“Join us,” Ka said.
“No way under heaven,” I said.
Everything happenedfastfastfast.
Fire swirled around Ka/Aurelia’s hand as she raised it high. The fire formed into a ball of power so bright it blinded. She whipped back her arm to throw it.
Eli fired. Ka took five shots midcenter.
“Nooo,” I whispered, the sound lost beneath the gunfire.
Ka/Aurelia staggered. Healed in Ka shape. She morphed back into the Firestarter. Faster than I could follow, she curled her hands. That waiting magic gathered in her palms. She threw two fireballs. Dead center at us. The fireballs scarcely left her palms when they sputtered and died.
Pearl and Opal dove at Aurelia, who was holding an iron blade.
“Iron!” I shouted.
The two dragons vanished. Eli fired again. And again. He changed out mags. Kept firing. Ka laughed, changing forms over and over. She flung a hand at Eli. A different magic slithered toward him, snaky and twisted.
Opal reemerged for a second and shouted.
Eli’s weapon misfired.
Opal’s magic batted Ka’s away and she disappeared again.
My heart stuck in my throat.
Eli was okay.
Ka walked toward me, closing the space between us.
Opal and Pearl reappeared, their inner light flashing, blinding. Opal thrashed her barbed tail at Ka.
Ka jumped out of the way. Slipped past the barbs and continued toward me, dancing past the tail.
Knowing he would hear even over any gunfire deafness, I whispered, “Koun.”
Koun rotated around us all, his body in a graceful, deadly spin, splendid in the night.
Eli pulled two more weapons, but he didn’t try to fire, his eyes tracking between Ka and me.
Koun’s executioner ax stretched out behind him, a longsword in his other hand. In a perfect cut, his sword took Ka’s right hand. His body spinning, his ax took Monique’s head. Opal and Pearl swooped down and caught the head. The two arcenciels flipped again, tails in graceful arcs, throwing rainbow lights against the stairs and the outer walls. The arcenciels vanished. Taking the head with them, like a trophy.
Ka lifted her stump and stared at it. It pulsed blood. A lot of blood.
Monique didn’t bleed much. Her body simply folded down into a heap. She was gone.
Koun tripped Ka, slammed his sword hilt across her jaw hard enough to stun her, and watched her head bounce on the concrete. He knelt beside her and applied a tourniquet to her stump. Ka shook her head but didn’t fight. She held her stump to her horrified face, the blood still oozing out. With her other hand, she reached over and picked up her severed hand. Koun snapped multiple null cuffs onto her head and each arm. She shimmered and tried to shift, but she had waited too long, the null cuffs doing their job. There was no way she could change shape in the hope of reattaching her hand. Koun used silver plated zip strips to secure Ka’s elbows together behind her back, and her ankles together.
From down the street, tires squealed. The stink of vamp rose on the air before weakening as cars pulled away. I knew this smell. Some of the makeshift clan we had fought in Asheville had been waiting for phase two of an attack that hadn’t started well. The backup troops were now abandoning ship. Shaun MacLaughlinn and his clan of misfits and psychopath fangheads had been part of the assault. Shaun and I were on a collision course. The day he no longer had a head couldn’t come soon enough.
Aya reappeared from the darkness.
Relief scoured through me. My brother was alive.
Grandmother was draped over his shoulder. I smelledAya’s blood. She had wounded him again. He had not killed her.Again.But this time Grandmother was wrapped in null cuffs, six sets of the new cuffs created by the Seattle coven for the military and PsyLED, shackles that stopped all magical activity. The null cuffs were duct tapped in place. Yet, even bound, Granny shimmered and changed shape. Her magic was stronger by far than Ka’s. She formed from Hayalasti Sixmankiller into a white female with gray hair. Into a young blond woman. And then she shifted again and again, back to back, so fast I almost missed it. She was...
Sabina.
