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“Pain bad?” I asked.

“Yeah. I’ll stay back here for the other door,” he said, “and cover my ears. Don’t get yourself killed.”

“Not my plan,” I said.

“You two finished playing nice-nice? Good.” Eli said, his own words a snarl, nearly as good as a big-cat’s. “Six vamps inside,” he said, “clustered at the back of the room, probably trying to get out the locked escape hatch. They’re gonna be pissed when they realize the hatch won’t open and they’re trapped. And it won’t be long before we have wet, pissed vamps, fresh outta the shower and wanting revenge. On three, people.”

In the moments we had been standing there, Eli had used the last of his C4 on the third door. He didn’t bother to count silently, and I drew a silver stake and my fourteen-inch-long vamp-killer as he counted down. “One, two, three.”

The door blew. And nothing happened. No vamps flew at us. Nothing happened. At all.

I raced past Eli and Bruiser, passing through the baptismal water, feeling it splatter on my hair and across my neck and back. Leaped through the splintered door, into the room. Landed, weapons out to either side, my body bladed, left foot forward, balanced. Ready for anything. I stopped. Water swirled into the room and around my feet.

Clustered in the back of the room were six vamps. Big H was in the middle, standing with his arms out at the sides, his fingers seeming to claw at the wall. Two vamps were on either side; one was crouched at his feet. All of them were vamped out, snarling, their bodies oddly twisted, but not like the spidey vamps. Like regular old vamps. None of them moved.

And I had no idea what to do.

I just stood there. Weapons ready. Breathing like a bellows. Inside me, Beast snarled, puzzled. Behind me, Eli turned off the water. Silence fell.

The guys moved into the room, forming a semicircle behind me.

Like the upstairs, this suite was done in white and scarlet, with a bed big enough to play touch football on, white-painted columns for bedposts, a seating area big enough to seat both teams on, tables and chairs at one end of the room, an en suite bath visible through an open door. And a pile of vamps so still they looked like statuary.

Hieronymus took a faint breath and said something I couldn’t hear. I pulled off my helmet and he repeated, “I cannot.”

I stepped closer, feeling the guys behind me keeping pace. “What can’t you do?”

His face warped, as if his skin had been pulled to the side only to resettle like soft clay or putty that, left alone, returned to its original form. Something was hinky here, not what I had expected, not even subconsciously.

I took another step and sniffed, my mouth open to take in the scent of the room, which I hadn’t done since I started down the stairs to Big H’s lair. The smell of vamp was strong and herbaclass="underline" the floral of funeral flowers, the dry scent of sage. But the smell of sickness was missing, as was the acrid, dusty scent of the spidey vamps.

I walked slowly toward them, the guys on my trail, spreading out and around furniture, keeping the vamps covered. I was close enough that in Beast’s vision, I could see the necklace around Big H’s neck. And I realized that his neck was burned beneath it. It hadn’t been that way before; I was sure of that.

To the female vamp at his feet, I said, “Unbutton H’s shirt.”

An expression of utter relief crossed her face and vanished. She stood gracefully, reaching long, delicate fingers to her master. They unbuttoned Big H’s white shirt, exposing his chest. Which was blistered and pitted and blackened around a shard of iron wrapped in corroded, ancient copper.

“Tag. You’re it,” I said. When the vamps didn’t react, I said, “The Naturaleza tagged you. They put that on you sometime after you hired me to come kill them off and before I got here. It’s controlling you. Isn’t it?”

The female vamp nodded once, then froze.

“If I take it off, will you die?”

Hieronymus’ face twisted again, and I realized it was with the effort to speak. Nothing came out, but his lips moved. He said, “Take it.”

Keeping the vamp-killer to the side, I sheathed the stake, dropped the helmet, and reached up a hand. I touched the copper necklace. Lifted it slowly. The iron wrapped in copper tore H’s skin as I lifted it away. Blood trickled down his chest. There was no clasp, and I wasn’t going to get close enough to lift it over his head. “This is gonna hurt,” I said.

With a single massive jerk, I broke the chain and leaped back.

The vamps collapsed to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. The iron swung on the chain, back and forth, dangling in my fist. Power surged up from it, snaring me in its might. The entire room went black.

And I was falling.

CHAPTER 26

Mr. Prepared for Anything

I was in a dark place, empty and cool. It smelled of wet and age and eons of time. It pressed down on me, heavy and dense and dangerous. It was so dark I couldn’t tell when I closed my eyes. I reached out and the vamp-killer clanged against stone. The fist holding the necklace touched stone on the other side. My heart leaped into my throat. I was underground. I was buried.

But the stone fell away as I continued my turn. A light, faint and dim, appeared to my right. I took a step, another, moving slow and easy. Moving through the underground dark, a tunnel, cold and wet and chill, its dimensions somehow organic, widening and narrowing. A cave. I sheathed the blade and placed my feet carefully, redistributed my weight warily, expecting to find no ground beneath me at every step.

As I moved, I heard the slow plink of water. Smelled water and smoke, heard the crackle of fire licking at cold, dry wood. The passage opened up to reveal a large cavern in the rock, domed, with stalactites hanging down from the roof and stalagmites rising up from the floor, the walls smooth and pearlescent like a shell.

The fire burned near the back wall, its light flickering. I recognized my spirit home, the cavern of my youth, the place where I first learned to shift when I was a child of five. The place I went to in my mind when I was in danger or when I had something I needed to learn. It was a hard place, but it was mine. A place of strength and a place of dreams.

Near the fire sat an old woman, her gray hair in braids hanging down to her lap on either side. Her head was down, staring into the fire, the light showing me only the top of her head and her wrinkled forehead. I thought it was Kathyayini, but the clothes were all wrong. This woman wore no flower-sack clothing, but a cotton shirt in a vibrant yellow, a pullover shirt intended to tie at her throat. It hung open, revealing a necklace of carved and dyed bone and porcupine quills and glass beads. Her skirt was canvas, dyed blue, worn at the hem and belted with worked hide in beads to match the necklace. Tied to the belt was a series of small leather bags, pouches for herbs and minerals.

I paced slowly to the fire. When I stood there, my shadow elongated behind me, I had no idea what to say. This was a Tsalagi elder. A shaman. I should have taken off my weapons. One didn’t wear weapons into the presence of an elder of The People.

“Tsilugi, Dalonige i Digadoli, aquetsi ageyutsa.” Welcome, Golden Eyes, Golden Stone, my daughter.

My legs folded, and I sank to the ground. “Elisi?” She raised her head and the firelight moved over her wrinkled face. Her eyes were amber, like mine. “Elisi,” I whispered. My grandmother.

“Forgive me for coming into the presence of an elder with weapons.”