Cat Tats

Rick raised his head, the tendons in his neck straining. Nausea roiled in his stomach and up his throat at the slight movement, and he dropped his head back. He was lying faceup. The rafters were barely visible over his head in the dusky, gloomy light. The familiar scent of hay and horses was strong in his nostrils, but it wasn’t the hay of his parents’ barn. There was an acrid undertang to this scent, as if the box stalls hadn’t been mucked out in a long while, and it was musty, as if horses hadn’t used the premises recently. He rolled his head to the side and saw a shaft of light filtering through dusty air, falling through a wide crack in the wall. No. Not Dad’s barn. He’d never let it get in this condition.

This place was abandoned.

He almost called out, but something stopped him, some wise wisp of self that wasn’t still hazy from the raspberry Jell-O shooters. He tried to sit up, but pain shot from his hands and pooled in his shoulders like liquid fire. His arms were bound.

He craned to see, blinking to clear his vision. His arms were pulled up high in a V and shackled with old-fashioned iron cuffs chained to rings. His legs were stretched out too, similarly secured, his body making a dual V. He was naked. Instantly his body constricted and his breathing sped. He struggled to rise and discovered that he lay on a wide black square stone, cool to the touch despite the Louisiana heat. On the ground around the stone, touching the four corners, was a circle of metal, black in the light.

Terror shot through his veins, clearing the last of the alcohol out of his system. His heart pounded. His breath came fast, gasping. He broke into a hot sweat, which instantly cooled into a clammy stink.

He jerked his arms and legs hard, giving it all he had to pull himself free. But nothing gave. The pain multiplied in his legs and arms like lightning agony, at his shoulders and groin with liquid fire. His wrists and ankles burned, the iron cuffs binding him, cutting into his flesh. He turned his head to the side and retched, but his stomach was empty and his mouth dry as desert sand.

•   •   •

When the nausea passed, Rick dropped his head back. Forced himself to breathe deeply, slowly, despite his racing heart. To analyze. To think. To be calm. He closed his eyes and mouth, and worked to slow his mind, to contain his racing fear. Around him the barn was silent. Lifeless. Where the hell am I?

When he was calmer, he raised his head again, and studied everything he could see, everything he could hear, analyzing it all. The barn was old, of post-and-beam construction, the frame of twelve-by-twelve beams fitted together with pegs and notches and the vertical boards of the walls nailed in place to the frame. There were four box stalls, one on each corner, with a tack room on one side between two stalls, and opposite the tack room, between the stalls on the other side, was a wide space to saddle and groom horses. The center area was an open passageway more than twelve feet wide, with moldy hay stacked on the wall opposite the double front doors. It had to be more than fifty years old, and the wood showed signs of termites and the kind of damage only time and disuse will provide. Foliage grew up close to the sides of the barn, vines and tree limbs reaching into the interior. Part of the tin roof was missing, and birds flew in and out, twittering and cooing. He could hear no sound of engines, which meant he was miles from any highway, miles from any airport, from any city, far from help. He could hear the faint sound of water rippling, echoing, a soft trickle, like a bayou moving sluggishly nearby. Rarely, he could hear a plop as something fell into the water. All of that was bad. But at least he was alone. For now. That much was good.

When he was calmer, he looked down at himself. If his body had been a clock, his arms would have been nearly at ten and two, and his legs close to eight and four. It looked familiar, and from his alcohol- and drug-fogged brain came an image: He was positioned like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. Like an archetype. Bound in a witches’ circle, on a square altar. Like a goat for slaughter.

Was it the full moon? The new moon? Was he the sacrifice in some black-magic ceremony? A long shiver racked down his spine. Rick had a lot of specialized training under his belt, but nothing he’d learned in his criminal justice classes at Tulane, at the police academy afterward, or in the focused and elite training provided by his current covert employers had prepared him for this.

Judging from the angle of the sunbeam, the sun was setting. Or rising. The beam fell across the barn onto a rat-eaten saddle and bridle, and a bedraggled red horse blanket across a joist. As he watched, a bird alighted on the blanket and pecked, eating whatever it found in the ripped, rotting cloth. It pulled out a bit of stuffing and, with a flutter of wings, carried it away into the darkness of the rafters. To the side, against the nearest stall wall, was a glass of water with a red straw in it. His mouth felt even drier at the sight, but there was no way for him to reach it. Rick dropped back his head.

In the academy, he had attracted the attention of the black suits in the Justice Department. He had been co-opted for an undercover assignment, and given a plausible story and a believable problem that got him “kicked out of NOPD.” He’d jumped on the opportunity, even though it had meant a false arrest for assault, even though his family couldn’t know. And even though, if successful, he’d be alone with vamps, without backup. On the surface, he was a pariah to the cops, but he’d been working to infiltrate the vamps’ organization for the New Orleans Police Department, the local FBI field office, and some high muckety-mucks in the DOJ.

A pretty face and a checkered past, along with the police training and the criminal justice degree from Tulane, had made him the perfect hire as part of a security detail for one of Leo Pellissier’s scions, Roman Munoz. Munoz was a low-level vamp scumbag needing muscle for hire. Rick had worked himself up in Munoz’s organization, and when his new boss went to jail for tax fraud—the first successful vamp conviction in Louisiana, courtesy of Rick’s tips, passed to his handler—Rick had migrated into odd jobs for the vampire community: protection gigs, strong-arm stuff, and security. Watching for the golden opportunity to draw the eyes of the MOC—the Master of the City—Leo Pellissier.

Across the barn, a field mouse with tiny round ears scampered across the floor and into a hole. Above Rick, wings fluttered, sounding larger than the sparrow-sized bird. He tried his bindings again, trying to think. Getting nowhere.

He had proven himself and was now an established and trusted part of the lower-level vampire organization. He knew people. He had skills usually cultivated by thugs and thieves, and yet, thanks to his LaFleur upbringing in New Orleans society, he could blend in almost anywhere, even in the upscale Mithran culture. He was versatile, smart, and willing. The vamps seemed to like him and were using his services. Lately, he had done some work for his uncle, who was security chief and primo blood-servant for Katie of Katie’s Ladies, which put him one step closer to Pellissier.

He’d been undercover now for more than two years, a long time by covert standards. When his successful stint undercover was done, he would be perfectly placed to move up quickly in law enforcement. But the most recent assignment had proven complex. He was trying to discover where the Mithrans kept their rogues, the new vampires who were bitten and turned but not yet ready for public view. And he was trying to find out something—anything—about the MOC’s financial structure. Both had proven elusive, but he had been making headway.

Until his ego let him think he was about to get lucky with Isleen of the cute smile and the bounteous breasts. And the big fangs. A girl. He had been brought down by a girl. He was so damn stupid.

The last thing he remembered was the bar and Isleen, the girl vamp he’d been trying to pick up. And succeeding. Blond, blue-eyed, about five two, and built to please a man, she had flirted steadily with him, even buying him drinks. . . . When did a gorgeous bombshell ever have to buy a guy drinks? Stupid. Yeah, that was him.

He tried to raise his arms; the shackles burned his wrists. He lifted his head again, studying the stone and the witch circle. The stone was polished smooth, not with a high shine but with a matte luster. But it was dusty, as if it hadn’t been used in a long time. And one corner was broken off, with a long crack weaving brokenly toward the center. The circle looked like iron in the dim light, but iron would interfere with any spell casting. So maybe silver, highly tarnished. Or copper? Could some witches use copper? But why had a vampire turned him over to the witches? The two races hated each other.

He checked the shaft of light again. It was less sharply angled, nearly straight across, and tinted with pink. Setting. The sun was setting. He shivered in the warm air. Night was coming. Most witch ceremonies were at night, weren’t they? At least the black spells? He had to get out of here. He fought his bonds. The pain in his wrists and ankles was liquid heat. Blood trickled from his flesh as it swelled around the too-tight cuffs. Something crawled up his inner thigh, tickling its way through the hair. Spider. Had to be. He bounced his butt hard and dislodged the bug, landing on it. Crushing it beneath his buttock. A soft laugh escaped his throat. Sounding more sob than amusement.

Taking only minutes, the sunbeam reddened and thinned and grew fainter. And vanished. And night fell. Quickly. It took only seconds for the dark to smother him. Heart pounding, he heard only the twitter of birds in the rafters, the rustle of small rodents, and the sound of his breathing—too fast, too harsh. Choked with fear.

Dark. Very dark. The new moon, then. A new-moon ceremony. He tried to remember what the new moon meant for the black arts. And then he heard singing. A soft melody, unfamiliar, rising and falling, from outside the barn. And footsteps. Brushing the earth. Swishing, like a dress sweeping the ground and foliage with each step. Fear crawled up his throat again, and he was glad his stomach was empty. If he vomited, he would be lost. Too bad he hadn’t eaten. Maybe it would be a kinder fate.

Something metallic rattled from the double-barn-door entrance. One door groaned as it opened, the echo of the rusty hinges twanging into the night. It was too dark to see anyone enter, but the soft swishing sounds of fabric moving through grass grew stronger, closer.

“You’re awake! Good! I brought you something.” Isleen’s voice.

Childlike, happy, as if he were in her bed and she’d just returned from an errand. “Do you like it?”

Rick licked his lips, dry and cracked, drawing up the short introductory course in hostage negotiation he’d taken at the academy. Keep them talking. Make the kidnapper see you as a person, not a tool. Yeah. Right. That was not gonna work so well with a vamp, especially if she was hungry. Make them do things for you, so they had to associate with you as a person. That one might do. . . .

“I can’t see in the dark,” he whispered.

“Well, poo. Of course you can’t, you dear little human. I’ll fix that.”

In the dark, he heard the soft shush of cloth and the sharper scritch of a match. Light so bright it hurt flamed and lit the barn. He saw Isleen holding a dusty Coleman lantern, the logo in red on the gray metal can. The light gleamed on her face, porcelain in the sudden illumination. She was dressed in white, the bodice close fitting, pushing up her breasts like a corset might. The dress was long with a handkerchief hem, pointed, embroidered, and beaded with white pearls, like a dress one of his sisters had worn to the prom, and it caught the light like satin or silk. Her hair was down, brushed to a golden shine, with a wreath of braided flowers on her head. White orchids resting in green leaves.

She set the lantern on the black marble stone and held out her arms. “Better now? Do you like it?” She twirled slowly as if modeling the dress.

“Pretty,” he said.

“And me?” she said, sounding just a bit put out. Her lower lip was protruding in a pout.

“Pretty,” he said. And his voice croaked with thirst on the word. “Ohhhh. You’re thirsty.” He heard a little snick. The sound of fangs clicking down into place. “So am I.” Her voice dropped lower, suggestive, a sensual caress. Isleen was close enough now that he could see her eyes in the lantern light. Pupils blown, black as the devil’s heart, resting in the bloody sclera of her eyes. And something in the way she tilted her head, her blond hair falling in a long slow wave, looked . . . not quite right. The little vampire wasn’t just thirsty—she was hungry.

But instead of biting him, she brought the glass of water over and—sinking onto the dusty stone at his side—brought the red straw to his lips. He drank, a desperate sucking sound that she seemed to like. Her face softened into desire and she licked her lips, a flick of tongue between inch-and-a-half-long fangs. The straw had a bend, and she set it on the stone so that he could reach it by lifting his head and craning to the side. Curling his lips around the top, he again sucked deeply, and finished the water with a loud sputter of air through the straw, leaving only a dribble in the bottom.

He focused on Isleen. She was bent over his left wrist, her mouth open, breathing in the scent of his blood with a soft scree of sound, one with a muted moan of desire in it. Her tongue darted out and licked across the seeping wound, along the sides of his wrist and down the center of his palm. Almost instantly, the pain abated in his wrist. Pleasure trailed up his arm. His heart boomed hard, a bass drum in his chest, in his ears. He dropped his head back to the stone, breathing out a faint gasp of desire. And Isleen filled his field of vision, imprisoning him with her eyes, one hand splayed on his chest. “I like the way you tassste,” she hissed. “And you are mine now. Miiiine.” Isleen placed a slow kiss to the soft part of his belly where his rib cage ended and his belly began. He could feel his pulse pound there, in the huge artery just beneath her lips. Rick was quite certain that she was mad.

He fought his rising fear, knowing that she could smell it and could hear his heart pound, knowing his reactions would incite her predatory instincts. She laughed, the low, sensual sound vibrating deep through her lips into his belly.

Looking over her shoulder, Rick saw the barn door open. Only a crack, but the silence let him hope—for long, hopeless moments—that he might yet be saved. And then a small voice said, “I am here, mistress.”

Isleen rose and whirled so quickly it was dizzying, as if time stuttered and stumbled and he missed some vital second where she moved. She crouched and hissed. Stopped for a second and slowly stood upright. “You are late.”

“Yes, mistress. There was traffic.” When Isleen didn’t respond, the newcomer said, “I have my equipment.”

“You may begin. But first I will eat. To your knees, girl.”

Rick heard a soft thud as knees hit the earth of the old barn. The voice whispered even more softly, “I am yours, mistress. But I thought you wanted him bound to you by the end of the new moon.”

Isleen paused again, that otherworldly stillness that was another aspect of the Mithrans, the vampire race. It was a stillness that mimicked death, as inhuman as the speed with which they could move and as strange as the need for human blood. “And my drinking from you will impede this?”

“Even if you allowed me to drink from you, I am weak. You have fed deeply, and my body has not yet recovered. I would not be able to finish in time.”

Rick understood. Isleen had taken too much for too many days. The girl—Isleen’s blood-servant—was dangerously anemic.

“I shall hunt, then. I will return before dawn.” Isleen looked back at him over her shoulder, her head cocking, birdlike, the angle not possible for a human, her hair falling like silk. “And I will have my vengeance on Regina Katarina Fonteneau for taking what was mine.”

Regina Katarina Fonteneau . . . had to be Katie of Katie’s Ladies. But how would killing him hurt Katie?

Another one of those broken seconds later, Isleen was gone. Night air whooshed in softly to fill the place where she had stood. Rick smelled honeysuckle and wild jasmine from the vines on the barn’s walls. In Isleen’s place was the new arrival. His new tormentor. She was pale skinned, standing somewhere around five feet, and her hair was dyed Goth black. Dark circles rimmed beneath her eyes, and the flesh of her throat was bruised, with blue veins tracing beneath the surface. Her neck, throat, and upper chest were crusted over with scarring. Some of the wounds were fresh, puckered, and oozing. Vampire bites weren’t supposed to do that. Vampire saliva and blood were supposed to have healing properties. Unless something was wrong with Isleen. There had been rumors of vampires with illnesses, notably the long-chained scions he was supposed to find.

The girl lit more lanterns, light flooded the room, and Rick raised his head, looking at where Isleen had licked his left wrist. His wrist, hand, and arm were pain free, but the skin was still inflamed. A pustule was forming on the outer part of his wrist, and red streaks were running up his forearm. He wasn’t being healed. He was being made sick. His heart sped up again, and Rick turned his head to the girl.

She was a fragile thing, her clothes dirty, blood dried on the neckline. She lifted a case, one that looked a lot like a gun box but bigger, and set it beside him. When she opened it, he could see needles in sterile packets, and chemicals, and his heart painfully skipped a beat. She was going to torture him. With needles. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. She’s going to use needles. Son of a bitch. He hated needles. He struggled again, pulling at the bonds. The sound was muted but for his cursing, which seemed to echo through the deserted barn. His energy was quickly depleted, and he fell back, banging his head on the black stone, gasping, sobbing. He was so dehydrated that his eyes stayed dry. He couldn’t break free. He had to use other talents.

Humanize yourself. Talk to the captor. Right . . . “What’s your name?” he croaked. Ignoring him, the girl lifted out vials and bottles of chemicals, and set them on a small tray, one she could carry and maneuver easily. When she was satisfied, she stepped back and uncoiled an electrical extension cord. Which meant there was a generator—which he couldn’t hear—or a building nearby. Someplace to escape to. Maybe find a phone. “What’s your name?” he said again, and when she didn’t answer, he said, “My name’s Rick.”

“I don’t care,” she whispered. She took out a small clock and opened out little legs on the back, making a stand, placing it so that she could see its face. The time read nine twenty-seven. “I don’t care what you do or why she brought you here. I don’t care if you rescue puppies and heal the sick with a touch of your hand. I’m going to do what she wants. So shut up.” She placed the glass, newly filled with water, at his lips.

He drank, and when he spoke, his voice was stronger. “Why? Why are you going to do what she wants?”

The girl’s hands stilled. She was so thin that light from the closest lantern spilled through her flesh, turning her bones dark and red, ghostlike and ephemeral. “She tried to force me as her blood-servant”—she glanced away, and when she swallowed, it looked painful—“but she couldn’t bind me. I don’t know why. But when she failed, she lost control. She nearly drained me.”

“Forcing a blood bond is illegal according to Mithran law. So is draining humans.”

“I know.”

“We could go to the Master of the City. Leo Pellissier is big on vampire law and order. He would make her stop. Punish her.”

“I can’t.” She tried to take a breath, and it sounded like silk tearing, wet and painful along her throat. “I tried to get away. Three times. And this last time . . .” Her voice broke, mewling like a kitten crushed in a fist. Tears filled her eyes, and she rolled her lips in, as if sealing in a memory and its pain. Her breath was tortured, and she pressed her pale hand to her even paler throat. “This last time . . . she took my brother. He’s seven.” The girl turned her face away, hiding behind a spill of black hair. “She made me watch as she fed on him.”

A first feeding always had sexual overtones. What the girl described was molestation and torture all at once. Rick yanked against his bonds, a growl coming from him, part pain, mostly anger. “Let me loose. We can take her down if we work together.”

“No. If she dies, Jason is dead. She hid him with her scions,” the girl said, “which she calls the long-chained. I don’t know where. And if she doesn’t come back, they’ll all die. If she lives, and if I don’t do what she wants, she’ll make me watch him die.”

“We can find him in time,” he snarled.

“I can’t take that chance. But thank you for the anger. No one has been angry for us in . . . in forever.”

Rick shoved down his rage. It wouldn’t help. Neither would the fight-or-flight instincts that battled through his blood. Forcibly he silenced his fury, tamping it down, sealing it off. “What does she want?” he asked when he could, his voice low and even.

Her movements economical and fiercely determined, the girl positioned the lanterns around him, uncapped a marker, and placed it against his skin at his shoulder. “She wants you bound to her,” she whispered. “And if she can’t do it with her vampire gift, she’ll do it with magic.” She began drawing on his skin with the marker, drawing and wiping away most of the ink, leaving only a faint outline.

“You’re going to tattoo me?” he asked, incredulous, relief flooding his system. “That’s all?”

“A tattoo of binding. Using her blood and animal blood in the final part of the spell. The blood will bind you to her. You’ll be a blood-servant. Of sorts.” The girl looked at him through her bangs, her eyes smoky brown. “It’s an old spell. I think she stole it from my grandmother. And I’m sorry to use it on you.” Her voice dropped lower. “So very sorry.”

Hot sweat broke out along his skin, and his sphincters pulled in so tight that his belly ached. He swore violently as his hope evaporated. The girl’s a witch. Rick raised his head and looked at the black marble beneath him. Considered the metal ring. An impressive witches’ circle, one used for a long time by powerful witches. Probably the girl’s grandmother and her coven. He dropped his head back. “Can your grandmother break it once it’s done?”

“She could. But Isleen killed her. Broke her neck and threw her in the bayou.” Her voice shook, and there was something dark and terrible in her tone. Rick knew Isleen had made the girl watch.

•   •   •

The cute little vampire, Isleen, needed a stake and a beheading. As soon as he got free. Assuming he could get free before his will was sapped and he was magically bound to the crazy bitch vamp. But if one witch knew how to break the spell, then others would too. Assuming he could find them. Assuming . . . assuming a hell of a lot for a guy stretched out naked in a witches’ circle. He concentrated on regulating his breathing, feeling the pen against his skin. Pen, then cool, damp cloth. Pen, then cloth. He had to keep his head if he was going to get out of this. He marshaled the negotiation techniques taught in class. “What’s your name?”

“Loriann.” She lifted his head and shoved a pillow under his neck so that he could see without strain. She turned her back a moment, and Rick quickly scanned the barn. Nothing. Nothing there to help him at all. Not even an old hoe to fight with.

“Put out a finger. Cut the cards.”

When Rick looked at her, she was holding cards, bigger than playing cards. Tarot. “I’m Catholic. I don’t read tarot.” Which was utterly stupid considering his current position, but refusal was instinct, pounded into him by a lifetime of nuns.

“I don’t care. Put out a finger or”—Loriann pulled in a breath and firmed her face, steeled her voice—“or I’ll make you wish you had.”

Shock spilled through him, an icy chill. “You’re not a black witch,” he managed.

Loriann closed her eyes. Her skin paled even more, looking almost translucent in the lantern light. “It doesn’t matter what I am anymore,” she whispered. “White, black, blood, light, or dark.” She laughed, the sound broken. “I’ve lost myself. I’ve lost my choice. So put out your finger and cut this deck, or I’ll hurt you.”

Straining to move the blood-deprived digit, Rick put out a finger. Placed his nail into the deck about midway through, parting the cards. Loriann separated the deck and shuffled until the oversized cards were well mixed. Then she laid one out. It was a skeleton riding a horse, and the legend beneath the picture read DEATH. “Great,” he said. “This is why I don’t do tarot.”

Loriann said, “Death isn’t usually real death. It means change. Now shut up.” After that she ignored him and laid out twelve cards in a circular pattern around Death, mumbling to herself. The last card, at the twelve-o’clock position, was the Hanged Man. Whatever she saw didn’t make her happy, and she gathered up the cards and reshuffled them, mumbling, “I never liked Aunt Morella’s time reading anyway.” Louder, she said, “Stick out a finger.”

Again he cut the deck with his fingernail, and Loriann laid out a card. The title at the bottom read KNIGHT OF WANDS; the knight was wearing plate armor and riding a red horse, and carried a stick with leaves growing out of it. “This is you,” she said. Over that card, at an angle, she laid out another card. It was Death. Again. “This is the problem.”

“No shit.” He laughed, and it sounded hopeless even to his own ears. Over that she laid another. The card depicted a woman sitting on a throne between two pillars: one white, one black. She wore a white crown like a nun’s wimple and a white dress, with a cross on her chest. The card read HIGH PRIESTESS. “Hmmm. This is the solution or best course of action.” Quickly Loriann laid out four cards: the first at the bottom, the next to the left, then the top card, placing the last card to the right, in a cross pattern. She laid down four more cards in a line to the far right. The last card she set down showed two naked people. The Lovers. She studied the cards silently. Then gathered them all up again.

“What?” he asked.

She shuffled and held out the deck. “Again.” Rick complied. He figured anything that kept her from sticking a needle into him was a good thing. This time she laid out three rows of seven cards. The far left column came up as three knights, the knights of Swords, Wands, and Cups. “Interesting,” she said, surprised. She looked at him quickly, something new in her eyes, and then glanced away. Down the middle column were Death, the Queen of Swords, and the Lovers. Loriann studied the cards up and down, left to right, as the night flowed on. It was now ten twenty-five. Closing in on the witching hour.

Loriann arranged the cards, putting them into an order that must have made sense to her, and shoved them into a box, then into a small tin at her side. It was brightly painted in little dots of color, like a print of stained glass in miniature. On the top, the Virgin Mary stood in a pointed, arched window.

The witch took out another box from the tin, this one larger, the box older. On the front was a painted picture of a shadowy woman standing in front of a cauldron, a cat with a bobbed tail at her feet and cave walls at her back. Stalactites dripped from overhead. A witch. “My grandmother’s cards,” Loriann said softly. Her cheeks took on a hint of color and she leaned forward, as if hiding behind the fall of her ink black hair. She went through the deck, rearranging the placement of the cards. “No one has used them in . . . in a long time.” Loriann separated the cards into three stacks of differing depths.

Two stacks were composed of cards that had titles on them and one stack contained cards with only numbers. She shuffled each stack until each was well mixed, and lifted a small stack toward him. She said, “Major Arcana. Cut.”

Rick forced out a nail and directed it into the partial deck. He had lost feeling in his hand. He figured that wasn’t a good thing.

“Personages of the Minor Arcana,” she said, lifting the second partial deck. “The Court Cards. Cut.” He cut the second partial deck and the third, which was larger, containing what looked like nearly half of the total number of cards. Loriann shuffled each stack, made him cut the decks again, then laid the cards out in the same three-row pattern as before. This time some cards were taken from the top of one pile, some from another. “Gramma liked gypsy readings, but she did them the way her mother taught her, with the three rows of seven, each column from a specific stack, and to the side, a cross of the Major Arcana. Her cards were specially painted just for her,” Loriann said, “and her deck is different. It has different . . .” Her voice trailed away, as if she had just realized she was speaking aloud. She pressed her lips together and bent her head, her hair sliding forward so that he couldn’t see her face.

When Loriann finished laying out the cards, at the four corners and down the center column were the Court Cards. To the left top was the Queen of Pentacles, upside down, a wolf asleep at her feet. At the top right was the King of Swords, an African lion at his feet and his sword made of gold. The left bottom corner was the Page of Pentacles. He was a vampire with a scroll under his arm. The right bottom corner was the King of Wands, and he was a witch with red hair, and with fire exploding from his wand, which was clearly a weapon. A huge owl flew overhead. “No cup cards,” she murmured. But she didn’t explain.

The center column was also composed of Loriann’s Court of the Minor Arcana. The top card was the Queen of Swords—a woman in black, a wildcat with a bobbed tail and yellow eyes on her lap, claws drawing blood on her right thigh. The queen held a sword with a silver blade dripping with blood. The Knight of Wands was the center card: He sat on a rearing black horse, holding a bloodied stake and silver sword, with vampire heads beneath the horse’s hooves. A wolf howled in the background, head angled up toward a full moon. The Knight of Swords was at the bottom but was upside down, the first time a knight had appeared that way. His bloodied sword was silver and black, and a huge cat—a black leopard with yellow-gold eyes—sat on the horse’s rump.

The cards were so old that paint flecked off them as Loriann worked. The edges were rounded and worn from long use. Despite himself, Rick was intrigued. It was almost as if he could sense meaning in the cards, but it seemed to be just out of reach or around the next corner. As if all he had to do was reach out or take a single step, and he would understand. But the significance was elusive, fragmentary.

On the layout of cards in a cross pattern to the side were the Major Arcana. The Wheel of Fortune was in the middle, with animals racing on the wheel—a wolf, a big black cat, a flying owl, an alligator, a spotted dog, and a bear. Around it in a cross pattern was the Devil—a horned, wolf-headed beast with owl’s wings, a horse’s legs, and cloven feet. The Devil had bloody fangs, and claws hidden in the wing feathers. The Hanged Man was an American Indian chief in full feathered headdress. He had been tortured before the hanging, and a black leopard was curled up on the hanging branch above him, sleeping. At his feet were a small wolf, or a coyote, watching him and salivating, and a grouping of turkey buzzards staring at his head. A card called Strength was painted with an angry mountain lion, screaming, clawing the air, sitting on a dead vampire, both with fangs bared. The last card was the Tower. It was on fire, and people and animals were falling out of it.

Loriann studied the tarot placement for a while, while Rick tried to read something—anything—in the cards. “Animals,” Loriann muttered. “Vampires. Change everywhere.” And then, “Ahhh. I see.”

“Well, I don’t.”

She gathered up the cards and put them away, then brought her needles and tattooing equipment closer. “Your future is both set and undecided. There are two moments when you will be allowed to choose, and both moments will change the course of your future. One is now, with the tattoo and the blood I’ll use to bind you to Isleen. You may choose canines, equines, or felines. Which do you desire?”

He almost said horses, but the word that came from his mouth was “Cats.” He stopped, surprised, because he detested his sisters’ cats, and preferred dogs and horses. He shook that away and asked, “But why me? Isleen said something about revenge on Katarina Fonteneau. Is that Katie of Katie’s Ladies?”

Loriann nodded. “Katie did something bad to Isleen a long time ago. I’m not sure what. But she can use this spell to get back at her through your bloodline.”

“How?”

Loriann looked at him in true surprise. “Because Katie is your mother’s great-great-something-or-other-grandma.”

“N—” Rick started to disagree and stopped.

The memories of some weird things returned. Money for his education, deposited into his account, a gift from a distant cousin. His sister’s medical bills for leukemia, the huge ones not covered by insurance. They had amounted to nearly four hundred thousand dollars. Paid in full by that same distant cousin. His mother disappearing on Christmas Eve every year for an entire night. The strange French-accented voice on the phone several times, calling for his mother. At night. Always and only at night.

Son of a bitch. He was related to one of the city’s most powerful vampires. And the cops had sent him in undercover to find out about her—

“I can tell you don’t have tats,” Loriann said, drawing him back from his past. He turned his face to hers, trying to hide his shock. She shoved her hair behind an ear and almost smiled. Her eyes flickered down his body and back up, lingering at the V of his legs before she returned to her work. “This may hurt.”

The first needle pierced his skin.

•   •   •

At dawn, Loriann put away her torture implements. Rick was sweating, shaking with the continual pain. He had no idea how people could go through this over and over, getting full-sleeve tats, tats on their necks and throats. Under their arms, on their privates, on sensitive, tender skin.

Loriann sighed, and he felt fatigue move through her and into his own skin, a shared exhaustion. Over the course of the night, he had become deeply aware of the little witch, pain bringing them close, making him conscious of her breath, alert to the slightest shift of her posture and position, sensitive to her ever-changing emotions, responsive to her intense concentration. It was as if they were two parts of one creature, sharing energy, breath, and his pain—one part administering pain, the other part enduring it. His blood had sealed the deal, trickling several times across his shoulder to the stone beneath him.

He shuddered as his tormentor unclasped the shackles on his right arm. She stepped to his left arm and unclasped that restraint as well.

He tightened his muscles as he had done over and over in the night to relieve the pain of immobility, contracting and releasing. He dragged his numb arms up and shoved his elbows under him. Groaning, he forced himself upward, reclining on his elbows and forearms. Loriann moved clockwise through the dim dawn to his legs.

“I’m going to let you relieve yourself now,” she said softly. “Eat something. Drink. Shower off.”

“Clean up my blood on the stone?” he said, mocking.

“No,” she whispered. “It stays.”

He understood. It was part of the sacrifice.

She clicked his left leg shackle loose. He didn’t tense. He didn’t let his breathing hitch, knowing that somehow, through the bond established during the night of pain, she would expect what he planned. In a moment he could get away. Disable Loriann. Get to the city’s vampire headquarters. Tell the blood-servants what was going on. Get help for the kid, Jason. But no matter what, no way was he lying down again on the black stone.

The shackle fell from his left leg with a heavy clank. The witch moved to his right leg. He couldn’t feel sensation beyond agony in his limbs, but he forced the toes of both feet to wiggle, and he could see them move in the slowly brightening light. He closed his eyes and breathed in. Brought up his free leg. Tried not to tense in preparation for a lunge.

A click sounded, different from the other sounds. He opened his eyes, looked down. And cursed. With a clumsy roll, he rose and stumbled across the barn. Was brought up short. He tumbled to the dusty floor. Loriann had attached a shackle to his right ankle and had run a chain from that to one of the rings in the black stone. The chain was less than ten feet long.

Lying in the dust of the stable floor, Rick started to laugh, the sound hollow and echoing. The peals sounded half-mad. And he couldn’t stop.

He rolled to his back and held out his leg, shaking it, the chain’s heavy links tinkling low. If he had an axe, he could try to cut through it. Or he could cut off his foot. And bleed to death getting to help. Of course, if he had an axe, he could kill Isleen . . . and thereby kill Loriann’s seven-year-old brother, Jason. Rick was as trapped as Loriann was.

His muscles were weak from being tied down; his hands and feet were numb and swollen. The pustule at his wrist had broken open during the night and re-formed larger and flatter than before. Red streaks ran up his arm nearly to his elbow. The lower arm was hot to the touch. Blood poisoning. Gangrene could follow on its heels. He needed antibiotics or he might lose the arm. He had to get out of here. But Loriann wouldn’t help, and he was more exhausted than he could ever have imagined, his muscles quivering from stress and immobility.

Sick, aching in ways he had never known a man could hurt, Rick rose and relieved himself in a metal bucket, no longer caring about unimportant things like privacy. Tears smeared through the sweaty, bloody barn dust coating him.

He accepted the food and water that Loriann brought—soup right from the can, cling peaches in heavy syrup, and two liters of water—knowing it might be drugged, but not having any choice. Telling himself it wasn’t over. He wasn’t dead or blood bound yet. He needed strength to get away, and he had until only eight p.m., when the sun set, to accomplish that goal. Getting drugged from the food was a risk, but no worse than being too drained to attempt an escape if the opportunity presented itself.

•   •   •

He spotted his clothes—boxers, jeans, shirt, socks, and boots—piled in a corner, doing him no good. He couldn’t get the pants over the shackle, and he wouldn’t be able to wear a shirt anytime soon, not with the tattoo painful on his left shoulder. He studied Loriann’s work in the pale light but couldn’t make out the picture, not looking down on it. It might have been waves or mountains. Or both.

Loriann went into the shadows of the barn, and when she came back, she was dragging a hose, held kinked off in one hand. “They used it to cool off horses and wash them.” She indicated the hose. “It’s only cold water, but at least you’ll be clean. If you want,” she said. When he nodded, she pointed to a corner. “The floor’s lower there, and the water will drain.”

Naked, no longer caring, Rick clanked to the corner and stood, his back to her, his hands up high, supporting himself against the barn wall. The first gush of water felt icy, and he tensed, his skin pebbling as the spray drenched him from head to toe. But he relaxed as the grime and sweat of the night washed away. He turned slowly, facing the water, wondering what he should be feeling in this moment, as the little witch washed him. The water stopped, and he stood as Loriann kinked the hose again and dragged it away. When she returned, she tossed him a towel. He took it and dried off with the rough, coarse terry cloth. She gave him another bottle of water, which he opened and drank, feeling more human. He took the sheet Loriann offered and wrapped it around himself. It would give him some semblance of protection from bug bites. The insects had come in during the night, attracted by blood and sweat and misery.

“Sit,” she said softly, pointing at the black stone circle. “I can help you.”

“Like you’ve been helping me all night?” he said.

She shrugged. “It’s up to you.”

Too tired to argue, Rick sat on the edge of the stone altar and held his head in his hands. His fingers weren’t working well, and his toes were on fire, aching with the return of blood supply. Prickles of electric pain ran up and down his limbs. Body limp, spirit dejected, he looked through his too-long, lank hair at the barn door, his way out if he could make it that far, before closing his eyes.

•   •   •

Loriann put her hands on his shoulders, and a moment later a cool release, like a salve, washed over him, passing through his skin into his muscles and deeper into his bones. He took a breath and let it out. He hated to feel grateful to his torturer, but he did. Grudgingly he said, “Thank you. That feels better.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t have a choice.”

“We always have a choice,” he said. “Always.” He raised his head. “You have a choice now. You could go to Katie, or to my parents, or to the cops, or to Leo Pellissier. You have a choice.”

“And my brother would die.”

“She’s going to kill your brother anyway, Loriann. And you know it.” She didn’t answer. When he looked up again, Loriann was gone.

•   •   •

He was pretty sure the food or water was drugged, but not enough to knock him out, just enough to leave him sluggish and woozy. The beams holding up the roof seemed faraway, shifting with shadows like bird wings; the wing shadows lightened, changed position, and lengthened again as the day moved past. Insects swarmed around Rick, biting and buzzing, gnats attacking his eyes and dive-bombing his breathing passages. His mouth and nose covered by an edge of the sheet, he slept until noon, surprisingly dreamless, or with no dreams worth remembering. Maybe the unconscious mind just couldn’t compete with a reality like sitting through needle torture for hours, torture that made less sense than any dream.

Loriann had left him water, and he forced himself to drink every time he woke. Toward what he judged was midafternoon, the drugs wore off and the nerves in his muscles and flesh began to protest, itching and burning, tight with the futile resistance of the night before. He stood and began to stretch, trying to remember the moves his youngest sister had made when she took up yoga and vegetarianism at age thirteen. Surprisingly the slow stretching helped. When he could move without too much pain, he shoved an edge of his sheet between the shackle and his skin, and began to walk the length of his chain. It clanked hollowly as he moved; the dust beneath him was fine, almost soothing, as it slid around his feet.

Pulling the chain to its full length, Rick searched the parts of the barn he could reach. He found a rake head, the kind with five thick tines for throwing hay. One tine was broken, but he could wrap the fingers of his left hand around the handle’s base and slide those of his right through the tines. It was a pretty good weapon against a lesser being than a vampire. For Isleen, the handle would have made a better weapon, a stake to plunge into her black heart. But there was no handle.

I could kill the girl, though.

The thought shocked, like a bucket of icy water. He stood unmoving, his thigh muscles trembling, his stomach cramping with hunger. The iron cool between his fingers.

A weapon. He could kill Loriann. Kill her and take her key. And go to the Master of the City. He turned the rake head over in his hands. The iron was hard and deadly, rusted at the break. The tines were sharp, still showing flakes of green paint between them. I could kill the girl.

The nuns had made it clear to them that all men could kill. Cain and Abel had been objects of lecture—the very first sibling rivalry and the very first murder. I could kill the girl. Grab her. Throw her to the ground. Plunge the tines into her abdomen, just below her rib cage. The idea turned his stomach. But . . . I could kill the girl.

He swiped experimentally at the air. It was a clumsy weapon. If he killed Loriann, her little brother would likely die before Rick could get to Pellissier and convince the MOC to go after one of his own. And, of course, he’d have to live with himself after.

I could kill the girl.

Rick took the weapon and sat on the black stone, trying to use the remaining tines to pick the lock on the shackle. They were too big for the tiny keyhole, but a nail might work. Excitement buzzed through him. Horses were shod with nails.

He set the rake head aside and fell to his hands and knees, his fingers sifting through the fine dust. He concentrated on the area near the walls, as a good farrier would never leave a shoeing nail lying in the center of the barn, where it might injure the tender part of a horse’s hoof. But if one went flying, it might land in the shadows, lost. He felt his way along one wall before his fingers found something hard and slender in the dust. His heart gave a single hard thump. A nail.

But it was larger than might be used for shoeing a horse—a tenpenny nail, too thick to fit into the keyhole. I could kill the girl. Tears gathered in his eyes, burning. His nose ran. He laid his head against the wood and closed his eyes as tears leaked slowly from his eyes and trickled through the dust on his face. I could kill the girl. Hail Mary, full of grace, he thought. I could kill the girl. Hail Mary, full of grace . . .

A measure of peace fell into the air with the words to rest across his shoulders and settle into his heart. The words of the Apostles’ Creed came to him, as clear as if Sister Mary Thomas were standing over him in the barn, ruler in hand, tapping his skull each time he forgot a word. She had never hurt him, but that ruler was a constant threat. Eyes closed against the falling light, he whispered, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. . . .” Murmuring the creed and starting the rest of the rosary, he searched the barn to the reaches of his bindings.

By the time he was done, he had found three more tenpenny nails and discovered the boards of a stall wall that had been replaced. The carpenter had dropped the nails during his repair job. Rick placed the nails with the rake head, a metal button, a buckle, part of a leather bridle with two rusted rings, a broken plastic spoon, and a dog collar. Nothing that would kill a vampire.

He was filthy, his sheet so full of dust that he looked as if he had been rolling around on the ground. Which he had. Sister Mary Thomas would have smacked him with her ruler if he’d come back in from recess looking like this. Nuns, especially the older ones, still believed in corporal punishment, although not to the black-and-blue state. And back when he was in school, he had figured they practiced punishment searching for perfection—though whether they hunted for the perfection of the method of chastisement or perfection of the souls of their charges, he had never decided. When he was a lot older and a little wiser, he figured he had been a pain in the nuns’ collective butts and had brought the punishment on himself.

It was late afternoon when he thought to use the rake tines to pry and chop a stake from the old wood. And felt so stupid that he started laughing. “I’m an idiot,” he said. “A damn fool idiot.”

He chose a board low down on the wall that could be hidden in piled dust, and felt along it with his fingers, searching out a weak spot. He found one in the corner, damp from long contact with the ground. Rick pried into the grain with the tines and started to chop.

•   •   •

Rick stopped chopping before dark and hid his tools, tucking the rake head into the shadows of the stall wall across from his work site and covering it with a natural-looking pile of stall dust. He stepped back and, seeing his footprints, knelt and brushed them away. When it still didn’t look totally natural, he picked up handfuls of dirt and tossed them into the air. They made a convincingly haphazard pattern when they fell, and he repeated the dirt-tossing everywhere. It left him sneezing but feeling safer.

He had decided during the slow course of his labor that he couldn’t kill the little witch. She might deserve it, but she was as trapped as he was. And maybe he didn’t have premeditated murder in him. When it came to humans. But if push came to shove, he’d find a way to kill himself before he’d let Isleen bind him with black magic. And he had the weapon, nicely hidden, that would do the deed easily. If he couldn’t get away in twenty-four hours, then . . . then he’d find the pulse point on the inside of his elbow and puncture his artery with a sharp tine. Or he’d fall on the tines. Something. He’d be dead meat when Isleen came for him, which brought grim satisfaction.

Just having a plan was enough to raise his spirits and help him to face another night bound to the stone. Well, a plan and the first of his weapons. If he’d had half a brain, he would have been ready to put the plan into action tonight, but he’d moped away half the day and had only part of the tools he needed.

He had excised two stakes from the bottom board of the stall wall; he hefted them in his hands, feeling for weight and balance. They were short, maybe too short at only eight inches, give or take.

A good stake needed to be wide enough at the base to provide stability in one’s grip and strength in a thrust but narrow enough to slide between ribs. Vamp hunters each had their own preferences as to length and circumference, based on hand and grip size and upper-body strength. For most, fourteen inches was way too long and increased the chance that the vampire might bat the weapon away before it hit home or twist his body and cause the tip to miss the heart. Anything smaller than ten inches was considered too short. Rick’s stakes were only around eight inches long, shorter than most, which put him at a disadvantage. Not that he’d planned it. He had been trying to pry out a single long stake with the objective of making two twelve-inch stakes from the one. It had broken, teaching him patience he hadn’t wanted to learn.

The effect of the day’s labor on his infected wounds was obvious. They were bigger and more painful, and his arm from fingertips to elbow was now a constant throb of infection. But he’d worry about the arm later. If he survived.

He tested the heft of the stakes, making sure he could grip with his swollen hand. The stakes were as big around on the blunt end as his thumb, and nicely pointed. Stakes needed to be about the circumference of a drumstick to pierce through skin, pass between ribs, and puncture a heart without snagging on muscle, cartilage, or bone, and without breaking. His were rough and full of splinters, which might catch on tissue instead of sliding through and between. Tomorrow he would smooth them as much as possible with the few metal scraps he had uncovered.

Rick had never killed a vampire. He’d never killed anything but deer and a few turkeys. He’d never forgotten his first kill—a buck that got hung on a downed limb in a bayou near his house and was being attacked by gators. He couldn’t save the deer. So he’d stolen his daddy’s shotgun and put it out of its misery. It had taken four rounds, and he’d cried for days.

But killing a vampire, killing Isleen, he figured he could do. And he wouldn’t cry a single tear. He’d probably be laughing his head off when he buried his stake in her black heart.

He studied the final stake, now only half-removed from the wall. It was longer, a bit wider, and the wood was paler, with a tighter grain. Tomorrow night Isleen would have a problem when she showed up. Tonight . . . tonight he was going to be in a spot of discomfort. As the sun set and golden rays poured through the slats of the barn, he shook as much of the filth out of the sheet as he could, then used a stake to stretch to the hose and turn on the water Loriann had showered him with. Lastly he hid the stakes in different spots and covered his tracks. When the little witch showed up at his barn door, he was clean and dry and waiting.

•   •   •

That night was worse than the previous one, as much because of his psyche as the fact that the injured skin was being worked on again. And, of course, the throbbing of infection. He bled more, he had to work harder to control his breathing, and Loriann didn’t drug him this time, so he felt everything. Including a whole lot more pissed off.

Somehow it had been easier to accept being tattooed against his will when he’d woken up chained. Having to lie down like a willing sacrifice and be shackled to the black stone sucked, especially when he’d sworn he’d never do it again. The only break the witch gave him was when she transferred her tools to the other side and started work on his other arm. It was some kind of circular design. He’d thought at first that she was tattooing Christ’s crown of thorns on him, but when he asked, she shook her head and said, “Shut up. I’m working.”

So much for casual conversation. There was no more getting-to-know-you conversation either. In fact the only sound was his breathing like a bellows, his occasional gasp, and Loriann mumbling under her breath. Spell casting, he figured.

But at least he knew what the big tat was. Cats. Which made some sense from her original question—cats, horses, or wolves? In her oblique way, she had had been asking him to pick his tat. He could make out a mountain lion and what looked like a house cat.

His mom would be royally ticked off. His parents had long ago proclaimed that no child of theirs would come home with a tattoo. But if he had to have a tattoo, Loriann did good work.

Two hours before dawn, Loriann packed up her torture implements and allowed him to wash off and eat a meal. Near dawn Isleen appeared in a whoosh of air, creating her own wind, and stood there bent over him, fully vamped-out, fangs exposed and fresh blood on her mouth and chin. Her fingers were almost warm—though still cooler than a human’s—where she traced the tattoos, and they grew warmer when she slid her fingertips up to touch the pulse point in his throat.

Her body was bent weirdly, as if her spine was more articulated, snakelike. Her fingers were spread, and bloody claws were out, held wide, fingers curved as if to catch prey. Rick couldn’t help the hard thump of his heart or the way it raced when she bent lower, folding herself in two, and licked the trace of his blood from his skin with a dead, cold tongue. A shiver raced over his skin, and Isleen laughed, her vamped-out eyes blacker than the doorway into hell.

“You have done well, little witch,” she whispered, her chilled, fetid breath blowing across Rick’s face. “He tastes . . . lovely.”

“Thank you, mistress,” Loriann whispered, her face averted from the vampire.

“You will be finished tomorrow?”

“Before the moon rises, mistress.”

“Good. I shall be here. The ceremony will go forward.”

“And Jason?” Loriann whispered even more softly, as if the words strangled in her throat.

“Who? Oh.” Isleen stood and flicked her fingers as if brushing something inconsequential from her. “The child. You may have him when the work is completed.”

“Will you bring him when you come?”

Isleen tilted her head to the side, that lizard-movement thing again that vampires never did in front of humans because they knew it creeped out their dinner. “I suppose I can bring him. Perhaps seeing him will convince you to work well and finish the project on time.”

“Yes, mistress.” But the witch was watching Rick through her dyed tresses, some meaning in her expression.

“Before midnight, then, witch, for the ceremony.” And Isleen was gone. Loriann unlocked three of his shackles, gathered up her belongings, and walked to the door just as the sun rose over the horizon. Framed in golden light in the doorway, she stopped. “You’ll have only a moment,” she whispered. And then she, too, was gone.

Rick rose and wrapped himself in the clean sheet she had left folded on the black stone. Pressed into the dirt by the rectangular shape of the kit that carried her needles was a knife, its sturdy blade about four inches long, and a rasp, a kind of sanding implement used by farriers when they needed to reshape a horse’s hooves. It was perfect for smoothing rough wood implements. The kind one might make with a knife, from boards in a barn, to kill vampires.

Rick laughed, the sound low and vicious and victorious. She had decided to trust him. She had arranged for the dangerous, insane vampire to bring Jason here tomorrow night. And at some point in the proceedings Loriann was going to make sure he got the chance to stake Isleen.

•   •   •

The knife and rasp made the work of chipping and shaping stakes much easier, and by noon Rick had six good stakes, two short ones and four well-shaped, well-balanced ones that hefted nicely in his hand. And he had the knife, which he had carefully honed with the rasp, though the edge wasn’t particularly sharp; the rasp wasn’t manufactured with the goal of smoothing steel, and his efforts had been laughable at best. It also wasn’t plated with silver to kill a vampire. But it was a bladed weapon, and having the weapons improved his chances of saving his hide. Rick knew that fighting a pissed-off vamp while naked, weakened, hungry, and sick as he was wasn’t likely a survivable endeavor, but he had decided that going down fighting was better than submitting.

Midafternoon he showered in the cold water, ate the small plate of food left by Loriann, and took a nap on the dusty floor, curled on the folded sheet, hoping to garner some strength for the night.

And he woke with a vampire’s jaws at his throat. Drinking.

His body reacted instantly, sexually, to the attack. One of Isleen’s hands was holding his nape, the other playing him. He couldn’t scream; he couldn’t fight. He couldn’t stop her. And with the vampire saliva entering his bloodstream, he didn’t want to. He was aroused, chained by the ankle, and drunk on vamp. Her hunger was insatiable. Her body corpse-cold. But resisting was all he had left.

One hand wound into her hair, holding her. His head fell back and his spine arched up, closer to her. His other hand found a stake under the edge of the sheet. He curled his fingers around it.

Isleen pulled away, her body moving so fast that he couldn’t follow, seeing only a wisp of movement and the vampire standing in the shadows at his feet. The stake was in his hand, still hidden beneath the sheet. He’d missed his chance. Rick laughed, a biting bark of sound; he could almost see the laughter float around the barn, bitter as the taste of weeds and ash. Cold as the vampire’s lips on his throat. Colder than the feel of her dead fingers on his flesh.

She held his eyes with hers, which glowed like a deer’s in headlights; her blond hair fell around her face like a veil. He heard a click to the side, and a lamp lit the barn. Isleen was revealed out of the dusky shadows, dressed in a white lace gown. It was stained with blood, crusty brown overlaid with fresh blood, scarlet and damp. The fresh blood was his, he figured. The old stuff was probably from some other poor bastard she had trapped and chained up.

Isleen’s eyes seemed to fix him in place, holding him as surely as her hand and fangs had only moments before.

He heard the roar of a generator in the distance. The sound of wind in the foliage outside. The twitter of birds nesting in the rafters overhead. He’d missed his chance. And he laughed again once, the sound crazy, harsh as graveyard sobs.

Loriann handed Isleen a small cup. Isleen spat into it. My blood. She’s spitting out my blood. With one sharp canine tooth, the vampire pierced her finger and held it over the cup, allowing her cold, dead blood to drip down into his own blood, mixing them. The drops seemed to echo into the barn, distinct and ominous, flying like bats’ wings, darting into the shadows.

Isleen handed Loriann the cup, then licked her finger and her lips, still holding his eyes. With a poof of sound, the vamp was gone. His arousal drained away. Tears he hadn’t known had fallen dried on his face.

Loriann turned on more lights, and he could see clearly. He should have been embarrassed about the little witch watching while Isleen . . . But he wasn’t. He couldn’t seem to care about much tonight except his failure to stake the vamp. He turned his head, watching the witch as she moved around the small space, setting out her tools. She knelt at his side and handed him a plastic bottle of water. He drank. His throat ached with the movement. Isleen hadn’t been gentle with him. When the bottle was empty, he said, “Is she gone?”

“Yes. She’ll be back at midnight for me to finish the spell. And she’ll bring Jason. It’ll be your only chance.”

He sat up slowly, belly muscles protesting, bringing the stake with him. “You didn’t mean for me to stake her just now?”

Her eyes widened. “No. No, not until Jason is here.”

“Mighta been nice to know that.”

“I didn’t think— Oh my God.” She turned away, holding herself around the waist, her hair sliding forward, hiding her face. “Okay,” she said after a moment. “Okay. Never mind.” Her tone said that she was forgiving herself and him for the near miss. She stood straight and went back to work. “We don’t have much time. Do I have to chain you to the stone tonight?”

“No. I’ll be a good little human vamp snack.” He could hear the bitterness and anger in his tone, but the hopelessness that had settled on him like a grave shroud had lightened. He had another chance. “Speaking of which, I smell food.”

“I brought you some Popeyes chicken, biscuits, and sides. A gallon of tea. Hope you like it sweet.”

“Yes. I’m starving. Can I eat while you work?”

“No. So eat fast. And we have to talk. I need to tell you how the spell works so you can pick the right time to . . . to kill her.” Loriann placed a bucket of chicken at his side, and he dug in, listening, wondering at himself and at the way he could plan the death of an insane, undead monster with such enthusiasm.

•   •   •

Loriann was almost done with the tats. Around his right bicep was a circlet of something that looked like barbed wire but was really twisted vines in a dark green ink. Interspersed throughout the vines were claws and talons, recurved big-cat claws and raptor talons, some with small drops of blood on the tips—blood from Isleen and from his own body, mixed with some cat blood and scarlet dye, the mixture meant to bind his body to the vampire once the spell was complete. On his left shoulder, following the line of his collarbone, down across his left pec, down from his shoulder to his upper arm, and almost to his spine in back, was a mountain lion. He was a tawny beast, with darker markings on his face, body, and tail, his amber eyes staring. He was crouched as if to watch for unwary prey, the clublike tail curved up around his shoulder blade. Behind his predator’s face peeked a smaller cat with pointed ears and curious, almost amused eyes, lips pulled up in a snarl to reveal predator teeth—a bobcat, snuggled up to the larger cat. It was beautiful work. But it was a spell woven into Rick’s body.

“The gold in the eyes is pure gold foil, mixed with my grandmother’s inks. It shouldn’t infect or cause you trouble. And as long as you kill Isleen before the spell is finished, the eyes won’t glow. If the binding is completed, you’ll know it, because the eyes, all four of them, will catch the light and glimmer just like gold jewelry. Either way the tattoos won’t fade, not ever. And you probably can’t get them lasered off. Not with the dyes my grandmother used . . .” Loriann stopped and stood unmoving, her body almost vibrating with fear, exhaustion, and excitement. She met his eyes, hers dark ringed with fatigue and blood loss from feeding the vampire. “You’ll save Jason?”

“We don’t know where he’ll be. In a stall. Hanging from the rafters in a cage. I’ll kill Isleen. Whoever is closest will save Jason.”

“Okay.” Loriann licked her lips. “One last thing. I called Katie. A guy answered. I told him about you. About Isleen and Jason. He was pretty pissed.”

Hope shot through Rick. He could feel his heart thud in his chest. His uncle Tom answered the phone at Katie’s Ladies. “And?”

“I told him to expect a text message with directions. And I programmed the message with directions on how to get here.” She pulled out a cell phone and snapped it open. “It’s in my phone, waiting. As soon as Isleen arrives, and I see that my brother is still alive, I’ll hit Send. If I can. I don’t know—”

With a pop of displaced air, Isleen appeared. She held a small boy in the crook of her arm, his long legs dangling. The boy was asleep or unconscious but breathing. Isleen had fed again, and the front of her dress was soaked with blood. Rick had no idea how much of it was the boy’s.

Loriann made a helpless moan of fear and longing and horror, one hand outstretched to the child. With her other hand, she pressed a button on the phone and sent the text message. Rick closed his eyes for a moment, hiding his relief. Help was coming. If he could keep them all alive until it arrived.

He focused on the vampire. Her hair was up in curls and waves, with a little hat and a scrap of netting perched on top, like something a woman from the eighteen hundreds might have worn. When she set the boy down, he saw that the lace dress had a bustle in back. And she wore pointed lace shoes. Strings of pearls were around her neck, crusty with dried blood. She looked like a parody of a horror movie, dressed for a wedding, covered in blood. She patted Jason on the head. The kid had pinprick holes in his neck. She had fed from him. Recently. It was all Rick could do to lie there and watch as Isleen positioned Jason on the dirt of the barn, curling him into the fetal position and covering him with a blanket she must have brought with her.

Rick was stretched out on the black stone, spread-eagled, his hands and feet appearing to be manacled but really free. The sheet was bunched at his side near his right hand, and beneath it were two stakes. Beneath his back were the knife and two more stakes. Hidden in the dust at the base of the black stone to his left and to his right were the two short stakes, his last-ditch-if-all-else-fails weapons. But help was coming. Help had to come.

“Begin,” Isleen said to Loriann, standing above Jason like a threat from the grave. “If you do it right, your brother will live. If the man is not bound to me when you are done, the boy will die while you watch. Then you will die.”

“Yes, mistress.” Loriann sat by his side, above his shoulder so that his right arm would be unimpeded, her most delicate tattoo needle in her hand. On the stone near her was the pot of mixed blood. She had woven her spell into his flesh with the blood on the tips of the cat claws, leaving only parts of three to be filled in.

“Sit beside him on the stone there”—Loriann pointed with the needle—“in the crook of his left arm. I’ll speak the ritual words while I fill in the last globules of blood on the cat’s claws.” Loriann met his eyes, telling him that she was ready.

All they needed was to put Isleen at a disadvantage, cause her to focus on something else just long enough for him to react. If the help came after the vampire was dead, he’d have a ride home. If the help came before, well, he’d have a weapon to protect the kid.

To Isleen, Loriann said, “When I say, ‘For all time. For all time. For all time,’ you have to bite him on his wrist and drink from him. One sip. And then you say, ‘Blood to blood, flesh to flesh, soul to soul. I claim you as my own. For all time. For all time. For all time.’ And it’ll be done.”

•   •   •

“How long?” Isleen asked, her fingers trailing down his face, cupping his cheek. He smelled old blood and something sweet and parched, like dried lilies. The smell of the vamp herself.

“The last globules will take about half an hour. I have to chant the whole time. If you talk, if you move, if you cause me to lose my concentration, it will break the spell.”

“And the child will die.” Isleen flashed her fangs. “Never forget that. Begin. Now.”

Loriann closed her eyes and ducked her head as if to pray. Then she opened her eyes and placed the needle into the pot of blood. “Blood to blood, flesh to flesh, soul to soul. These two are one.” She pierced Rick’s flesh with the needle. “Blood to blood, flesh to flesh, soul to soul. These two are one. Blood to blood, flesh to flesh, soul to soul. These two are one.”

The needle pierced him again and again as Isleen stared into his eyes, hunger in hers. He knew that she was trying to roll him, to do what vampires did to get free blood-meals and to bind blood-slaves and blood-servants. He could feel her compulsion tickling at the edges of his mind. If needles and fine blades hadn’t been sticking into him, he might have succumbed. But the pain kept him alert. Ready. The minutes ticked by. His blood trickled around his bicep to pool on top of his dried blood on the black witch stone.

Loriann changed the chant when she started on the second globule. “Blood to blood, flesh to flesh, soul to soul. These two are one. Time and time and forever. Blood to blood, flesh to flesh, soul to soul. These two are one. Time and time and forever. Blood to blood, flesh to flesh, soul to soul.These two are one. Time and time and forever.”

Rick regulated his breathing, keeping himself loose and relaxed. Letting Isleen believe that she was succeeding in rolling him. He slid his expression into a goofy smile. Let drunken love fill his face.

Loriann started on the last drop of blood on the last claw. Again her chant changed. “One blood, one flesh, one soul. Time and time and forever. One blood, one flesh, one soul. Time and time and forever. One blood, one flesh, one soul. Time and time and forever.” The phrase was like a drum beating into his mind. His heart stuttered and found a new rhythm, meeting and following her words. “One blood, one flesh, one soul. Time and time and forever. One blood, one flesh, one soul. Time and time and forever. One blood, one flesh, one soul. Time and time and forever.”

And then she said the words Isleen had been waiting for. “For all time. For all time. For all time.” The tattoo was complete.

Isleen bit. The pain was instantaneous. An electric shock. Rick gripped the stake. And spun, pushing up and away. Fast. Faster than he had ever moved. He plunged the stake into Isleen’s back. The point slammed through skin and muscle and cartilage.

Isleen screamed and ripped her teeth from his wrist. Twisted her body in a snakelike move no human could have duplicated. The stake missed her heart. Claws slashed down his abdomen. Struck at his throat. He scuttled away, taking the blade in his right hand. But his left hand had been injured by her teeth cutting their way out. He couldn’t grip a stake. It rolled across the black stone.

Isleen attacked, moving so quickly that she was a blur. Her fangs slashed into his throat. Ripping. Tearing. Her claws pierced his chest. He threw back his head and screamed.

He missed what happened next. Missed it entirely. Loriann told him about it later, much later, in such vivid detail that it was almost as if he witnessed his rescue. His saviors.

Katie and Leo. The two master vampires blew the doors off the barn. And came inside. Katie staked Isleen. Leo cut off her head. Loriann cradled her brother. His uncle Tom lifted them both and carried them, curled up together, out of the barn. The last memory he had was a spray of his own blood. And the vamp-black eyes of the Master of the City, Leo Pellissier.

•   •   •

Rick woke up in his own bed, clean, sore, and sleepy, just after dawn. Sprawled in the chair at the foot of his bed was his mom, her eyes open, watching him. Tom sat in a kitchen chair beside her. When his uncle realized he had awakened, he said, “What do you want most? A rare steak or sex?”

Rick raised his head, surprised that there was no pain. No pain anywhere. He touched his throat, finding no scars, then smiled and stretched. “Neither. Breakfast would be good.” He looked at his mother. “Blueberry pancakes?”

She blew out a breath so hard and deep it sounded like a mini-explosion. Uncle Tom grinned widely, a big toothy grin. “He’s still himself. The binding didn’t take.”

“Pancakes it is,” his mother whispered, blinking back tears. “But your father is going to have kittens at the idea of you with a tattoo.”

Rick sat up on the edge of the bed and looked down at the tattoos on his shoulders, studying the eyes of the mountain lion. They didn’t glow or sparkle like gold jewelry. They were just amber, the eyes of a mountain cat. “I can live with that,” he said. “I can live with most anything now.” He tilted his head to his uncle. “Thank you. I owe you. I owe you big-time.”

“Yeah, you do. We’ll talk.”

“After the pancakes,” Rick said. He looked at his mom. “With blueberry compote and whipped cream?”

She wiped a tear from her cheek and nodded. “Anything you want, son.” She bustled out of the room, followed by his uncle, leaving him alone.

Rick shoved the pillows back against the headboard and propped himself up on them, listening to the chatter between Uncle Tom and his mother. He looked down again, studying the cats on his shoulder. Unsure what he would feel, he raised his hand and touched the amber eyes of the bobcat and then of the mountain lion. They felt like flesh—warm, resilient—and he could feel the pressure of his fingers as he traced the eyes. Nothing new in the tactile sensation. Just fingers. Just skin.

But the cats were part of the binding ceremony, part of his future that Loriann had read, had seen, and maybe had changed. She had done something to him, to his future, when she’d made him choose an animal. He knew it. He had felt it, like some tremor in the possible paths that life would offer him. A new branch, darker, more shadowed.

Rick didn’t know what it meant to have the cats on his body, beneath his skin, part of him. But he figured the future would come whether he wanted it to or not. He had no control over that. He never had. It was just that, until now, he had never known how little power and influence over life he really maintained.

With that unhappy thought, he got out of bed, feeling stronger than he’d expected. He pulled on jeans and a long-sleeved white T-shirt, hiding the tattoos, and looked at himself in the mirror over his bureau. He looked unchanged. But only on the surface. Beneath, wildcats had entered his life. And he would never be the same.