Dark Queen

“Not,” he whispered, the sound creaking with tight breath. I dropped my head to his, forehead to forehead. “But I’m going to kill Lucrezia Borgia.”

“My mistress. Lucrezia Borgia is true-dead,” Tex said. “I took her conniving, snake-belly-low life and her head.”

“Good. I think she broke my rib,” Eli said. “Sucker hurts.”

I rolled Eli up into my arms. He grunted with pain, tightening up to protect the hurt rib. “Babe,” he wheezed. “Next time? We’ve got a backboard.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry.” I tucked his head against my shoulder and carried him up the stairs and into the house as if he was the most valuable thing in the universe.

“Results of this duel are acceptable to the Onorios.”

CHAPTER 18

Rainbow-Colored Baby Bunnies and Lollipops

The body of Lucrezia Borgia disappeared, probably back to the EVs’ ship in deeper water. I spared a single thought that the Carusos might be aboard, forced into making the dead into revenants. But I just, flat-out, didn’t care.

Instead, after I deposited Eli in the vamps’ sleeping lair for a hit of Tex’s healing vamp blood, Sabina called me to the third floor. She stood in the center of the middle fighting octagonal and said, “The challenges to Jane Yellowrock have been met, all but one. This latest is for dominance over Clan Yellowrock, and that by Dominique Quessaire, formerly of Clan Arceneau, now secundo heir of Clan Des Citrons.”

Beast growled.

I snarled. Dominance duel. Holy crap. Time again did that battlefield slowdown, where everything happened in overlays of understanding and images. Dominique moved up the stairs and through the scions and blood-servants like a snake through tall grass. I put my hands in my pockets, slouched as if irked by inconsequentials, and looked the challenger over with jaded eyes.

Dominique stank of lemons and fresh human blood. She was dressed in fighting leathers dyed the color of her blond hair, which she wore long and down. On her neck was a necklace of small gray moonstones the same shade as her pale eyes. On the necklace was a pendant, a ruby wired with gold.

I pulled on Beast’s sight and saw the tracery of old, faint magics in the moonstones, empty of power now, but once likely used by a moon witch. The ruby, however, was something more powerful. Intense red motes flashed through it, motes that seemed to call to my own magics. I felt a pull in my midsection, as if I’d swallowed a bag of iron filings, as if a magnet drew on them. Pain slithered through my belly. I almost stepped back. I’d seen a ruby like that before. In fact, I had a ruby like it in my box of magical trinkets.

And if there were two of them, what did they do?

What could they do together? Ahhh. Dominique might know or guess that I had the other ruby.

I had been challenged by Dominique Quessaire. Dominique was a traitor. She had waited to try for my head until after I had something she wanted—my clan and my people. My ruby? Had she been looking for it in Leo’s office when she beat holes in the wall? And Adrianna—her lover whom I had finally killed true-dead—had been after le breloque, the crown of the Dark Queen, when I took her head. Dominique wanted the most important objets de magie. Dominique had visions of grandeur.

She had seen me fight, knew what I could do. She was good with two swords, even better with one. Better than me by far with any weapon.

My mind circled back to Adan. Adan had been playing with time. The last moments of the battle that had freed Adan flashed through my memory. There was something there, something important about using magic. Time slapped back to full speed.

“As the last member of the inner circle of Clan Yellowrock able to wield a weapon, I accept for my master,” Koun said. He was standing behind me and I had no idea when he had appeared there. “Weapons,” he said, “one sword, one battle-ax, no armor.”

“I will fight the Blood Master of Clan Yellowrock and no other,” Dominique said. Her tone and her stance were insolent and there was a trace of something in her light eyes that said she expected to win by cheating. “First blood.”

“Challenge accepted. One blade each, no longer than fourteen inches. Claws and talons,” I said. And then I smiled, letting my lips expose my teeth slowly in threat. Beast peered through my eyes. “Jewelry is acceptable.”

Dominique blinked, realizing that I knew about the ruby, knew she was going to cheat with magic against the most important rule in Sangre Duello and dominance fights. And that I didn’t care.

“Here and now,” Dominique said.

I gave her a jut of my head and drew on Beast energies. Everyone cleared the floor space and I moved to Eli. My partner and second was holding a Desert Eagle .50- caliber handgun at his thigh. He holstered it with a tiny click. “You sure about this?” he asked.

“Yeah. I’m sure.” Because I had remembered the thing I had learned when Adan was in a cage, harnessing the timewalking magic of an arcenciel. Stealing her magic. If I could feel the pull of Dominique’s ruby, then I could use its power. And the motes of power in my middle said I could take all its magic for myself. I was becoming the Dark Queen in truth.

“What blade?” he asked.

“The Mughal blade.”

Eli paused in helping me prepare for this fight. “Why?”

“Because the myth that came with it said that the blade has magic in it. It will deflect or lessen the mortal blow of any enemy. Whoever owns the blade can’t die in battle.”

Eli shook his head, not happy with my answer. He preferred weapons that blew things up.

I glanced around, noting where everyone was. Ro Moore was standing in front of a window that had once been a fire escape. Her gaze went from the fighting rings to the roof below and back, watching for anyone who might want to interrupt the proceedings with a hand grenade. I hadn’t even considered that possibility. I was getting lax. Good thing I had trained smart people. I nodded to her. She nodded toward the windows at the back of the room with a faint smile.

I looked there and saw Brenda Rezk guarding that possible access. Yeah. Smart people. Go, me.

I was ready. Beast? I thought. I need some claws. Just claws.

Jane needs killing teeth and power of half-form.

Not this time. Just claws.

My fingers went knobby and hard and I gasped. The tips burned as if I’d stuck them into red-hot coals. Beast’s retractile claws re-formed at the tips, ten killing claws. My fingertips oozed blood and I licked it off. Ouch, I thought at her.

Deep inside, she said, Five and five killing claws. She sniffed at me, and turned away.

I stepped into the fighting ring and closed my eyes, breathing in Eli’s Zen and my skinwalker meditation. Letting my body relax and tense all at once, just as if I was going to shift into a difficult form. The bell sounded. My eyes opened and Dominique attacked, shouting, “Ralentissez!”

A thin line of power shot from her necklace. A slowdown spell, hidden in the ruby and released with a wyrd. Time slowed down. The five pointed energies in my middle reached out and wrapped around the line of magic. Altered it. Pulled it in.

Incorporated the wyrd and the energies into my own.

A silvered vamp-killer stabbed at me.

I bent around the blade in a dance move. Stepped into her reach. Clawed her face with one hand, slicing deeply into her waist with the Mughal blade. I yanked on the blade, cutting into her.

Dominique screamed, that piercing vamp ululation that said she was dying. Her eyes flashed scarlet. Her fangs schnicked down. She ripped away, tearing my blade from her flesh. She disappeared with a tiny pop of sound. Toward the window where Brenda Rezk stood guard. Dominique landed, ripped at Brenda. Tearing out her throat. Dived through the window. Landed on the roof below with a loud, hollow thump. Brenda fell, her blood a pulsing spray, her head at an awful angle. Titus’s second caught Brenda’s body. Eased her to the floor. It was too late. There was not enough left to save.

Koun leaped after the traitor. Paused in the window. His gaze tracked Dominique, his body and tattoos catching the lights in strange blue and black shadows on pale skin. He watched her run, his head following her progress around and toward the water at the front of the house. A moment later, he tilted his head to me and said, “In spite of the angel of death, all is well, my master.”