Beat . . . beat . . . beat . . . beat, beat . . . beat . . . beat . . . beat. Slower. Beat . . . beat . . . beat . . . beat. Beat . . . beat . . . beat . . . beat.

And silence.

I/we opened our eyes. Our soul home was dark, silent. Not even the plink of distant water disturbed the depth of the stillness. We were lying before a fire; coals of red cedar glowed red beneath the ashes of herbs, their harsh stink still hanging in the air. Our belly was on the cool stone floor, muzzle resting on front paws, long, thick tail wrapped around and against us for warmth. We spread our fingers/toes and stretched, extending our claws and pressing them into the stone, kneading with a press, scritch, withdraw / press, scritch, withdraw rhythm. In the distance, the single boom of a drum sounded, the vibration filling the soul home, reverberating around and around and bouncing from the stalactites and stalagmites, a tone deep and sonorous, as if the cave itself were purring. After long minutes, the sound faded. We breathed the scented smoke. We listened to the silence. We are one, of one mind and one body, but still Beast and Jane, we thought. The drumbeat came again, with the building pressure and deep release, the reverberation lasting long, long, long, into silence.

“Jane?” The voice came from far away, the words slow and deep. “Look up. See your soul home. See the walls and the roof of the place of your safety. See what is there.”

We tilted our head, trying to place the slow, deep voice that sounded like no one we knew. Her scent told us the voice was Aggie One Feather, her words calling us to a healing ceremony. Jane/Beast had been injured. Hurt by black magic. Aggie was our healer/shaman/teacher.

Jane/Beast blinked into dim light of old, red, fire coals. Seeing above us in the dome of the roof, red lines, like blood vessels, pulsing with silver and black and red motes of power and full of sick blood. Magic that hurt us was black magic. Blood magic. Like the magic of witches turned to darkness. Like blood magic stored in a stone. The blood diamond had such magic, magic that sent out red pulses and motes of power. But Jane/Beast had the blood diamond in a safe place, kept where we could not get to it easily and use it. In a place where temptation was not.

I/we yawned, killing teeth sharp and white. We thought of the spell, the wyrd, that had attacked us in the hallway. The wyrd that Joses—Joseph, yes, Joseph—had used against us. Remembered his body when he crawled up the elevator shaft. Was many floors. Even Beast could not leap so high, could not crawl so high on metal walls.

Jane remembered.

Joseph’s black eyes settled on me and his mouth opened, slowly, so slowly, to reveal a maw full of cracked and broken teeth, brown with age, and fangs like tusks in his upper and lower jaws. Even in the time bubble, Joses Bar-Judas had been able to see me, see us. Power rippled across him, sparking white and black, colder than an arctic snow, hotter than volcanic ash falling from a flaming sky. The power didn’t so much dance across his skin as sizzle. So unbelievably powerful.

In the bubble that let me/us stand outside of time, we saw him alter course, shifting trajectory fractionally, heading right for us. Eli was squeezing the trigger of the subgun. From inside the bubble I could see the silver-lead rounds leaving the muzzle of the weapon, spiraling and twisting, half an inch at a time, a puff of dust and air exploding out with each round.

Joses, a Son of Darkness, ducked to miss the rounds. So fast.

Around his neck was a gold chain, like a necklace, with red things dangling from it like rubies . . . but brighter. Rectangular. Plastic? Had I seen that at the time? I couldn’t remember, but I must have noticed it with some part of my mind.

I unsheathed a vamp-killer. Leaped forward, taking the time bubble with me, ducking beneath the rounds and the hot brass discharging from Eli’s gun. My right arm extended in front of me, blade point forward. Pushing off with my toes, I stretched into the lunge.

Joses opened his fingers, exposing his hand. On his wrist there was a flash of . . . gold. He wore a bracelet, half-hidden by the tatters of clothing, or maybe tatters of half-mummified flesh. The bracelet was made of hammered gold in the shape of overlapping, interlocking leaves, with a bizarre setting of gold claws and horns. Vaguely familiar looking. Clasped in the setting was a mineral crystal, clear and brilliant, in the unpolished, uncut shape that nature had created. Quartz? Diamond?

The crystal spit clear motes of power, like lightning bugs on meth, darting too fast to see, even in the slowed bubble of time. Beside the clear crystal were empty horns and claws, a hole, a setting where a similar stone had been ripped away.

Oh no . . . Noooo, we thought, pulling away from the memory.

Lying in the darkness of the soul home, we put things, myriad disconnected things, together. And we understood. Noooo, the Jane part of us thought.

The Beast part of us thought, On the wrist of great predator was magic. Predator used magic, blood magic, to escape trap and prison and cage.

He went to the dark side, the Jane part of us thought, pulling more into herself, like Darth Vader. We snorted with vicious laughter. Laughter that yanked us apart with a snapping pain, to think fully as two instead of one.

Do not understand. Blood is good, Beast thought. Blood is life. Blood is strength. Blood gives us strong mates and strong kits and fulfills hunger. Without blood, there is weakness. Do not understand that this is bad.

Jane thought, When the male puma concolor killed your kits, stole their blood and their life, what did we do?

We tracked, nose to ground like pack wolf. Found male big-cat. Killed him. Beast growled lowly, the sound echoing through soul home. Remembered taste of his blood and licked jaw. Snarled. Was good blood.

The blood magic in the blood diamond was stolen from witch kits, Jane thought. It is what fills the blood diamond with power. The bracelet that the vamp carried was also filled with blood magic, but . . . not of children. Of something else.

Of vampires, Beast thought. Tasted blood of vampires in magic that hurt us. Stretched claws into stone of soul home floor. Scritching, sharpening killing claws.

We looked up into the roof, to strange lines that moved, thinking together and separate, thinking as Jane and Beast joined, one but two, concurrent. Lines on the roof of the soul home moved.

Pulsing lines of veins and arteries, Jane thought, but looking clogged and bruised. Leaking? Like . . . being under attack from vampire blood. But Joseph didn’t bite me. And vampire blood can’t survive outside of vamps. Except . . . the priestess hinted that the blood of the Son of Darkness might last if it was in a relic of some sort, maybe mixed with magic.