Dark Queen (Jane Yellowrock #12)

Brute chuffed. And then he nodded his head up and down in the human affirmative, bouncing once on his front paws. Brute spun to me. His silver-blue eyes less wolflike than I had ever seen them. Human intelligence gleamed in them. And I knew. Over the sound of the SOD’s raspy screams, I whispered, “Hayyel gave you the ability to timewalk and to incapacitate the magic of the Sons of Darkness. With your bite.”

Brute gave me a doggy grin, his tail wagging even more fiercely, and turned his attention back to the SOD. He bit down again and again, his wolf fangs piercing the bare feet of one of the fathers of all vamps. Biting. Biting. Giving one of the two most powerful vamps in the world the were-taint. And no grindylow was stopping him. I walked to the SOD and grabbed his nasty, slimy hand. On his index finger was a ring, a faceted brown diamond in a simple setting. A magical amulet. “Did Dominique give this to you today?” I asked.

Joses gurgled with laughter and clenched his fist. Brute nodded and vocalized again, “Ooommmeee.” He was trying to say Dominique, the vamp I hadn’t killed well enough. Crap.

I gripped the SOD’s hand and pulled on the ring. He made a fist to stop me, and so I broke his finger and pulled off the ring. Tucked it in a pocket as he screamed hoarsely. I turned from the drama in sub-five and pattered back up the stairs, texting Rick that his zeta cat had just attacked Rick’s alpha at HQ. He texted back that he would be at HQ in four hours. Then I found some Tylenol and a handful of ibuprofen for my headache. I managed to keep it down.

In the scion lair, the playroom/prison where Leo, or some other suckhead, once kept his scions in the devoveo, I walked past Eli and Edmund, who were standing a good six feet away from a silvered cage. Inside was my new buddy, Kemnebi. My silvered blade was still buried in the middle of his back. Kemmie couldn’t heal until the silver toxins of my sword cuts had flushed from his system. The stuck silvered blade made that impossible and shifting to either of his forms unattainable. He was trapped in cat form, paralyzed by a silver blade, his guts still spilled out on the floor. Alive, but in pain. I could smell it on the air, hear it in his panting breaths. Guilt, my old nemesis, raised its head. Kem would kill me in a heartbeat, but I was sick at the sight of him there. Being tortured.

I opened the cage door, pulled a vamp-killer, and squatted on the floor in front of his cage, balanced on my toes, my elbows on my knees. I leaned in and growled. It was a deliberately masculine position and a challenging growl. My lips pulled back, exposing my fangs. Letting my voice drop into Beast’s growl, I started with the easy questions, saying, “Did Dominique and a lemon-scented witch cast a spell on you to free you from your tamed state?”

Kem hissed at me, cat style.

“Did you harm the grindylow who was supposed to watch you?” I placed my blade at his throat.

Kem snarled, showing me his cat fangs.

More slowly, I said, “Did you, somehow, kill your grindy? You and the lions attacked when humans were present. The grindy should have killed you all.”

The half-man/half-cat spat at me, the only gesture he could make with silver in his spine.

“Why did you attack? How were you and the cats planning to disrupt the Sangre Duello? Nod that you’ll answer these questions and I’ll pull out the blade so you can heal.” He lifted his lips, showing his teeth; deliberately he shook his head no. I stood, closed and secured the cage door, and said, “No food, no water, no medical help, and no one removes the silvered blade until he’s willing to tell us about the grindy and about what’s going on with the weres.” I turned my back to the cat, a cat insult, and left the room, Eli on my tail. So to speak.

In the hallway, the playroom door closed and I could smell Eli’s anger.

“You’re leaving him in agony.”

I steeled myself to answer. “This isn’t war. He isn’t human and isn’t covered by or protected under human laws. He’s a werecat. He won’t die. He’ll suffer a bit, that’s all.”

“Jane—”

“No. Too many seemingly unconnected things are happening right now. Too many possibilities all leading back to the EVs and ahead to disaster. In the last few minutes, we’ve been attacked by werecats who acted crazed or spelled or both, one of which should not have been able to attack at all, too tamed for anything except getting his belly rubbed. We’ve smelled lemons. Dominique, who allied with Des Citrons—but might, possibly, be acting outside their wishes—has gotten in and out with ease and she tossed Callan a sword. Callan attempted to kill the outclan priestess. A witch is floating around HQ and no one can seem to find her.

“I’ll make sure Alex is researching them, but though they’re an old clan, Des Citrons has managed to keep out of the historical eye for centuries. The clan may or may not be aligned with the EVs. They may be hoping to sit back and watch and then pick up the pieces later. Rick will be here in four hours. Rick, as alpha, can make Kem talk. Four hours to think about his sins.” And then it hit me. I ducked my head to see directly into Eli’s eyes. His were haunted. “You saw injured enemy combatants tortured, didn’t you?”

“Aggressive interrogation.” His lips twisted down. Confusion filled his face. “It’s—” His words stopped abruptly.

“Inhuman and inhumane?” I leaned in to Eli, my shoulder touching his. “His grindy is missing. He may have killed it. Her. That’s assuming grindys can be killed. But his grindy is a baby grindy. A baby.” They looked like kittens, neon green kittens with steel claws, but kittens. They were cute little killers. “He wanted to kill humans. Tried to kill Larry and may have turned him into a furball. And Kem is my pack. It’s my right to demand answers.”

Eli shook his head, but answered in the affirmative. “Yeah. Okay. For a werecat who didn’t think twice about harming Larry.” He made a fist and placed it on the door between Kem and us. “Okay. Four hours.”

Eli walked away, leaving me thinking about how much I had changed, about how easy it had been to slip away from humanity, away from thinking about mercy and kindness. Mercy and kindness were hard. Hurting others was easy. The door opened and I met Ed’s eyes as it closed. It was a thick door. Heavy. It sealed with a little whoosh of sound I hadn’t noticed when I entered and left. It was a door created to keep the screams of those inside from disturbing others in the hallway. It was a room built for imprisonment and torture. “I’m a horrible person,” I said, speaking to myself rather than to Edmund.

“Yes, my master. You are.”

“But if I set him free, again, he’ll hurt the ones I love. Again.”

“Yes, my master. He will.”

“I have to take care of the people I love. That means . . .” This was the hard part. The part I had realized several times over the last months. “That means I have to become a monster.”

Gently, Edmund said, “Have you not always been a monster, my master?”

I took in a breath that hurt as if I had been stabbed. I turned from the room where I was actively torturing an enemy and started to walk away. Faint screams came from the room behind the heavy door. My heart leaped into my throat. Ed slammed the door open. We both raced inside. Kemnebi lay inside his cage, his throat sliced away, his blood emptying out, toward the drain in the middle of the floor. His cage was still secured. The grindy was standing atop the cage, her neon fuzz bloodied, her ankles and neck showing ligature marks where rope of some sort had dug into her flesh and abraded off the hair. She had been tied up. She had gotten away. And killed a wereleopard inside his cage. Right. Not exactly a kitten.

Eli appeared at my side. “Well, hell,” he said.

Vamps and weres and their blasted layers of conspiracies within plots within intrigues within treacheries. “I need to see the parley papers. We need to talk to Leo.”





CHAPTER 11


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