Broken Soul

CHAPTER 14 Talk to Big Bird

As soon as the dizziness cleared and my head stopped being filled with images and scents, I stepped down from the bed. I had to change the sheets. Buy a new bed. Scrub the bathroom. Good oogly moogly, this place stank.

I made it to the door and scratched on it with my paw. Then, just for fun, I barked, a long arrrooooo of sound. Alex, smelling of garlic, onions, sweat, deodorant, and growing boy—a toxic mixture—opened the door and stared down at me, his eyes big as always when he saw me in a different shape. I considered letting go some gas—a doggie way of stating an opinion on any number of things, but I thought better of it. I walked into the kitchen and ate the raw hamburger that Eli put on a plate for me. The energy required by shifting always left me starving and I hadn’t had to tell my partner. I butted his leg in thanks and he scratched my ears, a familiarity I’d never have permitted in human form but which felt perfect in dog form.

Back in the living room, I stepped up on the sofa and sat, my tail thumping, staring at Eli. Who smelled wonderful to my dog nose, and made me wonder how Bruiser might smell, which nearly made me drool. Associations in bloodhound form were so totally different from human or Beast shape. All the senses were closer together, interwoven, more intricate, and so much more intense, that I could see how easy it might be to let them take over and to lose myself in the textures and blends of scent patterns. I realized that Eli was talking and I woofed to show I was ready for a sniff test.

Inside me, Beast growled. Ugly dog. Good nose, on ugly dog. She thought a moment, and added, All dogs ugly.

Eli came at me with the sealed baggie and I pulled my head away for a moment, already almost overcome by the smells as he pulled the Ziploc open. I shook my head, my ears flapping, and gave a little sneeze to clear my nose before sticking my head forward and my snout into the baggie. I took a small sniff. Then another. And another, breathing deeply as the smells found new places in my doggie brain, forming associations with other scents from the last time I was in this form, from times I took other forms with good scent noses, and also from when I was human—nose-blind, I understood. Humans had so little understanding of the smells of the world around us that if we were sightless, deaf, and unable to touch at all, that isolation might show the difference between a human’s ability to smell and a bloodhound’s ability.

I learned all I could from the bloody cloth, lifted my head from the baggie, and trotted back to my room, closing the door with my nose.

I was sitting on the bed, firmly in the gray place of the change, when I felt the magics. Like mine, but different. In the location of mine, yet not. L’arcenciel magics. Close. I reached in to the deeps of me and found the genetic form that was mine, that was all Jane, all human, and I ripped it up and out through me, through the energies that glowed with zooming lights, that sparkled like stars, and blazed like comets, through the flesh that needed to become my own. I rolled from the bed to the floor.

And I screamed. Pain like being burned to the bone, being branded, being dipped in molten iron. I threw back my head and found the genetic structure that could weld a sword and shoot a gun. I found myself, my human form. Gasping, I rolled to my backside and to a sitting position, twisted in sheets. Eli stood over me, weapons drawn. Overhead the light shined into the formerly dark room. I grabbed up the sheets and tried to stand but my legs collapsed and I fell.

“Magics,” I gasped. “The light-dragon is here.”

Eli stepped, balanced, lifting his feet one at a time, setting them down in stable position, rooted, as he slowly turned. “Where?”

That’s right. Humans can’t see it in every form. “Close,” I managed. I pulled on my jeans and tee and grabbed my weapons, a little-used eighteen-inch, steel-bladed vamp-killer that hung in a sling on the back of the bed frame and a nine-millimeter semiautomatic handgun. I chambered a round, pointed to the front of the house, and followed Eli out of the room.

He forced open the front door and we broke through the crime scene tape and out into the street. The smell of a flash rain was in the air, the stink of lightning. The street ran with water, warm on the asphalt beneath my feet. But the magics faded and disappeared.

“I don’t believe in coincidence,” I said, as I stuffed my face with the rare steak that Eli had cooked (if a steak this rare can be called cooked) while I shifted back. “But I smelled something in the blood that I’ve smelled before. Or nearly. The shooter smells like one of The People. I need to get another look at the paintings on one of the lower levels of vamp HQ.”

Eli’s mouth pursed. “What does Leo have in all his basements? Sounds more and more like we need to recon down there.”

Remembering the breath-freezing fear response I’d had standing in the elevator in the dark, I said, “Bring flashlights. Maybe that bazooka you keep talking about.”

The look on Eli’s face said I was a scaredy-cat girl. Inside, Beast hissed at the insult, but I didn’t correct him, stuffing my face instead. He’d find out soon enough if he followed through on his recon idea. The bogeyman was in the basement? A scion so special—or so old? One of the long-chained ones?—that he or she was kept alone and out of sight, hidden away until its existence had faded into myth? I said, “There’re cameras in the stairwells. You’ll never get downstairs.”

“Whoa,” Alex said. “We didn’t install cameras there. What kind of cameras?”

“Same make and model we used in the rest of the place.” I flashed him a grin that was all teeth. “I’ll be taking up the need for payment on that design with Raisin and Del. Someone cheated us.”

“More important than that,” Alex said, a look of triumph on his face. “Those cameras have to be monitored somewhere.”

“Nice,” Eli said. “Meaning that we can gain access, take it over, and use it. We can see what’s below stairs.”

I pointed a fork at the Kid. “Make it so, Number Two.”

Alex chuckled once at the old order given by the Next Generation, Star Trek’s captain. It was a single huff of sound, much like one of his brother’s restrained laughs, or Beast’s, and he headed back to his work area, his head already bowed over a tablet.

“If we can get into the system, we can manage an unobserved basement visit,” Eli said. “Until then, I have an update. I just finished the reports of all the eyewitnesses who saw the arcenciel attack in the sparring room.” At my polite but incomprehensible, steak-choked interrogative he said, “None of them match. In fact, none of the descriptions of the arcenciel match, beyond a glittery, shadowy creature.”

I made a circular motion with my fork to indicate he should continue, before stabbing it into a morsel of meat.

Eli said, “I don’t think it’s mind control. But how about something the snake releases from its body?”

I paused in my chewing and thought about the feel of the scale on my chest, all tingly. I said, “’Ass it. ’ike ellssd.”

“Yeah. Exactly like LSD,” Eli agreed.

I swallowed and said, “What did the lab get on the remains of the arcenciel glop it left on the gym floor after we stabbed it?”

“We don’t— Wait a minute,” Alex called from the other room. He brought over a tablet, made an agreeable sound, and pushed it to me. “This just in.” He pointed to the line he thought most appropriate. It was a line of chemical formula followed by words, which he read aloud. “‘Preliminary reports indicate that this compound is a biologic agent with hallucinogenic properties—a deliriant, mildly psychedelic, and strongly dissociative, likely to cause confusion, emotional euphoria, and forgetfulness, as well as headaches and possible flashbacks.’ None of our witnesses had any physical complaints, maybe because they all drink vamp blood and that keeps their brains healthy enough to withstand the compound’s natural effects.”

None of us mentioned that Eli now fell into that vamp-blood-drinking category, his life having been preserved until he could get to a hospital, after he’d been nearly drained by enemy vamps. I couldn’t resist the glance to his neck where he sported new scars—pale and irregular, above the older scars from his time in active military duty. He narrowed his eyes at me in warning and I went back to the steak, the tablet, and the info contained in the e-mail.

Alex pointed to another line and said, “‘In case of ingestion, normal, healthy humans should break down the substance within hours.’ But it doesn’t say what effect it might have on vamps.”

I scanned the rest of the report as the possibilities of the reactions of humans and vamps went on, but it was all guesswork on the part of the researchers. I had seen the results in person. Eli had read the reports. “Oh goody,” I said. “The arcenciel is a living, breathing, dream-inducing, drug-pushing, see-through dragon. Like one of those frogs people lick in the Amazon, but bigger. And can fly.” I half chewed and swallowed the last of the steak, got up, and went to the bedroom where my thigh rig hung on the back of the bedroom door. I removed the scale and brought it back to the kitchen, feeling the tingles on my fingertips and residual tingles on my chest. I got a roll of paper towels and tore off a stack, setting the scale on top. I sniffed my fingers and felt a change inside my nose and head, like a sudden change of air pressure. “It’s a drug, or maybe a drug and magic, working together.” I washed my hands, scrubbing the fingertips that had touched the scale. “While we’re sharing information,” Alex said, “we got something from George.” He set another tablet in front of me, and stretched his fingers apart while touching the screen, making the text larger. In his formal way of writing e-mails, Bruiser said:

Jane and Youngers,

From the book I am reading and interpreting I have deduced several things that might be of interest. The writer claims to be using oral tradition and ancient writings from before the time of the Sumerians, none of which survive today, so far as I am able to deduce.

After the flood, the remaining humans were in great disarray, having lost everything of a cultural nature, and being thrust into stone-age starvation and subsistence level standard of living. In the people of the west (this could be interpreted as the Americas), this destruction and re-creation of the entire landscape created a power vacuum which was filled by the tribal magic-users (witches) who had gifts that gave them greater chances of survival. They bounced back in the form of warriors, shapeshifters (skinwalkers?), wise men, war women, shamans, and healers, most with no mention of the immune problems suffered by preadolescent and adolescent witches of today, though that may mean nothing except that it was lost to time.

They survived in this manner until the Europeans came and many of them changed, growing sick and mentally unstable. My presumption is that of the majority of scholars: The white man’s bacteria and viruses killed them off, their scriptures and priests demonized them, and the white man systematically destroyed the tribal Americans in genocide.

In a place that I am deducing is the African states, the witches were feared and were often sold into slavery by their own tribal chiefs as a way of preserving their own power bases. Both Christian and Muslim proselytizers and missionaries later demonized them.

In Europe, which has a better-preserved oral history and tradition, the witches went underground, hiding what they were, except for the tribal Celts, who accepted the magic-users as the ancient gift of the gods and of God. Among the Celts, magic-users remained well respected, though carefully hidden from the Church, which proved a successful methodology from the other tribal peoples of time.

When vampires were created through dark magic and black arts (the original three were witches, if you recall) they increased their numbers by turning witches into vampires. Prior to the vampire wars and prior to the creation of the Vampira Carta, the Mithrans began to destroy the witches instead of turning them.

I have been searching the archives for information relating to the causative factor for their enmity. I suggest that you ask Leo or Grégoire for more information. I will send more as I am able.

Best,

George Dumas

Some of this info was new, and some was old stuff, and some was a new way of looking at it all. I remembered that Gee DiMercy had once told me about the Cursed of Artemis, the original name of the were-creatures. He had even proposed that my kind were part of the old story, goddess-born, whatever that meant. He wasn’t willing to share more, but he had suggested that I ask some of the older vamps. I had asked the priestess Sabina, who had told me about Lolandes, whose legend became confused with, and merged into, the earth goddess, who was common to all ancient tribal peoples. Lolandes had been a witch of sorts.

The first three vampires—the Sons of Darkness and their father, Judas Iscariot—had been witches too, made from the crosses of Calvary, also known as Golgotha, the place of the skull. The spikes of Golgotha were part of that event. Sooo . . . did the instigating event of today’s dangers go back that far? To the creation event of the vamps themselves? Was the spike of Golgotha that important?

Or did all of our current problems—the dragon, Satan’s Three, the attacks on my house—go back to Lolandes? There was something here, something lost among all the info we had already gathered, something important, but just out of reach, taunting me. Dang it.

I pulled up the old memory of the witch and told the guys, “Long before the Greeks named her Artemis, there was this powerful, long-lived mortal, a witch, though different from today’s witches in ways that I haven’t been able to determine. Anyway, Lolandes was the most powerful witch of her time, in a time when women were revered, when political and religious power was passed through the matriarchal line. She helped humans in childbirth and cared for wild animals.”

“So maybe preflood,” Alex said.

I gave an eyebrow shrug that said, Who knows? “Lolandes could have been a witch among The People of the Straight Ways. She could have come before, or after, the flood. Myth and oral tradition is sketchy at best. Anyway, Lolandes had a hunting bird, like a falcon, that loved her and came back to her after each hunt, bringing her the kills. She loved the bird.

“One night on the full moon, a wolf killed the bird, fighting over a doe they both had targeted. Lolandes cursed the wolf with disease, something similar to rabies, that affected mind and brain. It was the were-taint. The wolf ran into the woods and started biting anything it came across. The humans and the creatures it bit became were-creatures, but all were insane. Lolandes regretted the disease and found a partial cure, which she gave to all of them except the werewolves. They stayed insane as punishment for the death of her bird.”

Eli said, “No falcon would have been hunting a doe.”

It was the same dispute I’d had about the creation myth of the moon-touched, the weres. “I think the bird was maybe an Anzû.” Eli looked confused. I just sighed. “A storm god.” Which didn’t help my partner at all. “It’s my night off, but I have to get dressed and weaponed up. I have to talk to Big Bird.”

“Big Bir—?”

A knock sounded at the side door and Eli was instantly out of his chair, weapons drawn, his body bladed and protected behind the kitchen wall. I was on the floor, yanking the Kid out of his chair by his shoulder, and rolling our bodies across the floor until we were safe. He cussed softly the whole time, his pores reeking of fear and shock. I wasn’t weaponed up, which was stupid. I’d left the thigh rig on the table to roll Alex. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Eli bent and slid a nine-mil to me across the floor, the scraping sound loud in the suddenly quiet house. I grabbed it as I rolled off of Alex, taking a prone position, my lower body flat on the floor, upper chest raised, balanced on my elbows, gun in a two-hand grip. I checked it fast and triangulated our shooting positions. If Eli moved toward the door, I might shoot his legs. Using my toes, I repositioned, sliding myself over, which left more of me exposed, but decreased the chance that I’d hurt my partner.

I nodded and Eli leaned in, twisting the knob and throwing the door open all at once. Soul stood on the other side, a bag at her feet. She was holding a .45 aimed at Eli’s middle. A .45 slug would have blown a hole through my partner and blasted the wall opposite. Soul looked from Eli to me and smiled. “Am I in time for dinner?”

Soul had taken one end of the couch, her legs curled and feet tucked beneath her, pretty plum-colored shoes on the floor below. Sitting there, she looked a tiny thing, all voluptuous curves and gauzy purple fabrics. Her silver-platinum hair was up in a loose bun with tendrils that looked as if they had worked their way free hanging down around her face and to her shoulders. She appeared delicate and well-bred and weary and sensual all at once, as she held a salad bowl in one hand and ate with the other. “Peanuts and cola on the flight down, and a two-hour layover at Atlanta. I detest airport food. This is delicious,” she said, and placed a neat bite into her mouth.

I envied her ability to eat salad with such tidy little bites. I usually just shoveled lettuce in and wiped the dressing off my mouth later. I also envied the way Soul looked, so feminine and refined. I might be a girl now, with the dressy wardrobe to prove it, but I’d never be effortlessly sexy. Of course, Soul had looked anything but frail with the huge gun in her hands. Looks could be deceiving.

For now the gun and her luggage were all upstairs in the guest bedroom. We had another freeloader. I was getting them more and more often and didn’t know how I felt about my space being invaded so regularly.

When Soul was done with the meal, she leaned over and placed the bowl on the floor, picked up her tea mug, and sipped. “Thank you, Jane. This is heavenly.” It was the tea Bruiser had brought, the Something Far Too Good for Ordinary People tea. Soul was not ordinary people, and I nodded. She said, “Do you want to debrief me on everything that’s taking place here?”

Soul was PsyLED, so not everything could be told, but there were a lot of things that affected the human populace, or might affect the populace. As succinctly as I could, I told her about the attack on me by the light-dragon, the appearance and fight of the light-dragon at vamp central, the bomb and the shooting. And the torture of Reach. It was disjointed because I had learned info about Reach—which had likely precipitated a lot of the things happening in New Orleans—later than the trouble started. Soul listened, and I finished with, “So what can you tell me about the arcenciel and why it’s attacking me?”

Soul leaned back over and gathered up her salad bowl and utensils, and carried them to the kitchen. Water ran and I smelled the soap we washed dishes with. I met Eli’s gaze and he gave me a microscopic shrug. “How much can she tell us?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

Minutes later Soul came back through the room carrying her mug. She bent and picked up her shoes, walking barefoot through the house. At the entrance to the foyer she said, “Consider that it isn’t attacking you at all. Then ask questions of me. Thank you for your hospitality. I’m tired and will turn in now.” Silent as a climbing cat, Soul disappeared up the stairs.

“Well, that was no help at all,” I said to Eli. “I’m going to vamp HQ and ask a few people questions. Maybe they’ll be more forthcoming than Soul was. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“I’ll catch some zees.” As it had been a while since he’d slept, I nodded and weaponed up, leaving the house by the side door.

I let myself into vamp central and logged my weapons in with security as per Protocol Aardvark. When I satisfied security, a headset hanging around my neck but not activated, I found out where Gee DiMercy was, and took the stairs up one level, to one of the libraries. I had been to the elegant room once, while carrying a vamp head in a carton. It wasn’t my best moment. This time I brought a bag of something else, a joke I hoped would go over with the Mercy Blade, the Anzû I was hoping to charm or fight, whichever got me the info I needed.

He looked up as I entered the library. No reaction showed on his face as he closed the book he was reading and pushed it across the desk. As if he’d been expecting me. Go figure. I strode across the short space, seeing from the corners of my eyes the deep piles of Oriental carpets, the leather sofas with silk velvet throws, the unlit fireplace, and the dark wood shelves filled with books. By the scent, and as far as I could see, Gee was alone. I reached the table and tossed the plastic bag across the uncluttered top where it landed and slid toward Gee. He caught the bag in one hand and laughed, a quick croak better suited to a crow than a man.

Eyes sparkling that odd, iridescent blue, he held up the bag and said, “I never ate birdseed. I eat meat on the hoof or wing.”

“Not denying it? Anzû?” I accused.

“I have been called many things, skinwalker. Including Storm God. Do you not kneel in my presence?”

The small man sat deeper in his chair, tossing the bag back and forth from hand to hand. I sat across from him, as if I deserved to sit in his presence. “Nope.”

Gee DiMercy laughed, this time a more human-sounding chortle. “Modern man is so vastly entertaining. But they still come to the gods to ask questions, to petition for miracles. What do you wish, little goddess.” It was more a demand than a question, and I propped my elbows on the tabletop, chin in hand. Looking defenseless, which I was, if he planned to hurt me. I was betting on the immortal’s desire for entertainment to keep me safe.

“I know the Sumerians and the Babylonians and the Chaldeans worshiped versions of the Anzû storm gods, which makes you, maybe, the oldest thing alive on this planet. I want to know about The People of the Straight Ways. I want to know about the flood. I want to know about the arcenciel. And I want to know about the thing in the basement.” Up until the last statement, Gee had looked blandly polite, the way people look when you act according to expectations, which meant that Gee had been waiting for me to put things together and come to him for info. When I mentioned the basement, however, he blinked. Either Gee was the best actor in the universe—not an impossibility—or he had no idea about the basement. “Start talking,” I said.

“And would I share my knowledge and wisdom for nothing, little goddess? Share with a brazen and insolent woman with nothing to offer me? In times past, those who petitioned us did so with gifts of gold and silver, offering their bodies for the delight of the heavenly beings, and the blood of their first born.”

“I gave you birdseed. Eat up.”

“I propose a hunt. The two of us, on the wing. Perhaps we shall hunt elk in the cold north.”

My mouth fell open.

Gee laughed again at what he saw on my face. “You did not think to get away for nothing?” It was half question, half amused statement. His eyebrows went up when I didn’t reply and surprise flashed across his face. “You did think I would share my knowledge exempt of sacrifice. You are much the child. Or the fool.”

“I pick fool,” I said. “I can’t hunt elk. The biggest bird I can shift into—” I stopped. I had been about to say was the Bubo bubo, the Asian eagle owl. But I remembered the feathers I had taken from the death site of an Anzû. I still had one somewhere. It likely had Anzû DNA on it. Could I shift into an Anzû? And what would I be if I did? Something like excitement but darker, colder, shivered through me.

“Okay,” I said before I could think it through or change my mind. “One hunt in return for answers to every question I can think of.”

Gee looked to the ceiling as if he searched for heavenly protection from my foolishness. “One hunt for four questions.” He grinned evilly. “Questions already asked.”

“Five questions. The four questions I already asked, answered fully, in English, now, and one question of my choosing, answered fully, in English, at any time I ask it. In return I’ll give you one hunt, to last no longer than twenty-four hours, to take place at a mutually agreed-upon time, no sooner than tomorrow, and no later than two weeks before the Europeans arrive.”

Gee chortled, delighted. “I am not Loki to demand such strictures upon an agreement. Done,” he finished, before I could comment. “Your questions were: knowledge about The People of the Straight Ways, knowledge about the great flood, knowledge about the arcenciel, and knowledge of what hides in the deepest scion room. Yes?”

“Yes.” And maybe knowledge about Peregrinus, though I didn’t say it aloud for fear it would become my unasked question by accident. We’d see.

“My answer to the last question, first. I am uninterested in the scion rooms. They all stink and are filled with ravening beasts in human form. You will have to ask the Master of the City, as the residents there are his, as are we all.”

Speak for yourself, I thought. But instead of saying it, I inclined my head in a “go on” gesture.

“The People of the Straight Ways were also called the Builders. They built with stone and unfired mud bricks, which were effective at the time due to the lack of rainfall in a glacial period. Their civilization flourished over twenty thousand years ago, at the start of the last glacial period, and they were destroyed at the end of that period, some seven to ten thousand years ago, when the earth warmed almost overnight and the glaciers melted.”

“Overnight,” I stated, careful to make the word a not-question.

He waved a hand at me as if waving away the word. “It took over a century or so for the glacial sheet to melt, and the resultant movement of the earth, as the weight of the glaciers vanished and the northern hemispheres rose, and the floods created as ice dams burst and millions of gallons of water rushed toward the nearest seas, and the permafrost melted from stone-like ground. A hundred and twenty years of flooded hell. The floods were everywhere as cold, dry weather became hot, wet weather in only two generations. There were many series of floods. The final one, the largest and most destructive, wiped the last of the Builders’ civilization off the face of the earth. Earthquakes rocked the entire world. Whole mud brick cities sank beneath the waves, cities buried in the alluvial mud and many feet of ocean, all evidence wiped away forever. It is the survivors’ memories of that last flood that are memorialized in carvings and friezes and paint—the rolling waveforms, the stylized-squared forms, the doubled-over waveforms—on the archaeological sites, the world over.”

My childhood in the Christian children’s home flashed before my eyes. “Noah and the flood?” I asked.

Gee made a little fluffing motion with his hand. “I was not alive at the time, but I have been told by the oldest among us that Noah was obedient, but a boring and untalented preacher, a drunkard, and an egotist. His redemption came in the fact that he listened when the Anzû messengers spoke of the final destruction and built his ark. He was among the best of the Builders. He survived. Many more perished.”

“The Anzû,” I said, again carefully making it a statement and not a question, though the question was inherent. “Not God.”

Gee pondered the dilemma of the question/statement for a moment but decided to let it go. With a bored shrug, he said, “According to the ancients, the creator spoke through the living long before there was writing to record the prehistoric stories.”

I wasn’t sure that he had answered my statement and also didn’t know what his nonanswer said about my beliefs, so I didn’t push it. “That’s answers to questions one and two. I’m ready for number three.”

“The arcenciel is a more difficult question. They do not come from this time or this world.”

I remembered that Rick’s cousin Sarge Walker, a pilot who lived outside of Chauvin, Louisiana, south of Houma, had once talked about liminal lines and liminal thresholds. “This isn’t a question,” I said. “I’ve heard of sites and places on Earth where the fabric of reality is thin, where one reality can bleed into another. Places where the coin stack of universes meet and mesh and sometimes things can cross over from one reality to another.”

Gee DiMercy zoomed a razor-sharp look at me, one worthy of a raptor with a bunny in its sights. I put two and two together and added, slowly, “Like maybe . . . the Anzû. And the arcenciel. It bit you like it did Leo, but didn’t hurt you near as much. And then it . . . licked you.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “Tasted your blood with its tongue. Like a dessert, a petit four,” I accused.

Gee did a little pifft of sound. “I am delectable, yes; this is true. Liminal thresholds are theoretical, the type of conjecture toyed with when physicists have drinking parties and alcohol loosens their tongues.”

I sat up and dropped my hands into my lap, palming a steel blade, a small three-inch throwing knife, though I held the blade back, against my inner arm, for close-in work, not throwing work. Just in case I really did understand the truth and he decided to kill me for it. “I was told that the Earth has three liminal lines. They supposedly curve across the Earth. One starts in southwest Mexico, curves across the Gulf of Mexico to Chauvin, Louisiana, then follows the Appalachians east and north in a curve like the trade winds sometimes make, but more stable, static, bigger, and smoother. Then it curves across the ocean.”

Gee stared at me with an expression I had no way of deciphering, except that he didn’t look like he wanted to rip my insides out and eat the chunks anymore. Or not as much. Still Gee didn’t respond, but I could see things happening behind his eyes.

“The arcenciel and the Anzû both came through the liminal thresholds, didn’t they?” I said. “That’s why there’s no real paleontological or archaeological evidence of either. That’s why there are so few of you. That’s why—”

“Stop. I may not bandy such information about.”

“We have a deal.”

“And I will contemplate how I might fulfill that deal without being forsworn to others no longer here.”

I stood. “Okay. Meanwhile, I have a . . . a friend, of sorts. She works for PsyLED, and her name is Soul. When there’s danger, she moves with a long, sinuous shape of light.” I leaned in. “Would she think you tasty too?”

Gee’s eyes went wide and he said, “I would speak to her.”

“Yeah? Well, I’ll pass along the request. Right now, she’s sleeping in my guest bedroom.” Gee’s eyes went wider and something like avarice crossed his face, too fast for me to interpret. “I’ll be doing some research on liminal lines and thresholds.” I stood, walking out of the library, leaving the birdseed on the table, and keeping my body bladed and my eyes on Gee DiMercy’s until the door closed between us. I broke out in a sweat, knowing he could have run me through with sword, beak, or talons before I had a chance to block. I was lucky he’d not made up his mind to kill me for my rudeness. I was betting that old beings who had been worshiped as “gods” were not totally hip to modern-day snark. I put the small blade away when I reached a place where other people were, feeling safe only when there were lots of witnesses around.

I paused in a hallway and thought about the “dark things” that Gee had said were hidden here at HQ, and the things that no one was saying. I pulled my clunky cell and dialed the Kid. “Yellowrock Secur—”

“You know that glitch we were talking about recently?” I interrupted. “The one that sent us all up and down?”

“Someone’s listening?” Alex caught on fast. “The, uh”—he paused, searching for a word that would communicate without giving anything away to any sharp-eared vamps nearby—“winches, gotcha. What can I do for you?”

“Send me there. Stop at the room with all the paintings and stuff, and then send me as far as you can.”

“Oh.” I could tell Alex was thinking that wasn’t such a good idea but he finally said, “Yeah. If you’re sure.”

“I’m in the mood to travel.”

“I can’t get past the security programs to override the system, without an insider’s handprint. At least not yet. I’m working on it, though.”

“I’ll find someone willing.”

“It’s your neck. You want me to stay on?”

He meant stay in contact, the HQ internal communication lines open. “Yeah.” I fumbled in the cover of the cell, pulled out the earpiece he had put there one rainy afternoon when he was playing Q to Eli’s and my James and Jane Bond. I synced the cell to the radio, putting the cell back into a pocket. I had never used the upmarket syncing service but it was handy. “You there?”

“Loud and clear,” Alex answered. And no one at HQ could overhear. Alex was big on back doors. He was a lot like Reach that way.

I walked into the public parts of fanghead HQ, snagging a vamp on my way. It was Mario Esposito, a dark-skinned Italian guy who thought he was way prettier and way more suave than he really was. In his low-heeled loafers, Mario was three inches shorter than me in my boots, and while that wasn’t uncommon, his interest in my chest was unusual. The twenty pounds I’d put on not so long ago had given me some kind of cleavage, and Mario looked like he wanted to get up close and personal with mine. I hooked my arm through his and led the way to the elevator, as Mario shot me his best lines.

“I knew we would one day be together, mio amore. I knew it the first time I gazed at your body, strong and sensual and . . .”

I pushed into the elevator and nuzzled Mario’s ear. “Mario, honey pie, would you swipe your palm and take me to heaven?”

Alex made a quiet gagging noise, one that faded into the background noises, even to a vamp’s sharp hearing. Mario laid his hand over the reader, and hit the button for the third floor.

“Now, please,” I said. “Make it so, Number Two.”

The elevator doors closed. Mario’s mouth descended to my neck. The vamp didn’t notice my disinterest while he pressed his fangs against my skin in invitation, but he did get the downward motion of the elevator. Down and down and down. He pulled his cold lips from my throat and looked up to my face. “We are going down.”

“Yes.”

“Into the dark.”

“Looks like it,” I said, maybe a bit too nonchalantly.

A blade appeared in Mario’s hands, one in each. Fast. Almost as fast as he vamped out into fighting mode. I was impressed. I pulled my nine-millimeter semiautomatic, checked the silver-round load, injected a round into the chamber, and off-safetied. With my left hand, I pulled a small LED flashlight and flipped it to turbo mode. I stuck it into the little strap on my left wrist and shook my arm, satisfied it was secure. I pulled the fourteen-inch vamp-killer and set my feet, carefully balancing my weight.

Around his fangs, Mario asked, “Why do I feel that you were, perhaps, expecting this descent into hell?”

“Because you’re almost as pretty as you are smart?”

“Jesu Christo,” he swore, the word choice odd for a vamp. “I am trapped with a madwoman.”

The doors opened onto a lighted room, the storeroom with the paper records and the paintings. I concentrated on the painting of the four vamps, taking it in fast, Grégoire and his sick little family, memorizing the faces of his sire, his brother and sister, their clothes, and the bird jewelry. The older male was olive skinned and dark haired, with a patrician nose and a dissolute, supercilious sneer that would do Caligula proud. This would be François Le Bâtard, an illegitimate son of French royalty, pederast, abuser of children. Someone of power among the EuroVamps. The younger male, Peregrinus, looked Grégoire’s age, black haired, black eyed, a beautiful fallen angel, his eyes and expression empty. The girl looked even younger, maybe twelve, dressed in a low-cut gown that revealed far too much of a body halted before puberty. Unlike Peregrinus, her face wasn’t blank. She wore a look of terror that seemed to have a scent even after all these years. Grégoire stood to her side, a hand on her shoulder as if to hold her down or give her reassurance, his golden hair pulled back into a braid, his blue eyes staring right at the painter. He was wearing a tight blue outfit with a white shirt and tall boots. And he looked angry. Beyond angry. He wore a fury that appeared unfettered, uncontrolled, as wild as a mustang cornered by a cowboy with intents to capture, tame, and ride him. But the painter who had captured them all. They looked real, as if they could step off the canvas.

Beside the painting was a safe, an old black one with a big handle and a dial. Another painting stood beside it, of two females, both vamps, according to the paleness of their perfect skin. One was Adrianna, a vamp I knew and had killed, twice now. For reasons never clear to me, Leo had brought her back. Other paintings were stacked nearby, including a painting partially hidden behind a trunk. It depicted Grégoire, his siblings, and a small girl child with golden skin and black hair. I had to wonder whether the thing or things that Satan’s Three were searching for might be here, in this huge room. Sadly, nothing jumped up and down waving its arms shouting, Me, me, me! and all I got from the experience was a chance to memorize the faces of my enemies. I needed to have the contents cataloged and photographed. Soon. When I had a free day. I laughed at the thought, feeling Mario jerk in shock at the sound.

Beside me, the terrified vamp cursed in a breath that stank of fear pheromones. He swiped his hand and pressed the main floor button. “A madwoman,” he repeated. The door whooshed closed on the paintings, and Mario started to put away his weapons when he noted I was balanced and ready for . . . attack? Combat? “What have you done?” he hissed.

The elevator dropped again, this time with a little jerk, as if it didn’t really want to go down. “Just checking to see if Peregrinus might be looking for something hidden down here.” Mario started swearing under his breath, the words in Italian and full of religious references.

On second thought, he might have been praying.