Blood Trade

CHAPTER 23 Vampire Blood. Mixed with Something.

The lot was vacant, lit by bright morning sun. But no church. Just an empty space. I recognized trees I had seen the night I came here, and when I looked hard, I could see the outlines of an old foundation, mostly gone, marked more by the way the grass grew than by any rise in the ground or scattered stone or brick.

“Wait here,” I said to the Kid. “If I disappear, don’t freak. But if I’m not back in an hour, tell Eli to bring Soul here. She might be able to find me.”

The Kid looked at the lot, at me, and back at the lot, his brows creased together. “Disappear? Like into some kinda interdimensional space-time fold?”

I huffed a laugh. “Been there, done that once, a long time ago.” The Kid’s eyes bugged out. “Long story. This didn’t feel like that. Not exactly. But maybe there were similarities. Last time I was on the outside of the bubble. This time maybe I was on the inside.”

“Can I film it?”

I started stripping off the weapons and the weapon harness, because one should never take weapons into a consecrated place or into the presence of an elder. “Go for it,” I said. “But I’m guessing you won’t see a thing.” I thought a minute. “Maybe a lot of fog.”

Weapon free, with nothing on me except the silver coin, pocket watches, and the discs, I got out of the SUV. Took a slow breath and blew it out. Another. And wished I’d taken the time to get a shower. I was rank with the sweat of battle. I squared my shoulders, gripped the coin between the index finger and thumb of my right hand, and walked between the trees. Nothing happened.

I sat on the ground in front of where I thought the front doors of the church had once been and crossed my knees—which was not a comfortable position in the leathers and boots. The sun was warm on my shoulders, the fickle winds of the Mississippi chasing away the night’s chill. I pulled off my leather jacket and set it behind me. Finally got my shirt straight, now that the weapon harness was off.

My socks were still twisted. I wanted tea. Breakfast. My stomach growled. Nothing else happened. I studied the amulets and the iron discs. And realized that the stuff I thought was copper was actually something far darker. It was blood. I lifted one and sniffed it, pulling on Beast’s senses. Vampire blood mixed with the iron itself. And with . . .

I dropped the disc, staring at it on the grass. Skinwalker blood. It all came together.

Lucas Vazquez de Allyon had killed off my kind everywhere he could. But one miniature painting I had seen in an old book had depicted him holding a bowl of blood, with dead and drained skinwalkers from the Panther Clan everywhere around him on the ground. Skinwalkers like me.

I looked at the silver coin in my hand. Kathyayini had known what I was. Somehow she had known. As I fingered the coin, I found a sharp edge, just a spot where the coin had ground against something sharper or harder once. I spat on my thumb and rubbed it on my jeans, cleaning it, and pressed the pad of my thumb on the coin. Nothing happened. I gripped it in my left hand and cut into my right thumb with a hard, fast motion. My flesh tore. A shock of pain flashed through me.

Blood welled and dripped into my palm. I put the coin into the pooling blood. In the distance, from a clear sky, thunder rumbled. In the echo of the rumble, the sky darkened and a low fog appeared. Lightning flashed, a spreading fan of power that reflected off the clouds boiling up in the sky in this place that wasn’t. I remembered the whole quote.

“Long years past was cold iron, blood, three cursed trees, and lightning. Red iron will set you free.” Then: “Shadow and blood are a dark light, buried beneath the ground.”

Lightning, like now, in a mystical place full of storms.

Dream-walkers were mystics. Mystics opened themselves to spiritual possibility, and being mystical meant that they seldom communicated logically. They left spiritual hints and clues . . . and the most mystical aspect of vamps was their creation story, an act of black magic that had unintended consequences. And beings who did good magic and black magic were . . . most often witches.

Red iron and trees, I thought, trying to find sense in the dribs and drabs of knowledge I had. The Sons of Darkness, the witch sons of Judas Iscariot, had used the three cursed trees of Calvary to bring their father back to life. The wood from the three crosses had been mixed with blood and black magic to create the first immortal, and when they ate his flesh, they became the first two vampires and fathers of all the vampires who followed.

My breath released in a slow exhalation. I was close to something. Very close.

Night had fallen around me. The SUV was gone; so was everything else. Shadow and blood are a dark light. There were shadow and my blood in this place.

There had been shadow and blood on Golgotha the evening the Christ died. There had been his blood on the tree. And on the cold iron that pierced his flesh, holding him there.

I took a slow breath, not moving, not fighting for it—whatever it was that my hindbrain was putting together. The words rolled through my mind again, low and sonorous, potent as the lightning: Long years past was cold iron, blood, three cursed trees, and lightning. Red iron will set you free. Then: Shadow and blood are a dark light, buried beneath the ground.

Some outclan priestesses had a sliver of the wood of the crosses that had been used to make the vampires. But what had happened to the iron? Had it been melted down and used for more black magic? Like the transformative magic that was turning Naturaleza into spidey vamps?

Lightning cracked again, slamming into the ground only yards away. The power of it sent electric shivers through me. My loose hair stood on end, and my skin crackled with the pain of electric shock. On the ground in front of me, the last red iron disc slid across the grass and snapped into place atop the other two. The pocket watches that were still whole glowed with a greenish light in the gloom of wherever or whenever this was.

Red iron and three cursed trees. Is it possible?

I closed my eyes and took a cleansing breath. When I opened my eyes, the church was before me. I started, even though I’d been expecting it. Overhead, thunder rumbled, close and ominous. Rain pattered down, just as the last time I was here. I gathered up my jacket, the amulets, and the thick iron disc, putting them into pockets where they couldn’t touch one another. I held the silver coin in my bloody fist as I walked up the short steps and into the church. The doors crashed shut behind me, an angry boom that reverberated through the church.

I walked down the aisle, but Kathyayini wasn’t there. The church was empty. Which sent willies down my back. My heart sped, an irregular pain, and I massaged my chest with my fist as I walked, not thinking about the blood until the air chilled it on my skin. Rain pounded down outside and on the roof over me. The din of the storm was incredible. I could feel the power through the soles of my boots. Wind hit the side of the church, and the old building groaned.

I reached the front, the church dark, lit only by lightning strikes outside. Each strike was intense, showing me the pews, the cross over the entry door that I hadn’t noticed last time. It was painted red. I eased my backside onto the dais and sat, feet dangling. And waited.

“You don’t got no match? It’s dark in here.” Kathyayini.

I sighed out a breath, relief so strong it hurt as the air left my lungs. “I don’t carry matches,” I said.

I heard the scratch of a match striking right beside me and I flinched at the sound, the smell, and the flickering light, after the long minutes of darkness and lightning. Kathyayini lit a candle and then another, and a third. “You don’t listen too good. Do you? This a lot harder in daytime.” Kathyayini hopped up on the dais beside me and sat. She was wearing a different dress this time, with a biblike front over her chest and a red T-shirt underneath. The fabric of the dress had huge red flowers on a pink background. It wasn’t flattering, but it did look comfortable.

I said, “I was busy getting inside a witch-warded house during the night. At dawn, I was busy killing vamp things, spidey vamps, inside the house.”

“Sounds messy. That why you stink?”

I chuckled and my shoulders slumped. “Yes, ma’am.”

“You save everybody?”

“We didn’t save anyone. There was nothing in the house except bodies several days old.”

“Huh.” Kathyayini pursed her lips, her mouth wrinkling up like a dried plum. “There shoulda been a witch circle there.”

“There was nothing.”

“You sure? No circle painted on the floor?”

My head came up. “Crap! There were black arcs painted on the floor in each room. Not a circle, but something.”

“Quarter circle? Like the whole house was the circle? You not very bright if you don’t see that.”

“Couldn’t be a witch circle. It was broken by the walls of the house.”

Kathyayini pursed her lips, the wrinkled skin drawing up like a dried apple. “Some circles are symbolic, proof of power used somewhere else.”

I hadn’t known that. Once again others might pay because I didn’t know enough of the arcane. I pushed off the dais and landed on the floor below the podium. “I have to get back there. Now!”

“No.” She waved a hand at me as if my intention was of no interest to her. “You got to sit down and listen. We got things to talk about.” When I took a step away, she narrowed her eyes at me and said, “Sit!” There was power in her command, so strong my knees buckled. I grabbed the dais to keep from falling and I sat. She pulled a strip of cloth from a pocket of her bib and pointed at my thumb. It was still bleeding, which was odd. My skinwalker metabolism would usually stop the bleeding of a scratch quickly. I wrapped my small wound and gripped the cloth over it, applying pressure.

“What have you learned so far?” she asked, though it was more command than request.

“That an old Spaniard, a conquistador, was a vamp. He drank down the power of the best warriors of the Tsalagi and then used some of their blood to make amulets, maybe using the iron from the spikes of the crosses to give his magic power.”

“Hah. You not so stupid as I think.”

“At some point,” I went on, “he figured out how to use the amulets to focus enough power to keep the rest of the vamps in the U.S. and Europe at bay, so he could practice Naturaleza, free from interference, for centuries in Atlanta. That was enough for him until he discovered a way to make vampires sick. And then he concocted a plan using the vamp plague to take over the entire U.S. But Leo Pellissier stood in his way. Leo and me.

“I killed Lucas and his heir took over the amulets and added a full witch circle to the mix. The added power created transformational magic. I think the purpose of the magic was to make a super vamp able to be truly immortal, withstand the sun, silver, crosses—every weakness that vamps have. And the magic was tested by creating revenants to see what came back. And what has come back so far is monsters.”

“Not bad.” She patted my knee. “But let’s talk about the Tsalagi warriors from long ago. They not all dead. Are they?”

She means skinwalkers. “Uh, no, ma’am.”

“You killed the other one.”

My eyes whipped to hers, and she smiled in the light of the three candles. “You been here many moon cycles, setting things in motion. Stopped other things. Maybe that other Tsalagi like you was supposed to do something important for this old Spaniard, and you killed him instead. What you think that might be?”

I shook my head in confusion, trying to rearrange my thoughts and the things I thought I had figured out into some new semblance of order. “Maybe Immanuel was supposed to kill Leo, so de Allyon could take over?”

“And so, maybe you the catalyst for his plan, not the plague. Or maybe both together. You showing up in New Orleans caused him a headache, I betcha.” She cackled with laughter. “And he tried to kill you, yes?”

I remembered the attack in a hotel in Asheville. “That was to kill Leo.”

“You not so smart now. Old blood drinkers got plans on top of plans, everything tied together like a big knot”—she held her hands out as if gripping a soccer ball—“like a clock, around and around. He was doing bunch of things at once and you stopped all of them. He had to rethink his plans.”

I felt a chill, like a winter wind over a graveyard. “Everything I’ve done since I got to New Orleans has brought me here, to this moment.”

“Now you see? You getting smart now.”

“If you knew all this, why didn’t you tell me last time?” I ground out, my frustration making my voice loud enough to echo through the old building. Outside, lightning hit the earth close by, lighting the inside of the church in a flickering burst of power. “You gave me a riddle that made no sense.”

“Eh. You figured it out.” She flapped a hand at the unimportance of it all. “Musta made some sense, it did. Besides, what make you think I knew everything last time? What make you think I know them this time? What make you think any of this is real?” She swept an arm around the old church, to include herself. “If none a this is real,” she said, “where it all come from?” She tapped my head with a bony finger. “You knew lots of it already. I just gave you a nudge with my riddle.”

I pushed her finger away and passed my hands over my face, pressing in on my eyeballs. I could smell my own blood soaking into the cloth. My bleeding still hadn’t stopped. “Okay. What do I do next?”

“What you think you do next?”

“I think I have to figure out how to use the quarter witch circles in the old house”—I stopped, remembering another circle, the one in the refrigerator of the other house—“because the witch circles will take me somewhere else. Where the witches are.”

“Now you talking like a smart girl. Get. I got stuff to do.”

“But—”

“Don’t forget to save us. The Acheé witches, we in big trouble.”

Lightning hit the top of the church with a sound like doom. The candles went out. And I was sitting on the ground, in the grass, in the middle of a downpour. My jacket was behind me, the three pocket watches were on the ground in front of me, and I was holding the red iron disc in one hand and a bloody silver coin in the other. I put the watches in separate pockets and the iron coin in the zippered one. And trudged back the way I came. Between one step and the next, I was in the daylight, staring at a shocked Alex. He was only a foot away, his eyes wide and his mouth open.

“You disappeared. And then you came back. Like . . . like magic or something. And why are you all wet?”

I grunted sourly, striding to the truck. “Get in and drive.”

We went back to the old saloon and bar where Eli and I had rescued the three girls chained in a bathroom, where I had shifted into Beast to save my life. As he drove, I loaded my shotgun and the nine millimeter I had emptied into a spidey vamp and weaponed up over the soaked clothing. When the Kid braked at the curb, I found one of Eli’s huge flashlights, got out, and went to the bar. I yelled over my shoulder, “If I’m not out in fifteen minutes, call Eli!”

The door was covered with a piece of plywood and taped over with crime scene tape. There was a gap at the bottom, and I wriggled my fingers under the wood and got a good grip, braced one foot on the doorjamb, and yanked.

The door groaned up and out at an angle, nails pulling out of the wood. When it was high enough to get through, I ducked and went inside, drawing a nine-mil and turning on the flash. My sense of smell told me the place was empty, but I scanned the front room and behind the bar to make sure before I took the long hallway to the back.

The women’s restroom was empty but still smelled of pain and fear. The door in the back of the building was missing, allowing in a lot of light. The refrigerator stood open once again, either because the cops left it that way or because vamps had used it since then. I was betting on vamps. I stood in the doorway, studying the white-painted circle in the center of the fridge. “Flying by the seat of my pants could get me killed this time,” I said to myself.

Beast answered, We are Beast. We are more than Jane and big-cat.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I pulled the three watch amulets out of my pockets and laid them on the floor of the fridge, inside the white circle. Then I stepped over and into the center of the circle, unzipped the pocket, and took out the thrice-made red iron disc. It was clumsy, but I held the weapon and the flash in one hand, and bent my knees, spread my feet into a modified shooting stance, and with my other hand pressed the disc into the bloody cloth.

The floor fell out from under my feet. My stomach lurched. Vomit rose in my throat.

I landed hard in the dark, dislodging the flashlight. Dropping it. It landed with a hollow thud and rolled, illuminating a place I had never seen before. It was a tiny square room, maybe three feet on a side. It stank of old earth and blood and the dusty reek of spidey vamps.

I’d just been transported through space by a witch spell. Nausea danced a tango up my esophagus again, but I swallowed it down. Kirk and Spock never spewed after a transporter trip, I thought, panicky giggles close on the heels of the thought. That would be totally uncool. I managed a shuddery breath and locked the giggles and the nausea away.

Just beyond the walls, I heard a voice. Eli. Eli?

I put it together fast. I had to be in a hidden room in the house we had raided at dawn. Back where I started from. Well, that was ducky. But it explained the quarter arcs in each room—symbolic of a place to land. Picking up the flash, I inspected the small space. The walls were painted black, with strange symbols all over them in a reddish-brown color. The symbols meant nothing to me, except I thought they were runes, stuff I had seen at Molly’s. I had a feeling these were painted with blood mixed with other stuff. What else would a psycho vamp paint witch symbols with but blood? My breath came faster and I breathed through my mouth and nose to take in the scent/taste/texture of the air in the coffin-sized place. As there was nothing to shoot, I holstered my weapon. I had no idea why a witch circle would deposit me here, but there had to be a reason.

On the other side of the walls, Bruiser said something and Rick laughed. The two of them being jovial together. It was creepy. Worse, the flashlight showed me that there was no way out except through the walls, which were surely spelled. No door or latch or catch, no window, hidden panel, or bookcase to search for the book that would release the wall. Zip. Nada.

I took a step to pound on the wall and my boot hit something solid. I aimed the flash down. It illuminated a handle in the floor. A trapdoor.

“The one you seek,” Kathyayini had said, “she is bound to the Earth. She didn’t mean to be bound, but she cannot get away now.” The three pocket watches had been transported with me, and were aligned in a semicircle around the handle, all open, all set for twelve noon. Or midnight.

I opened my mouth to call out to the guys, and snapped it closed with a clack of teeth. If I called to the men on the other side of the walls and they broke them down, would that dislodge whatever magics had brought me here? I’d hate to go boom when I’d finally found something that might be useful. I tucked the fatter disc into my pocket, zipped it closed, and gathered up the pocket watches. The minute this thing was over, I was busting the watches and dropping the discs into a bucket of sulfuric acid.

I reached down, grabbing the handle in the trapdoor. And pulled.