Sabina was shorter than I, yet my feet dangled off the ground, my body against the chapel. Her fingers were like steel, cutting into my throat, twisting the steel chain links of the collar into my flesh, yet only the collar allowing me any breath at all. I was pinned, my neck stretched out. I couldn't reach any weapon that might be effective against her.
I forced my panic down, but there was nothing I could do about my racing heart or the fear-sweat that beaded on my skin. And the children had only me to help them right now. I forced my hands to fall to my sides. Held myself tightly against another brainless move.
She spoke, and I had no idea what she murmured, but it sounded like Latin, like a . . . liturgy. And this was the priestess of the vamps. I had said that they had a religion. Maybe I was more right than I had guessed.
When she paused to draw breath, I tried to speak. "Please." My voice was whispery from my arched position and from terror building beneath my breastbone. I forced out the words. "I seek. Absolution." With the word, a faint tremor ran through Sabina. She eased her grip on my throat. My breath whistled in my newly healed tissues. Relief flooded through me.
I had been to water, had been prepared for battle. Purified. I drew on that calling. I could feel again the sluggish current flowing over me as I dropped below the surface. The warmth of the air when I stood, my feet in the muck of the bayou bottom. The blackness when I again went under. Strange peace flowed through me, tranquility lapping at the far corners of my mind like the black bayou, dark and slow. The emotion felt as if it had been hiding, holding itself silent and still until now when I might recognize it, use it. And I understood. This fight for the kits was the reason I went to water. This was the battle Aggie One Feather had foreseen.
Serenity flowed along my skin and settled into the distant crannies of my mind and heart, sifted through my nerves and soothed my flesh. I closed my eyes. I repeated my calling. "I seek wisdom and strength in battle, and purity of heart and mind and soul."
The serenity that flowed through me seemed to move through my skin, bleeding into hers. She took a slow breath.
Her fangs clicked back in her mouth, her body trembling, her eyes bled back to human. She set me on my feet and stepped away. Blood pounded into my head. The world reeled around me and I caught myself on the edge of the porch, fingers digging into the underlip. Somehow we were on the ground beside the chapel, the dead vamp's legs near my hand. I carefully moved away as if he might stand up suddenly and attack.
"Show me the site where this rogue rose on my land." It was said in the command tones the very old ones use. Duress. Coercion. Vamp magic. It rippled over me like dry sand scattered in a smooth arc, burning and sharp. I wanted to go into the woods. Wanted to go back to the burial site marked with white shells. I turned and faced the woods, my booted feet on the crisp grass.
Beast touched the compulsion with a paw and batted its control away. I could almost see it unravel from me, like the fringes of a shawl pulled free from the weave. Crap. Sabina was strong. I took a breath, keeping it slow and steady. I didn't want her to know I was unbound from her power, not if I could help it. I still had too much to learn.
I smoothed my hands over my thighs and kept myself from drawing a weapon. She was so fast I'd not get it halfway out before I was dead. I swallowed and it hurt, reminding me of her strength. "Sure. This way." Legs shaky, palms sweating, I led the way back into the woods. I didn't hear her footsteps follow, but the starched cloth of her habit made little chuffing sounds, cloth-on-cloth. The skin on my throat rose into fresh prickles at the thought of her behind me.
Still in command mode, she said, "Tell me what you know of the cross of the curse. And how you know it."
The compulsion rippled over me, black motes of power, tinged with purple, ringing my chest, making it hard to breathe. Cross of the curse? The one she used to chase off the liver-eater . . . ? Yeah. But lying wasn't my strong suit and lying so close to compulsion was probably impossible; I'd have to lie with the truth. Was that any less a lie? Something else to worry about later. After the children were safe.
"A little bird told me that you used a cross to chase off the creature who was attacking you. She said that it's a . . . powerful weapon."
She was suddenly at my side, visible in my peripheral vision. "Who is this little bird," Sabina purred, "who speaks of the Blood Cross?"
I took a chance. "An owl."