Dark Queen (Jane Yellowrock #12)

“Everyone wants to fight Jane. Every single one of the Europeans,” Edmund said at last. “From Titus’s sous chef to his primo.”

I heard soft clicks and snaps as Eli worked, growing more noisy than usual. Edmund’s admission had disturbed him. “Show me.”

I had seen the list. I wanted to blow off steam. I slipped into my room and changed into exercise gear: tight, Lycra-based running pants and a padded sports bra. Bare feet. I walked into the living room and pointed at Eli. “Spar. Now.” Then at Edmund. “And when I wipe the floor with him, it’ll be your turn.”

Edmund’s lips lifted faintly. “As my mistress desires.”

I didn’t even bother to fuss about the mistress comment. I turned on my toes and raced up the stairs, across the construction mess, into the bedroom with the sparring mats. And faced away from the door, toward the windows. I let my body loosen. I breathed. Let my mind stop. Relaxed until a white haze filled my brain and body, not silent, but a place, a state of mind, an existence without sight, texture, or sound. An absence of sensation.

Then I let it bleed back into me. A rubberized mat covered the wood floor. I let my soles feel the mat, the cushioned perception of weight, of gravity. I smelled the chemicals that composed the mat. Heard water come on in the showers. And I heard Eli enter the room, so silent a waking cat wouldn’t have heard him. The air moved. Smelling of Eli.

I ducked, dropped. Opened my eyes. Captured my balance on one foot and both fists. Swung the other leg out and around. Missed him.

Took a blow to my rib cage that sent me into the wall. I laughed. It sounded not quite right. I launched myself at him. Took a blow to my abdomen. Block block block. Strike strike. Blow. Block. Pain woke me up. My fists tightened. My crouch deepened a quarter inch. And I attacked. Fastfastfast. Beast chuffed through my throat.

Eli’s heel came at my throat.

Killing strike. Knowing I would dodge. Because I was faster than Eli. Always had been.

Time . . . stopped.

And then . . .

I was standing in the room, eyes closed. Back to the door. And I smelled Eli.

I dropped and rolled, shouting, “Edmund!”

He was instantly in the doorway, the little pop of sound that announced a vamp moving fast. My eyes were wide. Eli, in attack position, was staring at me. I slammed my spine to the wall and foot-crawled hard, to stand against it.

“Jane?” Eli said. “What?”

“Time did something. I already had a fight with you. And now we’re starting over. Something’s wrong.” A spike of pain lanced through my head. And I remembered time doing something weird with Leo recently. Tears welled over and fell from my eyes. Scoured down my cheeks. Though whether from what was happening or from the memories of the tortured bodies of the Stephens family at the B&B I didn’t know. My skull spiked with pain and I wanted to hurl. I put one hand to my head and one to my belly, which felt hard and tight. “Something’s very, very wrong.”

“I’ll make tea, my mistress,” Edmund said. “Eli. Come with me, please.”

Eli looked like he didn’t want to go, but he followed Edmund. They left me there, alone in the spare bedroom with the fighting mats. The stench of rubber. And a body that hurt. As if I’d been beaten.



* * *



? ? ?

In the kitchen Edmund was preparing a fast cuppa chai in the Bunn coffeemaker. Eli was sitting at the table. I pulled an afghan off the couch and wrapped it around me, ignoring that it smelled of Bodat and pizza. I was cold.

I watched them. They seemed fine.

I sat at my usual place. No one said anything.

Upstairs, one shower went off. I hadn’t heard it come on in this timeline.

Ed placed the mug of spiced tea in front of me. The cup was one with a saying on it. I DON’T NEED ANGER MANAGEMENT. I JUST NEED PEOPLE TO STOP PISSING ME OFF. The tea had a thick layer of frothed cream on top. My tears, which had stopped, gathered again, at the kindness. I wrapped my icy fingers around the mug and lifted it from the table. Sipped. The frothed cream made it perfect. The tea and cream were delicious and quickly helped my belly pain to ease. Ed put two Tylenol on the table and I took them without argument.

“Jane,” Edmund said, when my mug was half-empty, “tell us what happened.”

I gave them a blow-by-block-by-blow description of what I had experienced. They said nothing. I sipped. They looked at each other. Something about the exchange hit me as wrong, but I couldn’t place it.

“Did Beast do the time change?” Edmund asked. “Your eyes were glowing gold when I got to the sparring room.”

“B—” I turned my thoughts inward. Beast stared at me a moment, turned away, and padded, pawpawpaw, into the darkness of our minds. “Maybe,” I whispered, thinking. Remembering. Especially remembering the last big fight between EuroVamps and our side, in a warehouse where a weather witch had been forced to create storms and to collect arcenciels for their timewalking magic. What if . . . what if it wasn’t just me who had messed up time? What if it had been Beast too? And the witch Adan. And . . . the arcenciel trapped in the anode of crystals that same night.

That possibility hit me like a Mack truck. What if it had been all of us, in tiny little changes back along our shared timeline? And the pain in my head and belly might be contributing to it too, my messed-up genetics switching on and off and . . . changing things around me. We might all be screwed six ways from Sunday.

Edmund brought coffee to the table and poured me a second hot cup of tea. I heard the whirring sound of the new stirring device in the background, before he added a froth of cream to my cup. I was a long way from Cool Whip.

Hammers and buzzes of saws from the third floor grew loud and a sound like a stack of lumber dropped from a height shook the house. Eli’s body twitched and I could tell he wanted to check on the men upstairs, but he drank his coffee instead, his eyes on me.

“Remember the fight in the warehouse?” I said after I drank through the cream. “Adan Bouvier was in a magical cage, working storm magic, blood-starved, pretty much insane. There was an arcenciel trapped in the crystal. Cerulean. Adan was using her to alter time. Beast . . . my Beast seems able to twist time too. I wasn’t doing anything with time and yet I kept losing moments. Odd little things that I didn’t notice immediately but that added up to me being uncertain about the sequence of events.”

“That happens in battle,” Eli said. “Especially after you’ve been in a few firefights. You lose some things. Memories will skip from event to event like a stone on still water. Others are so detailed and brilliant and sharp they play out for you like you’re going through it all over again.”

“Like you’re experiencing it again?” I asked.

“In a way. For me it’s always clearly a memory. But it can be intense and comprehensive and meticulous in detail.”

“Since the warehouse fight, I’ve noticed small bits of time stuttering. Or two events that happened in different ways. But they both feel real.” I sipped some more.

“I have called Soul, my mistress,” Edmund said, bowing his head. “She and Gee will be here soon.”

My fingers clenched on the warm mug. “Why?” Though I knew the answer.

“Because they and Brute are the only other timewalkers we know.”

As if they knew that Ed had told me they were coming, as if they’d waited for the words to be spoken, a knock sounded on the front door. Ed let them in, murmured words of greeting and explanation. “They don’t know about Beast,” Eli said, his voice so low I could barely hear him. “You want me to stay while you talk? If not, I’ll give you priva—”

“Stay,” I said. My voice sounded a little pleading, which should have ticked me off, but didn’t.

He nodded. Looked up as our guests entered the kitchen. Soul sat to my left, her billowy clothing shades of misty gray that darkened into purple near her feet. Gee, looking taller, more muscular, took a seat at the foot of the table, his hair longer and blacker. The changes were an easy adjustment for his glamour. He said, “The little goddess is evolving.”