Beast pressed down on my brain, her claws sharp as knives. The mesmerism snapped and broke.
“I will do what?” I asked.
Frustration flashed through Katie’s eyes. “You will tell me how to fix my dear old friend. How to help her.”
I looked from Katie to Amorette.Okay.That was not what I’d expected after her comment about the Mercy Blade.
“Did you come to feed me, my dear? I’m so hungry.”
“Katie, when humans get old, sometimes they get a disease of the brain called dementia. Many of those are perfectly content and happy as long as they are well cared for. You’re caring for her, right? Feeding her? Cleaning her? Bringing her company to socialize?”
“Yes. But this does not fix her brain. All she wants is to make her lace things and drink.”
More blood might fix Miz A, I thought. More blood might make her fully vampire. And perhaps fully rogue.
“Did you come to feed me, my dear? I’m so hungry.”
Katie slit her wrist with a tiny knife and held it to Miz A’s mouth. The not-human, not-vampire dropped her needle, took Katie’s wrist in her hands, and drank. When she was done, she released the vampire’s undead wrist and picked up her doily. “Thank you, my dear.”
“Miz A?” I asked. “Are you happy?”
“Of course I am happy.” She patted Katie’s hand. “I have my dear Katherine. I need nothing else.”
Katie looked at me with wide eyes. “She has never said those words before.”
“You saved her because you loved her. So you can love her longer, feed her regularly, and maybe your blood will continue to heal her. For starters, take off the chains and bring her old-lady blood-servants to visit with. There have to be some somewhere. Did she like games? Painting? Poetry? Anything that might stimulate her and draw her away from the doilies?”
“Scrabble. She liked to play a word game called Scrabble.”
“So get some humans in to play Scrabble with her.” I thought a moment, and added, “And I’ll get Amy Lynn Brown to feed her. That might help.” Amy was a Mithran vampire with a rare and potent blood that brought young vamps out of the devoveo, the ten years of madness vamps went through when first turned. She might help Miz A, stuck between vamp and human.
“Yes,” Katie said quickly. “I have heard of this Mithran. Thank you. If she helps, I will be in your debt. I will owe you a boon.”
“Sure. Whatever.” I backed out of the room. Hope was all I could give Katie, and that was more than humans ever had when faced with the decline of an elder. Hope was a fragile gift.
Glad I hadn’t had to... do anything, I left the house, and Katie, and the woman she loved like a mother.
Anzu, Duba, Beast
First published inWERE–, an anthology from Zombies Need Brains (2016). It is in the timeline somewhere before Jane becomes the Dark Queen.
The note read “Jane, We will hunt. Ready yourself. We leave after dusk, Gee.”
I hated orders. But I owed Girrard DiMercy—the vampires’ Mercy Blade—a hunt, which he had won from me in return for information. Gee had a good memory, but his timing sucked.
I flicked the note against the fingers of my other hand, thinking. With vamps and their playthings, you have to be one step ahead, and thinking things through had proved better than attacking first and asking questions later.
Gee expected me to shift into something like a hawk or an owl and hunt at his side, while he shifted into the thing he really was under layers of glamour. If that happened, he’d set all the parameters and I’d be little dog to his big dog—earth bird to his Anzu. So far as I knew, the feathered Anzus were not native to Earth and had once been worshipped as storm gods. Big honking storm gods with claws, wings, a raptor’s beak, and a bad attitude.
“Does Leo know about this invitation?” I asked, crumpling the note. Leo was the fanghead-vampire Master of the City of New Orleans and my boss. Gee’s boss too, in a way.
The blood-servant-messenger’s face broke into a smile that said I had asked a question he could answer. “Yes, ma’am. He knows. My master said, ‘May your hunt be bloody. May you rend and eat the flesh of your prey.’ ”
“Well, crap.” I had plans. I was spending a four-day weekend with my sorta-boyfriend, eating and sleeping and everything my heart and bodydesired, in bed. Plans. And the following Tuesday, I was flying to Asheville, North Carolina, to spend a few days with my BFF Molly, to see the ultrasound of her baby, the one where the doc tells if it’s a boy or a girl. And then I was gonna pick up my Harley, Bitsa, from the repair shop in Charlotte. Finally. Big plans. Leo liked jerking my chain, and he would feel just peachy messing with my life.
But... it was only Wednesday. The hunt we bargained was for twenty-four hours. I should be back by Thursday night. Friday morning at the latest. I’d still have a few days to myself and my honeybunch, Bruiser. Plus Gee didn’t know that I had aces up my sleeve. Well not exactly aces. More like jokers, both of them wild, cards that didn’t belong in the deck of cards the Mercy Blade expected to deal. “Hmmm,” I said.
The helpful human said, “Mr. DiMercy and the Master of the City have requested the courtesy of a reply.”
