and recently discharged. Witch magic. In a vamp graveyard.
Okay, that was weird. Vamps and witches didnot get along.
I stepped closer and something crunched beneath my boot. Squatting, I lifted a broken white shell from the muddy soil. Carefully, I brushed Ada-blown leaves and detritus away, exposing more shells around the periphery of the open area. Now that I knew they were here, I was able to make out a ring, perfectly circular, made of the small white shells. In the center of the circle was more white, and though I couldn't be sure without getting on my hands and knees, I thought it might form a pentagram.
Beast's reaction made the skin across my shoulders and along my neck prickle like hackles rising. I did not like this. Whatever it was, it was giving me the willies.
The antipathy between vamps and witches was rancorous and long-standing, like a cold war linking and dividing the races, a war that had lasted for hundreds of years, according to Molly, its origins lost in time. Yet, here in this dank and isolated place, encircled on all sides by city and bayou, the air tingled with magic, the ground was saturated with it, and the blood that soaked the soil was charged with it. Minute blue sparkles of magic tasted of nutmeg and sang a note of electric power. The witch power had been coiled, snarled, twisted into a heart of foulness. Dark magic had been done here. Blood magic. I paused and breathed deeply, hoping to find what kind of blood had been spilled - goat, chicken . . . or human? But the blood was too old and the site too exposed to hurricane rain for me to tell specifics.
I stood and dusted my hands off on my jeans, looking into the trees that surrounded this place. I saw a cross, nailed to a tree, about six feet off the ground. Another cross was several feet to the side. There were five crosses in all, nailed to trees at the points of the pentagram, and I wasn't sure, but the crosses might have been silver. Weird. The points of the pentagram on the ground lined up with the crosses on the trees. None of this made sense, not for a vamp grave, not for witch involvement, not for anything. I controlled my breathing, pushed down my fear response.
Across the ground, something moved.
A tiny patch of earth in the middle of the small clearing lifted and fell. A little triangle of soil. The bit of dirt dropped, stilled a moment, and lifted again. Something white poked out. The smell of death roiled out into the night, musty and foul. And the white thing resolved itself into fingers.
The hair rose on the back of my neck. Beast growled low in my throat and gathered herself tight. My body tightened, tension thrumming through me. I pulled my favorite vamp-killer and felt better with the elk-horn hilt of the weapon in my hand.
More soil fell away, the patch of earth rolling as something shuffled the surface leaves and scattered the shells. As something tried to rise from the center of the pentagram.
The silver crosses at head height began to gleam softly.
Crap, I was witnessing the rising of a newborn vamp. A young rogue. A blood-sucking killing machine. I pulled a stake, making sure it was silver tipped. But Beast held me motionless, watching, curious.
"Curiosity killed the cat," I murmured, adjusting my grip on the weapons.
Beast hacked with dire amusement.
The thing was skeletal, white-skinned and filthy, arms like sticks as it dragged itself out of the ground, hands and arms, knobby elbows. The head. Clods of dirt fell away. Long hair, tangled and muddy, dragged the grave. I had never seen a first rising, and it was much likeNight of the Living Dead in 3-D, but stinkier. The rogue was female. She wore a party dress, a floral print, once pale with big flowers in bright colors, now foul with death fluids, blood, and the mud of the grave. She pulled her hips from the ground, shook her legs and feet free, and took a breath. Whipped her head to me. And found me in the night.
Her eyes almost glowed, bloodshot. Her neck was ravaged with knotted scar tissue. She hissed, snakelike, hungry.Starving . And coming for me. I started toward her, to finish her off.
No, Beast whispered.Not here. Sire will scent her death. Will know you, be able to track you. Run. Like wounded bird.I had a