Beast wondered if water drops in soul home showed what would happen if Eli did not mate with witch. Wondered if Soul was pushing Eli to one place in future.
Eli blew air through nose. “Stay away from my partner. Come on, Janie. Let’s get you a steak.”
Am Beast. Not Jane.But followed Eli to eat dead cow.
***
I shifted back to Jane in the shower and woke lying on the chilly tile, thinking over Beast’s thoughts and concerns, and worried about Soul’s attack. It was out of character and it didn’t make sense in any way. I wasn’t sure how to address the attack or if I should even try. I had a hard time letting things ride, but this seemed like one of those times when I needed more info and intel before I jumped in trying to fix it all. Soul had some seriously big teeth and I had a feeling that I might not survive being bitten again. My scarlet leather jacket was ruined. Fortunately I still had a box of new military-style armor Eli had ordered.
After I rubbed the CBD oil over my belly and dressed, I went looking for Bruiser. Merlin had changed the music on the sound system; Chris Stapleton was crooning “Tennessee Whiskey” through the speakers. It was soothing music, not martial enough to plan a war.
Bruiser was sitting at the bar, a cut-crystal glass half-filled with amber liquid in one hand. He smelled of tension and frustration and shame. He had just bound a human to himself with his Onorio magic and he hated it. Likely hated himself. I slipped up behind him and slid my arms around him. Rested my head on his shoulders. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you did that for me. I’m sorry I’ve made our lives so difficult.”
“Leo. Leo set all this in motion. Not you. You’re keeping us alive and free.”
I said nothing. We were alone in the kitchen, dim lights under the cabinets giving a faint light.
“I learned things from her,” he said. “Not enough to pay the price of my soul for what I did. But I learned things. You told Shimon that the white werewolf ate his brother, but he already knew that some part of Joses/Joseph was still alive. He knows Joses’s heart is in New Orleans, and I don’t know how he learned its location except from Edmund’s mind, gleaned during the final minutes of his possession. Shimon wants the heart and wants Brute dead. And wants you dead for feeding Joses to the wolf.”
I drew in a breath, slow, steady. “Is Jodi in danger?” Jodi worked for NOPD and was from a witch family. And she had Joses’s heart.
CHAPTER 16
Once We Finish with the Mustache Twirler
“I’ve called Jodi in New Orleans and told her to check on the heart and make sure it’s in a safe place. Jodi says she’ll put it in a null room and get back to me.”
I said nothing. Just hugged tighter. Silence was a powerful tool for giving someone space to talk. Or not. As they wanted.
“I was blood-drunk for nearly a hundred years. When I came out of it I was angry. Angry for all the things Leo had me do, things that seemed right, at the time, because I was bound so tightly to him, but that were wrong. Evil, sometimes.”
He took a breath that shuddered through his chest. “I’m Onorio. I have... gifts. Yet I didn’t try to save Leo. Because of the way he used me, for so long, when the sword was striking, I hesitated. I could have reacted; might have saved him. But I didn’t move.” He sipped the amber liquid, scotch, I thought. Nasty stuff. “Leo made a weapon out of me. Made me a killer. And with Onorio magics, I was able to move as fast as a Mithran. Faster. And I let Leo die. I let my friend die out of pique and childish anger.”
“You were sworn not to interfere. The outclan priestess would have killed you instantly if you had tried to change the outcome of the duel.”
“Who’s life was the more valuable? Leo’s or mine?” Bruiser may have laughed, but the sound was too broken to be certain. “I thought I was doing the right things when I was blood-drunk. I thought it was the right thing when I used Onorio bindings on Nicolle, who is now pining for me, banished to Rosanne Romanello’s Sedona clan home. I thought it was the right thing to let Leo die. Just as I think it was the right thing to mind-bind that woman. But... my reason is so faulty, so defective, that I don’t knowwhatis morally right and proper anymore.”
I squeezed his shoulders. Nicolle was a vamp Bruiser took from Grégoire’s home after she tortured some of the vampire’s people. That was the place I first smelled the scent and texture of Onorio magics, mostly hidden beneath the onslaught of other, more potent smells at the time. Softly, my breath featherlight on his skin, I said, “My grandmother did the same thing to me. I’ve often wondered if I would have been my grandmother’s willing assassin had I stayed with the tribe and not been thrust into the blizzard on the Trail of Tears. And I think I would have. I think the violence she bred into me when I was a child was addictive. I would have become more and more like her, until, or if, I finally saw the truth, like you have.”
“And what is that truth, my love?”
“That we are killers. Morally malfunctioning. But with the ways, means, abilities, power, and in the position to do the right thing in the end.”
“The end does not justify the means,” he said.
“We all have the potential to do awful things when our minds are not our own. Yours was not your own when Leo had you.”
A sudden thought came to me, and with it came the scent of shame. Rick’s mind hadn’t been his own when Paka spelled him and stole him away. Even though I caught the scent of magic, I let him leave with her instead of trying to find out what was wrong. I let him go becauseI was hurt and shocked and embarrassed at a public humiliation. That was something I needed to deal with.
“Now you have your eyes open,” I said. “You can go forward into the future with who you are now.”
“Meaning stop dwelling on the past and do the job that needs doing now.”
I shrugged against his back. He sipped again. I had the feeling this wasn’t his first scotch of the evening.
“Do you think the blood of the SOD made everything happen the way it did?” I asked as the liquor went down his throat with a soft sound. “I mean, Joses had been bitten by an arcenciel. They make vampires crazy. Leo’s uncle and then Leo himself drank from Joses, when he was raving insane, hanging on the basement wall. They imbibed dragon poison through the blood that they stole. That changed the way they thought, the plans they made, the alliances they made. Maybe even made them worse people than they would have been otherwise.” I felt surprise quiver through Bruiser. “And then you drank Leo’s blood as part of the primo binding. Not much, but maybe enough to make you think and be different from what you would have been otherwise.”
“I don’t know. Every time I close my eyes, I see another victim,” he said. “Remorse and regret and repentance. Onorio powers are to bind and kill. Even you.”
