Skinwalker (45 page)

I reached for her shackle. “I can take care of—” Her eyes shot from my face to my neck; my skin went sweat slick. The magic charms instantly grew hot against my stomach, burning in the presence of the danger presented by a hungry vamp. I fought the urge to move away in fear. “If I free you, can you control yourself enough not to drain me dry?”

The man across the hall chuckled. “If you set her free, she will rip out your throat in joy. We all would.” He sniffed the air, raising his head, licking his lips. “I remember your scent from the Pellissier party. Not quite human. Tasty.”

“So much for being kind,” I said. I stood and stepped away from Dominique. “You'll just have to wait until I kill your blood-master.”

“No!” Dominique said. “Why would you kill Grégoire?”

The vamp across the hall laughed, derision in the tone. “You are a fool, you little ‘not-quite-human.' Grégoire is not rogue. No! He is prisoner, and has been for these two months and more. He is shackled, as we, with silver. He still lives, though he grows weak. I feel his heartbeat, slow and weak.”

“You should have come when I asked,” Dominique said. “You should have come.”

Understanding slid into place with an almost audible click. The rogue was bleeding Grégoire, which was why Dominique had commanded me to visit, back at Leo's party. And if she hadn't felt safe telling me at the party, then the rogue had been there, close by, listening. Could I be any more stupid? I pulled the cross from my shirt. “Where is the rogue keeping your blood-master? And why is he keeping you shackled—other than a blood meal? And most important, who is the rogue?”

The man across the hall laughed. Dominique wept. The vamps in the other two doorways rattled their chains. And Correen moved up the stairs, a butcher knife in her hand.

“Though it surely means the death of my human family, I called Clan Pellissier,” she said to Dominique, as tears rained down her wrinkled face. “The blood-servant of the blood-master of New Orleans is on the way.” Outside, lights drew up in front of the house. An engine died. Doors closed. They must have been close by. I saw my payment for bringing in the rogue's head flitting away. Correen screamed and raced toward me.

I threw Dominique to the floor of her room, stepped in after her, and slammed the door. Out in the hall, Correen banged the blade into the door, screaming, “Dominique! Dominique!”

I dropped to one knee, so close I was bathed in the sick breath of the vamp. I shoved the cross at her face, blazing a cold, bright light. “Where is the rogue keeping your blood-master? Why is he keeping you shackled? And most important,
who is the rogue
?”

When she answered, all the breath went out of my body.

By the time the footsteps made the top of the stairs, I was standing in an open window overlooking the back garden. Gathering Beast to me like a cloak, I jumped, hit ground, rolled into a crouch, and took off across the lawn. In a single leap, I took the six-foot-tall back fence and raced to my bike, still hidden in the shadows, three blocks away.

Witchy power

I gunned the engine, crouching over the handlebars. Beast crouched with me, face to the wind, my/our mouth open for scents. I was heading out of town, along the Mississippi River. And I was about to do great damage to the entire vamp council in general, and to Clan Pellissier in particular. When I was done, I figured someone would kill me.

Lightning cracked overhead, throwing the world into jagged edges of light. Rain sliced down, beating me as I rode through the storm. I was soaking wet by the time I found the old house and turned down the drive between the rows of oaks, in the wake of two cars, moving slowly through the rain. I passed both, the people inside obscured by the night. Security guards? Not like it mattered. They'd never have time to react.

Lightning shattered overhead. I smelled the rogue's human scent, fresh on the wind. I gunned the engine and bent over the bike. I took the stairs to the porch with a grinding of wheels on wood and hit the front door, still moving fast. The door wrenched open and kicked back against the wall, the impact slamming through my bones. I rode the bike into the foyer, spun out on the slick family crest, and killed the engine. Glass tinkled as something broke.

An alarm wound up, the single tone starting low and climbing, getting ready to wail. I was moving so fast that the engine was still whirring with power and the alarm was only a hope of urgency. I kicked the stand into place while tossing the helmet, checked the M4 for firing readiness. Pulled the strap over my head so I wouldn't drop it. Rested the weapon on my chest. I wasn't going to use the gun unless I had to. I could smell humans in the house. I saw one at the kitchen, her mouth wide.

With one hand, I reached under my jacket and pulled my T-shirt free of the jeans. One of Molly's little charms landed in my damp glove, the tingling of its harnessed power hot even through the gloves. I had worn them close to my body, reactivating the protection portion of the spell they carried. Now, like the Benelli, they were locked and loaded. The bike fell silent. I retucked the shirt and rotated my head on my neck to loosen muscles tight from the ride.

I raced up the curving staircase on the right, my booted feet almost silent on the deep carpet, my motion throwing rainwater in spirals. The vamp scent of the rogue was strong. The alarm wailed.

Immanuel, Leo's son, raced into a hallway at the top of the steps, swathed in silvery light, already shifting. I had a single instant to see dress pants, bare feet, shirt hanging open, revealing his bare chest. I reached the landing. Pulled a stake. The alarm reached its pinnacle, wailing.

A paw swiped out, claws raking the air—so fast. I dodged, ducked. Chose my spot on his chest. Slid up under his guard. Stabbed him with the stake. Hard, up under his ribs.

He staggered back. I pulled the cross and advanced. There was only a pale glow. Immanuel fell against a tall stand. A statue tottered, started to fall. A marble statue. On a stone stand. He roared. Stone cracked. The statue exploded before it hit the floor. Marble dust and rock shards shot over me, shrapnel, cutting deep. Immanuel was drawing mass. I'd hit his heart. He should be dead, if he was a skinwalker turned by a vampire. . . .

Not a vampire
, Beast said
. Skinwalker
.
Liver-eater
.
Took Immanuel's place.

In an instant I understood what I should have comprehended earlier. Way earlier. The usual methods of vamp killing wouldn't work because this thing wasn't a vamp and never had been. A vamp hadn't turned a skinwalker and brought it in to a blood-family. If Immanuel had done that, Leo would have recognized my blood scent. Instead, a skinwalker had eaten the liver of a vamp and taken his place, subsuming his native scent; he had eaten Immanuel, Leo's son, and taken his place. The reek of rot filled the hallway.

Statue dust rained down. The marble pedestal exploded. The rogue/skinwalker was drawing more mass. I back-tracked through a storm of stone projectiles. Immanuel lashed out. One massive paw. Claws fully extended. They ripped through my leather jacket. Sliced flesh beneath deeply. I sucked in a scream.

“Stop!” The word echoed with power. Witchy power. The walls rippled at the purpose and intent of the single syllable. Power bombarded me, hot prickles of pain, stealing my breath. Off balance, I fell to the floor and bounced, muscles frozen,
stopped
.

Immanuel, on one knee, at the apex of his swipe, stopped. I realized it hadn't been Immanuel's command. The alarm died. Lights flickered. A human I hadn't seen stood at the end of the hallway, immobile, panicked. Footsteps trod up the stairs, soft in the carpet. I remembered the cars I passed, people inside. Crap. The cavalry had nearly been here when I arrived—witches. “Stop,” the voice said again, softer, closer, strengthening the spell. Beast raged in me. I held her down, resisted her need to
move
. To
fight
.

My hands sizzled with heat and electric agony. I'd been hit with a spell before, and I understood that to resist was to make it stronger. I ceased fighting against the compulsion and released my grips. My hands fell open. My body relaxed. The Benelli thumped softly to the carpet; the charm lay exposed in my palm.

“
Stop!
” Power flowed from the word like silvered light.

The rogue/skinwalker began to slowly sink to the floor, fighting the compulsion, his body moving a fraction of an inch at a time as his own kinetic energies were used to bind him. I looked around, able to move only my eyes. I couldn't even breathe beyond a shallow intake of air, not nearly what I needed in the interrupted aftermath of fighting. But at least the rogue was similarly trapped. Neither of us could move with conscious choice. The footsteps grew closer. I heard others behind them. One, perhaps two more witches.

“
Stop
,” several said together.

The command was much more than a set of letters arranged into a single syllable. It was an intricate spell, a general, all-purpose, spoken word—a
wyrd
—wrapped around a spell, intended to stop all kinetic energy, except the speaker's own, within a predetermined radius. And it did. I lay on the floor, trying to relax, trying not to fight for the breath I so desperately needed. Everything around me took on a shimmering hue, bright and sharp, amplified by the spell's power. It was brightest around the rogue, where the silvery energies began to tighten and constrict as he fought the forces bearing down on him.

The witch moved into view. Antoine. Behind him was the woman I had seen in the Royal Mojo Blues Club in the secret meeting. They walked up the last three steps, moving easily, human slow. The woman stopped at the landing, her long skirt swaying. Antoine stood before her, his locks tied back, curiosity on his face. He was wearing sneakers, a button-down shirt open at the collar, and threadbare jeans. A half dozen or so wicked-sharp blades were strapped at his belt, blades with steel and green stone handles.
His cooking knives.
I wanted to giggle but I didn't have the breath. My sight was growing darker at the edges, a sign of oxygen deprivation. I needed to breathe. Soon. A glance at the liver-eater showed his face ashen. His eyes livid.

Antoine pulled a knife as he advanced on the rogue, who still wore the beautiful face of Leo's son. But, like the walls that had rippled at Antoine's
wyrd
, and the air that held too much power in check, his flesh rippled slightly. The rogue was tiring, his exhaustion draining his control; he was losing his focus. The rot stench intensified. His skull bones took on an odd fusion of features, part human, part lion, while his skin slipped from hue to hue, a coppery, olive, pale, tawny pelt patchwork underlain with sickly, yellowed skin and pustules. His hair slid from blond to ashy brown to black with scraps of pelt. His flesh—the snake in his bones—wanted to return to its Cherokee form, seeking the original pattern, while his intent and fear pushed his body toward other forms.

His skin darkened, lightened; his hair flowed black and long. His eyes went from a tint so dark they looked black, to a softer tone, yellowish, like mine. From above me, kneeling, he turned those eyes, those so-familiar eyes, to me. Recognition again flared there. He saw Beast within me, close to the surface, barely harnessed. He hissed in a breath so hoarse it sounded as if he breathed in through glue.

Antoine moved through the kinetic energies trembling in the air. He knelt beside Immanuel, one knee on the carpet, close to my face. I could see the frayed seam in the denim, and the two men just beyond.

In an instant I put it together. The rogue was trying to take over Leo's position of power, using Grégoire's form and monies to buy land for his new clan. In a perfect position to carry out his plan, he was the one creating instability in vamp politics. Like I said before, could I be any more stupid?

“We thought it might be you,” Antoine said. Immanuel's eyes flitted to him. “But when Clan Arceneau was buying up all the land, we thought it was the woman Mithran, little Dominique, seeking control of her clan, or seeking to begin a new clan-family and expanded hunting ground.”

Antoine shifted, blocking my view, his back to me, his body standing within the outstretched claws of the rogue. “Or, we think perhaps it was Blood-master Arceneau, eh? You lead us to think that, yes? The ‘traveling in Europe' was ruse? You have him, Arceneau, bound in silver, stash him somewhere?” He chuckled at whatever he saw in Immanuel's expression. “And then Anna join us. Tell us something about you become strange. . . .”

The rogue, the liver-eater, twitched a claw. Only a fraction. At the movement, the charm lying in my palm grew hot, burning.
Oh crap. The charms.
They were reacting to my fear and Antoine's spell. They were intended to protect me. Clearly at least one of them had identified a threat to me and was trying to react. The burning increased, gathering, intensifying in the center of my hand. I wanted to scream. As my skin blistered I managed a gasp, soft, almost silent.

Neither of the two looked my way. Antoine reached out and touched the rogue's paw, one finger on the tip of a claw. “I don' know what you are, mon, but you not Immanuel. Not Immanuel, long time pass. Decades, maybe. You steal Immanuel shape, yes? And this sabertooth shape. How you do that? You kill a witch and take her power? Yes? No? No matter. Your time here done. I no miss de heart, like dis
petite chat
.”

With a quick flick of his wrist he jerked the stake out of Immanuel's chest. Blood flew. Splattering me. A droplet landed on the charm. The crimson drop bubbled and spat, releasing the heating stench of rotten meat. It mixed with the reek of my burned flesh as the charm bristled with power. I gagged on the pain. Tears blurred my eyes. I wasn't supposed to hold it once it was activated. I was supposed to throw it at the danger. It was supposed to detonate, but only on the cause of the danger, not on me. Holding the charm was having an unexpected effect on the incantation embedded in it.
My hand is burning
.