the pack hummed with the death energy of their jade and the appearance of his killer on the rise.
chacal had come to her in the night, filled with a full fervency and erzulie had given into her care what was asked.
but that was before sobo had died, that was before the blood of another son watered sapphique's coastal crest.
chacal directed, ordered; she was the leader needed by their wolves now. and erzulie returned from her break to blink and see bodies rushing around her.
lilitu and mireille, retreating with the young. 
she did not see rhaegal yet nor cherub's wing nor njord.
she heard the full-throated cry of her daughter rushing to battle — fierce chacal!
but erzulie did not intend to lose another fucking child, not today.
what she had given chacal would poison and slow and plunder breath from lungs. 
what she held in shaking paw now, bloodied with sobo's end, was her ending. a small white seed.
rosalyn and her children and grandchildren and surely, surely the new ones who grew inside the raging tanzanite.
it was a fierce and great plan that chacal had concocted, peerless; she would see it through to its end. erzulie scuffed her shoulders silently in foliage, dusting herself in the same way without the same items.
and then she swallowed the white seed. it would turn her blood to something bone-eating and monstrous, and in fifteen minutes the white-hot fire of it would peak. a taste of her flesh now, then, the last thing for a bear to devour.
erzulie saw no more; she joined chacal at once in their dance, lunging directly for the massive creature who had cost her so very much.
no more.

rage and hate and anger and pain;
sobo, dead, dead; her daughter shouting in their words and their tones; erzulie drew up sharply;
theo
red heat and terrible fury poured into her heart. erzulie heard val's whooping and grunted, lurching back from the bear's crushing blow, pulling on all the power of sapphique's lwa and her own skilled guardianship to escape this first attempt at death.
it would come again.
ten minutes.
its claws caught her across the ribcage, drawing deep furrows of crimson as she hit the ground in a hard roll. chacal's gold-black frame flashed like wildfire and the bear's snarl shattered the air. agony flooded her vision, but the ruby forced herself upright with a hot hiss seething through clenched teeth. 
the woman soared for the space between the bear's forelegs, fangs cutting for flesh of the chest; clinging limpetlike, knowing that she must abide until it brought its teeth to bear.
and all the while, sand churned to scarlet beneath her.