loss of her sister keeps her and Jane apart, though Jane gets to talk to Angie on the phone every day. She still can’t connect with Beast with any regularity. And she has decisions to make.
Double-Dead Bodies: The last night of the parley talks gets under way, with Grégoire’s decision being announced. Though denied MOC status (no surprise considering everything that happened), Lincoln is given permission to start three new clans, and in ten years he can reapply. When everyone is checking out of the hotel at sunset, Jane scents someone from the same blood-master whose servant tried to kill her in her room. She warns Derek and Wrassler, who stop the woman to talk. The woman steps back and takes aim, and she has two guys backing her up. Jane shoots the woman in the forehead, but learns quickly that the men are wearing vests. Beast speaks up and tells Jane to use claws, meaning knives. When the fight is over, Derek has been wounded but not seriously. Jane, overjoyed at Beast’s return, realizes that she actually enjoys her crazy life. The question is, what blood-master vamp just declared war on Leo?