Dark Heir

Silently, I asked, Beast?

Beast is here.

Do you know where Santana is?

No. Angel Hayyel knows. Santana kills and eats his prey.

I thought about that for a moment, not quite sure what to do about the fact that Beast knew what an angel knew. Okay, that’s scary. And worse, Santana was eating his prey. Like skinwalkers did when they went insane and became u’tlun’ta. And Santana had tasted Immanuel’s blood—Immanuel, whom I had killed, who had been u’tlun’ta. And whom Leo had not drunk from. Leo’d had no idea his son had been eaten and replaced by a different being.

Diamond is yours for now, Beast thought at me. Will take you to vampire killer.

“Joses son of Judas Iscariot,” I said, pronouncing it Yo-sace, son of Ioudas Issachar. “Joses Bar-Judas.” Yosace Bar-Ioudas. “Joseph Santana.”

Nothing happened. Bruiser lifted one brow, Leo-like, and asked, “Blood?”

“It’s always blood, to you people.”

“To Mithrans. You are my people now.”

We might be about to go into battle with angel oversight and me in pelt instead of skin, but my heart warmed and the bubbles of happiness sizzled through me. I lifted the vamp-killer and nicked my padded fingertip, letting the blood dribble on the weapon, the three hairs, and Santana’s blood. “Joses, son of—”

The world exploded in white light and gray energies and we entered the Gray Between. My gut roiled and twisted and the nausea that hit was fiery. Seconds passed in the Gray as my abdomen kinked and coiled.

We came out of the Gray Between, propelled over a puddle of muddy goo and blood and part of a vampire, blond and broken. Dominique. Her throat ripped out. Santana’s face buried in her abdomen. Eating. Like an u’tlun’ta.

We hit, splashing through the thick mud, and rolled apart, facing the Son of Darkness.

Faster than the lightning that nearly killed me, Santana rose and unsheathed a sword. He was mostly healed but still missing part of one shoulder, that arm dangling, useless. With the single sword, he attacked. Bruiser blocked the strike with two swords and danced through the room, forcing Santana to follow him. Away from me. Swords clanged and rang on the night air. Steel flashed.

I lay propped against the wall and vomited blood. Brick wall, old brick. Heaving was horrible, but when it let up, I felt marginally better. Well enough to wonder why I was tossing cookies. I hadn’t bent time. I had just . . . utilized the blood diamond. Like a witch. Or it had used me . . . I vomited again, the stink of stomach acid and blood, foul. I wasn’t designed to use magic. Using magic was killing me little by little in ways that my skinwalker magics couldn’t fix.

I wiped my mouth and took in the smell of mold and vamp blood and vomit on the humid air. Light came from candles lit throughout the room. Old furniture, half-rotted and broken. No floor. The walls had been spray-painted by vandals. Roaches scuttled everywhere. Two dead humans were piled in the corner. Santana’s and Bruiser’s shadows swayed and gamboled in the flickering light. Through the broken-out window I saw the Royal Mojo Blues Company, and I knew that we were at one of Santana’s old properties, one we had eliminated early on in our search for the SoD.

Bruiser took a hit to his already damaged shoulder and dropped, rolled through the water and away. Using the brick, he shoved off with one leg and engaged Santana again. One sword to one sword.

I tucked the diamond into what was left of my bra and managed to get the M4 shotgun up and in place, against my shoulder, trying to find balance where I lay propped against the wall. Bruiser took a sword strike into his torso, through and through. Santana whipped the sword out, slashing. I stared, breathless, as Bruiser fell. I smelled Onorio blood and bowel and I pulled the trigger. Again. I hadn’t reloaded, and the rounds were gone, but Santana was on his knees. He might have been growling through his fangs, but I was deaf from the shotgun. Using the expensive weapon as a crutch, I levered myself up to a standing position and dropped the gun. I took the vamp-killer in both hands and stalked close. I took a steady backhand and swung at his neck, putting muscle into the strike. The blade caught in the cervical spine and the SoD fell over, taking the weapon with him, jerking it from my hands; his head was still attached. There was life in his eyes, but even vamps have spinal columns. I’d severed Santana’s.

“You alive?” I asked Bruiser, not looking. I couldn’t bear to see.

He chuckled without humor, graveyard comedy, the sound barely heard over the ringing in my ears. “I’ll live. But the recovery will mean a lot of time in bed.”

“Silver lining,” I said. Leaving the vamp-killer buried in Santana, I stumbled back to my M4 and reloaded, knobby fingers shaking. Bruiser laughed again, sounding more alive.

At the edges of the ringing in my ears, I heard sirens, the sound of traffic, and music. And voices, growing closer. “I like the new look,” he said.

“Yeah? No mirror handy. I’ll admire myself later.” I went back to Santana and leaned over him. I removed the bracelet from his wrist and stuck it into the other side of my bra, where it wouldn’t accidently touch the new weapon. I went back to Santana and aimed down at his body. I fired. Kept firing. Until I stood over the Son of Darkness, empty weapon pointed down onto a macerated pile of blood and meat simmering in silver on the ground. Head still attached. Heart still beating. Not dead. It was messy.

I tucked the M4 under an arm, and with my fully healed hands, I yanked up on a broken rib, exposing what might once have been a lung. It had the right shape but was deflated, full of silver-fléchette holes and blood. Beside it, something pulsed. Can anything survive without a heart? Leo had asked me. I put a foot on Santana’s shoulder and yanked the vamp-killer out of his spine, feeling, hearing, the crunch of bone. I’d done it before. It felt familiar, and maybe that was a bad thing, because I didn’t feel any guilt at the sensation. No guilt at all. Yeah. A bad thing.

Bare-handed, I shoved the lung aside and gathered up the heart in one hand. Using the vamp-killer like a filleting knife, I cut it out, a cold, gooey mess of silver-chewed muscle that stank of silver-charred-vamp. “Ick,” I muttered, letting blood drip through my fingers back into the goo that had once been Joses Bar-Judas / Joseph Santana. There wasn’t life in his eyes anymore, but I didn’t delude myself that he was dead. Not yet. I swished my bloody hand in a puddle. “Ick and yuck and eww.” I stood and slung my hand in the rain to finish the cleaning. I looked up and discovered that the building had no roof. From the hole I’d made in Santana’s flesh, a coil of silver-stinking smoke curled into the rain.