Cold Reign by Faith Hunter
Feeling like I had baked in the sun for hours, I eased out of the car. I hadn’t paid attention to myself since my flesh had glowed so brightly from the lightning, but my skin had remained red and burned looking. I was wearing clean sweats and a pullover hoodie and soft shoes. I wasn’t wearing armor or carrying arms, not to the house of an Elder of The People.
My hair was again tied back in a knot and thumped silently against my back as I walked toward Aggie’s house. The door opened before I got there and a brown nose appeared at knee height. The nose was attached to a brown-and-white face and long floppy black-and-brown ears. Aggie had a beagle puppy. She better not try to make me take it. Last time I was here, she had given me a cat. Fortunately I was able to foist it off on Molly. Aggie was standing behind the dog. She asked, “Are you here to go to water?”
That was pretty much the same question she had asked the last time I came for the purification ceremony.
“Yes.” With Aggie, it was always safest to agree.
“Are you fasting?” Aggie asked, again repeating the same sequence of words, like a formula she had memorized.
“Yes. I’m starving.”
“Go get in the car. Our things are already in there. I will get Elisi.” She meant her mother, the one I called Uni lisi, which was a term of respect rather than one of endearment. Grandmother of many children, a title used for a tribal or clan elder, one who knew the old stories and had old magic and even older secrets of healing.
I climbed into the Toyota’s backseat, knowing better than to call shotgun. I settled in, buckled in, laid my head back, closed my eyes, and was instantly in that strange almost-sleep where my body felt paralyzed but I was aware of everything: my own breathing, my own heartbeat, the sounds of water pattering onto the car, the permeated smells of the old women, the puppy, the mean old cat they had adopted, and a strong scent of coffee.
Aggie and her mother got into the car. I heard it turn over and felt the motion as it eased down the road. The wipers squeaked back and forth; rain tapped down softly. That precise sound of tires on wet roads filled the car, soothing, and then we traveled down a series of shell roads, which would be shining bright even in the gray light and rain. The sound of the tires changed as the shells on the roadway became sparser and the roads became progressively less maintained. I knew the moment we veered onto the two-track trail, the car bouncing into and out of potholes and over washboard ruts. I’d been here before.
As the four-by-four Toyota crawled down the ruts, Aggie again explained the ritual of going to water, unconcerned if I was listening or asleep.
In my near dream state, I heard every word, and as she spoke I drifted back into myself, feeling oddly and unexpectedly rested and free of pain. I sat up when she finished, and I stretched and decided that since she had used the same formula this time as last, I should too. “So, we go in the woods, throw up, talk to God, and go for a swim in the bayou that’s full of snakes, nutrias, and alligators.”
Aggie and her mother laughed, the sounds like water rippling over stones. “Thought you was asleep,” Uni lisi said. “We walk you through the ritual prayers.”
I hadn’t done much praying lately, in or out of church, so maybe this would help me in more ways than I had thought. When I stopped, which wasn’t often, and considered my own soul, which was never unless I had to, it was dusty and dry and scoured by winds. It was also dark as a cavern, and I suddenly worried that no soul should ever be so dark.
“Your vampire priestess, she call us today, before dawn.” Uni lisi watched me absorb this in the little mirror in the sun visor. I nodded. “She old and powerful. She know you a war woman, so we take you to water as a man, like last time,” Uni lisi said, returning to the general outlines of the last time we went to water. “After, you will be cleansed inside and out; your spirit will be open and restored. You will be ready for battle or pain or difficulty, and you will be without the shadows of the past that darken your soul.”
“We know you worship the Christian god,” Aggie said, again following the same ritual steps as before. “The old beliefs say the Great Creator made us. Some say the Creator still listens to us and some say he is gone, but all say he left three guardians to watch over us.”
I nodded, my hair rubbing loud on the seat back. Cloud-to-cloud lightning brightened the sky, lambent and gentle-looking. Around us fog closed in. Rain splattered the old car.
“In Cherokee ritual, the numbers four and seven are important,” Uni lisi said. “Four guardians of the four directions, seven when you add in the three guardians left by Unelenehi. Unelenehi, is the Great One. You call on this name when facing east. Selu was first woman, the corn mother. Her husband, first man, was Kenati. There is also the great female spirit which we call Agisseequa. But going to water is no hard and firm ritual calling on a specific god or a specific spirit. You call on who you want, who you want to lead you, who you want to clean you soul.”
The small Toyota turned into the same pine trees I remembered from before. Aggie braked and turned off the car. Uni lisi continued the narration. “This not like baptism. This a way to recognize our Tsalagiyi roots and heritage, to call on the past to lead and direct us into the future. It your ritual, the way you pray, the god or spirits you believe in. We done said what we needed to say. Come on. Sun done rose. We late.”
I bowed my head to them and murmured, “Lisi, elder of the People, and Uni lisi, grandmother of many children, thank you for taking me to water.” They each nodded regally and left the car for the rain. I peeled myself out of the car and followed them into the woods, flip-flops squelching on the rain-soaked ground.
Aggie’s hair had grown out and both women wore their hair braided, Uni lisi’s down to her hips, the thin white tresses laced with the black of the midnight sky. Their bodies moved with grace and elegance and I felt awkward and noisy in my flops.
I had worn flip-flops last time too, though for different reasons, and now the flops splattered rainwater up over me even as more rain fell through the pine needles. The trail snaked through the trees to the edge of the muddy bayou, though the water was much higher now, drowning the roots of the trees, and it moved faster than I remembered. I finally took off my flops and carried them.
We stopped and my stomach cramped with the memory of what was to come.
Aggie hung her black cloth bag from a branch above a stump and peeled off the lid from a coffeehouse travel mug. Steam curled out into the cold, winterlike air as she set it on the stump beside a small freezer bag containing a bit of native tobacco, harder and harder to find these days. She gave neither to me.
The smell in the cup was different from what I remembered. It still smelled like boiled tree limbs and lichen and pinesap, but now it also contained something more bitter. I remembered the odor and the effects of it from my last time in the sweathouse. Peyote.
Aggie opened a small thermos and poured some of the contents into the plastic thermos cup, giving it to her mother, who guzzled it down and moved into the trees. Aggie drank her own dose in a single gulp and made a horrible face. She poured a third cup and handed it to me. “Drink. Purge. Then come back and drink that one, the whole thing.” She pointed at the second mug. “And follow the ritual.”
“Why is this time different?” I asked as her face continued to twist in distaste.
“You take strong medicine now. Drink.” Aggie closed her thermos, put everything back into the black bag, and turned quickly into the trees. Dual sounds of retching moved through the pines. The breeze sprang up, a whipping wind, and I clenched my teeth against their clatter. Big bad vampire hunter not able to take a little chill, when the older women seemed fine? No way.
She hadn’t explained the next part of the ritual, and that was surprising, as carefully as she had kept to the original format. But she had left the travel cups and the small freezer bag on the stump below the branch where her carry bag had hung. I tossed bac
Beast rolled beneath my skin, sick and angry. Jane is stupid kit. Let human shaman give bad things to Jane again. Foolish stupid! Like bad meat. Kit mistake. Foolish. Sick!
I agree, I thought as the herbal drink flushed through me with a roil of vicious cramps. I got to my feet and yanked off my clothing just as the last of the stuff hit bottom and my body rejected the potion, this time from the other end of my digestive tract. Just like last time, it took forever and I was even more sick and weak when it was over. I looked at my legs, arms, and belly and the moonlight-pale scars there. The scars that hadn’t yet healed from the lightning strike. The scars that the lightning had illuminated like some kind of claiming. And there was that word again. Claiming.
In a pouring, drenching rain, I stumbled back to the stump and cleaned myself with the baby wipes in the bag, then put the waste in the garbage bag Aggie had left for me. Quivering with reaction and fatigue, I sat on my folded clothes, the smell of pine sharp and sneezy. I was hollow, tingling, drained. But like last time, the cramps subsided; any hunger I had misted away. The rain eased. Energy flooded back into me. But the cold air struck against my sweat-streaked body and I shivered even as heat flushed through me.
I lifted the second travel mug and drank down its contents. The taste was so bad that I nearly lost it and held the foul stuff down by an effort of will.
Stupid foolish stupid kit! Beast raged inside, her golden eyes glaring at me, her claws digging deep into my brain. Then suddenly she was gone. My mind was clear and lucid and empty of Beast.
CHAPTER 6
Peyote Made Everything Weird
I picked up the smaller plastic bag, opened it, and sniffed the dark brown tobacco, perhaps two teaspoons of curled leaves with a raw, rich scent. Less than last time. I stood and faced east, the sky a deep gray, clouds building. Thunder rumbled, a temblor beneath my feet. The world went brighter, lighter. Thunder grumbled again and this time it didn’t stop, a long, drawn-out sound that lasted a minute or more. When it finally faded, I could see curls of magic around every tree and blade of grass, and purling across the water in the fog that was still rolling in. The magic of the land danced and sparked, amazing iridescent hues of blue and brown and green and yellow, like Mother Nature on drugs, except that I was the one on drugs. The peyote was working. And maybe something stronger.
Taking a pinch of the tobacco in the fingers of my right hand, I thought about what Sabina had said. “Purify yourselves.” Purification was an ancient thing, spiritual and holy and dangerous, but necessary to face hard times, battle, or great danger. War.
I faced east, lifting my fingers through the blue twinkling mist. I didn’t remember what I’d said last time, but it seemed important to keep the ritual similar, as if treading the same sacred ground. “I call on the Almighty, the eternal, the Elohim, the god in three.” I dropped the bit of tobacco and it fell across me, bright red motes on my skin, and an echoing red from inside me.
The motes. The motes the Damours released when I killed them. My goddaughter told me the motes of magic were still inside. As was a dark shadow, poised next to my heart. This was what I needed to purify. This darkness, this remnant of blood magic, this shadow that lived inside me and beat with my own heart. It kept the Damours’ magic alive even when I tried to kill it. I needed to be free of it.
Raindrops splatted onto my skin, hard and punishing for a few moments as I curled around the tobacco, keeping it dry. The raindrops left little droplet-shaped white spots before they trailed down me to the ground, and the spots on my flesh turned red. My breath was heated on the cold air, puffing bright, a sign of life, pink as a baby’s toes.
I turned to my right, facing south. “I call upon my skinwalker father. I call on the skinwalkers who have gone before me, but without the taint and dishonor of u’tlun’ta. Those valiant ones who died in war, with the blood of their enemies in their fangs. Hear me.”
I dropped a bit of the tobacco. It too fell against me, and this time it burned, hot as sparks from an ill-built fire, catching the wind, skirling in the magic of the mist. Rain thundered down, putting out the sparks where they burned, the rain purple and glorious. I laughed and my laughter joined with the rain and fell to dapple the ground. But my breath was brighter, a richer shade, like blood mixed with water.
A stick cracked behind me. My flesh tightened. Shoulders hunched. I was not alone. If I had ever actually been alone before. I didn’t look. I didn’t want to see.
I turned west, holding up a pinch of tobacco, wet in the rain. The drops pelted down, icy as sleet on my bare skin. My feet were black from the mud I stood in, and black mud splattered up my legs like dark tears. I remembered the term Unelenehi, who was the Great One. “I call upon the self-existent, eternal god Yehovah, who is the god who creates.” When I spoke these words, my breath was red, scarlet as the Damours’ magic, and shadowed black with their evil. Evil they had placed inside me and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get rid of it . . . or at least not alone.
I had been five at my first kill. I could still see the hilt of the knife in my small hand as the blade pierced the white man’s flesh. I could hear his screams, though his mouth was bound. All this was stored deep in my soul. The dark spot grew, expanded. It beat like my own heart.
I realized that the Damours’ dark magic had combined with the evil done to me by my grandmother when she taught me to kill. Together, they had become something else. Something much more powerful than I had understood. Something that conflicted with the sacred name of the Almighty.
The wind swirled around me and the tobacco was drenched from my fingers to wash down me, across my body. Where it touched, it trailed hot and scalding. Some small part of me knew that the ceremony shouldn’t go like this. Something was wounded and broken in the ritual. Or in me. I had gotten off course. But if I stopped, the black mote of shadow would be forever with me. Endlessly a part of me. And the scarlet motes would eventually destroy me, eating me from the inside out. Like what they were doing inside me each time I bubbled time. They cut me. And I bled.
Ahhhh . . . I thought. The foreign magics cut me. My body then tried to vomit them out of me, tried to free me of the evil motes and the shadows.
My breath went hot and noisy in my lungs, like a roaring sea in a blizzard, a whiteout of clarity and understanding.
I turned right again, now facing north, shuddering so hard I thought I might drop the tobacco pinched in numb fingers. My heart beat erratically, shaking my chest. “I call upon El Shaddai, the all-sufficient one, the feminine of the godhead. El Shaddai, that aspect most often associated with the Holy Spirit, hear my call.” I felt the presence behind me move closer. Colder than a glacier on the flesh of my spine. I hunched my shoulders against the pounding rain.
Beast growled low in my mind, the sound far away; the place where she usually hunched was vacant.
I slid my feet through the mud, rotating back to the east, and scraped the last bit of wet tobacco to the tips of my fingers. I closed my eyes, my body grayish with the cold. I let the pinch of tobacco fall into the rain. “I seek healing of and freedom from the dark shadow that grows within me. I seek the destruction of the purpose of another’s power, that power manifested in scarlet motes that infest me. I seek wisdom to cure my weakness. Strength in battle. Purity of heart and mind and soul.”
The air sizzled. The wet ends of my hair lifted. Terror zapped across me li
The darkness that lived inside me was close to the surface, the shadow beating with the rhythm of my heart, the scarlet motes zipping through me, painful as barbed wire. But as I watched, the Gray Between opened around me and silver motes of my own magic reached inside me and began . . . herding the scarlet motes. Like prey.
I dropped my arms and slumped forward, following the bright and silver colors of all the motes as they raced through me. My dark silver power moved the scarlet motes into some kind of weird geometric design. They moved from my left fingertips to my right toes, to my head, to my left toes, to my right fingertips, and back to my left fingertips. I held my arms out to the side like Vitruvian Man and . . . the motes formed a pentagram. Holy crap.
Before, they had been unfocused, unstructured power within me, the magic random. Until now. There now was a working, one organized like a witch working—geometric and steady. This ceremony and my skinwalker magics had stirred it all into some different path, some new purpose. I knew that it was possible for a working to take black magic, overcome it in some kind of great battle, and then use it. But it took testing and fire and suffering, and I had endured none of that. Yet the darkness within me was changed.
Memory surfaced, full of blood and terror, my fangs tearing the head off a blood-servant sent to kill me. Memory of being shot by El Diablo, one of Derek’s men, in a bayou. Of shifting into Beast in the back of Leo’s limo. Of nearly dying on the floor of sub-five basement in HQ, after fighting and defeating the Naturaleza vamp De Allyon. Of the first instant I bubbled time. Of achieving the half form of the fighting skinwalker. Maybe . . . Maybe I had been tested all along? Maybe my magic had been waiting until I was whatever I was now to fix me. To fix itself.