I started to rear back at the alarm pumping through him. “What—”
Before I could get the word out, Leo moved. Popping to my side faster than I could see. He jerked le breloque out of my hand and placed it on my head.
The sizzle of power shocked through me, the same sensation I had felt when I’d looped the wreath around my arm.
Bruiser dove for Leo, but the Master of the City was faster and popped back behind his desk. They grappled across the expanse, sending the laptop crashing to the floor. A lamp. The music went silent. The sound of blows landed. Grunts and curses. The smell of blood. I sat through it all, feeling what had just happened. I had been crowned. With le breloque. A magical item that controlled the weather. That collected power to be used for magic. That vamps and witches had fought over.
Fear coursed through me as the tingle of magics slid around me, to tangle onto my bones. I dropped deep into my soul home, the cavern dark and chilled, a fire burning in the center, the air tinged with hickory smoke. There was strange light glowing in the cavern, centered in the ceiling overhead. I looked up to the doomed ceiling, seeing the center, above the fire. Light spread out from that center height like the plumage of a bird, like angel wings, feathering down. The light was growing brighter, illuminating my soul home.
From the base of the stone walls, a golden fire rose, cold blaze licking up the damp rock. The flame tips were shaped like the leaves of le breloque. The power of the magical device was trying to take over my soul home. Was trying to take over me. Giving me some new power, some new responsibility. Heavy. Onerous and oppressive. In the vision of my home, my knees buckled. I fell to the ground near the fire.
Leo had asked me to be his queen. I had said no. He had seemed fine with my reply. He hadn’t been. That sneaky little suckhead.
Beast padded close, her golden pelt shining in the odd lights. Leo is good ambush hunter. Crown is making Jane different. Do not like what crown is making Jane.
She was right. Le breloque was making me . . . making me . . . something. I didn’t know what.
Jane has choice, Beast thought at me.
I remembered the words Hayyel had spoken about me making good choices. This was surely one. “No,” I said. “I refuse.”
Beast chuffed in approval.
Above me, the wings fluttered. Lifted. Resettled. Covering the dome of my soul. The light from them spread. The licking flames of the corona’s power died down. Flickered. Vanished.
The Glob in my pocket warmed. Sparked with electricity. I pulled it free and lifted it. Held it high. “I will not accept the magic. I have my own.”
Swiftly, the Glob drained le breloque. The vision of my soul home, shot through with brilliance, dimmed and disappeared. I was back in Leo’s office, holding the Glob over my head. Over the sound of the scuffle I thought I heard the whisper of angel wings.
I reached up and took the wreath off my head, looked it over, and said simply, “Stop.”
The fight stopped. Bruiser was bleeding and Leo’s severed and reattaching fingers were at an odd angle. “It didn’t work.” I hooked the crown over my arm. “I don’t know what you intended to happen, but it didn’t take.” I thunked the crown with a fingernail. The sound reverberated in the room.
Leo looked horrified. Bruiser looked relieved, the kind of desperate relief he might have expressed when I called him from the boat to say I was alive. “I’m not a queen.” I thunked the corona again. “I’m leaving now. And if you ever try to crown me again, I’ll cut off your head and shove it up your royal ass.” I looked at Bruiser and added, “You coming?”
Bruiser remembered to breathe. Leo started laughing.
I grinned at them both. A Beastly grin, all teeth and violence.
Without another word, I left the Mithran Council Chambers, a crown over my arm, my honeybunch at my side.
? ? ?
Due to a twist in diplomacy and an aggressive move on Leo’s chessboard of vamp politics, the invasion of New Orleans was over, but the danger wasn’t past. A blood challenge might be worse than anything we had faced to date. But I had my team and my love by my side. And I still had myself, my own soul—both of them. Together we could survive.
We might, just maybe, even win a challenge to the death.
Read on for an excerpt from the first book in Faith Hunter’s Soulwood series,
BLOOD OF THE EARTH
Available now from Roc.
Edgy and not sure why, I carried the basket of laundry off the back porch. I hung my T-shirts and overalls on the front line of my old-fashioned solar clothes dryer, two long skirts on the outer line, and what my mama called my intimate attire on the line between, where no one could see them from the driveway. I didn’t want another visit by Brother Ephraim or Elder Ebenezer about my wanton ways. Or even another courting attempt from Joshua Purdy. Or worse, a visit from Ernest Jackson Jr., the preacher. So far I’d kept him out of my house, but there would come a time when he’d bring help and try to force his way in. It was getting tiresome having to chase churchmen off my land at the business end of a shotgun, and at some point God’s Cloud of Glory Church would bring enough reinforcements that I couldn’t stand against them. It was a battle I was preparing for, one I knew I’d likely lose, but I would go down fighting, one way or another.
The breeze freshened, sending my wet skirts rippling as if alive, on the line where they hung. Red, gold, and brown leaves skittered across the three acres of newly cut grass. Branches overhead cracked, clacked, and groaned with the wind, leaves rustling as if whispering some dread tiding. The chill fall air had been perfect for birdsong; squirrels had been racing up and down the trees, stealing nuts and hiding them for the coming winter. I’d seen a big black bear this morning, chewing on nuts and acorns, halfway up the hill.
Standing in the cool breeze, I studied my woods, listening, feeling, tasting the unease that had prickled at my flesh for the last few months, ever since Jane Yellowrock had come visiting and turned my life upside down. She was the one responsible for the repeated recent visits by the churchmen. The Cherokee vampire hunter was the one who had brought all the changes, even if it wasn’t intentional. She had come hunting a missing vampire and, because she was good at her job—maybe the best ever—she had succeeded. She had also managed to save more than a hundred children from God’s Cloud.