Broken Soul

CHAPTER 16 The Plink of Blood Slowed and Stopped

We returned to the cold feast near nine. At some point in the long afternoon and evening, Bruiser had put the oysters and meat in the refrigerator. Nothing smelled spoiled and we were ravenous, and so we sat on a blanket and pillows he tossed on the couch, which he pulled away from the wall to face the balcony. In the flickering shadows of a single candle, we ate wilted salad and drank room-temperature wine and fed each other oysters and Andouille sausage with our fingers. Nothing in my entire life had ever tasted so good.

While we ate, I told him about Satan’s Three and the arcenciel attacking me. Unlike a human man, he didn’t get all protective or worried after the fact. He just listened while I talked, stroked my hair when I described the attack and the distinct scent patterns of the arcenciels. He agreed with me that there must have been two arcenciels at the warehouse, one that was there when the vamps were, and then, later, Soul. He was a man who let me be me. It was different. And nice. And sooo . . . Bruiser.

We made love again, slowly, our bodies crushed together on the couch. This time, his hands were gentle, scarcely touching, his fingertips suspended at the instant where flesh met flesh. Soft caresses, leisurely and deliberate, our pleasure withheld, rising and ebbing. When we were done, I lay beside him, limp and fulfilled, every inch of me. And every inch of him.

Out front I heard a car pull up and a door open and close. I flew from the couch so fast I was a smudged replication in the mirror near one of the balcony doors. Almost as fast, Bruiser rose up on the couch. “What?”

“Leo,” I whispered. “Leo is here.” Bruiser’s scent changed, a smell like burned stone. “Bruiser?” Faster than a human could ever hope to move, yet seeming to glide, Bruiser rolled to his feet and disappeared into his bedroom.

He answered, his voice little more than a murmur. “The last words between my former master and I were not totally clear regarding you.” From the doorway, my jeans came flying; I yanked them out of the air and onto me, careful of the killer zipper this time. A moment later Bruiser emerged wearing the thin pants and T-shirt from the afternoon.

“Not totally clear,” I replied softly. “He told you to stay away from me.”

“Yes. But he did not tell you to stay away from me.” Bruiser sounded smug, vigilant, and meticulous. Cautious. He slid one of his dress shirts off of a hanger and over my head. As if I were a child, he rolled up the cuffs. “What? No bacon shirt for Leo?”

“No.” Bruiser placed the back of his hand against my cheek for a moment, watching my face to read my reaction. “I’m having it framed to hang on the wall over my bed.”

I spluttered with laughter. “Very artsy. Are we in trouble? You know he’ll know what we’ve been up to.”

“Perhaps I am in trouble. He already knows, I’m sure,” Bruiser said, turning away. “The apartment reeks of sex. With the balcony doors open, he knew everything the moment he opened his car door. He’s being excessively polite, allowing us time to get presentable.” Bruiser’s eyes pierced up at me. “I will attempt to control the situation.”

I chuffed out a breath and picked up my silver stakes, twining my hair into a messy bun and securing it with them, easy to hand. “This should be fun,” I muttered. “Not.” But he had a point. Neither of us had showered since sometime in midafternoon and we’d been busy since then. Several times.

Bruiser shoved the couch back in place and tossed the blanket into the bedroom. He took a bottle of red wine from the wine cabinet and opened it. He poured it into a carafe, holding the bottle high over his head and allowing the wine to gurgle and splash down and into the crystal. “Letting it breathe, the fast way,” he explained. “A sacrilege, but the best I can do under the time constraints.” He removed three deep-bowled crystal glasses from a cabinet and set everything on a wood tray on the island. He put a sharp knife on the tray.

I took a seat at the bar, turning one of the white leather bar chairs at an angle so I could see the door and the balcony too. And the bed. It was neatly made. Dang. Bruiser was fast when he needed to be. And agonizingly slow when he needed to be too, for which reason I was very sore, even with Beast’s fast healing. I fidgeted in the uncomfortable chair, noting only now that there were three white leather chairs. How handy.

A knock came at the door and Bruiser opened it. Leo stood on the other side, motionless, not breathing, not moving, his pale skin seeming to glisten in the light of the single candle still burning. Leo was wearing a black tuxedo, the tie loose at his throat. His hair, black and lustrous, lay on his shoulders. It had grown several inches in the time I’d lived in New Orleans.

“I am honored that the Master of this City would visit me,” Bruiser said with polite precision. “Please come in.”

Without a word, Leo entered, Derek on his heels. Derek was dressed in Enforcer leathers, weaponed up like a modern-day samurai. I tensed all over, but his eyes passed over Bruiser and me, sweeping the apartment and checking the balcony, bedroom, bathroom, closet, moving the way a human did when he’s been well fed on vamp blood—fast and smooth and powerful. When Derek was satisfied, he took a place at the door, his hands hanging close to his weapons.

Bruiser ignored him and followed his former master to the island. He shot me a look that lasted half a heartbeat, intense and cutting. His eyes then shot to Derek. Pointing me to look at the Enforcer, a direction, an order, a suggestion of some kind. I hadn’t fought beside Bruiser like I had with Eli. The battlefield communication wasn’t yet in place; I had no idea what the look meant, except to be alert and wary and ready for anything. I could sense Bruiser’s worry even over the smell of sex that permeated the place. “Would you care for a glass of wine?” Bruiser asked. “I think you will find the vintage agreeable.”

Leo lifted the bottle, read the label, and raised a single eyebrow, but over the reek of sex I could detect a rising change in his scent pattern, from banked discontent to something more peppery and hot. The beginnings of anger. “Outside of Pellissier Estates in France, there are fifteen bottles of Pellissier Cabernet, 1945. My cellars contain ten of them, or they did.”

“They still do,” Bruiser said, ignoring the less-than-subtle accusation that he might have pilfered from the MOC’s wine cellar. He poured the dark red wine into each glass. “I bought this and one other at auction last year for a dreadful sum. Though the fast aeration is a desecration, this bottle seemed an appropriate sacrifice for the moment.”

I managed not to react to the word sacrifice, until Bruiser picked up the knife and sliced his fingertip. He held it over one of the glasses and let the blood drop into the wine. Suddenly I could hear everything: cars outside on the street below, the sound of my heartbeat, the plink of blood meeting wine, the slight shift of Derek’s leathers at the door. In my peripheral vision, I made sure his hands were still empty, and I could feel his eyes on me, gauging me. I forced myself to remain sitting, compelled my body to relax against the low back of the chair, a false ease that might fool Derek, but would never fool Leo. Slowly Leo’s mouth opened, and his fangs dropped down. They were ivory-toned in the dim light, tinted darker by the flickering candle, as if they were lightly coated with old blood.

Sacrifice, Bruiser had said. For taking me to bed. Which meant that, even with the fancy dismissal as blood-servant, Leo’s claim on me still stood, and Bruiser’s careful interpretation of the edict wasn’t going to protect us. In Leo’s eyes, Bruiser had stolen from the Master of the City. Leo thought it okay to sleep with anyone and everyone in singles and batches, but he wasn’t much on sharing what he had claimed.

To make his anger worse, according to Del, Leo was missing Bruiser. Whom I had just stolen.

But despite Leo’s claim, he had never owned me. I would not be owned.

Beast is not prey, she thought at me.

The plink of blood slowed and stopped. And I knew what Bruiser wanted even before he looked at me. Questioning. Was I willing to offer blood for the supposed wrong I’d done to the MOC?

“No,” I said, heat blossoming in my gut. “I never belonged to you.” I pointed at Leo. At the words, his pupils widened and his sclera began to tint scarlet. The scent of scorching pepper and the smoke of burning papyrus grew stronger. “I was never yours to give away or keep. I was never yours at all except for the job.” I pointed at the bloody wine. “And I don’t offer sacrifice of my blood. Not to anyone.” I pointed to Bruiser. “You should have remembered that.”

Bruiser blinked, something dawning in his eyes. “Too late,” I said fiercely, surging from the chair and to the door. Derek shifted, the movement not subtle, intending to be seen, a warning that he would defend his boss.

To Leo I said, “You can take this job and shove it into the sun.” Barefoot, anger like a flame tossed carelessly into a pile of deadwood, I picked up my keys and walked out of the apartment. And slammed the door. Inside I heard the sound of furniture breaking and a roar of rage. Stupid men.

My cell rang moments later. I ignored it. It rang again. I turned it off as I drove away.

Stupid men.

Stupid, stupid men. I tried to put the memory of Bruiser—all the memories of Bruiser I had formed in the last day—out of mind, but it wasn’t working. I got angrier as I drove, as the images of Bruiser flashed before me. Bruiser stretched out on his bed. Bruiser stretched out on me. Bruiser’s face when I slammed my way out of his apartment. Worry. He’d been afraid. “Well, I can take care of myself,” I said. But . . . Leo had lost his temper when I’d left. There had been the sounds of fighting. Anger and apprehension were boiling in me by the time I neared my home, and my increased body temp released all the scents accumulated over the last hours. Passion and tenderness and sex. Such fantastic sex.

I wanted it. I wanted time to roll back and stop there, Bruiser atop my body, heaving breaths, voice ragged, calling my name. And I wanted it gone, wiped away forever as if it had never been. I cursed when a traffic light stopped me, backlighting me in a bar’s bright, neon beer signs, through the broken windows. In frustration, I beat the steering wheel with my fists. The wheel bent. The driver behind me backed away and took a side street. I laughed, the sound broken and hurting.

Beast said nothing. Nothing about the hours in bed, nothing about the smells, nothing about Leo or Bruiser. Despicable Bruiser, who gave in to the old ways of his old life. No. Beast said nothing at all. She was totally silent, motionless inside me. Which just made me angrier.

I didn’t want to be with people, but I had no place else to go, except to check into a hotel, and that seemed no safer than anywhere else, and might endanger humans. While I was trying to decide, my muscle memory took me the short blocks back to my house. I was forced to park a block down due to traffic, which happened only during tourist event weekends, and I had no idea which tourist event was taking place now. I stomped from the SUV—when was my bike gonna be fixed?—and down the street and through the side gate. I keyed open the door, slammed it too, said a brusque hello to the Youngers as I stormed past, then slammed the door to my bedroom.

Stripping off Bruiser’s shirt, I pitched it into the garbage. The jeans followed. They smelled like Bruiser. And me. And hours in his bed. Maybe I should burn them. I turned the shower to hot. Then to hotter. I tossed the silver stakes into the corner of the small space, stepped under the scalding spray, and slammed the shower door. And proceeded to scrub myself with a loofah that one of Katie’s working girls had given me for Christmas. It was saturated in perfumed soap and I hadn’t been able to force myself to use it, until now, when I needed the stench to hide the other stench.

I soaped my hair and scoured the bottoms of my feet. I scrubbed everything in between as well, every part of me that Bruiser had touched, had marked with his hands and his mouth and his rough, unshaven face. I was abrading the top layer of skin and I didn’t care. If that was what it took to get the reek of Bruiser off of me—

The shower door rammed open, bouncing off the wall. Leo stood there, vamped out, steam rushing to swirl around him. He lunged into the blistering stream. Screaming, “You are—”

Time stood still. Droplets of water stopped, suspended. Steam—minuscule droplets, heated nearly to the point of boiling—vibrated in place. Leo hung in the air, midleap, his face frozen in a rictus of fury. Still dressed in his tux.

There were two-inch talons on each fingertip. His lips were pulled back in a snarl. Three-inch fangs were snapped down in eating/fighting position. Eyes like pits into hell, opening inside volcanos, viewed from above as one fell into the darkness. Vamped out. Vamped out and beyond ticked off. Leo didn’t like to be dissed.

Time . . . time was stopped. Or nearly so. Or I was suddenly outside of it.

Silver lights stood among the shower droplets, black motes here and there. In human form, I was in the gray place of the change. And nothing was happening. I wasn’t shifting. I was just . . . here. The gray place of the change was present and real, yet not overtaking me, not running the show. In the moments since Bruiser suggested that I offer a blood sacrifice, I had wanted time to stop. Now it had. And I had no idea how it had happened except that I had done this. Somehow.

The I/we of Beast is stronger than Jane or big-cat alone. Hayyel made us so. But there will be a price.

Isn’t there always? I thought back.

In the shower stall, the water droplets seemed a fraction of an inch lower. Leo, a fraction of an inch closer. But I had plenty of time. If there was such a thing.

Hayyel was an angel. The Everharts and Truebloods had summoned him to Earth to deal with the demon that Evangelina Everhart Stone had summoned with the blood diamond. The blood-magic, black arts, blood-diamond artifact that currently resided in one of my bank safe-deposit boxes, along with the iron discs made from the spike of Golgotha and a few pocket watches from Natchez, Mississippi—which also had some of the iron in them, powering them. The pocket watches did something about time, but I wasn’t sure what. I had a feeling that I wasn’t smart enough to figure it out, and that I’d eventually have to find a physicist to explain it to me.

When Hayyel was fighting the demon, time did something. It stood still and it rushed ahead all at once, all the pathways and possibilities of the future open at one time. I hadn’t seen much of it. What I had seen was distorted and blended, like a single frame from a thousand movies, overlaid and viewed at once. Madness. Madness I had instantly forgotten, too much for my human brain to see/internalize/analyze/understand.

Those memories now seemed to merge with the steam droplets. Trying to rise. A distinct image in each micro globule of water, vibrating with heat and possibility. And still too much to take in or understand.

Hayyel did something to you, to us, in the moments he appeared, I thought.

Yesss.

What? What did he do?

Hard to think. Hard to think like Jane. Beast shook her head and pawed my mind, frustrated. He showed Jane a way to . . . true life. He showed Beast how to forgive the life that Jane had stolen.

I understand that part. But that doesn’t explain the images in all the droplets. Or the fact that time has stopped now while Leo is trying to kill us. It also doesn’t tell us what to do about it all.

Time slid forward again, a fraction of a second. The droplets skittered. Leo’s mouth opened wider. He was really not happy. When time let up again, the poop was gonna hit the prop and it was gonna get messy.

I/we were not . . . do not understand words. This. This is what he did to us. Beast showed me a memory, one I had seen before. Two streams, roiling with white water, tumbling, plummeting down a mountain, taking different paths. Rushing over and around rocks and deadwood debris. Water dropping and falling. Coiling like living things, angry and lusting and thrusting down the peaks, an image I had seen before, and thought I understood, but . . . perhaps not.

In a tight, narrow spot, full of broken stone and flood-blasted trees, the rivers met. Became one. The eddies and currents exploded into one another. Fought one another for supremacy. Spray, icy with winter, spewed into the air. Wave trains rose and fell, cresting at the tops. Eddy lines lifted a foot above the waterline, like a fence, as the two rivers struggled for power, fought for control. And merged.

This, Beast thought, indicating the eddy line. And this, she thought, showing me the swirling water in a pool below, as the two rivers became one and stopped fighting for supremacy. And found a calm pool of peace. We were broken. Alone. Fighting for dominance. First as two. Then as two merged, but not at peace. Hayyel healed us. Healed our broken soul. Gave us strength and power. But we have not accepted it. Have not taken his gift and made it ours. Have not eaten it and made it part of who we are.

I turned my attention from Beast’s memory of rivers joining to the memory of my soul home, the place/memory where my skinwalker nature was first revealed. The cavern was composed of limestone, the scent sharp and tart. In this memory it was also dark and dank, cold, without the light of the fire that was usually lit. But I knew this place that existed within me, even in the dark. I moved through the large cavern and into a small passageway, to the nook where Beast slept.

She lay on the ledge in the space she claimed as her den, belly to the cool rock. Her chin and jaw were on her paws. Her amber eyes studied me as I studied her. If two broken souls join, are we still a broken soul? But just a bigger broken soul?

Beast chuffed with amusement. If we join, we are stronger. Faster. This place becomes ours, our hunting territory.

And what does that mean?

Stronger, faster. This is always better than weaker, slower. Weaker, slower is prey.

You have a point. Especially with Leo trying to kill us. Again. But . . . you couldn’t tell me this before?

Jane did not need to know before. And price of more power might be much, like Beast trying to eat whole bison. Sickness.

I remembered my last partial shift in the HQ gym. Time had slowed and I had moved even faster than normal then too. And I’d had cramps after. Incapacitating stomach cramps. That would be bad in the middle of a fight.

Beast waited, staring at me through the dark. I had scratched her behind the ears once before. Now I bent into the ledge. And Beast rose to her paws, claws out, digging into the stone beneath her. Oddly, I could feel her claws in the back of my brain, piercing. She stepped toward me. Our faces met, hers prickly and rough with stiff hairs. She tilted her face, lifting her jaw. I rubbed my face over her jaw, accepting her scent, allowing her to mark me. She dropped her head and rubbed the top of it under my jaw, taking my scent.

It was odd and disorienting. To feel both sides of a motion. Beast’s and mine.

Okay. Let’s do it, I thought at her.

Beast opened her mouth and showed her fangs. Her breath was hot and rich with scent patterns. Meat and milk and kits and blood. Gently she placed her fangs against my throat. I knew what needed to happen if we were to live the next second. I reached to my waist, finding the hilt of a knife. The hilt was large and coarse, crosshatched for a better grip in a sweaty hand, but too big for my small fist. It was familiar to my childhood. My father had used this knife to clean fish. He had put it into my hand, teaching me how to behead a fish, how to skin a catfish. How to scale a black bass. Fillet it for cooking or drying. It felt real, that hilt of carved bone, though the knife had been lost long ago. It felt as real as my own heartbeat, as my own lungs pulling in breath. I drew the knife and placed it at Beast’s throat.

So. We both have to die, together, here, in the gray place of the change, in our soul home, to get this stronger, faster thingamajig?

Yesss.

And then we have to pay the price.

Yesss.

Fine. Now!

Beast bit down. I thrust into her throat. Pain shivered through us both. Our blood gushed out, hot, spurting. Death blood, from death strikes. Like the two rivers, our blood mingled. And became one. Fire and ice rushed through me with the pain, molten lava and glaciers calving, all of nature held in a single moment of time that wasn’t. A bubble of not-here, not-now, a time of its own, potent with life and possibility, outside of other reality. That moment had a sound, like a huge bronze bell, a note that reverberated through my bones. It had a color, the dark blue of deep ocean water, full of life rolling with power. The color of a sunset, burning through the sky. And the scent of blood.

A snippet of scripture came to me. “For the life of the flesh is in the blood . . . for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.” I lifted my hand, which was coated in hot blood, and licked my fingers, smelling/tasting the life force of Beast. I swallowed, her fangs caught in my throat an electrified torment at the motion. Her own throat moved against the blade buried there, as Beast swallowed my blood.

The gray energies and black motes of power vanished.

The scalding shower spilled down. Leo roared, diving toward me. Shouting, “—not released from me!”

I dropped to the wet tile floor, grabbing up the dropped stakes. My hands were tawny-pelted. My fingers knobby and strong. My claws were extended. My clawed feet scratched into the wet and slippery tile as I rose, fastfastfast, thrusting up with the silver stakes. Hard. Directly into Leo’s heart.