Charming (6 page)

Whatever Valkyries really were, this woman was presumably claiming to be one of their descendants. Or else she was well over a thousand years old.

Sig’s hair was tied up in a long braid, and she was wearing a black sweater like the ones naval commandos used to wear in World War II. She was still wearing jeans, but there was a gun holstered on her hip, and she had exchanged her shoes for black combat boots. She wasn’t wearing anything that would glitter or sparkle, and a plain sword hilt protruded above her right shoulder from where the blade was resting in a back sheath. The only jewelry she was wearing at all was a dull iron collar and twin iron bracelets that showed at her wrists and probably ran about six inches beneath her sleeves. The collar was called a combat torque back when I was a knight, even though it resembled the iron collars worn by slaves more than it did Norse jewelry. The bracelets were called bracers, or in some circles vambraces. Both had been strategically designed centuries ago to protect the places where vampires instinctively bite the most, the neck and the wrists.

Sig set the butt of the spear on the ground and leaned on it like a walking stick. “That was really stupid,” she said. “But I’ll give you this, you almost held your own. I’m not sure I could have done as well.”

I squinted at her. “But you’re not sure you couldn’t have either.”

Sig made an either/or waggling motion with her hand.

I nodded. After that spear toss I believed it. It would have taken strength greater than mine to make that throw, and an impressive amount of skill.

Sig stared at my shoulder and frowned. It made me oddly self-conscious. Broken glass chunks embedded in my right upper arm were tearing open new wounds as aggressively regenerating flesh pushed the fragments back out. Shrapnel sucks. I once got hit with a barrel of buckshot and spent a couple of hours ejecting pellets from my hide like some kind of bizarre metal popcorn popper. It gave the phrase
sweating bullets
a whole new meaning.

Sig whirled her spear casually and pointed its metal tip at a small crimson patch on the pavement. I frowned as I realized that the patch was my blood. She looked up at me intently. “I’m going to do some magic,” she said. “Old Aesir magic. But I won’t if you don’t trust me.”

What the hell were the Aesir? I’d read about them, but I’d never been able to figure out if the Aesir were high Fae pretending to be gods among the primitives or another species altogether. Still, it wasn’t the right time for a scholarly discussion. In a few hours daylight was going to completely evaporate the vampires and leave a bunch of empty clothes, some human corpses, and my DNA lying all over the place. So I stuck to the essentials.

“What’s the magic do?” I asked suspiciously. Magic. Blood. Me. These are not words that I like to hear anywhere near one another.

“It’s an old spell for burning blood,” she explained. “Valkyries weren’t really angels, you know, back in the old days. We dealt with the nearly departed, not the dearly departed.”

“You were psychopomps,” I said. Psychopomps are beings who help spirits pass on to the next level of existence.

She smiled in a way that seemed to signify agreement and began to talk in a slightly formal, old-fashioned manner. It suggested that she was repeating words told to her mother’s mothers. “Once we were just
klok gumma
, wise women with the
sight. We looked for spirits that were still bound to this earth, and if they needed to move on, we helped them.”

“So what changed?” I asked in spite of myself.

“My ancestors were tired of being dominated by men and made a bargain with the Aesir who were pretending to be gods. The Aesir bred with them and produced female children who were stronger than men and had long lives and eyes that could see like eagles’, and in return, we found them warriors whose spirits had left their bodies but were still linked to them.”

After literally chewing on my tongue for a second to keep from asking for more details about these Aesir and why they wanted legally dead humans with a spark of life still in them, I got back to business. “So what does any of that have to do with spells for burning blood?”

“The Aesir taught my ancestors this spell in order to cauterize injuries and kill infections. It helped them stabilize and transport the critically wounded. The same Valkyrie who told me all of this taught the spell to me.”

“My wounds are already healing,” I pointed out with what I thought was commendable restraint.

She sighed and began speaking like a modern woman again. I think she was starting to figure out that yes, I was always this difficult. “I know that. The way it was explained to me, the Aesir used the same spell among themselves for a different reason. They don’t like to leave their blood behind where enemies can gather it and use it for spells against them. If I keep chanting the spell using this patch of your blood as a focus, eventually every drop of your blood and tissue in this alley will burn up.”

Still the very picture of calm, I raised the next point, which I considered critical. “But not the blood in my body?”

The look she flashed me was dry. “It wouldn’t be a very
effective spell for treating the wounded or concealing evidence if it ignited blood inside the body.”

I looked at the drying blood on my arm and clothes.

“Yes, that’s going to hurt,” she confirmed, exasperated. “But you’ll heal quickly, and your blood and DNA won’t be all over the alley.”

“Give me just a moment,” I said. My T-shirt was still soaked with sweat and holy water, so I removed it carefully with my left hand and began wiping the blood off my arms and scalp. When my arms were cleaner if not clean, I kicked off my shoes and took my wallet and keys out of my pockets and dropped them on the ground before taking off my pants.

Sig watched with a complete lack of bashfulness. I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye and couldn’t tell if her expression was appreciative or impatient or amused as I rubbed the wet shirt over my body. I won’t lie; I flexed as much as I could get away with without being overt about it.

“Some tough guy,” she mocked. “Afraid of getting a few quickly healed burns.”

“Wounds caused by fire heal slower than other wounds,” I pointed out. “And that’s normal fire, much less this magic crap you’re talking about.”

“That’s true,” she admitted. “By the way, I think some blood might have trailed down into your boxer shorts, there, champ.”

I paused. “Are you trying to get me naked?” Somehow my voice came out more hopeful than suspicious. A dark alley with dead bodies all around wasn’t exactly erotic, but survival is its own rush. Birthrates are always higher in war zones and violent neighborhoods.

She grinned. “There’s a cut on your left flank.”

I checked my left side. She was right. At some point there had been a bleeding graze right above the waistband of my
boxers, although it had already healed. When had that happened? That wasn’t even the side that had charged through the falling glass.

“The blood probably didn’t trickle around your pelvic bone and into your crotch, so you don’t have to worry if you’re prudish,” she said airily. “What’s a little burning down there?”

I looked at my crotch. “Fine,” I muttered, and pulled my boxers off. You don’t live as long as I have and remain shy about nudity. As far as that goes, when we squires hit puberty and were at our most sexually freaked out, the knights would sometimes make us fight naked, or in pink ballerina outfits, or in bunny costumes. Their intent was to desensitize us, make us shut out our environment and focus on essentials; they didn’t want us at a psychological disadvantage if we ever escaped capture after being stripped or were attacked in awkward circumstances. That’s what they said, anyway. The exercises always had a kind of fraternity hazing feel to them, and some of the knights were pretty inventive when it came to dreaming up humiliating scenarios.

In any case, I didn’t ask Sig to look away, and she didn’t offer. There wasn’t much blood to wipe away. Well, actually, there was a lot of blood; it was just rushing into that particular area from beneath my skin, not plastered over it.

Sig grinned, completely unembarrassed. “Been a while?”

“It has been,” I admitted.

She held my gaze for a moment, and something charged passed between us. Then she blushed for the first time since I’d met her and looked away. Muttering, “Forget this,” she touched the spear’s tip to the patch of dried blood and began chanting.

The blood on the pavement began to turn brown and crumble. Apparently there were traces of blood still on my skin too small or fine to see, because I felt a growing warmth over the
surface of my arm and the side of my scalp. At one point a shard of glass made its way through my shoulder at just the wrong moment and the welling blood it produced caught fire. As the Valkyrie continued to chant, the dried blood on the ground began to steam, and then it burst into flame. Nothing else ignited on my skin, but there were burning sensations that were mildly agonizing, some of them on the left side of my pelvis.

Arousal wasn’t a problem any longer.

My T-shirt and pants and boxers caught fire, and several other minute fragments of flame flared up across the length of the alley, small embers smoldering on the walls. Bizarrely, the tips of the female vampire’s decaying hand caught fire and created a sickening stench. Then I realized that pieces of me were on her claws.

Finally the Valkyrie stopped. “I don’t think anyone is really going to comb this area over very carefully anyway,” she said. “But no lab techs are going to be studying your DNA now.”

“That’s useful magic,” I admitted. After a moment’s hesitation I added awkwardly, “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, also a little clumsily. “You’d better find some clothes and get out of here. I’ll take care of the rest.”

Which was generous and all that, but what she was really saying—tactfully, in case I’d taken our brief flirting and my nakedness to heart—was that we weren’t going to celebrate being alive by slipping away somewhere to have sweaty adrenaline-fueled sex. Well, that was fine. I was raised by an order of warrior monks, and while I’m not chaste, I don’t believe that there’s any such thing as free love either. I went through the sixties once, and once was enough. Besides, I had a lot of disturbing sights and sounds and smells and tactile
sensations to forget—or at least let fade a little—before I felt human again. Well, as close to human as I get, anyway.

“If you’re going to take any risks, I’ll share them,” I stated firmly.

“How chivalrous,” she said archly, and a chill went down my spine. Chivalry was a little too closely associated with being a knight, and it was the second time that night that she’d made what could have been a veiled reference to my origins. “But if a norm shows up, I can handle it better on my own.”

“How’s that exactly?” I tried to sound suspicious instead of rattled.

“You mean aside from the fact that you’re naked?” She removed a wallet from her back pocket and flipped it open. There was a gold badge on the inside flap.

I stepped closer and peered at it. “That’s one of those bogus badges they give to those local ‘friends of the police’ chapters,” I observed. “How much did you have to contribute?”

She crooked her lips into an almost-grin and looked a little abashed. “Most people don’t bother to inspect it.”

“Come on,” I said. Regular medical examinations? Background checks out the ass? Psych evaluations? Spending day in, day out surrounded by trained observers in potentially dangerous situations? Who was she kidding? I had to hide among normals too.

“You’re smarter than you act,” she said, pocketing the wallet. “But I didn’t have to contribute anything to get the ID. I really do work with the police on occasion.”

“You work with cops,” I repeated.

“Well, one cop mostly,” she admitted. “A homicide detective. But they know me around the station. They think I’m a psychic.”

I arched an eyebrow at her.

“Well, OK, I am a psychic. Kind of,” she admitted. “But they think that’s all I am. Even the ones who won’t admit it know I’m helpful on occasion. If they find me alone at the scene of a violent crime… well, it wouldn’t be the first time.”

I thought about how useful someone who could see dead people would be to a homicide detective. “So why are you trying to get rid of me?” I asked. “Assuming I can find some clothes?”

Sig sighed impatiently again. I have that effect on women. “I called some friends as soon as I saw the vampires making their play. They’ll be here soon, and I don’t want you to see them or them to see you until I’ve told them more about you. There’s too much potential for… misunderstanding.”

At least I didn’t have to worry about one of her friends being a knight. The idea of a supernatural creature having a knight on her speed dial was too ridiculous to contemplate.

“Or I could leave now, and you could just not tell them about me at all,” I suggested.

“I gave you a chance to stay out of this back in the bar,” she reminded me. “You didn’t take it.”

“So you’re going to hold me to a snap decision?” I asked. “Even though I had no real information to base it on?”

She stared at me without a hint of apology or argument. “Yes.”

I nodded. “Hypothetically, what’s to keep me from just cutting your throat right now? That would be a way of covering my tracks.”

I was expecting her to challenge me or talk trash. Instead, Sig closed her eyes and tilted her chin upward. “Go ahead.”

I made a sound low in my throat. It wasn’t a growl exactly, but it wasn’t a sound that I could help either. Sig thought she
was calling my bluff, and she was, but in wolf language she had just submitted to me.

Her eyes flew open, alarmed for the first time. I had moved closer to her, although I hadn’t done it consciously. Somehow I was much more naked than I’d been a second ago.

“How do you know I won’t kill you?” I managed through a mouth that was suddenly dry. She had twice dropped odd little comments that might have been hints that she knew who I was. My heart was going so fast, I could barely hear my own words over the blood pounding through my skull. God, I wanted to grab her and kiss her. The only reason I didn’t was that it was a sudden animal impulse, and I was used to resisting sudden animal impulses. “You’re right, but how do you know?”