Bullet Page 0,61
wouldn’t have enough power to stand against her. She crushed him, and nearly destroyed us as a people of any color.”
“Do you know how she ended up in the . . . coma in the caverns?” Because that had been where her body lay, in a cavern where only torchlight touched. The vampire council had tried to abandon her a few times when world wars forced them to move countries, but there had been a compulsion that wouldn’t let them leave her body behind. But none of the vampires knew why she had fallen into the “sleep.” They only knew one night she had not woken. For over a thousand years she’d slept, until now.
“If all the legend is true, then it was her own guards that did it. Those who the vampires are not allowed to name. She let some of them keep their golden tigers as animal to call, because she believed them to be totally loyal to her.”
“How did they make her sleep?”
“The story speaks of a spell and a sacrifice of lives. They meant to slay her, but they could not.”
“Would not, as in pity moved them, or could not, as in she couldn’t die?”
“They couldn’t figure out how to kill her permanently. They tied her to the body she last inhabited and left her there.”
“Why would the guards tell the tigers?”
“So that if they were all lost, there would be some memory of what happened and what would be needed to defeat her.”
“Bibiana, I can’t be some sort of weretiger savior.”
“Not savior, Anita, master. You must be the Mistress of Tigers. You must be the daywalking vampire who defeats the night once and for all.”
I asked what I’d been thinking since it happened. “Does your legend tell how to kill the Darkness, or how to put her back to sleep?”
“The guards that have no name still exist; ask them.”
I nodded, and glanced at the bedside table. In the top drawer was my cross and a very ancient piece of metal. The Nameless Vampire Guards were the Harlequin. They’d given me the charm the first time the Mother of All Darkness had messed with me. It was supposed to keep her out of my head and my body. It worked, but it had to be cleansed and recharged periodically, like a gun that needed reloading. My cross just worked, but then it was about faith, and the charm with its imprint of a many-headed tiger on it was magic, not faith. The more witches I knew, the more I realized that there was a difference.
The Harlequin were so scary that simply mentioning them by name could bring them to your door with permission to kill you. They were the elite among vampires, strong enough to have territories of their own, or even be council members, but choosing to cut all ties to their bloodlines and be a combination spy, police, and execution service for the vampire community. Supposedly only the council could set them in motion, but was that still true, or had the Mother of All Darkness already taken back her guards? If she had, we were cooked, done; it was finished before it began. Mommie Dearest was still weak, weaker than she’d been before the council hired mercenaries to blow her to kingdom come. In the past she’d possessed me directly and more easily. Maybe the loss of her body hadn’t destroyed her completely, but it had weakened her. She needed the other vampires to talk to us, possess us. If there was a way to destroy her once and for all, we had to do it fast.
“Anita, are you there?”
“I’m sorry, Bibiana, you’ve just given me a lot to process. I’m thinking.”
“Do not think too long, Anita. I will contact the other queens of the clans. I will urge them to send people to you. Our only hope lies in a swift rise to power.”
“I haven’t agreed to all this, you know that.”
“I know, and I know that you are skeptical by nature, but there is no time, Anita. Our time to hesitate has been lost. We have only action before us, and I pray that it is swift action on your part.”
“So I what, fuck everyone into their next power level like some pornographic computer game?” I made sure my voice held all the scorn I could manage. I was good at scorn, it was one of my best things. Nathaniel and Damian touched me at the same time, soothing me with