Death's Rival (19 page)

Leo’s brows went up in surprise. “Of course you will.” And I felt his compulsion caress
me like a huge hand smoothing my pelt.

“I would have fulfilled them anyway. Without . . . this.” My voice broke and I struggled
to find my breath. “I’ll do my duty. But if you ever t-t-t-try to drink me down again,
I’ll shhtake you and cut off your head.”
And eat his heart,
Beast added. Leo went still at that, as if he could hear her promise.

I turned and walked to the sliding door and extended my hand. At the end of the palm
was a golden-furred paw/finger, human shaped, but bigger, knobbier, with a retractable
claw at the tip. My index finger found the button that made the door rise. It whirred
up and I walked under it and into the night. It closed behind me. I made it to my
bike. Pulled my sleeve down over my aching inner elbow. Straddled Bitsa. On the third
try, my fingers folded around the handlebars, mostly human-shaped again. I managed
to kick-start her. And I rode away.

Tears flew from my eyes, snaking with the wind across my face, into my hairline. I
wasn’t wearing my helmet. My loose hair blew out behind me as if the wind ran fingers
through it, unbraiding and tangling. I could still feel Leo’s fangs at my throat.
Katie’s against my arm. Still feel my own fangs in my mouth, sharp against my tongue,
and knew my jaw and lower face were still misshapen. If a cop stopped me for riding
without a helmet, I’d scare the crap outta him.

I sobbed with misery and what might have been despairing laughter. I had been delusional,
thinking I could work for vamps and not get bitten, not be forced to drink from them.
Delusional and stupid.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.

* * *

I dropped the bike on the far side of the Mississippi. Just pulled off the narrow,
unmarked road into nowhere, into the brush beside the road, and propped her against
a tree. I stripped off my shirt, the stench of vamp and my own blood strong in my
nose. So much had happened in the converted warehouse. I had learned so much. And
lost so much.

Have you used the bones?
Sabina knew what I was. She knew I was a skinwalker.

“What is she?”
Katie had asked Leo. He had replied, “
Unknown
.” I hadn’t realized it at that time, but he had scented of the truth. So Sabina hadn’t
told the Master of the City about me. Why not?

I stepped away from the bike into the woods. Briars tore at me. As I walked, I dropped
my clothes and boots, leaving them where they fell.

I had clawed Katie. My face had transformed. They knew I was
something
. Something cat. Leo and Sabina had talked into my brain, something gained from the
magic ceremony, the taking of my blood, and force feeding. Compulsion that bound me
to Leo. Even here, out of the city, miles away, I could feel him inside me like a
ghost crouching in the corner of my brain, like a demon’s dark shadow, waiting to
command me.

Something splashed my legs, wet and cool. I stopped. I had walked a long way into
the woods. Yet I knew where I was, at Beast’s hunting grounds, the swampy water where
deer and other prey came to drink, where gators slept in the heat and hunted in the
night. Something splashed nearby, landing heavily in the water. Mosquitoes buzzed
me, biting. Sweat was slick on my body. The water moved slowly, stirred from beneath,
the moonlight rippling on the surface. I touched my neck, the tissue swollen and tacky
with half-dried blood. Time seemed to bend around me, a languorous pain.

I sobbed into the night, the sound raucous, ripping from me like a scream of torture.
I had been . . . dominated. Controlled.
Beaten
. I wrapped my misshapen hands around my aching throat, the gold necklace I always
wore now crusted with my blood, and let the tears fall.
Ten minutes,
I thought. I’d allow myself to grieve for ten minutes. The tears fell, scalding across
my cheeks, through my pelt and dripping onto my hands. I had been prey.
Bruiser had betrayed me.
Another sob ripped from my injured throat, the sound spreading out over the water,
settling into the swampy ground.
Ten minutes.
Then I’d get on with living.

Beast rose, fast, powerful, and demanded,
Shift. Now! Beast is not beaten. Beast is not prey!

I let my half-human-shaped hands fall away from my throat, closed my eyes on the moonlit
water. Pain, physical pain swatted me down. I fell forward, toward the water. Cutting,
burning, slicing pain. Gray light filled with black motes of energy shot into the
darkness. I screamed.

* * *

I leaped onto the shore. Shook swamp water from my pelt. Screamed into the night.
I am Beast! This is my land. My territory. I hunt. I am not beaten!
In the water, something long and dark moved. Alligators. Worthy prey. But not in water.
Would hunt gator someday, on land. I screamed challenge again. Things in swamp sank
into deeps and water went still. Moon and stars were caught in water, trapped.

I shook again, flinging stinky water. Walked into the night. Inside mind, I found
Jane. She still grieved, her mind curled tight, sleeping like kit. Near her in mind
was dark thing, like mist and marshmallows, like shadow and sponge. From the dark
thing a chain ran, to curl around Jane’s neck. I pushed on dark thing with paw. It
moved. It stank of Leo.

I studied it, thinking, thinking like Jane.

This chain was a new thing. It had not been here in mind before, and now it was here.
It stretched to Jane like leash. I understood. Dark thing was the creation of alpha
vampire, magic of Leo. His ownership was like collar of metal, spikes poking Jane’s
neck. Was like cage, holding Jane. Dark thing was binding of Leo. I growled. Put claws
on binding, testing. Cutting down with sharp claw edges. Binding was not tight. Not
strong. Could shift and shift and shift, maybe only five times, and poking collar
of binding would be gone. Jane was not human to be bound. Beast was better than Jane
alone and better than big-cat alone. Jane should not grieve. Leo hurt her, but did
not defeat her. We would still be free.

I walked through woods, night like a gift of hiding. Black panther, black leopard,
black big-cats liked night best, but Beast was good hunter by day or night. Could
hunt in tall grass under sun, or at night under no moon. I tracked by smell moving
on air, going to place Jane needed to see. Following stink of old meat, spoiled long
ago under hot summer sky. I sat at edge of killing place, looking, seeing many bones.
Many more than five deer had been killed here, stolen from Beast. Winter food, killed
by thieves of meat, by pack hunter. Deer bones mostly gone now. Bones scattered. Wolves
had taken food in bloodlust. In killing spree. Jane needed to see. To understand.

She stirred, eyes still leaking. Sad for being prey. Sad for Bruiser who was not Bruiser
tonight. She did not understand that Bruiser would grieve too.
Beast?
she called. I huffed. She stared out at night through Beast eyes. Night was sharp
with greens and blues and silver tones, everything bright and clear. Bones stood out
in grasses and on top of pine needles.
Bones?
she asked.

Deer bones. Killed by wolves, by pack. Stolen from Beast. Thieves of meat, like in
Hunger Times. Pack thinks like strongest, like alpha. Pack thinks like pack. Not like
one. Not like two. Like pack.

Jane sighed, breath in mind tired and sad. Not understanding.
Yeah, yeah. Got that. Sorry, but . . . I don’t get why we came here.

I growled, sound vibrating into night.
Beast lost much here. Beast lost winter food. Beast lost meat.
Hissed thought,
Lost to
pack.
Tonight Jane lost to pack. Bruiser lost to pack. But Jane is not pack. Bruiser is
not pack. Jane is Jane and Bruiser is Bruiser
. I batted a rib bone hard with paw. It spun into dark and landed in brush.
There is no shame in losing to pack with strong alpha. Shame is from not fighting
again when pack is smaller, when pack-alpha is not expecting attack. Only shame is
giving up.

Jane made strange sound, air and laughter like bubbles in mind. But when she thought,
anger and joy thrummed in words.
Like
taking a pair of brass knuckles to a half-awake werewolf and knocking his butt into
never-never land
.
Like sitting on a nice tree limb and dropping down on unwary prey. Patience. Yeah.
Okay. I can wait to get Leo back for this.
Her tears began to dry.

And Bruiser?
I thought to Jane
. He was prey tonight too, caught in alpha’s mind. In Leo’s pack. He smelled of grieving,
like Jane smelled of grieving. Like Beast smelled of grieving when I killed injured
fawn here, fawn left by pack to die slow death. Did not want to kill. Did not. But
must. Forced by pack. Like Bruiser.

Jane made sound in mind. Like snort. Like disbelief. Like acceptance too.
Yeah, yeah, okay. Bruiser is all innocent. When did you get so wise?

Beast is good hunter. Beast is good mother of kits. Jane is not.
Jane said nothing to that.
I hunt now. Go to sleep.
I put paw on her mind, pushing down, forcing her to rest. I walked into forest.

* * *

I woke up at dawn, naked on a bed of pine needles, which Beast seemed to do to me
as often as possible, knowing that needles hurt in places that tender skin should
never be exposed to. I always figured it was a joke of sorts, reminding me who was
really boss. But at least she had brought me back close to my clothes and my bike
and I didn’t have to hike barefoot through the woods. I gathered up my undies, jeans,
and boots, shook them free of bugs, and dressed. Collected my weapons where they had
fallen and stuck them into their various sheaths and holsters. Braided my hair. And
thought.

I was feeling calm, steady, clearheaded, seeing the world and my place in it with
clarity. Without excess emotion. Envisioning what had happened the night before and
my future options as if everything were laid out on a table for my consideration.

Beast was right. Bruiser had little responsibility for what had happened last night.
He was blood-drunk and recently risen from the dead, or near dead. He wasn’t a vamp,
so he was something else, though I had no idea what he was now.

Leo . . . Leo was a master of a city, a powerful vampire, politically and personally.
That excused him nothing, but it explained a lot. Like kings and monarchs throughout
history, the powerful did bad things to cement and keep their power. Leo believed
that his taking of my blood helped him in some way. Weird as it was, Leo really believed
that giving me his blood and binding me to him was a gift.

And as for me . . . I didn’t know what I was feeling, but I was done with grief. Though
I was temporarily bound, it was an imperfect binding. I had options Leo didn’t know
about. I could get on Bitsa and take off and never come back. I could claim my freedom.
Or I could stay and put to rights what I had made wrong by killing Ramondo Pitri,
even though that death was purely self-defense. I could maybe even save Bruiser from
whatever fate now awaited him. I could still do my job. If I wanted. If I could face
Leo without killing him.

I let that thought settle. I could leave. Or I could stay. I twirled the tip of my
braid and tied it off with a thread ripped from the inside of my pocket.

I’d been hurt, but I wasn’t beaten. I could still work, could still be there for the
friends I had in this city. I smiled slowly. I could get Leo back for the forced feeding
and binding later.

Which led me to Leo’s own gang-feeding. A forced or coerced feeding from a human was
a vamp’s version of takeout, though from the victim’s point of view it was an assault.
It took away a person’s will and rights and it hurt. It hurt bad. What was it like
when a powerful vamp was drained? What had Leo’s forced feeding been like, and how
had it changed him? And how much of my internal debate was the binding? How much of
my willingness to stay was Leo’s draw on my soul?

Holding my hair in one hand, I touched my throat, feeling again the slice of fangs
going in. The electric shock as they sliced through me. I should want to kill Leo,
tear him limb from limb, but I didn’t. I didn’t know what I was going to do about
it. Not yet.

I rode at a leisurely pace, the sun rising gray and brown through a haze of pollution.
My clothes were bloody, and if I got stopped I’d have a lot of explaining to do, but
I needed some time to assimilate everything that had happened, everything I had learned.
Hunger twisted my insides, the hunger of the shift that needed calories for fuel.
But I didn’t stop for food. I needed to be fasting. I took the roads, heading for
Aggie One Feather’s, the one place I might find a measure of peace.

Aggie was standing in the yard when I rode up, Bitsa puttering along with that signature
Harley roar. The elder of The People was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and
gardening gloves, holding a pair of clippers in one hand and a dozen sprigs of rosemary
in the other. A basket lay at her feet, full of fall herbs, heated by the warm, late
fall air. Fall, assuming there is such a thing here, lasts a long time in the Deep
South. There would likely have been a frosting of snow in the mountains of home already.
Tree limbs would be bare. Here it was still warm, even at dawn, and half the trees
were still bright with fall color.

I parked in the shell drive, turned off the growling bike, and unhelmeted. As Aggie
watched, I began removing my weapons, stashing them in Bitsa’s bags. Guns, blades,
stakes. The cross in the lead-lined pouch. Everything. Nothing that might be considered
a weapon could be brought into an elder’s house. I filled up one saddlebag and started
on the other.

Paper crinkled in the bottom and I dug out a white paper bag. I had bought Aggie and
her mother gifts while I was in the mountains, and left them in the bag in my bike.
I closed the lid of the saddlebag, feeling the witchy-lock tingle under my fingertips
as it activated. A thief would get a nasty shock if he tried to steal Bitsa. Carrying
the small white paper bag, I crunched across the shells, my boots falling silent on
the grass. I smiled down at Aggie, her face unlined, her black hair pushed back behind
her ears. She had cut it into a pageboy that just brushed her shoulders, and it glistened
like liquid onyx in the sun.