Lay across vampire, feeling heartbeat grow fast, fastfastfast. Hearing vampire breath. Bit down on throat, killing teeth piercing thin skin of vampire. Crushed windpipe of prey. Breath stopped. Held throat, watching prey eyes. Vampire eyes grew wide, vampire teeth folded back into vampire mouth with sharp snap like stone falling onto stone. Prey’s heart raced now, too fast to follow beneath Beast paws. Beast bit down more, killing teeth cutting. Vampire blood flooded mouth. Tasty. Good blood. Strong blood.
Jane always said do not eat. Stopped cutting with teeth and lapped blood. Jane did not say do not drink. Good vampire blood. Strength flooded into Beast. Blood slowed and Beast bit down again. Lapped blood again. Watching vampire eyes. When blood stopped and healing began, Beast bit down. Lapped fresh blood. Did this many more than five times, watching prey eyes. Time passed. Blood slowed. Beast licked jaws and muzzle. Watching prey eyes. Stood on prey chest, staring down, thinking, Will kill now. Bit down hard and tore flesh away from throat. Spat vampire meat to path. Bit down and spat again. Did not eat. Tore through muscles and flesh until only broken bones of neck were left. Then twisted prey head to side and bit down hard on neck bones. Crunch. Spat bones to side.
Vampire heart slowed. Heartbeat stumbled like feet of injured prey in forest. Stumbled again. Prey died.
Beast butted head away with chin. Screamed in victory. Beast was big. Beast had killed big prey. This was Beast’s territory. Screamed and screamed and screamed.
Hunger gripped stomach in claws. Had killed but could not eat dead prey. I padded to bayou. Birds were awake on banks, startled by Beast’s territory victory scream. Two Canada geese were on bank close to Beast. I crouched, leaped. Up and across and down bank to bayou edge. Caught one goose in jaws. One goose with claws. Killed both and landed on edge of water. Small alligator hiding in reeds blinked. I dropped geese and stared at gator. I am Beast. I am big tonight. I will kill and eat gator. But small gator sank below water. Gator was afraid.
Either that or it’s never seen a two-hundred-pound mountain lion with feathers sticking out all over her face, Jane thought, her words sleepy.
I/Beast hacked with displeasure and turned back to geese. I settled and ate.
I came to in the night, lying on dirt and leaves, covered by plants that blocked out the sky. My head was on my piled clothes, angled to look down the path. In the dim light I made out a heap of dark flesh and dark clothes, the Enforcer I was supposed to kill. Had killed.
Beside him lay a human. Crap. Beast had killed a human too? I put it together quickly, realizing that the vamp had cheated and sent a human into the park on a different tangent, so that if I did get the drop on him, the other guy could take me out.
I pushed up slowly and dragged myself to the bodies. I had killed two beings tonight, one human. From the looks of the body, Beast had gone a little bonkers over the kill. She had savaged the human’s side. Not good. She knew not to eat, but killing two opponents must have led her to the brink. She had tasted human flesh.
I closed my eyes and held them shut for a long moment, not sure what my religion permitted about this. Not sure how to pray. For that matter, I wasn’t certain what my tribal forefathers would pray in a time like this either. I settled on the truth. “I didn’t want to kill,” I murmured to God. “Forgive me that I am violent and cold and a killer. Forgive me that I tasted my enemy when he attacked.” For a moment, I could taste human blood on my tongue and my stomach roiled. I remembered the words of my cruel grandmother. “We do not eat the bodies of our enemies. It is forbidden. It makes us sick.” What it did was make us even less human and drive us closer to the threshold of U’tlun’ta. Now I understood.
I had no tears. I felt oddly empty, as if God hadn’t heard. As if God would never hear me again. I had killed and tasted human meat. My stomach rebelled, twisting in pain. Something else to deal with someday. Maybe. For now, I stripped the jewelry from his clothes, leaving his weapons beneath him. I didn’t want my fingerprints on them anywhere. While I searched, my fingers tingled with magic and I pulled a pocket watch amulet from his pocket, just like the amulet carried by the blood-servant I had taken down in Sedona, the one Rosanne Romanello drank from. Now I had two magic things that I had no idea what to do with, three if I counted the blood-diamond in the safe-deposit box. I was amassing a hoard of magic things I couldn’t use but was honor-bound to protect. Ducky.
I dressed in the night, surprised that my clothes still fit. Beast had stolen mass from the concrete lion and given it back, seemingly perfectly, despite the possible presence of organic matter—shells, maybe. I shuddered at the thought of organic matter buried somewhere in my body. I had no idea what it might do to me later. Maybe nothing. Maybe . . .
I would look the same to the gathered vamps, all except for my eyes, which were yellow now, the contact lenses lost in the shift. I pulled my hair back into a coil and slid into the flip-flops, shivering in the cold breeze.
I walked down the path to Big Guy’s head and stared down at him, his eyes looking up into the sky. Dead. By my hand. “I’d honor you, if you were honorable,” I said. Instead, I lifted the head by his ears and walked down the path to the Peristyle, my hair blowing in the icy wind, my feet aching from the cold. Hungry, needing to eat.
The wind was at my back, blowing my scent and the scent of blood before me.
I was determined to end this night as I had started it, with moxie and magic. Holding the head by one ear, I pulled my hair around and let the wind carry it before me across my left shoulder. A long gray and white flight feather was caught, tangled in my hair, and I pulled it free, holding the feather out to the side with the head.
The Peristyle came into view, the vamps lined up in the center, staring upwind, toward me. When I was close enough I raised my voice and called out, “Pellissier wins. De Allyon’s Enforcer is dead at my hands and teeth.”
De Allyon stepped forward, his entire body vibrating with emotion, his fists clenched. “That is not possible!” he shouted into the wind.
“Why? Because you gave him a knife?” I called back. “Because you sent a human behind him to make sure I died? Your Enforcer fell on his knife and lost his head. And your human is dead with him.” I threw the human man’s jewelry into the Peristyle, and it clanked as it landed.
“Did de Allyon deceive us?” Sabina asked. “Was there deception in a gather?”
“The human woman lies!” the enraged vamp screamed. “It was her own knife!”
“Not mine.” I called on Beast’s speed, racing past the table holding my weapons and through the pavilion, palming what I needed in the hand, hiding one behind my lower arm and the extension of the twelve-inch feather, holding another along the length of my leg—more sleight of hand, dependent on the sight of the severed head and the feather to keep their eyes from the weapons I’d grabbed. “And I am not human.” Beast glared at de Allyon through my eyes and I knew they glowed golden. I/we growled.
De Allyon drew back. “You cannot be. I drank down all of your kind.”
“Wrong. I’m alive.” I tossed the severed head at him. Beast shoved her strength and speed into me. The world went silvery gray. Everything around me dilated and slowed. I turned the stake in my left hand, its base against my palm. De Allyon caught the head, looking down into the face. He looked back up at me, disbelief in his eyes, his neck exposed.