Shadow Rites

“And you’re sure they raped the woman upstairs?” He nodded to the darkness up the narrow steps, barely visible in the oil lantern light. Questioning my judgment.

My voice dropped even lower. “I smell her on them. They stink of her blood and pain and fear, not fun and games.”

Eli nodded at that, musing. His scent altered to acceptance. “Good enough for me. Do we free the girl and leave the mess or call the police? And if we call the cops, do we wait?”

I bent to sniff closer, recognizing something I’d have realized sooner if I hadn’t been so caught up in memories and rage. “Tau,” I said. “They smelled like Tau and Marlene. They helped to care for Ming of Mearkanis in the pit. Brothers, half brothers. Maybe I should have kept them conscious and questioned them before I . . .” Before I cut them up. Beast withdrew from the forefront of my mind, prowling away. Satisfied. But I wasn’t. I looked down at my hands. The hands of a killer. A maimer.

A memory flashed before me, of a blade sliding slow, down through the bones of an arm as he jerked and thrashed. Heard a man screaming. Saw blood flash, crimson against white flesh. Then it was gone. And I knew that I—or my grandmother—had done this exact thing before. When I was five. When I helped to torture and kill the men who raped my mother and killed my father.

Eli said shortly, “Shit happens in battle. You don’t think. You just do. And if you’re lucky, you survive to fight another day.”

But this was now, and . . . I was guilty. I knew it. Something inside me tightened and twisted, tangling up. “Call the police,” I pointed to the grimy ancient flip phone cell near the cooking brazier. “On that. I’ll free the girl.”

“I’ll free her. She needs to know a man saved her. And your face is kinda scary right now.”

I touched my jaw with my knobby fingers and felt pelt. Upper and lower canines too long for cat or human. I grunted. Blinked. Saw again the ancient memory of the man I had helped to kill, so long ago. Bucking against the blades. I had just punished these two men, in part, because of the murder and rape that were nearly two hundred years gone. As if the little girl I had been was still alive and well inside me.

“Don’t touch anything,” Eli added. “We won’t be staying.”

He dialed 911, gave the dispatcher the address, and, without identifying himself, gave a quick description of what to expect, ending with the words, “There’s a girl upstairs. She’s been held captive. Used. We’re setting her free, but she won’t be able to walk. She needs care.” Eli wiped the cell free of prints and set it down where he’d found it, the dispatcher’s voice asking questions to the empty air.

He went up the stairs and the girl began a panicked moaning, a muffled “Hunh-hunh-hunh” behind a gag.

“It’s okay,” Eli said. “I’m here to set you free. Not to hurt you. An ambulance is on the way. You’re safe now.” And he said it again. And again. Over and over. When he came back down the stairs, he was grim and smelled of fury and impotence. The human girl was free and crying, her voice hoarse and dry. In the distance sounded sirens. Eli looked around and said, “You were right.” He analyzed the scene. The men. “Totally right about everything. There’s no sign of female habitation down here. She’s been a prisoner. Nothing here but porn mags and video games.”

“No electricity,” I said, thinking clearly again. “As if they’re squatting in their mama’s house? Weird.”

Eli and I left through the doorless front opening, stepped over the door, and raced to the SUV. Alex had the vehicle running and pulled out of the empty drive before we could close the doors. At a sedate pace, he crossed the next intersection and then turned left on the one after. Weaving through the silent streets, he headed uptown, back to the French Quarter, passing cop cars, an ambulance, and two Harleys ridden by local bike gang members. I missed Bitsa fiercely, but I also knew that missing the bike was just one way of not thinking about the girl, tied to the bed, at the mercy of the men.

I looked away, out the window, into the night. We had come to track Tau and Marlene. And instead of finding them, I had cut up their . . . brothers? Sons? Whatever. “We could have questioned them,” I said again. “About Tau. And Marlene.”

“I take it that whatever went down in there wasn’t on the action plan for the night?” Alex asked.

“No,” Eli replied. “And we lost the chance to learn something. But Janie saved a kidnapped girl. Sometimes, even in the middle of war, we do God’s work, no matter what.”

I thought about those words as I stared out the window. War Women. We do God’s work, his vengeance. Whether he wants us to or not. I reached into myself and found the memory of Jane, the human-looking part of myself, of ourselves, though I was quite certain that I had never been human. Not at all.

I climbed across the seat and into the back of the SUV, where I found towels, washcloths, and a bottle of water in a rucksack. I stripped, washed up, and redressed in stretchy pants and a tee. I also found my human shape and let myself flow back into it. It hurt this time, as if in direct proportion to the previous, painless half shift, the agony ripping along my nerves like tiny knives cutting through me, scoring my bones. When I came to myself, I was gasping, grunting softly.

In the backseat, Eli asked, “You okay, Janie?” overly unconcerned.

“Ducky,” I managed, sounding human. I wiped my boots as well as I was able and pulled them on too. My stomach growled and I said, “I could eat.”