Obsidian Butterfly (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 9)

I stood on the other side of the bar from it, looking at one of those dried faces. The mouth had been sewn shut on this one. I didn't know why. I took a few deep cleansing breaths, and there was an odor of herbs to it, but mostly just a dry smell like tanned leather and dust. I reached out with my left hand. Even with the bandages and the muscle cramps this was still my power hand, the hand to sense magic with. Most people have a hand that is better for sensing stuff, usually the opposite hand from the one you write with. I have no idea what ambidextrous people do.

There was an amazing amount of power pushing out from the thing, but the bar was wide and I was hurt so my concentration wasn't good, and I still couldn't answer the one question I needed answered. I used my right hand to sort of jump-sit on the bar, then got onto my knees. There was a face at eye level with me, and this one had eyes. A man's face, I think, with pale grey wolf eyes trapped in a dried mummy face. Those eyes stared out at me, and there was someone home. The walking dead don't show fear. I knew what I'd feel before I stretched my hand out toward the face. There was Nicky's power like a warm blanket of worms, squirming over my skin. It was some of the most uncomfortable magic I'd ever felt, unclean, as if the power itself would eat your flesh if you stayed too close to it for too long. This was where Nicky's energy had gone, and this was why no matter how much energy he gathered, it would never be enough. Magic this negative, this evil, is like a drug. It takes more and more energy to get the same result with worse and worse effect on the spellcaster.

I sent my own magic into that mess, not to empower, but seeking. I felt the cool brush of a soul, and before I could pull back, my power ran up that column of trapped flesh, and the souls glowed behind my eyelids with cool white light. None of them had been dead when he did this to them. I wasn't a hundred percent sure they were dead now.

I opened my eye and pulled my hand back from the thing. His power sucked at my hand like invisible mud. I pulled free with an almost audible pop. The man's face moved its withered mouth, and made a long dry sound, twice. "Help," it said, "help."

I swallowed a wave of nausea and was very glad I'd missed breakfast. I crawled on one arm and my knees to Nicky. I bent over him and whispered, "Would burning it free their souls?"

He shook his head.

"Can you free their souls?"

He nodded.

I think if he'd said yes to the first question, I'd have put the Browning to his head and killed him. But I needed him to free them, and I added that to my list of things to do before I left town. But there was nothing I could do for them today, except stay alive, and strangely, keep Nicky Baco alive. One of life's little ironies, that last.

I sat on the bar with my legs dangling over the edge, hand cradled to my chest, dazed with the sheer evil of it. I'd seen my share, but this was near the top. This was near the top after what I'd seen in the hospital. At least the corpses were just eating bodies, not souls.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," the Ulfric said.

"You're closer than you know," I said.

"Where is our gift?" he said.

"Where's your lupa?"

He stroked the head of one of the wolves by his legs. "This is my lupa."

"I can't share the gift with anyone in animal form," I said.

He frowned, and it was very close to being angry. "You must honor us."

"I plan to." I rolled the sleeve of my jacket back over my left arm. The wrist sheath had to go. I undid the straps, propping the blade, sheath and all between my legs. The monster hovered behind me, peering curiously. It was distracting me. I couldn't save them today, and didn't want to see it anymore until I could fix it.

"Can you order it to leave the room?"

He looked at me. "Scared?"

"I can feel the souls crying out for help. It's sort of distracting."

He looked at me, and I watched the color drain from his face. "You mean that."

I smiled, but not like it was funny. "You didn't know that he's trapping their souls in that thing?"

"He said he was." His voice had gone softer.

"You didn't believe him," I said.

The Ulfric was gazing up at the thing as if he'd never seen it before. "You wouldn't believe something like that, would you?"

"I would." I shrugged, wished I hadn't, and said, "but then this is my line of work. Can you please send it away?"

He nodded, and spoke rapidly in Spanish. The thing folded down on itself and crept away on arms and legs and bodies like a broken centipede. Sitting on the bar, I could see it go down a trap door behind the bar. When the last segment of it had slithered out of sight, I turned back to the Ulfric. He still looked pale.

"Baco is the only one who can free their souls. Don't kill him until he's done that."

"I didn't plan to kill him," the man said.

"That was before you knew. I don't know you well enough to know if when I leave, you'll get all self-righteous and try to end this evil. Don't, please, or you condemn them all to an eternity of that."

He swallowed like he was having a little trouble keeping down his own breakfast. "I won't kill him."

"Good." I drew the knife from between my knees right-handed. "Now gather round, boys and girls, because I'm only going to do this trick once."

There was a general movement as the wolves moved forward. I spared a glance for the boys I'd come in with. They hadn't put their guns up, but they had them pointed at the floor or the ceiling. Edward was watching the wolves, Bernardo was watching the wolves, too, though he looked pale. Olaf was watching me. I really, really, didn't like him.

"I give honor to the Ulfric and lupa of the Broken Spear Clan. I give the most precious of gifts to the Ulfric, but not being true lukoi, I cannot share this gift with the lupa in her present form. For that, I apologize most sincerely. If I come back this way, I'll shop better." I sat the blade on the bar and leaned over the edge until I could reach a clean glass. One of those thick chunky ones that people are so fond of putting scotch in. It was a strain to get back into a sitting position on the bar, but I managed it with the glass in one hand. I put the glass beside me on the bar and picked the knife up. I laid the blade against my left arm, just above the wrist, and stared at the whole, pale, unscarred flesh. There were scars just above it where a shapeshifted witch had clawed me, and the cross-shaped burn scar that was now a little crooked from the claw marks, but this one patch was still pure. I hoped it didn't scar, but what was one more.

I took in a deep breath and sliced the blade down my skin. A sigh ran through the watching werewolves, and whimpers from a few of the furrier throats. I ignored them. I'd known it would get a crowd reaction. I kept looking at my flesh and the damage I'd just done to it. The wound didn't bleed immediately. It was just a thin red line, then the first drop spilled from the wound, and the rest of the wound spilled in crimson rivulets down my arm. Deeper than I'd wanted it, but probably about what was needed. I held the wound over the glass. Some of it splashed around the edges, trailing down the sides, but I managed to get it going into the cup. I didn't even need to squeeze the wound much to encourage the flow. Deeper than I wanted it, oh yeah.

The Ulfric had moved closer, close enough that he was standing with his body touching my legs. The wolf that he'd introduced as his lupa moved up to nuzzle at my knee, and he hit her. He backhanded her the way you'd hit a dog you didn't like much. Where was women's lib when you needed it? She went to her belly, crying in doggy fashion, telling him she hadn't meant any harm with her tail tight curled to her rump.

No one else tried to move forward. If the lupa couldn't share, the rest of them knew better than to try.

The Ulfric stayed pressed against my legs. "Let me take it out of your arm." He stared at my bleeding arm like I'd stripped for him, something beyond sex, beyond hunger, and yet a little of both. I raised the arm so the blood trickled down it in fast little streams of red, splashing down into the glass. His gaze followed the movement like a dog after a piece of food.

The truth was that letting people lick a wound directly tended to distract me. Through the marks I was bound to a werewolf and a vampire. Both of which found blood exciting. The thoughts that filled me when I shared blood with anyone were too primitive, too overwhelming. Especially now with my shields in ruins, I couldn't risk it. "Is the gift worthy?" I asked.

"You know it is," and his voice had that peculiar hoarseness that men get when sex is in the air.

"Then drink, Ulfric, drink. Don't waste it." I held the bloody glass out to him. He took it reverently in both hands. He drank, and I watched his throat convulse as he swallowed my blood. It should have bothered me more, I guess, but it didn't. The numbness was back, a distant almost comfortable feeling. I fished under the bar until I found a stack of clean napkins and pressed them to my arm. The napkins soaked crimson in moments.

The Ulfric had waded into the pack with my blood in his hands. They surrounded him, touching him, caressing, begging for him to share. He dipped his lingers in the nearly empty cup and held them down for the wolves to lick.

Edward came to stand near me. He said nothing, just helped me put pressure on the wound, got more napkins from under the bar and a clean cloth to tie it tight. Our eyes met, and he just shook his head, the faintest of smiles playing on his face. "Most people pay money for information."

"Money doesn't interest most of the people I deal with."

The Ulfric called back to me through the reaching werewolves. His mouth was bloodstained, his neat beard and mustache thick with my blood. He stared at me with his golden eyes and said, "If you want to talk to Nicky, help yourself."

"Thank you, Ulfric," I said. I hopped down off the bar, and Edward had to catch me or I'd have fallen. Fresh blood loss on top of everything else was not what I had needed. I waved him away, and he didn't argue.

Edward undid Nicky's gag, and took a step back. The werewolves had pulled back, giving us the illusion of privacy, though I knew that every werewolf in the room would hear us, even if we whispered.

"Hi, Nicky," I said.

He had to try twice before he said, "Anita."

"I was here before ten." I put my hands on the bar and propped my chin on them so he wouldn't have to strain. The movement hurt my back, but somehow I wanted to be on eye level with him. The bulky makeshift bandage seemed to be in the way, but I wanted to keep the arm elevated. Nicky looked even worse up close. One eye was completely closed, blackened and bloodfilled. His nose looked broken, blood bubbling from it when he breathed.

"He came back into town early."

"I figured as much. You've been a very bad boy, Nicky. Pissing off your Ulfric, power play behind his back when you're just human, not even a werewolf, and that thing. That's not voodoo. How the hell did you do that?"

"Older magic than voodoo," he said.

"What kind of magic?" I asked.

"I thought you wanted to talk about the monster that's killing innocent citizens?" His voice was strained, pain-filled. Normally, I'm against torture, but I just couldn't find much pity in my heart for Nicky. I'd seen his creation, and I felt the torment of its parts. Nope, I just couldn't spare much sympathy for Nicky. He'd never take enough damage to make up for what he'd done, not at least while he was alive. Hell might be a very nasty place for Nicky Baco. I trusted the divine to have a better sense of justice and irony than I did.

"Okay, what do you really know about the thing that's out there?" I asked.

He lay there on the bar, wrists and ankles bound together, blood trickling from his mouth, and talked as if he were sitting behind a desk. Except for the little pain sounds he made every once in a while, which spoiled some of the effect.

"I felt it years ago, maybe ten. I felt it wake."

"What do you mean wake?"

"Have you had it in your mind yet?" he asked, and this time I heard the fear in his voice.

"Yeah," I said.

"It was sluggish at first, as if it had been asleep or imprisoned, dormant for a very long time. It grew stronger every year."

"Why didn't you tell the police?"

"Ten years ago the police didn't have any psychics or witches working for them. And I already had a criminal record." He coughed and spat blood, and a tooth out on the bar. It made me raise my head up, which forced Nicky to roll his head a little. "What was I going to tell them? That there was this thing out there somewhere, this voice in my head, and it was getting stronger. I didn't know what it could do at first. I didn't know what it was."

"What is it?"

"It's a god."

I raised eyebrows at him.

"It was worshipped as a god once. It wants to be worshipped again. It says that gods need tribute to survive."

"You got all this from just a voice in your head?"

"I've had ten years with the thing whispering in my head. What have you learned in less than that many days?"

I thought about that. I knew it was killing to feed, not just for sport. Though it enjoyed the slaughter, that I'd felt, too. I knew it both feared me and wanted me. It feared another death worker on the opposite side, but it wanted to drink my powers and would have if Leonora hadn't stopped it.

"Why has it just started to kill people now? Why after a decade?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Why does it slaughter some and skin others?"

"I don't know."

"What is it doing with the body parts that it takes away from the scenes?" Which was a detail that the police would not like me sharing with someone outside the investigation, but I wanted answers more than I wanted to be cautious.

"I don't know." He coughed again, but didn't spit out anything. Good. If he'd continued to spit blood, I'd have worried about internal injuries. I didn't want to have to persuade the pack to take him to the hospital. I didn't think I'd have much luck.

"Where is it?"

"I've never been there. But understand that what's been killing people is not the god. He's still trapped wherever he started. His servants have done all the murders, not him."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that if you think you've got trouble now, you ain't seen nothing yet. I can feel him in the dark, lying like some kind of bloated thing, filling up with power. When he's full enough, he'll rise, and it'll be hell to pay."

"Why didn't you tell me all this before?"

"You had the police with you the first time. If you turn me over to them I'm dead. You've seen what I do. There wouldn't even need to be a jury."

He had a point. "When this is over, you have to dismantle it. You have to free their souls, agreed?"

"When I can walk again, agreed."

I glanced at his legs and saw that there was a lump under his pants leg. It was the bone of the leg, a compound fracture. Jesus. Some days there are so many stones to throw in so many different directions that I don't even know where to start.

"Does this god have a name?"

"He calls himself the Red Woman's Husband."

"That can't be an original English phrase."

"I think he knows what his victims know. By the time he came to me, he spoke in English."

"So you think he's been here a long time."

"I think he's always been here."

"What do you mean, always? Like eternity, or a really, really long time."

"I don't know how long he's been here." Nicky closed his good eye, as if he were tired.

"Okay, Nicky, okay." I turned to the Ulfric. "Is he telling the truth?"

The man nodded. "He didn't lie."

"Great. Thank you for your hospitality and please don't kill him. We may need him in the next few days to help kill this thing, not to mention freeing the souls of your pack mates."

"I'll lay off on the beating."

It was the closest thing I was going to get to a "yes, we are going to let him go and make sure he isn't hurt anymore."

"Great, I'll be in touch."

Edward stayed near me as we walked to the door. He didn't offer me his arm, but he stayed close enough that if I stumbled he'd be there. Bernardo already had the door open. Olaf just watched us walk towards them. I stumbled a little up the two steps to the door, and Olaf caught my arm. I looked up into his eyes, and it wasn't pride or honor or respect that I saw. It was ... hunger, a desire so great it was a physical need, a hunger.

I pulled away from him and left a smear of blood on his hand. Edward was at my back, helping me towards the door. Olaf raised his hand to his mouth and pressed it to his mouth like a kiss, but he was doing the same thing that the wolves did. He was tasting my blood and liked it. There are all kinds of monsters. Most of them crave blood. Some for food, some for pleasure, but you're dead either way.