“There was no one more fierce than a woman avenging her husband or son.”
I closed my eyes. Understanding. Finally understanding. I felt again the hilt of the knife as my grandmother put it into my hand, too large, hard to hold. I saw the blade, bright gray steel, the same blade Edoda had used on the fish when he gave me gall to taste. I saw my hand as I reached out and made the cut in the white man’s flesh. Watched as he bucked. Heard the strangled sounds he made as my grandmother, a woman of another age, another culture, a War Woman in every way, started to train me for my life’s work—to avenge the losses of the tribe. And then I remembered the feel of the hilt in my hand as I killed Evangelina, her blood a hot flood over me.
Evangelina, who had once been something like a friend, a woman I had always respected. And who had died because she . . . had killed the innocent. Was trying to kill others. Who had broken all the laws of her own kind. No one else could have killed her in time. Had I not acted, many more might have died. I knew that. But my soul still held on to the grief and guilt, because I wanted there to have been something, anything, different that I could have done.
Hot tears coursed down my cheeks. Burning.
I hadn’t forgiven myself for either death. Not yet.
Aggie went on. “Our women celebrated the capture of prisoners. They sang and danced and joined in the torture of their enemies at the stake.” I nodded, closing my eyes, understanding, remembering, and Aggie’s voice softened yet more. “Women had the right,” she insisted, making certain that I heard and understood what my grandmother had been doing when she led me to torture and kill, “and the power to claim prisoners as slaves, or adopt them as family and kin, or condemn them to death, ‘with the wave of a swan’s wing,’ as the old words go. The right.” Her fist struck the clay floor. “And the responsibility. Sometimes . . . ofttimes . . . it sat heavy upon them.”
“Oh,” I said. I opened my eyes and wiped my cheeks, to see Aggie patient, drenched in sweat, her hair plastered and salty. She needed nourishment and electrolytes and water. And I knew that somehow, Aggie One Feather had come to know what I was some time ago, without me saying anything. She had discovered that I was a killer, a rogue-vamp hunter. And she had taken me in anyway, because the duties of a War Woman, a woman of the Cherokee culture, were not so dissimilar to my own. My eyes burned, but my tears had stopped. I was too dry, too empty for crying.
“Ghigau,” Aggie said, and repeated the word again, so I could learn it, “Ghee ga hoo. She was wise and full of knowledge, a person of great respect and value to a clan and to a tribe. War Woman. Beloved. You are all of these things.”
“Maybe not wise,” I said, a hint of humor in the words.
“But learning. Growing. Such things are precursors to wisdom.” Aggie gestured to the door and I led the way, out into the dawn. The air was nippy and the sky overcast with rain clouds. I looked up and a splatter of rain spat over me, icy and sharp, pelting. But the rain stopped, as if the microshower was a promise of more, or maybe a warning. Or maybe Mother Nature was bored and teasing.
Twenty-four hours ago, I had been attacked in the streets of the French Quarter, crashing my poor bike, and running away from a fight with an energy thing. Running away and leaving Bruiser there, wounded and hurt and bleeding, to fight alone. I had run away from people. I had spent the last day and night trying to find myself, and when I did, I was different from what I had always thought, always feared. Not necessarily better, but certainly stronger.
I thought about losing Rick to Paka, to the magic of black-wereleopard heat. To the bristly and powerful magic of the African continent, and the were-taint, and the mating needs that had claimed him. And I smiled, my teeth baring with Beast’s fury.
My mate, Beast thought. Mine!
Oh yeah. Ours, I thought. I could tell by the way he fought against Paka. Not.
But before I could deal with Beast’s claim and Ricky Bo, I needed to go discover what had happened to Bruiser, find Molly and the missing girls, Rachael and Bliss. And make sure that Beast understood that she and I were . . . the I/we of Beast.
Yeah. That.
Deep inside, Beast lifted her head and screamed, the shriek that planted terror in the hearts of the Tsalagi long before the white man came. I/we are Beast, she cried. This is our place! Our hunting grounds! Our mate for as long as we choose him!