Sabina gave a slow sigh that stank of old blood. Her breath, so seldom used, always had the scent of old death. I tried to ignore it. “L’arcenciel. Essendo luci. Titles I had thought never to hear again. Rainbow. Being of light or light-being in an archaic dialect of Latin,” she said. “With the arcenciel, Joses, and enough blood, Peregrinus will be strong enough to defeat all. This I understand.” Her brow wrinkled. “Knowledge and secrets are much harder to maintain, hidden, in this day and this age. Once, all one had to do to hide great secrets was to kill the humans who knew of it. No longer.”
All you had to do was kill the humans. Right. But I didn’t say it.
Sabina met my gaze. “What do you wish of me, she who walks in the skins of the beasts?”
“I’d kinda like to use the sliver of the Blood Cross.”
She rocked. And rocked. Beyond the windows, I could feel the sun starting to rise. The color of the windows was clearer, redder. The candles, oddly, seemed to cast less light, the shadows shrinking and becoming denser. It was nearly dawn. I knew Sabina was old, but I figured that she still needed to be out of the sunlight, probably sleeping in the huge stone sarcophagus in front of the chapel. The one with her likeness carved in the stone.
“Do you believe?” she asked. Reading my confused expression and maybe my scent patterns, she went on. “Do you believe in the cross? In the crucifixion? In the resurrection? That the Christ was transcended, ascended to heaven? Do you believe?”
I swallowed, buying the time to think, knowing that she would smell any dissembling, any lie. Knowing that my answer was important to her. History, if not religion, had always been important to this priestess. And, the more I learned about the origins of the vamps, maybe religion too. I took a shallow breath and held out my arms as if to display myself. I said, “I am human flesh, bone, and tendon. Yet I can change shape and form, like magic, and become an animal. I know that there is another place, maybe another universe of energy and matter, but in a different form. It may power my own . . . what we call magic.
“I have a soul, that lives inside this body, but isn’t caged by it. Even in another form, I can still maintain my identity, the sanctity of my spirit, of my soul.
“I live in a world with vampires and werewolves and Mercy Blades and les arcenciels,” I said, stumbling over the French, “who use a magic I can’t even begin to comprehend.” I frowned and dropped my arms. Her expression hadn’t changed, but she shook her head slowly, which didn’t seem like a good sign.
“My best friend is a witch. I’ve seen her do what looks like magic with her gift. I’ve been healed with the magic of Bethany, the priestess, once, by Leo once, and by Edmund Hartley more than once. I’ve seen Leo raise his magic in such power that it burned on the skin of my arms. If I believe in magic, in power that I can’t understand, how can I not believe in more, in stuff that’s supernatural and holy and even bigger than the power I’ve seen myself?
“I don’t think that we know everything that happened back then.” I pointed to the bier that held the Blood Cross. “I don’t think we understand everything that we think did happen or that we were told did happen. But there was power left in the cross and in the nails, the power of his blood. The Sons of Darkness just stole it and made it evil, as humans always make things evil. So . . . yes, ma’am. I believe.”
“Even though you are Chelokay?”
Chelokay was one of the ways that Cherokee had once been pronounced. “Even though,” I said. “The belief systems are not in opposition.”
“The white man’s Christ and his priests declared the skinwalkers to be the evil ones, the devils. Before Batildis’ Chelokay blood-servant was called the Devil, the skinwalker was the devil.” She cocked her head, sniffing, reading my face, my body language, my scent patterns. “And yet, you believe. Why?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. The hope of things unseen,” I paraphrased, “faith, that is. That kind of hope. I want there to be something bigger, something better than the rest of us.”
“And if there are many things bigger and better than humans?”
“Not my problem,” I said, suddenly tired. “I don’t care. There are bad guys, and demons, and horrible things that go bump in the night. Other things that are good, the kindness of strangers, angels on wings, messengers from above. Even a priestess in a vampire graveyard.”
“I am not good. I am not kind. I am a far worse devil than the human so named and now dead.”
“Maybe so. I still need the sliver of the Blood Cross. I still have to kill Peregrinus.”
“To save Leo Pellissier and his wanton lovers Katherine and Grégoire?”
“I’m between the devil and the deep blue sea. So to speak.”
Sabina’s chair stopped rocking. And it was empty. I didn’t even hear the pop of displaced air as she moved. She was standing by the stone sarcophagus. The lid weighed, like, four hundred pounds and she lifted it, opened it with one hand, casually, the way I might lift the lid of a jewelry box. A moment later she closed the lid, softly, gently, as if it were made of cardboard. Her back to me, she said, “You would use the cross made evil by Ioudas Issachar?”