The death magics shimmered. Just ahead. A sparkling death. Not Molly’s.
My death. I curled into the path of the magics.
It hit my head. My neck.
Frozen pain. Darkness like the void of space.
The Glob sucked it all down.
Burning hot. The Glob’s own black pockets of reality opened wide. In my bones, I felt its power open, revealing the tiny pockets where magic was safely stored. I felt the voids, like bubbles, like tiny black holes, full of energy. So much power. The icy electric death was sucked away. My mouth formed a small O. Those were pocket universes. The places where magic came from and went to.
My fist, holding the Glob, hit the witch. The null sticks in my other grip pierced her belly.
The witch screamed.
My momentum thrust us back. Down. My body above hers. Just like when I fought to protect Billy.
Except. She dropped a small stone as she fell. It tumbled in the air. Bounced. Landed. Our bodies landed on top of it. Skidded. The floor erupted. Fingernails raked my neck above my armor. Claws dug into my back. Tearing armor. Breaking skin. Tangling in my clothes.
A witch circle opened beneath us. Around us. And we were gone.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Blackness like the end of the world. Empty space.
A flash of light blinded me. An assault of vamp-smell hit me.
Screams.
My body slammed into something. Things inside me broke.
Claws raked my spine.
Then blackness again. Cold and empty, the way death must be to a vamp with no soul. Falling apart, bits of me sloughing away. Into nothingness.
I hadn’t even gotten a breath.
Dark and cold. That aching lonely nothingness.
Pain like landing from a long fall, flat on my face. Brilliance burning my eyes. Exploding scarlet stars. I turned my head from the broken dead ground. Sucked in a breath. Groaned.
Slit open my eyes. Again, there was light in the dark. Streetlights. Headlights.
The smell of my blood.
And something licking it from my neck.
“Get offa me,” I grumbled, flinging an arm back, expecting to find a vamp and hitting nothing.
Something else growled from beside me.Wolf?
The cold thing on my back shifted to my other side and I rolled over, facing the night sky. There was no witch with me. But just as bad, two guns were stuck into my face. Point-blank.
I was no longer in Oz, wherever that brief flash of light and stink of vamps had been, but guns were no better, and the snarling snouts complicated the lack of ambience. I was seeing double, managed a second breath, which hurt more than the first one. Was too tired to raise my arms. “I give up,” I said, slurring, blinking up at the gun-toter, trying to focus past the barrels on their faces. Face. One face. My eyes had adjusted.
“I got Queenie,” a laconic voice said. “Sit.” The snarls moved back as the dogs sat. Tex holstered his weapons and touched his mic off. “Damn it, Janie, you scared ten years offa my unlife.” One dog lifted a paw, whining an apology for growling at me. She leaned in and licked my face.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, trying to avoid that slobberingtongue. “Fangheads don’t lose years off their lives until they lose their heads.”
“And if I’da shot you, Bruiser woulda taken my head.” He offered me a hand up.
