Promises to Keep

chapter 5


“THAT WAS BRINA?” Jay asked as Xeke led him away. The vampire’s arm across his shoulders was meant to look possessive, so Brina would let him go. Jay was grateful that it helped him stay upright despite the pounding in his head.

“She tends to conveniently forget that laws such as freeblood status exist,” Xeke said quietly as Jay walked with him back to the room where they had first spoken.

Freeblood laws had been an invention of the original Midnight, back in the sixteen hundreds. Humans could be abducted into the empire by anyone’s whim, but witches and shapeshifters were given the right to remain free as long as they abided by Midnight’s laws.

“Daryl was her brother?” Jay asked, confirming.

“I’m surprised she’s noticed he’s dead,” Xeke answered dryly.

Jay winced. “She has.”

“Should I assume this all means you are no longer in the mood to follow through on that delightful offer you made earlier?” Xeke asked.

Jay considered it. He was shaken, having reached too deeply into Brina’s madness, and now felt raw and vulnerable.

“Rain check?” He closed his eyes a moment, trying to focus, and felt his body sway.

“Are you all right?” Xeke shifted his arm from Jay’s shoulders to around his waist, taking some of his weight. “You look faint.”

“I’ll be fine. I should head out.” He needed to be anywhere else, far away from so many ancient minds pressing against his.

“Are you driving?” Xeke asked.

“Yeah,” Jay answered. He didn’t want to drive. Should he take Xeke up on the offer to stay at his place, though? “The couch would be fine,” he said.

Xeke chuckled, and said, “Why, yes, I do happen to have a couch where you can crash.”

“Sorry,” Jay said. “I’m unfocused. It’s hard to tell what you’ve said out loud.”

“Most telepaths can’t read vampires,” Xeke said.

“I’m not a telepath,” Jay answered. “I’m an empath. Similar talents, different mechanism.”

“You can explain the difference to me later,” Xeke said. “For now, you look about ready to fall over.” He reached into Jay’s jacket pocket to retrieve his car keys. “I’ll drive.”

“Thanks,” Jay whispered.

He took a few steps, and then felt himself being lifted.

Jay shut his eyes.

“You are one mellow witch,” Xeke observed.

“You’re relaxing to be around,” Jay replied.

“You’re not helping my ego.”

“Your ego doesn’t need help.”

By the time the car had warmed up, Jay was asleep.

He dreamed of the barren wasteland he had found in Brina’s mind. As he walked across the scalding sand, his skin started to char, peeling and flaking into black ash like a Hollywood vampire in the sun.

He woke alone on a comfy sectional sofa. A note on the coffee table said:

I had to get to a screening. Feel free to stay as long as you like, and help yourself to anything from the kitchen. Your car is in the parking lot.

—Xeke

Was the excuse genuine, or had Jay’s host left because he wasn’t sure how his hunter guest would act once out of Kendra’s territory?

Intrigued by this chance to learn a little more about a man he had long admired, Jay began to look around. Instead of a bed, the largest room boasted a bank of three computers, one of which had been left on, with a video camera plugged into it, and was now flashing the message Import Successful.

Hoping for a sneak peek at Xeke’s next work, Jay pressed Play. The video was raw footage of an interview.

“It’s a controversial subject,” the woman in front of the camera was saying. She looked vaguely familiar to Jay, but he couldn’t place her. “Even today, many serpiente consider Anhamirak and Ahnmik gods. People do not like having their gods studied scientifically.”

Now Jay recognized her—she was one of the parabiological researchers working with SingleEarth to investigate the history of serpiente shapeshifters. SingleEarth’s scientists had established that vampires, most witches, and all shapeshifters had a link to a particular elemental power called Leona, an immortal being of immense power. Scientists were still trying to figure out what made all her magical descendents so different from each other.

“Would you share your theories with me?” Xeke prompted from off-screen.

“Well.” The researcher fidgeted a moment, and then seemed to recall that she was on camera. “Serpiente myth describes a time when they possessed incredible magic, which was wielded by the priests and priestesses of a group called the Dasi. Oral tradition tells of a creature named Leben who tried to take over the Dasi by impersonating their god. The Dasi’s leader seduced Leben, and to win her favor Leben gave them all their second shapes.” She paused, and with a shrug explained, “Unfortunately, this ‘gift’ triggered a series of natural disasters that nearly wiped out the civilization. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of the new shapeshifters died in the upheaval, a horrific number when you consider that we’re talking about a pre-dynastic Egyptian village, not a modern city.”

“You say ‘natural disasters.’ Were they natural, or magical?”

“Well.” That word seemed to be her method of pausing to gather her thoughts. “We know now that Leben is one of Leona’s creations. He is directly responsible for the genesis of every shapeshifter living today. My theory is that the serpiente gods Anhamirak and Ahnmik were actually elementals, just like Leona. Like all their kind, they gain power through their mortal bonds. When Leben claimed their worshippers for Leona, Anhamirak and Ahnmik fought back. Either Leona deliberately started killing the new serpiente to weaken their elementals or the serpiente’s deaths were a natural consequence of elementals fighting. An earth elemental gets angry, and you get an earthquake—that kind of thing.”

“Why would Leona challenge another elemental in the first place?” Xeke asked.

“These days, Leona is unrivaled in power, with thousands of bonds. Back then? As far as we know, she had three vampires, and a small band of witches with nowhere near the power that the serpiente attribute to their ancestors. Leona may have worked through Leben to eliminate the competition.”

Ancient immortal soap operas, Jay thought, imagining a reality television show in which a bunch of elementals were trapped on an island together. Chuckling, he stopped the video and went looking for the rest of his belongings.

He found his jacket, tie, and vest hung carefully on a coat-rack by the front door, with his shoes beneath them. Xeke had apparently decided he shouldn’t sleep in his full monkey suit and noose.

Noose. The image of Brina dangling with a broken neck, unable to move until one of her slaves cut her down, rose into his mind once more. Jay had seen plenty of violence in his past, but he had never experienced such a black gulf of emotional pain as had driven Brina to try to destroy herself. Delving so deeply into her mind had forced him to feel it the way she did. To feel himself swinging there.

He shivered as he stepped out the front door.

He was in a small apartment complex, set well back from the road and backed up against the forest. Tasteful white lights on the trees out front reminded Jay that this was Christmas Day, or would be once the sun rose.

His car was nearby, and a quick check of the GPS made it clear he was across town from Kendra’s gala. Few vampires were powerful enough to bring other living creatures with them when they did their teleportation trick, and even for those who could, it was a rough trip for both parties. The lack of bedroom made it clear that this wasn’t Xeke’s only or primary home; he had probably dropped Jay here because it was the shortest drive.

Jay was a little stiff from sleeping restlessly on a couch, but a short walk would fix that. He liked trees.

But there was something … odd … about this forest.

He hesitated at the edge of the woods. It wasn’t the fact that he was in dress shoes and tuxedo pants, anticipating trudging through the snow. It was …

Something.

Yet something else pulled him forward, and Jay Marinitch wasn’t one to resist the call of unnamed, unidentified forces suggesting he wander into a dark and unfamiliar forest.

The woods were beautiful, illuminated by the moonlight trickling through naked branches to bounce off the snow beneath. What surprised Jay was the lack of animal tracks. The snow had fallen two days before. Why weren’t there signs of foxes, rabbits, and deer?

When he finally did sense life, he pursued it.

What he found, curled in the snow, was a woman with skin and hair the color of the night sky, and white streaks like moonlight in her hair. She wasn’t sleeping, but neither was she awake. She was just lying in the snow, in a long gown covered in frost.

Her breathing was barely more perceptible than her hypothermic thoughts. When Jay knelt and set his fingers to her throat, he felt that her pulse was steady. He touched her arm, and a whisper of magic replied. A shapeshifter of some sort? That would be good. Shapeshifters were very sturdy.

He put a hand over her heart and slowly trickled warmth into her body, wondering who she was and what might have brought her to be here like this.

Most breeds of shapeshifter had certain defining features. The Mistari-tigers were of African-Asian descent. Serpiente tended toward dark hair with fair skin. The lions were black in human form, but this woman wasn’t just black in the way that humans were; she was actually black, like coal. Lynx would have been able to guess her breed by her smell, but Jay couldn’t.

She stirred slightly, moaning.

Jay tried to reach for her mind, but it fluttered away, as elusive as a faerie.

As he continued to pour warm power into her, he sensed her body remembering injuries both recent and from long ago. There was a sense of resignation in her flesh, and a memory less substantial than scars that remembered cut and burned flesh, broken bones, blood flowing.

And an even deeper agony.

Suddenly, that agony lashed out at Jay.

He staggered backward and thudded into the snowdrift behind him. His connection to the shapeshifter had been completely severed.

Wind whipped through the forest, making the trees shiver and groan in sympathy. The air rippled like heat rising from pavement. A force whispered to him, She must come home.

The force that spoke was … maybe not malevolent, but maybe so. He knew only that it was powerful, and it had stopped him from helping the woman.

She can’t go home if she dies here, he thought.

He lifted her gently in his arms. If he couldn’t keep her warm with his magic, he had to find another way. He wished he hadn’t locked Xeke’s door behind him. He arranged her in the backseat of his car, wrapped in an emergency blanket. He wanted to call SingleEarth’s healers for advice, but his cell phone was still dead. The best he could do was turn on his GPS and ask it to take him to the closest SingleEarth Haven, which was #2.

Perfect; his cousin Caryn Smoke worked at the clinic attached to #2. Caryn was twenty, just a year older than Jay, and hadn’t yet finished her formal medical training, but she was already one of the best magical healers he knew. He had recently received an engagement announcement from her, though he couldn’t remember who she was marrying, or when. Hopefully it hadn’t been a Christmas wedding. He wasn’t sure what would become of the shapeshifter if Caryn wasn’t there to help.