Dark Queen (Jane Yellowrock #12)

The sight of his son, dead on the carpet in the doorway. A monster. A beast of darkness, half sabertooth cat, half Mithran. Dead at the hand of the woman he’d brought into his lands and charged with killing that same darkness.

His decision not to kill her. But to force her to love him.

Months later, the attack by his enemies, when the Naturaleza had been draining him dry. The woman led the charge to save him. When later, still drunk from his healing, he attempted to bind her by force. George’s rage and ferocity. The woman’s resistance. His realization that he had erred, the sensation of a small part of the soul he feared he no longer had, slipping away. He had never told her that she had bound him instead.

A vision of Jane, on the dance floor, a warrior woman of her tribe, dressed in vibrant silks. Dancing. Whirling. As sinuous as a snake.

The feel of her body against his as he led her in a dance of passion. Her refusal to become his in truth. Her ability to thwart him at every turn.

Her honor.

His honor.

Leo slid his thumb from his mouth.

I blinked. No. Not Leo’s mouth. Not . . . Leo’s.

My mouth.

The sensation became my own, his thumb sliding across my lips, the taste of Leo on my tongue. I blinked. Found I was gasping. Crying.

Alex grabbed my arm and dragged me away from him, whispering harshly, “Bruiser staked the MOC to protect you.”

The room was in an uproar. People shouting. The smell of blood and anger and battle. The ebony table was empty of clan leaders except for Sabina, wearing fresh whites, healed, her fangs schnicking down, all five inches of them. Her jaw was still unhinged. I was leaning limply across the table, entirely too close to the outclan priestess. Eli and Bruiser were squared off together against Leo, who was sliding to the floor in a boneless heap. It was the blood of the MOC that I smelled.

I wrenched my arm free and croaked, “I’m okay.”

Alex’s face said I wasn’t. I scrabbled, fighting for balance, my bare paws on the cold floor. I’d lost my shoes when I half-shifted. I fought for control. Bruiser raised the bloody stake high. I pulled the Mughal blade. Shouted, “Stop!” But my throat was dry, voiceless. So I pulled a gun and shot into the only thing dense enough to safely stop a fired round, damaging the antique carved table that was probably worth more than my house. But it worked. The table stopped the round, splinters flew, and the Council Chambers went still and silent. “I’m okay,” I said. “Bruiser. He didn’t attack me.”

Alex asked, “Janie?”

“Leo, did you give me that or did I take it?”

“I gave myself to you,” he said, as his blood pooled on the floor beneath him.

I smelled his truthfulness. Saw it on his face. I said, “He didn’t try to bind me. Stand down.” No one relaxed from combat mode, but I ignored them. I was still holding a blade and a nine-mil. I checked in to my soul home. Everything there was peaceful. My soul was still my own. I was slightly deaf from the gunshot, but otherwise I was good.

“Leo,” I said. “How badly are you wounded?”

The Master of the City slid his hand into his black jacket and it came away scarlet. “Nothing immediately mortal,” he said, with the faintest of smiles. His fangs clicked back into the roof of his mouth; his eyes bled back to human.

Eli said, “Janie? You’re sure?” He still had a gun aimed at Leo. Bruiser still held the stake.

He had fought the MOC for me. That was so sweet it made tears gather in my eyes. “I’m good. He”—I looked at Leo again—“gave me a gift, I think. I’m fine.” A little teary eyed, a little weepy, a little off-kilter, but mostly okay.

Leo huffed out a breath he might actually need, and, with two fingers, removed a neatly folded white hankie from his pocket. After wiping his bloody hands, he folded the hankie and pressed it against his side. He said, “Jane Yellowrock, I cannot bind you. I cannot even know your mind. But you now know mine. Will the Dark Queen swear to me, to protect and guard my city, to guard me, to fight by my side, to avenge my death, should I fall and die true-dead?”

Except for the Dark Queen title, the last part was essentially what Leo had asked Ming. This was part of the swearing-in ceremony of a blood clan. My breath went fast and my heart rate sped, things I knew Leo could detect. This was the creation of a new clan. Of Clan Yellowrock, in the way of the Mithrans. Holy crap. This was really happening. And then it hit me. As Dark Queen, I could avenge his death . . . Plans within plans.

I looked at the floor, at the feet of the Master of the City of New Orleans. At the feet of the creature who had abused me. Who had crowned me. Who would always want to use me, whether I agreed to that use or not. Who would do evil in the name of good, horrible evil to protect his people. A creature who was rebuilding his own power base even as I was building my own to protect my people. In his shoes would I do any less? Softly, not sure who I was talking to, I quoted, “Because I’m a Scorpion. It’s in my nature.”

“From the traditional tale of the Scorpion and the Frog,” Leo said. “But scorpions are creatures of instinct. I am a man. While it is my nature to use you, I will not do so unless the need is urgent. I have learned and changed and evolved, thanks in large part to you, my Jane.”

It wasn’t likely, but it was remotely possible that Leo had grown emotionally and might change. Me? I was the city’s champion. Which was utterly ridiculous. I am an idiot . . . But I’m NOLA’s idiot. One who might, one day, do evil to protect it. “Yes. And yes, I accept and I so swear.”

As if I hadn’t kept him waiting while all that raced through my mind, Leo said, “George, please bring Edmund Hartley, Jane’s primo, back into the room. Meanwhile, Gee DiMercy, do you accept the position of Yellowrock Clan Enforcer?”

Gee dropped from the ceiling to the floor, landing beside me on the balls of his feet and one hand, like a monkey leaping from a tree. It shocked me so much that I nearly shot him. He flowed to his feet like a snake. “I do,” he said, holding out his hand. Leo cut downward with the blade. That was getting to be a pretty unhygienic, unsanitary thing and I was glad my part in the cutting was over. Except it wasn’t. Gee offered me his thumb to suck on.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “Really?”

Gee waggled his thumb at me, blood trailing down it. And then he grinned as if this was the funniest thing ever. “Just think of it as sushi, my mistress,” he said.

“Bird blood? I hope you washed that thing.” I opened my mouth and Gee hesitated, meeting my eyes. The grin slid from his pretty face. The blood on his hand shifted from scarlet to sapphire blue, its true color. There was something vital, weighty, even imperative about the misericord of the city offering me his blood unglamoured. Black eyes intent, he placed his thumb into my mouth. His blood was thick and bright, sweet like agave syrup. Beast’s synesthesia flared, giving Gee’s blood the chill of deep blue water; the smell of midnight in a winter forest, thousands of stars overhead, shimmering through naked branches; the sound/vision of indigo or woad splashing in a vat, staining a pair of hands. The sensations shimmered into taste and texture of ground lapis lazuli and sugar on my tongue, the sound of sapphire wings in flight.

“I am yours, my mistress, my little goddess,” he whispered.

I encircled his wrist with my long knobby fingers and pulled his thumb away. Irritated, I said, “I’m not a goddess.”

“As you say, my mistress. I swear loyalty to you above all others, in every circumstance outside of my misericord duties. In your absence, I swear to your clan and to its scions and cattle.”

“Backatcha, little bird.” But it didn’t come out flippant, as I intended, but somber, unsmiling, and resolute. Gee stepped back and when he was about five feet away, he bowed, bending one knee and sweeping with one hand, as if to push a cape back. Or his glamoured wings. He took a seat.

Crap. This was getting heavy.