These were city cops and they were strangers, men and women I might have seen after the debacle in the three-story building de Allyon had rented and refurbished. But I didn't really know any of them. And they were yelling at us.

I was deaf from the fighting. We all were, so whatever they were ordering us to do, none of us could hear. I pointed to my ear and shook my head. "We're deaf!" I shouted to them. I pointed to the house. "We killed the things inside. The things inside killed the people in back." I figured that would buy us some time until someone who knew us got here.

Even as I had the thought, Sylvia arrived, no lights, no siren, because it wasn't her jurisdiction. She wasn't on duty, but whatever Syl said caused the cops to lower their weapons. They didn't put them away, not then, but at least they weren't pointed at us.

With Soul's help, the cops found a torn place in the ward and entered. Three of them checked out the house, and two of them came out gagging. The other one was stone-faced, evaluating us in light of the death inside.

I looked at Soul and shouted, "Better than seventy percent." She laughed and dropped down beside me, shaking her head, her platinum hair falling around her face. Her clothes were dirty and she had green goo drying on her face, but otherwise she looked as beautiful as ever.

Soul sobered. "The witches are not here."

My own mirth dimmed. "No. And the ward is still going. I don't understand it."

"Me neither," she said. And Soul looked worried. I didn't think I'd ever seen her worried.

While the cops did the cop thing, I emptied my pockets of the three busted amulets and spilled the parts onto the porch in front of me. I had never taken a pocket watch apart, but figured the wheels and gears were part of it. Also the spring and the little b.u.t.ton screw. But the discs were sort of a surprise. They looked like iron with a coating of bright copper. I turned one over and over, seeing nothing special about it, but nothing useful either. Until I pushed one close to another one. They ratcheted together like magnets, becoming one thing.

I blinked, not sure what I had seen, but absolutely certain that it wasn't good. I put the one free iron piece into a pocket that had a zipper to keep it closed; I didn't want them getting anywhere near each other. Sitting there as the day brightened around me, I tried to fit the pieces together, and I remembered a tiny bit of info that had never fit anywhere.

"Long years past," Kathyayini had said, "was cold iron, blood, three cursed trees, and lightning. Red iron will set you free." Which had made no freaking sense then and made none now. Except that now I had some red iron. She had also said, "Shadow and blood are a dark light, buried beneath the ground."

Shadow and blood. Shadows like the shadow land of the old church. Blood like in blood magic-black magic. I had done black magic once, as a child. It was how I'd gotten Beast. Buried beneath the ground. Like my soul home? The cavern I always saw when I was doing spirit work with Aggie One Feather?

"If the cops will let me go," I said, "I have a woman to see. She might have answers."

"I'll see to it," Soul said, "I'd have done it sooner, but I couldn't hear until now." She took a cleansing breath and pulled a black case out of a pocket and flipped it open. Inside was a gold badge with the letters HS in gold relief, and below them, in smaller lettering, PSYLED. Soul, a VIP in Homeland Security, was about to pull rank.

Eli gave me the keys to the SUV, but I was too tired to drive, so the Kid drove. Which was scary on a whole different level. I didn't even know the Kid had a license. If he did. I had also forgotten he was here, but he'd been monitoring the action from the street with his brother's military observational toys and filming the action-I guessed in case we all died and he had to report it to the police and PsyLED. As we pulled into the early traffic, I eased the small silver coin from my pocket, the one with the sea serpent on one side and the square on the other.

Fingering the small silver coin, I gave him directions, and wondered if Kathyayini would come to me in the daytime.

CHAPTER 23.

Vampire Blood. Mixed with Something.

The lot was vacant, lit by bright morning sun. But no church. Just an empty s.p.a.ce. I recognized trees I had seen the night I came here, and when I looked hard, I could see the outlines of an old foundation, mostly gone, marked more by the way the gra.s.s grew than by any rise in the ground or scattered stone or brick.

"Wait here," I said to the Kid. "If I disappear, don't freak. But if I'm not back in an hour, tell Eli to bring Soul here. She might be able to find me."

The Kid looked at the lot, at me, and back at the lot, his brows creased together. "Disappear? Like into some kinda interdimensional s.p.a.ce-time fold?"

I huffed a laugh. "Been there, done that once, a long time ago." The Kid's eyes bugged out. "Long story. This didn't feel like that. Not exactly. But maybe there were similarities. Last time I was on the outside of the bubble. This time maybe I was on the inside."

"Can I film it?"

I started stripping off the weapons and the weapon harness, because one should never take weapons into a consecrated place or into the presence of an elder. "Go for it," I said. "But I'm guessing you won't see a thing." I thought a minute. "Maybe a lot of fog."

Weapon free, with nothing on me except the silver coin, pocket watches, and the discs, I got out of the SUV. Took a slow breath and blew it out. Another. And wished I'd taken the time to get a shower. I was rank with the sweat of battle. I squared my shoulders, gripped the coin between the index finger and thumb of my right hand, and walked between the trees. Nothing happened.

I sat on the ground in front of where I thought the front doors of the church had once been and crossed my knees-which was not a comfortable position in the leathers and boots. The sun was warm on my shoulders, the fickle winds of the Mississippi chasing away the night's chill. I pulled off my leather jacket and set it behind me. Finally got my shirt straight, now that the weapon harness was off.

My socks were still twisted. I wanted tea. Breakfast. My stomach growled. Nothing else happened. I studied the amulets and the iron discs. And realized that the stuff I thought was copper was actually something far darker. It was blood. I lifted one and sniffed it, pulling on Beast's senses. Vampire blood mixed with the iron itself. And with . . .

I dropped the disc, staring at it on the gra.s.s. Skinwalker blood. It all came together.

Lucas Vazquez de Allyon had killed off my kind everywhere he could. But one miniature painting I had seen in an old book had depicted him holding a bowl of blood, with dead and drained skinwalkers from the Panther Clan everywhere around him on the ground. Skinwalkers like me.

I looked at the silver coin in my hand. Kathyayini had known what I was. Somehow she had known. As I fingered the coin, I found a sharp edge, just a spot where the coin had ground against something sharper or harder once. I spat on my thumb and rubbed it on my jeans, cleaning it, and pressed the pad of my thumb on the coin. Nothing happened. I gripped it in my left hand and cut into my right thumb with a hard, fast motion. My flesh tore. A shock of pain flashed through me.

Blood welled and dripped into my palm. I put the coin into the pooling blood. In the distance, from a clear sky, thunder rumbled. In the echo of the rumble, the sky darkened and a low fog appeared. Lightning flashed, a spreading fan of power that reflected off the clouds boiling up in the sky in this place that wasn't. I remembered the whole quote.

"Long years past was cold iron, blood, three cursed trees, and lightning. Red iron will set you free." Then: "Shadow and blood are a dark light, buried beneath the ground."

Lightning, like now, in a mystical place full of storms.

Dream-walkers were mystics. Mystics opened themselves to spiritual possibility, and being mystical meant that they seldom communicated logically. They left spiritual hints and clues . . . and the most mystical aspect of vamps was their creation story, an act of black magic that had unintended consequences. And beings who did good magic and black magic were . . . most often witches.

Red iron and trees, I thought, trying to find sense in the dribs and drabs of knowledge I had. The Sons of Darkness, the witch sons of Judas Iscariot, had used the three cursed trees of Calvary to bring their father back to life. The wood from the three crosses had been mixed with blood and black magic to create the first immortal, and when they ate his flesh, they became the first two vampires and fathers of all the vampires who followed.

My breath released in a slow exhalation. I was close to something. Very close.

Night had fallen around me. The SUV was gone; so was everything else. Shadow and blood are a dark light. There were shadow and my blood in this place.

There had been shadow and blood on Golgotha the evening the Christ died. There had been his blood on the tree. And on the cold iron that pierced his flesh, holding him there.

I took a slow breath, not moving, not fighting for it-whatever it was that my hindbrain was putting together. The words rolled through my mind again, low and sonorous, potent as the lightning: Long years past was cold iron, blood, three cursed trees, and lightning. Red iron will set you free. Then: Shadow and blood are a dark light, buried beneath the ground.

Some outclan priestesses had a sliver of the wood of the crosses that had been used to make the vampires. But what had happened to the iron? Had it been melted down and used for more black magic? Like the transformative magic that was turning Naturaleza into spidey vamps?

Lightning cracked again, slamming into the ground only yards away. The power of it sent electric shivers through me. My loose hair stood on end, and my skin crackled with the pain of electric shock. On the ground in front of me, the last red iron disc slid across the gra.s.s and snapped into place atop the other two. The pocket watches that were still whole glowed with a greenish light in the gloom of wherever or whenever this was.

Red iron and three cursed trees. Is it possible?

I closed my eyes and took a cleansing breath. When I opened my eyes, the church was before me. I started, even though I'd been expecting it. Overhead, thunder rumbled, close and ominous. Rain pattered down, just as the last time I was here. I gathered up my jacket, the amulets, and the thick iron disc, putting them into pockets where they couldn't touch one another. I held the silver coin in my b.l.o.o.d.y fist as I walked up the short steps and into the church. The doors crashed shut behind me, an angry boom that reverberated through the church.

I walked down the aisle, but Kathyayini wasn't there. The church was empty. Which sent w.i.l.l.i.e.s down my back. My heart sped, an irregular pain, and I ma.s.saged my chest with my fist as I walked, not thinking about the blood until the air chilled it on my skin. Rain pounded down outside and on the roof over me. The din of the storm was incredible. I could feel the power through the soles of my boots. Wind hit the side of the church, and the old building groaned.

I reached the front, the church dark, lit only by lightning strikes outside. Each strike was intense, showing me the pews, the cross over the entry door that I hadn't noticed last time. It was painted red. I eased my backside onto the dais and sat, feet dangling. And waited.

"You don't got no match? It's dark in here." Kathyayini.

I sighed out a breath, relief so strong it hurt as the air left my lungs. "I don't carry matches," I said.

I heard the scratch of a match striking right beside me and I flinched at the sound, the smell, and the flickering light, after the long minutes of darkness and lightning. Kathyayini lit a candle and then another, and a third. "You don't listen too good. Do you? This a lot harder in daytime." Kathyayini hopped up on the dais beside me and sat. She was wearing a different dress this time, with a biblike front over her chest and a red T-shirt underneath. The fabric of the dress had huge red flowers on a pink background. It wasn't flattering, but it did look comfortable.

I said, "I was busy getting inside a witch-warded house during the night. At dawn, I was busy killing vamp things, spidey vamps, inside the house."

"Sounds messy. That why you stink?"

I chuckled and my shoulders slumped. "Yes, ma'am."

"You save everybody?"

"We didn't save anyone. There was nothing in the house except bodies several days old."

"Huh." Kathyayini pursed her lips, her mouth wrinkling up like a dried plum. "There shoulda been a witch circle there."

"There was nothing."

"You sure? No circle painted on the floor?"

My head came up. "c.r.a.p! There were black arcs painted on the floor in each room. Not a circle, but something."

"Quarter circle? Like the whole house was the circle? You not very bright if you don't see that."

"Couldn't be a witch circle. It was broken by the walls of the house."

Kathyayini pursed her lips, the wrinkled skin drawing up like a dried apple. "Some circles are symbolic, proof of power used somewhere else."

I hadn't known that. Once again others might pay because I didn't know enough of the arcane. I pushed off the dais and landed on the floor below the podium. "I have to get back there. Now!"

"No." She waved a hand at me as if my intention was of no interest to her. "You got to sit down and listen. We got things to talk about." When I took a step away, she narrowed her eyes at me and said, "Sit!" There was power in her command, so strong my knees buckled. I grabbed the dais to keep from falling and I sat. She pulled a strip of cloth from a pocket of her bib and pointed at my thumb. It was still bleeding, which was odd. My skinwalker metabolism would usually stop the bleeding of a scratch quickly. I wrapped my small wound and gripped the cloth over it, applying pressure.

"What have you learned so far?" she asked, though it was more command than request.

"That an old Spaniard, a conquistador, was a vamp. He drank down the power of the best warriors of the Tsalagi and then used some of their blood to make amulets, maybe using the iron from the spikes of the crosses to give his magic power."

"Hah. You not so stupid as I think."

"At some point," I went on, "he figured out how to use the amulets to focus enough power to keep the rest of the vamps in the U.S. and Europe at bay, so he could practice Naturaleza, free from interference, for centuries in Atlanta. That was enough for him until he discovered a way to make vampires sick. And then he concocted a plan using the vamp plague to take over the entire U.S. But Leo Pellissier stood in his way. Leo and me.

"I killed Lucas and his heir took over the amulets and added a full witch circle to the mix. The added power created transformational magic. I think the purpose of the magic was to make a super vamp able to be truly immortal, withstand the sun, silver, crosses-every weakness that vamps have. And the magic was tested by creating revenants to see what came back. And what has come back so far is monsters."

"Not bad." She patted my knee. "But let's talk about the Tsalagi warriors from long ago. They not all dead. Are they?"

She means skinwalkers. "Uh, no, ma'am."

"You killed the other one."

My eyes whipped to hers, and she smiled in the light of the three candles. "You been here many moon cycles, setting things in motion. Stopped other things. Maybe that other Tsalagi like you was supposed to do something important for this old Spaniard, and you killed him instead. What you think that might be?"

I shook my head in confusion, trying to rearrange my thoughts and the things I thought I had figured out into some new semblance of order. "Maybe Immanuel was supposed to kill Leo, so de Allyon could take over?"

"And so, maybe you the catalyst for his plan, not the plague. Or maybe both together. You showing up in New Orleans caused him a headache, I betcha." She cackled with laughter. "And he tried to kill you, yes?"

I remembered the attack in a hotel in Asheville. "That was to kill Leo."

"You not so smart now. Old blood drinkers got plans on top of plans, everything tied together like a big knot"-she held her hands out as if gripping a soccer ball-"like a clock, around and around. He was doing bunch of things at once and you stopped all of them. He had to rethink his plans."

I felt a chill, like a winter wind over a graveyard. "Everything I've done since I got to New Orleans has brought me here, to this moment."

"Now you see? You getting smart now."

"If you knew all this, why didn't you tell me last time?" I ground out, my frustration making my voice loud enough to echo through the old building. Outside, lightning hit the earth close by, lighting the inside of the church in a flickering burst of power. "You gave me a riddle that made no sense."

"Eh. You figured it out." She flapped a hand at the unimportance of it all. "Musta made some sense, it did. Besides, what make you think I knew everything last time? What make you think I know them this time? What make you think any of this is real?" She swept an arm around the old church, to include herself. "If none a this is real," she said, "where it all come from?" She tapped my head with a bony finger. "You knew lots of it already. I just gave you a nudge with my riddle."

I pushed her finger away and pa.s.sed my hands over my face, pressing in on my eyeb.a.l.l.s. I could smell my own blood soaking into the cloth. My bleeding still hadn't stopped. "Okay. What do I do next?"

"What you think you do next?"

"I think I have to figure out how to use the quarter witch circles in the old house"-I stopped, remembering another circle, the one in the refrigerator of the other house-"because the witch circles will take me somewhere else. Where the witches are."

"Now you talking like a smart girl. Get. I got stuff to do."

"But-"

"Don't forget to save us. The Achee witches, we in big trouble."

Lightning hit the top of the church with a sound like doom. The candles went out. And I was sitting on the ground, in the gra.s.s, in the middle of a downpour. My jacket was behind me, the three pocket watches were on the ground in front of me, and I was holding the red iron disc in one hand and a b.l.o.o.d.y silver coin in the other. I put the watches in separate pockets and the iron coin in the zippered one. And trudged back the way I came. Between one step and the next, I was in the daylight, staring at a shocked Alex. He was only a foot away, his eyes wide and his mouth open.

"You disappeared. And then you came back. Like . . . like magic or something. And why are you all wet?"

I grunted sourly, striding to the truck. "Get in and drive."

We went back to the old saloon and bar where Eli and I had rescued the three girls chained in a bathroom, where I had shifted into Beast to save my life. As he drove, I loaded my shotgun and the nine millimeter I had emptied into a spidey vamp and weaponed up over the soaked clothing. When the Kid braked at the curb, I found one of Eli's huge flashlights, got out, and went to the bar. I yelled over my shoulder, "If I'm not out in fifteen minutes, call Eli!"

The door was covered with a piece of plywood and taped over with crime scene tape. There was a gap at the bottom, and I wriggled my fingers under the wood and got a good grip, braced one foot on the doorjamb, and yanked.

The door groaned up and out at an angle, nails pulling out of the wood. When it was high enough to get through, I ducked and went inside, drawing a nine-mil and turning on the flash. My sense of smell told me the place was empty, but I scanned the front room and behind the bar to make sure before I took the long hallway to the back.

The women's restroom was empty but still smelled of pain and fear. The door in the back of the building was missing, allowing in a lot of light. The refrigerator stood open once again, either because the cops left it that way or because vamps had used it since then. I was betting on vamps. I stood in the doorway, studying the white-painted circle in the center of the fridge. "Flying by the seat of my pants could get me killed this time," I said to myself.

Beast answered, We are Beast. We are more than Jane and big-cat.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." I pulled the three watch amulets out of my pockets and laid them on the floor of the fridge, inside the white circle. Then I stepped over and into the center of the circle, unzipped the pocket, and took out the thrice-made red iron disc. It was clumsy, but I held the weapon and the flash in one hand, and bent my knees, spread my feet into a modified shooting stance, and with my other hand pressed the disc into the b.l.o.o.d.y cloth.

The floor fell out from under my feet. My stomach lurched. Vomit rose in my throat.

I landed hard in the dark, dislodging the flashlight. Dropping it. It landed with a hollow thud and rolled, illuminating a place I had never seen before. It was a tiny square room, maybe three feet on a side. It stank of old earth and blood and the dusty reek of spidey vamps.