Half an hour later they left, carrying bags full of micro-drives, amulets of a kind neither of the witches had ever seen, and various papers and contracts between several fangheads and a multitude of humans. Things that might lead to Konstantin, Ravensport, the possessed vamp-witch, and Asshat’s cronies.
Chapter Thirteen
EJ
They hadn’t found Ivyanna Holmes.
EJ slumped in the passenger seat, listening as Walter preordered Hot Nows from Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. For once, EJ didn’t sneer at the thought of the coffee quality or hot sugary treats. Angie was cold, drained, and suffering from the long night. It hadn’t been all that great for him either.
The naked woman had been a witch. An old, powerful suckhead witch. A witch with a succubus in her.
Walter had seemed to know her.
EJ had never seen anything like theattackworking she had thrown, and the next time he was at his secure, encrypted system, he would search for video of similar explosions recovered from the war, and stored in the military’s version of the underweb.
He’d picked up the amulet the witch had thrown and placed it in a null pouch in his jacket. There was little energy left in it, but it was possible that he could trace the remnants of the exhausted working. Power always left a trail. If there was vid, and he could enhance any audio of thewyrdshe had spokenwhen she threw the amulet, he’d get an understanding of more than the basics, enough to experiment and pass along to his successors in Section Seven. And to family. When he found time, which didn’t look like soon.
Walter pulled up to the brightly lit donut bakery. As it was just before five a.m., they didn’t have to wait in line. The partiers usually went home at four when the bars closed, and most early-shift workers didn’t start until five thirty. Not all chain businesses had survived the wars, but McDonald’s and Krispy Kreme were alive and well, though expensive, having partnered with cattle farms, processing plants, farmers, and suppliers to keep themselves open.
As soon as Walter drove up, the auto-clerk handed out their order, its plas-steel arm a bright blue in the lights.
EJ popped open his coffee and sipped the scalding liquid before biting into an original glazed donut.Son of a witch.He closed his eyes as the taste hit his tongue and sent a sugar shock through him. He missed this stuff.
EJ devoured the donut, took another, and sipped again. “Tell us about the witch.”
Walter’s expression didn’t change, but blood moved once through his carotid arteries as his heart beat. His pupils widened, as if he might vamp out. EJ tensed. The moment passed, and Walter’s eyes became the brown of his human self. EJ’s hands relaxed. The car moved toward home on auto.
“Nyoka came into her magic at a young age,” he said, “and used it to create for herself a sensuous body infused with power, a magic that was meant to coerce and shackle, to subjugate and annihilate. Her body was flawless, her magic one that could enslave man or woman. Naked, she was perfection. But even with her beguilements and her witch power, she was a…an instrument to be used. In the eyes of her master, her owner, shewas athing, not a person. And the fact that her master was also her father meant nothing to his desires.”
EJ’s mind dropped unexpectedly into Delta Mode. Power thrummed through him. Forcing himself to relax, he folded Delta and put it away, sliding into Theta.
“Nyoka and I were of an age when we met. About fourteen. Our owners were related, three generations up the line, and both were vampires. Her owner, and the sire of his vampire line, was Maximus. He was Willim’s great-grandfather and his vampire sire as well. Relationships between my kind are always overly complicated.
“At that age, Nyoka was already a woman. I was still a boy, used by Willim for his pleasure.
“In that year, in the heat of summer when a malaria epidemic swept through and killed hundreds, whispers raced through the island’s slave population of a safe haven in the mountains, a place for slaves who ran away to live infreedom.
“Hearing of freedom to be found in the mountains, I ran away. Willim sent trackers after me. Men who had less mercy than the dogs with which they hunted. They caught me in less than a day, and they brought me back to him in the dark of night.”
Walter fell silent, staring into the snowy night.
The scent of coffee and donuts had filled the car’s interior, though EJ had lost his appetite at Walter’s tale. Clinically, he knew he needed the sugar and the dopamine, so he bit into the second donut, the sugar glaze crispy. The donut was so sweet it made his teeth hurt. He sipped his coffee, waiting to see if Walter would continue. Sleet and wind battered the car windows as the vehicle drove them toward home.
Into the silence, Walter took a breath as if to speak, as the vehicle wove through the dark streets. EJ and Angie waited,almost breathless, to hear the story they had never been told. Walter’s full history wasn’t even in his unredacted dossier kept by the queen.
On the exhale, Walter continued his tale. “When the trackers returned with me, Willim was in the midst of a private party. White men and liquor, cards and large sums of money, sex with unwilling slaves. Blood and sweat and fear and power.
“With his…friends?…watching, Willim branded me. Nyoka, badly abused and broken, looked on, unable to help me, forced to helphim.”
The silence went sharp and spiked and darker than the night.
Angie’s eyes were on Walter’s face, on his brand. EJ listened for hints of discordant tones from the brand, but any magic trapped in it was currently dormant.
“How did she help?” EJ asked softly into that silence. “As a witch or as a woman?”
Walter laughed, a colorless reverberation, bitter and tired. “With Nyoka, there was never a difference. And before you ask, I remember nothing of that night but the pain of the red-hot brand touching my cheek.
“Willim spent the following nights…showing me the error of my ways. But as Nyoka told me later, the night of my capture and branding was the axis upon which the rest of her life turned. That night she used her magic to…” Walter stopped, a sharp, short pause this time, as if he rearranged his thoughts and parsed his words. “She used a working to help me survive the pain.
