Dark Heir

“I pulled the sliver of wood from its bag. It burned some, but not much. Baldy was wearing the blood diamond, still coated with my blood, around his neck on its chain. And I launched up at him.” I reached out with my right hand, fingers and thumb miming the grip from that night, as if I still held the wood from the Blood Cross. “It pierced him, in his chest, just below the gem. His blood pulsed out. Up and over the gem, mixing with my blood, and then over the wood of the cross.”

“Mixing,” Molly said, her voice soft.

I nodded, realizing now that something had happened that night, something unexpected and unknown. “The spell broke. Baldy caught fire at the point where the Blood Cross touched him. He almost exploded with a white heat and flame. It consumed him from the wound out. My fingers flamed. My hair caught on fire. I remember the smell. All the vamps were dead. All the humans were either dead or dying, the motes of power from the wyrd spell still attacking them. But he hadn’t finished the spell. He never said it the third time to invoke it. But I didn’t know how to save the other humans.”

Angie Baby had told me to use the blood diamond to stop the magic. I’d had no idea how to do that, but I had no better ideas. My voice dropped as I recalled the last of that terrible night. “I pulled a silver vamp-killer and dug the necklace out of Baldy’s burned rib cage and held it up. And nothing happened. And I started this . . . this death laughter. The kind crazy people do when the world is ending,” I whispered, remembering the sound, remembering that Angie Baby had saved me and that I couldn’t say that aloud where others might hear. “The power of the dark spell stopped. And it flew back into the diamond. And all the children lived. And all the humans lived except Hicklin. I liked Hicklin. He was good people.”

“Oh, Jane,” Molly breathed.

Baldy’s spell wasn’t the same spell spoken by Santana, but it had contained the same kind of concentrated, enormous power. Power that had been gathered and shaped but never released. Was that unspoken spell like a weapon, primed and aimed but never fired? Was all that power still in the gem, waiting to be used? I opened my eyes. “I used the gem myself, didn’t I? When I wanted the gem to call back its power, it did. My will made it happen.”

Molly looked down at her hands, holding the cat, which had fallen asleep in her lap. After long moments, she nodded, the motion jerky, as if unwilling.

“I’m tied to it, aren’t I? Not just able to be tracked by it, but tied to it. Joined. The blood diamond and the bracelet that the Son of Darkness was wearing. And because of that, I’m tied to him.”

She murmured, “You are likely tied to the Blood Cross, and the bracelet, and the diamond.”

“So . . . what do I do?”

Molly shook her head. “I don’t know what. But I have a bad feeling that we’ll find out soon. And worse, Lachish may be able to see that you are tied to a black-arts artifact. She’ll know just how dangerous you are and how dangerous Joseph Santana is. And she may want to kill you for it.”

“She can try,” Eli said.

“The biggest failure of that night was that no one went back and beheaded the vamps,” I said. “I should have. It was my job.”

“You were hurt,” Eli said. “You had to get the children back to their parents.”

“So I didn’t finish my job. Making all this my fault.”

“Leo knew. It was the MOC’s ultimate responsibility,” Eli said. “The buck stopped with him. And he played a different game.”

“Game,” I said. “Vamps have always played games with human and witch lives. I doubt it’s changed much now. I have to wonder if it ever will.”

CHAPTER 13

Manis and Pedis and Gossiping About Boys

When Eli and I pulled away from the curb in front of my house it was after dark and we still had no idea where the murderer had laired during the day. We had no idea where he would attack that night. We hadn’t killed him, hadn’t even tracked him. And Molly had no idea how to keep me from being tracked by the blood diamond—which was in my gobag, to keep it away from Molly. Not that I believed she would give in to temptation and use it. Unless she thought she had a reason. Kinda like me, but way worse. I might be able to use the stored energies in the diamond to power . . . something. But Molly could use it, direct its energies like a precision tool, her death magics melding with it. And forever changing who she was. Her death magics told her that she should use it.

I saw Mol’s witch energies flow over the house, warding it as we drove away, her once blue-tinted power now shot through with other colors, none of them pretty.

I slumped down in the seat, pressing Jodi’s cell number on speed dial. There was no answer and it went to voice mail. “Calling you at the woo-woo room,” I said, and pressed END before hitting her office number. When she answered, she should have sounded professional. Instead she sounded snarked out. “What the hell do you want?”

“Dang caller ID,” I muttered. “Update for law enforcement. We found an old lair today. No bad guy there.” A true-dead vamp lying on the floor, but there were a lot of reasons not to tell her just then: the jurisdiction was murky on dead vamps, Jodi didn’t have time to work up a cold case, and she wouldn’t care about dead vamps while humans and witches were in danger. “Alex is working through old property records for possible lairs for the suspect. Leo is searching for hard copies for the same and for human blood-servants who might still be alive. Eli and I are heading to vamp HQ. Did you have your little talk with Leo yet? And if so, did you play nice or did you haul him in to NOPD in the trunk of a car in broad daylight?”

“That interview has yet to take place.” Jodi’s voice rose into a snarl. “The governor nixed it. So you tell the MOC that the city’s in lockdown thanks to his fangheads. That means no tax money from restaurants, hotels, or other sources of tourist income. Meanwhile, every cop on payroll is on duty and riding the streets, two to a car. It’s costing overtime—lots of overtime. Law enforcement morale is at a post-Katrina low at the same time that the populace as a whole are getting itchy trigger fingers.” Her words sped up and I held the cell out for Eli to hear better, though I doubted that he had missed anything so far.

“Every guns-and-ammo business in the city and most of the parish has sold out of silver-lead-mixed ammo and handguns, and inventory of high-powered rifles is down to single digits. Liquor sales are at an all-time high, making the populace trigger-happy and mean. And we’ve already pulled a dozen drunk and armed good ol’ boys off the streets. They’re in lockup now, making a racket I can hear in my office.”