very non-Ed thing to say, and made me wonder how much of the Flayer’s mind was still part of Ed’s. “Alex,” Edmund said, his voice compulsion and request all at once. “Would you put on ‘Evil Mama’ by Bonamassa.” Alex told Merlin to play the song, and the strains instantly filled the speaker system in the entire main level, a song about knifing a man in the back. I wondered if Edmund felt I had done that to him, or if he was trying to warn me that the Flayer still resided in part of his mind.
My primo picked up Klaus’s arm and dragged him through the house and out the back door, the hard-driving guitar and accusing lyrics hanging between us.
Klaus left a trail of melted snow tinged with blood. His shoes came off, resting a few yards apart in a bloody patch.
The blood reminded me that Ed was a vampire in every way. A hunter. A predator. A killer.
However. Edmund swore fealty to Molly and to Angie Baby. No matter what else, I knew he would protect them all.
Molly, however, wasn’t so sanguine. She and Evan stepped over the trail and headed to their rooms. Her narrowed eyes followed Ed as he went through the house and out the mudroom door, Klaus’s body banging over the threshold and down the steps. The door closed behind them. Silent, without looking at me, they went to their rooms.
* * *
* * *
I checked in on my clan. Bruiser was busy with the high-level vamps in Shaddock’s cottage, talking about the immediate future battling Shimon, and the more distant future when the Flayer of Mithrans was dead. It was a formal parley, the kind of meetings that Leo Pellissier had reveled in and the kind of meetings that I slept through. In his room, Eli was sleeping off a near-death experience with Thema curled around him. They were both naked and I didn’t want to know what had happened between them. Molly and Evan and the kids were in their rooms with the door shut. Moll’s sisters were closeted with them. Alex wasn’t talking to me, bingeing on energy drinks. I was on my own.
I pulled on a sweatshirt over my comfy clothing, found the arcenciel scale, the eagle feather, and my father’s medicine bag. And my own. I took three throwing knives and a vamp-killer, just in case more vamps found a way onto the property, and walked through the now-swirling snow to the sweathouse.
There was no music here accusing an “Evil Mama” of doing bad things. It was silent and cold, even the ashes. I closed the door on the ice and started a fire using matches, a bag of Fritos, and a tiny bottle of vodka I had swiped off the wet-bar shelf. It wasn’t traditional. I didn’t care. The combo of greasy corn and alcohol lit the curls of bark and dry splinters, and the fire spread quickly to the larger pieces. When I had a good blaze going I used the long pole I found in the corner to open the small door in the dormer that would both let out smoke and let in light, so I’d know when it was dawn.
I sat by the fire and took the weapons, pushing them behind the nearest half-log seat. I dug the snowball crystals from the fur between my toes and flicked the melting ice into the dark.
Carefully, I spread my treasures on the dirt floor in front of my bent knee, all but my gold nugget and mountain lion tooth, which I wore around my neck. I had the eagle feather. The arcenciel scale. The medicine bags. The Glob. The crown of my Dark Queen office.
My own medicine bag was dyed a dark green on one side. I opened it and found it wasn’t as empty as I had believed. There were two bits of waxed paper, folded over. Inside one was a pinch of raw native tobacco. In the other waxed envelope was what smelled like white sage. The bag was too small for the golden eagle flight feather, but its contents were a good start on a real medicine bag, which should contain the things the earth gave, the symbols of a life well lived. Eli had chosen well.
My father’s medicine bag was old and faded, the edges soft and powdery. I hadn’t noticed until now, but once there had been something sewn on the bottom. Maybe a beaded fringe. Maybe a bit of