Death's Rival (20 page)

Aggie wasn’t surprised to see me. But then, little really surprises Aggie. She’s like
a leaf on the surface of a stream, floating along in the eddies, sliding across rapids,
untouched by it all, and serene. “I have no idea what that kind of serenity might
feel like,
Lisi
.” It wasn’t what I had planned to come out of my mouth, and I rattled the bag to
take attention away from my words. “I come bearing gifts.”

“You are covered in dried blood. Are you injured?” she asked.

I touched my shirt, crusted through with blood. “No. Not mine. And no one else is
hurt either.” At her disbelieving expression, I added, “Some vamps tried to bite me
last night.” Which was true. I just didn’t add the part about them being successful.

“Are they dead?” she asked.

“Not any more than they were before they tried.”

Aggie’s mouth twisted into what might be the start of a smile or a grimace, and tilted
her head in acceptance. “Come inside. My mother asked to see you this morning when
she woke.”

“Uh. Sure.” But Aggie’s mother scared me witless.
Uni Lisi,
grandmother of many children, a term of respect, was an old woman who saw too much
sometimes. I followed Aggie into the house, feeling like a lumbering giant next to
her petite grace. “Wait here,” she said, pointing to the living room. Inside, the
windows were thrown open and bees bounced at the screens. The small living room was
spotless, floral fabric on the sofa and chair, a brown recliner, a new wide-screen
TV, a rug I hadn’t seen before on the floor, and on a side table, a bowl of potpourri
flavored the air with dried herbs and synthetic scent. A feral hiss brought me up
short. A huge tabby cat lay curled on the cushions of a well-used old rocker. She
stared at me with wide green eyes. I stared back, Beast rising inside. The cat drew
her paws beneath her, the body language saying she was ready to run or fight. Her
hair bristled and she showed me her teeth. Cats don’t like me. Never have.

I dropped my eyes, though Beast pressed her claws into me, painfully. She didn’t like
showing submission to anyone, but this was the tabby’s den, the cat a new addition
since the last time I’d been inside the house. I smelled her now, over the potpourri.
I didn’t enter the room, but stood at the entrance, eyes down. The cat settled slightly,
uneasy, and kept her eyes on me.

Aggie stuck her head in from the kitchen. “I see you met the queen. She showed up
here a few weeks ago and moved in. Sweetest cat I ever saw. ’Til now.”

“Cats don’t like me,” I said.

Aggie looked at me strangely. “Queenie likes everyone. Even the dogs.” I grunted as
Queenie showed me her teeth again. Aggie’s brows went up at the threat from the house
cat. “Hmm. My mother is out back on the porch. Come.”

I trailed Aggie, and Queenie dropped heavily to the floor, following us through the
house with regal disdain. Her scent came strongly then, heavy with hormones and faintly
with blood. I said, “You know she’s pregnant, right?”

Aggie turned back and stared at the cat. “Well, darn. I knew she was getting fat.”

“She’s due soon.” Like today, but I didn’t say that. Queenie was already in early
labor, but since I had no way of knowing that, except my extra-good nose, I didn’t
say that either.

Aggie made a long-suffering sound, half sigh, half snort, something I remembered from
The People, the
Tsalagiyi
, a sound that was pure Cherokee, and I smiled, relaxing at the familiar noise. On
the back porch
Uni Lisi
was sitting on a deeply upholstered chair, a bowl of bean pods on the table in front
of her, shelling them fast, her knobby hands flying through the beans, pinching off
the ends and stripping the string down the side of the pods, exposing the plump beans
inside, tossing them into a bowl, and dropping the empty shells on the table. It seemed
like a lot of work when they could buy beans in a can, but I didn’t say that either.
She paused in her shelling and gestured me to the table. “Come. Come, Jane. Sit.”
I sat across from her, my little paper bag on my lap.

Aggie placed a glass of sweating tea in front of her mother, a single mint leaf in
the bottom; two identical glasses went to the side. One was clearly mine. “Jane says
Queenie is going to give us kittens soon.”

“Oh?”
Uni Lisi
leaned over and studied the cat. “We have to get her a basket and a blanket. That
big pink one in the corner of my room. Make her a place on the porch so she doesn’t
take the babies off. Good to see you, Jane. Go get the basket, Aggie.”
Uni Lisi
drank her tea and smacked her lips. I had never heard the old woman so chatty. “Drink,”
she commanded. At her gesture I drank too, the tea so sweet it coated the inside of
my mouth, good Southern tea, one-third sugar, the rest tea so dark it looked like
bayou water. It was delicious. I tried to think of something to say, as the old woman
went back to shelling beans. “We gonna have some kittens,” the old woman said, as
if I didn’t already know. “You want a kitten?”

“Um, thank you, no,” I said, with my best Christian children’s home manners.

Aggie carried the pink basket back onto the porch. It was really pink—flamingo—with
a pink bow on top. The basket was about three feet wide, with a huge hoop handle,
the biggest basket I had ever seen, and Aggie placed it at
Uni Lisi’
s feet. The blanket Aggie set inside was fleece, yellow with red and green polka dots
all over it, a color combo that was . . . interesting at best. Queenie walked past,
her tail high, and hissed at me, warning me to stay away. She leaped gracefully into
the basket and began pawing the blanket into submission, ignoring me totally now.
Aggie sat beside me and drank her tea, sighing once as she eyed the cat. “Kittens,”
she murmured with disgust.

“I brought you gifts,” I said. I tilted up the paper bag, and two small foil-wrapped
packages fell into my hand, each one tied with hemp string. I placed the silver foil–wrapped
one in front of Aggie, and the gold foil–wrapped one in front of
Uni Lisi
. The old woman clapped her hands together like a child and began tearing at the paper.
Aggie took hers and untied the string. They both got them open at the same time. Both
women made little oohing and aahing sounds as they lifted their necklaces to the light.

“I’d have brought them to you on my last visit, but I didn’t come inside.”

Uni Lisi
swatted her daughter’s hand. “You should have brought her inside. She had presents.”
Aggie looked at me under her brows and I stifled a grin.

“The amethyst came from a small mine near the Nantahala River,” I said, “on Cherokee
land. A Cherokee silver artist named Daniel Running Bear did the silver work. Daniel
Yonv Adisi
. I found the silver chains online and they probably came from China. They should
be long enough to just put over your head,” I finished. I had planned that part carefully,
remembering the older woman’s knobby hands, but if I had seen her shelling beans,
I’d have just bought her a short chain and let her use the clasp.

Aggie and her mother draped their necklaces over their heads in gestures that looked
choreographed, the twin actions of people who had lived together for many years. Aggie
looked at me with a smile, the first one I had seen on her face today. “They are beautiful.
Thank you,
Dalonige i Digadoli
.”

“Oh yes. This is pretty. Pretty, pretty!”
Uni Lisi
patted her amethyst between her shrunken breasts. “I like purple.”

I nodded formally to each of them. “You are welcome,
Egini Agayvlge i,
Uni Lisi
.”

“Mama, you wanted to tell Jane about your dream.”

“Yes.” The old woman nodded, her hands busy once again with the beans. “I have many
dreams as I get older. Some are nothing. Some are something. This one was something.”
A prickling ran up the back of my neck, as if cobwebs trailed across me. I placed
the tea glass on the table, my hands curled around it, wet with condensation, cold
from the ice.
Uni Lisi
drank again, her lips making that smacking sound when she was done. She reached down
and stroked the cat, feeling along her belly. Queenie rolled over and let the old
woman feel of her stomach. “Fat kittens. I count four. Maybe more.” She looked at
me again. “You sure you don’t want a kitten?”

I shook my head, waiting on the dream. The dreams of the elders were important, not
to be ignored.

“This dream was strange, even for me. It was about a man hanging over a fire.”

I stilled, slowly dropping my hands into my lap, my tea glass forgotten. “A white
man?”

She nodded, returning to the beans. “Dirty. Naked. He had a beard, like he needed
to shave. His mustache was longer, like he had it first. Brown hair. Brown hands.
He was dead. He had been cooked over a slow fire for many hours.” She looked at me
from under her brows. “This was not the way of
Tsalagiyi
. Not the way of The People. This was the way of the Mohicans, maybe. Or the Creek.
Savages. Not
Tsalagiyi.
” She nodded once, firmly, her hands flying through the beans. “Not
Tsalagiyi
.”

If I thought it was strange for a member of one tribe to call another tribe savages,
I didn’t show it. I kept still, waiting on the rest of the dream.
Uni Lisi
drank again, smacked again, and said, “There was an old woman standing beside the
fire. She was wearing a long dress, blue or gray, and her hair was in braids down
her back. She was holding a stick, the end sharpened and black from the fire. She
poked the body and it didn’t bleed.” She pointed one knobby finger at me, her black
eyes throwing back the light, like faceted stones. “When Aggie takes you to sweat,
you will think on this.” She looked at her daughter. “Take her now. I’ll finish the
beans and take a nap on the couch with Queenie. We gonna have us some kittens tonight,
I think. Go, go.” She shooed us with her hands.

I stood, my knees feeling weak at the vision
Uni Lisi
had seen. Aggie made the sighing-snorting sound again and said, “Go to the sweathouse.
I’ll be there shortly.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Bitsa Alone Could Wake the Undead

Once again I was sitting in the sweathouse, feeding kindling to the fire. The coals
had been smoldering beneath a heavy layer of ash when I entered, and I had uncovered
them, fed them twigs, then larger pieces. The rocks were heated, and the smudge basket
was full of smudge sticks. It was as if they had known I was coming. Considering the
dream, they probably had. I had started to sweat long minutes past, and had a steady
trickle going when Aggie entered and closed the door on the rest of the world. She
sat beside me, and I could feel her eyes on me. I kept mine on the fire, letting the
flames steal my vision in the dark hut. More minutes passed. I was sweating freely
and stewing in my own irritation when Aggie finally spoke.

“We have spoken of your soul house, of the cavern that drips with moisture, lit by
flickering firelight, the place of your earliest memories.”

I nodded to show I knew what she was talking about. It was the cavern where I made
my first shift into
we sa
, the bobcat, when I was a child of maybe five. When Aggie took me back into my own
memories it was to this place I most often went.

“You carry anger around in your soul home like a trapped storm cloud full of thunder
and lightning and heavy rain,” she said, her voice a murmur. “Your spirit overflows
with that anger. This anger is too large for you to contain, and it is compressed
within you.”

She fell silent while I envisioned the darkness within me, and the storm she could
see there. She was right. It was a raging storm, bigger than Katrina, more destructive
than Hurricane Andrew, trapped there, inside me.

In the sweathouse, the fire crackled and spat, stealing energy from the wood with
a soft hiss. “Do you want to tell me about the anger?” she asked.

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Fed the fire. Aggie waited. I had the feeling that she
would wait until nightfall and say nothing else. She had given me an opening and now
it was my turn, to take or not. “I killed a man in my hotel room in Asheville. I didn’t
see a gun—it was down at his side—but I reacted to the threat I sensed, the fear I
felt, and I shot him. He died. Only after he fell did I see that he was carrying a
gun with a sound suppresser on it.” Aggie’s expression didn’t change; even her scent
stayed the same, calm and waiting. “I found out later that he was only there to look
me over in preparation to challenging me to a fight of some sort. And now all the
vamps and blood-servants in the Southeast are in danger. Because I killed a man.”

After a long moment, during which Aggie added a log to the fire, she said, “He was
only there to look at you? He could have done that in a restaurant. On the street.
Anywhere. He came into your hotel room? With a gun in his hand?” I nodded. “Then perhaps
he was going to kill you and slip away, so he didn’t
have
to challenge you.”

My head snapped up. I met Aggie’s eyes and she laughed at whatever was on my face.
She shrugged, as if to say, “It’s just a thought,” but she said nothing.

Some of the shadow I carried fell away from my shoulders. “Thank you,” I said. Aggie
shrugged again. “In your heart, you knew this. It is only part of your darkness.”

“Last night, Leo Pellissier and his heir forced a feeding on me. To bind me to them.”

Aggie didn’t flinch, but I smelled her reaction: surprise, anger, and something deeper.
She was protective of me.
That lifted my hurt even more, and the darkness was no longer so heavy. I took a
breath and it felt clean and fresh, like the way air felt coming out of a cavern.
The breath of the earth. The breath of my soul house, my spirit place, moving again,
no longer blocked.

“I had stupidly claimed to be Leo’s Enforcer, a position that requires sharing of
blood, and sometimes sex, in a binding ceremony. When I made the claim, it was to
protect myself and others, and I had no idea it involved any kind of sharing. When
it first happened, I wouldn’t let him bind me, but now that he’s facing a new threat,
a bigger threat, he took what I’d verbally given him.”

“And are you bound by this vampire?”

“Not so much. It isn’t permanent.”
But it should be.
I didn’t say that part. “I’m angry. He had no right. It was an assault. And I have
no legal recourse.”

“Because under this Vampira Carta you have told me of, you gave him certain rights
over you when you came into his employ.” I nodded. “Rights you did not understand.”
I nodded again. “But once you knew of these rights, you still remained in his employ.”

I didn’t nod this time. Aggie had hit the nail on the head. I had known a forced feeding
could happen. I stayed because the money was good. Because I was curious about vamps,
and had allowed myself to get caught up in their lives and society. And maybe for
other reasons I didn’t yet understand, reasons that had to do with my own forgotten
past. “I was stupid,” I said, now hearing my bitterness.

Aggie cocked her head, letting me think it through. She shifted and resettled her
legs. “And now you are conflicted, because you gave him the rights over your body
and blood, but you never expected him to take them.”

“Yeah. That about covers it. It proves I’m pretty stupid, doesn’t it?”

“A scorpion’s nature is to sting. A raptor’s nature is to rend and tear flesh. Did
he do that which was normal and right according to his nature?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“And your nature is to protect and to serve. Did you do that which was normal and
right according to your nature?”

“Yes,” I said again, my brows coming together. There was so much wrong with that line
of thought. It’s the nature of a serial killer to trap and torture humans. It’s the
nature of a pedophile to touch children. But nature doesn’t make everything right.
It’s often just an excuse. Yet understanding one’s own nature is often a first step
to personal growth. All this psychological crap was making me irritable.

As if she sensed my irritation, Aggie changed course. “Will you leave his employ?”

I thought about Leo. And Bruiser. And the other humans I had met and liked. “I should.
I don’t know. I have to think about that.”

“If you stay, it will be with eyes wide open now. Fully adult and fully informed.”

“Yes. I understand.” I shook my head and started to rise.

“There is still an angry darkness inside you.” Aggie leaned back and relaxed, her
eyes serene, like a nun’s, like a woman who had made her choices and was okay with
them. Not anything like me. “This anger is perhaps the core of who you are. It storms
in the very center of your being, and it forms the basis of every decision you have
ever made. We should look at this anger.”

After a moment I said, “I made a vow when I was five years old.” Aggie waited, implacable,
resting in that enveloping sense of peace. “I made a vow to kill the men who murdered
my father and raped my mother.” To give her credit, Aggie didn’t flinch at the bald
statement. I eased back to the floor, my heels and butt on the cool clay. “I put my
hands in my father’s cooling blood.” I put out my left hand as I had done as a child,
to show her. “And I wiped it down my face.” I lifted my hand, palm facing me, and
dragged it down my face, slowly, feeling again my father’s blood, sticky. The air
cool as it hit the streaks of blood on my cheeks and forehead. “And I promised to
kill them. I looked them in the face, silently, but promising that they would die.
I was only five. I thought I hadn’t succeeded. Until I remembered the bearded man
hanging over a fire circle.” This time, Aggie sat forward, her pupils wide in the
firelight, her mouth opening slightly. “He was the
yunega
in my memory. There was an old woman, my grandmother. She poked him with a stick.
I want to remember that. All of it. I think that is part of the dark, angry place
inside.”

“Anger, building and storming,” Aggie said. I nodded. “Okay.” She put on the music,
a wood flute, playing a haunting melody. She lifted a heavy, earthen pitcher and dripped
water over the hot rocks with a ladle. It hissed and spat. Steam rose, the air growing
close and humid. My sweating increased instantly. Aggie passed me a bottle of water
and I opened the top and drank. The water tasted bitter, and I stopped midswallow,
watching her. “It’s got a little something in it to help you remember,” she said.
I grunted and finished the bottle, draining it.

Aggie took the empty and chose a smudge stick from the basket. She lit the end. A
bitter, acrid smell filled the steamy room. I breathed in. Closed my eyes. Time passed.

The room grew much lighter, as if the door was open. I turned to it, and saw an old
woman enter. She was wearing a shift, coarsely woven cotton over her naked body, bony
legs showing beneath, her feet bare. “The
yunega
is dead,” she said. “Come.”

I stood, the clay floor chilling the soles of my bare feet. I was wearing a blue dress,
which I saw in glimpses as I walked out of the house, down the trail to the small
clearing. I kept my eyes low as we entered the open space. In the center of it was
a circle of white quartz stones, with gray rocks inside and the remains of a fire—ashes
and one blackened log. Something black hung above the cold fire. It dripped once,
a drop of reddish water trickling down and falling into the ashes. I let my eyes rise
to the blackened stumps. They had once been feet. Now they were scorched meat, with
blisters above in the scarlet flesh. The skin had split and wept. I let my eyes rise
up the man’s body.

His upper thighs were red and covered with dried blood. I smelled burned hair, and
saw little blackened curls of hair on his skin. His manhood was gone, leaving only
a patch of raw meat. I remembered his scream when it was removed—a long ululating
wail. Above the wound was a white belly, hanging and slack, like a fish belly. His
chest had brown nipples and hair, like the stomach of a dog. Men of
Tsalagiyi
did not have so much hair on their chests. Only the
yunega
had hair all over their bodies, like dogs or rats. My father’s chest had been smooth
when I dipped my hand into his blood.

The white man who raped my mother hung from sharpened deer antlers that had been shoved
through his shoulders. His hands were tied behind his back with rope. Lank hair, the
color of acorns, fell forward, half hiding his bearded face. He had had no beard,
only the mustache when
Uni Lisi
captured him. Now his face was scruffy, like a bear, with hair. His blue eyes were
open and dry, staring down at his body. His mouth was open in a silent scream. With
my skinwalker nose, I could smell his blood and the stink of rot, but white men always
smelled of rot and unwashed bodies. “Are you sure he is dead,
Elisi
?” I asked.

Elisi
picked up a stick from the fire and stabbed him. “He no longer bleeds.”

“Do we eat him?”

“No. Skinwalkers do not eat the bodies of our enemies. It is forbidden. It makes us
sick.”

I nodded and turned away. “Good,” I said. I looked up at the leaves in the trees.
They were golden and scarlet, with patches of blue sky showing through. “And the other
one?” I asked.

“He is next.”

* * *

I swam back up from the vision of fall leaves and blue sky. I was gasping and wet
with sweat. The thin cloth tied above my breasts and hanging to my knees was soaked
and limp as I shoved up with my elbows against the clay floor. “
Elis
—” I stopped, my throat so dry I couldn’t speak. Aggie handed me another bottle of
water. I opened it and drank it down, and nothing had ever tasked so good.

A demon had told me recently that I had never taken vengeance on my enemies. That
he
had killed my grandmother in the snow, as he had killed many of the Cherokee on the
Trail of Tears. The demon had lied. A laugh escaped my mouth, half hysterical with
shock. The demon had lied. Fierce joy threaded through me, weaving into my soul. “
Elisi
killed him. My grandmother killed him.”

Aggie nodded slowly. “Your grandmother was a warrior woman, like those of old.” There
was no condemnation in the tones. “Did you see it? Did she make you watch his death?”

I started to shake my head and stopped. I had a quick image of leaves, dark and thick,
over my face. Beyond them was fire, a man hanging over it, screaming. Three women
worked over him, mostly naked, wearing only thin shifts, their clothes draped across
nearby bushes. The women were
Etsa
, my mother, and her sister, and
Elisi
. “I wasn’t supposed to see it,” I whispered. “But I hid. I watched. Until he started
screaming so bad. When they cut him.”

I looked at Aggie. “I led my grandmother to him. To them. I caused their deaths.”

“And is that part of the storm inside you, child?”

I shook my head, stopped, and nodded, uncertain. “I think that there’s more. I need
to remember the rest.”

Aggie looked as if she would disagree, but after a long indecisive moment, she passed
me another bottle of water. “One bottle should have kept you in the dream place for
many hours. No one has ever needed two.”

I stopped with the bottle halfway to my mouth, watching her.

“Did your grandmother have yellow eyes like you?” she asked

Holding her gaze, I drank the drugged water down. Recapped the bottle. Handed it back
to her. “Yes. So did my father.”

“I see.” And I was afraid that she did indeed see. Before I could comment, the dreams
took me again.

* * *

The
yunega
was in a cave up the hill beyond
Elisi
’s house, bound and naked. I squatted before him, bare feet on the smooth clay floor,
my hands clasped between my knees. “Did you see what they did to him, to your friend?”
I asked. “They will do much worse to you.” The man looked at me. He was
yunega
. He did not understand the speech of
Tsalagiyi
. He was staring at my face. It was still crusty with the traces of the blood of my
father. I wouldn’t wash it until my vengeance was done. I smiled. He shrank back against
the cave wall.