He swore softly and didn’t apologize. “I’ll be down in five.” He ended the call and I heard movement upstairs.
I pulled a short-sleeved T over my head and latched on my silver-plated titanium gorget, stuck my silver stakes into my bun, and holstered two .380s in a double shoulder holster I rarely used because it rubbed the skin under my arms, but the weapons didn’t show to the casual observer once I slid on a lightweight jacket. I’d sweat unless the heat wave had broken, but I could live with a little stink. I stuck a vamp-killer into each Lucchese boot shaft. Basic, minimum arms for a rogue-vamp killer. Then I hung two sterling crosses around my neck and emptied out an old gobag, filling it with stuff I might need at HQ.
Eli was standing in the kitchen drinking a fresh cup of espresso when I left my room, and over the scent of coffee, I could smell chai steeping. Alex was there as well, his head on the table, his eyes closed. He looked just the way a kid coming down off an energy-drink-induced high should look. Wasted. I poured the tea into a twenty-ounce travel mug and lifted it in a toast to Eli. With my knee I nudged Alex. He raised his head and cracked open his lids, glaring at me between his long, curly lashes, lashes that most women would kill for. I grinned at him, unrepentant. My power nap with Bruiser had revived me more than I’d have thought possible. Alex closed his eyes again and dropped his head with a groan.
“Since we’re all here,” I said, “I need to clarify something and correct a mistake.” Both brothers turned their total attention to me. “In the Cherokee tradition, family was not necessarily related by blood, but by marriage or adoption.”
A sudden tightness appeared at the corners of Eli’s eyes. Alex actually focused on me. Both Youngers stared at me, silent, unmoving.
“Since you bought into the company, since you moved in here, you’ve become more than just business partners to me.” I stopped. My throat didn’t want to go on, threatening to close up and suffocate me. I cleared my voice and the tissues sounded suspiciously thick and wet. “I haven’t researched the proper ceremony, and The People have ceremonies for everything, but they usually are amended and altered within clan and family.” I shrugged and set the travel mug on the table. My hands were sweating. “So I thought—” My voice stopped again and I cleared it, but when I went on, my voice was rough. “I thought that, if you wanted, we could become family and make up our own ceremony.”
Eli smiled, a real smile, showing teeth. Alex goggled, but his eyes appeared wet, and he blinked them quickly. Eli said, “Are you asking us to marry you, Janie?”
“No! The roles for men and women are different in Tsalagi society—” And then I realized he was teasing. I whooshed out a breath and wiped my palms on my jeans. “I’m asking you to become my brothers. My blood brothers, specifically. If you want to.”
For the next six years, subjective time, and what was more likely less than five seconds’ objective time, the brothers stared at me. Then they looked at each other. There was that wordless, instant, deep communication that took place among family. Alex shrugged. Eli shrugged.
“Why not,” Alex said.
“We are honored that a War Woman of The People would adopt us into her clan,” Eli said. Both Alex and I raised our eyebrows. He gave that open, warm grin again. “I’ve been talking to uni lisi. She wants to adopt us too. All of us.” Uni lisi was the mother of Aggie One Feather, who was an Elder of The People and my spiritual counselor. “But I’d rather be adopted by you,” he said.
“Yeah,” Alex said. “That old woman scares me.”
“Me too,” I said.
The brothers laughed, and I wasn’t sure why, but I laughed with them. Then I said, “Edoda, my father, was of ani gilogi, Panther Clan. My mother was ani sahoni, Blue Holly Clan. Technically, because the men left their clans and entered the wife’s clan when they married, I’d have been born into Blue Holly Clan, but because my eyes are yellow, I think the Panther Clan had claimed me, through my grandmother who was Panther. Also, after my father died, my grandmother claimed me and took me to her clan. I think. It was a long time ago. But that’s what I think happened.” I took a breath and it was shaky sounding. “So I want to invite you to be adopted into ani gilogi. To be my danitaga”—I stumbled over the word—“my blood brothers. To be my family.” I dredged up the words from my distant, fractured memory. “To be my tsidanalu. Or maybe it was my sidanelvhi. My family.”
“Why now?” Eli asked.
“Because before the EuroVamps get here, I’m going to write my will. It’s easier to transfer money to you if you’re family.” And because it’s what I want. I want a family. Didn’t say it. Figured they knew it.
Alex said, “Is this where we cut wrists and share blood? ’Cause that’s totally unhygienic, dude.”
I hiccupped with laughter. “No. That’s not in the Tsalagi tradition at all.” Eli gave a minuscule grin at my laughter. “And we’ll have to finalize this at the Propitiation of Cementation Ceremony, what we call the Friendship Ceremony. It’s celebrated ten days after the Great New Moon Ceremony, so once a year, in October, to be formal and legal according to tribal law. Traditionally two men publicly exchange clothes, one piece at a time, to make them brothers for life.”
Eli’s eyes widened. “I am not wearing your lacy undies.”
“I don’t have lacy undies,” I said crossly. Eli’s grin widened. “Brat,” I added. Just as I might have to a real brother. Eli’s grin went wider. Alex’s eyes were as large as saucers.
“Purification rites would follow the Cementation Ceremony, to remove any unforeseen barriers that stand between us and the Creator. And then we’re family. If you want to.”
“But for now?” Alex asked. “What do we do in the meantime?”
“I think we just say yes,” I said.
“Yes,” Alex said, instantly.
Eli’s smile slowly fell away. He set his own coffee mug on the table and stood straight, at attention, the military man’s regal bearing. He said, “Yes. My brother and I are honored to be accepted into the ani gilogi clan. Honored to be the . . .” He paused. “Sorry. I don’t remember the pronunciation.”
“Danitaga?” I supplied, as tears gathered in my eyes.
“Right. We’re honored to be the danitaga to War Woman, Jane Yellowrock. Dalonige‘i Digadoli.”
“You said my name right.”
“Yeah,” Eli said, his face serious and intent. “I’ve been practicing. Now let’s go solve the world’s problems.”
* * *
We walked into vamp central, keeping it light, keeping it relaxed, went through the pat-down and the listing of weapons. Eli and I put on headsets that allowed us to talk to the person manning the security console and walked to the elevator before turning the units off. On his cell, Eli asked his brother, “You have her location?”
“Yeah. I had to backtrack through hours of footage—thanks for all the time, by the way—but I located her on the security cameras. Go to the third floor and I’ll give you directions to her lair.”
“Which should be loads of fun,” Eli muttered.
Minutes later, I knocked on the inner door of the supposed lair of Bethany, outclan priestess of the Mithrans. A human opened the door and stared out at me. He was holding a cannon, pointed dead center at my chest.
CHAPTER 24
Doing the Big Nasty
“Janie?” he said, startled.
“Wrassler?” I said at the same instant, just as surprised.
“We weren’t expecting company.”
“Uhhh . . .” We as in we, a couple? Wrassler and Bethany? When I’d given his number to Jodi? Oh crap.
But before I could say something totally inappropriate, he said, “Some of Leo’s most experienced people keep watch on her when she sleeps at HQ. Do you want me? Or . . .” He looked back over his shoulder while holstering his Taurus Judge .45/.410, a gun easily mistaken for a cannon. I swallowed my heart back down into my chest cavity, where it danced a jig as it tried to settle to a normal rate and not the f
ight or flight of a gun in my face. “. . . or Bethany? She’s awake, but she’s feeding.”
Which sounded just icky. “Feeding while . . . ?” I made a circular motion with my hand, trying to find a socially appropriate term.
“Getting it on,” Eli supplied. “Doing the big nasty. Making the two-backed—”
“Stop.”
“Yes, ma’am.” But he didn’t sound the least remorseful.
Wrassler just gave us a small smile. “I wouldn’t have opened the door had that been an issue.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, of course you wouldn’t.” And he wouldn’t. Wrassler was big enough to be a member of WWE—World Wrestling Entertainment—but he had brains and sensitivity and long years with the NOLA Mithrans, which required a healthy awareness of all things vampy-protocol-ishy to survive and prosper. Which he’d done really well until I’d shown up, after which he’d lost a leg and use of an arm. Go, me. With an effort I kept my feelings off my face. Wrassler wouldn’t appreciate either guilt or sympathy. “May we speak to her?” I said instead.
Wrassler lifted a huge shoulder in a shrug that would have moved a mountain range. “She’s better after feeding. Come on in.” He stepped aside, limping as he put weight on his prosthetic leg. From the corner of my eye, I saw Eli with a weapon. He’d drawn down on Wrassler, not that it would have saved my life. If Wrassler had intended my hurt, his round would have passed clean through me, Eli, the wall behind us, the wall on the other side, and probably out into the French Quarter. Or, depending on what the versatile minicannon was loaded with, it might have just filled me with shotgun pellets, taken out every organ in my chest cavity, and killed me before I could shift, like the yunega did my father.
I had a sudden flash of ancient, faded memory. My father dead on the floor of our home, his hands in beast-claw form. Partially changed, as he tried to draw on a beast-form to save his life. The memory of my small hand in his cooling blood. Painting my face in promise, a promise to kill the white men who had been his murderers. Which I had done.
I shook myself free of old memories when Eli put his hand to the small of my back and gently pushed me into the room. I stopped just inside the entry and stared.
The apartment was small by modern standards, a tiny sitting room on the right, a bedroom directly ahead, a bath to one side, closet to the other. But it was far, far different from other vamp rooms I’d seen. It wasn’t gilded or inches deep in Middle Eastern rugs or full of paintings. The floor area was bare. Spartan. And lovely. The cypress floor was so smooth it felt like glass beneath my boots. In contrast to the empty floor space, there were shelves built around the walls, filled with orchids beneath grow lights, bleached bones, and African artifacts that should probably have been in museums. There were African tribal masks, animal skulls, tapestries, iron arrow points, twisted iron necklaces, rotting breechcloths, spears decorated with feathers, amazing carvings, bright pigments, and . . . blood. Yeah. Blood, old and grayed by time, used as coloration or to anoint some artifact in sacrifice, the ancient mixed with the smell of fresh blood on the air—sharp from the recent feedings.
The lighting was bizarre, landing on the artifacts from odd angles and unexpected positions, throwing shadows that held teeth and claws and movement as the air-conditioning came on and a false breeze stirred the feathers and cloth. Clothing and jewelry hung on pegs on the walls—wildly patterned skirts in silk and cotton, billowy blouses, ballerina shoes, silky underthings in reds and pinks and amazing blues that didn’t fit into any modern-day version of undies. There were necklaces made of horn, bone, blackstone, onyx, polished marble, pearls in fabulous colors, and dozens of shades of jasper and agate. Earrings and bracelets hummed with magic. Geodes lined the shelves, cut to reveal amethyst, some kind of pink stones, darker than quartz, and some kind of blue stones, the color of the sky at dusk.
Bethany’s room was pagan and harsh, uncivilized by European/American standards, tempestuous . . . and utterly magnificent. There were African phallic symbols, idols of the earth goddess, death masks like those at Madame Tussauds, all things I recognized because one of my housemothers had loved history.
Brenda. She had been the best. I’d learned how to be civilized because of her. Not civilized like the yunega, the white man, but civilized in the sense of humanity, long-lived and long-suffering. For some unclear reason, the suite reminded me of Brenda. Brenda who had been nothing like a suckhead.
Bethany, suckhead in question, was lying on a bed that might have come from fifteenth-century Europe, carved in Christian art of the time and magical symbols, though none with crosses. She wasn’t that nutso. The bed was strung with tight hemp ropes to keep the mattress resting flat. The bedclothes were white silk. And Bethany was dressed in . . . a sheet. Nothing else. Her blue-black skin was so oiled and rich looking it seemed to throw back the candlelight. Her hair—always long, braided, locked, and strung with beads—was up in a high wrap, like a turban made of her own hair. The beads in the locks gleamed in the lamplight, as did the myriad earrings hanging from her ears.
“Oh, maaaan,” I murmured. How was I supposed to talk with . . . this?
But Bethany broke the ice, sounding relatively coherent. “Skinwalker,” she said. “Welcome.”
I threw back my shoulders and I asked, not the questions of the hour, but the question her welcome inspired. “When did you first know I was a skinwalker?”
Bethany shrugged and the silk sheet slipped to her waist. Oh goody. “I knew when you shifted into the screamer cat.” Her full lips stretched to reveal her blunt human teeth, the smile of a succubus, had they ever existed, wicked, entreating, passionate, demanding. “My Leo was most distressed about his upholstery but was most delighted to have found one such as you.”
“Yeah. I’ll bet he was,” I said, my tone uncaring.
“But before that, when I healed you of the injury you suffered at the hands of my friend, I tasted your blood. Blood that I knew from before and yet could not name.”
That was a lot of info from a vamp. They usually held their cards closer to their chests, but maybe the blood-feeding had made her mellow. I wasn’t sure where to go with the information. The event Bethany was talking about had happened soon after I came to New Orleans. I’d been injured at a vamp party and Leo had ordered Bethany to heal me. It had been a . . . harrowing experience. But if Bethany had tasted one like me before, that could only mean she had drunk from Leo’s son, Immanuel, whom I had killed. The only other skinwalker I’d met in the modern world. Of course, he’d become a liver-eater by then and was killing humans and vamps like they were his own personal buffet bar, so I hadn’t really had a choice.
“When did you drink from Immanuel?” I asked, knowing it had nothing to do with Santana but unable to help myself.
Bethany shrugged again and pulled the silk sheet over her, turning on one side, so I could see only part of her face, one black eye glittering and cold and nutso insane, no matter how lucid she might sound from time to time. “We were lovers,” she said, “Immanuel and I, before he went up the river to explore. We were lovers when he returned, but his blood was different then. When I spoke of it, he refused to allow me to drink again. There was no more sharing. You tasted as he did. Will you allow me to drink from you? A true sharing, not a healing?” Bethany pulled the covers away from her body in welcome.
Ick. Blood and sex. Not gonna happen. But I said it more nicely. “I’m honored. But I’m otherwise involved.” Eli slanted a look at me and I wanted to elbow him. I refrained. “Did you drink from Joseph Santana the night he was taken? Did you bring him to Leo? And most importantly, did Santana drink of Immanuel before the rest of you got to him? And then did the arcenciel bite Santana? It’s vitally important that I know what happened that night.”
“You ask too many questions and offer nothing in return. No blood, no sharing, no love. What do you barter?”
I had expected this and I opened the gobag. Carefully, I removed the magically empty gold arm bracelet shaped
like a snake, the one I had taken from Adrianna. “This is worth much more than answers to questions. This is—”
“The little whore’s armband.” Bethany thrust up her hand, rising to her knees so fast I missed the motion, the sheets forgotten. “Give.” Eli tensed, his pheromones going from merely alert to something like interested. Bethany’s eyes flicked from me to him and back to the gold.
“We’re bartering. I want honest and complete answers to all my questions, today, now. And your assistance at some future date, such assistance to be determined.”
Bethany snapped her fingers at Wrassler. “Witness.”
“So witnessed,” Wrassler said.
“Give.”
“You understand that it has no magic at this time.”
“It can be used for many things, none of them your concern. Our bargain has been struck. Give!”
I tossed the armband to Bethany. Faster than a snake striking, she leaped up from her kneeling position, stretched, and caught the gold band out of the air. Landed on her mattress with a creak of the hemp ropes. It was a slithery motion, more reptile than human, and it made my skin crawl. If the scent change was any indication, the snaky act also decreased Eli’s interest considerably. Bethany slid the gold band onto her arm with such glee and covetousness that I felt like I was watching a scene from The Ring or The Hobbit, or one of those movies that Alex was always playing on the TV as background to his work space. A sick sort of desire. It made me acutely aware that I might have made a mistake giving her the band, but it was a little late at this point.
Bethany, naked as the day she was born, sat back on the sheets, caressing the bracelet. Without looking up, she said, “Ask your questions.”
“Tell me about the night Joseph Santana disappeared.”