A chained angel? Partially chained?
So maybe Hayyel had been, and was, still close by. Maybe he could help, even if he was chained. Or maybe he needed help to deal with being chained. Or both.
I was glad I hadn’t said all that aloud, because there was power in this vision and some kernels of truth. I opened my eyes, not sure when they had closed.
Aggie was sitting across from me, wearing her linen shift. She rubbed something onto her knees, as if they ached. When she saw me looking, she shrugged and reminded me, “Werewolf? Demon? Angel?”
“There were two werewolves inside Evangelina Everhart’s circle with a demon. The demon was eating them. The angel appeared and—” I stopped. There had been a burst of light at the demon circle when the angel appeared, Hayyel doing something, changing something. “The angel did something to all of us.” But the most obvious change had been to Brute, the werewolf I thought I’d just now caught a whiff of. Brute was bound to the angel in some way, probably even more than Angie.
The memory of the werewolves in the demon circle vision was overlapped with memories and visions of the Mughal blade, the prophecy attached to it, and me in armor. Which was strange unless what I’d seen was a combination of all these three: memory, prophecy, personal spiritual vision.
I closed my eyes and pulled the visions back to me. “What do you need?” I whispered, not fully sure who I was talking to. Hayyel? Aggie One Feather? God? “What do you want me to do?”
The memories and visions shifted, as if being shuffled like cards in a deck. In the overlapping of it all, things came clearer, almost as if the sun rose and shone light into the space, ruby and sapphire light, like a prism. In the vision, in the strange place, the people who watched the angel came clear.
The people standing along the walls wore brightly colored clothes—robes. Like people wore in Biblical times. I inhaled in shock. Not a vision. Not my soul home. Thered and blue light seemed to flow across the walls, brightening the angel wings. I took it all in, memorizing everything.
Something scratched on the sweathouse door.
“He’s here,” I said. “At the door.”
Aggie tensed. “The angel?”
“No.” I’d been out awhile again, and my voice slurred. I swallowed to try and moisten my throat. “The werewolf.”
Aggie swore and dumped a bucket of water on the fire. Smoke, sparks, and filth shot out like miniature fiery thunderheads blooming. On the far side of the firepit, the elder was standing, a wicked blade in her hand. “You bring an abomination to my door?” she spat.
“He’s not feral,” I said, pressing against my scalp to put out any sparks. My hair made crunching sounds from dried sweat salt. I crawled to my feet, hearing the salt crack and feeling it crust painfully in places best not mentioned. I was salty and sweat-streaked and now sooty. My braid swung forward, stiff as a stick, filthy.
“All werewolves are rabidbeasts.” Aggie hissed the last word and I blinked at her. She didn’t look like herself. Dressed in her handmade, undyed ritual shift, her hair cut short to her shoulders, her feet bare, Aggie held a single-edged vamp-killer—fourteen inches of steel, silver-plated on the back of the blade, one that would poison vampires or were-creatures.
A weapon in the hands of a Cherokee elder, in the midst of a sweathouse ceremony. Aggie, furious. Her mouth twisted down in fear.
I stared at her, trying to decide if what I saw, the terror I saw on her face, was real or part of a drug-induced ceremonial hallucination.
Is real. Elder smells of fear,Beast thought at me.Aggie is afraid of werewolf. And is afraid of the I/we of Beast. Aggie has feared since she first saw us in half-form.
Yeah. And werewolves are evil in post-white-man tribal tradition,I thought back.Evil.
A shiver of shock raced through me. I tried to lick my lips, but they were cracked and I tasted blood. “Not all werewolves are rabid. And this one travels with agrindylow who’ll kill him if he so much as opens his mouth to lick someone.” I stepped slowly to the door, my eyes on Aggie and her weapon, one that could kill me as easily as the vampires for which the blade had been designed and named. The reasons an elder might be armed in a place where no such weapons were allowed flitted through my mind. Her fear, her need to protect herself from me was the best possibility.
She no longer trusted me to keep her safe.
I unlatched and cracked open the door.
A huge white snout tipped with a black nose poked into the crack. It snuffled and snorted.
Aggie smelled of terror, even to my human nose. She raised the blade higher. So far as I knew, she wasn’t trained in fighting with a vamp-killer but I had never done a deep background on her. And lack of skill didn’t make her any less dangerous. “He won’t hurt you, Aggie. Hey, Brute. You got a grindy with you?”
A kitten-nose appeared over Brute’s and a neon-green-furred face followed. The grindy was sitting on the white werewolf’s head, which even in my dehydrated state was adorable. The grindy tilted its head and made ameepsound.
Brute shoved the door wider and peered inside. He stopped, watching Aggie. He wagged his tail and sat, perking his ears forward, tongue lolling out one side of his mouth. At a quick glance he looked like a bleached-out Great Pyrenees dog, maybe one whose bloodline included moose or elk. Then you saw the wolf fangs, icy eyes, and high-set predator ears. No sweet Great Pyrenees at all. He whined. The grindylow saidmeepagain, and pulled itself higher on Brute’s head, holding on to his ears with both paws.
Aggie lowered the weapon, but her eyes were still too wide, her stance uncertain.
“Let’s step outside,” I said to Brute.
Moving slowly, I bent and picked up a few bottles of water, one of which I opened as I left the sweathouse and guzzled, crunching the plastic to force the water out and down my throat fast. I drank two more and swallowed a salt tablet with the last one.
