Maybe the Roman Catholics had one. Absolution. Something. The Cherokee would have one, and Aggie One Feather would guide me through it some morning soon. But I needed something now, when the night and the blood of my enemies coated me, their deaths pressing on me.
In two steps, the water rose up my thighs. Without looking, I knew that Rick was standing on the bank, watching me, Leo and Bruiser and Eli behind him. Rick's wolf and his Soul stood beside him. Something like pain cut through me, a steel blade of misery and grief, sharp and burning cold. But nothing in life was set in stone and nothing in life is promised us. Not happiness, not joy, not love. Everything was variable and mutable and inconstant. Perhaps Rick and I still could be together. Someday. But I couldn't count on that. I couldn't count on anything except God, death, and myself, and sometimes not even myself.
I looked up into the eastern sky. "I call on the Almighty, the Elohim, who are eternal. Hear me. See me." I knelt, dropping slowly below the muddy surface, the cold water closing over my head, washing away the blood of my enemies. I stood just as slowly, letting the water run through my clothes and hair and over the drying blood on my skin.
The water trickled off me, into silence. Nothing moved now that Sabina's magics had died away, the trees of the park motionless. Even the vamps had stopped moving, standing, all of them, friends and enemies alike, watching me.
I turned to my right, facing north, and whispered, knowing that the vamps and weres would hear, and not caring. "I call upon my Tsalagiyi ancestors, and upon the grandmother and father of my kind. Hear me." I knelt and dropped below the surface of the water. When I rose, my skin felt cleaner, my soul less soiled. Cold prickles lifted my flesh and water ran from me, cleansing.
I blinked against it. When the water draining down my face cleared, I caught a glimpse of humans in night camo standing in the crowd of enemies over de Allyon's clan, guns at the ready. The Tequila Boys. One stood beside de Allyon's heir, now the clan leader. Another stood beside his secundo scion. Guarding. If we had enemies among our own, that was finished now. They were free of obligation and coercion. Leo was safe now.
I turned west. "I call upon my guardian angel, Hayyel. Hear me." I heard the wings of a night bird on the far bank, but resisted the urge to look behind me. My human and vamp watchers were not alone. Not anymore. I knelt, letting the water close over me, cleansing me. Purifying me. When I gained my feet, the water pulled through my hair and it lay on the surface like a veil.
I faced south. "I call upon the Great One, God who creates." A predawn breeze blew along the length of the bayou, growing harder, stronger, smelling of wet and leafless trees and water birds and the soil of the earth. I dropped once again below the surface, and as the water closed over me, it took the last of the blood with it, leaving me clean. Leaving me at peace. I stayed that way, kneeling in the mud, under the water, waiting, feeling the unaccustomed cleanliness of my unconventional baptism.
I stood, the water cascading from me, and turned right, facing east again. I felt the current swirl around me, and I knew the alligator was swimming close for a look, tasting the flavor of water and the strange blood in it. But I was still unafraid of the creature.
"I call upon the Trinity, the sacred number of three." Beast growled low in my mind, the sound a rumble as I dropped below the water. I rose and said softly, looking at the night sky, "I call upon the Redeemer, the blood sacrifice, for peace and for forgiveness. I seek wisdom and strength, purity of heart and mind and soul." In the distance an owl called, loud and long, the hooting echoing. Nearby another answered, three plaintive notes.
I had survived the vamp blood-feud, alive and unhurt. I had turned that feud on my enemy and taken his head. Though the vamps now had better confirmation that I wasn't human, they weren't much closer to knowing what I was than they had been. I smiled up at the nearly new moon.
Rick stepped into the water, approaching me slowly,