Dark Heir

I had perhaps even been seeking the darkness and chaos myself, depending on things and people instead of on the spiritual. Had that weakened me, allowed my soul to be damaged? Crap. I had been stupid. This wasn’t good. Not at all.

Choose, Beast said.

“War Woman,” I said.

* * *

A light so bright it stole all my vision engulfed me. I was in the air, hanging in the midst of a lightning bolt. Pain shook me. I burned. I was on fire. My body caught in the fiery lightning, unable to move. My skin blackening and falling off my muscles, exposing my bones. But unlike in my soul home, there was blood.

Forcing my muscles to obey, I brought my hands together, the sliver of the cross, the glowing-white blood diamond, and my blood, what little hadn’t boiled away, meeting. Touching. I made a double fist around the weapons and gripped tight with hands that were on fire. My entire body spasmed in a seizure as some new magic, some new power, met the lightning. Together they seared into me.

The lightning bolt swatted me the rest of the way out of the witch circle. Over Molly’s and Sabina’s heads. Through the magics of the middle circle. Through the wards of the outer circle. Smashed me against the earth. Bowled me over and over in a sickening rush of melting skin and clacking bones. As I rolled, the fire was snuffed out. Pain continued to explode on and through me. I was pain, as if the sensation were a sentient being, alive and seething.

The Gray Between took me again. A different kind of pain ripped through me, colder, icy. Pelt sprouted through the burned flesh. I came to rest on the grass, in the dark, against the front wheel of a vehicle.

The last echo of thunder shook the earth. Rain strafed the ground. Hard, drumming rain.

A shot rang out. Reverberating through the beating downpour.

Women screamed.

My bones twisted and snapped. My ribs wouldn’t expand and I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t even die. The pain was beyond my own comprehension. I was in the midst of the shift into . . . something. But I was burned, burned, burned. Bruiser lifted me. I knew by the feel of him in the Gray Between. My body twisted in his arms, writhing in agony. Let me die. But the words didn’t form. My mouth wasn’t shaped right for speech.

But, oddly, I could still hear.

Rain decreasing. Slamming of doors. Engine starting. Sound of tires over something.

“Hospital?”

“What good would that do us?”

“Vet?” That was Eli, worry underlying the snark.

“Church?”

“Alex? Closest church?”

A tinny voice said, “Closest is upriver. Eight miles.”

“I say back to the French Quarter. The St. Louis Cathedral. I mean, if you want a church, that’s a big-assed church.”

“Do it.”

My body lurched and rocked and I finally inhaled, the breath so painful it felt like I was still breathing lightning. I tried to scream, tried to flail against the pain. I couldn’t. Every slightest movement sent pain rocketing through me, slicing through me. “Can’t get in the church,” I managed. “Will burn.” But it came out as “’An’ ’eeen urk. Iu urn.”

“Can you get the weapons and clothes off her?” Eli asked.

I felt pressure here and there on my body. “They’re burned into her flesh,” Bruiser said. “They’ll have to be cut out unless we get her to shift.”

I felt wetness on my back, the backs of my thighs. The only part of me that wasn’t screaming in pain. “Jane? She’s awake. Can you shift, Jane? Can you shift?!”

I reached into me. Nothing happened. Nothing. Something was wrong. “No,” I managed to say, but it came out, “Nuh.” My mouth was broken. “Nuh.”

“Hang on, Janie,” Bruiser whispered. “Hang on.” My consciousness slipped away in a haze of agony.

Much later I whispered, “KitKit?” the sound guttural and hoarse. I had no idea where that question came from, among all the ones I should have asked.

Bruiser laughed, though it sounded more like tears. “A little singed. Last time I saw her, she was in Molly’s arms.”

That was when I realized that Beast had asked. Beast. Speaking in English through my mouth. Or . . . maybe my mouth. Maybe something else.

“Flesh of Joses/Joseph?” I asked, sounding a bit more human.

“Gone. Burned to ashes by the lightning.”

Maybe that was a good thing, I thought. Or maybe not. Because there was still a way to call the SoD. Using the three hairs that Bruiser carried. Maybe we didn’t need the witches at all.

Once again, everything went black.

CHAPTER 27

Medium-Well-Cooked Meat

When Bruiser picked me up, I came to again. It was the altering level of pain that woke me. My eyes were open, slitted to see down along my body. I was in half-Beast form, but burned. Crispy critter. The phrase came to me, uttered once by a firefighter, back in the mountains, when he thought no one was listening. My blackened hands were clasped, half-human, half-paw, and were fused together, as if the muscles and juices had cooked them into that shape. Though I couldn’t feel them, I could see the glow of the white diamond through my flesh, and I knew I was holding the two magical items in a double fist sealed by burned flesh.

We were illegally parked directly in front of the St. Louis Cathedral, in the area marked off for foot traffic only. Bruiser was carrying me up the short flight of steps, through a downpour that rivaled Noah’s flood.

“Nuh. Nuh!” I shouted. But it came out in a whisper. The light in my hands exploded. I croaked out a scream. Writhed in Bruiser’s arms. He whirled and raced away from the front doors, back to the SUV, trailing a wisp of smoke. The light died. The pain that had spiraled up into some new height of agony died back down with the distance. But now, I felt cold, so cold.

“I’m such an ass!” Eli shouted, frustration and fear in his voice. “Janie tried once before to take the diamond into a holy place. It’s black magic. It burns.”

The sound of his fear made me reach out for the Gray Between. Nothing happened. I tried again. And again. Nothing worked. Beast? She didn’t answer. It was getting to be a bad habit. And now I was afraid too.

“What are our options?” Bruiser answered Eli, his voice thick with fear. “It’s seared into her body. Suggestions?”

“Leo? One of the priestesses?” Alex asked over the open cell’s speaker.