Talking to a werewolf in wolf form was difficult. At the house, we had a soundboard that Beast could tap on to communicate. It was new and it made our lives so much easier, but out in the wild we were still stuck with the Q and A, yes and no, method of communicating, a series of questions to which Brute could respond with a no head-shake or a yes nod.
“Brute. Is there trouble?”
Brute nodded.
It was daylight or near enough, so that meant the trouble was not likely a vamp. “Is one of my humans in trouble?”
Head shake.
I asked my way through the list: witch, were-creature, cops, ICE (who had, lately, gone after vamps because the long-lived ones didn’t believe in documentation), para-haters, PsyLED—the Psychometric Division of Homeland Security—and half a dozen others before Brute made a disgusted chuffing sound and stared at the sweathouse. I turned to see Aggie, standing in the open doorway, her right side hidden, probably carrying the knife. “One of the tribal people?”
Head shake. He looked from Aggie to the firepit, now with only a few glowing coals left.
“Oh,” I said, feeling stupid. “You know something about the angel?”
Brute nodded.
“What is it?”
He turned and disappeared into the gray light.
“Crap,” I sighed out. “Not a yes/no question.” I looked at Aggie. “He doesn’t usually run away when I mess up.”
Aggie frowned and turned her back on me, picking up a leather scabbard and sheathing the blade. Her shoulders were hunched, her head down. I didn’t know if her posture was angry, exhausted, shamed at drawing a weapon, or something worse.
“Aggie?”
She shook her head, the motion weary, and asked, “Could your vision be in a graveyard? You’ve fought battles there before, and blood drinkers frequent them.”
I frowned, thinking. Watching her move, the stressand uncertainty in her jerky movements. Fear, again. She was afraid and I didn’t understand.
She turned to face me, the scabbard nowhere in sight. “A church?” she asked. “A cathedral?”
“It didn’t look like a graveyard,” I said. In the Deep South, few burials are beneath the ground because the water table is so high the air-filled coffins float to the top and have been known to float away in the next flood. Coffins are secured on the surface in brick or stone mausoleums and statutes of saints and angels are common in them.
My vision didn’t look like a church either. It looked like a cave. But in a vision, who could tell? There were dozens of graveyards with statues and hundreds of churches in and around NOLA, most with paintings, murals, stained glass pictures in the windows, angel statues, saint statues.
I thought about the curved, domed ceiling, the strange light and the sloped walls, as if something was dripping down them. “If it’s a real place then maybe a small Roman Catholic church in NOLA?”
“Or farther away,” she suggested, her voice tense, her eyes looking away from me. “In France or Rome. Anywhere, if it’s a church or cathedral.”
That was a daunting thought. “The darker streaks on the walls could have been mold and the odd light could have been from stained glass windows, I guess. I didn’t see any, but the lighting was red and blue. So I’ll hope that Hayyel is trapped in an old ruined church somewhere close and not thousands of miles away. Maybe a local one, moldy, damaged by hurricane.” I could plan for it to be close, though trusting in luck and flying by the seat of my pants hadn’t gotten me many places in life except in trouble.
Aggie didn’t reply, but her body was still stiff and jittery, as if preparing to be hit.
I let the memory of the vision fill me again. The last two hurricane seasons had left the landscape scarred and hundreds of buildings, homes, and churches dilapidated. Hayyelcouldbe trapped in a building somewhere. “Yeah. Maybe a church. I think I need to see it again. When can I come to sweat again?”
“Not today. Not tomorrow. Not this week.” Aggie wasstill not looking at me, her eyes off to the side, staring at the floor.
I opened my mouth, stopped, closed it. I had a feeling that the answer was going to hurt, but I didn’t have much of a choice. “Aggie? Was the knife for me?”
She raised her head. Her face was drawn down, etched by dread and fatigue. “If you shifted into a dangerous creature. Or if you shifted into a different person.”
“U’tlun’ta.You think I’m liver-eater. Spear-finger.”
She shook her head, her shoulders slumping. “Not today. Not yet. But someday. All the elders agree. We have talked. The Choctaw. The Western band of theTsalagi. Walkingstick. My mother. And now you bring a werewolf to my door.” She raised a hand to stop my comments. “Not intentional, I know. But it came here only because of you. Because of what you are. Of what you may become. Spear-finger. Raven-mocker. You are a dangerous creature, or you may become one. You are a killer, and you know this, yet you do not seek to mend your ways and search for peace.”
As she spoke, my eyes burned. A faint tremble started in my fingers and ached into my chest. It hurt to take the next breath. “By my order and my command, two of the three skinwalkers I know of, my grandmother and a clan member, were jailed when they became liver-eaters. And my people know to kill me if I ever—” I stopped.
