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 andhedges. 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 herhedge 2.0ward, 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 varioushedge of thornswards, 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 anoofof 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 eyesflickered 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 shots 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 herhedge. “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-fourrhythm.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.
“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 heardshincks, andclicks andclacks, 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 afull 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.
