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Near the fire was a shotgun and a pistol and a knife I recognized Edoda’s knife, the bone hilt crosshatched for a good grip Beside that knife was another knife I knew, the curved blade sheathed in the red velvet Bruiser’s gift I was surprised to see it there And then again, I wasn’t Were my father’s weapons part of the decision I had to make? Was Bruiser part of it? Clothes of a War Woman Weapons of a warrior fro weapon from Bruiser What else?

I looked up from the weapons lit by the steady fla stalactites, and dohere the ceiling curved into the walls Shadows listening But the stone that composed my soul home was different Where it was once pale, it was now dark

My cavern was da--had left soot and char all over it, black and gray and dirty, with the undareens and creae syht at first I tiltedthe shapes, and they resolved into hundreds of representations of the Blood Cross scorched into the walls at every angle, as if the lightning and the cross had been spinning around, engaged in a dance--or soht fist up to the wall The crosses covered and overlapped the tracery ie of veins left from the injury I had suffered to my hand, the injury of the wyrd spell Santana had thrown at me I’d never been completely healed of it, and, perhaps the wound had e

Directly overhead was s, white wings and dark wings, as if a snol and a crow fought there

Fro shiver as if fro for a h I had never s My cave walls were being burned by the lightning I understood what I was seeing and s The sliver of the Blood Cross, the diain reality, and it was affecting me there, in the Gray Between And perhaps in yet another reality where light and dark, chaos and order, were fighting for supre flashed again, a sear I felt on htning left behind was of the cross itself, not the sliver that I carried, but the portion that Sabina kept safe in her lair I remembered the cross, the way it had felt in rained, the two pieces not h stakes, splintered ends smoothed and oiled The wire that wrapped the two pieces, shaping theris The cross had been weighty, much heavier than it appeared, and old Ancient It had been made from the three broken crosses that the sons of Ioudas Issachar had used to bring their father--dead and buried--back to a semblance of life And thereby they created the first vaht burst, this al behind the stronger scent of scorched limestone As it burst,hair and skin overlaid the s rock

I understood that my body was under attack in reality, and my soul home was under attack in the Gray Between, but I wasn’t certain if the lightning was my enemy, or the blood diaone horribly awry Or maybe all of them

It was possible that I had been pricked by the cross in real time, real life; Sabina had warned ht kill me But it wasn’t as if she’d been certain And I’d wielded the sliver of the cross before So if the cross wasn’t my enehtning had provided the power to whatever was going on in a battle between light and dark, chaos and order

Two ht Sooowho directed the lightning? And if my soul home was ruined, would I be dead in the human world too? Or, conversely, could I survive if I was there, in my soul home, when my body died in the other reality?

There were too le answer I had no idea what any of it ht mean in my current state of spiritual darkness OrWhatever What really mattered was thatI hadn’t blessed or warded my soul home inever I wasn’t even sure how to do that Until now, I hadn’t considered that I ht need to do that It--the spiritual heart ofI had left it weak and unshielded in ht at me Decide whether you will be War Wo?" I asked, surprised

There was another flash, another pain, a second A third These co onizing Burns always are I hissed as the pain spread Real tiain I was almost out of nontime Which was kinda funny on the face of it I didn’t have long to figure out what to do in a choice where both sides see

Except

A War Wo For fas

Killers just killed For sport Money Without thought or caring Killers killed withoutspiritual purpose Except that randmother was a War Woman She had tortured the two eance fit into the paradigs of multiple species Werewolves Vaht have been able to return to sanity with enough time and the proper blood to drink Brute and I had discussed that once, but no answer had been forthco, they were trying to kill me at the time, but I had never tried to save them Never tried to find another, nonlethal way to stop theive thee? A different life? And if I had given thee, I’d probably be dead now because, honestly, people didn’t often change

Except the taxi driver Zareb He had changed Turned his life around Sooo Had I therefore sent people into the next life unprepared for the light, worthy only of the darkness and chaos? Had I deprived them of the opportunity to transform? To find redemption?