“No,” said Ursula. “I have something else to discuss with you.”
“What?”
“Kara. Your mother.”
“My last name is Hadrada,” she said. “Is that familiar to you?”
Lyssa shook her head, unable to find her voice. Hearing this woman mention her mother by name had formed a knot in her throat that seeing Betty, fighting Betty, and standing over Betty’s dead body couldn’t come close to touching.
She seemed disappointed. “Ah.”
“How. .” Lyssa stopped, wetting her lips. “How did you know her?”
“Kara saved my life.” Ursula smiled. “Much too long a story for a time like this. But you have her face. When I saw you. . I thought at first it was her.”
Again, it was difficult to speak. “She’s dead.”
Ursula’s visible surprise — and regret — did painful things to Lyssa’s heart. No one had ever been sorry her mother was dead. Quite the opposite.
“I’m sorry,” whispered the old woman. “She was. . a good person. Few understood that, and she was unfairly treated because of it. As you are, I suspect.”
“She understood why.” Lyssa looked deep into her eyes, memorizing them. Some rainy day, when or if anyone ever disparaged her mother’s memory, she would recall this old woman, and her compassion. “So do I.”
“And yet, you haven’t fully embraced. .” Ursula stopped and looked past her at Eddie. “Never mind. I wanted to know if there’s anything I can do for you.” She looked down at Betty. “You’re here because of the Cruor Venator, aren’t you?”
Eddie’s shoulder brushed against hers, hard and warm. “She’s hunting Lyssa.”
“And so you become the hunter,” said Ursula softly, glancing down at Lyssa’s gleaming claws. “A formidable one, I expect.”
She pulled the jacket sleeve over her hand. “Not formidable enough to keep them from killing my friends, and. . tracking me.”
“Tracking you.” Ursula paled. “Ah.”
Lyssa thought about Estefan and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. That’s how Betty found this place. We should leave, and so should you. Right now. Before anyone else comes.”
“We will,” said the old woman firmly. “But how are they tracking you? It shouldn’t be possible.”
Lyssa was keenly aware of Eddie listening, and was afraid of how much he might hear that would damn her. But the truth had to be told, because she sensed Ursula might be able to help. She had nothing to lose, at this point.
And, Ursula had spoken her mother’s name. She had looked Lyssa in the eyes, without fear. No other witch in that room had been able to do the same.
That had to mean something.
Lyssa swallowed hard, and looked at Eddie. “Can you. . bring out the. .”
Skin, she could not say. Estefan’s skin.
Compassion filled his eyes. He slid off the backpack and pulled out the paper parcel. When he began to hand it to her, she shook her head and backed away.
Tight-lipped, Eddie unwrapped the brown paper and revealed the leopard hide.
Ursula leaned forward but did not touch.
“A shape-shifter,” she said, after a moment. “And so are you. I understand now. That’s the blood they’re sniffing.”
“I need to break the link. I’m not sure how.”
“If you’re Kara’s daughter, you know how. But I think you know the medicine will be worse than the disease.”
“What does that mean?” Eddie asked.
Lyssa finally reached for the parcel. “It means I can’t just grieve like a normal person.”
He hesitated, holding it back. “You know what you’re doing?”
“No.” She tried to smile for him, but the burning had already begun in her throat and eyes. “I don’t want any more knocks on the door, though. Do you?”
Eddie gave Lyssa a sharp look but handed her the parcel. She sat down on the couch, just as his cell phone began ringing. He answered tersely, his gaze never leaving hers. She was dimly aware of him speaking to Lannes, but her focus was mostly on Estefan’s skin.
Betty’s body was a surreal exclamation point on the floor, but it was easier to ignore her — or feel nothing at all but relief. Especially while holding part of her friend’s corpse.
Ursula murmured, “If you need blood. .”
Lyssa gave her a sharp look. Eddie hung up his cell phone, and said, “If she needs blood, she can have mine.”
It was like offering cocaine to a drug addict. He had no idea what that meant to her. She closed her eyes and shook her head. The remnants of Lethe’s blood would have to be enough. Before she could change her mind, she placed her hands on Estefan’s skin and opened her mind.
Images slammed like a hurricane, stealing her breath and squeezing her heart until her world was reduced to nothing but endless suffering — a life teetering on the edge of death.
From this maelstrom rose the memories of two women: one of them tall, lithe, and dressed in crimson; and the other, whose pale face was surrounded by a tumbling mass of glossy black hair. Betty and Nikola.
Both held curved obsidian blades in their hands. Their eyes glittered, and their smiles were white and sharp.
“I wish you had a child,” said the black woman, Nikola. “I’ve never had the blood of a shifter-baby. It must be sweet. So. . succulent.”
Betty rose from her couch, and glided across the floor. “Would it taste like spring?”
In her memories, Estefan trembled. Lyssa trembled with him, lost in his skin, lost in the pounding fear that fell upon him in throbbing waves. A primitive, violent fear, overwhelming, paralyzing — and dehumanizing. No fear could match it. No fear could be as powerful. No one but a Cruor Venator and her women could tear a brave heart to pieces with nothing but a look.
Estefan was untied in her memories, but still helpless, wearing his leopard body as he pressed his belly to a concrete floor and groveled. Frightened into paralysis.
Betty and Nikola surrounded him, obsidian knives flashing.
The first cut was shallow, across his side. The second cut deeper, over his heart. Betty sank to her knees, licking his blood off her blade. Nikola did the same, throwing back her head with a shuddering sigh. Lyssa hated them with a terrible fury.
From behind Estefan a familiar, leathery voice whispered, “I will wear your skin as my own, leopard. I will hunt your kind and make them live as animals until I am ready for their blood. I will take their power, and my empire will stretch into the fire when the new world comes.”
His terror sank like a sick root into his soul. It did not matter that it was out of his control, nothing but an illusion induced by evil. Being forced to endure such a violation of emotion was the same as rape.
Her friend, tortured to death. Estefan, whose only crime had been showing kindness to a lost girl with no home, no family, and a lot of loneliness.
Leave these memories, whispered the dragon, finally stirring. Do what you came to do and let it be over. Find the link. Sever it.
Whatever spell the Cruor Venator had cast would be linked to Estefan’s skin. Not the physical skin, because otherwise, burning it to ashes would be enough. The spell was linked to the essence, to the spirit and blood.
Shifting magic was a unique magic. All shifters could sense one another if close enough. The Cruor Venator would now have the same ability, simply augmented by her own power.
Guide me, she said to the dragon. Please.
A wing stretched through her soul, gathering her close. Here. Follow.