Death's Rival

Faster than my eyes could follow, the vamps facing me vamped out and attacked.

Leo screamed and charged past me. Bruiser pulled weapons and started firing.

I rode de Allyon down, my blade trapped in the crevices of his spine. I landed on top of him, one leg to either side. De Allyon was watching me, his eyes still open. The flesh around the blade began to reknit, the restorative powers of the Naturaleza healing him. I yanked up on the knife, jerking it back and forth until it released from the spine’s bony processes, then pressed, cutting the healing tissues. Slicing deep. “You killed my people,” I whispered as I cut. “You killed my people. I am the hand of God tonight, because you killed my people.”

The battle raged around me as I cut. I smelled Leo’s blood. Smelled Bruiser’s, and felt the heat from his body on either side of me. He had straddled de Allyon and me, his weapons firing with steady precision. I smelled Rick nearby, injured. I scented human blood on the awful wind, and heard gunshots from near the cars, the drivers fighting. Heard other cars roaring up. More humans coming.

Sabina’s power was a barbed icy meat hook pulling on my blood-chilled skin. I rose and cut down, putting my weight into the knife blade.

I had killed a Naturaleza before, and I knew how hard it was to bring one true death. I sawed at his spine, the bones catching and grinding on the silvered blade. De Allyon’s blood pumped again, burning, pooling beneath us.

I severed his head. The blade hit the flooring beneath and rang like a bell, scoring deeply into the floor. Lucas de Allyon’s head rolled to the side and swiveled, as if looking at me. The remainder of his blood gushed out. I grabbed the hair of his head and pulled my legs beneath me. Pushed against his chest, steadying myself on his body. Bruiser stepped aside from me, spinning the twin short swords I had given him. Both blades were bloodied. I chuckled, and he slid his eyes to me, seeing my blood-drenched state and the head in my hands. A grim smile hardened his features. I held the head aloft and shouted, “De Allyon’s blood-feud is over!”

Sabina shouted, far louder than I had, “Enough!” Her power shot through the room like frozen lightning. Everything stopped. All the vamps, all the humans near the cars.

“This is finished,” she said more quietly. “De Allyon’s territory and hunting grounds are forfeit to Pellissier.” De Allyon’s heir and spare started forward, vamped out and bloody, but seemed to lose the ability to walk. Both settled slowly to the floor in ungainly heaps, the priestess’ cool gaze following them down. All de Allyon’s other vamps went still, immobilized by her power. They looked at the priestess with something akin to awe.

Sabina said, “Any practicing Naturaleza who is tainted with Sanguine pestis will be held captive until such time as a cure is found. Any Naturaleza not tainted with Sanguine pestis will put aside the evil and practice Fame Vexatum or suffer the penalty of the council and my wrath. All of de Allyon’s scions and loyal subjects who still adhere to the ways of the BloodCross will be accepted into Pellissier’s clans under his authority. So do I rule, and so shall I be obeyed.”

The icy wind dropped and disappeared. I searched out Leo in the crowd. He was standing with Koun, his back against a pillar at the edge of the Peristyle. At his feet were three dead vamps, staked and bloody. He watched as I walked to him, holding the head of my enemy out in front of me, his blood dribbling from the severed stump. The words that came from my mouth were stilted and formal, and sounded nothing like me at all, yet they were perhaps more like me than any words I had ever uttered. “Lucas de Allyon killed my people. He killed the Tsalagiyi—the Cherokee.” The people my kind had sworn to protect. “He enslaved us, killed us, and drank us down. He destroyed us. Despite the fact that you betrayed me and forced a binding, I am in your debt for the favor of his death at my hands.”

Leo took the head by the hair, accepting the gift. “In recompense of your debt and in honor of your service, you may choose a gift from among mine. Choose wisely,” he said.

I shrugged my acceptance. The Peristyle was a bloody battleground. Five vamps were lying dead, three of them Leo’s—Kabisa and Karimu, sworn to Grégoire and Clan Arceneau, had died fighting back to back. Koun was kneeling over the body of Hildebert, a German vamp whose name meant “bright battle,” and who had died fighting, still wielding a blade as his head hit the floor. Hildebert and Koun were the warriors of Clan Pellissier, and Koun bent his head low over Hildebert’s chest, bloody tears dripping, to run across his friend’s body.

In the far shadows, Rick walked out of the wood, along the path I had taken during my battle with the Enforcer and his human accomplice. I remembered the human Beast had savaged; her claws and killing teeth had marked his flesh. I had some explaining to do soon. I didn’t think it would be a pretty discussion.

I looked down at my hands, the blood drying and cold. It seemed I’d always had blood on my hands, from the time my grandmother had given me my first blade. De Allyon’s hair and blood were caught under my nails. The hair was coarse and black as the night sky. I took a breath at the sight of them, the action of my chest erratic, the muscles jerking and stabbing. Tears flooded my eyes. I curled my fingers under, the blood tacky on my skin. A sob rose in my chest, gathering a scream with it, tangling into some huge snarled pain, like roots twisting tight and choking. They were stuck, wedged in place, blocked by some organic dam that kept the agony of my soul from finding release. Tears gathered and settled inside, floating close to the surface, but obstructed, unable to find freedom. I clenched my hands, the blood sticky.

Ahead of me, Eli pointed a rifle at Sneak Cheek, the Tequila Boy we had suspected of being leak number two. During a debriefing, I’d have to ask what Eli had seen. Later. Much later. I nodded to two Vodka Boys and three Tequila Boys, talking quietly about getting good and drunk before dawn.

I passed El Diablo, standing by himself, and he gave me a small nod, touching his combat helmet, like some old-time Western cowboy. I lifted a finger at him, and though I didn’t manage a smile, I did manage to keep my sobs in.

When I passed the last marine, I took a breath, painful and coarse sounding, dropped my hands, and walked to Bayou Metairie, sliding out of my flip-flops as I went. I waded into the water, feeling Beast looking out through my eyes. She spotted the gator in the distance, nostrils above the surface, but it wouldn’t bother me, not with vamp blood on my skin. I looked up in the black sky and found the North Star, orienting myself to face east. There was no ritual for my kind of Christian who had faced battle and killed. Maybe the Roman Catholics had one. Absolution. Something. The Cherokee would have one, and Aggie One Feather would guide me through it some morning soon. But I needed something now, when the night and the blood of my enemies coated me, their deaths pressing on me.

In two steps, the water rose up my thighs. Without looking, I knew that Rick was standing on the bank, watching me, Leo and Bruiser and Eli behind him. Rick’s wolf and his Soul stood beside him. Something like pain cut through me, a steel blade of misery and grief, sharp and burning cold. But nothing in life was set in stone and nothing in life is promised us. Not happiness, not joy, not love. Everything was variable and mutable and inconstant. Perhaps Rick and I still could be together. Someday. But I couldn’t count on that. I couldn’t count on anything except God, death, and myself, and sometimes not even myself.

I looked up into the eastern sky. “I call on the Almighty, the Elohim, who are eternal. Hear me. See me.” I knelt, dropping slowly below the muddy surface, the cold water closing over my head, washing away the blood of my enemies. I stood just as slowly, letting the water run through my clothes and hair and over the drying blood on my skin.

The water trickled off me, into silence. Nothing moved now that Sabina’s magics had died away, the trees of the park motionless. Even the vamps had stopped moving, standing, all of them, friends and enemies alike, watching me.

I turned to my right, facing north, and whispered, knowing that the vamps and weres would hear, and not caring. “I call upon my Tsalagiyi ancestors, and upon the grandmother and father of my kind. Hear me.” I knelt and dropped below the surface of the water. When I rose, my skin felt cleaner, my soul less soiled. Cold prickles lifted my flesh and water ran from me, cleansing.

I blinked against it. When the water draining down my face cleared, I caught a glimpse of humans in night camo standing in the crowd of enemies over de Allyon’s clan, guns at the ready. The Tequila Boys. One stood beside de Allyon’s heir, now the clan leader. Another stood beside his secundo scion. Guarding. If we had enemies among our own, that was finished now. They were free of obligation and coercion. Leo was safe now.

I turned west. “I call upon my guardian angel, Hayyel. Hear me.” I heard the wings of a night bird on the far bank, but resisted the urge to look behind me. My human and vamp watchers were not alone. Not anymore. I knelt, letting the water close over me, cleansing me. Purifying me. When I gained my feet, the water pulled through my