Dark Queen Read online

  It was the thought concept of a predator cat, a Puma concolor, making me decide.

  Bad use of Jane’s minutes, she added, though Beast had little concept of time except now, soon, later, before, hungry, seasons, and moon cycles. Animals didn’t follow time as humans did.

  Choose, she demanded. Head hurts.

  I gripped Eli’s right arm, pulling him into the time bubble. He stumbled and I caught him, shoving his weapon up and away. “Jane?” he said, almost startled at the time change. Almost but not quite. It was hard to startle one of Uncle Sam’s best, especially as he had been in the Gray Between with me before. He looked at the unwelcome visitor. “Who?”

  “Don’t know. Wearing a PsyLED badge.” I held up the badge as proof. “Using the new Glock issued to PsyLED. He speaks some of the language of The People. He called me by my Cherokee name. And then called me u’tlun’ta.”

  “He smell like you?”

  “No. Floral.” My own scent was a challenge to most vampires, until the team leader accepted me. Then that one’s underlings fell into line and accepted me too. But oral history, things people had told me about a skinwalker who had lived in New Orleans a century and more ago, hinted that at least one other skinwalker had smelled like flowers. At some point soon, I had to track down the vamp who had owned her and ask questions. In my copious free time. Right.

  Eli frowned. He checked the altered trajectory of his round, patted my hand, telling me to not let go, which would drop him into normal time. He lifted a thigh rig from the floor and strapped it onto his shower-damp body and seated his weapon in its Kydex holster. He looked me over, seeing too much. “Your head?”

  “Bearable.”

  Eli grunted. With one free hand, he gripped my arm, making sure we didn’t separate. Together we pattered down the steps, back to the killer. “We still don’t know if all skinwalkers can bubble time or if it’s unique,” he said, “part of you and Beast. We need to make sure he doesn’t learn that you have that skill.”

  “It’s on video footage at HQ,” I said.

  “Yeah. But that’s in a time and place where witch magic could be playing tricks. Discussing that with cops is a battle for tomorrow. We play it by ear, wronged, in danger, and innocent.” Eli looked the visitor over as if he was a piece of terrain to be taken from the enemy, staring into the yellow eyes, as if looking for contacts. Eli frowned. “Too bad I can’t get his weapon away without pulling him into time with us. Let me get to the left side of the doorframe, weapon drawn, ready to fire. You get into your previous position, and let me go. Then you take the guy out. I’ll take care that the weapon doesn’t fire again.”

  “Okay. Modified kata guruma?” Kata guruma was a dramatic, vicious martial takedown.

  “Okay by me. Use his hair. Grab his dumplings and give ’em a twist as you slam him down, but toss him inside. We got gawkers.” He meant the tourists on the sidewalk across the street. “I’ll have his weapon long before he hits.”

  I shrugged and put the vamp-killer and the PsyLED badge on the floor, out of the way, then stepped into position, my foot touching Eli’s to keep him in my time bubble, my body and hands almost touching the stranger. Eli positioned his hands just above and beneath the killer’s gun hand. “Now,” I said to my partner. Eli moved his foot. Instantly I was alone in the Gray Between. My head spun and spiked with pain. I took a breath to keep from throwing up and blew it out. And dropped the Gray Between. Drew on Beast speed.

  The overlapping gunshots sounded, blasting the silence away as I seized the lustrous, slick black hair instead of the back of his neck. Reached between his legs and seized his testicles in a crushing grip. Lifted high, as I pulled his head down low to my right side. And slammed him inside the house and into the foyer floor. Not a textbook move but good enough. All in one faster-than-human motion.

  The house shook. The man made a breathless, squealing, squeaking sound. Eli was standing over him, holding the attacker’s weapon and his own, both pointing at the man. Maybe a whole second had passed. He lay on the floor, his hands between his legs. Squeaking still. His golden-skinned face pale as death. His eyes rolled up.

  “I will not”—I hesitated—“nuwhtohiyada gotlvdi. I don’t make peace with assassins.” I kicked his foot out of the way and closed the door on the startled cries of the onlookers and the winter air. Winter in New Orleans meant the high sixties, but still. It was the ecologically appropriate thing to do.

  “I missed it. What happened?” Eli’s younger brother, Alex, asked, running in from the living room. He hadn’t answered the door. Probably playing some kind of video game and couldn’t be bothered.

  “Jane happened,” Eli said, his dark skin picking up the lights through the layers of stained glass and bulletproof glass.

  The man on the floor groaned. Eli patted him down and removed a weapon from a leather ankle holster. From a small pocket built in the holster, he also pulled a tooth and held it out to me. The canine tooth was curved and sharp, nearly two inches in length. A big-cat tooth, longer and slightly more narrow at the root end than a Puma concolor tooth, though curved, like all Western Hemisphere big-cats. Whatever species, it was additional evidence that the man was a skinwalker. He carried the genetic material of his favorite animal to shift into in case of injury or near death. He might feel like he was dying, but he’d live. I curled my fist around the tooth. Ignored the bass drum pounding and the ice picks stabbing inside my head. Ignored the desire to hurl my cookies.

  Alex brought up kitchen chairs. We all three sat in a small ring around the downed man and watched, as if he was a one-man play. Alex passed around ice-cold bottled Cokes—my favorite way to drink Coke now—and a bag of potato chips. I smothered a laugh at the picture we must have made. I chewed, watching. The man’s color wasn’t getting any better. “How long does it take to get over a testicle twisting?”

  “With your grip?” Eli asked casually. “Days?”

  Alex made a sound that was mostly “gack” and crossed his legs, suddenly pale even despite his mixed-race heritage.

  “Three minutes till he can breathe?” Eli guessed. He reached out and took my wrist, guesstimating my pulse, still saying nothing in front of the outsider about my headache and nausea.

  “Better cuff him,” Alex advised. “As entertaining as this is, we got work to do.”

  “True,” I said. “And I’m in my jammies.”

  “You went to the door in your PJs? Shame on you,” Alex said.

  “I know, right? I should comb my hair. Dress. Maybe even makeup. For company, you know.”

  “Girly stuff,” Eli said at my makeup comment. Frowning, he dropped my wrist. “You get any sleep?” he asked, but really asking about my sickness.

  “Not a lick.” I touched my head and winced. “Of course, now that I’ve exercised a little, I’m sleepy. And we have uninvited company and I can’t go back to bed.”

  “Always the way,” Eli said.

  “Dude showed up unannounced, and tried to kill you. Double case of the rudes,” Alex said.

  The man on the floor gurgled.

  “Ice pack?” I suggested.

  “Nah. Let him suffer,” Eli said. He bent forward and rested his elbows on his knees, hands together under his chin, watching the man’s ribs try to work. Casually, he added, “He’s turning blue.”

  “I see that,” I said.

  “You people are sadistic. I’m going back to my game.”

  “Shooting and dismembering nonhumans on video? Sadistic, much?” Eli asked, his words sorta mushy, due to his chin on fists.

  “Totally not the same,” Alex said, shaking his head, the long, tight curls around his face swinging. “Alien bugs. Exoskeletons. Antennae. Multiple legs. Green goo instead of blood.” The curls stopped swaying. They were tangled, hanging in spirals like a shaggy mop. He needed a haircut. And a shave. Alex had a lot of whiskers on his dark-s
kinned chin.

  I blinked, surprised. His masculine chin. His eyes were deep-set over sharp cheekbones. His shoulders were broad and his arms were well-defined under his T-shirt. Holy crap. He had been doing chores and helping to cook and clean up without being asked for months. Taking showers regularly. Joining us in weightlifting, martial art practice, and sparring workouts, and he had been to the shooting range several dozen times. Alex was . . . adulting. Stinky had grown up into a very nice-looking man.

  “What?” he demanded when he caught me gawking, jutting out his chin, peeved. His tone was the one a teenager makes to meddlesome parents. He squinted his eyes and frowned, short-tempered and petulant. A child still.

  “Never mind. Just a bad dream. Go back to your game.”

  Alex stomped off.

  “Kid’s growing up,” Eli said without looking up, reading my mind. “It’s disconcerting.”

  “Yeah. It is.” I picked up my vamp-killer and went to my room, setting the blade on the bedside table beside the nine-mil and bringing back my cuffs. “You cuff him. I’ll sit on him in case he’s faking.”

  “No way he’s faking. Men do not turn that color from anything else. You cuff him.”

  I shrugged, bent over the man on the floor, grabbed his arm, and whipped him facedown. Stepped on his spine. Yanked up his arms. Cuffed him. He made a sound that let me know he had managed a breath. “He’ll live. If he’s a skinwalker he’ll heal even if he has to shift. And I’m not feeling really chatty right now with a guy who tried to kill me.”

  The shooter was lying on the very dusty foyer floor, the dust well scuffed around him, smeared all over his nice pants and jacket. We had a renovation going, opening the attic into a third floor, and the dust had quickly become ubiquitous. Even Eli’s super-neat streak couldn’t keep up with it.

  Eli said, “He had a big-cat tooth amulet. Like yours.”

  “Yeah. He did.” I wore my tooth fetish on a gold chain around my neck, with the gold nugget that tied me metaphysically to the time and place I’d shifted for the first time as an adult. Most days, I hardly noticed the necklace; it was part of me. I also owned several fetish necklaces with the bones and teeth of other predators I might need to change into, and I’d added a few creatures to my collection recently. I had the ability to shift into prey animals of a similar mass, but Beast hated it when I did that. She was a carnivore and preferred to never be a prey animal. She was also grumpy and callously passive-aggressive. I tried to keep her happy.

  I closed my door on Eli and the stranger and tossed my black jammies on the bed. I took a half dozen antacid tablets, four aspirin, and two Tylenol. Meds don’t work on me like they do on humans, but at this point I was willing to try anything. I dressed in jeans and layered tees and stomped into an old, scuffed pair of Lucchese boots. They had started out a gorgeous green, but I hadn’t made a habit of cleaning and caring for the leather, and the damp Louisiana air had left them sorta moldy on the outside. I wiped them down with a rag to reveal the color of the leather, which had weathered to a greenish charcoal. They looked like something I’d wear to a barn to muck out stalls. I really needed to pay them some attention. I combed and braided my hair and slashed lipstick on my mouth. Looked at myself in the mirror. Black hair. Amber eyes. Golden-copper skin.

  The man had hair the same length and color as mine. I ran my hand down my braid. Same texture. He was Tsalagi. He was skinwalker.

  I was no longer alone in the world.

  Hope billowed up from some forgotten crevice deep inside me.

  But like the last one I found, this skinwalker had tried to kill me too. I shoved down the useless traitor of hope and capped off the fissure. I would not waste emotion on the possibility of finding a skinwalker who didn’t want to kill me. Hope was a lie.

  Sometimes life sucked.

  I dropped my braid and left my room. In the foyer, the chairs were gone. So was the man. Eli was carrying the stranger to the kitchen, a handful of long hair and the cuffs in his right hand, the man’s belt in his left. The fancy shoes were getting scuffed as they dragged, and by his breathing, it was clear the carry position wasn’t helping his cojones. The stranger had to weigh two hundred pounds, but Eli carried him as if he weighed forty. Eli swung him up and into a chair like a bale of hay and the guy landed with a thump. On his butt, but probably banging his damaged cojones on the wood seat. The man groaned.

  “Been there, bub. Hurts like a mother,” Eli muttered, recuffing the man’s hands in front. “I’m making coffee and tea. You act like a normal polite human and I’ll let you have some. And some aspirin. You act stupid and I’ll let my sister at you again. Understand?”

  The man didn’t reply, but I swelled up with happiness. Eli had called me his sister, and neither the Cherokee adoption procedures nor the vamp ones had even started.

  Alex, apparently over his pique, grunted behind me and said, “My bro’s getting all lovey-dovey in his old age.” I felt something deflate inside me, until he added, “Offering a coffee to a killer. So sweet.”

  “I didn’t offer him the best espresso, just some coffee. Standard American. Or one of Jane’s cheaper teas.”

  I let the smile that had started at the use of the word sister spread. This was way better than hope. This was real. The thought of family settled me.

  I heard a horn beep outside. Eli tossed the man’s badge, his wallet, his key fob, and a pack of gum on the table. “PsyLED ID or a very good fake. Key beeped to a government vehicle with government plates down the street. Appears he drove here alone, but Alex’s systems are keeping watch on the exterior cams for a partner.”

  The man lifted his head. His eyes were squinted in pain, but his breathing was slow and regulated as he tried to work through the misery. Skinwalker healing was way better than human. His color was returning. But he didn’t talk.

  I said, “While my brother makes us all something civilized to drink, I can duct tape your legs to the chair or you can give me your word of honor that you’ll be good.”

  The stranger sat up straighter and tossed his tangled hair back. “Brother?” His voice was graveled with pain. “Not by blood. Mixed race black and maybe Choctaw. Not Chelokay.” Chelokay was another way of saying Tsaligi—Cherokee in the speech of The People. That was intended as an insult, delivered without looking at Eli. Ignoring another warrior was an additional insult. “You’re u’tlun’ta,” he said to me, pronouncing the word a little different from my own hut-luna, though close enough. It was insult number three. On top of trying to kill me. Dude was not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, obviously being deliberately bad mannered to see if I’d go u’tlun’ta on his ass. “But you didn’t try to kill me,” he said as if thinking things through. “Why? Since I fired at you. And how did you not get shot? There is no way I could have missed.”

  He had not answered my question, instead muddying the emotional waters with insults and turning the table with his own questions. Basic reverse interrogation tactic. Law enforcement tactic. I decided to roll with it for now. “You always shoot unarmed women and ask questions later?”

  He looked away at that one. Shoulders tensing in shock. As if just remembering that part.

  “In front of witnesses? There were people on the sidewalk.” My tone called him stupid.

  His lips were firm and tight. I realized that he didn’t know why he’d tried to kill me. He had reacted on instinct when he smelled me, just like vamps did. Interesting. Last time that happened I nearly had to kill a vamp in Sedona. Time before that I had to threaten Katie and then hurt Leo. “You ever met an u’tlun’ta? They smell like rotted meat.”

  His eyes widened in surprise.

  Clearly I had hit the nail, and he had never met a liver-eater. I pointed to my chest. “I don’t. I smell like predator. Not pretty flowers like you. Not like dead meat. And I killed the only u’tlun’ta in NOLA.”

  “I saw the foot
age,” he said, no inflection to tell me what he thought about me killing a massive half-human, half–sabertooth lion.

  “Uh-huh.” I had still shots. The video was Leo Pellissier’s private in-house security footage. No way should this man have been able to get it. Yet his offhand reply told me he had really seen it. Not good.

  Eli placed a mug in front of me. It was really a soup mug, white, with a picture of Santa Claus on it, the dialogue bubble saying, “Jane Takes Care of My Naughty List.” Below that was the body of a dead vampire, staked and his head removed.

  The stranger’s eyes took in the mug. “Cup’s a little out of date, isn’t it? You work for the Mithrans now.”

  I still killed vamps who got out of line. A lot of vamps. Either his intel was bad or he was being a pain in the butt. I was going for door number two, so I said nothing. Eli placed a tub of Cool Whip on the table and I used the soup spoon to dig out a glob of the white frothy stuff and place it on top of the tea. I added a similar amount of sugar from the restaurant-style pour-decanter and stirred. Eli sat down and placed a cup at his side. Another one with a straw in it went in front of the killer.

  “You don’t think I’m going to drink that. It could be poisoned.”

  Despite the stabbing headache, which had developed razor edges cutting its way out of the left part of my head and into the middle of my brain, I chuckled softly. Eli gave me a twitch of a smile. We actually had a mug with the words YOU’VE JUST BEEN POISONED in the bottom, so you saw it only after you finished the drink. It was cute.

  Eli pulled out a chair and turned it around, sitting, straddling it. He took his own weapon in one hand and his mug in the other and sipped. “We don’t poison. We shoot, stab, cut, slice and dice, eviscerate, disembowel, and decapitate. Sometimes shoot and blow up our enemies. We’ve been known to bury our dead in the swamp. But we don’t poison. Poison is wussy.”

  I laughed aloud and drank a gulp of the tea. It was a really good Bombay chai with fresh ginger, strong, and the caffeine might help the headache a bit. The nausea receded. “Now that we’ve laid out the consequences of trying to get feisty again,” I said, “talk.”