I woke up to Johnny calling my name softly. He was on his knees beside the couch. “Why’d you move out here?”
Fog lifting slowly, I sat up. “I couldn’t sleep so I took a bath. Then”—after I’d stashed the wand in the bed table with the spell items Beau had given me—“I had the thought that it would be rude to climb into bed beside you with wet hair.” I unwound the towel from my head and finger-combed my hair. “What time is it?”
“Just after nine.”
So my three hours of sleep had expanded to about six. That should be enough.
Johnny yawned and stretched. My eyes rested on his shirtless chest, on the half-dollar-sized pentacle on his sternum. Wings spread from it across his pectorals, and the tail caressed the top two of his six-pack abs. The wings were black, and white ink created highlights, with a deep blue seeming like a sheen on the feathers. The seven-pointed fairy star was lower down. Next, my attention shot to the Celtic armbands, stylized dogs. Or wolves.
“What is it?” he whispered, fingertips stroking the line of my jaw.
“The place I had to go yesterday. Wolfsbane and Absinthe. Beau, from The Dirty Dog, he runs it.”
“I thought you were going to a witch supply shop?”
“It is a witch supply shop.”
Johnny went still. “But he’s not a witch.”
“Well . . . not exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“He used to be, but he isn’t anymore.”
Johnny rubbed sleep from his eyes. “I don’t understand. How does somebody stop being a witch?”
I studied his Wedjat tattoos with an all-new wonder. What was that ink keeping from him? “Beau was Bindspoken.”
“Bindspoken,” he repeated, rising from the floor. I bent my legs up to make room for him on the couch. “Still. Why would a Bindspoken witch hang with waeres?” His warm hands rubbed down my lower leg and tickled across the top of my foot, then slid upward again.
“The witches can’t associate with him; my touch had a shocklike effect on him. Maybe it’s camaraderie, a sense of being a social outcast he shares with waeres.”
Johnny shrugged. “Did you get what you needed?”
“Yeah. More than I thought I would.”
He grinned merrily. “That’s what happens when women go shopping.”
Spoiling anyone’s good mood first thing in the morning was terrible, but I had to tell him. No delays. “Johnny, he told me something about you that you don’t know.”
“What?”
I sat closer to him, wrapping my arms around my bent legs, trapping his hand under mine. “He said someone long ago must have figured out that you were the Domn Lup. He suggested that this person had you tattooed as a means to make your magic relinquish its power into the art and colors of the pictures, thereby locking that power up. He said we’d have to find out who did it and persuade them to unlock it.”
He let that sink in.
“Is my memory locked up, too?”
“He didn’t mention that specifically, but it seems logical to think so. If all of this is unlocked, it could come back along with your ability to change at will without the struggle and pain.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?” His voice was clipped.
“Beau said that, being Bindspoken, he knows what it’s like to have your power cut off from you. He said it was pointless to tell you until someone who could help you, someone like the Lustrata, showed up.”
“He knows that’s you?”
I nodded. “I’m supposed to be able to help you figure this out.” Gripping him tighter, I went on. “He said there’s a spell in the Codex that we must do.”
“A spell?” he echoed indignantly.
“Yes. Magic is not the same threat to you since you’re Domn Lup. Beau said that’s because you are magic. And the ‘we’ I referred to is you and Menessos and me.”
“Why’s the vamp got to be involved in finding out who did this to me?”
I bit my lip. “This won’t directly find out who did your tattoos. That’s going to be a multistep process. This is step one.”
Johnny snorted disapproval. “What does this spell do—wait, let me guess. There’s binding involved.”
“It takes from each of us two pieces of our soul—”
“Soul?” Johnny stiffened.
“Beau said that in order to maintain our own ‘soul balance’ within ourselves, we’d have to take pieces of each other even as we gave up pieces.”
Johnny stood, his hand falling away from mine as he strode across the room.
I bit my lip waiting, studying the dragon and foo-dog tattoo on his back.
Finally, he paced back. “I’ll do anything you ask, but don’t tell me I’m supposed to give part of my soul to the vamp, and take part of his in trade.”
“I’m not going to ask you to do this. I’m going to tell you what’s been presented as the solution. Either you volunteer, or you don’t. If the three of us don’t agree on this, it won’t happen at all.”
“And if this spell doesn’t happen?”
Having to be the one to present him with the first of his unpleasant choices of real leadership hurt my heart. “If this doesn’t happen, then I can’t stop WEC from rendering me Bindspoken. If I can’t tap into the energy and magic, then I can’t help you find the person who tattooed you, and your power and your memory may stay locked up forever.”
He sighed heavily and paced away again.
“I’m sorry, Johnny. I know. Doing this will cost you; not doing it will cost you. You just have to decide which of these two evils is more acceptable than the other.”
“This is why I didn’t want to be pack leader,” he muttered. “This shit sucks even on small-time local pack levels.” He didn’t return for a long, long minute. “How does this stop them from harming you?”
“If I’m correct, then if pieces of my soul are elsewhere, as in my soul is incomplete, they cannot bind it down. Like they can’t close the door because there’s other things in the way, the pieces of yours and Menessos’s souls.” Instantly, I was willing to bet that the gateway the fairies used, the one Xerxadrea wanted me to seal shut, worked on the same principle.
“Why wouldn’t they just work their Bindspoken ritual on us all?”
“How would waeres everywhere react to learning that WEC had damaged their Domn Lup?”
“Good point.” He resumed his place on the end of the couch and drew my legs across his lap. He draped one arm over the couch back, ran the fingers of the other up and down my shins. “But how will waeres everywhere react to learning that their Domn Lup is bound to some vampire?”
“He’s not just any vampire.”
“Oh, right. He’s the lord of the northeastern quarter of the U.S.A.”
“He’s more than that.”
His mouth crooked up on one side, unimpressed. “Oh, yeah?”
“Do you want to bear the burden of another ultimate secret that cannot be revealed unless he reveals it first?”
Johnny studied me, silently earnest. His hand rested on my knee, heavy and hot.
Yes, I haven’t told you everything.
Then Johnny looked away.
Yes, you know what a burden a secret can be. Do you want the knowledge, and the responsibility?
I waited. It was his decision. I wondered if Johnny, through the deeper bond Menessos had implemented between Johnny and me, had somehow heard those thoughts. I could almost hear him weighing the pros and cons of his answer: he didn’t want to know anything more about Menessos. But I needed him to voluntarily agree to soul-sharing with the vampire.
And the stakes are too damn high to even consider making that decision without knowing all the facts.
He shifted, brought down the arm draping the couch back. “Tell me.”
“He is the original vampire and he is yet alive.”
I watched him struggle with this information. Surprise. Disbelief. Waiting for the punch line. Suspicion rose, followed by doubt. Rejection of the idea came next. Then deliberation. Concession of plausibility. Conversion. Acceptance. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“I’m not.”
His hands were both in motion then, stroking me, knee to ankle. “Not centuries old. Millennia old?”
“And alive. That’s why he doesn’t smell like the rest of them.”
“And how he moves around during the day!”
I nodded. “He doesn’t die. He really sleeps.”
He covered his face with his hands and groaned. “That’s just . . . mind-blowing.”
“Johnny, do you see what the three of us are to each of our own respective kinds?”
“Oh, I see it.” His hands fell limp into what little of his lap wasn’t covered by my legs. “I see a binding between the three of us makes it all tidy, and this soul-sharing is the means to force us to work together as we have pieces of our very souls lodged in each other. I can never strike at him, and he can never strike at me.
“Menessos and I will be each side of the scales the Lustrata must balance. You’ll always be in the middle.” I couldn’t tell if he was just working it out audibly or if he was getting angry, so I stayed silent. “This isn’t just about today, either. I mean, sure, it’s about the needs we have right now. But this will project into the future. It keeps us from striking at each other. And what if the day comes when we need to? You said the old witch claimed the red fairy was mad. What if the vamp goes mad? We’d be stuck.”
“You’re right.” I hadn’t thought in fast-forward. I put my feet on the floor and scooted closer to him, took his hands in mine. “You have a valid point. I’ll give it some more thought. I wish we had more time.”
He squeezed my hands. “Do you want this? Do you want to be rooted between the original vampire and the king of waerewolves?”
“I am already there. It’s inevitable. I didn’t want to leave my home and leave Nana and Beverley behind. I didn’t want to out myself to the world, or become Erus Veneficus. I didn’t ask for any of this, but it was appointed to me and—”
“I’ll do it,” he said softly.
“What?” I hadn’t even gotten to my usual spiel yet.
Johnny looked at me with the weight of the world in his eyes. “Your needs come first.”
My heart broke. This was changing him. I was changing him.
He said, “It’s the right thing for the right reason.”
Two hours later, I sat in church.
Not just any church. This was the Pilgrim Congregational Church. The interior was very theatrical with seating fanning out from a pulpit in one corner. Rounded arches rose to a central stained-glass dome, the space under it unbroken by supporting columns. For all its grandeur, it was practical, too. Lower walls could be raised into upper walls to open Sunday school rooms to the sanctuary and expand the seating. Johnny pointed out the historic pipe organ and the original Tiffany stained-glass windows flanking it. He concluded his little guided tour with a grand view from the balcony. I was speechless, but that was more due to the fact that the pews filling up below me on this Saturday afternoon were filling exclusively with waerewolves. It smelled like a forest in here.
“Why do they gather in a church?” I asked.
“No vamps. Any sanctified ground is magically protected. Vamps can’t be on your Covenstead grounds without permission, right?”
I nodded. “It’s a sacred space, set aside and protected by our magic. Christian churches, Islamic mosques, Jewish temples . . . they have inherent protections, too.”
“It’s kind of a tradition for waeres to meet here.”
“So do they own this place or rent it or what?”
He made a face. “They’ve worked out an agreement that benefits both parties.”
“Ahhh.” Meaning I wasn’t getting details I didn’t need. Fine with me.
There were perhaps sixty waerewolves assembled. I saw Celia and Erik, Theo. Hector sat in the back, Todd in front. The Harding twins sat in the middle of the right section, and the rows around them, unsurprisingly, were filled with young men. For a pair of waerewolves they sure had cougar opportunities.
“I’m going downstairs. When I start speaking, would you make your way down, so that when I call you, you can come forward?”
“Sure.” He had told me what his plan was, but neither of us would dare to predict how the waeres would react. Not even with double innuendo points on the line.
I sat in the balcony, waiting. Being in a church made me think of the Reverend Kline. I took the protrepticus out of my jeans pocket and flipped it over and over. Surely, with Xerxadrea dead, it was no longer functional. But one never knew. I kept it with me, but I hadn’t opened it yet. Nor had I figured out what to tell Goliath about his dead brother speaking to me from it. For now those answers could wait.
We were here to ask for help. According to the news, the body found inside the Botanical Gardens had not yet been identified. But it would be. Xerxadrea had warned me Vilna-Daluca would blame me. I couldn’t expect them to offer any aid, no matter what plans might have been in the works.
Minutes later, when the flow of people into the building had ebbed, Todd took to the stairs before the pulpit. He did not stand behind it like a pastor, but remained in front.
“Welcome. This gathering has been called by our new dirija, our Domn Lup, and your presence is noted by your signatures in the Book of the Ascribed. I will remind you that what is discussed here is pack business and goes no further than pack ears.” He gestured and Johnny came up the steps to join him. “And now, the Domn Lup.” Todd went back to sit in the front pew.
The silence that followed was probably a formal show of waere respect, but I’d seen Johnny take the stage to vast applause and screams of excitement. The quiet did not befit him as well.
He nodded to them. “Hello.” Pausing to draw a breath, a charming grin came to his face. “I trust that after last night’s festivities, none of you awoke with a hangover.”
It won him a few snickers.
“No wolf worth his howl ever admits to a hangover, right?”
Howls went up around the room. When they faded, Johnny began. “I called this meeting to tell you something, and I trust that you will be patient with me in the telling.” A few seconds ticked by as he seemed to decide on his wording. “The witches have a legend about a witch who will bring balance to this world. They call her the Lustrata. All of their lore confirms that she is real and active.”
I remembered I was supposed to go down and be ready. I left my seat and quietly descended, then waited in the back of the church, leaning against the wall.
“. . . in order to achieve that balance, she must make tough choices. And she has made some. She has chosen to align herself with both waerewolves and vampires. To charge both with managing their portion of balance. Each side must do their part.”
“Vamps can’t be trusted!” someone interjected.
Johnny regarded the man who had shouted. “A few weeks ago, I was in complete agreement with that statement.”
“Bah!” someone else shouted.
“I’m not saying I’ve done a full about-face on it, either. But I’ve seen a few things that have made me reconsider. That said, one thing I am a hundred percent certain of is that I trust the Lustrata. She has generated the loyalty of a most powerful vampire and—”
“We know who you mean!” the first man said. “And what she did to generate that loyalty!”
“Her blood!” another added.
Johnny wasn’t hassled by their outbursts. “The mundane humans cannot comprehend our world, so open your eyes, and see things as they are, not as the reporters see it. We are on the brink of a war, and you must hear this!” Johnny was many things, including a musician. He knew the value of silence, and when he stopped and let silence fall, it only served to emphasize his next words. “Her blood sealed his loyalty! ‘The Lord of Vampires will drink the Lustrata’s blood.’ That is what the vamp’s own bards wrote in the eighteenth century.”
News to me.
“She is aligned with the vampire who will rule them all, and she is aligned with me.”
Cammi Harding stood. I wasn’t sure she’d changed her clothes since last night. Perhaps her closet was filled with short skirts and shirts with plunging necklines. “How did she generate your loyalty?”
Johnny appraised her, and it wasn’t kind appraisal. “In ways you cannot.”
A few men howled their Neanderthalish approval.
“She has shown me loyalty and respect, and undeniable power. The Domn Lup acknowledges power.” He beckoned me forward.
My heart was thudding in my chest, but I walked toward him. Hell, I’ve strutted about in the stupidest shoes on the planet. I can walk up there in sneakers, no prob. As I passed certain rows, the growls weren’t hidden. Keep going.
“I present to you the Lustrata,” he said.
I surveyed the crowd as I stood one step below Johnny and saw hardened, unconvinced faces.
“We are on the brink of a war,” I said, “and I have asked your Domn Lup for aid.”
They were all worried now. If Johnny said, “Jump,” they were supposed to ask, “How high?” and immediately comply.
The gathered waerewolves fidgeted uncomfortably in their seats or made other restless moves. Cammi remained standing. She tossed her head and crossed her arms, deepening her cleavage.
“Tomorrow at dawn,” Johnny said, “the fairies are coming to dole out their vengeance upon a vampire. The vampires cannot defend their own in the sunlight. We have been asked to stand in and fight for them.”
The interjections that came were, “Fight for vampires? Are you out of your mind?” and, “Let his Beholders defend him!” and, “You can’t ask us to fight for vampires.”
“I have not,” Johnny interjected there, “asked you to do anything but gather here and listen.” That shut them up. “The Beholders will be there, but our future also teeters on this one sunrise.”
“Our future?” Cammi asked.
“The fairies gave the witches an ultimatum: deliver the vampire or face war.”
Cammi sneered. “Let the witches fight!”
“I am,” I said.
“Right.” She moved into the aisle. “They’re sending just one little witch?” Something about church aisles made people move as if decorum were required, or so I thought. Cammi managed to stomp down the aisle in four-inch heels. “Their commitment seems lacking.”
My chin leveled. “I am the Lustrata.”
Cammi stopped, even with the first pew.
I wouldn’t risk touting the aid of witches who weren’t likely to show up. I just hoped none of the waeres knew the witches were divided on the subject of supporting me. “Will you be there?” I asked Cammi.
She didn’t answer, but she clearly didn’t want to have to rise to that challenge. She might get dirty. Scuff her shoes. Break a nail.
“If this war happens,” Johnny went on, “it will spill into the life of every creature on this planet. The mundane humans have been waiting for an excuse to demand the extermination of the rest of us. This could easily be that excuse.” His voice changed then, passion filled his words as when he sang. The heartfelt rawness of his plea shone through. “If you fight, you fight for the world. Many of you have children. They will still inherit this world from you. What world will you give them? The one in which you’re an embarrassment that was eradicated? Or the one in which you stood up and declared your bravery and fairness as you chose to fight for all people?” He searched the room as he spoke, acknowledging his pack members individually.
Cammi shifted her weight and tossed her head. “Out with it already! Are you ordering us do this, Domn Lup? To risk our lives in protection of a single vamp while the rest of the undead remain safe in their haven and WEC sends a single witch to represent their interests?”
Here it was, the moment when the responsibility of leadership became the Hand of Fate that slapped him in the face. The first hard question of his rule had been asked. This was what he didn’t want: his decision risking people’s lives.
Would he cower, bruised by Fate’s inescapable hand?
Would he fight back?
His answer would characterize the kind of leader he would be. The pews were silent as if the waeres present collectively held their breath.
Into the fallen hush, Johnny stood unmoving. Solid.
As he considered, he conveyed calmness to his pack. He demonstrated he did not make snap decisions. He established he was not an insensitive autocrat. Their lives mattered, and he would not recklessly risk them. He showed me that he was willing to lead, that he could bear this mighty authority and its cost, that he could be accountable, and be in command of the situation.
Goddess, I love him.
He filled his lungs, ready to answer. “I am not going to command you do this,” he said. “I have told you what is at hand and I have presented my solution. I know there’s been no time to prove I deserve your trust. But you know what I can do. You know what I am. You know what my course of action will be. And I’m giving you the choice. Either you volunteer and stand at my side, or you don’t.”
He was using my words. I was flattered he thought them worthy. He nodded to me, a signal.
I faced the crowd again. “There will be a reward for anyone who takes this risk.” It was time to tell them all. Some already knew, but Johnny wanted me to tell the rest here, now. “I saved the life of a friend of mine, a member of this pack. Theodora Hennessey. Erik and Celia Randolph were also there and involved. I used magic, a powerful spell provided to me by the very vampire whose life is now threatened and needs your aid. Because of this spell, Theo’s life was saved. And now, she, Erik, and Celia all claim to retain their human minds while in wolf form. They have spoken of this to Todd. I promise, when this is over, I will repeat that ritual and give all volunteers who wish it that same gift.”
“Todd, I charge you with sharing the details,” Johnny said, “but only with those who take oath not only to be there and assist, but to keep secret those details.” He came down a step to stand beside me. “You all have a decision to make. Do you choose to be spectators, and let the fate of the world happen as it will, or do you choose to shape the future with your own hands?” He took my hand, put it on his arm to lead me out as an equal. He brushed past Cammi and hit her shoulder with his for emphasis.