I could almost hear the laughter in Leo’s voice, when he said, “And which dead bodies would that be, chère?” It sounded like sha, not cherie, the Louisiana version of the French endearment. And I didn’t like Leo being endearing to me.
I gritted my teeth. “The enforcer-types I’ll stake or shoot when they come to Sabina’s rescue when the alarm goes off.” I gunned the engine. “Now, Leo.”
“Of course, Jane. Whatever you wish. Thirty seconds.”
It was only after I hung up that I realized Leo had sounded like his old self. His old well-balanced, emotionally stable self, from before I killed his son’s imposter and he got stuck in the dolore. And then feasted on Katie’s dead blood. And then . . . Gee had fed Katie, who maybe fed Leo again—maybe when asking to become his heir—giving Leo some of Gee’s blood? Vamp feeding arrangements were both gross and impossible to understand. I was getting woozy trying to figure it all out.
Leo being sane was a good thing, but no way did I think it was gonna be all good. There had to be another shoe to drop. After the last few days, I was likely to see a fashionista’s closet full of falling stilettos.
When I figured my thirty seconds were up, I peeled out and swerved around the gate, into the cemetery and along the crushed-white-shell drive. It was dark, no security lights, not even a candle burning in the nonchapel where Sabina’s sarcophagus lay, but I had better than average night vision after all the years I’d spent in Beast’s skin and, even without the moon, I could see.
The mausoleums were white marble, each with a naked winged angel on top, also of carved stone, one mausoleum for each clan, except that Leo had killed off a few clans recently. The mausoleums were intact, repaired from one of my previous visits. Contact with me had been a bit rough on vamp real estate.
I swung the bike around and tightened my hand on the accelerator. And braked, dropping the bike into a low-angled skid when my eye caught sight of the angel on the Pellissier vault. I cut the engine, dropped the helmet, and walked away from Bitsa to see it better. It was too dark to be certain, but danged if the winged warrior didn’t have Girrard’s features. “Well, slap me silly,” I muttered. “The guy is everywhere.”
Before I got back to Bitsa, I heard a pop and whirled, grabbing for a stake and a vamp-killer, my heart thumping hard. Sabina was standing between two white buildings, wearing her nunnish white robes, her face serene, or as serene as an undead, blood-sucking monster can get. She wasn’t vamped out, which was good, because my throat protector was lost to the wolves. “You did not request an audience.”
“Cry me a river.” The words slipped out before I could I stop them.
“I do not cry. You are impudent. Rude.”
I blew out my irritation, hoping for an obsequious impulse somewhere inside so I could show proper deference. But there was nothing like that inside me right now. “So sue me.”
Her head tilted to the side in that weird, reptilian thing they do. “Why would I wish to involve the legal system of this country?”
I figured modern snarky comments didn’t translate well to a two-thousand-year-old vamp. “What do you want, little nonhuman?” she asked.
“I want you to tell me about the weres.” When she didn’t answer, I said, “You’re an elder. Among my people, an elder is the keeper of knowledge, history, and the old stories, and they share that wisdom whenever they’re asked.”
“The Cursed of Artemis,” she said, her mouth moving as if the words tasted bad. “Children’s tales.”
“Tales I haven’t heard,” I countered. When she didn’t poof away or try to kill me, I dropped to the ground, sitting in the darkness, my back against a mausoleum wall. A misty rain began, as if condensing out of the heavy air and settling to the ground. I turned my face up to it. “I need to hear the stories, Sabina. Please.” My housemother in the children’s home where I grew up would be tickled with my manners.
Sabina ignored the rain, though her clothing was damp with it. “All myth is based upon some form of truth and history, though twisted and puffed up and hacked away. The tale of the Cursed of Artemis is no different.” The priestess crossed her arms under her breasts and tucked her hands into her sleeves. It looked almost practiced, as if she wanted to appear human, aping human gestures. “Long before the Greeks named her Artemis, was Lolandes, the woman. I have often thought that her legend became confused with, and merged into, the earth goddess, who was common to all ancient tribal peoples. But Lolandes, renamed the Artemis of Grecian lore, was no goddess, but a powerful, long-lived mortal, one sometimes called a witch, though different from today’s witches. She was the most powerful of her kind, in a time when women were revered, when political and religious power was passed through the matriarchal line. She was venerated for helping animals and humans in childbirth and for caring for wild animals.”
Sabina turned her back against the stone wall, standing so close to me that the hem of her robes brushed my leather-clad knee. Beast nudged me to stand, not liking my submissive posture beneath the priestess, but I shoved her away. She went, giving me a huff of disgust.
“Lolandes once had a female bird as pet, a type of falcon, a fierce hunting bird. It was dedicated to her, never needing the jesses or the hood, and returned to her after each hunt, bringing Lolandes the choicest of kills from the hunting fields. The two were inseparable.
“One day at dusk, beneath a full moon, a wolf killed the bird, fighting over a doe they both had targeted. Lolandes cursed the wolf with a disease, similar to rabies, that affects mind and brain. And she took up the body of her bloodied pet and she mourned.”