Shadow Rites: A Jane Yellowrock Novel (18 page)

The woad ring in her teeth, Beast backed partway down the pillar and then leaped, free-falling toward the cave floor twenty feet below. Where a silver snake with one huge green eye was coiled, looking up at us, ready to strike.

You Can Try, Witch

Midair, Beast whirled her heavy tail and torqued her body, pushing off the pillar with her back paws, launching herself out and to the side. In a movement worthy of a kung fu special effects movie, she spat out the ring and whipped her body around, catching the snake behind the head. She bit down. Metal and bone crunched, green blood splattered and filled her mouth. Beast whipped her whole body side to side, lashing the snake, thrashing its head against the floor, breaking its spine in a dozen places. Death tremors twitched through its long tail. The emerald slit pupil in the single green eye widened and went still.

The woad ring had gone dull and grayish. The stink of burned hair disappeared. The snake was dead.

Just to be certain, Beast ripped out the snake’s vertebra and spat bone, green blood, and silver scales to the floor. She settled to the cave floor to groom herself. Her tongue was rough and coarse, and pulling green blood and blue woad off her pelt.

Oookaaay. I can’t complain.

Beast is best hunter.

Yes, you are. But we’re still left with my hand all bent back and broken. And
what
is with that stink of burning hair?

We can shift now. We can become Beast. The Gray Between is ours again,
she thought.

I studied the ceiling. The dark mote was still there, but instead of a strong pulsing, it was fluttering, as if Beast’s rough treatment of the woad ring and removal of the chain had damaged it somehow. I remembered it spurting, as if it was alive and had been injured. I pushed to our feet and moved slowly to the other side of the fire pit, to see the mote from that side. There was a small blackened mark there, like a scar.

I went back and pawed the ring. Part of it was missing.
What happened to the blue ring?

Beast ate it
.

Was that wise?

Tasted of blood of Anzu.
Beast chuckled.
Makes Beast strong
.

I didn’t like the idea of her swallowing the magic of another creature, but it was a bit late to argue about it.
What about the smell of Bethany?
Bethany was a vamp priestess and she took the term
nutcase
to new and whacky heights.

Bethany meant to watch, like ambush hunter. Bethany has not done so.

So she, what? Forgot about us?

Beast does not know.

But . . . her magic. Is it dead?

Beast looked away, bored with the topic. Or she didn’t know the answer and wouldn’t let me know that she didn’t know. Dang cat.
How about the burning hair?
I asked again.

Jane has hair.

Yeah. Dang cat was messing with me.
Fine. Ducky. Let’s try this thing.

I padded back to the fire pit and lay down on the cool stone floor. Closing my eyes, I searched out, not my own DNA, but the vision of myself in my human form. I felt the Gray Between as it erupted out of my breastbone, high,
near my throat, and spread around me with cool, sparkling radiance I could feel, even sightless. The shift began with my spine and ribs, bones cracking, snapping in two, and reforming. I opened my mouth to scream, but had no breath for one, my lungs half collapsed as they changed and reshaped. This change was as painful as my shifts used to be, and as slow, a ripping, tearing transformation. I opened my eyes as the bones in my left hand and arm, and even higher in my shoulder, began to reform, reshape, realign, and snapped into place. Human.
Better,
I murmured to Beast.
Much better
.

And then I remembered one of the
Tsalagi
words for the double helix of genetic material. The snake.
I-na-du.
The snake in the heart of each creature. And I had to wonder whose DNA Beast had just broken. Or healed.

*   *   *

I came to in the sweat house, the coals burned low, into deep red heat, the rocks discharging the same heat outward. The first thing I noticed was that I was pain free. Salt-caked. Stinking. I rolled my body over and took a good long look at my hand. Human. Mine. I checked out my feet and knees and thighs, and peeked down through the neck opening of the sweat-soaked gown. Human.
Thank God
.

My BFF was gone. Aggie was sitting against the far wall, her back ramrod straight and pressed firmly to the wood, as far from me as she could get and still be inside the sweat house with me. I cleared my throat, which felt like two pieces of chamois buffing together. I was seriously dehydrated, and when I spoke, my voice was coarse and gritty. “So. Now you know my deepest darkest secrets.”

“I doubt that.” She sounded wry, not terrified.

“Well, all the ones that are fit to be aired in public.”

She made a sound that was part snort, part a sound like
pshaw
, and all Cherokee.

I remembered my grandmother making that sound and I smiled, or what passed for a smile made by lips dried in mummified wrinkles. With all the formality at my disposal and with my heart in my throat, I said, “Thank you, Aggie One Feather—
Egini Agayvlge i
—of the
ani waya
, Wolf Clan of the Eastern Cherokee, Elder of the
Tsalagi
.”

“You are welcome in my sweat house and in my home,
Dalonige i digadoli
, of the
ani gilogi
, Panther Clan, through your father and grandmother, but also of the
ani sahoni
, Blue Holly Clan, through your mother, who must also be honored.” She gave me a slow, low bow, as ceremonial and ancient in its formality as anything I remembered from my toddler years among the
Tsalagi
. The kind of bow offered to an honored guest who might come to trade or bring news from a distant clan. As formal and measured as a bow offered to one who brought news of war.

Pushing up to a full sitting position, I managed a much less graceful bow in return, but did succeed in dropping my head lower than hers had gone. As was proper to an Elder and to a shaman of The People.

She gave me a wisp of a smile in return. “Let’s get you showered and inside the house. You need to eat and sleep and drink a great deal of water.”

*   *   *

Before we left, I ate enough at Aggie’s table to feed three people and drank so much water there, and on the way home, that running trips to the bathroom woke me several times, which was the only thing that kept me from sleeping away the rest of the day. Not even the squeals of running children, giggles, and Alex’s teenaged irritation at the noise and interruptions had any effect. On some level, I must have heard it all, but I slept through everything, and woke at sunset, the last rays of scarlet light brightening the street outside my window. My hand was normal, my Beast was purring contentedly inside me, and I was pain free, if stiff as a board. I couldn’t ask much more of living than that.

However, I shuffled to the bathroom and caught sight of myself in the mirror over the sink. I decided that the myth of zombies was really true, as the black-eyed, sallow-skinned, dull-haired, uncoordinated thing in the mirror didn’t lie.

In the shower, I turned the water to scald and slid to the floor, letting the hot water beat down on me, washing away the last of the salty scum I had missed in Aggie’s outdoor shower, the new stink of sleep sweat, and some of
the muzzy-headedness. When there was no more hot water, I crawled from the shower, dried off, combed my wet hair, dried and braided it, and dressed, remembering the clothes that had been piled at Aggie’s sweat house fire. Pretty sure they had contributed to the stink of burning herbs and roots and other scents. Being Enforcer was hard on a girl’s wardrobe. Good thing I wasn’t a fashion horse, a woman who loved clothes and shopping and all that stuff. My lifestyle would have left me in permanent misery.

I dressed in a loose oversized gray tee and black leggings, and pulled on socks, because my feet were unaccountably cold, before leaving the bedroom for the kitchen and whatever animal protein I smelled cooking there. I passed Molly, who said, “We need to talk and scan you for external magics as soon you can be coherent. Which, at the moment, looks like never, but I’m withholding judgment.”

With a grunt, I lifted a hand in her direction as I slid into a kitchen chair. Eli was lining up a plate full of beef shish kebabs, with pineapple and onion and three kinds of peppers, heavy on the beef, which was cooked rare and bloody and perfect. I sat and breathed out, “If you weren’t already adopted, I’d adopt you right now, just for this.”

“That’s what all the old women say. The young ones want to bump bones.”

“Uncle Eli, what’s bump bones?” Angie Baby asked from the living room.

“Crap,” he whispered.

That woke me up. I stuffed a huge gobbet of beef into my mouth to keep my laughter hidden from my godchild. Eli swatted me with his dishrag, smacking my head without even aiming. “These are shish kebabs, Angie.” He indicated a platter on the edge of the table as she walked up. “And when you remove them from the stick, and they bounce, that’s bumping bones.”

I nearly choked trying to swallow the beef half-chewed and not laugh at the same time.

“Uncle Eli,” Molly said from the living room, censure and glee in her tone.

“Sorry,” he said. “Best I could do on short notice. I’ll do better next time.”

“I suggest there be no next time.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “That would clearly be the best decision on my part.”

“Mmmm,” Molly said. “Come back here, Angie.”

“I’m bored. I wanna watch a movie on the big screen.”

“I wan’ watch moo!” EJ parroted.

“I’ll be working in my room,” Alex muttered, gathering up all his gear and traipsing upstairs.

“So, what are you going to do about the vampire?” Eli asked, trying to divert attention from his own faux pas to me. “You know. The one who wants to live here.”

“What?” Molly asked, whirling to face us again.

I shoved in another hunk of beef and chewed, my eyes promising all sorts of retribution on Eli. He laughed easily, happily—that rare mirth that would have been part of Eli all the time if Uncle Sam and military service hadn’t ripped all the innocence out of him.

Molly shooed Angie to silence and started a Disney movie, listening as Eli explained all about the situation with Edmund and his new, forced position in my life. Things were happening behind her intent expression, thoughts caught in her silence, reflected in her expression before she turned to me. She took a chair beside me and propped her head on her fist, her elbow on the table, red curls flopping over to one side, a little longer than the last visit, but still far shorter than I was accustomed to. “A fanghead primo isn’t a bad idea,” she said.

I nearly suffocated on a half-chewed globule of beef. Eli’s happy smile faded away. I choked the beef back up and said around it as I chewed, “Whatchu mea’?”

“I’ve been studying the Vampira Carta in my spare time,” she said, offhand. “Well, the twins and I have. And Lachish Dutillet.”

Lachish was the head of the New Orleans coven, the woman leading the Witch Conclave, and she was in charge of vamp/witch reconciliation. She was a stout, stern middle-aged woman who looked like someone’s grandmother, but was really a magical force to be reckoned with. The twins, Elizabeth and Boadicea, were two of Mol’s remaining witch sisters and were always in trouble. Or making trouble.
Or stirring up trouble. Despite which, I liked them both a lot.

The Vampira Carta and its codicils contained the rule of law for the Mithran vampires and it contained protocols and rules for proper behavior between vampires, scions, blood-servants, blood-slaves, and cattle—the demeaning term for the nonbound humans whom vamps once hunted, sometimes for sport. The Carta provided proper procedures and conventions for everything, including challenging and killing each other in a duel called by lots of names: the Blood Challenge, the Sangre Duello, and the Blood Duel, to name three.

“A Blood Challenge,” Mol said, her eyes squinted, unblinking in thought, “Enforcer-to-Enforcer, or primo-to-primo, for first blood, is a common proper protocol for visiting vamps. It’s one acceptable first step to one master issuing a Blood Challenge to another. But if the first blood challenger loses on the first pass, they usually don’t offer formal challenge to the death.”

A fight to the death, with a sword, was a challenge I was destined to lose, which reminded me of the scar. I reached up under my arm and pressed the flesh there. I felt a ridge of tissue, but it was no longer sore or tender. The healing in the sweat house had given better results than I had expected, short of a true shift to another form.

“Having a primo makes you a master,” Molly said, “while still being Enforcer to Leo. It would put the challenger in a difficult place protocol-wise. A primo or an Enforcer can fight that first battle for any master. Is Edmund any good?”

“Yes,” Eli said. “Better than his position would indicate. He’s a former Blood Master who lost his position to an inferior fanghead, inferior in terms of vampire power, compulsion, and fighting ability. We’ve always thought he gave up the position instead of fighting for it, for reasons that have never made sense to us.”

“Interesting,” Molly said, picking at the pile of pineapple and onion and peppers I wasn’t eating. “One has to wonder why he fell so low, and why he’s still so low. Machinations, maybe? Leo doing what Leo does best?”

“Plans within plans,” I said.

“And this fanghead primo. He has no place to sleep? How about the bolt-hole/safe room you turned into weapons storage?” She was referring to the long narrow room under the stairs, hidden by a bookcase in the living room.

“We secured the entrance from under the house, but I could unsecure it,” Eli said. “I could put a lock on this side of the bookcase opening so he couldn’t get in through there. That would leave the house safe from him. There’s enough room to put a cot there, but no place for his belongings.”

“You are not seriously considering having Edmund stay here,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Big Evan would have a cow.”

“There is that,” Molly agreed. “Evan has cows often.” She pushed away from the table and wandered into the living room, where the kids were watching some animated, improbable movie, where the girls were all wimps, waiting to be saved by a prince.