Crossed (44 page)

“Tabitha?” James knelt down. “I can’t understand you. Can you change back to your human form? You made it to midnight. You can feed now.” He reached into the duffel. “I brought an assortment. I didn’t know if you had a preference.”

“You idiot,” I yowled, clawing at him angrily. The blood called to me. It damn well sang symphonies of desire to my famished little vampire mind, but I was too close to finding Eric to lose control to the hunger. “Eric is in the Hôtel Crillon! I found him. I can eat after he’s safe.”

I didn’t even see the stake.

“It’s okay, Tabitha,” James said to my paralyzed body. “You’ll be able to change again once you feed. You did it! And as soon as the formalities are over, you can pick right back up with your search for Eric.”

He stuffed me into the duffel atop the bags of plasma. A car door opened and I heard John Paul’s voice. “I’ll keep an eye on him, missy.” The engine roared to life, and we were off, back to the Château de Vincennes and away from Eric.

    44    

TABITHA:

WORD FOR WORD

James poured blood into my mouth, removed the stake enough for me to swallow, then slammed the stake back in as I clawed at his arms with my sharp but tiny cat claws. I thought back to Talbot’s method, holding me down and letting me drink blood from a blood bag, back when I first turned, and decided I liked Talbot’s way better. The feel of the metal hilt of James’s custom combat knife–like stake added insult to the repetitive injury’s deep thrust of pain, a cold hard chaser of blunt impact following the puncture wound.

After two bags of blood, James released me and I transformed to human, wheeling on him in a rage.

“You total fucking asshole!” I batted him into the brick wall of the small circular room, buckling the stone with the impact. My hands clutched at the vanishing wound left uncovered by my corset. “I was this close to finding Eric.” The wall returned to normal, thrusting James toward me and confirming my suspicion that he’d taken me magic-side again, back to the Château de Vincennes in the Vale of Scrythax, which meant we were likely in one of the turrets of the
donjon
.

He held up a hand and I grabbed it, bending back his
fingers and hurling him headfirst into the opposite side of the surrounding circle of stone. Blood trailed from his head as he slid down the wall, but he was immortal, so who cared? He’d get better. Right?

“He’s in the Hôtel Crillon. I was right there.” I stomped his back, rolled him over, and impaled him with his own custom stake, snatching it up from where it had fallen to the floor. “If I pin you to the ground with your own weapon—”

James’s eyes sprang open with a flash, his feet sweeping mine out from under me.

“Wood versus stone.” He jerked the stake out of his chest, revealing the blunted point. The 1-Up Mushroom T-shirt he’d been wearing vanished, replaced by his combat gear: all black modern body armor and the same long curve-tipped blade he’d brandished the first time I’d seen him armor up.

“What kind of sword is that anyway?”

“It’s a Grossmesser. Sixteenth century. I wound up with it in a soul battle last year.” His eyes never left mine, but I didn’t try to compel him. I knew what would happen. Telepathy? Yes. Control? No. “Oddvar’s previous paladin didn’t like me much. It’s a good weapon. I also wound up with his encyclopedic knowledge of German beers and beer making.”

“His knowledge?”

“In a close battle or a very lopsided one, it can happen. Soul burn.” His mouth twisted into half smile, half smirk. “Mild case.” Eyes looked away briefly. An opening.

Cold metal beneath my fingers as I grabbed for the blade. Sharp edges against my fingers as he reacted. The blade dissipated and he punched me, a rapid jab to the face, breaking my nose. The pain was bad, but the sound of the cartilage giving way was far worse.

“We don’t have time for this,” he said, manifesting the sword again. “We’re in a guard tower on the wall, but someone may notice this.”

“Notice what?” I snarled, claws out. “That you boke by nobe?”

“That you lost control and attacked me when I tried to feed you. . . . Wait. Eric is where?”

“The Hôtel Crillon!” My nose snapped back of its own accord, making my eyes water tears of blood.

“So that’s what you were trying to tell me. I’m sorry—I don’t speak Cat.”

I lunged at him, claws tearing through the combat armor, but hanging in the mesh.

He head-butted me, the hard Kevlar helmet rebreaking my nose, blinding me as my eyes filled with tiny dots of light. Withdrawing my claws to free myself, I rammed both fists into his chest, punching him through the stone and stepping through the hole after him before the power of Scrythax’s memory restored it to its former state. And then I was falling after him. Landing on the ground. Only now Luc and Aarika where there, too, and Christian, with his spear.

“We were just sparring,” James said. “Just messing around.” He brushed himself off. “You know how it is.”

“Of course,” Aarika said. “Otherwise you would have been winning, yes?”

James rose to his feet. “Sure. Sure.”

Luc’s expression put me in mind of a constipated hamster. “We don’t have time for this. Let’s get it done. The ritual takes several hours.”

“Several hours?”

“Ji won’t waive the reading of the Treaty of Secrets and the concordance of law,” Luc answered. “It seems he would have been willing to do so earlier, but we bent the rules before, so now—”

“I’m not going to bend them again.” Ji’s voice rang out from the courtyard. He stood halfway between us and the main
donjon,
wearing orange sweatpants, a matching hoodie, blue-tinted sunglasses, and those same Onmyodo shoes. Our eyes met, and
the telepathic contact was instant. “I’m normally pretty laid-back,” he thought at me as he walked, “but you should have worn the dress and let me have my little fun with the steak tartare. You made me lose face, and I’d already lost some to
la Bête
.”

An image hit my thoughts, him under the massive black wolf’s paw. “That was bearable, because he’s
la Bête,
but to lose face to a vampire I’m testing? No. Sorry. I won’t.”

“I’m sorry,” I thought back at him. “But—”

“That’s right,” Ji thought. “You
are
sorry, or you will be.
La Bête
gave you five
nights,
not five days. You got here at night,” a mental picture of a Roman numeral one lit up in my head, “June third. I tested you on June fourth, fifth, and sixth.” Three more Roman numerals lit up in my head: II, III, and IV. “That makes tomorrow night night five.
La Bête
will have to concede the point once my messenger has pointed things out. Thus, I regain my honor. Hope you have fun on your final night,
gaijin
. . . assuming you can even find your husband.”

“Why are you doing this?” I said aloud. “Because I embarrassed you?”

“Isn’t that enough?” He stopped beside Luc.

“Doing what?” Luc asked.

“He’s playing on a technicality,” I snarled. “The big wolf thing gave us five nights here and everyone knew he meant five
more
nights.”

The other immortals, James, Aarika, and Ji, exchanged glances.

“Hold on,” James said. “We’ll remember.”

Taking hands, their eyes lit white-blue from within. “Damn,” James said when the glow faded. “Ji’s right. That’s what was said.”

“But won’t he hold us to what he meant rather than what he literally said?” I asked.

“Unless he’s officially charged to keep his word,” Aarika answered.

“My messenger is on his way to
la Bête
even as we speak.” Ji crossed his arms over his chest, proud of himself.

“That sucks.”

“Indeed it does.” The new voice was
la Bête
’s. His fur bled out of the air as he arrived magic-side, within the Vale of Scrythax. Our surroundings bent and expanded. Reality had a wolf-shaped hole in it that was the color of its surroundings until the blackness at its core poured into the rest of it and
la Bête
was rendered in full color once again. “Do not do this, Ji.” The voice of
la Bête
echoed in our minds.

“No,
la Bête,
” Ji said. “I hold you to your words.”

“All of them that night?”

“Yes.”

Luc, Aarika, and James winced as one.

“Very well.” The wolf touched me with its nose. “I apologize, Tabitha. I must keep my word. I find I owe you an apology as well, Ji.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I also said that night that I would eat the next person who named me . . . and that person was you.”

“Noooooo!” Ji backpedaled, hands outstretched to ward off
la Bête
. He vanished from the Vale and
la Bête
gave chase.

“C’mon.” Luc grabbed my arm. “Let’s get you through the ritual as quickly as possible. With Ji not around to read the text, maybe we can get through this in time for you to get back to the Hôtel Crillon tonight.”

“And if I walk out now, then I default and you have to get all stupid and rules lawyer-y?”

“That’s about the size of it,” James said.

“Fine.” I ran to the
donjon,
the three of them in tow. One night in Paris is better than nothing, and if I got this out of the way, then maybe Eric could work out a return trip sometime. “Let’s get out of here so Beatrice and I—”

“She won’t be able to leave with you,” Aarika told me. “Once
you are emancipated, she has nothing to do with you and will be held here safely waiting for the return of her master.”

“Whatever.”

Luc read the ritual so quickly, I don’t think he actually stopped to breathe. The formalities flew by faster and faster until I started to feel like Danny Kaye in that movie Eric had made me watch—
The Court Jester—
when the king has the jester knighted so quickly that he has to be literally carried through parts of the ritual.

Though we sped through things at speeds only three immortals and a vampire could achieve, everything seemed to take too long. The second I was pronounced free, I left at a dead run.

By the time I got back to the Place de la Concorde, sunup was a little less than an hour off. The only way I was staying conscious was by seeming human, and even then the possibility I’d fall over in the street and burn up in the sun weighed more and more on my mind.

JPC stood out front of the Hôtel Crillon, puffing on his cigar.

“Are they?”

“Far as I kin tell, they’re still here.” His “here” made me giggle, more “h’yar” than “here.” “This is about as fur as I kin git without going to the In-between or landing raht next to ’em.”

Relief washed over me, and it was not the right emotion. Anger keeps me awake, but relief . . . My eyes slid shut and I couldn’t get them open.

“Dadburnit,” JPC shouted. “Try to turn inta a cat if yore gonna go and do that.”

“Tha-yut,” I mumbled, mimicking his accent. As numbness worked its way from my skin inward, I thought catlike thoughts. I hoped I had managed to change into a cat. I couldn’t tell. Numbness reached my core, and the lights went out.

Help me, Obi-John Paul Courtney. You’re my only hope.

    45