The blade was supposed to be back by now. It wasn’t. My team was supposed to be inside with me by now. They weren’t. The awful possibilities shifted around again. I had to move now.
“Get Molly secure. Fawn, Carmine. Flank me. If you get inside with me, assume shooting positions and attempt to take out the witches first, then these two.” I pointed at the screen, indicating Gramma and Ka. “Note their positions in the circle. They may look like other people when you get to them in person but their positions in the circle should stay the same. Don’t hesitate, no matter who they look like.” I knew what theu’tlun’taswere going to do in the middle of the ceremony to bind an angel. There was no way we would survive if the skinwalkers got to that point in the binding.
“This one, on the ground.” I pointed to the bound jaguar, Aya. “Donotfire at him. He’s my brother. Once youget the three witches, and the two others, the ceremony will be disrupted. Then take out the vamps if you can get good shots. Others of us may still be fighting them.”
I looked at Bruiser. “When Longfellow gets back, use the blade. You’ll know what to—”
Alex interrupted into my earbuds, “Better move fast, Jane. They just opened the circle and Hayalasti Sixmankiller just shifted to look like Sabina.”
I took in the screen with a single glance. On it, Sabina, the outclan priestess eaten by Gramma, stood at an angle to Lachish’s body. She held an athame in her right hand. Across from her stood Mainet. On the altar, Lachish’s chest continued to rise and fall slowly, faintly. Mainet and Sabina leaned over the unconscious witch.
To save Lachish, I needed Eli with me. Which meant I needed the Mughal blade. But if Lachish died before I got in the sanctuary... “No!” I pulled on Beast strength and speed, dashing to the side door of the church. The three vamps kept up with me, but the humans were left behind. Just as in the last few futures I had seen.
I reached the side door we had entered earlier and grabbed the door handle. Yanked away, “Ow-crap-ow,” shaking my hand. It had stung my palm at the webbing of my fingers, but it hadn’t damaged it. Much. I held my uninjured hand to the wood and felt the ward sealing it shut. I hadn’t seen this in the futures, so how—
To the side, a window was open to the night air. I gestured to the open window and Koun dropped to one knee, lacing his fingers together into a cup. I pulled my nice new H&K, double-checked the load for silver-lead rounds, and racked the slide. Stepped back and ran forward, one foot landing in Koun’s hand. He boosted me up and I grabbed the upper jamb, using momentum to lift my legs and slide in. As I fell, I fired two shots. Killed the vamp waiting there, keeping guard.
He fell. I landed, bright energies inches from my face. Shoved back on my heels hard and whispered into my mic, “Stop!”Crap. I breathed fast, pushing through the fear. The vamp I had just shot was now in two pieces.
I muttered, “There’s a second, innerdeath hedgeinsidethe church, and the vamp I just shot is half in, half out, and now we know what happens if someone falls across thehedge.” If the vamps came through and landed on top, they’d be halfsies like the guy at my feet; if they landed against it, they’d be asleep, like Koun had been. The humans would be dead. I backed away from the two-part vamp in the bloody suit, until my spine was against the wall beneath the window. The room was like a big meeting area, with movable dividers that could be used to create smaller rooms. It stank of mold and disuse. And the doors we had used to get in last time were on the other side of the room, on the other side of the inner ward.
I looked from the dead vamp, up. Koun and Tex were leaning side-by-side in the window, holding, one-armed, to the window jamb.
“Careful. You have about eighteen inches.”
“So I see, My Queen,” Koun said as he maneuvered in, braced on his two arms, maneuvering his legs and feet inside. It was a spider-lizard-monkey motion, nothing a human, even an Olympic athlete, could manage, but one of those inhuman moves that made vamps so creepy to watch sometimes. Using his arms, he angled his body inside over the window ledge, like a tripod on its side, and inspected the body that had been cut in half when it fell through thedeath hedge. He curled and landed below the window, turned, and worked his way to me.
“Nice shooting,” Tex said. He looked back and said something like, “Patrullan,” and I heard a dog woof. Tex lowered himself inside and down to the floor one-handed. As feats of strength went, the two maneuvers were pretty amazing. “Ain’t been in a church since I was human. It feels unnatural.” He shrugged his shoulders as if they carried a heavy weight.
“I told Jermaine to keep watch at the circle with orders to kill anything that manages to walk out of it,” Tex said to me. Into his mic, he said, “Fawn and Carmine, come on in.” The two human guards, standing on a ladder, for sure, followed, and Tex caught them, lowering them to the floor, saying, “We need y’all to keep our six open and guarded for the second and his team. Y’all shoot anyonewho ain’t ours, ya hear? Keep each other safe. Follow us inside when you can.”
I heard a voice but couldn’t make out the words. Tex replied, “Ain’t no buts. Them’s the orders.”
Leo dropped in behind Carmine. Silent, shaking as if he was being hit with a cattle prod. Vamps in a church without going up in flames. Dang.
I edged around the small open area as he talked, looking for a way through, over, or around thehedge. There was a black curtain I hadn’t noticed and I pulled it back to reveal a closet inset with shelving loaded with kids’ toys and puzzles. I turned back to my guards and pointed at the death energies. “Thishedgewasn’t in any of the futures I saw.” I pointed the way we had come and we worked back, past the window, and stepped over the vamp’s legs. “Two-piece suit,” I said. “Get it?”
Tex looked to heaven as if he was conferring with God. Koun gave a beautiful smile. Blood-bound for sure.
There was a click in my earbuds, and I heard Alex say, “Janie, private to you. Your flying dinosaur is back. The Consort is cutting the hedge and cursing you like... I don’t know what like. Except he likes barn animals. Expect assistance from your Consort and a team.”
I closed my eyes as if to block out all the horrible futures of Bruiser dying.Stupid man.“Copy that,” I said instead. Ten minutes later, Alex said, “The Consort, your second, and a small team are inside the outerhedge.”
“Right. Put me back on the general channel.” The Mughal blade had done its work and my backup was on site, which the visions had said I needed. But so was my Consort. I didn’t have the futures to flick around now, but I had the memories of them. “Bruiser, Eli, slowly. No flying leaps.”
Fawn said, “Careful.”
Eli was silhouetted in the night sky as he crawled through the window. Hanging on with both hands, he stared into the darkness. Our heart rates synced, his battle readiness like a calm, cold, underground lake. “That inner ward’s strong enough to see even with human eyes.”
I made a sound of half agreement as he dropped down. Eli no longer had fully human eyes, but I wasn’t sayingthat. Bruiser followed him, the smell of Onorio blood a faint tinge on the moldy air. I looked him over, seeing the oozing puncture on his cheek. In my visions he had lost an eye, which is why I’d asked for protective lenses. Quiet relief settled on me as I understood that there were still ways to alter the worst of the possibilities. I touched his beautiful face with the pad of my thumb. A vamp had licked the wound to stop the worst of the bleeding, but to heal it would take more time. “What condition is the Mughal blade in?” I asked.
Bruiser unsheathed it from its velvet-covered scabbard. In the pale orange and green glow of thehedge, the curved damascene blade was blackened and chipped, its tip missing, leaving it cracked and jagged. Ruined forever. But the remnant of the blade was long enough to get us through this one too. I hoped.
Then I saw Bruiser’s hands. Blistered. Blackened flesh hanging off where heated metal had burned him. His clothes were pierced and singed where bits of metal had burned through as they flew by. If he made another cut, he might not heal right, his hands were so damaged. It hadda hurt like a son of a gun. I held out my hand. Bruiser hesitated just a moment and then placed the hilt in my palm, and his goggles around my head to protect my eyes.
“The tip is gone,” he said.
“Yeah. And in none of my future possibilities did I see this innerhedge, so either it will be easy peasy to get through or just cutting the exterior one changed all the futures.” Kneeling, I turned the blade so I could cut into thedeath hedgeat my head height. “Protect yourselves.”
