Dark Heir

Near the fire was a shotgun and a pistol and a knife I recognized. Edoda’s knife, the bone hilt crosshatched for a good grip. Beside that knife was another knife I knew, the curved blade sheathed in the red velvet. Bruiser’s gift. I was surprised to see it there. And then again, I wasn’t. Were my father’s weapons part of the decision I had to make? Was Bruiser part of it? Clothes of a War Woman. Weapons of a warrior from my father’s time. Arcane weapons from my own time. A killing weapon from Bruiser. What else?

I looked up from the weapons lit by the steady flames into the arc of the smooth cavern roof with its hanging stalactites, and down where the ceiling curved into the walls. Shadows moved where the stalagmites rose from the floor, wet and glistening. But the stone that composed my soul home was different. Where it was once pale, it was now dark.

My cavern was damaged, as if fire—or lightning—had left soot and char all over it, black and gray and dirty, with the undamaged wall showing through in places, white and palest of greens and creamy grays in what looked like strange symbols, nonpatterns that I didn’t recognize right at first. I tilted my head and walked around the pit, studying the shapes, and they resolved into hundreds of representations of the Blood Cross scorched into the walls at every angle, as if the lightning and the cross had been spinning around, engaged in a dance—or some arcane form of combat.

I held my right fist up to the wall. The crosses covered and overlapped the tracery image of veins left from the injury I had suffered to my hand, the injury of the wyrd spell Santana had thrown at me. I’d never been completely healed of it, and, perhaps the wound had made my spirit and my soul home susceptible to further damage.

Directly overhead was more white and dark, this time in the shape of wings, white wings and dark wings, as if a snowy owl and a crow fought there.

From the far wall, I saw a flash of light and felt a burning shiver as if from the lightning, smelled again the odd scent, strong for a moment, inorganic and acidic. Though I had never smelled it before, I identified the smell. Limestone burning. My cave walls were being burned by the lightning. I understood what I was seeing and smelling. The sliver of the Blood Cross, the diamond, and the lightning were doing . . . something . . . in reality, and it was affecting me there, in the Gray Between. And perhaps in yet another reality where light and dark, chaos and order, were fighting for supremacy. Or maybe in another time, another moment.

Lightning flashed again, a sear I felt on my skin, hot and burning and then gone.

The shape the lightning left behind was of the cross itself, not the sliver that I carried, but the portion that Sabina kept safe in her lair. I remembered the cross, the way it had felt in my hand, the wood unshaped, tightly grained, the two pieces not much more than rough stakes, splintered ends smoothed and oiled. The wire that wrapped the two pieces, shaping them into a cross, was metal, green with verdigris. The cross had been weighty, much heavier than it appeared, and old. Ancient. It had been made from the three broken crosses that the sons of Ioudas Issachar had used to bring their father—dead and buried—back to a semblance of life. And thereby they created the first vampire.

Another flash of light burst, this almost directly overhead, near the imprint of the wings, leaving behind the stronger scent of scorched limestone. As it burst, my face burned, a flash of heat. The stink of burning hair and skin overlaid the smell of burning rock.

I understood that my body was under attack in reality, and my soul home was under attack in the Gray Between, but I wasn’t certain if the lightning was my enemy, or the blood diamond, or the Blood Cross. Or Santana. Of if the spell had gone horribly awry. Or maybe all of them.

It was possible that I had been pricked by the cross in real time, real life; Sabina had warned me that if I was wounded by it, the weapon might kill me. But it wasn’t as if she’d been certain. And I’d wielded the sliver of the cross before. So if the cross wasn’t my enemy, then that made the diamond my enemy. And maybe the lightning had provided the power to whatever was going on in a battle between light and dark, chaos and order.

Two more flashes lit the roof of my cavern in bright light. Sooo . . . who directed the lightning? And if my soul home was ruined, would I be dead in the human world too? Or, conversely, could I survive if I was there, in my soul home, when my body died in the other reality?

There were too many metaphysical questions and not a single answer. I had no idea what any of it might mean in my current state of spiritual darkness. Or maybe spiritual wandering. Whatever. What really mattered was that . . . I hadn’t blessed or warded my soul home in . . . ever. I wasn’t even sure how to do that. Until now, I hadn’t considered that I might need to do that. It—the spiritual heart of me—wasn’t purified or strong. I had left it weak and unshielded in my neglect and my wandering.

Decide, Beast thought at me. Decide whether you will be War Woman or killer.

“Aren’t they the same thing?” I asked, surprised.

There was another flash, another pain, a second. A third. These coming much sooner than the last. Much closer to me. And much more agonizing. Burns always are. I hissed as the pain spread. Real time was speeding up again. I was almost out of nontime. Which was kinda funny on the face of it. I didn’t have long to figure out what to do in a choice where both sides seemed to be the same thing.

Except . . .

A War Woman always fought for something. For family. Clan. Land. Tribe. Honor. Justice. Important things.

Killers just killed. For sport. Money. Without thought or caring. Killers killed without . . . spiritual purpose. Except that my grandmother was a War Woman. She had tortured the two men who killed my father and raped my mother. How did vengeance fit into the paradigm?

I had killed sentient beings of multiple species. Werewolves. Vampires who were in the devoveo. But they might have been able to return to sanity with enough time and the proper blood to drink. Brute and I had discussed that once, but no answer had been forthcoming. I had killed humans. In every case of killing, they were trying to kill me at the time, but I had never tried to save them. Never tried to find another, nonlethal way to stop them. Never tried to give them a chance at . . . What? Redemption? Change? A different life? And if I had given them a chance to change, I’d probably be dead now because, honestly, people didn’t often change.

Except the taxi driver. Zareb. He had changed. Turned his life around. Sooo. Had I therefore sent people into the next life unprepared for the light, worthy only of the darkness and chaos? Had I deprived them of the opportunity to transform? To find redemption?