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The lukoi consume their dead, at least part of them, and the eating of their flesh puts them into some sort of ancestral memory. Munin they call them after Odin's raven, Memory. They aren't ghosts, but they are the spirits of the dead, and I was a necromancer. The munin liked me. They eased around me like a cool caress of wind, entwining like phantom cats. I could channel the munin, sort of like a medium at a seance, but more, and worse. The only munin I'd ever channeled had been Raina, the wicked bitch of the east. But when she came, it was like a battering ram. Standing there in the middle of hundreds, thousands of munin, I knew I could open to them. But it would be like opening a door, an invitation. I could wallow in the past, live other lives. It was a whisper of seduction. Raina came like a ra**st, an overwhelming force. Not a sharing, but a taking.
However they'd tied their munin to this place it was blood magic, death magic. I cut the palm of my hand and pressed it to the tree. I prayed, and sprinkled blood on the bones at my feet. The circle of power snapped into place with a rush that raised my skin as if it would crawl off my flesh. I invoked the circle. I called the wards. I worshipped, and it was enough.
Shrieks, screams filled the night. The vampires went up in flames. They ran, burning, for the edge of the ward and all who made it across exploded in a rain of burning bits and pieces.
I felt Damian above me, and Asher. None of the vampires left behind tried to do anything but run. Most fell into burning heaps on the ground without taking another step. Anyone under a hundred died where they stood.
The Indian woman had come to stand on the edge of the bone circle. She stared at me while the vampires screamed and died, and the stink of burning flesh and hair was thick enough to choke. Her face showed nothing. She'd rescued the club.
Finally she said, "I should kill you."
I nodded. "Yes, you should, but your allies are dead and your master has flown away. I'd get out while the getting's good, if I were you."
She nodded and threw the club to the ground. "Colin and Barnaby live, and we will see you again, Anita."
"I look forward to it," I said. I was hoping that she wouldn't notice that my back was pressed against the tree, because I wasn't sure I could stand on my own.
Nikki nodded, and started to walk away into the dark, past the tree and the bones. She spoke something then stepped through the ward. When she stepped through, the magic quenched, swallowed back into the earth.
She looked at me from the dark on the other side of the quieted circle. We stared at each other for a long moment, and I knew that if we met again she would kill me if she could. She was Colin's human servant. It was her job.
I slid down the tree until I was sitting in the bones. My legs were too weak to hold me and a fine trembling had started in my hands. I gazed out into the lupanar, gazed out over my handiwork. Some of the bodies still burned, but no vampire moved within the circle. The vampires were dead. All of them.
21
Another fight, another shower. Rotting vampire was not an odor you wanted to wear to bed. My hair was still damp when I called Jean-Claude to fill him in on what we'd done. Okay, on what I'd done.
I told him the shortest version possible. His response, "You did what?"
I repeated it.
Silence on the other end of the phone. I couldn't even hear him breathe.
"Jean-Claude, you still there?"
"I am here, ma petite." He sighed. "You have surprised me once again. I did not see this coming."
"You don't sound happy," I said. "You know the news could be worse. We could all be dead."
"I did not think Colin would be so foolish."
"Live and learn," I said.
"Colin was right to fear you, ma petite."
"I told Colin what would happen if he messed with us. He pushed the button, not me."
"Who are you trying to convince, ma petite, me or yourself?"
I thought about that for a moment. "I don't know."
"Are you admitting you were wrong?" His voice held mild amusement.
"No." I tried to think how to say it. Finally, I said, "We were losing, Jean-Claude. They were going to kill us. I had to do something. I wasn't even sure it would work." I held the phone, and wished that he were here to hold me. I hated the thought that I wanted him like that. That I wanted anyone like that. I hated needing people. They all had a tendency to die on me. But I'd have given a great deal for a pair of comforting arms right at that moment.
"Ma petite, ma petite, what is wrong?"
I motioned Asher over to the phone. "Talk to your second banana. Ask Asher if there were other options. If there were other options, I couldn't see them."
"There is something in your voice, ma petite. Something fragile." He whispered the last word.
I just nodded, and handed the phone to Asher. I walked away from it hugging myself tight. Fragile, he said. Scared, more like. I'd scared myself tonight. Something in the power I released had extinguished the torches around the lupanar. Those of us still standing had moved by the light of burning corpses. It had been a scene right out of Dante's Inferno, and I had done it. The power inside of me had done this thing. Yeah, scared about covered it.
Damian came up to me. He whispered, "Jason's crying in the shower."
I sighed. Great, just what I needed, another crisis. But I didn't ask questions. I just knocked on the door of the bathroom. "Jason, you all right?"
He didn't answer me. "Jason?"
"I'm all right, Anita." His voice, even over the shower sounded strained. I'd never really heard him cry before, but that's what it sounded like, a voice thick with tears.
I pressed the top of my head to the door and sighed. I did not need this tonight. But Jason was my friend, and who else was I going to send in to comfort him? Damian had come to me with it. Zane didn't seem the hand-holding type, and Cherry, well ... if I was going to send another woman into comfort him, it seemed cowardly. Asher? Naw.
I knocked on the door again. "Jason, can I come in for a minute?"
Silence. If he'd been feeling anywhere near okay, he'd have made some kind of joke about me finally seeing him in the shower. That he didn't tease me at all was a bad sign.
"Jason, can I come in ... please?"
"Come in," he said finally.
I opened the door and the warm air fogged around me. I closed the door behind me. The room was soft and thick with warmth. It was hot, the moisture beading on every surface as if he'd cranked the shower up to as hot as it would go. Hot as it would go was enough to scald the flesh from your bones, if you were human.
The light left his shadow on the white shower curtain. He wasn't standing. He was sitting on the floor of the shower, huddled.
I moved the towel from the lid of the stool and sat down with it in my lap. "What's wrong?"
He took a deep sobbing breath, and even over the shower I could hear him weeping. Crying didn't cover it, weeping.
I wanted to see him while I talked to him, and I didn't want to see him naked. Choices, choices.
"Talk to me, Jason. What's wrong?"
"I can't get it off me. I can't get clean."
"You mean metaphorically speaking or literally?" I asked.
"It's all over me and I can't get it off."
I was being a coward and a prude. I reached a hand for the curtain and slowly drew it back until I could see him without splashing the entire bathroom with water.
Jason had his knees drawn up tight to his chest, arms locked around them. The heat from the water was enough to make me draw back. His skin had turned a nice cherry pink but that was it. I'd have had blisters or worse by now.
There were clinging patches of black goo on his back. The back of one arm had a patch on it. He'd scrubbed and boiled himself nearly raw and couldn't get clean.
He stared straight ahead at the faucets, rocking ever so slightly. "I was okay until I got in the shower and it wouldn't come off. Then I kept seeing those two vampires in Branson. I thought about Yvette, watching her rot. But it's the two in Branson. I can still feel their hands on me, Anita. Sometimes I still wake up in the middle of the day in a cold sweat, remembering."
In Branson, Missouri we'd taken on the local Master of the City. She'd had two young women that she was going to torture unless we gave her some of us to torture. They'd suggested that if Jason made love to two of the female vamps they would let one of the girls go. I think he'd enjoyed it, at first, but then they'd started to rot.
