Dark Heir

“I don’t—” Bruiser stopped. I could feel his breathing, hear his heartbeat. “I don’t think Leo can help. Not with this. Bethany would as soon kill Jane as heal her, and this would be beyond even her talents. Sabina is hurt from the lightning strike. But if we can’t find another way, then the Master of the City would be our last resort.”

“Aggie One Feather? Alex, see if they’re home.”

“Already tried. No answer, bro,” the tinny voice said. “I left a message on Aggie’s cell, but there’s a powwow in North Carolina this coming weekend. They may have left for that already.”

Car doors closed and the engine started. The tires rolled over something and Bruiser shifted on the seat. I couldn’t help the sound that wrenched from my lungs, a groan-moan-sob-croak.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he whispered. “So sorry.”

I thought I felt something touch my forehead, and I remembered the blessing he had given me before the witch circle, the feel of his Onorio magics skittering over my skin. Hadn’t helped much then. Didn’t help now.

We hit another bump and pain pummeled me. I went blissfully unconscious again. Sometime later, pain woke me. “Alex. Send me directions to something. Anything,” Eli said. “Yeah? Got it. Let’s go.”

Bruiser murmured through my own personal hell of pain, reminding me, “Find the Gray Between, love. Find the Gray Between.” This time I didn’t go unconscious but was alert through the drive, trying to follow Bruiser’s orders, trying to open the Gray Between, to become calm enough to sink deep inside, to the well of my own power, and shift and heal. But every breath was agony. Every heartbeat was torture. And the magical implements cooked into my palms/paws were the problem.

My pelt was scorched and my skin was blistered and breaking and draining in places, blackened and crisp in others. My burned muscles were contracted into knots of charley horses. On the drive, I started shivering as my body went into shock. I was losing fluids so fast that I’d die soon if we didn’t figure out something.

“Where are we?” Bruiser asked.

“Coliseum Place Baptist Church on Camp Street,” Alex said over speakerphone, just as the SUV came to a stop. “It was burned sometime after Hurricane Katrina. It’s sacred ground but not a place of worship anymore. It’s slated to be torn down because it’s unstable and likely to fall apart, but the historical society is trying to save it, and so there’s an injunction.”

Eli said, “This may work. Good thinking, Alex.” His voice got louder as he spoke over his shoulder to Bruiser. “Janie was partially healed when she landed in a baptismal pool at The Church. And once before, I saw Janie enter a sacred place in Natchez, the foundation of an old church. It was only an outline of the foundations, the rest burned to the ground. But when Jane walked through the front door, she disappeared into a mist and met with a woman. An Elder of the Choctaws, I think.”

I remembered that. I remembered how to do that, to enter sacred ground. But that time I’d had a coin to call the Elder to me, and an invitation to do so. This time I had . . . dangerous stuff gripped in the medium-well-cooked meat of my hands. And something just as dangerous—under the right circumstance—in my pocket. Something that had been part of that previous night, that previous journey into a different place and time, a place of dreams and the past and an old, old power.

Bruiser got us out of the backseat, and I managed not to scream too much, but my shivering was worse, much worse, even with the heat of an Onorio holding me. “Get the iron out of my pocket,” I said. Or nonsense syllables close to that. Mind-reading, Eli knelt and rummaged in what was left of my pocket, coming up with the fused iron discs. “Take me into the church grounds and lay me down.” The tremors of each footstep jolted through me as Bruiser, even with his Onorio grace, walked across the uneven ground toward the church. It was raining again, far harder. I could feel the cold as it seeped into me, even if I couldn’t feel the raindrops hit.

Beast? I called, sounding desperate. She didn’t answer.

To distract myself from the pain, I went over the formula I had once used to call a holy woman to me. This time I wasn’t calling a holy woman. I was trying to heal myself. The words had been . . . Long years past was cold iron, blood, three cursed trees, and lightning. Red iron will set you free. Followed by: Shadow and blood are a dark light, buried beneath the ground.

Maybe it had been . . . a prophecy of sorts?

Red iron and trees. I had determined the tree part to refer to the three cursed trees of Calvary that the Sons of Darkness, the witch sons of Judas Iscariot, had used to bring their father back to life. According to vamp-myth, the wood from the three crosses had been mixed with human sacrifice, witch blood, and black magic to create the first immortal, and when the sons ate the reanimated flesh of their father, they became the first two blood drinkers and fathers of all the vampires who followed. I had a piece of that in the cooked meat of my fused fists. The red iron had been iron from the spikes used to attach the three men crucified that night to the trees. According to vamp legend, the new vamps had melted them down and created a single massive spike, which had become a weapon to control vamps. Got that too.

Shadow and blood are a dark light. Once again there was shadow and my blood, in this place, just as there had been shadow and blood on Golgotha the evening the Christ died. There had been his blood on the tree. And on the cold iron that pierced his flesh, holding him there. The same cold iron that Eli had pulled from my pocket. In Natchez, I had figured out that the crosses and melted-down iron had been used for transformative black magic, magic that had turned Naturaleza vamps into spidey vamps—vampires that had transmogrified into things that were genetic amalgamations of insects, reptiles, and . . . and . . . horrid things. And the iron had given the things control over time.

I went over the whole saying again, trying to decide how much to use, how much to alter, knowing that I was crafting a spell I couldn’t use because I wasn’t a witch. Long years past was cold iron, blood, three cursed trees, and lightning. Red iron will set you free. Then: Shadow and blood are a dark light, buried beneath the ground.

I had everything I needed. I had a sliver of the crosses and pieces of the iron, blood. I had a soul home, also beneath the ground. And I had the blood diamond, which was a dark light if there had ever been one.