Several silent minutes later, she leaned down and began to cut through LeShawn's shirt with a tiny pair of scissors no longer than her fingers. "Let me," I said as I gripped the edges of the cut shirt and tore it from neck to hem. A final snap ripped it through. When I was done, I realized the vamp could have snapped me in two as easily as I had the shirt. Despite what she looked like, she wasn't an old lady. She was an ancient vamp, which meant powerful. I could stop doing old-lady favors for her.
The tats on the guy's chest were both prison tats and the kind of fancy work only a master artist can create. The black widow on his neck perched at the top of a web spanning his entire torso and both shoulders, and the other tats were caught up in the web. There were crosses and hearts and inked initials, the word "MOM" with a red rose, a tombstone with the name Mary on it, an eagle, and a pit bull. And there were scars, one from a knife wound and two from bullets; the scars had been included in the artwork. It was a tapestry of his life, of the good moments that had made him who he was, and the bad times that had shaped him with pain. There were also arcane symbols and initials--the gang tats that claimed him forever.
Sabina sighed. "I believe you."
I looked up in surprise. "Why?"
"Those tattooed with crosses do not survive to rise. The crosses should have burned through him to the bone when he awoke." She sat back in her chair, which creaked softly in the night. "Where is this place of magic?"
I pointed in the general direction. "And there are three other sites, older and overgrown, in the woods nearby."
Her lips thinned and turned down, making wrinkles in her pale face. "How could this be? I am here. I would have known. I should have known."
"Not if humans prepared the ground by day and witches set it under something like a stasis spell combined with a protective ward. Not if the vamp waited until nearly sunrise to do his work," I said, thinking of the vamps that took the children, moving at dusk, sunlight still bright on the western clouds. Had witch magic given them protection from the late-day sun? Or were they practicing other magics on themselves? Yeah. That.
They're not just trying to defeat devoveo. They're trying to make an ubervamp. A vamp with all the strengths and none of the weakness of regular vampires. My breath caught.
Sabina seemed to come back from a faraway place, and when she spoke it took her a moment to find the words. Or perhaps the language. How many languages and dialects did a person learn while living two thousand years? "Witch charms hid where this child rose? Powerful witch charms?"
"I'd say so, though I haven't had a witch out here to scan the place yet. Do you recognize the scent of the makers?" My heart tripped again with hope.
Sabina leaned down again and drew the air in over her mouth and through her nose, much as Beast scented. She went still, the breath dead in her lungs. "The smell is familiar," she breathed out, scenting again. "No." She sat down with a sudden thump, her white skirts on the porch floor. Sitting there, she shook her head, a weirdly human gesture, her expression dumbfounded. "Surely not . . ."
I realized that Sabina, priestess of the vamps, knew exactly what was going on. She had seen the kind of vamp burial before. When she didn't go on, I prompted, "Not what?"
"It is not possible. The maker I scent is long ago true-dead. I killed him myself." Her face cleared of the nearly human emotion. She smelled again, her nostrils fluttering. "His heir. He made himself an heir before he died. Yes." She sniffed again. "Yessss. His heir is now the leader, but he does not work alone. His acolytes assist him."
My hope died. I kept the reaction off my face by an effort of will, clenching my teeth together against the setback. If Sabina didn't know the makers, I was back to square one.
"The makers are of the Rousseau line and are young, only a few centuries old." She stood again, moving human slow, studying me. "I cannot help you, creature who hunts."
I figured I was the creature who hunts, and my blood spiked, sharp and fast, through my veins. But I shoved my need to know of my kind deep. Not until the kits were safe. I turned back to the body of the dead vamp.
"I did not believe that any of us could bear the power of a cross without burning." It was said with that tone she used when making pronouncements of ultimate Truth, like a law of nature and physics, like: None of us can fly, none of us can breathe underwater, and none of us can survive without blood. But it wasn't true.
"You did," I said softly. "The night the"--I wanted to say liver-eater, but changed it in time--"old rogue attacked. You drove him off with a cross. A wooden cross. And it blazed like pure silver."
Sabina Delgado y Aguilera's eyes raged into black pits. Her fangs snapped down, three-inch-long spikes. She was on me before the crosses hidden in my collar had time to glare with light. Before I could blink. Before I could draw breath. Her motion was so fast that I didn't have time to reach for a weapon. Her hand slammed me against the wall of the chapel so hard I heard the stucco crack. Icy fingers tightened around my throat. Her breath moved against my jaw, cold and smelling of old blood and dry herbs.
CHAPTER 17
Our sin has multiplied