The grass felt strange on my bare feet, something half-remembered from the early years in the Christian children’s home, my soles tender and without the calluses that built up in humans. The lights of the park grounds didn’t reach the pond water, but even with Beast resting within me, silent and still, I could make out the blackened wimple and robes the priestess favored. She was sitting chest deep in the pond. I moved toward her in my bare, human-shaped feet until I heard a ripple of water, the sound an alligator makes when it slithers across the surface of a shallow bayou.
“Sabina?” I said softly.
“Stay away, skinwalker, or I may drink you down. I am hurt. And I am not entirely in control when so badly damaged.”
I thought about that, and about the blackened bones of her burned arm, for half a second before I pulled the gobag to me and removed my cell. I punched the number for Del at vamp HQ.
“Jane,” Del said, her tone cool.
“Sabina’s injured,” I said baldly.
Del made a shushing sound of shock. It was hard to hurt an old vamp.
“We need healthy blood-meals for her at Louis Armstrong Park. Tell them to enter through the North Rampart Street entrance, cross the footbridge, and move toward the water. She’s in a lot of pain.”
“Go away, skinwalker,” Sabina said, her words sibilant with warning.
“How much pain?” Del’s voice held a note of concern, maybe even worry.
“Third-degree burns to one arm to start out with. Burns elsewhere. I don’t know how bad.”
“In that state, she’ll kill any human she tries to drink from,” Del said. Which made sense but made me pause. “I’ll send Leo. Sabina can drink from him first, and then, when her pain is eased, she can drink from the humans.”
“Ssssskinwalker . . . I thirsssst . . .”
I took that as evidence that I needed to get moving, and headed toward the street. “That’ll work. But we have a bigger problem. Santana is hurt too, maybe as bad as Sabina. He’s going to need blood to heal. And then he’s gonna be ticked off.”
“Dear God, Jane. What have you done?”
I could almost see Del rubbing her temples and popping Tylenol for the headache I was giving her. “I’m trying to fix a problem that’s been in the making for over a hundred years. Not everything is going according to plan. I’m not surprised about that and neither are you.” She didn’t answer that one.
“Even with humans to help him, life in the twenty-first century is going to be abnormal to such an old vamp. Santana’s going to take a while to get up to speed, unless he has some willing vamp help or takes a vamp prisoner,” I said, thinking about Dominique and making speed away from the water where Sabina lurked. “You need to put all the city’s vamps in lockdown. Now.”
“Is that all?” Del asked, her snippy tone back.
“One more thing,” I said, getting ticked off myself. “I’m trying to fix Leo’s screwups, so make it snappy.” I closed the bullet-resistant Kevlar cover of the cell as I passed the burned grass marking the site of the magical debacle. A witch-light brightened the ground and the witches who were gathered there. All four were conscious, but Molly wasn’t quite ready to take on anything magical, thank goodness. The NOLA coven leader was bent over her, pale healing energies moving across Molly’s face and head. My pal’s eyes were closed. I didn’t want to disturb her, and I hoped she wouldn’t remember the attempt to take the diamond. Or the fist that stopped her. “Lachish,” I said, my voice soft and measured, “you got enough mojo to put up a ward? Sabina is injured and it’s gonna take a while to get blood-meals together.”
“I can. And you can give her this.” She tossed something to me in the dark.
It landed at my toes, and when I picked it up, I felt the warm tingle of healing energies built into a feather tied to a bit of wood. The wood smelled like baby birds and bird poop, and I realized it was a stick from a bird nest, tied to a feather. Interesting choice for an air witch’s amulet. “Good,” I said. “I’ll get this to her. The sooner the better on the ward. Sabina’s hungry and not in very good control. I’ll see you later. I have a master vamp to track.”
No one replied. Knowing that vamp ears were good enough to have heard the conversation, I tossed the stick-and-feather healing charm toward Sabina, before picking up my gear and moving away to North Rampart Street. When I hit the footbridge I saw a ward rise from the ashes of the original witch circle, and I felt safe enough to knead my aching stomach. The witch healing hadn’t been thorough, and the pain still lurked there, knotted and tender. Worse, the hand injured by Joseph’s wyrd spell was marked with faint red tracery again and had started tingling.
Eli hadn’t called, meaning he was still in custody, so I dialed for a taxi as I walked, putting distance between me and the injured vamp. Rinaldo, the cabbie I used most often, wasn’t working now, but he offered to send a pal to pick me up and take me where I needed to go. I turned left out of the North Rampart entrance on foot and looked around for possible danger. The sidewalk was empty and still. Perfect place for an ambush. I stepped into a shadow to hide and watch, following the scents on the air currents. Upwind, no one hid. Downwind was a lot more iffy.
While I waited, I dialed Jodi Richoux on her cell. She answered, which meant that she was still at the crime scene, not in her cavernous office in the bowels of NOPD central. The woo-woo room had no cell reception and never would if the big muckety-mucks at NOPD had anything to do with it.
“I don’t have time for this,” she grated out in lieu of greeting.
“Yeah, you do. I just injured Joseph Santana.”
“What?” Her tone sounded remarkably less irritated all of a sudden. “How? How bad?”
“I stabbed him with a weapon that works on vamps. One I borrowed from a . . .” I wasn’t sure how much Jodi knew about vamp hierarchy, but I decided on truth. “. . . from the priestess Sabina. He was on fire when he got away from me. You need to send out an alert to all your cops that Santana is burned and might be looking for water sources to lair up in, as well as blood-meals to heal with, and better if he can find both together.”
“Do you know how many water sources there are in this city? Hundreds!” Jodi said, her annoyance increasing again.