“What’s the Son of Deception looking for?” Evan asked, choosing a title that sounded more insulting than the others.
“I don’t know. I’d guess that it’s trying to break into the memories of Leo and me. Maybe take Ed over completely and use him to come after me. Ed’s resisting and counterattacking, but he’s . . . he’s in bad shape.”
“Why do you sometimes refer to Shimon as it?” Bruiser asked from behind me. I turned my head and saw him. He was a hairsbreadth beyond the edge of the circle, ready to break the circle to save me. Which would hurt him. A lot.
I breathed out a laugh, which hurt me a lot, and waved him away. “Shimon is more than a vamp. I think . . .” I thought about the shadow, the teeth, the movement of it, and I whispered past the pain in my throat, “I think he can do a sort of psychic possession and control. And while I know that no vamp is human, he feels even weirder than any others I’ve met.”
“He hasn’t been human in two millennia,” Bruiser said. “He’s the oldest vampire undead. It’s likely that he’s also quite insane.”
I described the vision-memory for them. “It felt real. It had texture and temperature and the smell of fresh-cut wood. The stink of a dead body, the cold of blood loss. The sensation of biting off fingers—” I stopped. “There was this awful scream.” I rubbed my upper arms, my skin feeling pebbled and cold. “I think . . . I think it was the memory of the black magic used to bring their father back to life. But it was all mixed-up and confused.” I remembered the smoke thing. The timbre and flex of the mental words. The twisting, swirling power of tornadoes, so different from anything I’d felt before. The Flayer of Mithrans was . . . other. I gripped my own throat, feeling my pulse, the beating of my heart.
“You’re pale as a vampire. You should quit now,” Bruiser advised.
“No. I need to call Gee again. He hasn’t answered the last fifty texts or calls, but with the signal boost of the witch circle, he might hear me, wherever he is. Just a feeling, but . . . I need him here with me.”
“Please, Jane. Don’t overdo it.” Bruiser shifted a hard gaze, sharp as a knife, to the two witches. “Don’t let her kill herself.” It was a threat. And it was so cute I wanted to cry, but I hurt too much to cry.
I managed to sit up and was tickled pink that my blood in the shot glass wasn’t totally dried out, and that I hadn’t spilled it. I folded my legs and took a breath, my eyes on the shot—chalice. Crap. Shot-chalice. I liked. Molly would hate it. “Girrard DiMercy. You swore loyalty to me as my personal Enforcer before I was the Dark Queen, before I even had a clan. By my blood and your word, I call you,” I said. Molly said a heat-wyrd and the blood in the silver shot-chalice boiled in a fast simmer and dried to a crust on the bottom.
In seconds, I felt Gee, feathers fluffing against the cold. He was in his Anzu form and the connection was clear and sharp. I was seeing through his eyes and the world was bright despite the night, like owl eyes. I knew. I’d been in Anzu shape once and owl more than once. Seeing with a night-hunting raptor’s vision was always weird. In Gee’s sight it wasn’t really dark, the ground was snow-free, and the air felt damp and somehow warm, though the distant trees were leafless. At the far-off tree line, I saw bison, a small herd standing in chest-deep snow, their breath blowing, ice crusted around their nostrils.
Gee was perched in a dead tree over a small pool of steaming water. Steam rose from the hot spring in globes of mist and fell in drops, a mimic of the action of the water bubbling, a luscious warmth. It almost looked like Hot Springs, not so far away, but the landscape was bigger, mountains on the horizon taller. Gee was in Yellowstone Park or someplace like it.
“If you fall in, we could make chicken and dumplings,” I said, aloud and in my mind.
“My mistress is amusing. How might I serve?” There was something snide in both the observation and the question. I decided to ignore it.