by Faith Hunter
Eli didn’t reply, but I smelled his relief as if he’d been standing right beside me. I searched out and found Bruiser, who was entering the closed upper rooms with impunity, rooms set aside for family and privacy. The explosion might have been outside the ward, but Alex was inside and down. Something was wrong.
To Leo, I said, “I don’t see magics.” I eased into the room, clearing the closet and window nook and under the tiny desk. I was holding a vamp-killer in my left hand and the blob in my right. “No witches, no magics.”
“A candlestick is the culprit,” Leo said, his fingers growing bloodier as they crawled through Alex’s hair. “When he wakes, I will see that he is fed to mitigate any possibility of brain damage.”
“They hid here,” I said, coming back to the closet and tucking my head within. Something touched my face, like a spiderweb in the dark, a feathery brush of . . . magic. I wrenched my body out, tripping on my own feet. “Magic!” I shouted. A sneeze slammed through me. Witch magic. A lot of magic. Something thumped my left hand, no more than a fist bump of force.
Everything happened fast. Pain ripped out of my palm and green magics swept out from the closet to me, instantly coating my body, the floor, Leo, and Alex. A fast blur of flaming green. I cursed and shook my hand, but green flames roared up, shaped for an instant like an eye. My left hand caught fire, flaring with green flames. The pain was instantaneous. I staggered back a step, mouth open to suck in a breath that burned in my lungs. The anti-DNA charm sizzled and died, not built to withstand such intensity.
On pure instinct, I dropped my weapons, pulled the blob from my pocket, and slammed it into my left palm. The flames on my hand went out. The heat in my chest cooled. The pain stopped. The remnant flames raced up my spelled fighting leathers and died, but . . . my hand. I gasped and swallowed back a scream. My hand was blistered and weeping. I opened my fist and the pain flared back, so I closed it on the blob again. But I had seen enough. The flesh was coming off in small wrinkled, water-engorged strips, leaving the muscles beneath visible and raw. My poor hands, hurt again. This New Orleans gig was proving more damaging, more often, than I had ever expected.
Around me, the green magic boiled on the floor, spitting and spattering, like water poured into a red-hot pot. No one but me had caught fire. The spell had been targeted to me. That was a relief and a surprise, but I’d take it. I just had to get out of here before the spell touched my skin again and burned me to a crisp. With my booted foot, I flipped up the vamp-killer, which had landed at my feet, and caught it.
Leo’s fine-boned fingers were still in Alex’s hair. Bloody but unmoving. As if pressed gently against the perimeters of the wound to slow the bleeding.
“Jane?” Bruiser asked. He was standing at the door, weapons out, including a sword I seldom saw him carry. He hadn’t been carrying a sword in the limo and I had to assume he’d secreted one on the premises. “You’re hurt.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I triggered something, but this put it out.” I showed him the hand holding the blob. “Unfortunately it’s still active. Can you see it?”
Bruiser shook his head. “No.” But there was a strange look on his face, confusion, maybe. And he sniffed as if something smelled unpleasant.
“Are you okay?” I asked him.
“I . . . I don’t know.” He knelt by Leo, into the green, low-lying spell-mist. Tilted his head.
“Jane?” Eli called.
I heard more sizzling. My brain clicked back on. The anti-DNA charms were going out all at once.
There was no way that anyone could have known that I would be the one to trigger the spell. No way to know when the targeted spell had been put in the closet, but under ordinary conditions, it wasn’t a place I should have even entered. The chance of me entering the closet, even with Alex injured, was minimal. I was missing something. The green spell was still pouring out around my feet, filling the room. I was missing something. Something big.
“Jane!” Eli called, soft, but edgy. “Leo?”
Leo lifted one hand to his face. Opened his mouth. And he licked his bloody fingers. His head swiveled from Alex up to me, that inhuman oddly jointed way they move when they don’t care if they look human. From his place on the floor Leo’s gaze swallowed me. Fastfastfast, he vamped out. Eyes bloodred with pupils blown, huge and black. Green flames danced in his eyes. Leo’s fangs schnicked down. He rocketed up, talons reaching for me.
I’d been wrong. The spell hadn’t been aimed only at me.
CHAPTER 19
A Billowing Gust of Fiery Death
With no thought at all, I bonked Leo on the head with the hilt of the vamp-killer. Hard. Leo fell like a human. Into the rising, flaming cloud of glowing green vapor-based spell that was rising all around me, but wasn’t touching my skin again. Yet. Not through the spelled leathers and with the blob in my hand. “Bruiser, what—?”
But he was kneeling exactly as I’d seen him last, head down and tilted. Staring at Alex. Not moving except for a slow, shallow breath. And he hadn’t reacted to me putting Leo down. So to speak.
I whipped my head and took the working in, Beast-sight making the magics glow in brilliant greens and silvers, now flowing out of the room and into the hallway like a slow-moving, developing flood. Heading for the stairs. Understanding came in an instant.
This spell, whatever it was intended to do, other than burn me to death, make Leo bonkers, and freeze Bruiser, was being carried on flaming green air, a vapor that would pass through my clothes eventually, and burn me alive. And it could pass through all defensive hedge wards where any witch who used the protection would breathe it. Even vamps had to breathe to speak and would inhale the spell, which was likely how Leo got hit. He had breathed in to speak to me. So had Bruiser, who was breathing normally when he dropped into the mist. The spell was multifaceted and multipurpose and I had no idea what all it might do or what it was based on. We were so screwed.
Worse. I had done this. When I stuck my head in the closet, when I touched that spiderweb stuff. I had somehow ignited the green magics. Like det cord, flaming too fast to catch. Like an explosion out of the closet, a billowing gust of fiery death.
A small, rational part of my mind told me that something so sophisticated probably had a dozen possible triggers. But the rest of me wasn’t listening. And the working was still flowing out of the closet. I closed the closet door, but the spell raced through the cracks, barely slowed.
“Jane!” Eli shouted this time, and I heard his feet on the stairs.
Beast flooded me with another shot of adrenaline. “Problem,” I said softly, not wanting my voice to carry to the ballroom. “Spell. Stay put.” Eli halted, but I could smell his tension, a rising tide of violence that had nowhere to go.
I tried again to put the blob away and this time my hand stayed flameless. But as I released my grip, I ripped the flesh off my palm, leaving it clinging to the blob. I made a choked sound of agony. Beast shot painkilling endorphins through me, damping the pain and making me weirdly euphoric, while standing in the middle of a spell with a skinless hand. I rubbed the peeled strip of flesh off the blob and onto my leathers, tucked it all into my pocket, and sheathed the vamp-killer. Pulled a wooden stake with my good hand. Leo was already moving, trying to wake. His body was submerged and encased in green flames. His eyes popped open. Green pupils, face mad with rage.
I staked him. I’d done it before and he had lived. This was only wood, not silver, so I figured he’d be ticked off but would live to undeath again and without the drama of the last time. He went still, his eyes glazed over in what looked like real death. The magics crawled all over him, writhing, trying to wake him.
I spoke again to Eli, loud enough to carry, forcing my voice to be calm and controlled, despite the pain. “Spell activated. Booby trap in the closet. Minor injury to my hand. Made Leo unstable. He’s out of commission. Bruiser is motionless. And—” I to
ok in the second story. The hallway was filling with green gas, low down, heavier than air. “Tell the witches a dark magic spell is on the way down the stairs. To do some magical whammy and put it out, and ward against air.”
“Roger that. Alex?”
“Spell had no effect so far as I can tell. I’ll bring him down.”
I smelled more than heard Eli move down the stairs, a faint change in the potency of the scent patterns. By one arm, I pulled Leo out of the small room and into a bathroom. I rolled him over and into the tub, and double-checked the stake’s placement, midabdomen, where the descending aorta was, in a human. I gave it a little push to secure it and wiped his blood off along my wounded, skinless hand. Residual pain decreased and the oily-looking flesh seemed to grow more opaque in the first hint of healing. I rubbed every drop of the leftover blood into my skin and then wiped off on a fancy, tasseled hand towel and tossed it over the currently dead vamp, hiding the stake.
Leo was strong enough to get free if someone came in and pulled the stake loose, or if the magics in the house made it happen, or if it worked free somehow. I didn’t carry silver handcuffs. Note to self. If I survived this, I’d get me a pair of them. I locked Leo in the small room and wedged a chair under the knob. He could get out of the bathroom easily, but at least I’d hear him do so.
Back in the security room, I bent into the gas, careful to keep my face above it, and rolled Alex up onto my shoulder. I paused to look over the security console, which was now little more than shattered plastic, broken screens, and fried wires, dancing with green flames. So much for knowing what was going on throughout the house. I raced back down the stairs, through the six inches of spell that was flowing down them like a river and pooling at the bottom of the stairway, hearing the sounds of furniture breaking and shouts. I dumped the Kid—still breathing—onto a champagne-toned sofa in the Louis XVI Room at the front of the house; the settee was above the floor enough to have him breathing real air. I rose upright, feeling unexpectedly breathless and a strain in my thigh muscles. I huffed a breath and stepped to the entrance. Brandon stood there, back to the door, staring at nothing with much the same expression as Bruiser wore upstairs. I had a feeling Brian was out of it too. I scanned the wide foyer and up the stairs and back toward the ballroom, taking it all in.
Some smaller part of me was analyzing and adding up the factors: Skinwalker burns. Vamps go crazy. Onorios freeze. Minor witch charms fizzle out. Humans and witches had to be in there somewhere.
Green flaming magics roiled across the floor from the stairs, but also were in free fall through the stairway opening and straight down. It clung to the ceiling and across, to slide down the walls. The spell was growing in speed and in volume, seemingly feeding on itself. Or feeding on the people in the house. Skinwalker burns. Vamps go crazy. Onorios freeze. Humans and witches . . . Yeah. The magics had to be getting their power from somewhere and we were as likely a source as any. I was too tired for the minimal exertion. I had a feeling that we could be used up and left drained. Maybe that was the intent of the spell. Tau had become a senze onore . . . and that might be a psychic and metabolic vampire. She was stealing the life and energy from us all.
I waded through the mist toward the ballroom entrance. The witches were screaming incantations in English, Celtic, French, and Latin, a jumbled auditory mass. The burn of their magic was heated and icy on the skin of my hands and face, a dozen workings flying at the same time, skidding and skipping over the green mist like flat pebbles over a pond. But the spell was still flowing in around my knees, unchecked. My strength was failing, despite Beast shooting me full of the good stuff. But her gifts, even added to my normal skinwalker powers, wouldn’t be enough. Not for long.
I took in the ballroom with a single breath. Beast filled my head and my senses and evaluating as only a predator can, by scent. And she smelled blood. It was spattered in arcs and small pools on the parquet wood floor. The stink of the mixed blood was witchy, human, vamp, Onorio, and Mercy Blade, tasting acrid on my/our tongue as I tried to figure who was hurt. The reek of mixed-species blood bubbled in the green spell as if heated, the stench cooking up a miasma of terror and rising anger in the melee.
Visually the place was a wreck. Tables and chairs had been overturned and scattered. Witches and the human plus-ones were huddled under wards and hedges. Green energies encased ceiling, floors, and walls, licking out and up. I stepped just inside the opening and slid my back against the wall, behind Brian, where he stood, unmoving, a sword pointing at the floor, his face slack. I studied the long room. Locating prey and predators. And I didn’t see attacking witches anywhere. What I saw was vamps fighting.
Grégoire was closest to me, vamped out, whirling like a dervish through the rising magics, his sword keeping a wide swath of room open around him. But he didn’t seem to have any opponents at the moment. Gee DiMercy was bleeding, a smeared trail of evaporating, floral-scented blood leading to his hiding spot under the baby grand piano. I smelled his flesh burning, the stink of singed feathers, and his magics were glowing with some kind of protection, but he couldn’t heal himself and I couldn’t tell how bad he was injured. I had no idea why the green spell burned Gee and me and not the others, but when I got a long vacation I’d try to figure it out.
Beast chuffed at the thought.
Ming, also vamped, had bloodied fangs. She had bitten someone. Not good, if it was a witch or human. She was holding two knives, like short swords. Standing atop a small table in the nook called the Chaperone’s Alcove. She was barefoot now, beneath the scarlet dress, which was hitched into the feathered train.
Evan and Molly were huddled together beneath her hedge 2.0 ward, in the narrow place between the fancy bar and the liquor cabinet behind it. Their heads were, so far, above the rising mist, their hands working their magics, probably trying to use the filter magic Evan had come up with to stop the vapor working from entering. They were safe. Safe-ish. For the moment.
Eli was on the bar, two weapons drawn, one aimed at Grégoire, one on Ming. Neither vamp seemed to have noticed him. His legs weren’t on fire and his leathers weren’t scorched, but he looked tired, as if he’d been in-country for a week with no sleep.
The other witches were protected under various hedge of thorns wards, except for Lachish. She walked toward Grégoire, her hands up, holding a ball of pale golden light. Within it, red motes of power zipped and swirled. She raised her hands as if to throw it at Grégoire.
I shouted, “No! Lachish, they’re spelled by witches!”
She hesitated and I took my chance. From behind, I dove around Brian, pulling the blob, holding it in both hands before me. I threw my entire body at Grégoire’s feet, sliding across the elegant parquet through the spell. Holding my breath. Behind the blob. I didn’t catch fire, the blob protecting me in the Trueblood-Everhart working.
I took Grégoire out like a batter taking out home base. Except that I grabbed his feet as he toppled over me. Pressed the blob against the back of his knee. He landed on my back. All the breath left my body at once in an oof of sound and pain. I closed my lungs down, refusing them the breath they so desperately wanted. Grégoire rolled over me to the floor. His swords clashed once, just missing me. I spun and whipped the blob to Grégoire’s head in a half-roundhouse, half-uppercut move I seldom used except in the dojo as a feint, sparring. I clocked the vamp once on the temple. His head knocked back. With my good hand, I staked him too, midcenter abdomen, nonlethal to such an old vamp. The green magics in his eyes flickered and died. He was out. I’d need two pairs of silver handcuffs.
I rolled to my feet and caught a breath, coughing. I held a hand out to Lachish to keep her from using the spell, but she had already let the heat of it wisp away.
That left Ming. “Eli!” I managed between coughs. “Standard ammo.” I pointed at the table in the alcove. “Take her out!” The report of the nine-mil overrode my last two words. A three-tap. The shot
s echoed through the house. Ming fell, one hole in her cheek that seemed to enter at an upward angle, two in her heart. The heart shots would be an easy heal. The head shot, if it hit the brain, would take longer.
All around the room, the green flames fell. The vapor dying to little more than an oily film on the floor. And I couldn’t see why, unless the spell had burned itself out. And I didn’t think I’d be so lucky. I coughed and leaned on the bar beside Eli, who was breathing just fine and dandy. I sucked in air and lowered my head between my hands, trying to restore my spent energy.
I turned and rested my bruised back on the bar. Seconds passed. Silence filled the room. A waiting emptiness. Witches watching. Maybe the mist had been intended to kill the vamps, and now that they were technically out of action, it was over.
Lachish stepped back. Slowly the witches began to drop the various wards they were using. Molly dropped her hedge. “Son of a witch on a switch,” she whispered, and shook herself like a wet dog after a long rain. “Here,” she said, handing me two charms, carved from unstained wood. “The bear is for healing, the fish is to deflect violent spell attack.”
“What the . . .,” Evan said. His eyes went wide. Staring behind me.
Without thought, I pivoted. Freeing a vamp-killer and a nine-mil from their holsters. Marlene was dancing on the stairway from the second floor, visible about midway up. She was wearing transparent red harem pants and a flaring silky skirt over them, with a flaring, beaded tunic, and her bare feet drummed on the floor in a four-four rhythm. Marlene Nicaud was inside with the witches. Had been inside all day. No wonder everything had gone to hell in a handbasket.
“She was not here when I cleared the house this morning before the ward was set,” Eli said.