Shadow Rites

Leo might be ticked off that I gave information to her, info that she might turn against him soon. Which made me smile. It was always a pleasure to frustrate the MOC.

Still watching Adrianna, Ming said, “The man who took me from my lair was known to me. His name was Antoine.”

I drew in a breath, slowly, between my teeth. Antoine. Antoine Busho, or other spellings. The magic user who had read me the first time I came to New Orleans. He was dead. But . . . Antoine . . . Pieces began to fall into place in my brain. Rick had said that Marlene was Antoine’s wife, way back when I met the magic user. And Antoine was part of Ming’s being taken, kidnapped, tortured. Part of the spell that erupted in my palm, the spell that started all this crazy crap. And Marlene was his wife. And Tau . . . Tau was his daughter. The daughter of a magic user who had trained in a form that made him smell like something other than a witch. A shaman of some kind, maybe.

Ming said, “He had once been a chef of some repute, but his use of opiates had brought him low. He owned a diner where Benjamin and Riccard, my favorite blood-servants, often dined. Antoine was a magic user, of island and African descent, though his scent did not speak of witch. Because Benjamin and Riccard trusted him”—the scent of grief from rose from her—“I trusted him. He broke that trust, entered my lair, and pierced me with the point of a brooch. He had the assistance of Rafael and two Mithrans I did not see, whose scent I did not know.”

The number of Mithrans, even in an over-vamp-populated city like NOLA, was fairly limited. But then, the helpful, betraying vamps might have been from Atlanta, paving the way for the attempted takeover. Or unaligned vamps from a backwater clan. Heck, it could be anyone, even Euro Vamps . . . Could they have started plotting and scheming so early on a visit? Easy answer: Yes. They lived for centuries. They connived with the long view in mind.

“The pin and the brooch were spelled,” Ming continued, her voice strong but her grief unabated, “and when he threaded the pin through my flesh, I became compliant like a human who tastes Mithran blood and is addicted from the first moment. He cut my flesh and sprayed my blood throughout my lair, and overturned the furniture that it might appear I was taken by force, though I was agreeable to anything from the first moment I wore it. Even being put in a pit in a swamp, I was docile.”

She looked up at me, her eyes still vamped out, empty of emotion, dark, cold, harsh. Scary as heck. “I do not know why I was taken or why I was kept alive, but I remember much, and more returns to me. Antoine drank from me and I was unable to cloud his mind while the pin of the spelled brooch was upon me. He asked me questions about the Pellissier clan and about Leo and about his son and I answered. I had no gift for beguilement while pierced by the brooch.”

She transferred her gaze to Eli and it was as if a fifty-pound weight had been taken off my shoulders. She might not have been able to mesmerize humans while she was pinned, but she did now. And she was using that gift. “Eli. Derek. Don’t look at her.”

Both men flinched, hesitated, and turned away. No argument. How cool was that?

Ming said, “You spoil my entertainment, woman who smells of cat and dog. You are a shape-shifter?”

It was my turn to flinch and hesitate. But my secret wasn’t exactly a secret anymore. And if she knew what I was by my scent, then she might have met another skinwalker before. “Yes. You know of my kind.” I made it a statement instead of a question, hoping she would elucidate.

Ming simply shrugged, which baited and hooked me. And she knew it. She was good at this. Without answering she went on. “The water had not risen in the pit at that time, and it was dry. Antoine gave me humans to drink upon, a different one each time. They were the homeless, the addicted, the outcast members of society. I drank and they were taken away. But—” Her dark eyes filled with tears, bloody and thin, and they ran in slow trails down her perfect skin. “Then he brought a stray animal. I did not wish to drink, but he commanded me. Every time he came he brought another one. I became sick. My blood dried up in my vessels. It was horrible, horrible, horrible.” She didn’t blink, didn’t move, and yet the tears ran in steady streams to drip off her cheeks and onto the black silk she wore.

“He fed me dogs. He made me drink from dogs . . . I had forgotten. The brooch let me forget. The brooch kept me mesmerized and drugged and . . . But I now remember. I remember.” Her tone said she was ready for vengeance, and she clenched her hands. She breathed, and it was a quaking breath, as if her lungs and throat wanted to collapse, and she breathed again, calming. “And then he vanished. Much . . . much . . . later, the girl came. She and another woman brought me two humans and chained them in the pit with me.

“I tried to be gentle with them, but it had been so long . . . I was so hungry . . . And the witch girl did not return for such a long time, long after I had drained the humans and killed them, after I ate their rotted flesh and sucked dry their bones.” Ming blinked and took a breath, exhaled. I smelled blood on her breath this time, the scent of Katie, the most powerful vampire in New Orleans, and the only other one I knew of who had eaten dead flesh and survived. Katie hadn’t been sane, even by vamp standards, in a long time, but she had kept her promise to feed Ming after she got here. Point to Katie.

“The girl drank from me then. But my mind was not true. I do not know why she drank or what she gained from my words or my blood, except that something in her changed with each taste of me.

“She left the dead in the pit with me. And I ate.” Ming closed her eyes. “Eventually she brought me more humans. One a month, on the full moon, when I was so starved that I had no control. These she threw in with me, into the water, where they thrashed and the stink of their fear was an aphrodisiac to me.