It followed the stove, and we leaped after it, hopped on top, and started to jump up and down, trying to send it and him plunging through the floor.However, the floor was well-built, and it was taking a minute.A minute, as it turned out, that we didn’t have.
“Get behind me!”someone bellowed, just before we were hit with something we didn’t recognize.
It wasn’t a blow like the rest, but a spell, although not one I knew.It was comprised of magic so strong, so strange, and so alien that my counterpart and I paused for a second.Pretty, she thought, as she had at HQ when Hargroves’ spell had hit.
But that one hadn’t hurt, whereas this—
“Aughhhhh!”
Our scream echoed around the room as the spell ignited, and I mean that literally.We were suddenly on fire, with flames running across our body and eating away at our flesh like acid.They immediately consumed us, blocking out our view of the room and burrowing straight to our very soul, as if we’d been turned into an ember.We couldn’t see past them, couldn’t smell, couldn’t—
Couldn’t smell?
“Hurry, while she’s distracted!”someone said.A woman.To be more precise, the matriarch from the living room, I thought, snarling.
And she was right, wasn’t she?This was a distraction.An illusion cast to give our enemies a chance to regroup, which was why there was no smell of burning fur, or cooking fat, or charred bone.
And that meant—
Shit, we thought, and started laying about blindly with everything we had, before anybody could jump us while the damned spell impacted our senses.Dagger-like claws on one hand kept back the witches, and the spoon in the other scared off the vamps.Because, round and silly-looking as it might be, we could easily shove it through a heart.
If only we could find one.
But that was becoming easier, because while we couldn’t smell cooking meat, wecouldsmell—
“Scent!Scent!It’s going by—” A panicked voice yelled as we grabbed somebody.Somebody who was screaming and then shrieking as we lay about with him instead of our claws, using what we assumed was a vamp since he didn’t immediately die to pummel the others.
And, okay, my counterpart was starting to enjoy herself again, with the scent map in our head as good as sight, pinpointing the combatants we had left to deal with.Including a small, slightly built one, who had gotten knocked to the floor at some point, but was now getting up, reeking of spilled mint chocolate chip.And raising a hand.
A second later, our body froze in place, with no amount of effort enough to budge us so much as an inch, and even our thoughts...
Slowing...
Way...
Way...
Down.
???
“—so sorry,” somebody was saying.“I’m really so very—”
“Well, you damned well ought to be!”
I didn’t know the first voice, but the second was Sophie’s.And it sounded like she was about to lose her goddamned mind.And considering what could happen if that occurred—
I started fighting my way back to consciousness.
It was hard.It was really hard.It felt like my whole body was caught in a tar pit, one that had half-solidified in winter and was threatening to ice over me.And where the hell had that image come from?
I’d never even seen a tar pit!
And then I was opening my eyes.
I spotted Jen first and wondered what the hell she was doing there.Her eyes were neon green fire, brighter than I’d ever seen them, bright enough to stain her cheeks, which were flushed and furious.She had a hand out, I didn’t know why, and then I followed her gaze and realized—
She was somehow holding the vamps—allthe vamps—along with the pieces torn off their bodies, against the far wall with the tasteful prints, as if making a hideous, but eye-catching, piece of modern art.
