And then time broke in slow motion.
Time in battle is subjective, thick and viscous like taffy. An avalanche of images.
Brute snarled.
Beast leaped into the forefront of my brain, screaming challenge.
In agonizing, protracted fragments of time, Lucrezia’ssecond, Whimsical Lou, took two long steps into the dueling space, drew a long-barreled handgun. Aimed. Fired.
The round hit Eli. Midcenter. I could see it as it pierced his leather jacket.
Beast screamed. I/we leaped, raced down the sand. Grew claws with my right hand. Drew a blade with my left. The blade took the Whimsical second through the right eye. The claws tore out her throat. All while in midair. She fell. Rolled into the low waves, dark in the moonlight. A shot rang in the night, taking Lou in the chest. Tex, holding his six-shooter, fired again. Lucrezia fell. Tex stood over her. Firing until the chamber was empty. Time snapped back.
I rose from the landing crouch and sprinted to Eli, my combat boots crunching, throwing sand. Eli wasn’t moving, lying on the shore, facedown, head to the side. One arm twisted, outstretched in the slight surf, clear salty bubbles pooling in his palm. My body was so cold it felt like a shard of iceberg. Tears filled my lids and clung there as if holding on to the rims of frozen cliff faces.
I heard Shiloh ask calmly, “Have the deceased signed papers to be turned?”
Bruiser’s voice, sounding cool and distant, said, “Lucrezia is true-dead, as is Whimsical Lou. The judges await status of Eli Younger.”
I knelt, rolled Eli over, placed a hand on his chest, and... felt a heartbeat. Didn’t smell blood. I leaned in and sniffed, a long cat-screeof sound, pulling in air over my tongue. No blood. I pressed down on his chest, feeling the kind of armor Uncle Sam’s men wore to war, not just armor against blades, but against bullets. My tears spilled onto his face. I put my mouth at his ear and hissed, “If you’re not dead, I may kill you for scaring me to death.”
“Sorry, Babe.” The words were a breath against my cheek, his lips scarcely moving. “Just remembering how to breathe.”
I thought I might pass out from the relief that rammed through me. I shouted to the wind, “He’s alive. Eli will not be turned.”
“Never wanted to drink blood,” he gasped.
“Are you hit?” I whispered back, asking if the round penetrated the armor.
“Not,” he whispered, the sound creaking with tight breath. I dropped my head to his, forehead to forehead. “But I’m going to kill Lucrezia Borgia.”
“My mistress. Lucrezia Borgia is true-dead,” Tex said. “I took her conniving, snake-belly-low life and her head.”
“Good. I think she broke my rib,” Eli said. “Sucker hurts.”
I rolled Eli up into my arms. He grunted with pain, tightening up to protect the hurt rib. “Babe,” he wheezed. “Next time? We’ve got a backboard.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry.” I tucked his head against my shoulder and carried him up the stairs and into the house as if he was the most valuable thing in the universe.
“Results of this duel are acceptable to the Onorios.”
CHAPTER 18
Rainbow-Colored Baby Bunnies and Lollipops
The body of Lucrezia Borgia disappeared, probably back to the EVs’ ship in deeper water. I spared a single thought that the Carusos might be aboard, forced into making the dead into revenants. But I just, flat-out, didn’t care.
Instead, after I deposited Eli in the vamps’ sleeping lair for a hit of Tex’s healing vamp blood, Sabina called me to the third floor. She stood in the center of the middle fighting octagonal and said, “The challenges to Jane Yellowrock have been met, all but one. This latest is for dominance over Clan Yellowrock, and that by Dominique Quessaire, formerly of Clan Arceneau, now secundo heir of Clan Des Citrons.”
Beast growled.
I snarled.Dominance duel. Holy crap. Time again did that battlefield slowdown, where everything happened in overlays of understanding and images. Dominique moved up the stairs and through the scions and blood-servants like a snake through tall grass. I put my hands in my pockets, slouched as if irked by inconsequentials, and looked the challenger over with jaded eyes.
Dominique stank of lemons and fresh human blood. She was dressed in fighting leathers dyed the color of her blond hair, which she wore long and down. On her neck was a necklace of small gray moonstones the same shade as her pale eyes. On the necklace was a pendant, a ruby wired with gold.
I pulled on Beast’s sight and saw the tracery of old, faint magics in the moonstones, empty of power now, but once likely used by a moon witch. The ruby, however, was something more powerful. Intense red motes flashed through it, motes that seemed to call to my own magics. I felt a pull in my midsection, as if I’d swallowed a bag of iron filings, as if a magnet drew on them. Pain slithered through my belly. I almost stepped back. I’d seen a ruby like that before. In fact, I had a ruby like it in my box of magical trinkets.
And if there were two of them, what did they do?
