by Faith Hunter
“Obfuscation spells,” I suggested. “Good ones.” Eli cursed softly and I said, “Even money says she was in the closet and I triggered the spell. We might lose the final payment on the witch contract unless we discover a hidden room or something that Amalie didn’t disclose, where the witches hid.”
He chuckled coldly as I returned my weight to my feet and tried to find my balance. “Long as we get away intact, I don’t care about the money, babe.” I heard shincks, and clicks and clacks, metallic and otherwise. The stink of gun oil wafted from him too. He was checking and laying out weapons on the bar top. He had clearly hidden a stash beneath the bar.
“Yeah. Totally, my brother.” I pushed away from the bar and raised my voice. “Lachish. They’re coming. They were upstairs, hidden in the family quarters or a hidden room.” She cursed too, but the words were a spell she was readying.
“Come to think of it,” I said again to Eli, “we may have to exist on PB and J for a while. I may not get paid for Leo’s part either.”
“Why’s that?” Eli asked as if we were playing checkers and not facing death by burning or asphyxiating on magical gas.
“This was my fight to protect Leo—who I staked. His people—one who I staked, and another you shot at my direct order. I think I broke my contract.”
“Dang, babe. That sounds like a great story for the hot tub.”
“We have a hot tub?”
“We survive this, I’m buying us one.”
I chuffed. I had only a few moments before Marlene was in the room with us. I explained the spell to Lachish and she called out orders to her people. Lachish’s witches snapped up personal wards again and took places for a full circle—witches standing shoulder to shoulder, in an actual circle. They began a working that sparked the air blue and purple. It looked aggressive and dangerous. Go, Lachish.
Mixed magics sizzled on the air like burning meat. My left palm, holding the blob, broke open again to leak down my wrist. My hand ached, but I didn’t let go of Evan’s gift. The pain that had been muted by Leo’s blood screamed back, working through the cracks of my fingers where the air touched the burned flesh. If Marlene was here, Tau was close behind. And the spell was stronger now than before. The Nicauds had been scoping out the place and the occupants, a tactical maneuver, similar to the icons in the yard, to see what we had and how we’d use it. They were one step, or maybe three steps, ahead of us all the way.
The red-dressed witch appeared in the doorway. The magics on the air were suddenly so strong they skidded on my damaged skin like hot asphalt and broken glass. Tactical maneuvers . . . Were the Nicauds former military? That wasn’t in the dossiers prepared by the Kid.
As if reading my mind, Eli said, “This isn’t going down like attrition warfare, where success is quantified by enemy killed or disabled, weapons and infrastructure destroyed, and territory occupied. This is going down like a game. A video game.”
“Like the ones we found at the Nicauds’ old house.”
“Yeah. We’ve missed something. Our intel is bad.”
“A game run by a cat,” I said. “Cat and mouse. Play with the mouse. Maybe hurt it a little. Let it go, let it think it was free. Then pounce again.” I knew diddly-squat about video games, but I knew cats. I patted the bar and Eli leaped to the top as I stepped away, across the room, spreading us as targets. Grégoire’s body was now between Eli and the Truebloods and me. Molly, who had been listening to the byplay, nodded at me, looked at her husband, and snapped up her ward, which was a darker tint than before, likely modified on the fly for gaseous spells.
“Options?” Eli asked.
“Not much. We have to keep the spell contained and not let it into the streets. Let’s see what the witches can do. We’re not dying. Yet.”
“You’re worse than Uncle Sam.”
A laugh startled out of me, despite the danger, and I chuckled the words “You wound me.”
Marlene’s dance rhythm mutated, the vibration through the floor, a pounding ethnic beat that had elements of tribal American, African, and island. She moved into the room with balletic grace, the way lava moved. Swirling down a hill, taking everything with it. She was dark-skinned, with a mass of hair that coiled and curled down her back, a turban over her head. Full-lipped, with a broad nose. Wide, glistening eyes. Skin gleaming ruddy in the red magics that spun from her.
She performed a rippling dance step that started at her feet and undulated up her body to her head. A move that was part of the spell, directing it with her will and gestures.
Flames of power flared out from the witch, fire tipped with the pale spring green of her daughter’s workings. Smelling of iron and salt and scorched wood. Everything happened at one, in overlapping segments of time or maybe intersecting segments of my awareness.
Magics and energies slid along my skin. Kissing it. Promising pain unimaginable, except that hadn’t happened. The leathers were spelled against magics, even ones as strong as the green vapor spell. So as long as I kept my clothes on, and I didn’t simply asphyxiate on the gasses, I was good. My partner wasn’t good, however. He was fighting a cough. His skin had gone pale as if he was ready to knock on death’s door.
I tossed him the two charms Molly had given me and instantly he looked better. We shared a nod. Lachish’s huge witch circle at the back of the room was so full of power it was nearly black with the energies.
I clenched the blob. Stupid name, Beast thought. Which made me laugh, a sound more like a frustrated sob. The Nicauds’ spell was growing, stretching, slipping over the working at the back of the ballroom like oil over water, coating it entirely. It was also leaching my own energies as I breathed, feeding the vapor spell.
A human male hiding behind a table in the hallway slumped to the floor with a thump, unbreathing, his energy drained. A busboy racing down the hallway to get away, fell, and tumbled. Crap. That changed everything. The Nicuads were now willing to hurt everyone, human, witches, vamps, me. The only tactic I could think of was to drop the outer wards and evacuate the mansion. Which would take the spell and the fight out into the street and hurt the bystanders and then the first responders.
Run. Hide. Jane is stupid, Beast thought.
Yeah, I thought back.
All this thinking in less than two breaths. My head was swimming. Eli staggered on the bar top.
Already, outside, I heard sirens. Someone, probably one of our sharpshooter teams, had spotted something through the windows and had called police backup and ambulance. But the first responders couldn’t be let in, even if they could get in through the outer house ward. Things in here were beyond unstable. Anything I did might put the victims in greater danger. Flying by the seat of my pants and bashing heads didn’t sound like a good solution to this. I didn’t know what to do.
Eli crouched upright on the bar, still high above the fog, and maneuvered so he was between Marlene and the Truebloods. I fingered the blob, gripping and releasing, the pain in my burned hand easing again. Trying to think. Trying to decide on . . . anything.
Tau entered the room, delicate and tiny, like a tree nymph, with glorious hair, full and curly, standing out as Angie’s did when her magic was high, in a nimbus of power that writhed and snaked. There was an old myth about a woman—a goddess? A demon?—with a head full of snakes. Had she been a double-gened witch, her myth gaining power through the ages into a deity? Tau wore a green dress, a floral watercolor print in emerald, mint, and misty-sage green. She danced like her mother in style, but where her mother moved like molten earth, Tau moved like water, flooding the room with her magics.
As if a dam had broken, the green power of the working boiled up from the floor and walls and raged higher in the room, falling from overhead, from the height of the doorway, rising again on the floor. Filling the ballroom like a deluge, expanding like the sea through a broken dike, flowing through the doorways, down the walls, a waterfa
ll of power that eddied and shifted into whirlpools of rainbows. The vapor magic flowed into the working at the back of the room. Quickly the magics were waist high. A witch inside started to scream and writhe, slapping at her own skin as if bees were stinging her. Lachish’s huge protective ward began to crack.
To the side, Molly whispered, “Carraig,” in the lilting tone of her family’s oldest wards, in Irish Gaelic. Her own ward hardened yet again, but it wasn’t the same power signature as the one Evan had made in the yard. They had little air left. Several of other witches knew a working to keep out air, but not enough of them and the circle at the back thinned. More witches fell inside the ward.
The protective circle fell with a shower of sparks and a sizzle of power that was instantly swept up by the green misty flames.
Doors slammed shut throughout the house, a resounding multidimensional whamwhamwham of sound and vibration. In Beast-sight, the entrance to the ballroom and every doorway leading out, now glowed with black-light magic. Exactly like the magic Angie Baby used. Frustration and fear gathered in my throat, wanting to be screamed out. The Nicauds had just added their own wards to the one the Witch Conclave had created. If I had wanted to escape, I should have done it before now.
The witches broke up and raised smaller wards, in small groups. Or tried to. The green mist began to suck the energy out of them. All but Molly’s ward.
“Molly?”
“Got this,” she said.
“Good to hear.” I lifted my arms. The green magics were up to my chest, and ankle high on Eli. He might not be able to see the magics, but he had deduced how they worked. The flaming pool was now tipped in black, stinging, burning my hands.
Molly pressed her fingers through her ward, toward the dancing witches, saying, “Múchtóir dóiteáin. Múch.”
Marlene staggered. Tau threw out her hand at Molly and said, “Confuto. Retardo.”
Molly’s offensive working exploded in a scattering of scarlet sparks. Molly dropped like the dead. Evan caught her and her reinforced hedge 2.0 brightened over them, glowing red and blue. Half of it was now Evan’s magics. Dang. One more use of magic and he’d be permanently out of the closet. My godchildren would be forevermore in danger.
“Jane,” Eli demanded. “Options.”
“Eli,” I whispered. “Take the shot.”
He fired. But the weapon clicked oddly. Misfire. With his off hand, and a second weapon, Eli took another shot. It too misfired. The spells of the green mist were multilayered and multipurpose. Eli cursed softly and, in a single motion, pulled a knife, throwing at Tau. The whirling blade stopped in the air and fell with a sound of shattering steel.
The Nicauds turned at the sound. Marlene snarled when she saw the broken blade. Ignoring the human on the bar as useless, she looked at me and said some word I didn’t recognize. “Now, my daughter,” she said, and whirled something around her head. In Beast vision it looked like two electric stones tied together with a length of black magic rope, a spelled bolo, one of those things horsemen used to trap horses, if they didn’t care if the horse broke a leg. It whipped through the air. Once . . .
Tau danced to Grégoire on the floor.
Twice . . . The bolo spell whirled.
Marlene aimed her gaze at me.
Someone called my name, the voice broken, full of pain.
Three times . . . Marlene released it. The magical rope slid from her fingers.
“Jump!” I shouted.
Time slowed down, that situational awareness that sometimes gives battle the consistency of taffy. In a single motion, I caught my breath, set the weapons on the bar, and again dove through the fog, sliding under the piano. My hands caught on fire again. My face burned. My hair smoked. But as I slid through the mist and into the blue magics of Gee’s personal protection, the flames on me were snuffed.
The bolo hit the bar, just behind where I had stood, wrapping around it and through it, cutting the antique burled wood into four equal-sized chunks of smoking kindling. At my shout, Eli had leaped and landed on top of the Trueblood’s hardened ward. That was close.
Marlene screamed in fury. Whirled to follow my movement. And threw a second bolo spell at me.
Still sliding across the floor, I bowled into Girrard DiMercy, picking up his slight form as I rolled over my burden and to my feet on the far side of the piano. The bolo was wrapped around nothing but air, about a foot away from my skin. It fell to the floor in a shower of blue as I placed Gee on top of the piano. We were both coughing and full of the stink of burned hair, skin, and feathers. His voice a pale imitation of its usual power, Gee said. “I didn’t know if you would hear me. Not after—”
“I heard.”
Eli jumped back onto the broken bar. And threw another knife at Tau, who ignored him and his broken blade. But trying to buy me some time.
Marlene threw another spell at me. It spat when it hit Gee’s magics and fell. Marlene screamed in fury. With her attention on me, conclave witches were abandoning ship, turning their attention to getting through the black, woven wards on all the doors. It was just occurring to them that they were trapped. Tau hit one with a knockout spell and the woman simply crumpled to the floor. Tau laughed and hit another.
Gee’s face was blistered. Neck and hands raw. Burned before he opened whatever magics he had used to shield himself. Magics that had let me in. Another thing to think about later. His burns weren’t quite as bad as my own, but they were bad enough. There were slashes in his throat. Two fang slashes.
I remembered Ming’s bloody fangs. She had clearly attacked him. He wiped both hands through the blood of his throat and onto me, on my face and my injured hand. The pain instantly eased and beneath the blood I saw actual skin on my palm. “What—?”
Beneath Marlene’s screams, Gee said what I had thought only moments before. “We two are the only ones burned. We two who are goddess born. My blood, a drop of Ming’s blood, and your blood upon the weapon made by your friends.” He closed my healed fist around the blob, which appeared in his bloody fingers, stolen from my pocket as if by prestidigitation. “You are protected now. You must protect the children. Always.” His eyes closed as he slumped on the piano.
I turned back to the ballroom. Marlene’s anger had fueled the green flames all around her. Red fire danced over her body, licking but not burning.
Beyond her, Tau pulled something from her bodice, but her back was to me, and I couldn’t see what it was, except it was small. She said what sounded like “Meus es tu.” And she struck down with her hand. Down onto Grégoire, who still lay on the floor. Magics ballooned out around him like a black flower blooming through the green.
That couldn’t be good.
Tau turned to the witches and pointed at them, accusing. “You didn’t help us when we asked, when we begged.”
Marlene hunched in, her angry screams echoing away. Tears had tracked down her face, leaving black mascara trails in her makeup. In Cajun patois, she said, “You. You di’n’ stop the fanged devils when we show you proof of they evil. You done hid you heads in de sand and let dem take our young, you did. My Antoine, him die because you refuse him help. Now you pay.”
“Now you pay!” Tau echoed. She clapped her hands together twice and said, “Maintenant. Vous tuerez. Assassiner.”
I understood the last word, just as Grégoire stood. He moved the way a marionette did when a puppeteer pulled it upright on its strings. He was still vamped out. There was a peacock pin stuck into his chest, just inches above the stake I’d stuck in him. Grégoire opened his vamped-out eyes. The black of the pupils were filled with green flames. He had a sword in each hand. Face slack. He stared at the wall.
Tau smiled and twirled her fingers.
Grégoire spun and raised his swords to Tau like an offering. She slid her thumbs along the steel. Her blood slicked down across the blades. The vamp staggered toward the T
ruebloods. One sword lifted above Molly and Evan’s ward.
“Assassiner,” Tau repeated.
Kitssss. Beast reached inside and ripped her claws through the Gray Between.
The world swirled and roared around me. The gray magics erupted out. And then died. I lost my footing as an unfamiliar pain slammed into my chest, stealing my breath. I caught myself on the bar, not sure how I’d gotten there. Not sure what had happened. Except that my chest was aching as if I’d taken a hit. I glanced down and saw a scuff in the scarlet leather jacket. Yeah. Somehow, in the Gray Between, I’d been spell-stabbed. The leather/Dyneema/chain-mail counterspells had protected me.
Eli’s weapons were laid in a row on the bar, like a line of death, but nothing he had on hand had worked. He looked like death warmed over, face greenish, fingers trembling. I grabbed up my vamp-killer and raised it across my body in the Spanish Circle’s cross-guard.
Grégoire spun past me, knocking my clumsy block, sending my blade spinning across the room. His sword circled, a flashy move in preparation to cut Molly’s ward.
The blade fell and sliced through the energies like a hot knife through butter. The magics sizzled and spat and fell.
Lachish dropped her ward for half a second, and threw the orb of magics she had gathered once before. It wasn’t the tightly shaped weapon it had been, but it also wasn’t weak.
It hit Grégoire, cutting like a scissors through his marionette strings. He fell in a heap. The magics slithered like snakes up his body and inside, crawling through the hole in his belly where the stake still rested. I hoped Lachish hadn’t just killed Leo’s boy toy and best fighter, but I also didn’t have time to help him now, because Leo walked back through the door from the stairway. The stake was still in his chest. He too had a brooch in his flesh, pinned through his throat.
“Oh, crap,” I breathed. Leo had been left upstairs, incapacitated. With them . . .
Tau sidled up to him in a four-beat step, step-step-turning-step-step, as if she shared a dance with him. She yanked the stake out of him. Vamp blood splattered and Tau licked the stake. Leo looked at her and laughed.