She seemed uncertain where this was going, but she finally said, “Yes.”
“With the cuffs on?”
“It’s more distant, like listening with earmuffs on, but yes.”
I lifted the crown of my reign. “Can you feel anything from this? Don’t grab. It might kill you. Just extend a finger.”
She uncurled an index finger, and I let the crown touch her fingertip. She shook her head. “No. Why?” She was staring at my nice mug of tea.
I set le breloque aside and raised the mug to my lips; her eyes followed it. I made uncouth slurping sounds, watching her face. She wasn’t disturbed by my lack of manners, unlike the ancient vamps, but she was thirsty. “How about now?” I slapped the crown onto my head, and it adjusted to fit, snugging down tight. I felt tingles all down my body, like green ice that warmed and was gone. It was a new effect, and I wanted to see if she—
Monique’s face did this weird thing. It seemed to shout, Rattlesnake! Or Quicksand! Or Acid! Her eyes landed on mine, and she clamped her mouth shut. She saw me as dangerous. She saw the crown as dangerous. Coolio. I could use her fear.
“Ah. Good. Then you’ll understand why I’m doing this.” Not that I understood why I was doing it. Since there was no one to teach me how to use the crown, flying by the seat of my pants was my only option. But vamps and blood went together like hands and gloves, and le breloque was at least partially vamp crown, so . . .
I set down my mug, leaned over her, and tore the duct tape off her neck where Bruiser had taped the cuff in place over her scratch. It had scabbed over beneath the tape, but it opened up fresh with the adhesive pull. I swiped my fingers through her blood, shoved the tape back in place, and sat back. I didn’t pull out the Glob. No point in giving away all my secrets, and it wasn’t working exactly the way it used to anyway, so it had to be kept in reserve.
Meticulously, I wiped some of the blood on a paper towel for possible later use, stuffed it into the pocket holding the Glob, and while in the pocket, wiped the blood onto the magical thingamabob. The Glob went red hot, fast, and then cooled to an icy temp that probably had frost on it. I also probably had a blister the size of my fist on my hip and several on my fingers. Note to self: find a padded bag to hold the Glob and wear oven mitts when I test stuff. Testing things taught me a lot, but some of the things I learned were painful.
Being more obvious about it, I withdrew my hand, touched my bloody fingers to le breloque, leaned back in my chair, and half closed my eyes, bloody fingers pressing on the gold. The power of the Dark Queen had to be worth something, and if I lived long enough, I might learn what. The crown warmed slowly beneath my fingers, and unexpected sensations and reactions swam through me.
To the crown, the blood felt nasty, slimy, dark, a close cousin to treacherous and evil combined. But inside me, something was happening, something different from my skinwalker magics, Beast’s own power, or the crown magics. This power was also mine, but it was prism-bright, the colors of the rainbow and the sound of brass gongs, like light through stained glass and cathedral bells ringing. This new magic was warm as sun on a summer beach; it smelled of night-blooming jasmine; it had texture, like thrusting my hand into a basket filled with skeins of brightly colored silk yarn. This was something I had brought back from the rift and from contact with the Angel Hayyel. It wrapped around my skinwalker magic, and if power had emotions, I’d have said that it blazed with delight at the melding. I focused all that magic, all my own power, and all that power of the Dark Queen onto the blood drying between my fingers and the crown. Through her blood, I focused that power on Monique’s magic. I looked at it with Beast’s eyes.
Monique had shields, layers of them, Onorio defenses, light and shadow, sound and texture, taste and scent. Protective magical armor. The kind of thing that would absorb and dissipate the energies of a binding working, whether it originated with witch or vamp powers.
Beyond the layers was what felt like a membrane, rubbery and slick and rough all at once. And below that was a great open space. I pushed through the membrane and slid free on the other side to hover in a long, dark room with a curved floor, like the hull of a boat.
It was dank and rank and foul. It rocked, like a boat on the sea, back and forth, side to side. In the bottom of the hull, old blood sloshed gently on the wood and partway up the rounded walls. A slow, clotted sloshing.
There was a semifamiliar feeling here, and I realized that my mind was looking down on some version of Monique’s soul home, though her home was wood and rot and blood, and not the clean stone of my own. I was in the center of her being, and I almost retreated, but I steeled myself and stared down.
In the sloshing blood were the bodies of beings she had bound. They were tied and gagged, rolling back and forth, eyes closed. Four of them. At least two were vamps, and the others were definitely not vampy, but I couldn’t tell what kind of paras. As I watched, a thin purple tendril of power rose from the pool of blood. Without knowing how I knew, I knew it was intended to harm me.
CHAPTER 4
This Ain’t My First Rodeo
Without opening my eyes, I said, “Stop or die.”
The rise of magic stopped. I had a feeling that without the cuffs binding Monique, I’d have seen that power rise like smoke from a green-wood fire mixed with steam from a boiling kettle and scald me dead.
I slid my hand back into my pocket and touched the Glob with a single finger. Images, sounds, visions came clearer.
I had known that Monique was not just Onorio. She was more. A mixture of twisted things I couldn’t identify, except that her bound captives were still alive somewhere, and she was using them. It was as if her rotting slave ship was full of a dark magic of destruction that sucked the life from the bound beings trapped there. Blood magic was one way that demons worked, yet Monique wasn’t a demon.
Demons had a unique feel, a distinctive stench. And they were aware and discerning of watching eyes far more than Monique was.
But she was something different.
And she was very, very powerful.
I wondered . . . if I could stop her magic? A spiral of curiosity curled through me. What was blood magic without blood?
Le breloque warmed again, and in the vision—or potential ultra-dimensional reality?—of Monique’s soul home, I lashed out with my prism of light. Fast as a lightning strike, the blood boiled and scorched dry. In moments there was nothing left but the rotten wood of the hull and the bound bodies of her captives.
The light of my magic spread out and began to thread through the grain of the wood, braiding, knotting, whirling as my crown and my office sought to bind the binder. It wasn’t actually happening, but it was clearly something I had the power to do.
The Glob offered images of various other possibilities. My weapon just wanted to drain her and set the ship on fire. It sent me visions of the captives screaming. The Glob was more than just a tool. It was half sentient. And the crown was a tool I wasn’t sure how to use just yet. So I held both amulets back, reining in their power. Needing to learn more.