Cold Reign (Jane Yellowrock #11)(27)

“Why is this time different?” I asked as her face continued to twist in distaste.

“You take strong medicine now. Drink.” Aggie closed her thermos, put everything back into the black bag, and turned quickly into the trees. Dual sounds of retching moved through the pines. The breeze sprang up, a whipping wind, and I clenched my teeth against their clatter. Big bad vampire hunter not able to take a little chill, when the older women seemed fine? No way.

She hadn’t explained the next part of the ritual, and that was surprising, as carefully as she had kept to the original format. But she had left the travel cups and the small freezer bag on the stump below the branch where her carry bag had hung. I tossed back the first drink, this one exactly like the first time, and ran deeper into the woods, gorge rising with each step. I gagged. Gagged again. I stumbled and fell to my hands and knees as the emetic hit and my previously empty stomach cramped. Everything inside me came up, from my toes to the top of my head. I vomited until I tasted bile, remembering the bitter taste only then. It felt like I was turning inside out, retching hard. All the energy left my body, and I was limp and shaking. I had no idea how I was going to get to my feet again. And I had most of the ritual still to go.

Beast rolled beneath my skin, sick and angry. Jane is stupid kit. Let human shaman give bad things to Jane again. Foolish stupid! Like bad meat. Kit mistake. Foolish. Sick!

I agree, I thought as the herbal drink flushed through me with a roil of vicious cramps. I got to my feet and yanked off my clothing just as the last of the stuff hit bottom and my body rejected the potion, this time from the other end of my digestive tract. Just like last time, it took forever and I was even more sick and weak when it was over. I looked at my legs, arms, and belly and the moonlight-pale scars there. The scars that hadn’t yet healed from the lightning strike. The scars that the lightning had illuminated like some kind of claiming. And there was that word again. Claiming.

In a pouring, drenching rain, I stumbled back to the stump and cleaned myself with the baby wipes in the bag, then put the waste in the garbage bag Aggie had left for me. Quivering with reaction and fatigue, I sat on my folded clothes, the smell of pine sharp and sneezy. I was hollow, tingling, drained. But like last time, the cramps subsided; any hunger I had misted away. The rain eased. Energy flooded back into me. But the cold air struck against my sweat-streaked body and I shivered even as heat flushed through me.

I lifted the second travel mug and drank down its contents. The taste was so bad that I nearly lost it and held the foul stuff down by an effort of will.

Stupid foolish stupid kit! Beast raged inside, her golden eyes glaring at me, her claws digging deep into my brain. Then suddenly she was gone. My mind was clear and lucid and empty of Beast.





CHAPTER 6


    Peyote Made Everything Weird



I picked up the smaller plastic bag, opened it, and sniffed the dark brown tobacco, perhaps two teaspoons of curled leaves with a raw, rich scent. Less than last time. I stood and faced east, the sky a deep gray, clouds building. Thunder rumbled, a temblor beneath my feet. The world went brighter, lighter. Thunder grumbled again and this time it didn’t stop, a long, drawn-out sound that lasted a minute or more. When it finally faded, I could see curls of magic around every tree and blade of grass, and purling across the water in the fog that was still rolling in. The magic of the land danced and sparked, amazing iridescent hues of blue and brown and green and yellow, like Mother Nature on drugs, except that I was the one on drugs. The peyote was working. And maybe something stronger.

Taking a pinch of the tobacco in the fingers of my right hand, I thought about what Sabina had said. “Purify yourselves.” Purification was an ancient thing, spiritual and holy and dangerous, but necessary to face hard times, battle, or great danger. War.

I faced east, lifting my fingers through the blue twinkling mist. I didn’t remember what I’d said last time, but it seemed important to keep the ritual similar, as if treading the same sacred ground. “I call on the Almighty, the eternal, the Elohim, the god in three.” I dropped the bit of tobacco and it fell across me, bright red motes on my skin, and an echoing red from inside me.

The motes. The motes the Damours released when I killed them. My goddaughter told me the motes of magic were still inside. As was a dark shadow, poised next to my heart. This was what I needed to purify. This darkness, this remnant of blood magic, this shadow that lived inside me and beat with my own heart. It kept the Damours’ magic alive even when I tried to kill it. I needed to be free of it.

Raindrops splatted onto my skin, hard and punishing for a few moments as I curled around the tobacco, keeping it dry. The raindrops left little droplet-shaped white spots before they trailed down me to the ground, and the spots on my flesh turned red. My breath was heated on the cold air, puffing bright, a sign of life, pink as a baby’s toes.

I turned to my right, facing south. “I call upon my skinwalker father. I call on the skinwalkers who have gone before me, but without the taint and dishonor of u’tlun’ta. Those valiant ones who died in war, with the blood of their enemies in their fangs. Hear me.”

I dropped a bit of the tobacco. It too fell against me, and this time it burned, hot as sparks from an ill-built fire, catching the wind, skirling in the magic of the mist. Rain thundered down, putting out the sparks where they burned, the rain purple and glorious. I laughed and my laughter joined with the rain and fell to dapple the ground. But my breath was brighter, a richer shade, like blood mixed with water.