My arms were bound tightly against me. My fingers began to tingle as the bolo did its work, tightening, its magic binding into me, despite the magics on the leathers. My sword slid to the floor. Guns didn’t work in the Gray Between. I couldn’t get to a bladed weapon. But I had my claws....
“Dey. My. Boys. Unnerstan?Mine!”
I nodded, unable to do anything but agree.
“You like de one what kill my Antoine. Evil like dat... datanimal.”
Yes,I thought.Skinwalker. But not spear-finger or liver-eater. Notu’tlun’ta.
Marlene slid one of the sterling stakes out of my hair and pulled me across the room, my feet following an unspoken command to obey her actions, the bolo spell forcing me to comply. But my body wasn’t acting with a normal sense of balance and I tripped over something on the floor. Swayed drunkenly.
Marlene stabbed Grégoire with the silver stake. “No,” I tried to say, but the word was stuck in my throat with the gathering tears. They filled my eyes and I blinked against them. She removed a second stake and stabbed Ming. She pulled me to Leo and repeated the motion. “Hem you pick up,” she said, patting my arms, releasing the binding on them. But before I could react, the bolo tightened on my chest, making it difficult to breathe.
Unable to refuse, I bent at the knees and lifted Leo over my shoulder. My breath whooshed out of me in a pained grunt. My belly tore again. Leo made a soft breathy sound, too low for anyone but me to hear, and went still, his blood trickling down my back. But he didn’t move or resist.
Worse, I had a feeling I was bleeding internally. The working was leaching away my energy. I was dead on my feet. Leo and I were both in bad shape.
Lastly, Marlene pulled me to her daughter and took my hand, forcing me to touch her. I nearly fell to my knees as my strength was depleted. Bubbling time for two—four now—was not a wise move.
Tau gasped and looked around. “What—? Mama?”
“We gots what we come for. Let’s go.”
“What isthat?” Tau pointed at me.
“Dat dere a monster carrying a monster. We use dem both.”
Together we four walked out of the burning room, out of the house. The three security types who I had positioned on the front porch before the ward went back up were frozen in real time. Ro Moore, Brenda Rezak, and Wrassler, facing the front door, armed, holding weapons.I tried to reach out and touch one of them, but I didn’t make it before Marlene grabbed my knobby fingers and yanked back on them. Dislocating my fingers. I dropped to my knees and vomited all over the porch and dropped Leo with a thump that sounded slow and basso. I landed on him. The bolo spell bound me tighter, cutting into my skin where it touched. I smelled my blood on the air. Marlene didn’t let go of me or my fingers or her daughter. She kicked me, her foot finding the torn place in my belly with unerring accuracy.
I retched and tasted blood, but used the time to assess my options. I was still tied up in the bolo spell. I didn’t know what the working did, other than cut into me and make me agreeable to most anything they ordered, which was bad enough, but could become a lot worse, fast. I didn’t have the blob anymore. But I did have the brooch. And Leo’s blood. And the bolo might work differently in no time. Like, maybe I could get out of it. Somehow.
Marlene studied the witch ward and laughed. She said to her daughter, “Don’ let go of dis monster. But put out your hand. Break dis ward. Dis nothing for you power.”
I lifted the hand on the witch’s off side—the not broken hand—and checked for the brooch. Still there. Then I eased my fingers between Leo’s body and mine and got two fingertips and my thumb around the silver stake. His belly was in bad shape, numerous cuts, punctures, and what felt like intestines (assuming vamps have intestines?) pushing up at the nexus of the wounds. The stink of silver-tainted vamp blood assailed my nostrils, revolting on my tortured stomach.
I gagged again, and the tearing sensation in my belly doubled me over on the porch floor.
Leo smells wrong. Smells like meat, two days dead,Beast thought.Or like Son of Darkness with silver inside.
Which would be about right. To prepare for tonight, Leo had gotten blood-full, probably blood-drunk at one point. And he had surely squeezed out a few drops of the good stuff belonging to the oldest of all vamps to sip on. And now Leo was full of silver, just like the SoD.
I pulled the stake out of Leo’s belly and set it on theporch floor, careful to not let ittinkor thump down, in a darker shadow. Just as carefully I extruded my bloody claws and cut the Morse code for SOS into the porch floor. Three dots, three dashes, three dots.
As I carved, Tau inspected the structure of the magical working ward, fingers running over the energies frozen in no time. In the Gray Between, the striations and overlapping flaps of the ward looked like geometric forms—triangles and polygons made of light. Tau pressed her fingers into a faint, narrow crack between two angles and ripped a small hole. She placed one hand over the hole. Black electricity blossomed out of her palm. The rent in the red ward stretched and pulled.
I twisted my body and scratched the SOS again, just in case Eli didn’t get it the first time. I wiped my bloody fingers over the porch, hoping that someone was around to smell what had happened and track us. Or they might at least see the blood and the SOS and figure out it was something bad. I went back to kneading my belly, feeling the torn muscle like mush beneath my fingers. It was bad. Real bad. But... I felt Leo’s weight shift, just a millimeter or so. His fingers tapped on my back. Tap, tap, tap. Scratch, scratch, scratch. Tap, tap, tap. SOS. Leo had seen me leave the note and was letting me know he was less incapacitated than the witches and I had thought. But how to use that?
With her other hand, Tau widened the hole, her palm sliding over the ward in a large oval, and pressed outward. A segment separated and fell into the yard like an egg-shaped door.
Leo was tugging on the bolo spell. How could he even do that? Then,Ooooh yeah.It was likely made with blood magic. Tau’s blood. Which was Ming’s blood. Ming had sworn to Leo. Ming’s blood was Leo’s blood. Ming’s magic was Leo’s magic. That would have been a great thing to understand before this. But... I was betting that neither one of us had had the time to figure that out or decide how to use it. The bolo loosened and slid on my body. I hissed with electric shock.
Marlene yanked on my broken fingers, the painpulling me to my feet, and Leo with me, through the opening and into the night. The bright lights, flashing red and blue, streetlights, vehicle headlights, neon in windows, all seemed to smear across my retinas like lights in slo-mo camera footage, long swirling swaths of brightness on the dark of a New Orleans night.
There were police officers everywhere and Leo’s security people, including Derek, who should have been elsewhere, not that I blamed him for deserting one post for where the action was. We passed close to him, and I used my drunken staggering to get close. I flicked my good fingers at Derek’s face, seeing the blood fly from my fingertips and stop, hanging on the air. In real time, Derek would get hit and know that something was wrong.
Still in the Gray Between, we walked down the street, me weaving, the strength leaving my body along with a blood trail to follow. Leo’s hands bumped against my butt with each step, over and over, and I knew that he was enjoying the ride. I lurched off the sidewalk onto the street and landed hard on my heel, my shoulder ramming up at him. He almost gasped when my shoulder thrust into his solar plexus. But my gut tore just a bit more.
Jane, must shift back,Beast thought.
