Dark Heir

“There are witches in this city,” Sabina said. “I am a worker of magic, much like the witches. It is possible that we all may work together in this task. Ask your friends to give you entrée to Lachish. She will have ways to follow the trail of Joses Bar-Judas. Perhaps she and I may blend our workings together and capture him.”

“Why don’t you try to contact Lachish?”

Sabina tilted her head, and she made a little hummm sound, totally human and disconcerting. “With the accords under way, I had not considered . . . Perhaps I shall.”

My voice toneless and carefully not accusatory, I managed to ask the most important question. “How long have you known that Joses was a prisoner here?”

Sabina didn’t reply right away, but poured more tea into her cup. She didn’t drink it with sugar or milk, but straight up. Finally she said, “I knew that he had been taken. I knew that he was raving. I watched as Bethany tasted his blood to determine the cause.” Sabina smiled slightly, but not in pleasure. “I stood aside as Bethany lost her sanity with that one sip. And I stood aside as Amaury, master of the city before Leo came to power, brought him here and secured him in place.” Her dark eyes pinned me to my chair. “I did nothing to intervene. It was my decision, when . . . events . . . led me by the nose like a horse in a twitch. I had no choice then, not with what I learned, not with what might have happened in his lair. I have no choice now.”

I wasn’t sure about having a choice, or what choices she was talking about. I was totally confused, but I wasn’t going to argue with her. I had seen a horse in a twitch at the barn at the children’s home—the horse’s upper lip and lower nose twisted by a rope to hold the horse still for medical procedures. It wasn’t permanently debilitating, but it looked horribly painful. It was horribly painful. A horse would do anything—anything—for the one who held the twitch.

So taking Joses Bar-Judas prisoner had been a decision forced on the vamps due to his loss of mental control? He had become a rogue vamp? Or forced on Sabina by Bethany’s going insane after drinking Joses’ blood? Forced on her by Amaury? And others?

“He cannot be brought to true-death, Jane Yellowrock. He is all that we have to bargain with. He is all that we have to keep his brother, Shimon Bar-Judas, at bay. And Shimon has always been the more dangerous of the two.”

I decided once again that not replying was the better part of valor and said, “Thank you for the tea, Sabina Delgado y Aguilera, outclan priestess of the Mithrans. I will”—I searched for a polite, nonbinding phrase—“carefully consider all that has been said here.”

She replied to my cautious words. “You think to elude my command. The Master of the City must have the Son of Darkness back in his custody, alive, and soon, or many tribulations may befall. Consider carefully, before you refuse my order, the possibilities that may arise from your decision to obey or defy.” Sabina settled the cup into its saucer and lifted one taloned finger, the nail more than two inches long.

I hadn’t seen the talons extrude from the small flaps of skin at the ends of her fingers, just as I hadn’t seen her eyes vamp out, which might mean she was pulling on her compulsive powers. I pressed my own nails into my palms, the pain keeping me alert and in my own mind, listening.

“You are attempting to construct a Witch Conclave here, in New Orleans, yes?” she asked.

I nodded, wary.

“Witches will come from all over the States and Leo will play gracious host to them and to Lachish, searching for rapprochement.” She pronounced it in the French manner, the T silent, as all the vamps did.

I nodded again and Sabina smiled at me, the predator that she was peering at me through vamped eyes, her one finger still uplifted. She said, “Shimon Bar-Judas will know soon about the witches who plan to conclave here. If his brother, Joses, remains free, and they join forces, all you have sought to accomplish may be destroyed. Joses and his brother will bide in the dark, and then they will destroy every witch they can find.”

She raised a second finger. “The remaining witches may then attack the Mithrans, believing that Leo set upon them.” A third finger rose. “The Europeans, who watch us carefully, may choose that moment to attack the Mithrans of this city, claiming the desire to assist Joses, and if they win, they will take the hunting grounds and cattle.” That meant the land and the humans. Gotcha.

“If we are overcome, the Europeans will kill the cattle and the witches and all that have magic and power. All these things are possible future results of your actions or inactions.”

She lifted a final finger. “If you succeed in beheading Joses Bar-Judas and bringing him to true-death, as I know you desire, his brother will bring war upon us in vengeance. The Mithrans of Europe, Africa, South America, and Asia may well join him to ensure the death of Leo and the Pellissier clan. All that you do, every judgment you make, is weighted with outcomes in the future. The near future. All possibilities exist for you now, but every step you take to one end or another brings you and us closer to one of these finalities. The safest course of action is to save Joses and bring him to me, an act that you cannot accomplish alone. You must have help. Mithran help. Witch help. And it must be soon.” She inclined her head and lowered her hand with the accusing fingers.

I remembered a moment of folded time in my shower not so long ago. Each falling droplet of water had been arrested in time and space as my Beast warped reality and bent time to her—to our—will and need. Each droplet had contained one still shot of a possible future, the outcomes to each action on my part paused and waiting. When time returned, I had staked Leo and he had nearly died. It was possible that Joses’ getting free had been foretold in those droplets. It was also possible that my staking Leo had, in some way, contributed to the variety of futures that opened out before me, none of them good. Tiny fingers of fear skittered down my spine on icy hands. My fault? It could be. So much was my fault, the result of my actions or decisions.

Sabina smiled, and there was nothing remotely human left in her expression. “You understand. Good. You are dismissed,” she said.

That was another thing I hated about vamps, that whole royal attitude, telling me when I could come and go. “Thanks a heap,” I muttered, and forced my legs to push me up from the chair and to the door, my muscles quivering with reaction. I closed the door behind me.