Unbound

With a knowing look, Marie wiggled the knife. “Do you think I need this to kill you? Do you think I need any weapon at all?”

She dropped the knife and stepped around Jelani’s body. The air around her changed. It thickened with power, becoming icy, despairing, and angry. A faint keening noise seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

“You know what happens when a voodoo queen becomes undead?” Marie asked. Her voice echoed, like multiple people were somehow speaking through her vocal cords. “My ties to the otherworld were strengthened. Those consigned to the grave filled me with their power. Listen to them roar.”

Marie opened her mouth and there was a roar, rage-filled and eerie enough to make Bones shiver. Dark swirls appeared around her, as if her shadow had multiplied. Those swirls moved to curl around Bones, stroking him with freezing, malevolent, hungry hands. His strength seemed to melt out of him with their touch while the memory of his death, so long ago, flashed in his mind. He felt the same way he did then; cold, weak, succumbing to that inevitable slide into nothingness.

Then the power around Marie faded. That unearthly keening stopped, the shadows curled back into her, and in a rush, the strength returned to Bones’s body.

Marie watched him, a small, brittle smile on her mouth. “I wish you would have lied to me. Then I could have justified killing you.”

Bones recovered enough to shrug. “You already knew the truth. Lying would only have insulted us both.”

She studied him again, her expression giving nothing away. “You are banned from New Orleans for five years,” she finally stated. “If you violate this ban, I will kill you. If you speak of these events to anyone, I will kill you. As far as what everyone else will know, I contracted you to take care of the LaLauries while I was out of town, and Jelani was killed by them in defense of his city. Furthermore, you owe a debt to me equivalent to the value of a life, since I’m letting you keep yours.”

Bones didn’t argue Marie’s assertion that she could kill him. Her display of power moments ago made it plain that there were things about New Orleans’s queen that few people knew—or lived to tell. All things considered, Bones was getting a slap on the wrist. Then again, it was also in Marie’s best interest to leave Bones alive to back up her version of events.

As for Jelani, at least Marie was giving him an honorable legacy. There were worse things to die for than securing a long-denied revenge. Sooner or later, everyone died. It just took death longer to catch up to those it had already visited, like vampires and ghouls.

“Done,” Bones said.

Marie dropped her gaze to look at the dead man near her feet. “Get out.”

Her voice sounded huskier. She knelt by Jelani’s withering frame to stroke his shoulder. Even though she’d killed him, her grief was clear. That sort of ruthlessness combined with her level of power made Marie truly frightening. If meting out Jelani’s death had meant nothing to her, Bones wouldn’t have found her chilling. But even though it had hurt her to kill Jelani, that hadn’t stopped her from doing it.

Yes. Best be going quickly.

Bones left without looking back. His flight out of the city was already booked. By tonight, he’d be on his way to Ohio, searching out the undead accountant he’d been tracking before he got involved in this mess.

This was over, but it was time for the next hunt.

Dark Matters Vicki Pettersson

For Dennis Stephenson.

A wonderful father, grandfather, and man.

Prologue

It was a normal moment, and barely worth note. Which, of course, was what made it so noteworthy. But after weeks, and a barrage of demands and pleas, JJ would finally be allowed to wave sparklers and an American flag and cheer until his throat burned. And when darkness blanketed the sky, fountains of color so amazing and loud and powerful would rip it open, dulling even the Las Vegas Strip visible in the distance. For a child born, reared, and hidden in an underground lair, it was an absolute dream come true.

So that was why a family of superheroes were having a simple picnic on a grassy hillside, blanket-edge to blanket-edge with the mortals they’d been born to defend.

“Born and sworn to deflect and protect” his father would say, in a booming baritone that made his mother throw back her head and laugh. JJ would steal glances at them—at the giant man with honey-colored eyes identical to his own, and his mother with her quiet strength and noble lineage—and wonder if he had what it took to do that, to make them proud. He didn’t know. In a world that honored women, he was not yet a grown man, but he was the strongest five-year-old he knew. And all the kids in the sanctuary said his high jump—already ten feet—was better than most of the girls’.