“Oh,” I said. I opened my eyes and wiped my cheeks, to see Aggie patient, drenched in sweat, her hair plastered and salty. She needed nourishment and electrolytes and water. And I knew that somehow, Aggie One Feather had come to know what I was some time ago, without me saying anything. She had discovered that I was a killer, a rogue-vamp hunter. And she had taken me in anyway, because the duties of a War Woman, a woman of the Cherokee culture, were not so dissimilar to my own. My eyes burned, but my tears had stopped. I was too dry, too empty for crying.
“Ghigau,” Aggie said, and repeated the word again, so I could learn it, “Ghee ga hoo. She was wise and full of knowledge, a person of great respect and value to a clan and to a tribe. War Woman. Beloved. You are all of these things.”
“Maybe not wise,” I said, a hint of humor in the words.
“But learning. Growing. Such things are precursors to wisdom.” Aggie gestured to the door and I led the way, out into the dawn. The air was nippy and the sky overcast with rain clouds. I looked up and a splatter of rain spat over me, icy and sharp, pelting. But the rain stopped, as if the microshower was a promise of more, or maybe a warning. Or maybe Mother Nature was bored and teasing.
Twenty-four hours ago, I had been attacked in the streets of the French Quarter, crashing my poor bike, and running away from a fight with an energy thing. Running away and leaving Bruiser there, wounded and hurt and bleeding, to fight alone. I had run away from people. I had spent the last day and night trying to find myself, and when I did, I was different from what I had always thought, always feared. Not necessarily better, but certainly stronger.
I thought about losing Rick to Paka, to the magic of black-wereleopard heat. To the bristly and powerful magic of the African continent, and the were-taint, and the mating needs that had claimed him. And I smiled, my teeth baring with Beast’s fury.
My mate, Beast thought. Mine!
Oh yeah. Ours, I thought. I could tell by the way he fought against Paka. Not.
But before I could deal with Beast’s claim and Ricky Bo, I needed to go discover what had happened to Bruiser, find Molly and the missing girls, Rachael and Bliss. And make sure that Beast understood that she and I were . . . the I/we of Beast.
Yeah. That.
Deep inside, Beast lifted her head and screamed, the shriek that planted terror in the hearts of the Tsalagi long before the white man came. I/we are Beast, she cried. This is our place! Our hunting grounds! Our mate for as long as we choose him!
I heard a soft sound and turned my head as Aggie stripped off the unbleached linen and balled it up in a plastic container that smelled of other people’s sweat and a little of mold. Naked, she turned on the spigot and stood under it. I had figured out that, to Aggie, being naked in ceremony was not the same thing as being naked in public. Tsalagi had no shame of the human body in ritual.
I stripped and stood beneath the other spigot. And as the water rushed over me, I at last discarded the guilt and the grief. I was a lot easier than I had expected. More a thing of letting go, releasing it, rather than cutting something foul out of my soul. I would grieve no more for Evangelina. No more for the death of my first human. No more for the loss of Rick. I was Tsalagi. I was washed in the blood of a redeemer and in the blood of my enemies. And I no longer needed to take back what had been stolen. I dipped my head beneath the rush of water and felt it sluice me clean.
When we both were sweat free, Aggie handed me a towel and I dried off with it, then took another of the linen drapes and shook it out before wrapping it around me. This one was free of spiders, thank goodness.
Aggie looked at me, curiosity on her face. “Where are your clothes?”
“Last time I saw them, on Royal Street.” I met her eyes. “I was attacked by something. It was a coil of energy, like a snake, pulsing with power. It landed on me from overhead, though if it came at me out of the sky or had been waiting on a rooftop, I don’t know. It wrapped around me like a big snake, like an anaconda, and constricted around me. I’ve seen something like it before, but I still don’t know what it is.”
Aggie’s eyebrows nearly met her hairline. “You didn’t think it important to tell me this before I took you to sweat?”
“Do you recognize the thing I’m talking about?”
“Maybe. How did you get away?”
“I changed into my Beast, which should have saved me, but the snake followed me into the place of the change and kept squeezing. George Dumas was there, and he was pulled into the change. I ran away. Or rather my Beast ran away. I don’t remember it.”
Aggie blew out a breath, pursing her lips like a bird’s short, thick beak, wrinkles around her mouth making her look older. “Jane Yellowrock went from telling me nothing to telling me more than I can understand.” She tied the fresh linen around herself with a jerk on the ties, gathered up her clothes, and canted her head, again like a bird, but not the weird bird-neck-twisting thing vamps do. She said, “I can find out what the elders know of such a creature. But it sounds as if you left a battle. You should deal with that first, Jane Yellowrock.”
I let a smile pull up my mouth and it felt weird, the way it did when I hadn’t smiled in a while. “Thanks, Aggie. I will. Um. May I use your phone?”
Aggie chortled and jerked her head at the house. “I smell coffee and bacon. Mama’s up and cooking. You come in. Call your people. Eat. By the time they get here, you will be full and ready to fight any battle you must. And Lisi might have a gift for you, something in that regard.”
Lisi was her mother, and a shaman like Aggie, maybe more powerful and knowledgeable than Aggie herself. But—for reasons I had never been able to articulate—Uni lisi was much more scary. “Oh. Goodie,” I said, meaning Oh, crap, but one did not refuse the gifts of an elder.
CHAPTER 18
We Never Found the Body
“What the—” I jumped back from the table, standing, knocking over my chair, sending it crashing to the floor, and nearly exposing myself to Aggie and her uni lisi in my haste. There were long bloody scores down my thigh, and something hanging from my linen drape. “What is that thing?”
Uni lisi said, “Oh, you don’t be silly, lil’ girl. That’s just a tabby kitten.” With a gnarled hand, she reached over and removed the kitten still dangling from my sweathouse dress and cuddled it with the other, much bigger cat in her lap. “You a good kitten, ain’t you, KitKit? And you a good mama,” she said to the larger cat in her lap.
To me she said, “KitKit is a adventurous li’l thing. Gonna be tiny, but smart. Good mouser. Already litter box trained. And goes outside most times.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. I knew a pitch when I heard one. “No.”
“Oh yes. I see in a vision. You gonna take KitKit. She gonna save your life, she is.” Lisi tittered a laugh, happy as could be.
“No.” I backed away from the table. “I leave home often, and she’d be alone. I don’t have a car. I can’t take her places, like the vet. And I don’t have mice. I do not want a cat.”