by Faith Hunter
“We can talk about your love life later. Focus, woman. We got a man to rescue.”
I smiled for real then, stretching my arm. It was not a hundred percent. But at least I still had an arm. There was that. “On ten, Evan. Count down.”
Evan, his voice tight, started counting up from one. Irritating man.
Casually, Bruiser said, “I can toss you up.”
I measured the distance from ground to second floor. I thought about having to use my strong arm to catch myself if I jumped, which would mean holding my weapons with my injured arm. “You think you can toss me up so I can just step onto the railing and drop to the porch floor?”
“Piece a cake, doll face.” Which sounded like something out of the ’twenties or ’thirties. The nineteen twenties or thirties.
“Ten,” Evan said.
“Gogogogogogo,” I said.
Big Evan began to play a haunting melody, the flute notes low and sonorous. Air magic flowed toward the house from the golf course. Molly’s dark magic began to flow through the air from the second floor’s unfinished porch across the street from our objective. Leo, though he practically flew ahead of us, moved at a speed that humans—and witches with spells aimed against vamps—could follow. He stopped in the middle of the yard, his body going from a slow vamp-jog to a dead stop. He drew his long sword, propped it over his shoulder, and grinned at me. His fangs were down. Leo was having fun. The smell of blood and fear on the air was probably making him happy.
Our boots nearly silent on the fresh-cut grass, Bruiser raced in front of me. Dropped to one knee, his hands up high to grab mine. I raced up his body, my feet landing on knee, hip, and his shoulder, my body bent, taking his hands as he leaped to his feet. I leaped with him.
My body straightened, elongated, and I flew up and forward, drawing my weapons as I flew. Bent-kneed, I touched my right toes to the iron banister. With a shove I propelled myself in through the open door. Into the room where a fanghead had her fangs buried in Eli’s neck. I landed on the carpet with a double thud.
The vamp-killer took her head almost as if it sliced through the air all by itself. My throwing knife buried itself in the man’s throat. Silently, the bodies of both vamp and human went down. I caught the vamp’s head in both hands, holding the fangs in place in Eli’s throat. Blood, watery and pale, burbled out around the fangs still buried there. Bruiser landed beside me and raced to the doorway, securing the room. I eased the fangs loose and tossed the bloody head. Blood spiraled out from the stump of neck, creating weird patterns on the bedspread. I pulled the charmed stake from my thigh sheath and pressed it to Eli’s neck. Instantly the blood clotted over around the stake, a gelatinous glob of blood that spread until it clotted over the entire wound. I raced to a bureau, opened it, and pulled out a handful of folded clothes. T-shirts, maybe. I removed the stake, tucking it into a pocket, and pressed the clothes to Eli’s throat. I cradled his head in my palm, the other holding the compress gently in place. He was cold. So cold. Shock, I thought. His pulse beat, too fast, an erratic tattoo of movement, beneath my hands.
“I got him,” I whispered into the mic. “He’s alive. But I can’t move him. He needs—”
From the front lawn, I heard Leo shout, “Jacques Shoffru, former Master of the City of Veracruz and Cancún, Mexico, and all hunting territories between, you are forsworn. You will meet me here, now, in Blood Challenge!” So much for the trash talk. He’d skipped it entirely and gone right for the challenge.
“He needs a vamp to heal him. Fast,” I finished, in a whisper, knowing it was too late. Eli’s heart pumped a single hard thump, then sped with shock. He was dying. His pupils were blown, wide and nearly black as a vamp’s. Bruiser slid in behind me and started working the chains holding Eli upright, iron chains, the kind a monster truck would use to haul a cattle car. As if Eli was dangerous—
A shadow flickered in the edges of my vision. One-handed, I grabbed a knife. Threw it. With muscle memory, practice, and pure luck I hit my target. But the compression bandage slipped. I grabbed it as a blood-servant fell, my knife buried in his throat. Blood gushing. Gouting. I’d hit the carotid artery. He tried to shout, but sucked in blood with the breath. Choked. I’d hit his windpipe too. He writhed on the floor, dropping the short sword he had been holding. Trying to pull a gun. Gently, Bruiser took it away from him.
The man died. I remembered to breathe. The air ached in my chest. I blinked and saw the man’s bright green eyes, as if burned into my retinas.
Bruiser checked the hallway again and returned to the chains. He loosed the bonds holding Eli upright in the chair. My partner started to slide down, boneless. The T-shirt bandages slid again and fresh blood gushed over my hands. “No! Nononono,” I whispered, repositioning the bloody cloth as Bruiser caught him. The blood was so watery, like Kool-Aid, not something to sustain life. Eli is dying. Together we eased my partner to the floor. Instantly blood soaked into the carpet beneath him, thin and watery. Fresh and weak. Tears gathered in my eyes. “Nononononono,” I murmured, over and over.
“Jane,” Alex said, his voice full of fear in my earpieces. “Jane?”
“I can’t— I don’t know what—”
From the front yard, I heard the clash of steel. The roar of vampires in a duel. “Alex, I need two things. Fast. I need Shiloh here, in this room. And I need Molly to drain the pirate. You understand? Now. No argument. Just do it. Tell them. Or your brother is dead. Do it!”
I heard Alex giving orders on the makeshift coms system. I felt more than saw Bruiser leave the room. And it was just Eli and me on the floor, my hands trying desperately to hold in the blood. To hold in the life. His pulse thumped and stuttered and raced. I leaned in and hissed, “Do not die on me. Do. Not. Die.” Tears ran from my eyes and snot dribbled under my nose. They dripped onto my hands as I sobbed, trying to be silent. Knowing that if I had to defend him, if someone got past Bruiser and I had to let go and take up a weapon, Eli would die. Right then. “If you die”—I snuffed up the mess on my face and wiped it on the shoulder of the fuzzy purple shirt—“I’ll tell all Derek’s men you weren’t as tough as they are. I’ll . . .”
Fuzzy purple T-shirt. I repositioned my entire body and held the blood-soaked wad of compression material over his neck with my knees as I ripped off the T-shirt. It was stupid to remove the compression bandage. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I whispered. But I eased it slowly back. Blood had pushed past the clot that had formed from the charmed stake. I hesitated for half a second, grabbed the stake from my pocket, wiped it cleanish on my jeans, and pressed it back into the wound. Instant clotting. I wrapped the T-shirt over the wound and tied it all off with the T-shirt’s arms, not tight, loose enough to let him breathe. I repositioned Eli’s legs up high, a mound of pillows under them. I pulled all the linens off the bed and tucked them around his body to treat the shock. I was thinking now. At last.
A hand touched my shoulder. Bruiser leaned down to me and said, so softly it was less than a breath against my cheek, “Someone is in the hallway. Shiloh has a shot. Stay down.” I saw the vamp fall before I heard the rifle shot. It didn’t echo far, not on the flat land, but the echo in the midst of the houses was fast and tapping.
On the front lawn, swords clashed. I heard Leo shout, a sound of pain. I smelled vamp blood, and had been smelling it for a while, what seemed like hours, though it couldn’t have been more than two minutes. From the back of the house, I heard a scream and the faint snap of a whip. Go, Bliss and Rachael. Just hope it wasn’t one of ours.
“Molly says she can’t draw the life from Shoffru without drawing it from Leo too,” Alex said, controlled panic in his voice. “They’re moving too fast and she can’t figure out how to separate them in the spell. Jack is pulling through the bond he has on her, using Molly’s magic against Leo. And Shiloh can’t help you. She says Leo is pulling from her and her new servants, but it isn’t enough. She says all of Shoffru’s vamps are on the front lawn. They’re closing in on Leo.” His voic
e in the earpieces went emotionless and low. “They aren’t going to honor the Blood Challenge. They’re just gonna kill him.”
I cursed. “Okay. Tell Evan to get up here any way he can. Tell Bliss and Gee to help him get in through the back door. Tell them all to get to Eli and save him—I don’t care what it takes.” I yanked the mic off me and tossed it across the room. To Bruiser, I said, “Cut the light.”
“What are you doing?”
“Flying by the seat of my pants.” I yanked up the chains from the blood-soaked floor. And stalked out onto the porch.
Below me, Leo and Jack Shoffru fought in a ring of vamps and humans, like a couple of homicidal kids on a playground, both bloody, scored by dozens of cuts. They were surrounded by a nimbus of magic, sparking and red. The reddish magic around Jack was a haze that glittered with black and red motes of pure power. Motes that stabbed at Leo. Burrowing into his skin. It was death magic, Molly’s magic. And I knew I could survive it.
Jackie Boy wanted the blood diamond. If Shoffru ever got his hands on it, all hell would break out. Hell on earth. That could not happen. I had to find a way to destroy that thing. Somehow. Later. For now, I had to endure. And suffer Molly’s death magics. Again. Deep inside, Beast growled, more vibration than sound, the reverberation echoing through my soul home like a slow-beating drum. Below me, Leo seemed to take heart from the sound and in a move so fast I couldn’t follow, he cut Shoffru three times: groin, kidney, and face. Blood splattered across the lawn, black in the security lights. Leo shouted, and I felt the shout through the binding, holding me close to Leo.
I climbed up on the railing, one hand holding the chain, the stronger arm steadying me on the narrow iron barrier. And I picked out Jack’s second. A lone vamp stood to one side, the circle of vamps bowing out around the ground she held. Shoffru’s heir. She was tall, muscular, with a small waist and broad shoulders, her hair cut short to the scalp. She was armed to the teeth, and those teeth included fangs two inches long. She also had two long swords, one on each hip. And she had a nose ring.
In an instant, I put it together—the reason the scents had never worked for me. The reason the timeline hadn’t worked for me. It wasn’t Shoffru who took Molly. Who took Bliss and Rachael. Jack had used his heir, pulling strings in the background, letting his heir, Cym—Bancym M’lareil, I realized—do the dirty work. Sending a woman to host a party. To approach women. To take them away. And it was the woman who smelled of the Damours’ lair, and who had been working with Adrianna, maybe for a long time. I remembered the look they had shared at Leo’s party, long and full of desire. The woman had been working for and with Jack all this time. Jack hadn’t been working alone, just by himself. How sexist of me was it that I had never once considered a woman as the culprit? And, for sure, she was part of the magic that was hurting Leo. Somehow she assisted it. I narrowed my eyes and focused Beast’s night vision on her. She was holding a sword in her right hand, the naked blade reflecting a streetlight. She held something else in her left hand, something small. Something shiny.
Blood Challenges are formal things. They almost always, depending on the language of the issuing challenge, required a second. They always had rules. And witnesses. I didn’t know enough about them to say if using magic was against the rules. I didn’t know if what I was about to do would cause me problems in the future. Or problems for Leo. And I just didn’t care. Not anymore. I sought out Shoffru’s second, aimed my body at her, and shouted. “Hey, Cym! You want some of this?” And I leaped.
Beast flooded me with her power. In midair I swung the chain over my head. It whirled. And wrapped around her as I landed. With a clank-snap, the end of the chain, tacky with Eli’s drying blood, caught her. Secured her. Holding to the end of the chain, I rolled, seeing the vamps scatter around me, the ground absorbing the impact of my landing. And I pulled the chained vamp with me. End over teakettle. She dropped whatever she had been holding and I grabbed it up. And I started to burn. Three red motes scuttled through the flesh of my palm and under my skin. Into my blood.
Beast screamed. Her scream shrieked through my own throat, tearing. I tasted blood. I rolled to my feet. With my weak arm, I let go the chain and pulled a stake. Rammed it into the second’s heart. She went still. Maybe true-dead, maybe not. But true-stopped. I pulled a throwing knife, my arm aching. My flesh on fire. And I threw it.
As knife throws went, it sucked. The blade flipped in midair, losing power and trajectory. And hit Shoffru in the back, just below his neck on the right side, nicking the muscle before it tumbled to the ground. Shoffru whirled to me. He was vamped-out. Fangs like tusks, eyes like the pits of hell. Terrifying. He let go of the pull on Molly’s magic and whipped back his sword to take my head.
Beyond him, in the irregular circle of vamps and their dinners, Leo dropped to his knees. He was bleeding everywhere. Red motes of power scuttled like roaches under his skin. He was dying. Eli was dying. Rick was gone. Molly was as good as gone.
I laughed. It was not what Shoffru was expecting. He hesitated. Just a moment, a fraction of a second. And from somewhere close, I felt the first touch of death magic.
Black and soft as cashmere yarn, glistening with black stars, it settled on Jack, just as the spell on the throwing knife started to work. From every cut, slice, graze, and scratch on his body, blood began to flow. Bliss’ spell combining with the death magic. And as the blood welled, it blackened and fell like ashes on the night air. The two spells working together, evolving.
Shoffru’s eyes went wide. He grabbed something on his neck. The lizard. It came away from his body, limbs reaching, mouth open. Throat extended. Glowing red. Pulling red motes out of the air and into his mouth.
Dang. A magic lizard. My laughter bellowed out over the yard. But from my hand, the three red motes reversed course and flew from me, into the lizard. And through its skin and into Jackie Boy. Shoffru landed on his knees, mirroring Leo’s fall. His blood ran faster, graying and thickening, taking on texture and form, becoming semisolid, a gel, instead of blood. Beginning to pile on the ground at his knees. He turned to Leo, holding out the lizard, and the red motes inside Leo began to fly back, through the air, hurtling into Jack. He was trying to recall his magic, to heal himself from the spell. Trying to draw power from Cym.
The red motes pierced his skin, entered through his mouth. They zipped around inside him. And as he began to shrivel, they bunched up, in the areas of his heart and brain, spinning like tops. When he began to shift and sift into a pile of gray ash, they were still spinning. And I realized that they had to go somewhere when he died. I leaned forward and tossed the thing I had grabbed from the staked second to the grass at Shoffru’s feet. And then I rolled quickly away.
Looked back. It was a gem. Not a diamond. Maybe an opal. A fire opal. Red and glowing with inner heat. The motes dove toward it. Inside it. Leaving their host. And Jack Shoffru dusted to death.
I stared at the gem. Reached over and lifted Jack’s shirt out of his pile of granular ash and shook it clean. And wrapped the opal in it. From the ash, the lizard scampered across the grass and right into the hand of Gee DiMercy. Who winked at me.
I was pretty sure no one saw either of us as we confiscated Shoffru’s magical implement and his familiar. All attention was on Leo, who had made a miraculous recovery. He was standing on his own feet. And he had a vamp in each hand, forcing them to their knees. “Your master is forsworn. Surrender all rights and power or die,” he said. I looked at the second floor and saw Evan. He held out a thumb to me and disappeared back into the room where Eli had been dying.
My partner was alive.
We had won.
Leo was gonna feed.
Oh, goody.
In the far distance, sirens sounded. Lights were on in houses up and down the street. The neighbors had waked and called in the cops. I needed to get Leo into the house or the backyard. I thought of the bodies upstairs. The blood everywhere. This had FUBAR written all over it.
Knowing that
the young vamp would hear, I called, “Shiloh. Get our people out of the tree in back, and take Molly and get out of here. Tell Alex to tell all our people to get out of here. Move it.”
With a pop of air, she was at my side. “Yes, Jane,” she said. “This was . . . interesting. Aunt Molly-Lolly said it would be.” I had no idea what she saw on my face, but she laughed. “We’re going.” With another pop of displaced air, she was gone.
I looked over at Leo, with no idea of how to get him to a safer place, one where law enforcement wouldn’t try to arrest him for what he was doing. Human cops wouldn’t understand the dominance, neck biting, and bloodletting taking place. From the corner of my eye, I saw Derek with something over his shoulder, carrying it to Leo’s car down the street. I hoped he got to it in time. Cops would arrest a brother in a heartbeat for carrying a headless body. Arrest first, convict later, ask questions never. I looked up at the window where Eli was. War Women were fairly useless when it came to saving people, but I wanted to be with him anyway.
Bruiser walked across the dark yard to my side. As if reading my mind, he said, “The healers are with Eli. They have him stabilized, but it won’t last. I’ve called for the priestess to help heal him.” The sirens I had been hearing turned in, drawing closer, the combined wails heralding at least four cruisers, maybe as many as six. We had a circus on our hands. “I’ll get Leo to the back,” Bruiser said.
I looked at the MOC. He currently was drinking from a male vamp, and one woman was kneeling in front of him. I did not want to know what she was doing. “Yeah. That might be a good idea.”
He grinned, teeth gleaming in the night. “Remind me to tell you later how splendid you are. How extraordinary. And how beautiful.”
“It would have been even better in the mud, dude,” Derek said, jogging past. “But for chick-on-chick fighting, it wasn’t bad.”
At which point I looked down, to see that I’d fought the last battle in my ripped bra and a pair of bloody jeans. Go, me.