“Beast? What’s happening?”
Jane is sick. Jane may be dying.
Relief zipped through me like lightning. I wouldn’t have to keep on. I thought about being sick.It’s the snake in the center of all things, isn’t it?
Jane is broken. Jane has darkness growing in her.Beast sent me a vision of my insides.
I have cancer,I thought, wonderingly.
Jane is dying. Jane has broken time. And time has broken Jane.
Well. How ’bout that.
• • •
The helo landed on the beach two hours after dawn.
I climbed on and accepted the ear protectors. Put them on and strapped myself in. Gave the pilot a thumb up and settled back to not enjoy the ride. I was weak and nauseous. Pretended to be fine. Eli met me at the landing site, tookone look at my face, and grasped the bag I carried. Led the way to the armored SUV. Headed to HQ, which was where I told him to go. We rode in silence, his battle face on, giving nothing away. Midway there he said, “Babe.”
“Don’t,” I said. “Please don’t.”
He nodded and threaded through traffic. Parked in front of HQ.
“I’ll be just a minute,” I said.
“I’ll wait for you.” The way he said it held overtones of,I’ll wait for you forever, no matter what.I didn’t reply to the tone. I didn’t have forever. I opened the bag that had been waiting for me on the backseat and removed the small weapon. Stuck it in my waistband at my spine. Just in case. Picked up the vamp-killer and strapped it to my thigh. Stuck the Glob in a pocket. Also just in case. I shut the door.
HQ looked the same as I climbed the steps. The outer doors opened. The inner doors opened. The smell inside was different. No blood. No sex. No scent of fading funeral flowers or parchment. There were vamps here, sleeping, but not in great numbers and not the ones from before. Instead there was a long line of humans waiting. Wrassler limped toward me, his hands out, a welcoming smile on his face. I held up my hand to stop him. “Not now,” I said softly.
Wrassler’s face fell and he gave me a truncated nod before stepping back in line. No one frisked me. No one said anything about the weapons on my person. Everything was different.
Silently, I took the elevator to the basements, all the way to sub-five. I was armed with a fourteen-inch silver-plated-steel vamp-killer with a crosshatched handle, the Glob in my pocket, and a small .32 pistol loaded with silver-lead rounds. I didn’t need anything else for this.
The doors opened. The lighting was low. Brute was sitting at the feet of the Son of Darkness. One of them, anyway. Joses looked pretty good for a heartless lump of vamp-meat. Stinkier. Hairier. Brute had been biting him enough. Joses was halfway to being a werewolf-vamp bag of bones.
“Hiya, Brute.”
He panted at me, his white coat catching the low lights with an almost ethereal glow.
“Leo’s in a box of blood. He isn’t in charge anymore.” I pulled the vamp-killer. Dropped the bag. “Okay with you if I finish this?”
Brute chuffed. Tilted his head, tongue lolling. He looked at Joses, his eyes staring at the vamp’s wrists and ankles, where he hung, suspended on the wall. Brute chuffed what might have been a warning. Looked at me. Turned his massive head back to Joses and whined, a single plaintive note.
I walked past the white werewolf and positioned myself.
“You will not.” The words grated out, harsh as stone on stone.
I looked at Joses. He was looking back at me. Eyes focused, black pupils in yellow orbs. Sane-ish. As sane as the old ones ever got. Talking. Giving orders.
“Say again?”
“You will not. I live. Forever.”
“Yeah?” I reared back, the vamp-killer in a two-hand stance. Joses’s shackles snapped. Shattered. Fell away. He surged off the wall, spider-fast, pushing, bowing, springing, leaping in explosive force. Right at me. Beneath the vamp-killer blade.
Time slowed into a battlefield intensity. I saw/smelled/felt/heard the pop of displaced air. Vamp speed on meth, a rupture in reality. And he grabbed me. Claws sinking deep. Inside the vamp-killer’s reach. Beast shoved into me, claws bursting from my fingertips, fangs ripping through my jaw.
Too late. Too late.
