Dark Queen

“You not gonna say anything?” I asked.

Laconically, Eli said, “Figured that was your job, since you’re the one running away from us.”

I looked back. My partner was sitting in one of the rusted metal chairs we had picked up in a junk place somewhere, the kind with a frame made of a single length of metal pipe, and that rocked back and forth as the metal gave and returned to normal. But he wasn’t rocking. He was dressed in jeans and a zipped jacket. Boots. He looked good. Best brother I might ever have.

“I’ll be back.” Liar, liar, pants on fire. I’ll be dead, I thought to myself. Didn’t say it aloud. “I need some time.”

He nodded, that minuscule motion that was all Eli. He stood. “You’ll need these.” He stepped off the porch and walked to me. In his hand were two small white boxes. I opened the first one to see the medicine bag that had once belonged to my father. Symbol of the life I had lost, the violence I had found. “Ayatas says you should open it.”

Instead, I closed the box and Eli gave me the other one. In the bottom of the box was a stack of business cards. New. The logo at the top was of a crown stabbed through with two stakes. Below that were two lines.

JANE YELLOWROCK.

HAVE STAKES, WILL TRAVEL.

I smiled slightly and tucked a card into my jacket pocket. The boxes, I shoved into the saddlebag on top of my ammo and stakes. I tilted my head up at him. “I love you.”

“I love you too, Babe.”

“Tell Alex—” I stopped.

“I’ll tell him,” Eli said softly.

I rose up and dropped my weight down, kicking Bitsa to life. She spluttered for a while, so I pulled on my helmet. Adjusted the fit of the Benelli M4 so it didn’t pinch my butt. Looked up at Eli. His eyes were intense, calm, so . . . alive. I smiled. He smiled—a real smile full of joy, of family.

I gave Bitsa some gas. Pulled along the two-rut drive and out onto the street. Gave her some more gas. And took off for I-59. And the road to home.

EPILOGUE

I stopped several times for gas, for fluids. No food. I couldn’t keep anything down. I was getting sick fast. The cancer Beast had told me about was taking over. I could feel hard knots in my abdomen. I just hoped I’d get back to Appalachia in time to shift into her, so she could return to her beloved mountains. I wasn’t sure we’d ever be able to be Jane again, but Beast could take care of herself.

It was well after midnight when I stopped at a Hampton Inn and Suites off of 459, the loop around Birmingham, my butt tired, my body cold and weary. I paid for a room and took a long hot shower. Dressed in sweats. Climbed into bed. Couldn’t sleep. Belly hurting. The pain was kicking in.

At three forty-two I heard the rotors of a helicopter, distinctive, familiar. I lay in the dark, tears in my eyes. I hadn’t wanted this. Hadn’t wanted to make anyone else hurt. But I’d paid with a credit card. Of course I had. All along the route—Cokes, coffee, gas. Hadn’t even thought about it. And there was the Kid. Probably mad as hell, cussing, probably drinking energy drinks as he traced my passage north.

The knock sounded at my door. I got up. Stopped to look at myself in the mirror. I looked like crap. Well, I was dying. So there was that.

I opened the door.

Bruiser was leaning against the doorjamb. Dressed the way I’d first seen him the very first time in New Orleans. Dark slacks. Dress boots. Crisp shirt. Dark jacket. “Hiya,” I said.

Bruiser stared at me, as if memorizing my eyes, my mouth. But when he spoke, his voice was without inflection. “Soul visited. She says you’re sick. She says you smell like cancer.”

I took a slow breath. Watching him. “I’m dying. I’m guessing I have a few days. Two weeks at the most.”

“You’re heading back to the mountains. To the estate you bought today. Yesterday,” he amended, his face giving nothing away. “You intend to shift to Beast and let her live out her natural life span.”

“Pretty much.”

“And you didn’t think to share that with any of the people who love you?”

“I’d thought about it. A lot.” But I’d been alone most of my life. I had figured to end it that way. Not knowing what else to say, I shrugged.

Bruiser moved into the room. I let him. Shut the door. Crossed my arms over my chest, knowing I looked defensive. Not able to care.

Bruiser sat on the end of my bed, feet planted, legs splayed, hands clasped loosely between them. He looked at me. Silence and time and a weird sensation of space built between us, though neither of us moved. “Do you want to die?” he asked. When I didn’t answer, he said, “If you want to die, I’ll get on Grégoire’s Bell Huey and leave you to your business. But if you want to live, we have options. Well, one option.”

I frowned at him. “I’m not doing chemo. My RNA and DNA are screwed up. I’ve seen how fast this stuff is growing. How aggressive it is. And I have a feeling chemo might kill what’s left of the healthy cells faster than the cancer.” The cancer was growing in a star-shaped pattern. The Vitruvian Man pattern of my magic. I pressed my middle, feeling the lower points of the star. Magic cancer. Go, me.

“Chemo isn’t on the list.”

“Onorio magic?”

“Onorio magic kills and tames. My magic can’t heal. Not you. Not anyone.”

I frowned harder. “So what’s your plan?”

He shook his head. “Do you want to live or not?”

Tears spilled over. I nodded, the motion jerky. “Yes.”

“With me?”

I nodded again.

Bruiser’s smile appeared, so full of relief and joy that tears prickled at my lids. Gently he said, “Come live with me, and be my love, / And we will some new pleasures prove, / Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, / With silken lines, and silver hooks.” When I frowned harder he laughed and shook his head. Got up and opened the door.

Outside, leaning against the wall opposite, stood Ayatas FireWind. His hair was loose, a silken wave, his body relaxed. “May I enter your house, e-igido?”

I nodded. He entered and stood before me, his feet spread, his body rooted. “Where is the box Eli gave you before you left New Orleans? The box with our father’s medicine pouch in it.”

I lifted the box from the dresser and gave it to him. I wouldn’t need it anymore. Dead people didn’t need mementoes of the past. They were, themselves, mementoes of the past.

“Do you remember the note that said there was something in it if you ever needed it?” Aya asked.

I nodded.

“Did Eli Younger not tell you to open the pouch?”

I nodded. “I didn’t.”

“And do you remember the story I told about the soldier you stabbed on the Trail of Tears?”

I nodded again.

“Uni Lisi instructed me not to tell you this unless you needed to know, or if you asked. You didn’t ask. I would have told you had I known you were sick.” I watched my brother, his face calm, inscrutable as an Elder of the Tsalagi. “When you stabbed the soldier, he hit you very hard. Enough to break bone. To cause you to bleed great amounts of blood.” He opened the box and removed the medicine bag, handling it so carefully that the dry-rotted edges didn’t even dust away. “Uni Lisi put this in your father’s medicine bag that day.”

Gently he pulled out a leaf-wrapped something, the leaf cracking and falling to the floor, desiccated into nothing. Inside was a short length of broken bone and three teeth, a canine, an incisor, and one molar. Whole and complete. Child’s teeth. I blinked. The memory came back to me, a vision of a fist rising to my face. Fast. Powerful. Violent. The sensation of pain exploding through me. A bone-breaking agony that tore through my jaw as the memory forced its way to the surface. My breathing sped up. Then the memory fell away, leaving a place of darkness where it had been only a moment before, bright and vivid. I didn’t speak, staring at the small bit of bone and teeth.

“When you attacked the white man on the Trail of Tears, he hit you,” Aya said. “He knocked out your teeth. Broke out part of your jaw. Uni Lisi gathered it up and kept it, even after she forced you into the bobcat and sent you into the snow.” His golden eyes glinted at me. “They’re your teeth. It’s the only way she could think to convince you who you are. Who I am. She said that you’d remember. That you’d know.”