Koun whipped the wheel and pulled into a drive as Eli’s vehicle backed down the street, passing us. I caught sight of Eli in our headlights; he slipped out of the driver’s side and into the foliage near the street as whoever was in the passenger seat slid across and took over driving. It was a slick move.
Koun was a third of the way into a fast turn when I opened the door.
“Find us,” I said to him and leaped into the street, my body protected by the SUV. Beast-fast I moved, pulling my ARGO shotgun.
“Be safe,” Koun snarled. “Do not make me regret allowing you freedom to lead.” The SUVs pulled away. The headlights had hidden my escape, just as Eli’s had hidden his, and unless the witches in the street had some sort of low-lightseeingworking and were scanning the foliage, none of the attackers knew we had escaped the vehicles.
The Benelli cradled in my hands, I followed Eli into the low trees and shrubs, pulling on Beast’s night vision to augment the weird bond Eli and I had ended up with not so long ago. It wasn’t ananamcharamind-bond, but in battle it clicked into place like being whipped with barbed wire. In daily life, unless we suppressed the connection, we always knew where the other was, and had a sense of the other’s emotional state. Which had been uncomfortable the first time Eli got lucky with Liz Everhart, his... lady? Girlfriend?... after he was mostly healed.Yuck. TMI.
After that, I figured out fast how to block Eli and he me, using biofeedback and meditation techniques. Or target shooting. Or a really loud violent sci-fi film.
Neither of us liked the bond, but we were stuck with it, and in battlefield conditions it was handy, the sensationintensifying, along with the rise in adrenaline. Eli was just ahead, waiting on me, attuned to the link we shared, knowing I was coming. Catlike, I slid through the leaves of banana trees, lemon trees, and elephant ear plants and to Eli’s left.
In the street, Ursula threw the ball of energy at the house they were attacking. It gonged into the middle ward, a low tone that ached through my bones. With Beast’s night vision, I could see the effect even as the sonic vibration hit and thudded through me. The energy ball burst and shivered over the center ward, spreading like viscous slime and eating into the magical protections. Energy and sound consumed and countered the ward, a high-pitched buzzing, like white noise but more annoying. It grated along my nerves as if a floor sander had been applied to my skin.
The ward was quickly repaired, but in Beast’s vision, it was already mostly a patchwork of repairs. It wouldn’t last.
As the tone of the sonic attack decreased, the witch I had named Fiona gathered power, rolling it into a ball. But she didn’t toss hers at the house. Instead, she threw it along the street. Confused, I watched as it moved, only realizing at the last moment what its target was. An electrical transformer exploded in a shower of sparks. A bolt of electricity shot like lightning into the sky.
Up and down the street, lights flickered; the entire block went dark.
Taking advantage of the change in illumination patterns and the deeper shadows, Eli and I moved closer to the house. His focus on the witches in the street was icy cold and sharp as a laser, while he also maintained a broad and wide attentiveness to the entire street, the yards around him, and every being nearby. It was a mindfulness, a situational awareness I could never emulate. He had acquired it surviving one or two Middle Eastern wars and dozens of black-ops missions with Uncle Sam’s Army Rangers.
With his left hand, he pointed at his own eyes and then at the house. My eyes followed the direction.
Inside the middle ward, standing with her back to thefront entrance, was a witch I vaguely remembered from the witch conclave in NOLA some months past. She was siphoning earth energy and moon energy and slamming little silver and iridescent-green workings into the middle ward. It was her work that was holding the ward together, and she was powerful, precise, and skilled. But it was like trying to patch a sieve. The ward was still failing.
The high-pitched white noise increased, a sensation like fire ants biting. I wanted to scratch my pelt off my body. Ursula, Fiona, and Endora were drawing up more power, starting to make a ball-shapedattackworking from it.
If Eli was having any sonic-fire-ant problems with the sensation, I couldn’t tell. Stoic warrior.
Koun was suddenly at my other side, equally austere. But then, he and Eli were wearing proper headsets, unlike the one I had to wear to fit my hairy upright puma ears. I had less sound protection than they did, and this magic was high-pitched, like fingernails on a blackboard over loudspeakers.
Four more Glinda witch prison guards raced out the front door of the null house and took up positions in a circle pattern with the lone defender, adding their energies to her patch-job working. Five witches on their home turf against three. It should be enough.
It wasn’t. Endora threw theattackworking bomb. The sickly green energies hit, boomed, and spread, eating through the defensive measures of all the Glindas.
Eli gestured to the street again, this time indicating a location farther down. He whispered into his mic, “Attacking mixed paranormals are confirmed. Three witches, six vamps, and six humans are among the attackers. The front door of the house is center clock. At its eleven are a group of three vamps and six humans. Three more vamps in the foliage at the house’s nine o’clock, providing cover. We are at three o’clock. I want a man at the prison’s six, next to the house behind. A man at nine, behind the guards, and a shooter farther down the street to cover the large group in the street. Acknowledge.”
Three voices acknowledged.
“Tango and Delta team leaders, what’s your twenty?” Eli asked.
“South of you. ETA ten,” Bruiser said.
“Koppa Team,” Eli said. “When you are in place, target vamps. Fire on Koun’s command or mine. Non-lethal weaponry against humans except in self- or collateral-defense. Do not target witches. Repeat. Donottarget the attacking witches. We do not have termination orders by the U.S. Council of Witches. Repeat, no termination orders for witches.”
Overlapping voices said, “Copy.”
I added, “We do not have termination ordersat this time. The night is young.”
That got some laughter over comms.
“Carmine,” Eli said, speaking to a new team member, “do you have remote viewing ready?”
“Affirmative,” she said. “Uplink to Alex is operational. All remote units are airborne. Video to follow.”
Unlike Eli and the human team members, I wasn’t wearing infrared and low-light headgear, which let them differentiate between the body heat of various paranormal beings, but I could make out the groupings of the attacking warriors, all silvered in Beast’s puma vision. Three witches, three vamps, six humans in the street. Someone had multiples of the Rule of Three in mind for this attack, which made this situation even more dangerous in ways I probably didn’t fully understand.
