Shadow Rites

The Mercy Blade was an Anzu, birdlike beings once worshipped as storm gods. He had centuries of fighting experience and two long swords to my one. They sketched a cage of death around him that made my weapon useless. My body bladed, I slid my hand into my false pocket and pulled the silver-plated, steel-edged vamp-killer, a shorter blade than usual.

Seeing my new weapon, Gee rotated his blades even faster, an inhuman speed of glinting, blurred steel. His swords moved faster and faster, a flashing light all around him, our blades clanging, the scent of excitement from the spectators rising on the vamp and Anzu-scented air. Despite myself, I laughed, a low growl of soft sound. Within me, Beast’s four paws were pulled close in beneath her, a snarl on her face, her killing teeth showing. The growl in my laughter was hers.

The Circle was based on rotation, body angle, geometry, and foot placement, and my dancing shoes weren’t giving me purchase on the slick floor. The mats were too far to reach. Alive, that is. But then I didn’t intend to play fair. Though there were no rules in the Duel Sang—the Blood Challenge of the Mithrans—there was protocol and a long history of expectation. Cheating was my best weapon, but cheating only worked once.

Gee shifted his feet into an advanced move, one sword still whirling, the other a lunge, lunge, lunge as he tried to turn me away from the wall so he could circle me and force me into an open area. Not gonna happen. But sword fighting wasn’t second nature to me yet, and Gee had probably been born with a sword in his hand. Or hatched that way.

As Gee completed atajo and thrust, the most basic move, I swung into the lunge with my short blade as if to begin the move medio tajo y medio reves. But I caught one of Gee’s swords on the vamp-killer’s notch—barely a quarter inch deep—below the Ricasso and above the minuscule cross-guard. I swept the sword away, into the air. Gee started to react, but before he could, I slipped inside his blades. Brought my sword up in a thrust for his neck.

My left palm burned, agony detonating up my arm as I moved. Gee’s eyes blazed unusually blue, the color of the cloudless sky in the east, as the sun set in the west. Blue, blue, achingly blue.

I heard the clang of his right blade hitting the floor. In the same moment I felt the piercing burn under my right arm. Up. Inside me. I hissed in a breath that burned like ice and sleet and cutting steel. I caught a whiff of burning hair, acrid and vile.

I grunted and Gee swept his blade out of me, the sharp edge slicing into rib, the pain a frisson of shock.

Beast grunted softly. So did I.

From somewhere far away, I heard Eli say, “Jane?” Worry and shock in the tone. Then a demand, “Leo!”

Gee stepped back, sheathed his third sword, the short sword he had hidden in his clothes or with his glamour, and picked up his discarded long sword. His eyes were still blazing that strange, too-bright blue. Magic, I thought. The entire room had fallen silent, a shocked, nonbreathing silence, when you hear a pin drop.

Blood ran under my clothes, pooling in my waistband before trickling down and into the crack of my buttocks. Warm. Cooling in the cold air. A lot of blood. I reached again for Beast, knowing I needed to shift, to change into Puma concolor, my mountain lion form. I stretched down into the deeps of me. Beast hissed and snarled, chuffing as if at a challenge. Growling in anger. Dalonige i digadoli, she thought at me. My Cherokee name. Come.

But I couldn’t find her. Worse, I couldn’t find me. I fumbled deeper. I still couldn’t find the twined snake of genetic material, the snake at the heart of all creatures. It had changed recently, but it had always been there, my lifeline, my weapon of last resort. But this time the RNA strands, even twisted and damaged, weren’t there.

And I remembered again waking up to the tingle of magic in my fist, burning deep. The odd reek of burning hair. Oh, crap. What had happened?

Eli cursed, softly, far, far away.

Gee said, “Atajo, then step into medio proporcional. The European Mithrans will not allow you a trick. There is not one they have not used.”

I dropped to my knees. Raised my left hand. In the center of my palm, an eye appeared. A blue eye, as if it had been tattooed in the palm of my hand. It was staring up at me. I had seen it before, when I first met Gee DiMercy. It was his watching magic. As fast as it appeared, it faded, the blues going green, the color of the witches’ green magics, a green eye looking up at me, blinking, seeming to take in something about me, maybe more than I wanted anyone to know. And then it faded further, like an old tattoo, dispersing into my skin or vaporizing into the air.

A line of red soaked from my pants and spread beside my knee. The stink of burning hair faded, to be replaced by the stench of human fear and shame and my blood. Odd.

“Jane,” Eli said. Toneless. Combat voice. I heard the familiar schnick of a nine-mil being readied for firing.

“I smell Jane’s blood,” Leo growled. He was suddenly standing beside Gee and Eli, vamped out. His black eyes on me at his feet.

A drop of blood fell from my waist and landed in the scarlet pool on the floor at my knee. I lifted my eyes to Eli. His face was expressionless, harder than stone. The weapon was in both hands, pointing beyond me. “This is bad,” I whispered. Eli shifted his aim, a minuscule change.

Gee initiated a move, the lights glinting on his sword, his feet shifting into an advanced move. He is trying to kill me.

Eli fired.

Gee’s body snapped, as if he had been hit with the tip of a whip. Leo shouted. And Gee simply fell to the floor beside me. I sat down, my strength draining away, and looked into Gee’s face, where he was gasping, trying to find breath. I picked up the single dark blue feather that rocked lightly beside him, the only evidence that his glamours had nearly failed when he was shot. I tucked it into the opening of his shirt.