Sabina held out a small drawstring bag, destroying the moment when I should have spoken, should have asked her more. I took the bag and it was much lighter than I expected, silk velvet outside, padded within. I felt something inside it, long and slender, the length and shape of a ballpoint pen. Or a hair stick. Or a small stake.
Understanding came to me all at once, all the old lore, all the deeper meaning of the curse of the vampires. "This is why wood stakes kill vamps, isn't it? Because you were made through magic and blood and wood, from long-lost earth magic, knotted with evil." I stared at the velvet bag in my pale hands. Shadows and candlelight moved across my flesh as if searching for my twined soul. "This is why you have to drink blood to stay alive. And it has something to do with why so many of you don't survive being turned, don't survive the chained years. Right?"
"It is the curse we bear." She turned away and sat in her chair, rocking, the wood creaking quietly. She said, "Two Mithrans mind-joined tonight. I felt the joining, I felt their intent." She tilted her head in that reptilian manner, staring across the room at her broken door, hanging skewed on its twisted hinges. "It is little known that I am open for a moment to any of my flock who choose the anamchara way. As they join, they open, and I am part of them, part of their mind and their purpose. Tonight Rafael of Mearkanis and Adrianna, scion to St. Martin, banded together and killed her sire and his heir. Then they joined their minds into one, and made alliance against their enemies. In that moment, I knew their minds as I know my own.
"They intend to move against the master of the city after the full moon, taking him in personal combat. Then they will kill all the witches in the city, claiming this territory as their own. And they will kill the Rogue Hunter, she who hunts their kind, for they fear you." She smiled slightly, her head still tilted as if her neck were broken. "You do not seem so fearful to me. I hope my trust is well placed, my weapon truly given."
"I hope so too."
"The heavens move with both order and chaos," she said, as if searching for meaning, for the words to explain the unexplainable, "with light and dark, energy and matter, emptiness and fullness. This is a time of change, when many tides rush together." She raised her head to its proper position. "When the old ways return, when the old darkness fights for supremacy against that which is new, against the light of the world." She touched her lips with her tongue, and it made a dry raspy sound, inhuman and cold, like snakes slithering against one another.
Visibly, she gathered herself. "It is not within my duties or power to interfere in a legal challenge against the master of the city, but it would be dangerous for the humans should the allied challenge of St. Martin, Mearkanis, and Rousseau defeat Pellissier. Without an heir, such a challenge is a great danger to him." She looked at me. "Pellissier is like a rock in the confluence of many streams, attacked on all sides, buffeted."
The old vamp had been awfully agreeable about helping this time, when she had been so obfuscatory before. It must have been some freaky vision she saw in the midst of the vamps' mind-joining. It made me suspicious, but I had no one else to turn to. "I can let him know about the attack," I said. "Without mentioning your name."
Sabina inclined her head and I figured I had been maneuvered into doing her bidding. Before I could respond, she said, "There will be no more blood rites in the forest near this place. I have seen to it. The three Damours will not be allowed to enter this holy ground again. If they have another place for the rites, they will go there, forced there for the light of the moon."
I couldn't help the grin that split my face. I knew where the children and Bliss would be. I knew!
Sabina chuckled, her face instantly human-looking, mobile, and weirdly cheerful. "Go now. You have much work to do and little time."
I felt as if a large hand pushed me toward the outside, toward the night and the full moon. All at once, the candles were snuffed and the chapel went dark, as I left the place I had desecrated, passing beyond the door I had ruined. I stepped from the chapel to the sound of the stone lid being slid into place on her bier and the chair treads starting to rock on the wood floor. Outside, under the light of the full moon, shadows rested black across the grass, striping the white-shell walks like wounds in the skin of the netherworld, open and bleeding into the land. Rick was standing at the bottom of the stairs and when I descended, he gripped my arms, stopping me. "You okay?"
"Yeah. I think so."
He searched my face, his Frenchy black eyes holding me more securely than his hands. Finally he nodded. "Okay. That was seriously weird."
"You were listening?"
"Yeah. What next, Master Vampire Hunter?"
"I need to talk to some guys I know," I said, shooting him a look, thinking of Derek Lee, putting it all together. "I need to go to New Orleans City Park. And I need to talk to Leo."