Blood Trade

“Long years past was cold iron, blood, three cursed trees, and lightning. Red iron will set you free.” Then: “Shadow and blood are a dark light, buried beneath the ground.”

Lightning, like now, in a mystical place full of storms.

Dream-walkers were mystics. Mystics opened themselves to spiritual possibility, and being mystical meant that they seldom communicated logically. They left spiritual hints and clues . . . and the most mystical aspect of vamps was their creation story, an act of black magic that had unintended consequences. And beings who did good magic and black magic were . . . most often witches.

Red iron and trees, I thought, trying to find sense in the dribs and drabs of knowledge I had. The Sons of Darkness, the witch sons of Judas Iscariot, had used the three cursed trees of Calvary to bring their father back to life. The wood from the three crosses had been mixed with blood and black magic to create the first immortal, and when they ate his flesh, they became the first two vampires and fathers of all the vampires who followed.

My breath released in a slow exhalation. I was close to something. Very close.

Night had fallen around me. The SUV was gone; so was everything else. Shadow and blood are a dark light. There were shadow and my blood in this place.

There had been shadow and blood on Golgotha the evening the Christ died. There had been his blood on the tree. And on the cold iron that pierced his flesh, holding him there.

I took a slow breath, not moving, not fighting for it—whatever it was that my hindbrain was putting together. The words rolled through my mind again, low and sonorous, potent as the lightning: Long years past was cold iron, blood, three cursed trees, and lightning. Red iron will set you free. Then: Shadow and blood are a dark light, buried beneath the ground.

Some outclan priestesses had a sliver of the wood of the crosses that had been used to make the vampires. But what had happened to the iron? Had it been melted down and used for more black magic? Like the transformative magic that was turning Naturaleza into spidey vamps?

Lightning cracked again, slamming into the ground only yards away. The power of it sent electric shivers through me. My loose hair stood on end, and my skin crackled with the pain of electric shock. On the ground in front of me, the last red iron disc slid across the grass and snapped into place atop the other two. The pocket watches that were still whole glowed with a greenish light in the gloom of wherever or whenever this was.

Red iron and three cursed trees. Is it possible?

I closed my eyes and took a cleansing breath. When I opened my eyes, the church was before me. I started, even though I’d been expecting it. Overhead, thunder rumbled, close and ominous. Rain pattered down, just as the last time I was here. I gathered up my jacket, the amulets, and the thick iron disc, putting them into pockets where they couldn’t touch one another. I held the silver coin in my bloody fist as I walked up the short steps and into the church. The doors crashed shut behind me, an angry boom that reverberated through the church.

I walked down the aisle, but Kathyayini wasn’t there. The church was empty. Which sent willies down my back. My heart sped, an irregular pain, and I massaged my chest with my fist as I walked, not thinking about the blood until the air chilled it on my skin. Rain pounded down outside and on the roof over me. The din of the storm was incredible. I could feel the power through the soles of my boots. Wind hit the side of the church, and the old building groaned.

I reached the front, the church dark, lit only by lightning strikes outside. Each strike was intense, showing me the pews, the cross over the entry door that I hadn’t noticed last time. It was painted red. I eased my backside onto the dais and sat, feet dangling. And waited.

“You don’t got no match? It’s dark in here.” Kathyayini.

I sighed out a breath, relief so strong it hurt as the air left my lungs. “I don’t carry matches,” I said.

I heard the scratch of a match striking right beside me and I flinched at the sound, the smell, and the flickering light, after the long minutes of darkness and lightning. Kathyayini lit a candle and then another, and a third. “You don’t listen too good. Do you? This a lot harder in daytime.” Kathyayini hopped up on the dais beside me and sat. She was wearing a different dress this time, with a biblike front over her chest and a red T-shirt underneath. The fabric of the dress had huge red flowers on a pink background. It wasn’t flattering, but it did look comfortable.

I said, “I was busy getting inside a witch-warded house during the night. At dawn, I was busy killing vamp things, spidey vamps, inside the house.”

“Sounds messy. That why you stink?”

I chuckled and my shoulders slumped. “Yes, ma’am.”

“You save everybody?”

“We didn’t save anyone. There was nothing in the house except bodies several days old.”

“Huh.” Kathyayini pursed her lips, her mouth wrinkling up like a dried plum. “There shoulda been a witch circle there.”

“There was nothing.”

“You sure? No circle painted on the floor?”

My head came up. “Crap! There were black arcs painted on the floor in each room. Not a circle, but something.”

“Quarter circle? Like the whole house was the circle? You not very bright if you don’t see that.”

“Couldn’t be a witch circle. It was broken by the walls of the house.”

Kathyayini pursed her lips, the wrinkled skin drawing up like a dried apple. “Some circles are symbolic, proof of power used somewhere else.”

I hadn’t known that. Once again others might pay because I didn’t know enough of the arcane. I pushed off the dais and landed on the floor below the podium. “I have to get back there. Now!”

“No.” She waved a hand at me as if my intention was of no interest to her. “You got to sit down and listen. We got things to talk about.” When I took a step away, she narrowed her eyes at me and said, “Sit!” There was power in her command, so strong my knees buckled. I grabbed the dais to keep from falling and I sat. She pulled a strip of cloth from a pocket of her bib and pointed at my thumb. It was still bleeding, which was odd. My skinwalker metabolism would usually stop the bleeding of a scratch quickly. I wrapped my small wound and gripped the cloth over it, applying pressure.

“What have you learned so far?” she asked, though it was more command than request.

“That an old Spaniard, a conquistador, was a vamp. He drank down the power of the best warriors of the Tsalagi and then used some of their blood to make amulets, maybe using the iron from the spikes of the crosses to give his magic power.”

“Hah. You not so stupid as I think.”

“At some point,” I went on, “he figured out how to use the amulets to focus enough power to keep the rest of the vamps in the U.S. and Europe at bay, so he could practice Naturaleza, free from interference, for centuries in Atlanta. That was enough for him until he discovered a way to make vampires sick. And then he concocted a plan using the vamp plague to take over the entire U.S. But Leo Pellissier stood in his way. Leo and me.

“I killed Lucas and his heir took over the amulets and added a full witch circle to the mix. The added power created transformational magic. I think the purpose of the magic was to make a super vamp able to be truly immortal, withstand the sun, silver, crosses—every weakness that vamps have. And the magic was tested by creating revenants to see what came back. And what has come back so far is monsters.”

“Not bad.” She patted my knee. “But let’s talk about the Tsalagi warriors from long ago. They not all dead. Are they?”

She means skinwalkers. “Uh, no, ma’am.”

“You killed the other one.”

My eyes whipped to hers, and she smiled in the light of the three candles. “You been here many moon cycles, setting things in motion. Stopped other things. Maybe that other Tsalagi like you was supposed to do something important for this old Spaniard, and you killed him instead. What you think that might be?”

I shook my head in confusion, trying to rearrange my thoughts and the things I thought I had figured out into some new semblance of order. “Maybe Immanuel was supposed to kill Leo, so de Allyon could take over?”

“And so, maybe you the catalyst for his plan, not the plague. Or maybe both