Eli fell to Shiloh’s side and pulled a small blade. Without the headlights it was hard to see, and the snow grew thicker. Heavier. The night darker. Eli placed his wrist at Shiloh’s mouth, but she pushed it away. She couldn’t drink. She didn’t have a throat. She needed vamp blood to heal. And we didn’t have any. Brute raced back to Eli’s side, panting, looking all wolf and furious, as if he would attack and destroy the world. He threw back his head and howled, the sound angry and demanding. Unanswered.
“Keep my people safe,” I said to Wrassler. “That includes Jodi and Sloan.” I ended the call. To Alex I said, “Call Big Evan. Tell him about the Range Rovers. Tell him to shield his vehicle.”
“Roger that.”
“Tell him that as soon as it’s safe, they’re to turn around and go back home. Nothing is safe here.”
He didn’t reply.
“You should have told me” I whispered to Bruiser.
“To what purpose,” he whispered back. “We have done what you wanted us to do.”
He was right. I had run away. And now, my world was falling apart, my friends were in danger, and I couldn’t do a single freaking thing about it. I had sworn to protect all my people. I had failed. I needed to heal. Fast. Now. I needed to be everything I had walked away from. And more. And I couldn’t.
Except . . .
“What?” Bruiser asked softly. I raised a hand to stop him, thoughts whirling through me, images, sensations, memories.
I had taken Leo’s blood at the creation of Clan Yellowrock.
I had taken Gee’s blood at the creation of Clan Yellowrock. I had taken Edmund’s blood. I wasn’t a vamp, and calling Ed hadn’t worked before, but . . .
But I wasn’t a vamp. Right. Not a vamp.
But I was the leader of Clan Yellowrock, through the blood of Leo. And I was the Dark Queen.
“I need the crown.” Without thinking about it, I pulled on Beast-speed and raced up the stairs toward the bedroom. Pain forgotten, lost in the wash of blood spilled from Shiloh’s throat.
I ripped open the closet door and dropped to my knees in front of the oversized plastic tub of magical trinkets and snapped the lid open. Everything I had brought from New Orleans and everything the Youngers had brought from NOLA when they joined us here was in the tub: charms Molly had made for me, the carved bone coyote that had appeared after a weird dream, the blue Anzu feather Beast had taken from a dead Anzu, lots of stuff in a jumbled mess. I grabbed up the Glob. The lightning-and-angel-created, multi-magical-item amulet was warm to my hand. The Glob absorbed magic. That was the Glob’s magical power, to drain out magic, especially aggressive magic being used against me. It had once drained le breloque when the crown tried to take me over against my will. But it hadn’t stopped the power merge when I had chosen to use the crown. Le breloque was somehow tied to the position and power of the Dark Queen, not that I knew how that worked. Yet. I stood and carried them both back down the stairs, feet tapping fast, passing Bruiser on the way up.
“Janie?” He whirled and followed me.
“I’m the Dark Queen. I’m the freaking Dark Queen,” I ground out. “Not crowned by Leo, but a power chosen for myself. I put the crown on my own head. The magic in it claimed me. It has to mean something. It has to come with power of some sort. I took Leo’s blood. I have this magical crap.” I held out the two icons. “I have star-shaped scarlet energies in my body that I don’t know how to use, and that are growing cancer, maybe because I can’t use the magic and it has to go somewhere and do something so it settled on disease. Maybe I have to be able to use the power and the magic, or let its pressure off, like a steam valve. I need to be able to access it. I just don’t freaking know how to do that!”
Bruiser’s eyes went unfocused and his thoughts turned inward as we reached the landing. “The last Dark Queen didn’t end so well. Alex found a record that suggested she vanished and was never seen again.”
“She must have timewalked into danger and died. Or timewalked and caused herself to never be born.”
“Impossible. If she was never born, then she was never the