Shadow Rites: A Jane Yellowrock Novel (15 page)

“Okay.”

“An experienced forensic pathologist or medical examiner will see the bones. The damage to the bones will eventually point to a vampire.”

“Okay,” I repeated.

“The last vampire who was known to eat humans was Immanuel, and law enforcement has his teeth imprints on record from the postmortems on the police officers he ate.”

“And the imprints won’t match. So now they’ll assume that vamps killing and eating humans is common,” I said.

“When it is not at all,” Bruiser said.

I let out a tired-sounding sigh. “I’ll notify Dell to prepare a PR response to those potential problems. And Jodi,” I added, “just in case someone calls her about the cop-eater vamp.”

“The second item I need to share with you,” Bruiser said, “was something that we found at the bottom of the pit. A small gold knife that once belonged to Edmund
Hartley. He claims that it was lost during the time he moved from clan Blood Master to minor scion.”

“And since no one understands how a freaky powerful vamp like Edmund lost his clan to a weaker vamp like Bettina, that makes him suspect in some machination to overthrow Leo or cause trouble in general,” I said. “Got it.” I might not like vamp politics and quarrels, but I was getting a handle on them, even the quarrels that went back centuries.

“Edmund has been bled and read to verify his claims.”

Bled and read.
I liked that. “Has Bettina been asked to HQ?”

“She has, and she arrived some hours ago. She has refused to be questioned about the Blood Challenge that led to her taking over Clan Laurent, Edmund’s old clan, however, so Leo is simply serving strong vintages to her, to Ming of Glass, to Cai, and to Shaun Mac Lochlainn, Bettina’s anamchara, in a party room, in the hopes that some verbal insight might be allowed to slip out in the gaiety.” His tone was droll, and I knew that
gaiety
meant way more than party hats and balloons. Strong vintages meant that the humans the vamps were drinking from were terribly drunk on expensive liquors, making it possible for the vamps to enjoy themselves as well. Sex and blood, as Eli had said.

I was too tired to put what it all might mean together without banging my head on the nearest wall in frustration, but Bettina had once been clan master of Rousseau. She had been taken down by rivals within her own clan, not according to vamp law, in personal sanctioned combat—Blood Challenge—but outside proper channels. Clan Rousseau had been ruined in the war and the claimants to her title had died. Then Bettina called the sire of Clan Laurent, the powerful and charismatic Edmund Hartley, to personal combat and she had bested Edmund.

Bettina, a beautiful, tiny, curvy woman, was of mixed race heritage, mostly African and European, and while her sexuality could make the air burn, she hadn’t appeared that powerful in other vamp gifts, as least not to me. Vamp
one-upmanship stuff wasn’t my department, but I said, “Okay, so we have two witches.” I raised a finger, counting. “Ming in a pit with dead humans.” A second finger. “With Edmund, who wants to be my primo, and maybe Bettina, who is keeping secrets, and a Witch Conclave coming up.” I had five fingers in the air. “Just five little things to deal with. So far.”

“So far,” Bruiser agreed.

I dropped my hand. “And two, count ’em, two, magical brooches tying them all together. Were there fingerprints on the brooch you were carrying?”

“Yes, but no matches with AFIS or military databases. The brooch that was on Ming of Mearkanis had been underwater, so no prints there at all.”

“May I see the brooches?” I asked. “Together?”

“Yes.” Bruiser slid the headset up and into place, switched it on, and said, “Bring the brooches to me.” He gave his location and said, “And please bring the small repast I requested. Tea and some scones for the Enforcer. Coffee for Eli Younger and myself.” He switched the set off. Eyes twinkling, he said to me, “In case you didn’t get enough donuts while I worked in the mud to . . . satisfy you.”

I flushed slightly but held Bruiser’s eyes and said, “I was satisfied at the time, but there’s always room for more.”

“Room. Room, you two,” Eli said, sounding long-suffering, keeping his eyes on the far wall.

Bruiser and I sat silent, waiting on the brooches and the
small repast
. So dignified, that. Way better than a snack.

Following a discreet knock, three blood-servants entered the room, one carrying a tray with a carved wooden box on it, the size of a child’s jewelry box. The other two blood-servants brought in the repast and a tea table with folding legs, which they set up in the center of the room. “That will be all,” Bruiser said. When the door closed, he poured my tea into a porcelain teacup so fine I could see the tea through the cup, and placed it on a saucer. Moving gingerly to keep from breaking the expensive china, I added sugar and real cream and stirred with a sterling
silver spoon while Bruiser and Eli helped themselves to the carafe.

When I had sipped and eaten, Bruiser slid the wooden box across the table to me. The wood was unfinished, the top and sides roughly carved in lotus blossoms. The wood was unfamiliar to me, but the tingle of magic when I reached for the box wasn’t.

I opened the top and caught a single glimpse of the gems. A bright greenish magic slammed into me, sizzling into my left palm like a red-hot branding iron. The light in the room telescoped down to a single pinpoint of light. And then even that went black.

*   *   *

I came to, ears-first, hearing the conversation around me.

“She’s breathing.”

“Heart rate one eighty-five. BP two fifty-six over one twenty-seven.”

“Too high. Too high. Stroke territory.”

“How do you know what a normal blood pressure is for a . . . whatever she is?”

“Skinwalker. Cherokee skinwalker.” That was Eli. He sounded pissed. “And it’s too high no matter what species she is.”

“O² level is ridiculous. Two fourteen. I’ve never seen one that high except in a full code.”

“I have,” Eli said. “It isn’t a problem. The only thing I’m worried about is the BP and the partial shift.”

“When she wakes up she’ll finish the shift. What’s the big deal?”

“If you don’t get him out of here, I’ll shoot him,” Eli said, using his combat voice.

I heard a door open and close. I wanted to chuckle, but my body wasn’t responding. And my left hand was in misery, feeling as though it was in the middle of becoming a paw, all the bones expanding and breaking and reforming, but in slow motion. Stuck. They said I was stuck midshift. “Well, crap,” I whispered.

“She’s awake.”

“Mr. Obvious,” I muttered, taking a breath that stank
of blood—mine—and magic—not mine. A stink of burning hair and ozone had filled the small room, and beneath it was a faint, distant reek of old iron and salt. The smells of the green magic that had scanned my house. And me. I remembered. In the moment of waking, I remembered what the scan had spelled me to forget. The familiar awareness of the reading. I had been read exactly that way once before, when I first came to New Orleans, by a magic user named Antoine. Antoine was dead, killed by the creature who had taken over the form of Immanuel, Leo’s son. A skinwalker, just like me, but one who had gone to the dark side and started eating people.

And the green eye in my hand allowing Gee DiMercy to keep tabs on me, because he thought I was a
little goddess
, whatever that was. It was all tied in together. Somehow. And it was too much going on. “I need Gee DiMercy. And I need to talk to Rick LaFleur,” I said. “And make it snappy before I pass out again and forget everything I just figured out.”

My mouth wasn’t working well, but Eli understood me and rephrased my orders, adding, “Get George back in here. Jane, do you need Edmund?”

He meant to drink from to help me heal. “No. Just . . . Just Gee.”

I must have passed out again, because suddenly Gee was in the room, the smell of him pine and jasmine, like lying in a cold waterfall surrounded by a conifer forest and a garden in bloom. “Sit me up,” I said, speaking louder this time, my voice a croak. I got my eyes open and when I was halfway upright, my spine pressing against the sofa foot, said to Eli, “Everybody out but Eli, Bruiser, and Gee.”

“And me,” Leo said.

“Sure. Whatever.”

When the door closed behind the others, giving me some oxygen to breathe, I said, “Call Rick LaFleur’s number. Y’all need to hear this.”

“It’s the middle of the night, Jane,” Eli said, cautiously, as he found my cell in my pocket.

Bruiser said nothing and his scent didn’t change, but I read between Eli’s words and said, “I’m in my right mind.
Rick was in town when something similar to this magic hit me once before.”

Eli tapped the screen and held the cell to my ear. The number rang. And rang. I heard the line open and on the other end, a door closed. “Jane,” Rick said. The one word. Toneless. Waiting. Knowing that I wouldn’t call him except for business. Not anymore. Rick. My onetime boyfriend, who had publically dumped me for a black wereleopard, and who now worked for PsyLED, the Psychometry Law Enforcement Division of Homeland Security. My life was so weird.

“Sorry to wake you,” I said, my tone matching his. “Speakerphone.”

Eli punched a button and set the cell on the table nearest me.

“You sound like shit,” Rick said deliberately, to annoy me, because he knew, good and well, how I felt about cursing, even when I was the one who cursed. “What happened.”

“I think I was spelled. It was a similar spell to the one used by Antoine, your friend who ran the diner. The one you took me to meet, so he could tell you what I was.”

“Antoine’s dead,” he said, but I heard the undercurrent of interest in his voice.

“Yeah. I was there. But in the diner, when he shook my hand, he scanned me. Read me.
For you
. Who was Antoine? What was Antoine?”

“Antoine No Last Name. He wasn’t in the system. No prints on file. Went by the name Antoine Busho, an alias, as far as I could tell. Shaman. Originally from the Pedro Cays, underdeveloped islands south of Jamaica. No running water, no sanitation, no electric, no schools, no nothing but people living on the edge. I don’t know anything more about his magical system or who trained him. Except . . .” Rick paused, and I could almost see him tilting his head, thinking, remembering. “One time he said something about apprenticing to an African priestess for a summer. If he ever said the name, I don’t recall. How bad are you hurt?”

Not are you hurt, but how bad, as if the connection we
once had was active even now. Dang it. “I’m still breathing. Antoine said something about a wife. Marla? Maria? Marion? Something with an
M
?”

“That was a joke in the diner. Something to lure in the tourists. So far as I know he was single. That’s all I got.”

“Thank you for the information,” I said.

“Take care.” The call ended.

I nodded to Eli, who was already texting Alex with the info and the name to see what the Kid knew or could dig up about Antoine Busho. He spelled out, “Busho, Bucho, Buchoux, Boucheaux. Maybe a dozen others. There are so many names pronounced that way.” We heard a ding and Eli said, “Alex is on it. He’ll get back when or if he gets something.”

It hurt like heck, but I got my head to turn on my neck and focused on Gee DiMercy. The small man was sitting on the chair farthest away from me. He was no longer bloodied and beaten. No bruises. No cuts or abrasions. The Anzu could heal others of most were-bites, if he got to them in time and was given enough time to work his magic, but he couldn’t heal himself. Someone had fed him vamp blood to heal.

“You look better,” I said.

His eyes flashed to my left hand and away. I still hadn’t looked at it.

I said, “When we first met, you tagged me with a magic something-something. And I took it for my own somehow. Tell me about that spell.”

“It wasn’t a spell,” Gee said. “It was part of the goddess’s power, the remnants of her curse that touches all weres and the remnants of her personal power, the energies that generated all skinwalker archetypes and all shape-shifters. That you made my magics your own said only that you were of her get. That she was responsible for your being. It made you easy to track, to follow, and to offer assistance had you needed it.”

“The one you call a goddess. Artemis. Was she, like, an angel?” I had a feeling that she had been an
arcenciel
, but I had never gotten evidence to back up my hunch.

“No. Angels are all male, in every scripture and history.
No females existed. Ever. Despite the pretty sculptures in graveyards and paintings that Christians hang on their walls.”

Which I knew. I wanted to ask how angels procreated with only one gender, but that wasn’t germane to this discussion. “So she was, what? And this time, don’t blow me off, Gee. I need the answer.”

The slight man shrugged. “She belonged to the tribe that eventually became the Greeks. She was a prototype to modern-day witches but with the ability to charm and control any animal on Earth and in the sea. She was a legend who was elevated to the status of goddess by the worship of foolish humans around her. She was grace and beauty and power and wisdom.”

I said, “Was. She.
Arcenciel
?” I enunciated.

“I do not know,
Enforcer
.”

My title, being used to call attention to his purpose. I asked, “How did something get hold of your magic and make you attack me? Who has that kind of power?”

He looked at me from the corner of his eyes. “There are few who might wield such might. Perhaps you, skinwalker?”

This was getting me nowhere. I felt like I was dancing around the rim of a fire pit, almost on the edge of being scorched, almost on the edge of nothing at all. And the pain in my hand was growing steadily worse. I could smell my blood on the air. Eli knelt beside me and placed a linen tea napkin below my hand to absorb my blood. “You told me once to ask one of the Old Ones what it meant to be goddess-born. What is an Old One?”

“One of my kind would do. One of the old
arcenciels
would do. You might ask Thales, Arcesilaus, Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle. Even Hegesinus of Pergamon might know.”