Death's Rival

CHAPTER FIVE

Deer Antlers Piercing Through His Shoulders
The carpet was soaked scarlet. The walls had been spray painted crimson. The leather chairs had been painted. The rounded roof ran with red rivulets. A naked body had been tacked beside the entrance of the sleeping quarters. The body was bluish white skin everywhere except for the raw, gaping wounds, still leaking. His limbs spread in a grotesque X. Nails, huge six-inch-long nails, held him in place on the bulkhead wall. Steel nails though his wrists and above his ankles. Crucified.
It was the part-timer, Flyboy Dan.
My scalp tingled. My vision telescoped down to the bloody man hanging on the wall. The vision of the nailed man triggered something deep inside, in some dark and shadowy place in my soul, some memory of fear and pain. It was like a tight, scarlet bud, the flower of some unseen, unremembered horror still concealed in bloody, deadly petals.
Crucified. But not like the Christ. Like something else.
I smelled blood and the stink of bowels released in death. Heard the soft, wet sound of a drop of blood falling to the saturated carpet. I took a slow, deep breath and the darkness receded, the flower of old pain softened and blurred, losing its power over my mind.
But in some tiny, logical place of my brain that was still functioning, I thought, It isn't like the suckheads to let blood go to waste.
Stupid thought. Stupid, stupid, stupid thought. I forced myself to breathe, breathe, slowly, deeply. Underneath the blood-death-stink I smelled vamp. Now-familiar vamp. The vamp I was chasing. I drew my weapons back into firing readiness. I'd let them drop at the sight of the man. Stupid rookie mistake. Stupid thoughts. I blinked away tears I didn't know I'd cried and scanned the small jet, looking for anything alive or undead.
There was no way to avoid stepping in blood, but I did my best as I peeked into the cockpit and then circled around to the galley. Both were empty. I flipped the light switch in the sleeping quarters. There was no blood here. No. The vamp had left me a different kind of message. The new part-time first mate was naked, positioned on the bed where I had slept. Dead, with two holes in his neck, still trickling blood. A smile on his face. An envelope lying on his fish white belly.
It had my name on it.
I toed off my bloody boots, walked barefoot to the bed, and took the envelope. Tucked it into the blood-bottle tote. Grabbed my belongings and slid back into my boots. Not sure where the calm actions were coming from. Training or instinct. Maybe a bit of both, taking over when my mind went on hiatus and my soul was aching. I paused at the hatch and looked back at the crucified man.
The ancient, blooming horror opened before me, in fast forward.
I had a momentary vision of another man, white, bearded, bloodied, hanging over hot coals, deer antlers piercing through his shoulders, ropes leading up from the antlers into the dark of night. The sound of drums. The smell of herbed smoke and blood. A phantom memory, new, yet oldoldold. And then it was gone, as if it had never been real. As if the memory was a dream, half lost upon waking.
I went down the steps, leaving bloody footprints, and washed my boots at a low faucet on the terminal building wall. Entered the terminal. I was sawing at the bindings on the hog-tied air traffic controller when the tears that were gathered in my eyes started to fall. This was crazy. People were being drained, were being crucified. People were dying of plague. I was on a mission of peaceful parley that should have been known only to a few specific people, but it felt as if my every move had been telegraphed to Leo's enemies and I didn't know how, or who was giving away inside information. More people were dead by violent means and I didn't know why. I didn't know a lot of stuff, and it had come back to haunt me.
I blinked and saw the man stuck to the Learjet wall like a bug on felt. I took a steadying breath. I could mourn later. I bore down on the bindings holding the air traffic controller. Dulling my blade. Because his hands had swollen around the plastic strips, it took all my strength and concentration to saw through the strips on his wrists and not cut him badly. One of the zip strips parted. I bent into the struggle with the plastic. It took a whole minute and several cuts to his hands and wrists, even with my highest-quality steel edges, to free him. Whoever had trussed up the air traffic controller had known what he was doing. When the last binding on his hands broke through, the man collapsed on the floor, pulling his hands up to shoulder height. They looked awful, but I thought they would be okay. Tying up someone's hands that tight can result in permanent damage from something called compartment syndrome. I'd seen it before and it wasn't pretty. "See a doctor," I said shortly, not letting my relief sound in my voice.
I cleaned his blood from the blade by wiping it on his pants and put it away in a sheath not easy to hand. I didn't want to draw it again until it had some attention. I should question him again. Hard and thoroughly. Just because he had been trussed up at a crime scene like a young calf didn't mean he hadn't been culpable on some level. Maybe he let the bad guys in. Maybe he did something else. But I wouldn't interrogate him. I would take the coward's way out and vanish. I stood and said, "Is there video surveillance of the attackers?"
Using one purpled palm, he pushed up and rolled over, looking at the destroyed computer and electronic equipment. He laughed, a pained chuffing sound. "I doubt it. Looks like they shot up the whole works."
"I need transportation."
"I have a Yamaha Super Tenere bike beside the building out front. Can you ride?"
"I'm a Harley girl. Yeah."
"Keys in my pocket." He tried to move his fingers and hissed through his teeth at the pain.
"Give me ten minutes before you call the cops," I said. "Mr. Pellissier will make it worth your time." I fished for the keys and left through the front door. The bike was in the shadows at the side of the building, hidden from the parking lot, helmet on the back. It was a sleek, sporty street bike, all black, built for speed and comfort. I stored my weapons and clothes in the aluminum side cases and strapped the Benelli to the bike along my knee. The weight and balance were different from Bitsa, and it used a key start, which I had always thought was a wussy way to start a bike, but I wasn't complaining. I keyed it on and it had the nice steady purr of a well-kept engine. The last thing I did before leaving the airport was to throw the new cell phone as far as I could and let my braids down from the crown to put on the helmet. It smelled of the air traffic controller but wasn't too horrible. I'd been around worse smells today. I tucked the braids into my collar and was on the road in seconds, heading toward the city lights.
Popular wisdom says it's supposed to rain all the time in Seattle, but it was dry and balmy for November, in the high seventies, even this late. Scudding clouds were advancing across the sky, and the night was black with buffeting winds and unfamiliar scents, mostly fecund earth and dense greenery, exposed rock, still warm from the sun. I shifted gears and climbed a hill, gaining speed. Putting the past behind me. Right now no one knew where I was. No one could contact me. If I wanted, I could take off and just disappear. Start over.
Beast does not run away, she growled softly.
But I could. If I wanted. A large part of me did want to head for the hills. Every time I blinked I saw the man I had left in the Learjet. Black road. Blink. Bloody body hanging on the jet's bulkhead wall. Open eyes. The man I had left alone, unprotected, to be tortured by vamps. Black road. Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes. Black road. The hanging, bloody man had been familiar, part of an old memory, a memory from my Cherokee past. Familiar, but fading. Already the vision of the man in the past had merged with the dead man of tonight. The familiar, hanging pose. The distant memory tumbling into the present, yet not quite sliding into place. I had seen such a thing when I was a young child. I was nearly certain. Nearly.
For months, little bits and pieces of my current life had fallen away or were ripped from me, much like the man's flesh had been flayed off. But my grief had all been internal - not overt - and therefore easily pushed away, shunted aside in favor of more immediately important matters. Ignored. But at the sight of the tortured flyboy, and the half-recalled memory, the enormity of my life changes had socked me in the face like some dark demon risen from hell.
Black road. Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes. Black road. Grip bike. Apply more speed. Bend into the turn. Wind beating at me. My breath was hot under the faceplate, almost panting. Almost a sob.
I'd lost my best friend, Molly, when I killed her sister. I could still feel the eighteen inches of vamp-killer-blade sliding into Evangelina. Her demon-heated blood, pumping across my hand.
I'd lost my boyfriend Rick LaFleur when he was attacked by werewolves and were-cats, and I had been unsuccessful in helping him with his shift-to-furry problem. I had been forced to say good-bye to him while he went to a special training camp outside Quantico for agents of Big Brother - PsyLED - the Psychometry Law Enforcement Division of Homeland Security.
I was, for the first time in my adult life, essentially homeless, friendless, empty, and alone. Just as I had been at age twelve when I wandered out of the forest after being stuck in Beast form for decades. But this time, I remembered some of my past, and the memories left me flayed just as the pilot had been. Just as the man had been in the old memory. Had he? I remembered blood. I think. But the distant past was shifting and changing and drifting away. Black road. Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes. Black road. My own bleeding was all internal.
I was stupid and pathetic and spineless. Everything I'd done, every decision I'd made, had taken me to a place I had never intended to go - working long-term for the vamps instead of just beheading the crazy ones. Learning that some of them were thinking, feeling creatures. Not human - but not worthy of death just because of their vamp-nature. Black road. Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes. Black road.
Tears started to fall behind the face-shield, caught by the air currents sweeping up underneath like mini tornadoes, cool and damp across my face and into my hair. I deserved losing my best friend because I'd killed her sister. I had blood on my hands and on my soul and I'd added to the toll tonight - it was my fault that the men in the jet were dead, because I hadn't considered that someone would come after me, because I hadn't taken precautions. I didn't recognize myself anymore in the killing machine I was becoming.
Jane is killer. Only killer, Beast murmured.
"Go away," I shouted into the teeth of the wind. She growled and went silent. I gave the engine gas, speeding into the dark, passing headlights that left smears on my retinas. Bent low over the bike, leaning into the turns, taking chances that would have been deadly to anyone with human reflexes. Black road. Blink. Bloody pilot. Bloody bearded man. Nails. Antlers. Open eyes. Black road. The bloody body was a nightmare memory brought forward in time. Was the man from my past someone I had cared for? A white man? How would that be possible? And I'd never know, not for sure.
Lost. They were all lost. Everyone I knew from my first life. Etsi, my mother, Edoda, my father, Elisi, my grandmother. All gone. All dead. Decades and decades ago. And now everyone I truly loved and truly trusted from my current life, Molly and Rick, were gone. I screamed out my grief, in long, hoarse sobs as the miles and black pavement raced beneath me, and wind buffeted the misery that dogged me. I screamed until there was only the wind against my clothes and the road beneath my tires. Black road. Blink. Bloody pilot. Open eyes. Black road.
When the tears finally stopped, my voice was hoarse and my throat was raw. I was empty and purposeless and useless. Jane is killer only, Beast thought at me.
"Shut up," I whispered. "I didn't kill the man with the antlers through his body."
Jane is killer only.
In a small town outside Seattle, I passed a bank with a well-lit ATM and pulled over. If I had to go to ground, I needed money. I inserted my card and punched in the special PIN that allowed me a onetime withdrawal of an unlimited amount of cash. I removed five thousand dollars and added it to the wad of money Bruiser had given me for this gig. I wasn't sure why I might need to go into hiding, but the imperative was there. Take money. Stock up. Be prepared. Now I had to get back to New Orleans, which meant flying commercial, so I had to get rid of my weapons.
Two blocks over, in a brand-new strip mall, I found a one-stop shopping spot, most stores still open. In a high-end luggage store I paid cash for two hard-bodied cases used for shipping electronic musical equipment. Outside, I took my weapons apart so they couldn't fire, packaging the pieces in separate shipping containers, so that if someone stole one case, there weren't enough parts to make a whole weapon. It isn't easy to ship firearms and I didn't want any problems. In a UPS franchise store that was trying to close, I purchased a third container and shipping materials for the bladed weapons. The fifty I tipped the manager ensured that he stopped making noises about needing to close the store and got helpful, handing me padding and foam and layers of cardboard to keep the knives from shifting in transit. I kept only two weapons - two wooden stakes that I could use as hair sticks. If I got stopped by airport security, I wouldn't mind tossing them, and I'd feel safer if I had something on hand to defend myself.
I paid for insurance and overnight shipping to New Orleans and though it was an exorbitant price, I didn't blink at the cost. Another way the vamps had ruined me. Money meant a lot less now, was a lot less dear. Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes. I put the latest blood vials into a bubble-wrap envelope without telling the helpful clerk about the blood, and then secured them into the shipping container so they wouldn't roll around and burst.
I saw my reflection in the windows against the night outside. I looked like I'd been crying, my face strained and flushed. I took my receipts and left.
Inside the little town I also found a pay phone. I hadn't seen one of those in forever. I went back to the UPS store and held a twenty up to the locked door, mouthing, "Change? Please?" Maybe it was the tear streaks on my face, but something worked because he cleared all the change out of his cash register for me. I tipped him another five. He was a happy camper. But he'd surely remember me.
Standing in the dark, I inserted coins and called Bruiser on the pay phone. He answered with a simple hello. He sounded very British in that moment, though he hadn't been British since the early nineteen hundreds. He also sounded distant and unapproachable. If Leo told him to kill me, would he do it? I honestly didn't know, and it was dangerous to be attracted to a man whose loyalties lay elsewhere. "Hello?" he repeated. Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes.
"Your pilot is dead," I said. "Stuck to the bulkhead wall by nails just like a bug on display. His blood was sprayed all over the Lear." My voice sounded hollow, empty, and rough as broken stone. "Your new first mate was drained and left on the bunk I slept on. The air traffic controller was injured. It was done by two blood-servants, one vamp. They knew where I'd be." I placed a hand over the envelope in my pocket, the one I had taken from the drained body of the new first mate. It bent under the pressure but didn't crinkle, a heavy cotton fiber paper. Bruiser started to reply but I interrupted with "You have a serious leak. I'll get home on my own. We'll talk then." I hung up, walked back to the bike, and lifted the helmet. The phone rang. Dang caller ID. I walked over and picked up. "What?"
"You, little girl, are not human. And I have the security tape."
I chuckled. "Reach. I know that was not a threat. Your clients would be horrified if they ever learned you could be enticed to blackmail."
"Not blackmail. Self-protection. I don't know what you are, but if I feel threatened, this will go viral so fast that cheap, pixeled-out video of you carrying a dead cop out of a cave will look like child's play."
My past was always coming back to haunt me, ghosts of the dead. I had nearly died killing off a whacked-out family of vamps in a closed gem mine in the Appalachian Mountains. I had survived but hadn't been able to save the cop. Another failure I carried on my shoulders. A camper had caught the video on his camera as Molly and I exited the cave, the dead cop over my shoulder. "I'm not your enemy, Reach. But Leo would be, should I tell him you're monitoring his incoming and outgoing calls. For now, let's just call it even. I'll keep your secrets. You keep mine." I hung up again and got on the bike. The phone rang again as I rode away. I didn't look back.
* * *
I rode back to Seattle, taking in the sights as the clouds grew more ominous overhead and rain started to spit down in hard, widely spaced drops. The buildings were a charming mixture of new and old, towering and modest-height, nestled into the terrain as if they'd been tossed and landed where happenstance chose. The pace of life here, this late at night, was leisurely, with only moderate traffic and no sense of urgency.
The Space Needle was amazing, and Beast peeked out to get a good look, snarling, Too tall to use for watching prey. Stupid human buildings. After that, she disappeared from the forefront of my brain again. In spite of her disdain, part of me thought I'd like living here.
Underneath the usual white-man smells of modern life, Seattle smelled of fish, stone, raw wood, and green earth. It smelled of rain - lots of rain - tropical-forest quantities of rain - and freshwater lakes and the Pacific Ocean and a sense of freedom I hadn't expected. Though part of that might be from getting out from under Leo's and Bruiser's and even Reach's thumbs. Unless I gave them opportunity, like with the pay phone call, they couldn't find me tonight without a lot of work and a lot of luck. I stopped for gas and washed more blood, now dry, off my boots. It ran in thin trails across the pavement.
Near the Fisherman's Terminal, at the wharf, I found a coffee shop still open and wheeled the bike in. I got an extra-large chai latte and a big blueberry scone and pulled out the laptop I'd stolen from the vamp house. I went online and did some research into flights out of the city. There were plenty of commercial red-eyes leaving, heading east, but nothing direct to New Orleans until morning. I'd be getting in near ten. I needed to be there a lot sooner, but I had no choice. I booked a direct flight with one stop, but no flight change, which cost me over five hundred dollars, but I didn't quibble, and - not able to use cash for a flight since 9/11 - I used the one credit card I was pretty sure no one knew about. I borrowed the coffee shop's phone and left a message at the shot-up airport where the borrowed bike would be, then rode the bike to Sea-Tac, Seattle Tacoma International Airport, and left it in short-term parking with a hundred-dollar bill in the saddlebag.
With two hours left until my six a.m. flight to New Orleans, I cleaned up in the ladies' room and ate in a terminal restaurant that served overpriced, overcooked, undertasty food. I settled in for a long night. Having brooded myself into a total funk, I pulled out the fancy, heavy cotton envelope and turned it over. My name was on the front in a flowery, curlicue, old-fashioned script that looked like calligraphy. Old vamps had the best penmanship. They'd had centuries to perfect it. Whoever had written the two words had managed to imbue my name with elegance and menace, or maybe that was just me projecting. Or maybe it was the spot of bloodred wax sealed with the imprint of a bird with a human head, maybe an Anzu.
Sniffing the envelope, I detected a faint blood-scent: peaty, spicy, and a little beery - the now-familiar blood-scent of the vamp who drained the first mate. It was an odd scent for a vamp. Even without being in Beast form, I knew it was the same vamp who had sent my attacker in Asheville, and all the ones since.
Deflecting a spurt of apprehension, I slit open the envelope and pulled out the single sheet, unfolded and scrutinized it. The words were oddly capitalized, like the way old English words were capitalized in documents to indicate their importance. Again, it was written in the calligraphy of someone who had written in script back when that was a prized skill.
You killed my Enforcer, Ramondo Pitri.
You will Die with your Master,
in a massacre such as you have never seen.
This, at a time of my choosing.
Ramondo Pitri was the name of the blood-servant I'd killed in Asheville. He had come into my hotel room, carrying a gun with a silencer, and smelling of unknown vamp. I had shot him, killed him, before I ever knew that he was a made man out of New York, not the usual vamp fodder. He hadn't smelled like any vamp I knew, or been formally attached to any of Leo's clans. All that had caused us to assume he was a hired killer. But as an Enforcer, Ramondo should have been known to the general vamp population and should not have entered any other master's territory without proper papers or an invitation. And he should have stunk of his master's blood and been deeply under the blood-bond, rather than smelling of a distant and irregular feeding. Of course, I was an Enforcer - sort of - and I had no blood-bond at all.
I turned the paper over as if looking for clues that simply were not there. I had killed another master's Enforcer and now I had to die? And Leo had to die? And the blood-slave at the Sedona Airport had to die? And the pilot stuck to the wall of a jet had to die, as did the drained corpse of the first mate? All because I . . . what? Shot first and asked questions later?
The grief I had given into on the harrowing bike ride receded a pace, leaving a small blank slate of uncertainty on my soul. Grief, like guilt, may not always be warranted.
I folded the letter back into the envelope. I needed a cup of strong tea, but there was nothing in the airport except teabags, so I walked to a bar and ordered a pint of Guinness Draught, not because I could get a rush out of the alcohol - skinwalker metabolism is too fast for that - but because I wanted something in my hands to help me think. Holding the big glass, I sipped.
The taste brought Beast to the forefront of my mind again. Smells like vampire, she thought, and she was right, which might, subconsciously, account for me ordering the beer in the first place. Peaty and beery. Yeah. Like the vamp. I drank long, killing half the beer, feeling tension begin to drain away. I was tired and sleepy, but I pulled the letter from my pocket again and studied it. Midnight had come and gone. This read like some kind of vamp-challenge, the fanged Hatfields meet the vamped-out McCoys. If a challenge had been issued to Leo, I hadn't been notified. I looked at a clock and discovered it was now after five a.m., Pacific time. Maybe the letter meant midnight tomorrow. Or next week. The new moon was days away.
Smells like vampire, Beast thought again. Is important.
It was the first time she had taken such an interest in my life in weeks, and I couldn't help my internal smile. Okay, I thought back at her. But why? She didn't answer. Big help you are.
I debated calling Bruiser and asking, and I decided it could wait. This vamp threat would be contained in the Vampira Carta or its codicils, which I had on file on my own laptop back in New Orleans and could access soon enough.
Old vampires are patient hunters, Beast thought. Like snakes, lying on rocks all day in the sun. Not moving until a rabbit - or a puma - comes by. Then striking, fastfastfast with killing teeth. Even if snake is too small to eat its prey.
Sooo. The vamp attacks me, I thought back, in the cities he's conquered. Like a snake. Sneaky. That's part of his war on Leo?
Again, Beast didn't answer. Dang cat. I didn't want to use Reach for this. Maybe it was nothing, but he'd known about each of my stops on this little excursion. Maybe my best research help was also my new worst enemy.
I pulled out a throwaway cell and considered calling Derek Lee. I thought about how he had been Leo's ally first, then mine through a process I wasn't sure I understood, except for the money. I had made sure he was paid for his kills of rogue-crazy-nutso-vamps, and he had backed me up on several gigs. Money created either honorable bedfellows or cheating partners, one or the other. And then there were his new guys - who might be safer and more trustworthy than his older, dependable guys. Or not. There were too many new faces to keep track of.
"Derek Lee," he answered, succinct.
I smiled into my beer. Took a long slurp, so he could hear it, and said, "I need some intel."
"Legs," he said, using the nickname he and his men had given me. "And I should help you, why?"
"Because I keep life interesting," I said. He snorted. "And because I have money and something else you want, although you haven't figured out what, yet. No questions asked." Derek Lee went quiet at that. I had just offered a future favor, whatever he needed, whenever he needed it. "I need intel on Ramondo Pitri, a made man, of Corsican descent, if I remember right, out of New York."
"That's the guy you shot in your hotel room," he said, his interest sharpening.
"Yeah. Turns out he was the Enforcer of an unknown vamp, who intends to challenge Leo soon. He thinks I need to die along with Leo."
"Damn suckheads. Uh. Sorry."
The men knew I didn't curse and that often made them uncomfortable, as if they had mistakenly said a bad word in front of their grandma, in church. I laughed, the sound curt and bitter. "My sentiments exactly. One of your guys, Angel Tit, if I remember right, is from New York. Maybe he has contacts there he can use to dig up some history that isn't on record." Angel Tit was the nickname of Derek's electronics guy, a hacker as good as Reach. Well, nearly as good as Reach.
"What? A black guy from New York should know the mob?"
"He can ask his buddies and they can ask around. That's all I'm asking."
I heard Derek talking in the background, the sound muffled. "He says okay, but his guys are scattered. He doesn't know what he can find out. It's gonna cost you, Legs. Money to grease the way."
"It always does, Derek. It always does. Before you hang up, I need some specialists. I want an intel guy and a security guy on retainer, to meet me at dusk, at my house. The security guy needs to be someone with Special Forces training, but doesn't have to be a marine or SEAL. Army's fine." He snorted his opinion of the army. "I'll give you a finder's fee, but they'll belong to me." I put delicate emphasis on the word. "Not you." A silence stretched out. I waited, knowing that I had insulted him by saying the men I wanted had to belong to me and not him, and knowing that most people would have said something - anything - to end the silence. I didn't.
"Money talks," he said at last, the words almost spitting. "I'll send you some guys. I can't vouch for them personally, but they have good records."
"That's all I can ask."
"Legs, you ask everything of a man."
The connection ended and I had no idea what he meant.
* * *
I arrived back at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport at ten a.m., exhausted, sleepless, and shaky from lack of food. Peanuts don't go far when one is stuck on a plane for hours. I dragged into my freebie house and stared longingly at the stove. I wanted food, but I needed something else. I divested myself of anything that might be considered a weapon - including the two hair sticks and the magic amulet, the pocket watch I'd stolen off the blood-servant in Sedona. I tucked it into the Lucchese boot box I use for jewelry. The box wasn't pretty, but it did the trick.
After a quick shower, I pulled on clean jeans and a tee and checked my e-mail. I had a succinct one from Reach. It read "Subjects on video at airport are not identified. Not in any database."
"I can't get a break here," I muttered. Irritated, I took off on Bitsa. I had things I needed to know, things that might be stuck somewhere inside me, like grease and hair in a drain, or trees in a creek, backing things up. I was frustrated and tired and wanted to hit something. Not a good way to be when I needed to think clearly.
I made my way out of the city to Aggie One Feather's house. Aggie was a Cherokee elder, and I thought her mother might be a Cherokee shaman - sha-woman? - of sorts, not that I knew enough of my own heritage to say for sure if that was even possible. But Aggie had been working with me to find my past, the memories that were stuck so far deep inside me that they had become part of the framework of who I was, rather than separate moments that helped to shape me. And while I didn't like a lot of the things that had shaken loose inside me, I was learning stuff I needed, and, as she put it, freeing up my spirit to continue on its journey.
In the Lake Cataouatchie area - which is mostly mosquito-infested swamp - I pulled into the shell-asphalt street, smelling smoke, and onto Aggie's white crushed-shell driveway. The house was small, a 1950s gray, asbestos-shingled house of maybe twelve hundred square feet, with a screened porch in back. The house was well kept, with charcoal trim and a garden that smelled of tomatoes and herbs in the morning warmth.
At the back of the property was a small building, a wood hut with a metal roof - a sweathouse - and smoke was leaking from it, smoke that carried the scents of my past, herbed smoke infused with distant memories, all clouded with fear and blood. Smoke that spoke of the power of The People. Tsalagiyi - Cherokee, to the white man.
I turned off the bike and set the kickstand. Propped the helmet on the seat and walked up the drive, shells crunching under my feet. Not much stone in the delta; they used what was handy, shells. I took the steps to the porch, and pushed the bell. It dinged inside. Almost instantly, a slender, black-haired woman in jeans and a silk tank opened the door. Her face was composed, her eyes were calm, but she didn't speak. She just looked at me. Waiting. "Egini Agayvlge i," I said in the speech of The People. "Will you take me to sweat?"
For a long moment, she said nothing, studying my face, reading my body language, which always gave away too much to her. "I have taken one to sweat today already. I am tired. Come back tomorrow."
She started to close the door and I said, quickly, "Please."
Her eyes narrowed, but the door stopped closing. "Dalonige i Digadoli, Golden Eyes Golden Rock," she said with something like asperity, "you have hidden yourself away from the eyes of your own spirit, hidden yourself away from me, so that I cannot help you. What do you seek?"
"To know why nothing matters but finishing a job. To know why I'd compromise everything to see through to the end of a responsibility I accepted, even when it hurts me and the people I love. To see why I remember an image of a bearded man, tortured and hanging from antlers."
"You killed a man in your hotel room," she accused, her tone without heat. "You killed the sister of your friend. I saw it on TV."
I closed my eyes, weariness making me sway on my feet. "Yes."
"Go add wood to the coals. Make yourself ready. Clear your mind of useless thoughts and unnecessary pain. I will come." The door closed in my face. Rudeness from an elder of The People was almost unheard of, but I had a way of pushing people's buttons. Go, me.
In the back of the windowless hut, hidden from the street, I stripped and hung my clothes on a hook, ran cold water over me from the high spigot, dried off on a clean, coarsely woven length of cloth, and tied it around me. I ducked and entered the low sweathouse, stepping onto the clay floor.
I hadn't told Aggie what I was, but she knew bits and pieces of my story and probably guessed a lot more. I had originally come here, hoping she could help me find the child that I once had been so very long ago, before Beast, before I lost my memories, before the hunger times, which I remembered only vaguely, and before I was found wandering in the Appalachian Mountains, scared, scarred, naked, and with almost no memory of human language. I kept coming back because she was doing much more than I asked. She was showing me also who I was now.
Finding an elder here in New Orleans shouldn't have been a surprise - The People lived all over the States - but it still felt like a weird coincidence the universe tossed my way, like scraps to a dog. Like fate or kismet or whatever, though I didn't believe in any of that stuff.
I stirred the coals and added cedar kindling. Flames rushed up and lit the twigs, sending shadows dancing over the wood walls. Aggie had done some work (or hired it out, but I was betting on her doing it herself) in the sweathouse. She had added some more river rocks to the fire ring, and I pushed them closer to the flames. They were already warm to my hands, but not warm enough for what Aggie wanted. She had replaced the seating. A six-foot-long log had been cut in half lengthwise, sanded smooth on the flat sides, and lacquered until the benches shone. Then they had been placed on low cradle-shaped stands so people could sit on them instead of on the clay floor. These low benches were slightly higher than the old ones. I was guessing that old knees were more comfortable at that height. Maybe she was the president of the local elders, and they held elder meetings here. Assuming she wasn't the only elder round about. And assuming they held meetings. . . .
I was clouding my mind with inanities. I had a feeling that Aggie would make me wait until she thought I had gotten past that part of the process to make an appearance. "Make yourself ready. Clear your mind of useless thoughts and unnecessary pain." Yeah. She'd make me wait. I sighed and added more wood. Time passed. The wood crackled and hissed. I moved from the log to the floor, sitting as modestly one could in a sweathouse, and I sweated.
When the coals had burned down and the rocks had taken their heat, I dipped water over them with the hand-carved wooden ladle, from the Cherokee stoneware pitcher that I coveted. Steam rose, and I sweated some more. When the coals were a red glow below a coating of ash, I reached into a woven basket and pulled out a tied bundle of dried herbs, like a very fat cigar: twigs of rosemary, sage, tobacco, which was a new one, a hint of camphor, other things I couldn't identify, lots of sweetgrass. I set it in the coals. The herbs smoked and the smell filled the sweathouse.
I closed my eyes and dropped into the dark of my own soul. Into the cavernlike place where memories of the Tsalagiyi resided. The firelit, smoky cave of my soul home. I had been here before, in this half-remembered cavern with its sloped ceilings and shifting midnight shadows, with the far-off plink of dripping water and the scent of burning herbs, of the steady beat of a tribal drum, hypnotic and slow.
I heard the door of the sweathouse open, a shaft of light across my lowered lids, quickly darkened as the door closed. Bare feet padded close. Aggie sat across from me in the cavern of my soul home. I couldn't smell her scent, only sweetgrass and smoke and a single breath of the cool, damp air of the cave of my soul.
Warm, wet heat and darkness surrounded us, steam rising from red coals and heated rocks piled in the center of my spirit place. She started music - drums, steady, resonant. I think I slept. And dreamed.
Long hours later, I heard a voice in my dreams, softer than the quiet drums. "Aquetsi, ageyutsa." Granddaughter . . . "Tell me what you did not finish."
My mouth refused to open, as if I was caught in a dream, trapped, trapped, trapped. I sucked in a breath so deep and hard it hurt my ribs. I forced open my lids and they parted sluggishly, revealing Aggie through my tangled eyelashes. Aggie's eyes were black in the dark, calm and quiet, like deep pools of water in a slow mountain stream. She cocked her head, as if she were a robin staring at a juicy worm. We were no longer in the sweathouse, but in the cave where she took me sometimes, and I didn't know if this was vision or reality or some esoteric blending of the two.
The drum was deep, a reverberating beat, hollow against the cavern walls of my mind. A heartbeat of sound, steady and soothing. I couldn't get my mouth to work to ask my question. I didn't know what to ask.
Aggie smiled into the scented darkness. "You are stubborn. You are full of resentment. Only failure of the worst sort would cause you to resent failure. To fear it. To grow a tough hide that would make you never back down. Only failure." She reached into the basket and brought out another smudge stick, fat and aromatic even before she held it to the fire. Yellow flames licked out and up, and light caught her copper-colored cheeks and forehead, darkening the shadows at the sides of her mouth, making her look older than she really was. Drawing out her mouth into a muzzle. Like a wolf.
I tried to tense, but my muscles failed me. I tried to push upright, but the world whirled around me as if I were drunk or stoned. Aggie's mother was ani waya, Wolf Clan, Eastern Cherokee. Her father was Wild Potato Clan, ani godigewi, Western Cherokee. Aggie had magic I had only guessed at. Her snout stretched out. Her shadow on the cavern wall was all wolf. Teeth, wolf teeth, glinted in the firelight.
"My, what big teeth you have, Grandmother," I mumbled.
I knew I was trapped in a dream when the wolf laughed. She held the smoking smudge stick into the air and saluted the four directions, north, east, south, west, and north again. The trailing smoke made a pale, thinning square in the darkness. "What did you fail at, Dalonige i Digadoli?"
I recalled a vision of shadows on the wall. A man riding a woman. My mother. Remembered the stink of semen and death. The soft cries of fear and pain. The slick feel of cooling blood. "I didn't kill the killer of my father. I didn't kill the white men who raped my mother." I told the story of the fractured memories.