“Shaddock says they’ve been bled and read and he knows the recesses of their minds.”
“But?”
“Kojo and Thema are centuries older than Lincoln Shaddock,” Eli said. “Not sure I’d trust the MOC on this.” He tapped his mic. “Copy,” he said into it. To me he added, “Kojo and Thema are on the way to carry the two back and interrogate them. Don’t attack the friendlies.”
I grunted and walked around the bodies, looking them over, checking pockets—empty—and clothing labels. Expensive Parisian clothing. Expensive Italian shoes. They carried a good dozen blades and two handguns each. I confiscated everything and started to close the sweathouse door. There was blood splattered on the wood in a swoosh I recognized, thrown from my claws. I had wondered if the house needed to be smudged before it could be used. Now it needed to be purified, ritually cleansed.Crap.I walked away, to face the creek farther down the hill.
On the frozen breeze, I smelled ginger, fresh-cut grass, and the trace of jasmine that identified the vamps Kojo and Thema. Didn’t turn around. Didn’t want to see them carting away our victims, enemies, and whatever else they were. Heard the two pick up the possibly dead vamps and carry them away.
I’d come back at dawn and cleanse the sweathouse, incase my new spiritual Elder came calling through the snowfall. For now, I followed Eli back to the inn, ate a half gallon of ice cream and a container of previously cooked pasta, some of Shaddock’s fantastic BBQ ribs, and half a chicken, cold from the fridge. It was an odd combo, but I needed calories and the sensation of eating solid food. Satisfied, I crawled into the bed next to Bruiser and fell instantly asleep.
***
The sky was only faintly gray when I stood outside the sweathouse door again, hesitating, surprised, seeing that someone—Eli—had washed off the splattered blood. I touched the wood and looked around, up in the trees and rock ledges. He wasn’t visible, but I caught his scent on the air. I said, “Thank you.”
“Welcome,” Eli said, his voice coming from far off, keeping watch. “Want company for a bit?”
I smiled slightly. “Sure.” Knowing I was safe, I went inside, squatted at the fire pit, and studied the fire-starting paraphernalia. In the center of the pit, I emptied out a plastic zipped bag of flammable stuff: well-dried slivers of beech and sycamore bark, lint, and what could have been Brute’s wolf hair. I untied a double handful of kindling, slivers of pine and cedar heartwood, and layered that over the lint with larger splits of well-dried oak. A book of matches allowed me to light the fire, the sudden illumination and acrid stench of phosphorus mixing with potassium chlorate, sulphur, and burned hair.
I sat on the cold ground, babied the flame as the kindling began to burn. Spotted a six-pack of bottled water and downed two in succession as the flames caught the dry wood. I sat at the fire and Eli entered, took a place across from me, his movements silent. He smelled like snow and a little like protein bars. He squatted so we were on a level and I could feel his eyes on me.
“Janie, what’s up?”
I thought a moment and went with the truth. “The sweathouse has been complete for, what? Weeks? And I already got blood on it.”
“You’re talented.”
My half-form laugh sounded like a kitten growl. “Yeah. I’m good at blood. And death. And killing people.”
“Janie.” He sounded pitying. Which I hated. “You sitting here for a while? I’m going to check on the two fangheads and get some grub.”
“Grub.” I shook my head, smiling. “You mean a pile of greens and a chunk of steamed fish. Yeah. I’m going to sit here for a bit.” I met his eyes in the firelight. “Have you slept at all?”
“Enough.” He stood and put his hand on the top of my head for a moment in what felt like a benediction or blessing. He left me to my thoughts and closed the door on the dawn air. I felt, more than heard, him moving away.
I fed the fire. Added an oak log. Opened the herbs in the packages, put a stick of dried rosemary to the edge of the flame, and watched as it flared and smoked and scented the air. Thought about Hayyel and the dream. Vision. Whatever. Time passed. I began to sweat. My pelt darkened and lay flat to my skin. I hadn’t known I could sweat in this form. It made me itch. I drank water. Scratched. Added herbs to the flame.
One packet of dried herbs was a white sage smudge stick and I held the tip to the fire, where it blazed up, faded to red hot, then to a smoking black ash. I stood and lifted the smoking smudge stick to the north, east, south, and west, the smoke rising and filling the small building. A peculiar sense of contentment began to fill me, as amorphous as the smudge smoke. I fed the fire and relit the smudge. I carried the smudge stick to the four corners of the room. Held the smoke high and watched it climb to the rafters. I prayed. Sat back down.
After a time, the door opened. The heat that had built up whooshed away. I didn’t react in fear or surprise at the sudden interruption. I just sat there, smelling Eli and a woman on the air. He was close by, had brought her to me, which meant she was safe.
The woman stood in the open doorway, lit behind by snow and daybreak before she stepped inside and closed the door. She took off a coat and hung it on a hook bythe door. Topped it off with a knitted hat that was crusted with snow. Unlaced snow boots and toed them off. She turned to me and put her hands on her hips, surveying me in the light of the fire. She didn’t run screaming at my half-form or rap my knuckles, so I looked her over too.
She was mid- to late sixties, stout, with broad shoulders and a belly. Her arms beneath a pullover shirt and a loose sweater were strong, brawny. Her hips and thighs beneath jeans were muscular. She had jowls and a saggy neck. A complicated steel-gray braid hung over one shoulder to her waist. Her appearance was not the whole of her at all. She was stern, stable, well rooted in herself, a steel blade of a woman. “Aggie said you were a skinwalker but not a liver-eater. A shape-shifter but not a were. You look like a monster.”
“I am a monster.”
She snorted. “No doubt. You stink. Go jump in the creek. I checked and there’s a deep pool just downstream of a log that fell across it. When you get back, strip and put on a tunic. I’ll be smudging your sweathouse.”
I thought about arguing, about telling her I had already smudged the building, but she likely had her own measures. I stood and moved to the door. She stepped aside. I went out into the cold and the door closed behind me as I looked around in the dull dawn light. I spotted Eli. So much for him taking a break. He was twenty feet high in a leafless tree, the branches a black etching in the grayness. He was securing a camera on the tree to cover the entire area. He paused and sat back on the branch he straddled, one hand on the camera. Wind gusts had died away and the air was so still and so cold it fairly crackled. The smoke from the sweathouse smelled strong and heavy, the air so lifeless that the smoke had fallen back to the ground and made a smoke-fog hanging two feet off the snow. I looked in the direction of the creek and back to Eli.
“The vamps?” My breath blew in a cloud and rested on the air.
“The silver rounds are proving to be a problem. They’re too young to recover as fast as I’d like. Maybe I should have shot them a little less.”
“Mmmm. Maybe, maybe not.” I stuck a thumb at the creek. “I have to jump in the water.”
“Better you than me.” Eli grinned at me, that rare, fully open grin, showing teeth. “The water’s about thirty-eight degrees. You’re gonna freeze your ass off.”
