Broken Soul: A Jane Yellowrock Novel (31 page)

I took a round midcenter, just right of my navel. Another penetrated my left shoulder. Beast screamed. I fell at Derek’s feet and he leaped over me, still attacking Peregrinus, firing the weapon that shattered the stillness of the room and boomed against my eardrums. Bethany rose from the Devil, the priestess’ face and clothes covered with blood. The Devil stared sightlessly at the beams overhead, her swords out to the sides, her legs bent and limp, like a fallen angel of death on the clay of the earth. She no longer had a throat, just the bones of a spine. She was no longer a threat.

Bethany stood beside me, her arms out to the sides, screaming. Or, I was pretty sure she was screaming. Her head was back, her mouth was open, and her eyes glittered with fury. But the gun ripped into the air, stealing the sound, and then there was a flash of light, the scintillation of smoky wings, a flash of
blacked snake tail. Peregrinus pulled reality around him in a wash of flashing energies. He was gone, the bodies of the Devil and Batildis with him, shadows on the move. Derek raced after, his men chasing behind.

I lay on the floor, cradling the Judge, the weapon that I hadn’t even fired yet, as Derek’s men raced after their boss. I was feeling too weak for the wounds—unless a round had hit something important, had bisected or ruptured something. Like the descending aorta or the big artery that feeds the liver. Funny. I couldn’t remember the name of the artery. The cramps that resulted from playing with time hit me and I curled tight in the fetal position, gasping.

Beast?
I said.

She didn’t answer, which could mean something good or could mean something bad. I was facing the front of the room, and I saw Bethany stop screaming. She ripped the silver chain from Leo’s wrists and ankles and picked him up, placing him below the thing on the wall, holding the MOC’s head like a baby’s or a lover’s. As she raised back up, she paused and tore the thing’s leg open. With her teeth. A trickle of black blood fell from the fresh wound into Leo’s mouth. He shook as if an electric pulse had hit him. He vamped out and swallowed.

Bethany wiped her thumb through the black trickle and placed it into Grégoire’s mouth. He didn’t respond and she slapped him hard, rocking his head, before adding another trickle. And another. He took a breath, a wet, grinding sound like rubber over sand. She repeated the action with Katie. All three vamps were stirring. Bethany then ripped her own wrist and offered it to Leo, who latched on and drank. Grégoire, looking like an ill, bloodless child, took her other wrist. Katie crawled up Bethany and bit into her throat. Three mostly naked and blood-smeared vamps, all with their torsos cut open and gaping, feeding on the priestess.
Ick
. If I’d had breath, I might have said so, or laughed. Instead, the candlelight fluttered and telescoped down into a pinhole of vision, centered on the thing on the wall. It was staring at me. And I had a bad feeling that it knew what I was and that it wanted me. For dinner.

My last sight was of gray and black motes rising to obscure my vision.
Took you long enough,
I thought to Beast.

Beast was busy,
she thought back.

And then I remembered the
arcenciel
. It had been here.
Bethany hadn’t taken her or ridden her or whatever. But the pocket watches that were hanging on the crucified thing . . . Yeah, pocket watches. I’d last seen them in use in Natchez. And all the ones I’d managed to get hold of were in my safe-deposit boxes.

Now some were hung on the wall in the dungeon of the Master of the City of New Orleans and most of the Southeast. I had to wonder, as the last of the light shriveled down to a bright pinprick, where Leo had gotten his pocket watches. From Natchez? Or from my bank? Which would imply that the MOC had way more power in the human and financial world than I had known. I needed time to check all that out. Because if Leo had gotten into my boxes . . . that would totally suck.

The last of the light disappeared.

A Bucket Full of Snakes

I came to in a room I didn’t recognize. A chandelier hung over me, one of the expensive ones, lead crystal and real gold gilt, polished and so brilliant that the light reflecting back from each facet hurt my eyes. The ceiling overhead was painted like the Sistine Chapel, or another fancy cathedral in Italy, with angels and humans sitting on clouds, faces etched with ecstasy. Vampires with wings flew among the happy group, fangs out. Weird. Vamps were weird. Their art was weirder.

I took a breath. It hurt so bad that I groaned, then coughed, which hurt even worse. I wrapped my arms around my middle, feeling cold blood on my flesh. Oh yeah. Right. I probably died. Again. This was getting old. Cats had nine lives, but I had already pushed that score into unknown territory and I had to wonder how many times I could die until the one time I didn’t get shifted in time.

Time.

I blinked, remembering. Beast had done something with time. Not just speeding me up, but taking me
outside
of time. A time bubble that let me do stuff inside it while the world didn’t go on without me. Folded time. My guts twisted into a knot and then yanked tight. I pressed into my middle, kneading, but the charley horse only seemed to get bigger.

I tried to stretch out and thought my insides would rip in two.
Beast?

Jane must lie still. And wait.

Wait? I can’t breathe. I’m dying here.

Breast chuffed at me.
Jane is not dying. Jane has air. Jane should think of
time.

In the deeps of my soul home, Beast looked away, bored. She was lying in front of the fire pit, flames casting light and leaping shadows across her.

Time. Great.
I fought to relax, to not panic, and closed my eyes.

I had actually seen a time bubble once, or maybe a time loop. I had been working with Molly way back when, and we had found a time loop in an old house that had been diagnosed as having a poltergeist. Wrong. It had a vampire stuck in a time loop, in a time bubble, with a witch. I had always been aware that time slowed down in battle. Soldiers had reported that phenomenon from time immemorial. But this was different. More distinct. More intense. Longer lasting. Now Beast and I had more control over the experience. Now Beast could do something like slow down time, fold time, at will. Or place us in a bubble at will. Freaky stuff.

Unfortunately, it looked like I would be the one to pay the price for the time shifts, not Beast.

I managed to get an elbow out and rolled over slightly, so I could see. I was on a bed, in a room with some light. Fighting panic, I pulled a pillow to my middle and shoved it hard against me. I was able to inhale. A long moment later I exhaled, slowly, slowly. My guts roiled like a bucket full of snakes. I pushed down on the nausea, hard. It would be really bad if I threw up right now. I took another breath and this time, I smelled Del everywhere, in the coverlet, on the pillows, permeating the air. This was her bedroom.

I coughed again. Stuff came up. Too tired to lift my head, I spat it onto the covers beside me. Old blood, black and phlegmy. Totally gross. Old blood meant that I hadn’t shifted totally. If I’d shifted, any blood in my system would have been absorbed by the shift and rearranged inside me. In a total shift, nothing got wasted. But in a partial shift, I was starting to realize, things could be way different. Things like my level of pain, and the degree of my body’s change, and the functions of my brain.

“How are you?”

I tilted my head to see Adelaide staring at me, but her head was at an angle that made my stomach roil. I closed my eyes. From behind the darkness of my lids I said, “I’m sick as a dog. How are you?”

“Alive. Thanks to your help. And thanks to the priestess.”

“And Derek. Last time I saw him he was chasing Peregrinus.”

“Peregrinus got away,” she said shortly.

I swallowed and the nausea faded just a hint. I could hear Del moving around the room. Cleaning up my mess. “The others?” I managed to ask.

“Leo and his heir are well. Grégoire is recuperating. Derek is injured, but will survive, as will most of his men. Your wolf raced away, last seen leaping through the front entry. And . . . and Wrassler. He said to give you his thanks.” I felt the mattress beneath me shift, which made sickness rise again. I swallowed it back down, desperate not to be sick, desperate to hear Del’s report. I pressed the pillow harder into me. “Leo has promised him the best of prosthetics for his leg. His arm may heal.”

I opened my eyes to see Del sitting on the edge of the bed. “How many dead and injured?” I asked.

Del sighed. “Of Peregrinus’ fighters, ten dead and left to rot. Of ours, seven dead, two of them Derek’s men. Nine injured, one critically. Four humans missing.”

“Missing?” I focused on her face. Missing didn’t sound right. Why would anyone be missing?

I realized I had spoken the question aloud when she said, “We don’t know. But it has something to do with Bethany. After she got all the Mithrans fed, she disappeared. And she took some of our people with her.”

I thought about that while I gathered my strength and pushed up with my arms, swiveling to sit upright, my knees held close, pressing the pillow into me as hard as I could. Del placed pillows behind me and I rested back on them. I was in a bedroom, a lacy, silken chamber done in shades of gold and cream and touches of sapphire. A nine-millimeter handgun—not one of mine—lay on the bedside table. The room looked like Del, all soft and reserved but with hidden surprises that could hurt you. “Sorry about the spread,” I said, my breath coming easier. “What time is it?”

She shrugged and crossed her arms over her middle. “It’s washable. And it’s nearly three in the morning.”

I could hear the vibration of generators. “I’ll have to deal with the power situation.”

Del nodded. I realized that we both were trying to avoid
dealing with the reality. So I took a slow, deep breath and asked, “I’m guessing that everyone knows about the thing on the wall of Leo’s dungeon.” Del looked away. “What was it?
Who
was it?”

She cursed softly, smelling of worry and fear. While she debated on telling me the truth or an artful lie, I managed to get my knees to uncurl an inch, and touched my belly. It was still hard, and now ached. I should never do that again.
Never
. And certainly never in the middle of a battle.

The gesture elegant and lissome, Del dropped her arms and lifted her head, her shoulders relaxing, as if freeing herself from a prison. “They called him Yo-sace, Bar-Ioudas. Joses, son of Judas, in English. He is a Son of Darkness. A child of Ioudas Issachar.” She stood and walked to the door, looking elegant and delicate and all the things I would never be, blond and beautiful and graceful. She stopped at the door and looked back at me. “This changes so many things. The presence of Joses Bar-Judas, as a prisoner here, makes it quite likely that, rather than parley with them, we will go to war with the Europeans.”

Shock made my chest ache again.
Leo
. Leo had known. The Son was Leo’s prisoner. Leo had been . . . drinking from him. That was why the MOC was so strong. Why his primo could be saved—or brought back to life—and turned into an Onorio—because Leo had been made uberstrong by the blood of the Son. And why Grégoire’s twin primos, Brandon and Brian, had been turned into Onorios.

Reach had known or guessed Leo’s secrets and had given them up to Peregrinus. And this one secret had gotten humans killed.

Leo
had done this. Gotten an old lady across the street from me killed. Gotten three construction workers killed.
A cop killed.
So many dead because of this secret. “Did you know he was down there?”

“No,” she said, her voice expressionless. “As far as I know, no one knew but Leo, his pet priestess, and his Mithran lovers.” She left the room and closed the door behind her.

The pet priestess and Leo’s Mithran lovers: Bethany, Katie, and Grégoire. “Well,” I said to the empty room. “That sucks. Too bad Leo didn’t stay dead one of the times I killed him recently.” Now I might have to kill him true-dead myself, and not stop at a simple staking.

This was Leo’s fault.
All
of it was
Leo’s
fault. Leo’s and Reach’s.

I stretched out my other leg and curled the pillow back around my middle as I thought about the thing on the wall in the basement, trying to remember what I had seen in the timeless moments while I was in the bubble, hanging in midair, and afterward when I was busy getting killed by Derek.

The thing had been male. Crucified to an old brick wall with silver stakes. The wall had been slashed repeatedly by his talons, which were more like the Wolverine’s blades than most vamp claws. The damaged wall had shown some kind of metal, tarnished in the candlelight—metal studs, maybe. Black-magic items—pocket watches—had been hanging on the Son’s body. Scraps of clothes. Body was mostly dried flesh, looking mummified. Eyes glittering and focused on me.

The black-magic watches contained pieces of the iron spike of Calvary, of Golgotha. The crosses of Golgotha had been used to make the thing that hung on the wall, in a black-magic ceremony.

Now Leo wanted the spike. So did the EuroVamps, who were really the earliest vamps created by the Sons of Darkness. Sooo . . . what did the iron from the spike do to the Sons? To the Son in the dungeon?

There were a lot of negatives and dangers to being turned by a vamp. Sunlight could burn them. Lack of blood could starve them. The devoveo—the years of insanity humans went through after being turned—had to be lived through, and if they didn’t come out of the devoveo sane, then they were put down like rabid dogs. Then there was the delore—the insane grief they went through when one of their loved ones died. The lack of stability that only emotionally stable blood-servants brought to a vamp. Blood-thirst. Lots more.

Though the Mithrans hadn’t yet found a cure for the long-chained—the scions stuck in the devoveo—the Sons of Darkness had parleyed with the Anzû to keep their progeny sane from the delore, by feeding them sips of Anzû blood. It had worked. What did Gee DiMercy—the only Anzû in Leo’s territory—know about the dungeon’s only prisoner? He clearly hadn’t known about the
arcenciels
being around.

Not so long ago, Leo had said that the Sons of Darkness had ordered the Mithrans of the Americas to make peace with the Cursed of Artemis—the werewolves and other
were-creatures. That order would have been impossible to give with a Son of Darkness chained in the basement. So where did the order to parley with the were-community come from? Leo? The other Son? The European Council like the news media said? I hated vamp politics.

Even a future parley with the witches was now suspect. Was the order to reach rapprochement with the New Orleans witch coven because Leo needed the blackened prisoner and some witch magic to accomplish . . . what?
Crap
. I had no idea.

Anger raced under my skin, burning, hot, like acid eating away at me. So many dead. Hurt.
Damn
vampire secrets.
Damn Leo Pellissier
. But I could kill him later. For now, I had a deadly puzzle to figure out.

In the basement, we had a kidnapped Son of Darkness. Leo was playing political games with the lives of humans and of his people. Black-magic pocket watches containing parts of a magical item that Leo was looking for were resting on the Son’s body. And a werewolf who had been touched by an angel, had bitten the thing chained to the wall, and was running through the city with a mouthful of the Son of Darkness’ blood in him. I had to wonder what the bite would mean to the werewolf.

Oh—and the Devil was dead, along with Batildis, which could only tick off Peregrinus. Though he had taken their bodies with him. Could he bring them back to life, a human with no throat and a vamp cut in two?

And the
arcenciel
hatchling was still in Peregrinus’ possession. Soul was going to be really ticked off with me. After Bethany had said the
arcenciel
would be solid, I had expected to see the baby dragon, maybe held prisoner by Peregrinus via some arcane means. Or maybe with jesses and a hood, the way people trained raptors to hunt. I wasn’t sure what I had seen in the basement, about the
arcenciel
. It was all confused.

I also wasn’t sure what I was going to tell Soul, and she didn’t seem the patient, understanding type, not when she was in light-dragon form.

The weirdness was in overlays and none of it was going to be good. Nothing was ever good in the land of the blood-suckers. It was always FUBAR from beginning to end.

I laid my head back and studied the painting on the ceiling of Del’s bedroom. All that was missing was satyrs and images of torture to make it
perfectly
weird. I let my eyes trace the feathered wings of an angel as I tried to remember what else I
knew about the Sons of Darkness. Something the other priestess, Sabina, had said months ago. Sabina was way more sane than Bethany, but she had lost her humanity centuries ago too. She had told me that the eldest Son of Darkness had visited, a century ago, and had failed to rise one night. Yeah. That was it. Leo and Sabina entered his lair together, and the place had stank of violence and blood—of the Son’s
holy
life blood, or so she had said, and the blood of someone or something else. That blood had been splattered on the walls. Had that blood been Bethany’s? Had she brought Joses to Amaury Pellissier, the previous MOC? Or to Leo? The century timeline could work either way, but there had to be way more to the story, in order for the missing Son of Darkness to end up a prisoner in Leo’s basement.

Sabina and Leo had hidden the evidence. Reach had guessed or figured it out. Now everyone knew that Joses was here. Del was right. It would mean war with the EuroVamps, unless I could figure out a way to stop it.

Overhead, the lights flickered and the room went black. Which was the first time I noticed that I was in an internal room, one with no windows, one a vamp could stay in twenty-four/seven. And Leo and Del and been getting frisky, if my memory served. I sniffed the pillow again to be sure, but I didn’t smell Leo. They hadn’t spent frisky time here, which relieved me in ways I hadn’t expected. The lights came back on and the distant sound of generators went off. Power had been restored.