“Okay, say that Cynric could call storms, I’m not sure how I feel about a seventeen-year-old with that kind of power in my city.”

“But it won’t be his power, Anita, it will come to you. If you raise it in the tigers it will come to you, and you will be too powerful for the Darkness to eat.”

“I’m not a vampire, Bibiana.”

“But you are, you just don’t drink blood, Anita. The time for pretty lies is past. The hour is late, Anita, and the Darkness is coming. If you do not save us she will possess all the tigers, including you, and once she has a golden queen—you—as her vessel, she will destroy us all.”

“I am not a weretiger. I can’t shift.”

“Yellow was meant to be our ruler over all, a sort of High Queen. Some say that the power to move the ground is only to the Yellow. We won’t know for certain until you bring more of us into our full power.”

“Bibiana, this is all speculation. You don’t know that any of this is possible.”

“Do not doubt it, Anita. You must believe. It must be real. You must be able to harness the power of all the clans. You must.”

“I don’t must,” I said.

“Yes, you must, because if you fail us, the Darkness will rise up and consume the world. It was she who destroyed the yellow tigers so long ago. It was the Darkness who whispered evil in the ear of the First Emperor. She knew once we lost the golden, that the Master of Tigers wouldn’t have enough power to stand against her. She crushed him, and nearly destroyed us as a people of any color.”

“Do you know how she ended up in the . . . coma in the caverns?” Because that had been where her body lay, in a cavern where only torchlight touched. The vampire council had tried to abandon her a few times when world wars forced them to move countries, but there had been a compulsion that wouldn’t let them leave her body behind. But none of the vampires knew why she had fallen into the “sleep.” They only knew one night she had not woken. For over a thousand years she’d slept, until now.

“If all the legend is true, then it was her own guards that did it. Those who the vampires are not allowed to name. She let some of them keep their golden tigers as animal to call, because she believed them to be totally loyal to her.”

“How did they make her sleep?”

“The story speaks of a spell and a sacrifice of lives. They meant to slay her, but they could not.”

“Would not, as in pity moved them, or could not, as in she couldn’t die?”

“They couldn’t figure out how to kill her permanently. They tied her to the body she last inhabited and left her there.”

“Why would the guards tell the tigers?”

“So that if they were all lost, there would be some memory of what happened and what would be needed to defeat her.”

“Bibiana, I can’t be some sort of weretiger savior.”

“Not savior, Anita, master. You must be the Mistress of Tigers. You must be the daywalking vampire who defeats the night once and for all.”

I asked what I’d been thinking since it happened. “Does your legend tell how to kill the Darkness, or how to put her back to sleep?”

“The guards that have no name still exist; ask them.”

I nodded, and glanced at the bedside table. In the top drawer was my cross and a very ancient piece of metal. The Nameless Vampire Guards were the Harlequin. They’d given me the charm the first time the Mother of All Darkness had messed with me. It was supposed to keep her out of my head and my body. It worked, but it had to be cleansed and recharged periodically, like a gun that needed reloading. My cross just worked, but then it was about faith, and the charm with its imprint of a many-headed tiger on it was magic, not faith. The more witches I knew, the more I realized that there was a difference.

The Harlequin were so scary that simply mentioning them by name could bring them to your door with permission to kill you. They were the elite among vampires, strong enough to have territories of their own, or even be council members, but choosing to cut all ties to their bloodlines and be a combination spy, police, and execution service for the vampire community. Supposedly only the council could set them in motion, but was that still true, or had the Mother of All Darkness already taken back her guards? If she had, we were cooked, done; it was finished before it began. Mommie Dearest was still weak, weaker than she’d been before the council hired mercenaries to blow her to kingdom come. In the past she’d possessed me directly and more easily. Maybe the loss of her body hadn’t destroyed her completely, but it had weakened her. She needed the other vampires to talk to us, possess us. If there was a way to destroy her once and for all, we had to do it fast.

“Anita, are you there?”

“I’m sorry, Bibiana, you’ve just given me a lot to process. I’m thinking.”

“Do not think too long, Anita. I will contact the other queens of the clans. I will urge them to send people to you. Our only hope lies in a swift rise to power.”

“I haven’t agreed to all this, you know that.”

“I know, and I know that you are skeptical by nature, but there is no time, Anita. Our time to hesitate has been lost. We have only action before us, and I pray that it is swift action on your part.”

“So I what, fuck everyone into their next power level like some pornographic computer game?” I made sure my voice held all the scorn I could manage. I was good at scorn, it was one of my best things. Nathaniel and Damian touched me at the same time, soothing me with their hands and their nearness. Asher put his head in my lap, as if I weren’t covered in gunk. With all the terrible things that had happened, he seemed determined to concentrate on the good things. It wasn’t like him to be cheerful, but it was like him to be sensual.

Bibiana made a clucking noise at me. “Make all the jokes you wish, but do what we need you to do, or the next time the Dark visits our dreams she will begin to possess the queens of the clans.”

“She can’t possess anybody who isn’t a vampire,” I said.

“Why, because the council member known as the Traveller is so limited?” It was Bibiana’s turn to sound scornful.

“Yes,” I said, my voice no longer so certain.

She laughed, but it was a harsh sound. “You still do not understand what she is; she is one of the first. She has powers that the others mimic, but none of them hold the same level of ability. They are all but pale imitations of her. She can and will possess someone who is not a vampire if it serves her purpose.”

“Humans?” I asked.

“I don’t believe so. I believe it is vampires and werecats. Her animals to call and her people are all steeds for her to ride if we allow her to grow powerful enough.”

“A lot of this is guesswork, Bibiana.”

“If Adam and Eve suddenly walked in your door, would you not have to believe in the serpent?”

“What?” I asked.

“This is a story as old to the tigers as the Garden of Eden is to the humans. We believed our story was a metaphor, too, but when the evil from that story turns out to be real, then the story is simply true, Anita. The story is true, and you must process, or whatever word you choose, that fact immediately, and act upon that truth. You must do this for us, Anita, or she will take the vampires one by one, and then she will move against the tigers and take them, too, and when she has that much power to wield she will rise up and cover the world in Darkness. Do you not understand that?”

“Every creation story has an end-of-the-world clause, Bibiana. It’s usually just stories of floods or earthquakes that were local to the original people. Disasters that seemed world-destroying, but if you traveled a hundred miles it wasn’t.”

“You have felt her power, Anita. You have felt that she does not love, or care; she is an intellect and a nearly pure sociopath. She cares only for her own pain; all else is just toys for her to use, not real people, real beings. Do you really believe that she will stop with the destruction of just the vampires?”