Dark Queen (Jane Yellowrock #12)

I shrugged and put the vamp-killer and the PsyLED badge on the floor, out of the way, then stepped into position, my foot touching Eli’s to keep him in my time bubble, my body and hands almost touching the stranger. Eli positioned his hands just above and beneath the killer’s gun hand. “Now,” I said to my partner. Eli moved his foot. Instantly I was alone in the Gray Between. My head spun and spiked with pain. I took a breath to keep from throwing up and blew it out. And dropped the Gray Between. Drew on Beast speed.

The overlapping gunshots sounded, blasting the silence away as I seized the lustrous, slick black hair instead of the back of his neck. Reached between his legs and seized his testicles in a crushing grip. Lifted high, as I pulled his head down low to my right side. And slammed him inside the house and into the foyer floor. Not a textbook move but good enough. All in one faster-than-human motion.

The house shook. The man made a breathless, squealing, squeaking sound. Eli was standing over him, holding the attacker’s weapon and his own, both pointing at the man. Maybe a whole second had passed. He lay on the floor, his hands between his legs. Squeaking still. His golden-skinned face pale as death. His eyes rolled up.

“I will not”—I hesitated—“nuwhtohiyada gotlvdi. I don’t make peace with assassins.” I kicked his foot out of the way and closed the door on the startled cries of the onlookers and the winter air. Winter in New Orleans meant the high sixties, but still. It was the ecologically appropriate thing to do.

“I missed it. What happened?” Eli’s younger brother, Alex, asked, running in from the living room. He hadn’t answered the door. Probably playing some kind of video game and couldn’t be bothered.

“Jane happened,” Eli said, his dark skin picking up the lights through the layers of stained glass and bulletproof glass.

The man on the floor groaned. Eli patted him down and removed a weapon from a leather ankle holster. From a small pocket built in the holster, he also pulled a tooth and held it out to me. The canine tooth was curved and sharp, nearly two inches in length. A big-cat tooth, longer and slightly more narrow at the root end than a Puma concolor tooth, though curved, like all Western Hemisphere big-cats. Whatever species, it was additional evidence that the man was a skinwalker. He carried the genetic material of his favorite animal to shift into in case of injury or near death. He might feel like he was dying, but he’d live. I curled my fist around the tooth. Ignored the bass drum pounding and the ice picks stabbing inside my head. Ignored the desire to hurl my cookies.

Alex brought up kitchen chairs. We all three sat in a small ring around the downed man and watched, as if he was a one-man play. Alex passed around ice-cold bottled Cokes—my favorite way to drink Coke now—and a bag of potato chips. I smothered a laugh at the picture we must have made. I chewed, watching. The man’s color wasn’t getting any better. “How long does it take to get over a testicle twisting?”

“With your grip?” Eli asked casually. “Days?”

Alex made a sound that was mostly “gack” and crossed his legs, suddenly pale even despite his mixed-race heritage.

“Three minutes till he can breathe?” Eli guessed. He reached out and took my wrist, guesstimating my pulse, still saying nothing in front of the outsider about my headache and nausea.

“Better cuff him,” Alex advised. “As entertaining as this is, we got work to do.”

“True,” I said. “And I’m in my jammies.”

“You went to the door in your PJs? Shame on you,” Alex said.

“I know, right? I should comb my hair. Dress. Maybe even makeup. For company, you know.”

“Girly stuff,” Eli said at my makeup comment. Frowning, he dropped my wrist. “You get any sleep?” he asked, but really asking about my sickness.

“Not a lick.” I touched my head and winced. “Of course, now that I’ve exercised a little, I’m sleepy. And we have uninvited company and I can’t go back to bed.”

“Always the way,” Eli said.

“Dude showed up unannounced, and tried to kill you. Double case of the rudes,” Alex said.

The man on the floor gurgled.

“Ice pack?” I suggested.

“Nah. Let him suffer,” Eli said. He bent forward and rested his elbows on his knees, hands together under his chin, watching the man’s ribs try to work. Casually, he added, “He’s turning blue.”

“I see that,” I said.

“You people are sadistic. I’m going back to my game.”

“Shooting and dismembering nonhumans on video? Sadistic, much?” Eli asked, his words sorta mushy, due to his chin on fists.

“Totally not the same,” Alex said, shaking his head, the long, tight curls around his face swinging. “Alien bugs. Exoskeletons. Antennae. Multiple legs. Green goo instead of blood.” The curls stopped swaying. They were tangled, hanging in spirals like a shaggy mop. He needed a haircut. And a shave. Alex had a lot of whiskers on his dark-skinned chin.

I blinked, surprised. His masculine chin. His eyes were deep-set over sharp cheekbones. His shoulders were broad and his arms were well-defined under his T-shirt. Holy crap. He had been doing chores and helping to cook and clean up without being asked for months. Taking showers regularly. Joining us in weightlifting, martial art practice, and sparring workouts, and he had been to the shooting range several dozen times. Alex was . . . adulting. Stinky had grown up into a very nice-looking man.

“What?” he demanded when he caught me gawking, jutting out his chin, peeved. His tone was the one a teenager makes to meddlesome parents. He squinted his eyes and frowned, short-tempered and petulant. A child still.

“Never mind. Just a bad dream. Go back to your game.”

Alex stomped off.

“Kid’s growing up,” Eli said without looking up, reading my mind. “It’s disconcerting.”

“Yeah. It is.” I picked up my vamp-killer and went to my room, setting the blade on the bedside table beside the nine-mil and bringing back my cuffs. “You cuff him. I’ll sit on him in case he’s faking.”

“No way he’s faking. Men do not turn that color from anything else. You cuff him.”

I shrugged, bent over the man on the floor, grabbed his arm, and whipped him facedown. Stepped on his spine. Yanked up his arms. Cuffed him. He made a sound that let me know he had managed a breath. “He’ll live. If he’s a skinwalker he’ll heal even if he has to shift. And I’m not feeling really chatty right now with a guy who tried to kill me.”

The shooter was lying on the very dusty foyer floor, the dust well scuffed around him, smeared all over his nice pants and jacket. We had a renovation going, opening the attic into a third floor, and the dust had quickly become ubiquitous. Even Eli’s super-neat streak couldn’t keep up with it.

Eli said, “He had a big-cat tooth amulet. Like yours.”

“Yeah. He did.” I wore my tooth fetish on a gold chain around my neck, with the gold nugget that tied me metaphysically to the time and place I’d shifted for the first time as an adult. Most days, I hardly noticed the necklace; it was part of me. I also owned several fetish necklaces with the bones and teeth of other predators I might need to change into, and I’d added a few creatures to my collection recently. I had the ability to shift into prey animals of a similar mass, but Beast hated it when I did that. She was a carnivore and preferred to never be a prey animal. She was also grumpy and callously passive-aggressive. I tried to keep her happy.

I closed my door on Eli and the stranger and tossed my black jammies on the bed. I took a half dozen antacid tablets, four aspirin, and two Tylenol. Meds don’t work on me like they do on humans, but at this point I was willing to try anything. I dressed in jeans and layered tees and stomped into an old, scuffed pair of Lucchese boots. They had started out a gorgeous green, but I hadn’t made a habit of cleaning and caring for the leather, and the damp Louisiana air had left them sorta moldy on the outside. I wiped them down with a rag to reveal the color of the leather, which had weathered to a greenish charcoal. They looked like something I’d wear to a barn to muck out stalls. I really needed to pay them some attention. I combed and braided my hair and slashed lipstick on my mouth. Looked at myself in the mirror. Black hair. Amber eyes. Golden-copper skin.

The man had hair the same length and color as mine. I ran my hand down my braid. Same texture. He was Tsalagi. He was skinwalker.