Bad Blood

“The half-breed is Kubai Mata,” the demon snarled. “You tricked me.”

Aliza laughed. “We tricked you? That’s rich.”

“What’s a kubay mada?” Evie asked.

The demon bared his teeth at the words, then crouched down and began to flick his forked tongue over his oozing wounds.

“Tell us, demon,” Aliza said. “What is it?”

But the creature just hissed a string of curses and went back to tending its wounds.

She raised her hand to smack the side of the aquarium, then thought better of it. The pentagram that held him might be glued down, but the aquarium wasn’t in the best shape. No point tempting fate and getting themselves killed, because there was no chance the demon would leave them alive if he got loose.

“Damn thing smells like road kill,” Aliza muttered. “Makes my whole house stink. Evie, light some of those candles.”

“Will do, Ma. Then I’m going to my place. I’m worn out.” She popped the lids off a few jar candles and lit them with a simple fire spell, one of the first Aliza had taught her. “There you go. I’ll see you tomorrow. We can send him out again then.”

“Sure thing. Night, Evie girl.” Aliza waited until the scrape of Evie’s kayak leaving the dock reached her ears. She picked up a spray bottle of holy water she kept handy since bringing the demon into the house and gave the creature a squirt.

It yowled and shot upright, foaming at the mouth and cursing in a language she didn’t understand. “Do that again and I will flay your skin from your bones.”

Aliza leaned as close as she dared to the foul thing. “You can’t find the ring, you can’t get the man my daughter wants… maybe I should just turn you into ash and call it a day.”

“Perhaps the Kubai Mata will find you and kill you first.”

“You’re just making crap up now. Guess that means you don’t know what the kubay thing is either. Dumbest demon I ever summoned.”

“The Kubai Mata is a great evil,” he spat. “Greater than anything you can imagine. Meant to destroy my kind. My children.” Fire danced in his eyes. He growled loudly, pounding his fists against the magic barrier that held him.

“Then you better hurry up and do what you’re told so you can get free.” She squirted him again for good measure. With the sound of howling filling her living room, she went into the bedroom and closed the door. Through another door in her closet, she entered a small secret space not even Evie knew about.

Clearing the altar, she lit an oil lamp burner and laid out some new supplies—hawthorn, sulfur powder, the finely ground bones of a money cat. She added each to her mortar and pestle, then a few drops of her own blood and a pinch of earth. After muddling, she tipped the mortar’s contents into a silver bowl and placed it on the burner.

The flame blackened the metal and smoke rose in a thin trickle out of the dish. A shiver of anticipation brought goose bumps out on her skin. She smiled at her own cleverness. “Let me see through his eyes,” she whispered.

The smoke fanned out until it became an undulating screen. Images flickered in the smoke, the edges blurred and ragged. She reached out, smoothing the smoke with her hands. The images began to clear.

Dropping her hands, she sat back and watched what her power had wrought. A girl came into view, one Aliza had never seen before. Must be the ghosty one. Aliza frowned. Ghosts were pretty useless when it came to getting them under your control. Damn things did whatever they wanted.

Now, the one watching the ghost girl, Doc, the varcolai who’d brought Evie the drugs that had turned her to stone, he was going to come in handy. Aliza laughed, a dark sound that pleased her to the core of her witchy, black-magic soul.

Tucked against Doc’s side, Fi lay still and dreaming, the sheen of perspiration gleaming on her chest. She shimmered in and out of her ghost form, something she couldn’t control during sleep. The next time she went corporeal, he brushed a strand of soft brown hair off her cheek. She didn’t wake or shift, so he risked a kiss to her pale forehead.

Unlike his woman, sleep eluded him. Even after making love. Fine with him. He didn’t want to relive that damn dream again, but he couldn’t just lie here either, thinking about what it all might mean.

He crept out of their room and eased the door shut behind him, praying the whirring fan covered the door’s telltale squeak. He’d meant to oil that about three hundred days ago. Waiting several seconds, he listened, but there was no sound from Fi.

Only a few hours until dawn. The solars were depleted this late, leaving the narrow passages on the old abandoned freighter completely dark. He made his way by memory, catching a shadow here and there where a solar had a hint of power left in it.

The last door took him onto the ship’s main deck. The smell of salt water, oily refuse, and fish greeted him. The smell of home since Mal had found him and nursed him back to health. He stretched, the ache in his body matching the ache in his soul. He needed to run. Every night since he’d regained his ability to shift into his natural, animal form of a leopard, the urge to run had pressed on him like a junkie’s craving for a hit.

He chalked it up to the years he’d spent with no other outlet than the form of a house cat. Who wouldn’t want to run after that?

In a fluid move, he leaped across the deck, shifting in midair and landing on all fours in his natural state. The world opened up to him, the scents and colors and sounds intensifying, automatically categorized and processed by his animal brain. Which one to follow? Which one to ignore? He flipped off his human half and let his leopard side take over.