I’d seen Blondie duel when his emotions were involved. There was no mercy. He’d strip the flesh from his opponent before he’d stand and talk.
Alex stared at Beast. “Jane? You listening?”
The last Son of Darkness is in this hemisphere, I thought.
Ed in cage. Taken, Beast thought, thinking with me instead of thinking about deer and bison.
And if the SOD Two is in this hemisphere, he’ll be attacking my people. People that I left in the lurch when I abdicated. I nodded Beast’s head and she sat again, wrapping her tail around her paws. I remembered the sound of my primo’s shields tearing. The sound of his voice as he screamed. The silky feel of his blood as it ran across his flesh. As he was ripped away from me. That had been a psychic attack on Ed. It would take a megastrong vamp to rip him away from me.
Alex said, “I’m still looking but I haven’t found SOD Two entering the U.S. Not anywhere. And it’s hard to hide a large contingent of bloodsuckers.”
“The SOD’s numbers?” Eli asked from the fireplace, where he had taken up his usual position.
“Grégoire estimated fourteen fangheads. Forty-five humans. Fifty-nine bodies.”
I noted that he didn’t say warm bodies.
Alex pounded the keys some more. “Okay,” he said. His voice rising in pitch. “Yes. A ship called The Scarlet Dragon was found floating off of Palm Beach in Florida yesterday. Abandoned. The Coast Guard boarded and found a crime scene to beat all crime scenes. Fourteen people were found drained of blood in the galley freezer, stacked up like firewood. The crew and all of the staff were among those in the freezer.”
“Assuming that Grégoire is correct,” Bruiser said, the words coming slowly, “then Shimon took the ship from wherever the Bombardier landed, and sailed here.” His syntax changed, becoming the formal, measured phraseology and tone I had heard when Bruiser was primo to the Master of the City of New Orleans, the tone he’d used when he made official pronouncements in the court. “Unless we are much mistaken, Shimon Bar-Ioudas, the Flayer of Mithrans, the younger Son of Darkness, is in the States.”
Even in Beast form, my heart froze. I had thought I was done with all this. I was an idiot. There had always been two Sons of Darkness. Two sons of Ioudas Issachar—Judas Iscariot—two fathers of all vamps, two black witches who had used the wood and iron spikes of Golgotha to bring their father back from the dead, and who had been the first blood drinkers. No way was I going to be allowed to avoid him. Shimon Bar-Judas. Holy crap.
“ICE and PsyLED believe an upper-level vamp came ashore in Florida, but they don’t know who they’re looking for or where he is,” Alex said, fingers clacking keys. “Every alphabet agency in the U.S. is a week behind. Looks like they’re acting on the assumption that the fangheads are headed to New Orleans. If they’re right, that gives us time to prepare and to warn your people.”
I remembered Sabina, the outclan priestess of the U.S. Mithrans, saying, once, of the elder Son of Darkness—Shimon’s older brother—Joseph Santana, aka Joses Bar-Judas, aka Yosace Bar-Ioudas, “He cannot be brought to true-death, Jane Yellowrock. He is all that we have to bargain with. He is all that we have to keep his brother, Shimon Bar-Judas, at bay. And Shimon has always been the more dangerous of the two.”
So of course I beheaded Joseph and fed his true-dead head and body to Brute. In hindsight? Crap. I’d do it again.
I needed to be human. It was night, dark enough for me to shift. I could shift into Beast day or night, but shifting back to my human form was a problem until after dark.
Beast wants cow. Beast hungers.
Later. I stood and trotted up the stairs and along the hallway to the suite I shared with Bruiser, through the soothing tall-ceilinged bedroom, decorated in cream and stone and soft green, into the cream-and-stone bath and the doorless shower. Sat. And thought about being human.
Pain sliced along my bones like obsidian knives. Shifting was never the same way twice. Sometimes more pain. Sometimes less pain. Either way, it wasn’t a piece of cake. Bones snapped and joints tore. I screamed.
* * *
* * *
I woke on the cool tile of the shower. Naked. Clean. Dying.
All the strength and energy I’d experienced as Beast were gone, leaving me exhausted and in pain. My skin was pale, my bloodless fingers almost white on the gray tile instead of their previous golden tones. I pressed on my middle, feeling the hard, pointed ends of the tumor in my belly. It was star-shaped, like my own, new, blended power. And like the new magics, it was deadly. The tumor was stealing all my circulation, using all my muscle protein to feed itself. My hair was a black tangle of lusterless shadow. I was a mess.
The only positive thing in all this was that while I was in Beast shape—which was healthy—the tumor didn’t grow. Beast’s body was just dandy. Staying Puma concolor gave my clan time to search for cures that might work on a two-souled Cherokee skinwalker. Chemo was out. Traditional and tribal forms of medicine hadn’t worked so far. The tumor was magic-based, and my pals the Everhart-Trueblood clan were compiling possibilities. But so far? Nada. Nothing. Zip. The star-shaped magic constantly fed the tumor it had created, and it was growing as if it was on steroids.
I pushed myself to my knees and pulled up on the tiled half wall until I was standing. Woozy. Weak. I straightened my spine, forced air in and out of my lungs, and went to the sink and the small tray where the CBD oil and hemp oil were kept. Both oils came from the cannabis plant, but the hemp oil was made from seeds and the CBD oil was made from a single strain of flowers and leaves. Eli had found a supplier who was top-notch, and the quality of the oils was too, making it the most expensive body oil I’d ever used. I took a CBD dose orally—a little bitter, a hint of turpentine—and rubbed more CBD oil on my body, applying it to my belly and the bottoms of my feet to decrease pain. I used the hemp oil on the parts of my back I could reach, shoulders, arms, and legs, to combat dry skin.
I moved out of the frigid bathroom and pulled on warm velour sweats and wool socks. The clothing was baggy and hid some of my weight loss. Having cancer sucked.
I took a peek in the tall mirror and saw a skinny, sick woman whose odd amber eyes were hollowed out in her sallow-skinned face. Again I put my shoulders back and walked out of the suite. And into Bruiser’s waiting arms. He had been standing in the hallway, giving me privacy to dress. He did that all the time now—gave me privacy. As if he knew what it took to psych myself up to face the world in human form. I leaned into him. He cradled me gently enough that my middle didn’t ache where we touched. I breathed against his down-filled vest, smelling the feathers, the clean outdoors, the slightly citrusy, slightly spicy Onorio scent.
“I love you,” he said, his tone fierce. His arms tightened on me, restrained yet claiming.