Monique had shields, layers of them, Onorio defenses, light and shadow, sound and texture, taste and scent. Protective magical armor. The kind of thing that would absorb and dissipate the energies of abindingworking, whether it originated with witch or vamp powers.
Beyond the layers was what felt like a membrane, rubbery and slick and rough all at once. And below that was a great open space. I pushed through the membrane and slid free on the other side to hover in a long, dark room with a curved floor, like the hull of a boat.
It was dank and rank and foul. It rocked, like a boat on the sea, back and forth, side to side. In the bottom of the hull, old blood sloshed gently on the wood and partway up the rounded walls. A slow, clotted sloshing.
There was a semifamiliar feeling here, and I realized that my mind was looking down on some version of Monique’s soul home, though her home was wood and rot andblood, and not the clean stone of my own. I was in the center of her being, and I almost retreated, but I steeled myself and stared down.
In the sloshing blood were the bodies of beings she had bound. They were tied and gagged, rolling back and forth, eyes closed. Four of them. At least two were vamps, and the others were definitely not vampy, but I couldn’t tell what kind of paras. As I watched, a thin purple tendril of power rose from the pool of blood. Without knowinghowI knew, I knew it was intended to harm me.
CHAPTER 4
This Ain’t My First Rodeo
Without opening my eyes, I said, “Stop or die.”
The rise of magic stopped. I had a feeling that without the cuffs binding Monique, I’d have seen that power rise like smoke from a green-wood fire mixed with steam from a boiling kettle and scald me dead.
I slid my hand back into my pocket and touched the Glob with a single finger. Images, sounds, visions came clearer.
I had known that Monique was notjustOnorio. She was more. A mixture of twisted things I couldn’t identify, except that her bound captives were still alive somewhere, and she was using them. It was as if her rotting slave ship was full of a dark magic of destruction that sucked the life from the bound beings trapped there. Blood magic was one way that demons worked, yet Monique wasn’t a demon.
Demons had a unique feel, a distinctive stench. And they were aware and discerning of watching eyes far more than Monique was.
But she was something different.
And she was very,verypowerful.
I wondered... if I could stop her magic? A spiral of curiosity curled through me. What was blood magic without blood?
Le breloquewarmed again, and in the vision—or potential ultra-dimensional reality?—of Monique’s soul home, I lashed out with my prism of light. Fast as a lightning strike, the blood boiled and scorched dry. In moments there was nothing left but the rotten wood of the hull and the bound bodies of her captives.
The light of my magic spread out and began to thread through the grain of the wood, braiding, knotting, whirling as my crown and my office sought to bind the binder. It wasn’t actually happening, but it was clearly something I had the power to do.
The Glob offered images of various other possibilities. My weapon just wanted to drain her and set the ship on fire. It sent me visions of the captives screaming. The Glob was more than just a tool. It was half sentient. And the crown was a tool I wasn’t sure how to use just yet. So I held both amulets back, reining in their power. Needing to learn more.
On the floor of the hull, one of the bodies rolled over, straining against Monique’s bindings and the floor itself. Smeared in blackened, scorched blood, she stared at me. Seeing me through my own magic, inside my own vision. The woman staring at me was the Firestarter, Aurelia Flamma Scintilla.
Monique wasn’t alone in her soul home, and the Firestarter could see me here. Which meant that in some way, all of the beings lying on the hull were actuallyhere. And so was I.
I had killed another spiritual presence in my own soul home once, and the body, in real life, had died too. It was possible that I could die in Monique’s slave ship soul home if I wasn’t very careful. I flattened myself against the flat ceiling above and behind me.
Once before, I saw Aurelia up close and personal, or at least her illusion. Dark haired, dark eyed, skin like milk but with a faint, pale olive tint. She had been wearing black nun’s robes, and might be now as well, though here theywere stained in old dark blood. Beside the Firestarter was a bloody vampire female, her dark hair clotted with filth. She turned her face away, as did the others bound in the hull.
But the Firestarter. That one didn’t turn away. She stared at me.
Monique murmured, “Join us, place your power with the Firestarter. Together we will drain and rule all the vampires in the world. With you and the primo-Onorio, we have the Rule of Three needed to govern and control.”
The woman couldn’t count, unless the Rule of Three meant something besides the total, which was way higher.
“Why would I volunteer to be shackled?” I asked, watching the trussed bodies.
“We are not master and slave,” Monique said. “We are friends. We have willingly wrapped ourselves in chains, all working together.”
The others kept their faces turned away, hiding their identities, but they pushed up to sitting positions in slow concert. The actions were either choreographed, or it was the same kind of control used by the Flayer of Mithrans. A chill started in my fingertips and raced up my body. Monique Giovanni had worked for the Flayer. He had the unusual ability to bind and control and use the bodies of the people around him. Either he had taught her how to do that, or she had figured out how his power worked and made it her own.
An Onorio who could use uber vamp mesmerism was a new thing. And that was scary enough to make me mouthy. “Yeah? I don’t see you in the blood and the rot. That’s convenient.” I didn’t try to hide the sarcasm.
Monique was Onorio and also more than Onorio. She had bound the others, and I was pretty sure she had convinced them they were there willingly. This vision had meaning, each element both a spiritual reality and a symbol of the physical world. These bound paras and Monique were sowing violence among the vamps, building discord and fear and war between masters of the cities. That violence was the rot and the blood. They were working together, willingly at first, but now bound; that was the meaning of the vision ofthe captives in the soul home of Giovanni. They didn’t have enough willing helpers. Or perhaps willing sacrifices. They needed more. They wanted Bruiser to come to them willingly. They wantedme. There were other Onorios in the Dark Queen’s retinue and territory, and if they got me, they probably got them—Bruiser, the B-twins, all the vamps sworn to me, the outclan priestess, just to think of a very few. Taking me would leave very few slots to fill in any combination of the Rule of Three. And there was asenza onorein the NOLA witch null prison, a woman named Tau. A very dangerous woman.
