Mercy Blade (Jane Yellowrock #3)

“We could have fun while you tried.”

I burst out laughing and Deon opened the door for me to enter. Deon was gayer than a San Francisco stripper, but he’d taken a liking to me and recently begun flirting in the most outrageous manner. “Troll in?” I asked.

“No, tartlet. The boss man, as opposed to the mythical vampiric boss woman I hope one day to meet and feed, even if she is a she and not a he, went to buy liquor. I have your laundry ready. Want to play in it? We could dump it on the kitchen island and roll around—”

“Deon.”

He shut his mouth and switched his hips with a satisfied air, crooked a finger, and led me to the kitchen. “I got you present, girl. Replace them ugly cotton thing you wear on your Amazonian bottom,” he said over his shoulder, “with silk and spandex pretties.”

“Forget it,” I said, sputtering laughter. “Give it to one of the girls.”

He canted his head slyly. “You will like. I have the best of taste in all things fine.”

“Not happening, Deon.”

He laughed, the sound happy and devious all at once, floating back to me from the dining room. “You will love the way silk feel on that lovely bottom—”

“Stop talking about my bottom,” I said, following him through the dining room into the spotless kitchen.

“Shh. You wake the girls and they need beauty sleep. Where was I? Oh.” He held up a black wisp that shimmered in the light.

I stopped dead in my tracks. “Oh. Oh my.”

Back home, I took a shower to wash off the remaining stink of anger and aggression and flopped on the bed. This time, thanks to releasing my pent-up adrenaline fighting and shooting, and the calming results of chatting with Deon, I was asleep instantly.

I dreamed, knowing it was a dream, but was unable to wake. The sound of laughter bounced off the walls of my mind, the werewolf laughter of Roul Molyneux, though I couldn’t see him. I turned around and around, seeing Booger’s place, though only as my mind saw it, not as it had been. It was dark and empty, and the chain walls were down, enclosing me. This time there were no doors. Roul’s laughter echoed hollowly, rattling the chains with soft tinks all around me.

A man dropped from the ceiling to land on the balls of his feet and his palms, catlike, but his face was a dog face, tongue lolling and canines gleaming. He stood and his face went from comical to snarling in a heartbeat. Other men landed beside and behind him, stood and began to move forward, spreading out, boxing me in. They were all wolf-faced and naked with casual unconcern. Naked and erect.Instant fear shot through me, faster than my heartbeat, pricking on my nerves. I couldn’t breathe, suffocating. I reached for my vamp-killer. As in the way of dreams, I wasn’t armed.

An electric frisson of magic danced along my skin, as if the air crackled with lightning. I jerked, trying to wake, knowing I was dreaming, but I was trapped. Heart pounding, I tried to back away, but my feet didn’t, couldn’t, move. One of the men leaped at me, covering the space between us in an instant. Fangs bared, long and vicious.

The scene changed, leaving me in a dark room lit by fire. Confused, I sucked a breath and darted my eyes around. No wolfmen. I was sitting, my bottom, feet, and one hand on a clay floor, the room around me dim with dancing shadows. Fear grabbed me, so intense that I heaved. Stomach contents rising fast. Choking me. I swallowed hard, eyes wide in the murk.

A low bed with a thin mattress was against the far wall, a table and overturned stools close by. Windows with moonlight beyond, cloth curtains that moved in the night breeze. The walls were made of horizontal logs, mud chinked. Shadows moved on them, thrown up by the flames in the fireplace. Clothes and gear hung on hooks on the walls and sat on shelves. The shadow of a man, bearded, lunged back and forth, back and forth. Yunega. White man. Hurting etsi, my mother. Her sobs were quiet. Louder was the slapslapslap of his body hitting hers. Another white man stood ready. Waiting his turn. The smells of the yunega suffocated me. Unwashed bodies. Fried food. The smell of bad teeth and wet feathers. And the smell of man stuff on the air.

Watching the shadows, I curled my hands, one on the clay floor of our house. It was cool and smooth. One on warm cloth. Damp and warm. I didn’t want to look. But I turned my head in the dream, and looked beside me. A man lay on the floor, face up. He wore a long woven shirt of many colors, a wide cloth belt holding it closed. Blood covered his shirt, looking black in the dim light.

His eyes were open, staring, as if watching the shadows on the walls and ceiling. Yellow eyes like mine. Edoda. My father. They had killed him. Yunega shot him. He died. Edoda died, before he could change, the change that would have saved him. Only his hands had shifted into his beast, the claws of the tlvdatsi.

“My turn. Get off her. My turn.”

“When I’m done,” he panted. “You can have her when I’m done.”

I shuddered. Dry-eyed. Silent. Staring at Edoda. I opened my hand and placed it over the wound on my father’s chest, into his blood. Warm. Still warm. I lifted it and wiped Edoda’s blood down my face, my cold fingers moving slowly. His blood chilled quickly, bringing the coldness of the dead into my skin. Hand back into the blood; it was cooler now. Cooling so fast. I wiped my fingers down my face again, trailing the coolness of death. Placed my hand back into his blood.

“Hey, kid. What the hell are you doing?”

I looked up. Into the face of yunega. Blue eyes. Snarled hair. Stink of white man. I lifted my hand from my father’s blood, and painted my face. Blood stripes. Holding his eyes. Promising his death.

I hurled myself from the bed. Hit the floor shoulder first. Rolled. Slammed into the wall. And woke up. Disoriented by the dream.

No. Not a dream. A memory.I made it to the bathroom and threw up everything that was left from breakfast. Threw up. Over and over. Until the dry heaves were all that was left and my gut was wringing with pain. Tears and snot coated my face. I spat the last of the vomit from my mouth and collapsed on the floor by the toilet. Sobbing silently, gasping for breath.

I had forgotten. Forgotten the men who murdered my father. Raped my mother. Forgotten the bloody stripes on my face, cooling and sticky. How had I forgotten? How had I ever forgotten?

The wolves had reminded me. Circling me. Naked and predatory. Like the men who killed my father and raped my mother. Shudders shook through me, rattling my bones. How had I ever forgotten?

Long minutes later, I reached up and flushed the toilet, pulled myself to my feet and into the shower again, taking my toothbrush and paste with me. I stayed there a long time.

Darkness fell while I was dressing. I could smell steak broiling and the tang of whisky beneath it. Evangelina was home, cooking dinner that included something for me, as she didn’t eat much meat. I wasn’t in the mood for food. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the image of the man moving on the log wall. The blue eyes of the watcher staring down into mine. Smelled gunpowder and semen and sweat and wet feathers. I shivered in the cool house as the air conditioner came on.

I had a hard night ahead of me and I needed calories, needed calm. So I shoved the dream into a dark place in my mind, knowing it would come again, knowing there was nothing I could do to avenge my mother or my father. It had been over a hundred years since my memory had been a reality. I was no longer a child denied vengeance and trapped inside the body of another, stronger creature. This time, I couldn’t hide away in Beast-form. I would have to live with it all. Sometimes, not knowing is a good thing.I shoved stakes into my hair, belted on a robe that had come with the house, and went barefooted to the kitchen. Beneath the robe, I wore the black silk wisps given to me by Deon. I wouldn’t have thought the spandex would stay in place or be the slightest bit comfortable, but they were, moving when I moved. I was going to hate admitting that to him. He’d gloat.

Evangelina was in the kitchen, drinking her whisky straight tonight, no ice, and humming a tune, her long red hair unbound and swinging as she danced to soft music, something Celtic and wild, with drums and trilling flute. She had lit scented candles and they fluttered as she moved, uncomfortably like the images in my dream, but much better smelling.

In the candlelight, Evangelina’s hair looked darker red than Molly’s, with streaks of rich brown in it, and she seemed to emit a soft reddish glow as she danced through the room, like a warm aura. She usually wore staid business suits but tonight Mol’s eldest sister was wearing a loose floral dress that swayed with her dancing and when she looked up at me she grinned and lifted the glass in a silent toast. The grin and the toast were surprising enough, as Evangelina didn’t exactly approve of the motorcycle mama her sister liked so much, but when she hooked her arm through mine and pulled me into her dance, I was more than surprised.

In my shock, my feet took their time finding balance and rhythm but three awkward steps later I compensated and stepped into the beat; I didn’t have a choice, it was dance or fall down. As soon as I was moving, Evangelina let go and swayed around the rectangular table and chairs. I stopped dancing but a half smile pulled at my face and some of the horror that still clung to me from the dream eased away, pushed back by her joy and her half drunkenness. Maybe it was a spell, an enchantment fashioned out of her laughter and the warm scent of whisky, but whatever it was, it eased the melancholy that was riding deep in my soul, the misery of the dream that was really much more. I didn’t like magic not my own, but this I welcomed. It was ... healing. I said, “It was a good day at the negotiations, I take it?”

When she rocked back her head and raised her arms in what might have been a victory dance, I smiled, seeing this stern, conservative woman so carefree. Evangelina was the eldest of the Everheart sisters, a decade older than I was, never married, fierce as a warrior, like Boadicea, the Celt warrior woman. She was also a businesswoman, logical, determined, judgmental, yet able to see a situation from all sides. I was scared to death of her. But I’d agreed to let her stay here because Molly had asked. I do a lot because Molly asks.

Evangelina and the council of New Orleans witches were in negotiations with a delegation from the vamp council about three things: their rights, safety, and legal compensation for the loss of their young to a nutso vamp who had killed witch children for decades as part of dark magic ceremonies, the same ones that had left me keeping a black magic, pink diamond in my safe. It made me feel good to see her so happy when she had such a dark job.